Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx stalks PC and Mac converts Canonical says that with the latest release schedule this Thursday, it will win your love for Ubuntu. If not immediately, give it a year - but Canonical will get you. And by 'you', Canonical means Mac and Windows users. Chief operating officer and blogger Matt Asay told The Reg that changes in the consumer-oriented Ubuntu 10. …
I made the jump a few months ago and am *patently* waiting the arrival of Ubuntu 10.04 ( and Eeebuntu 4.0).
My main PC at home is 4 years old. No real need to upgrade the hardware so I havent bothered. XP SP3 ran like a dog so I presumed my hardware was getting a little outdated. I installed Ubuntu 9.10 and immediately realised that Intel & MS must be backhanding each other to constantly keep us all on the brink of needing new hardware. Ubuntu runs sweet and needs no additional drivers on my 4 year old PC.
When MS released Win 7 I got a copy and it failed to see my modem, wifi, NIC & sound hardware. 4 years old, Microsoft. You hear that? It's 4 years old! Where is your driver support man? The funny thing is I knew that apart from reinstalling XP, my Ubuntu 9.10 live CD was the only way I could get on the internet to find Windows 7 drivers. I couldn't find them so I gave up and installed Ubuntu instead.
A bit daunting at first but Linux has come a long *long* -*LONG*- way since the late 90's.
I am an IT pro. I use computers at work, I play with computers at home.
I can manage Windows in the workplace because there has to be stuff to fix otherwise I would be out of a job.
I want an OS that is simple to use and requires very little maintenance, for that I would only recommend Ubuntu. Simples.
Made the switch a fortnight ago, using a 3 possibly 4 yr old toshiba satelite. Got sick of the ridiculous boot times on windows so switched to 9.10. Cant quite work out why its taken me so long now. Was having hardware issues (wi fi dropping out, and the fan was on its way out cos it was being constantly used) now on 9.10 and its all hunky dory. Running like a dream, all hardware instantly recognised, and its also been a very good learning experience for a wannabe geek. Looking forward to switching to 10.04 tonight.
The window borders have always been too small on default Ubuntu to resize easily using a trackpad, I think they were 3 pixels in the previous release. Despite this being a known issue for years and having many many comments in the Ubuntu bug tracker they've decided to make it even worse for the new release and make the window borders 1 pixel (I still don't actually believe this - but I can't be bothered to try the new version).
Joe Bloggs is not going to want to have to mess around getting a different theme just be able to resize a window easily. Luckily I managed to find a Vista style windows theme which has 7 pixel borders I think, despite a few hiccups I think I prefer it overall to Windows XP and Vista, but maybe Windows 7 is better than Ubuntu.
Not sure what version of Ubuntu you're running, but the UNR version for netbooks has a hack that maximises most windows when they're opened. So no need for resizing windows there, for the most part.
The other way of resizing, assuming you're not running UNR, is to hold down Alt, then middle click anywhere on the window to drag-resize it to the shape you want. Works a charm with a proper 3-button mouse, but I'll admit it's not so easy to do on a trackpad if you have to hold down both buttons to simulate the third button. At least not on those weird Acer trackpads with mouse buttons on either side of the pad rather than underneath.
There's probably also some keystroke you can use to start resizing, but to be honest the alt-middle-click is just what I want., so I've never had to look up the key binding.
It's actually things like this (as well as select/middle-click to copy and paste alt left-click and drag to move windows around) that I think makes Linux (well, X Windows probably) far superior for actually getting things done.
And what nearly all users today want and need is a WYSIWYG system in which the computer manages the gory details of rendering, NOT a "printer programming language".
LaTEX was a great achievement, and a significant advance, back in the days when most of us were stuck with inserting cryptic dot-commands to use the limited formatting capabilities of Wordstar (which was, itself, a major advance over the systems of the 1970s like ATS).
But Linux isn't Unix, and the "LINUX way" is to give geeks the OPTION of tinkering in the guts of the system, while giving non-geeks the ability to EASILY use the power of modern PCs. And OO is falling short in that regard, when it comes to interchange with MS Office victims. That's not all (probably not even mostly) OO's fault. But if you're having problems with your lathe, the solution is usually NOT "go back to whittling".
There's an app for that. Try LyX. It's been quite a while since I used it, but I was quite impressed with it. It's totally usable even for someone who doesn't know anything about the underlying LaTeX language.
I'll grant you that LaTeX itself doesn't suit everyone (your "why not LaTeX? because it's LaTeX" comment), but for producing professional documents there really is no competition. But ultimately, I suppose, this is an apples and oranges comparison because LaTeX is a typesetting system and Word/OpenOffice are merely "word processors".
What makes this guy think that Linux will just suddenly "take off"? (And we've been hearing that trumpet for years).
There are two fundamental flaws I see with Linux: 1) It's trying too much to be like the very thing it hates – Microsoft Windows (I'm going to get flamed for this) and 2) It's fighting a war that's long been won: the desktop war is over people. Microsoft won. Get over it.
I'm sure Ubuntu has come a long way since the 90's but it's going to take more than a new release and pixie dust to get people to start dashing to desktop Linux (in any flavor).
Doesn't mean you cannot start a new one. (Ask the Romans Greeks, Trojans, Germans, Israelis etc)
Microsoft have won the battle for the desktop. Until the next battle. Which they may or may not win. I'm not saying the battle is right now, but its certainly going to come sooner or later.
I've been using Ubuntu on and off for 3 years, but apart from web browsing and email it's just totally frustrating.
I love the GUI, but my cheap and cheerful USB wireless dongle doesn't work; GIMP is great, but I can't print anything on my Canon printer; I try to install a small program and end up with tons and tons of other stuff called lib-something, loading down my system, and then totally lose track of what I have installed and what I don't. How come in Windows I never have to worry about .dll files?
I'd really love to go to Ubuntu, but it's still not there. I've given it a go, and I still have it as a virtual machine that I can have a play on now and again, but I wouldn't get rid of Windows just yet.
Odd. My cheap and cheerful wireless dongle works fine and I can print from GIMP.
As to the lib/dll thing. What exactly is the problem? You see some libraries being installed. They get installed. (You don't actually have to do anything special - it just works). The only difference is that windows doesn't tell you it's just installed a load of DLL's. You don't worry about DLL's in windows, so why worry about libraries in Linux? You dont 'keep' track of all the DLL's that get installed, do you?
It's all automatic. Just like Windows.
Hard drive died and of course I have lost the XP install disk.
So Debian it is.
You know, LINUX is not that bad.
I am still getting used to the small changes at the command prompt, but remembering ls -Fa is getting easier.
And man is your friend.
And for most people, they wouldn't even know the difference.
It's a GUI and they are all pretty much the same.
What is sad is that 20 some odd years ago I was a UNIX programmer.
It will come back; I hope.
In any case I have to use MS at work because that is just what we do.
(except the web pages, whatever passes for notepad would do fine on them.)
I like Debian LINUX.
However the article is about Ubunto and that kinda sucks.
Something is wrong with those people.
(whooo flame bait.)
"Ubuntu 10.04 LTS uses microblogging client Gwibber to combine streams from Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StatusNet, and such services through a Me Menu."
Right. That's a great idea. I want to have twatter and the like integrated into my operating system about as much as I want a painful infected cyst integrated into my body.
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