I was a bit surprised when I realized that no one had yet given any kind of review on the latest release of Ubuntu. I'm by no means an expert in this area, & I will welcome any sort of replies you'd like to give with your experience with this OS (I'm sure I'll get something from Douglass :-) ).
I loaded up Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop on to my Dell Optiplex GX-260 (P4-2Ghz, 512 MB RAM) to replace MEPIS Linux, which, unfortunately, after version 3.4, they started trying to use the Ubuntu repositories, but only succeeded in creating lots of broken links in the packages. Perhaps version 7.0 is better...I don't know. I had already heard so much about Ubuntu, that I decided to try it out, instead of continuing on with MEPIS.
To my surprise, almost everything worked right "out of the box". The drivers loaded up for all of my hardware. There was only one thing that didn't get setup correctly & that was the proper refresh rate for my monitor/graphics card. That was easily fixed with a simple line in a configuration file. This was easy to find using the extensive Ubuntu Community Forums.
So far, the USB devices I've connected boot right up without a restart (i.e. digital camera, webcam).
Ubuntu 8.04 comes prepackaged with all of the necessary software to get your desktop functioning. The only additions I needed were Skype (not available in any repositories but only from their site), the Java Runtime Environment (for applets on webpages) & a Flash plugin for webpages, as well.
What's also amazing is how it handles installation of missing packages. Not only do you get a notice of updated files in your system tray, but if there is a file missing from a program (i.e. the proper codec for playing mp3's), it will automatically ask you if you want it to look for it in the repository, download it & install it. Bam! And it works!
One thing that was interesting is that in the latest Ubuntu repositories, Firefox 3 Beta is the latest package release. Ordinarily, this would be ok, but since I discovered a break in the Typo3 backend when using Firefox 3, I decided to downgrade to version 2. When FF3 is a final version, then I will consider revisiting that version.
I was incredibly happy & surprised to find out how easy it was to setup my new Samsung ML-2510 black & white laser printer. Thanks to Samsung for making the firmware Linux compatible, I literally plugged the printer into the USB port & started printing immediately. To add to that joy, I was able to share the printer on a wireless network to my other notebook computers (one a Powerbook G4 running OS X, the other a Dell Inspiron 1150 running Windows XP Home) with zero problems. On the Mac, it was simply adding a network printer (reference: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NetworkPrintingFromMacOSX) & on the Dell, I loaded up the driver that came on the cd with the printer & installed it as a network printer (reference: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NetworkPrintingFromWinXP). So easy!!!
Recently, our YWAM training center had 5 Dell Optiplex GX-260 Slimlines donated, & though we've needed to upgrade the RAM to 512 MB (256 MB wasn't enough), we're loading up Ubuntu 8.04 on them all as public computers. I plan on setting up an Ubuntu server box for user management for those 5 client machines for a bit of data storage & to regulate usage of the machines during schools. Also, I intend to set it up as a print server. I've never done this part before, so if any of you have experience, tips, pointers & maybe some great online tutorials, I'd be super happy to know about them
Again, please add your experiences here.
~Chris
Comments
k/ubuntu hardy review
Hi,
there are actually quite some previews in the wild. But I guess that's not what you wanted to hear. I assume you wanted to know what fellow YWAMmers think about it.
Well, I must admit that I am not an early adopter and therefore can not really tell you a lot about it. So, in a sense I'm always a bit behind with my OS updates. In case of Ubuntu it might actually be a good practice. Let me explain for those who don't know. Ubuntu is based on Debian, which is great and very well developed. But unlike Debian, Ubuntu has a 6 month release cycle and is usually based on the latest development version of Debian. The Debian way of releasing is "when it's ready". It's aimed for ~18 months but if it takes longer, so be it. It's released when it's ready to be released. The current version of Ubuntu is therefore based on an unstable version of Debian which actually causes quite a bit of trouble for some people, as you can read in the Ubuntu forum.
So, I personally just give them a bit time to fix some bugs before I go ahead and install/upgrade to the latest version. I'm glad to hear, though, that it worked so well for you.
Having said that, I also must say that I test the stuff a little bit before I actually use it as production system. Currently I'm running 7.10 and have VirtualBox installed on it. A virtual machine which can be installed from the repository. In there I have 8.04 installed, having a bit a problem with the screen resolution (800x600) but that's OK. I don't have the best video card, anyways, so I'm actually happy that it works as well as it does. Actually, even though I don't have some fancy hardware at all I can have the virtual machine with 8.04 fired up and can work without any significant loss in speed. That itself is pretty impressive to me.
