Author Topic: Ars Reviews Ubuntu 10.04 (Read 13791 times)

itlnstln · « **on:** Tue, 11 May 2010, 08:28:07 »

Looks pretty sweet. Check it.

InSanCen · « **Reply #1 on:** Tue, 11 May 2010, 08:34:25 »

Apart from seemingly broken wireless management (9.04 was better than Win7 at connecting, 10.04 is worse), it's great. And people *****ing about the new default theme. It's a bloody theme, change it!

itlnstln · « **Reply #2 on:** Tue, 11 May 2010, 08:36:27 »

I like the comments I have heard in regards to the ugly purple background. I mean, who really keeps the default wallpaper? That's one of the first things I change when I install a new OS.

itlnstln · « **Reply #3 on:** Tue, 11 May 2010, 08:37:00 »

Quote from: webwit;180949

Ars, Ubuntu, Geekhack..orange on dark. Buncha clones.

We are all in a perpetual state of Halloween.

itlnstln · « **Reply #4 on:** Tue, 11 May 2010, 10:09:55 »

Those Lego people are clearly Polynesian.

I, obviously, have no imagination.

ch_123 · « **Reply #5 on:** Tue, 11 May 2010, 11:15:53 »

Quote from: InSanCen;180948

Apart from seemingly broken wireless management (9.04 was better than Win7 at connecting, 10.04 is worse), it's great. And people *****ing about the new default theme. It's a bloody theme, change it!

The wireless support in 9.04 was one of the reasons why I stopped using Ubuntu...

InSanCen · « **Reply #6 on:** Tue, 11 May 2010, 11:26:54 »

Quote from: ch_123;181036

The wireless support in 9.04 was one of the reasons why I stopped using Ubuntu...

Yeah.. my bad, should have been 9.10 as 9.04 was pretty awful (10.04 is much better, but weaker than 9.10)

Gentoo works well for me, and I'm playing with CentOS. BSD and me never agreed on anything and I'm waiting for mint to go to debian as a base.

itlnstln · « **Reply #7 on:** Tue, 11 May 2010, 12:04:10 »

Real subtle, Ripster. I agree, though. I can actually get **** done in Windows. Ubuntu, or any other distro for that matter, has yet to solve that problem for me.

Rajagra · « **Reply #8 on:** Tue, 11 May 2010, 12:20:27 »

Quote from: itlnstln;181047

I can actually get **** done in Windows.

You know, that makes a much better line than the sales pitch MS currently uses in its ads.

"Hello. I'm a PC, and I can actually get **** done in Windows."
Yes, I like that.

itlnstln · « **Reply #9 on:** Tue, 11 May 2010, 12:22:29 »

It's all the years I've spent in retail. I'm a freaking natural.

itlnstln · « **Reply #10 on:** Tue, 11 May 2010, 12:31:00 »

Sports are good. Getting out of the house and talking to women is a good thing, too. Some folks around here should try it some time.

InSanCen · « **Reply #11 on:** Tue, 11 May 2010, 16:38:39 »

Trying a new OS every week *is* my hobby. Honest. Ask my Missus. Just don't mention the other hobby that involves Internal Combustion Engines with large displacements, she can get rather annoyed at that one.

Phaedrus2129 · « **Reply #12 on:** Tue, 11 May 2010, 21:19:02 »

I've got it running on my Athlon XP machine. It feels pretty zippy, once I get the clock speed over 2000MHz, and the newer, larger, faster RAM should help too.

Boot time is great, even on such a slow system it takes under a minute. Yay for competent drivers and a kernel that doesn't look like week-old vermicelli. I also like a color scheme, purple isn't my favorite but it's a big step over that ugly brown/sienna color of 9.x.

iMav · « **Reply #13 on:** Tue, 11 May 2010, 22:18:15 »

Boot time is amazing with 10.04 (the desktop, netbook, and server variants).

datamonger128 · « **Reply #14 on:** Sat, 15 May 2010, 04:23:12 »

I'll believe the boot time when I finally install 10.04. On any of the computers I've tried using Ubuntu on, it always seems to take longer to boot than Windows did. Oddly enough, it even took longer to boot than Windows Vista did on my old HP a6600z with a 2.8GHz AMD Athlon LE-1660 and 2GB DDR2.

ch_123 · « **Reply #15 on:** Sat, 15 May 2010, 05:35:51 »

I think they cheat the boot time by having certain things load in the background after login.

In Stereo! · « **Reply #16 on:** Mon, 17 May 2010, 16:56:50 »

One quick CentOS question:

How can I install an application (lets say KTorrent) that it runs in background as a service. So that it starts automatically on startup -- without the need to even login.

ch_123 · « **Reply #17 on:** Mon, 17 May 2010, 17:02:49 »

I assume you are running KDE?

