[olug] trouble

T. J. Brumfield enderandrew at gmail.com
Mon Dec 28 15:17:01 UTC 2009


Distros decide which drivers they compile into the kernel. Hardware
compatibility does differ a little from distro to distro, but for the
most part, hardware compatibility is fairly the same.

Ubuntu ships the Gnome desktop, but they didn't write Gnome, nor have
they pushed much code upstream.

Personally, I loathe Gnome. Others enjoy it. To each their own, but I
honestly go KDE > Windows > Gnome.

Red Hat/Fedora, and SLED/openSUSE push far more code upstream. They
not only put out very easy to use desktops, that are more stable
(Ubuntu does tend to put out tons of broken packages), but they push
for more innovation.

Who developed Compiz? That was openSUSE. Who is pushing for most of
the feature development with Mono, Evolution, OpenChange, OpenOffice,
Samba, Moonlight, etc? Again, that is openSUSE. Their installation
tool (Yast) was around before Ubuntu. And didn't Ubuntu just borrow
the Red Hat/Fedora install tool initially?

The Red Hat/Fedora guys push for tons of major projects. Lately
they've been focusing on the Intel video drivers, Xorg and KMS, but
these guys really do push a lot of new code upstream.

I keep hearing how Ubuntu invented and innovated. They've pushed Wubi
into the public eye. Apt honestly was better than yum and most rpm
systems initially, but that isn't the case these days. And Ubuntu
didn't develop apt. That was just part of Debian. Ubuntu helped
develop a nice notification system, but KDE also developed their own
notification system that arguably is just as good.

What really concerns me is that each time there is a major Ubuntu
release, it is fairly broken. Ubuntu has the largest package
repositories, but their polish on packages is pretty piss-poor. Their
KDE desktop is the single worst of any major distro. Every major
complaint I've heard about KDE 4 is from someone who installed it via
Ubuntu/Kubuntu, and had KDE crashing left and right.

If you try a good distro like openSUSE, Arch, Sabayon, etc. you'd see
a fast, responsible, and stable KDE. I really don't know how the
Ubuntu guys botch their KDE packages so badly.

-- T. J.

On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 8:14 AM, DYNATRON tech <dynatron at gmail.com> wrote:
> yeah, some wireless and video hardware don't work (or don't fully work)
> until you install a provided driver and reboot. not a deal breaker as far as
> i'm concerned. it's usually a matter of ubuntu not installing proprietary
> drivers by default. i think there is an option in the text installer that
> will eliminate this issue, but i just do it post-install.
>
> it (8.04 --> 9.10) installs flawlessly on most of my hardware from my PII
> 450MHz VCR to my AMD X2 64-bit dual core laptop.
>
> luke, i'm not sure what issue you might be having with your installs, but
> you have a great resource here on OLUG, and there is a huge communtiy in the
> ubuntu forums always willing to help.
>
>
> wishing you all had a great holiday,
>
> -j
>
> On Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 10:51 PM, Dave Thacker <dthacker at bluestrain.net>wrote:
>
>> On Sunday 27 December 2009 10:33:17 pm Luke-Jr wrote:
>> > On Thursday 24 December 2009 02:14:04 pm DYNATRON tech wrote:
>> > > the innovation of ubuntu is that it is the most user-friendly distro.
>> > > little-to-no configuration is needed for it to work properly on most
>> > > modern hardware. it's optimistically the windows killer,
>> pessimistically
>> > > it's just a really good distro.
>> >
>> > Linux does all the hardware stuff, and as Rob pointed out via Greg's
>> >  article, Canonical/Ubuntu do next to nothing there. In theory, anything
>> >  using Linux will work on the same hardware. That said, I have been
>> >  constantly amazed at how Ubuntu won't even boot on a single PC I own,
>> and
>> >  always has hardware issues on every system I've tried it on. Also, I
>> >  *only* use Linux, so it's NOT a problem with Linux in general. So, no,
>> >  Ubuntu is FAR from good (or even decent) in the "it just works" area
>> >  regarding hardware...
>>
>> I just built a new system, loaded Kubuntu 9.10 , and was ready to roll in
>> less
>> than 60 minutes. (Note: The OS load and boot was 60 mins,  I had to learn
>> how to build the modern hardware and that took a few days)   I've loaded
>> Ubuntu server 7.10 through 9.04 on a variety of HP G2, IBM X-Series, and
>> Dell desktops with no hardware issues.  The worst hardware issue I've had
>> was an internal wireless card on a Dell laptop, but that was easily solved
>> with fwcutter.  Now I haven't loaded it on my Alpha yet, but if that didn't
>> work I wouldn't be too upset.
>>
>> YMMV when you install Ubuntu.  My experiences have been mostly positive.
>> It's worked better than my snowblower, and it certain has cost a lot less!
>>
>> Dave Thacker
>>
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>
>
>
> --
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