I've been using Ubuntu/Kubuntu the last couple years. Fair enough, KDE + Ubuntu does seem to put focus on the visual effects. I've had good experience running the XFCE windowing system, but at the same time why not just install Ubuntu and go straight to XFCE off the bat.

I'm kind of a cautious user when it comes my distros. I'll be waiting another few months for Dapper Drake to be released, then another month or so after that until some fixes are released.

Thanks for the warning, though.

Uh, so... how's that IDE coming along, Yann L?

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Uh, so... how's that IDE coming along, Yann L?

How is that related to this thread ? Anyway, I sold the source and rights to it. I have personally lost interest in Linux development.

Oh and ontopic update: I'm currently downloading Suse 10 evaluation. It's pretty big, but let's see if its worth the time.

Quote: Original post by Yann L
So I opted for the new Kubuntu (KDE version of Ubuntu) Flight 6. While it is still to be considered a beta version, they worked on that release for quite some time now, and went through a few release candidates. So I figured it should be pretty stable by now. And it had that nice and easy "Add/Remove programs" interface to apt-get, which would be extremely convenient to newbies. So I downloaded and burned the ISO.

It's a flight CD for the next release, which is, in fact, alpha quality. The current betas are technically called '[K]Ubuntu LTS Beta'. (In fact, most bugfixes occur between the flights, and the beta). You appear to be comparing apples to oranges, unless you frequently use unreleased versions of MS Windows. Truly, avoid Flight CDs unless you're working on the system itself. (The actual release won't occur for almost two months, out of a currently 7-and-a half month cycle.) You will undoubtably have a better experience with SUSE, as mentioned, a stable version of Ubuntu (Kubuntu tends to have more bugs), or even Fedora Core. To paraphrase you, don't waste your time on alphas.

EDIT: BTW, the six months things would be about right - when merging in packages from Debian unstable, some bugs may re-emerge, and six months ago would be the last alpha release. Myself, I had problems with the old version of Ubuntu (5.04), but they were all fixed in time for 5.10.

Some of those bugs are so obvious that they really have no business being in the 6th alpha. I guess much of Ubuntu's popularity stems from the fact that it's debian-based and does a decent job of detecting hardware at installation. Most of the graphical configuration tools (both in KDE and Gnome) are actually buggy enough not to deserve to be released.

Sometimes it feels that Slackware is the last honest Linux distro around. Its makers admit that the latest software has bugs and adjust release schedules accordingly (rarely do you see packages with *.0 versions there). It also doesn't try to be too automatic if it is known that the automation is unreliable.

Well your experience was slightly better than mine. I've tried kubuntu befor about 9 months ago and gave up because it was obviously not ready at the time.

Just today I tried to install kubuntu flight 6. I know it's an alpha/beta and I know it should contain some glitches but nothing like this, lucky I backed up. The live cd loads fine (the live cd was the main reason I've stuck with mepis for so long), I click on the install icon and start going through the steps. All the screen shots show a nice little world map to select your city from in the timezone section, I just had a big empty area where this picture should be.

Then I get to the point where the disk partitioning is meant to be shown and it crashes. Later I found out that it took the whole partition table with it. How it did this before any write operations where called I have no idea.

I found a bug report on it but the programmer involved didn't consider it a serious bug. I know it's OSS and you can't hold anyone accountable, but I expect people to take more pride in their work than that, probably more so in OSS seeing as no one is forcing them to make it.

Then it gets worse when I try and reinstall windows xp. Firstly I misplaced my activation code so I was forced to use a cracked one (what happens when that 30 days to register thing runs out?). After much searching I managed to find my graphics and sound card drivers, I can't find my ethernet or USB drivers though so no internet connection. So while everything worked great as far as microsoft is concerned I'm stuck with a perfectly useless desktop. That certainly made me appreciate just how much configuration linux distros do for you.

I left my mepis cd at work so I can't revert back yet, kubuntu has been usefull for something with it's live cd which I'm using to post this.

I havent tried Kubuntu myself, but I have been using Ubuntu for quite a while now at work and its been working flawlessly. I'm much more produtive in Gnome where there isnt so many config options to play with, and the KDE defaults are horrible (atleast they were 2 years back when I used it). At home I prefer Gentoo, its more fun to play around with. Although my free time is getting shorter... so I might switch to ubuntu here too.

The only problem I'v had that required editing a config file was getting access to the company printer (I'm on a windows network with just 2 linux, 1 Mac and 8 Windows machines), the normal detection stuff didnt work so I had to use appletalk. This would have stumped a beginner with linux, but I dont think many beginners are likely to start using linux at work in a stict windows environment (arrr.. the utf-8 issues). Detecting local printers have worked nicely.

At the moment there is nothing I'm missing from Windows in Ubuntu*, rather the opposite, I feel handicapped when I have to use XP... on the other hand, I wouldnt mind some of the clever interface stuff from OSX.


* actually, I miss iTunes badly. Rhythmbox is pretty good and can talk to my ipod, but it doesnt have the store integration.

Quote: Original post by Yann L
Linux, as a technology, has the potential to rival Windows.

Linux, as a technology, is subjectively ahead of Windows. Linux is a name of a kernel, remember? Are you saying that Redhat or Suse have potential to rival Windows? How about OS X (not based on Linux, I know, but still an open source kernel)?

Quote: Original post by Yann L
I mean, let's be honest for a moment. How difficult can it be to design a simple standarized software installation mechanism?

Like emerge?

Quote: Original post by Yann L
So despite what CoffeeMug might think, I still believe that Linux can make it in this fierce capitalist world

It already did, on the server side.

Let's face it. None of the commercial Linux distros are thinking of targetting the desktop. They know they'd have to throw out X, rip out the drivers, rewrite the GUI subsystem, provide X compatibility layer, develop a set of inhouse applications for the new GUI and port a few open source ones to make it compelling. That's A LOT of work (read: money). And at the end they'd probably do a crappier job than Apple because Apple had a huge head start.

It's not that these guys failed to deliver. It's that no company seriously considered making money by selling Linux desktop.

Do the OpenSource guys have a quality assuarance and testing resources? Windows team has.
Do they have tools to verify the driver code to identify a lot of bugs? Windows team has.

Unfortunately hackers can only make good tools, not an OS with no fixed platform, good UI design etc. There is no money to drive these things and people don't seem to be too keen on doing these jobs either.

Quote:
Do the OpenSource guys have a quality assuarance and testing resources? Windows team has.
Do they have tools to verify the driver code to identify a lot of bugs? Windows team has.

Yes, on both.

Quote:
Unfortunately hackers can only make good tools, not an OS with no fixed platform, good UI design etc. There is no money to drive these things and people don't seem to be too keen on doing these jobs either.

Ah, you seem to think it's some kind of elusive hacker in a basement somewhere that makes this "OpenSource thingamajong". That's simply not true.