In KDE's settings, there is a an autostart section.

In Stereo! · « **Reply #18 on:** Mon, 17 May 2010, 17:18:08 »

I'm running Gnome. There is a service configuration tool, but I'm not really sure what to do with it. :s

Edit: So it seems, that KTorrent and similar application can not start without the user being logged in as they need the window server to run. Need to install Rtorrent or something similar. But I really ned UPNP and I'm not really sure if Rtorrent does support it.

phobus · « **Reply #19 on:** Tue, 18 May 2010, 08:46:42 »

transmission-daemon works really well. You can access it with a gui, command line, or web client too. A cursory glance at google suggests it might have uPnP bugs, though. Personally, I avoid uPnP if at all possible.

Megaweapon · « **Reply #20 on:** Tue, 18 May 2010, 11:51:54 »

Quote from: ripster;181059

I'm sure there are stranger hobbies than trying out a new OS every week.

What, you mean like collecting keyboards?

No need for a new OS every week here. XP on the home desktop, Debian on the home server, OS X on the work desktop and FreeBSD on work servers.

I find using the right tool for the job makes my life a lot easier.

InSanCen · « **Reply #21 on:** Tue, 18 May 2010, 13:59:28 »

Quote from: ripster;183531

Sounds like a full time job supporting multiple OS's.

A touch more accurate ;-)

ch_123 · « **Reply #22 on:** Tue, 18 May 2010, 14:03:59 »

Only if you're doing it wrong.

itlnstln · « **Reply #23 on:** Tue, 18 May 2010, 14:10:22 »

Quote from: ch_123;183609

Only if you're doing it wrong.

Good call. That's why I needed a new job. Mine was too easy, and there was nowhere to go upwards. Time for change. May 31st; I can't wait. It's funny watching the people that are about to take over my stuff freaking out about learning what I do... and they thought I sat around and posted on Geekhack all day.

InSanCen · « **Reply #24 on:** Tue, 18 May 2010, 15:40:48 »

Quote from: itlnstln;183613

Good call. That's why I needed a new job. Mine was too easy, and there was nowhere to go upwards. Time for change. May 31st; I can't wait. It's funny watching the people that are about to take over my stuff freaking out about learning what I do... and they thought I sat around and posted on Geekhack all day.

I know exactly how you feel. It's great watching the realisation dawn, and the ensuing fallout that results. I proved a point when I left (Asked for a 2yr overdue raise, got told no, I didn't do enough to warrant it). 2 weeks after I left, the whole house of cards fell over. Lost £2M+ and hired me in as a consultant to fix it. They thought all those 5yr old disks they didn't want to replace just hotswapped themselves, automagically ordered individual replacements and logged all of this. Funnily enough, without me, or somone that actually looked at error logs, the failure rate became unsustainable. And then someone pulls the power to the whole array of spindles that had been spinning for 5yrs in an attempt to have a large disk swapping session, and wondered why they wouldn't fire back up.

LMAO all the way to the bank, pocketing approx 30x the annual cost of the raise. And was offered the job back ("We'll ignore your resignation, and give you that raise"). I took immense pleasure in describing in short but vivid detail, exactly where they could insert the offer. Sometimes, taking a decision and stepping into the unknown is just what you need to do.

itlnstln · « **Reply #25 on:** Tue, 18 May 2010, 15:49:56 »

The funny thing is that everything is documented, SOPs are written, etc. The hiring choices made around me are the problem. There's a lot of work that I do that needs data from disparate sources. The concepts are easy enough to learn, but the base skill level is fairly high. I use a lot of sophisticated tools and know SQL and RDBMSs backwards and forwards. Nobody else does. They didn't take the time to learn the systems while I was here, and now they are scrambling to catch up.

It's a lot like trying to teach a college History course, but none of the students can read or write. They can follow the concepts that I teach, but they can't read the book with the details, and they can't write the essays on the test. There's a certain skill set they need to do my work, and none of them have it. Oh well, I'm going to look like a badass at my next position.

Rajagra · « **Reply #26 on:** Tue, 18 May 2010, 16:58:17 »

Quote from: Megaweapon;183528

I find using the right tool for the job makes my life a lot easier.

Indeed.

TexasFlood · « **Reply #27 on:** Wed, 19 May 2010, 00:42:30 »

Quote from: InSanCen;180948

Apart from seemingly broken wireless management (9.04 was better than Win7 at connecting, 10.04 is worse), it's great. And people *****ing about the new default theme. It's a bloody theme, change it!

