Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Re: [LINUX_Newbies] Re: tried the newest ubuntu yet?

The first change with Lucid that may affect people is the move to Plymouth.
It uses KMS and that means that old graphics drivers will not work. If you
use a Canonical product then you have no choice but to follow. The results
have been faster boot times, but it is not smooth which is what they said
they were trying to do, ie. remove flicker when it switches to X. On my
Nvidia card I get an ugly VGA low res display of the Kubuntu logo for a
while and then it switches to X with the proprietary driver. I believe it is
using Nouveau and then switching to the proprietary Nvidia driver. Anyway it
is not elegant. I have read similar reports of problems with ATI and Intel
drivers and that covers the spectrum.

The second change is that Ubuntu has increased Mono content at a time when
many distros are moving away from it. At least half a dozen distros now ship
without Mono in GNOME. Fedora being the main one. I think Debian also, but
am not sure. This is counter-intuitive and counter-productive to my way of
thinking. They seem to be intentionally trying to drive a wedge in the
community by adding more Mono which is to say the least controversial and
divisive. They have removed the GIMP in the name of saving space and have
used many resource and space hogs that rely on Mono. Anyway there is much
gnashing of teeth over this in the anti-Mono camp and many users complain
about performance issues. I don't use Mono so would know about performance.
I am Microsoft free! Yeah!

The third change that is an annoyance more than anything is moving the
window buttons to the left from right. I use several desktop environments
and having GNOME on the left does not work when other desktops use it on the
right. I like consistency. This adds one step to change it back. Ubuntu will
include a button switcher (as of Beta 2) which is a compromise. This is just
one more indication that Canonical is out of step with the community and
that Shuttleworth suffers from Mac envy. It has been a PR nightmare as most
users are either ambivalent or hate it. There are few who back it. The
outcry was so huge that both Shuttleworth and the design team leader had to
step in. Shuttleworth said that Ubuntu is not a democracy. They do manage to
change the order of the buttons to something more acceptable (same as on the
Mac now) than the original change which forever had me restoring windows
rather than minimize. It is the inverse of the right button windows whereas
they had it maximize minimize close for awhile. Grrr!

The fourth thing that concerns me about all of this is that these changes
come on an LTS release. I think that these are major changes and these
should not be done on an LTS release which is more likely to cause problems
among users who tend to be more conservative to begin with. It is wrong
headed, IMO. They should have waited to Maverick in the fall. Users of
stable LTS may not be as forgiving as those of us who alpha and beta test
and many of these people have not been forgiving.

I did not even mention the removal of HAL which may foul up some users with
many external devices. For a time I could not mount them, but now I can. I
have used Lucid since the first alpha and so have seen the good and the bad.
Also some people do not like changes to the Software Centre, the Music Store
in Rhythmbox & the exclusion of Banshee, the demotion of gThumb, MeMenu and
Empathy which many users seem to dislike and the aubergine theme with
monochrome icons. I think that there is much change and many users just
don't like change. To do this on LTS is plain stupid, IMO. They are asking
for trouble.

The whole switching to Yahoo as the default search engine and then back to
Google makes me scratch my head. What was that all about? They appear not to
have thought this through.

I have switched to KDE (Kubuntu) on my desktop and stay with GNOME (Ubuntu)
on my netbook. I don't like all of the changes but who does? You take the
good with the bad and change it up to your own liking. On balance it is a
strong release.

Much of the improvements in any recent distribution is in the newer kernels
and in the later versions of GNOME and KDE desktops IMO. I have used all of
the latest releases from Fedora, SuSE, Mandriva, MEPIS and more. The later
the kernel the better. I installed Debian stable and its older kernel does
not even support Ext4 and my Wacom bamboo does not work. In the latest
kernels, my Bamboo works OTB without any configuring gconf. Even the Bamboo
mouse works. KDE 4.4 is just plain awesome and GNOME 2.30 is better too.

I am unhappy with what Ubuntu is up to, but what can you do? It is not a
democracy. The developers control Ubuntu and the community exists at their
convenience. That is why I moved to Kubuntu as my primary OS. It is the
unloved child and as such it is free of the doting attentions of the
parents. It is good to be left alone.

Roy

On 18 April 2010 23:59, iloveubuntulinux <valchaulinux@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> OK. I am waiting for the release to be official so I am wondering what the
> problems are
>
> --- In LINUX_Newbies@yahoogroups.com <LINUX_Newbies%40yahoogroups.com>,
> Roy <linuxcanuck@...> wrote:
> >
> > Of course there are problems. It is still in beta. However, the problems
> are
> > few. It all depends on one's tolerance for such things. I have been using
> it
> > since alpha 1 and it has come a long way. It is stable enough for me to
> use
> > every day and I have replaced Karmic on my desktop and netbook with
> Lucid.
> > However, I am not one to get upset if things go awry.
> >
> > Roy
> >
> > On 17 April 2010 13:07, iloveubuntulinux <valchaulinux@...> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > has anyone installed unbuntu 10.04 yet? I am wondering because I wanted
> to
> > > know if you had any problems
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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