Also I have another test box that I have just upgraded to 8.04 but didn't had the time to do a lot with. It's an old desktop of mine (whooping 1.6GHz AMD Duron, 512MB RAM, 32MB video card but runs 8.04 just fine. I wanna see how Vista would "perform" on that hardware ;) ) and if that thing gets messed up, well, nothing is lost. I just can re-install it and all is fine.
Another reason to not rush into it for me is also that Canonical, the company that backs Ubuntu financially, is putting most effort into the Ubuntu version, which has the Gnome desktop environment. But I'm a KDE user (Kubuntu) and I heard it a few times now that the "KDE-Ubuntu" guys always need to catch up a bit to have the same sort of standards.
Also I want to see how KDE4 works. As I understand it, KDE4 doesn't even run on its final tool kit yet. But it looks promising, at least after I figured out how I can adjust a couple things. I don't like the default KMenu which looks somewhat similar to Vista. But, thank God, it can be changed.
So, after all, I can say that it works fine for me so far. But I haven't done too much as of now. With the little I did I had actually less trouble then I expected. Running it in a virtual machine, using beta software (FF3beta5), etc. I did expect some hick-ups. But I really can't complain. Of course, KDE4 is not there yet, but that is not an Kubuntu issue. As I understand it, KDE4.0 is more geared towards the developers to adapt their software for it and KDE4.1 will be the actual first user-ready version. Right now there are even basic things missing like drag&drop. Knowing that, I actually find it very strange that the just released Fedora 9 comes with KDE4.0.3 without the option of KDE3.5. Kubuntu is by default KDE3.5 but you have the option of KDE4. But that's Fedoras choice and doesn't affect me really.
I haven't looked deeper into it really but in case something significant happens I'll report it here.
Greetings from the MatriX,
neo
My Two Cents
I agree, Ubuntu 8.04 rocks! With the Wubi installer, it is amazingly simple for non-geeks to try it out via a dual-boot setup with Windows. Speaking of which, tomorrow I'll be posting a tutorial on how to use Wubi, on my blog at crashsystems.net.
my experience...
I have installed Ubuntu Hardy about a dozen times now! (I held an evangelistic Linux Install Party!) and it has been fantastic.
Top points for me:
*WUBI installer is wonderful. It is a fab way to achieve a dual boot. There is almost no slow down in filesystem speed that is worth speaking of on a new system. Only problem is if you do not shut down your windows partition cleanly you will not be able to boot into Linux properly. This is because Linux wont take responsibility for corrupting the Windows filesystem!
*Wobbly windows. I just love them. Now even Kubuntu has them (but it is a bit buggy but enough for me!). I love this tactile feel to the destop.
*Printer Installation is automatic - printers are silently discovered and added to the system. Tick two check boxes and you can share and use other network printers, again added in seconds to your system. Plus my Mac using chums can share along. Zero config indeed.
*Actually everything seems to work out of the box. At my install day virtually all the laptops that folks brought worked flawlessly, sound, 3d acceleration and even little things like the special function laptop keys worked out of the box. Wow. Those things I didn't expect to work didn't such as wired wireless cards and Nvidia drivers but the codec installers and restricted driver managers work very well.
I was not so pleased with the KDE 3 installation being a little broken but the patches are out now. Be sure you update straight after installing. KDE 4 is really not ready for me to use daily but KDE 4.1 is looking better and better all the time and I will probably switch then. KDE 4 is really a preview.
View:By far and away the best and easiest Linux install ever. From insertion of CD to full configured software stack on a PC in 30 minutes... It can take people longer than that to get a PC out of the box and plugged in!
Best fun moment: I upgraded my two servers (mail server and YWAMKB server) at the SAME TIME via SSH in less than 15 minutes, and that included adding back some settings to some config files and the reboots!
You are unlikely to be disappointed!
Kevin
Crashed and burned
There's always one... I tried it out on my test machine, which has had many kinds of linuxes, bsd, etc. on it and this did not play nicely. It failed to recognise my bulk standard ATI graphics card and was very unstable. For some reason Ubuntu/Kbuntu has not liked me that much!