I'm running 10.04 right now. I was actually not going to upgrade yet but ran out of disk space during a 9.10 update and my GUI wasn't coming up any more, no matter what I tried. So, made the decision to load the distribution upgrade from a terminal and "fall forward", hoping that whatever got glitched in 9.10 would get overwritten and magically fixed. Well, it worked. Everything seems fine, better than ever. And I finally bit the bullet and compiled a newer ralink wireless driver than the ones included so that is working faster than ever. Can't complain.

vyshane · « **Reply #28 on:** Wed, 19 May 2010, 01:10:39 »

Upgraded my work PC from 9.10 to 10.04. It didn't remember my dual monitor setup, but everything else was fine.

HaaTa · « **Reply #29 on:** Wed, 19 May 2010, 01:51:10 »

Quote from: Rajagra;183762

Show Image

Are those drywall screws? Umm, I usually use something along the lines of a screwdriver or a specialized drill for drywall screws as the "right tool for the job" :P.

kishy · « **Reply #30 on:** Wed, 19 May 2010, 01:58:23 »

Aren't drywall screws generally black and have that scratchy sort of texture, as well as being quite narrow compared to the size of the head?

HaaTa · « **Reply #31 on:** Wed, 19 May 2010, 02:24:37 »

Yeah...now that you mention it. My argument still stands though

.

itlnstln · « **Reply #32 on:** Wed, 19 May 2010, 07:22:48 »

Drywall screws are awesome. I used to use them in subwoofer builds because they are incredibly strong. It's also pretty difficult to strip the heads on them, but if that's a concern, you're doing it wrong.

TexasFlood · « **Reply #33 on:** Wed, 19 May 2010, 08:43:36 »

Quote from: itlnstln;180946

Looks pretty sweet. Check it.

Glanced over the review, interesting, and picked up on pinta, which is like Micro$oft paint. I like GIMP but pinta looks like for really quick and dirty stuff so installed it to.

TexasFlood · « **Reply #34 on:** Wed, 19 May 2010, 11:36:33 »

Quote from: itlnstln;180950

I like the comments I have heard in regards to the ugly purple background. I mean, who really keeps the default wallpaper? That's one of the first things I change when I install a new OS.

I never even saw the purple background. I use desktop drapes to switch out a number of NASA pictures, mostly Nebula, so never even saw it, :nono: . I did notice the window manager controls (min/max/close) were moved to the left top of the windows. I couldn't cope and had to move them back to the top right.

bigpook · « **Reply #35 on:** Wed, 19 May 2010, 14:27:29 »

Like most people, the first thing you change is the wallpaper. But I am ok with the controls on the left. Seems kind of weird at first, but I got used to it. From what I am reading, some people got bent out of shape over it.
I don't know. Pick another theme?

TexasFlood · « **Reply #36 on:** Wed, 19 May 2010, 15:00:53 »

Quote from: bigpook;184278

Like most people, the first thing you change is the wallpaper. But I am ok with the controls on the left. Seems kind of weird at first, but I got used to it. From what I am reading, some people got bent out of shape over it.
I don't know. Pick another theme?

I just have trouble with the controls on the left, and see no reason why I should have to, :wink:

It's not hard to change. Here is the process I followed:

Right click on the Ubuntu menu and select 'Edit Menu's' which will load the menu editor.
Select System Tools ( Menus - Applications - System Tools )
Click the check box to the left of 'Configuration Editor' (Applications - System Tools - Configuration Editor) then click 'Close'
Next load the 'Configuration Editor' (Applications - System Tools - Configuration Editor)
Once this has opened navigate to 'Apps - Metacity - General - Button Layout'
Double click 'button_layout', this will enable you to edit it.
By default it will be 'close,minimize,maximize:' with the ':' at the end of the line the controls will be displayed left. If you move the ':' to the beginning of the line the controls will be displayed right.
I changed mine to ':minimize,maximize,close' which moves the controls to the right, and changed the order to 'Minimize - Maxamize - Close'
When happy with your layout close the 'Configuration Editor'

You're done.

bigpook · « **Reply #37 on:** Wed, 19 May 2010, 15:52:47 »

cool, I saw something like that somewhere on the interweb. Its nice that you are able to change it, but Canonical should have made it a bit easier to do for the average user.

I don't care so much for myself. Am using 9.10 on my laptop at work and the controls are on the right. At home its 10.04 with the controls on the left. It doesn't trip me up so much so its no worries.

I was reading somewhere that there is a reason for moving the controls to the left. I think Canonical is going to introduce "something" to occupy the right side. Not sure yet what they plan on doing.
Maybe something to do with Gnome-desktop; I suppose we will see when 10.10 comes out in October.

TexasFlood · « **Reply #38 on:** Wed, 19 May 2010, 16:20:10 »

Quote from: bigpook;184322

cool, I saw something like that somewhere on the interweb. Its nice that you are able to change it, but Canonical should have made it a bit easier to do for the average user.

I don't care so much for myself. Am using 9.10 on my laptop at work and the controls are on the right. At home its 10.04 with the controls on the left. It doesn't trip me up so much so its no worries.

I was reading somewhere that there is a reason for moving the controls to the left. I think Canonical is going to introduce "something" to occupy the right side. Not sure yet what they plan on doing.
Maybe something to do with Gnome-desktop; I suppose we will see when 10.10 comes out in October.

There is actually an easier way to "fix" the buttons, which I also tested and it works - the mwbuttons script.

And yes I saw the mention of moving the existing controls to the top left in preparation for some new controls to go into the top right. It was in that review linked to in the first post of this thread.

nowsharing · « **Reply #39 on:** Wed, 19 May 2010, 18:41:28 »

Today I updated my Asus 900A to Ubuntu 10.4 Netbook Edition. It's snappier all around, and every device worked without any tinkering. I've never been able to say that about a Linux distro before.

TexasFlood · « **Reply #40 on:** Wed, 19 May 2010, 20:19:20 »

Quote from: nowsharing;184383

Today I updated my Asus 900A to Ubuntu 10.4 Netbook Edition. It's snappier all around, and every device worked without any tinkering. I've never been able to say that about a Linux distro before.

All my devices worked without tinkering as well.

At least they did until I improved it till it was broke, :smile:.

My Belkin pcmcia 802.11n wireless card was working but only at 802.11g speeds. Didn't immediately see a native n driver for it so tried to load the Windows one via ndiswrapper. Not only did it not make it work at n speeds but when I removed it there was now NO wireless driver.

Rather than try to fix the old driver, I did some googling and found the latest source code for a compatible driver on the ralink web site and some great compiling guidance on the ubuntu forums. Actually first time around I tried compiling without the forums guidance and although it compiled, it didn't work. But with the guidance, basically setting a few pre-compile configuration variables, I'm getting 802.11n speeds out of this belkin card at last.

Using a Linux box definitely requires a different mindset than Windows for best results but having been a Unix admin in a former life, I can live with that.

ricercar · « **Reply #41 on:** Thu, 20 May 2010, 05:15:51 »

Does Ubuntu include drivers for 4-wire passive touch screen? (5-wire = multitouch)

TexasFlood · « **Reply #42 on:** Thu, 20 May 2010, 07:47:47 »

Quote from: ricercar;184581

Does Ubuntu include drivers for 4-wire passive touch screen? (5-wire = multitouch)

Uhh. Well. Searched the package manager for "touchscreen". There are a number of items that show up, but the primary ones that stuck out to me are below. At the bottom look like a couple of generic drivers, not sure if they're what you're looking for. I'd suggest searching the ubuntu forums for more info.

inputattach (already installed) - utility to connect serial-attached peripherals to the input subsystem - inputattach connects legacy serial-attached input peripherals to the input subsystem: keyboards, mice, joysticks, touch-screens...
libts-0.0.0 (already installed) - touch screen library - Tslib is an abstraction layer for touchscreen panel events, as well as a filter stack for the manipulation of those events. Examples of implemented filters include jitter smoothing and the calibration transform.
libts-bin (not installed) - touch screen library utilities - Tslib is an abstraction layer for touchscreen panel events, as well as a filter stack for the manipulation of those events. This package contains a few test programs like ts_calibrate that can be useful when developing or testing application using touch screens.
tsconf (already installed) - Touchscreen-Driver for X.Org/XFree86 server - This XFree/X.Org driver provides support for touchscreens input devices. The driver is actually an evdev-driver which supports events for moving in absolute coordinates, relative coordinates and mouse-buttons.
xserver-xorg-input-elographics (not installed) - X.Org X server -- ELOGraphics input driver - This package provides the driver for ELO Graphics touchscreens.
xserver-xorg-input-evtouch (not installed) - Touchscreen-Driver for X.Org/XFree86 server - This XFree/X.Org driver provides support for touchscreens input devices. The driver is actually an evdev-driver which supports events for moving in absolute coordinates, relative coordinates and mouse-buttons.
xserver-xorg-input-tslib (not installed) - tslib touchscreen driver for X.Org/XFree86 server - This X.Org/XFree86 driver provides support for touchscreens input devices. The driver is based on tslib which supports events for moving in absolute coordinates and relative coordinates. This package is built from the xf86-input-tslib driver module.

bigpook · « **Reply #43 on:** Thu, 20 May 2010, 11:29:22 »

Looks like Mint just released a new version based on 10.04

Here is a review:
mint9

I have mint 8 spinning on a spare box and for the most part like it a bit better than Ubuntu. I like the extra polish the Mint team have added to the interface and overall, they have done a fine job.
I imagine some users would deride it for being so simple to install and use, but nowadays, I just want to install and run it with the least amount of grief. I don't really have the patience or the time to manually configure the desktop.

What holds me back from using it on my main machine is that I haven't figured out how to install it on a raid array. Maybe they will release an alt-install disk like ubuntu...

itlnstln · « **Reply #44 on:** Thu, 20 May 2010, 11:56:18 »

Quote from: ripster;184775

Does this version require the ability to compile your own drivers as well? Maybe I should stop following this thread..........

I hate that. I just want to double-click a setup executable and move on.

kishy · « **Reply #45 on:** Thu, 20 May 2010, 12:45:34 »

Quote from: itlnstln;184785

i hate that. I just want to double-click a setup executable and move on.

qft

ch_123 · « **Reply #46 on:** Thu, 20 May 2010, 12:46:39 »

Quote from: ripster;184775

Does this version require the ability to compile your own drivers as well? Maybe I should stop following this thread..........

Tbh, that only really happens if the hardware you are using is **** or very very new.

itlnstln · « **Reply #47 on:** Thu, 20 May 2010, 12:48:18 »

Until Linux gets to that point (same with installing any software), I don't think it will be viable in the desktop arena. Say what you will about Windows, but it sure is easy to use, and I can get **** done.

bigpook · « **Reply #48 on:** Thu, 20 May 2010, 13:36:19 »

Software package management is very different on linux when compared to windows.

YMMV of course, but I have had good luck. Instead of searching the internet for drivers and software packages like I do for windows, I use synaptic or apt-get to access a software package database. If its in the repo, and theres lots of stuff in the repos, I click and install.

As for hardware, I have not had an issue in a very long time. During the install process, linux will find and install the appropriate motherboard drivers. Same goes for MP3 players, USB drivers, printers, scanners, etc...

I use both linux and windows, and really, its hard to beat apt-get for software management. Now, you could say that the software that is available for linux is ****. And I suppose to a certain degree that would be true; things like autocad, photoshop and other advanced apps are not available for linux. Thankfully, I don't use those apps so its not like I am missing out.
But thats not the fault of linux. It would be up to the software vendor to write the app so it runs under linux. That is a whole nother story though.

Just for clarity, the only reason I even use windows (XP in a vm) is because the applications I do use are only available for windows and are needed by me to program the phone switches I work on. The past few years have brought some relief as the programming interfaces can now be accessed via a web browser.

If it matters much, I have seen vmail systems go from DOS to OS/2 to Windows and now to linux. The linux vmail systems are pretty sweet too. Conference cards and other addins are now using linux for their firmware, and all of the PBX platforms I work on now use linux as the core OS.
Its a slow slog to world domination : )

ch_123 · « **Reply #49 on:** Thu, 20 May 2010, 18:10:23 »

Quote from: itlnstln;184820

Until Linux gets to that point (same with installing any software), I don't think it will be viable in the desktop arena. Say what you will about Windows, but it sure is easy to use, and I can get **** done.

Linux in general is better with out of the box support than XP is, and in some cases can beat 7 for certain hardware configurations.

And package managers are one of the best things about Linux. Compared with Windows which has... nothing... Of course, people are like "HURR DURR COMMAND LINE LOLOLOL" and fail to appreciate that it's objectively better by just about any metric.

Specifically, let's say I want to install something onto Windows -

1) I open a web browser
2) I have to search for the site that has the software.
3) I have to search through the site to find it's download page (often a Heraklean feat)
4) Find wherever the right one for my version of Windows is and click on it and go through whatever other rigmarole to start the download.
5) Sit around, wait till it's downloaded.
6) Find wherever the thing threw my download and open it.
7) Go through UAC and onto the installer.

The installer requires me to go through several screens of banal nonsense that any normal person is going to pick the "Yeah whatever" option.
9) Sometime later it's done.

Linux -

1) Open a terminal.
2) [OPTIONAL] I run 'apt-cache search xyz' if I dont know the exact name of the software package I'm looking for.
3) Type 'sudo apt-get install zyx'
4) I enter my password and press y.
5) Without any further intervention it downloads and completes.

You were saying something about a certain OS needing a better software installation procedure?

News:

Author Topic: Ars Reviews Ubuntu 10.04 (Read 13791 times)