Update: A Month With Ubuntu To Commence
by Ryan Smith on February 15, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Ryan's Ramblings
As I discussed in my last blog post, some time in the near future we will be doing a month-long review on Ubuntu to see if it's ready & capable as serving as my main desktop OS. After soliciting your feedback on the matter (and we really are amazed at the feedback; 131 comments) we have decided to go ahead and immediately start the process with Ubuntu 7.10, rather than waiting a few months for the 8.04 release. We appreciate the feedback and a lot of good arguments were made on both sides, but we've decided we want to bring this review to you sooner than later. We'll take a look at 8.04 separately when it ships. Expect at least a couple of blog posts related to the review throughout the next month.
For those of you seeking more Linux-focused articles, we'll also be fulfilling your wishes in the near future. Along with our month-long look at Ubuntu, we'll be bringing out some other articles. We'll have more to talk about this once the first of these articles are ready.
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stmok - Tuesday, February 19, 2008 - link
Its to do with XOrg. (the layer that handles GUI).You need to re-configure it by running:
=> dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
Wolfcastle - Wednesday, February 20, 2008 - link
Sorry, that doesn't help. What am I supposed to do with XOrg? I found a bunch of posts that said "This is the fix." Then I followed it, and after a while, my old configuration was broken so that I couldn't go back to my old hardware config either.And the fact that I have to restart the computer every time to see if a little "fix" I made in the computer works or not takes too long.
All I can say is that on Windows, this particular hardware switch problem isn't as bad. Windows isn't perfect either, but it's just easier for the average user.
nameNotInUse - Monday, February 25, 2008 - link
This is one of the big problems with Ubuntu - too many well meaning, new users. I can understand that you think you need to restart your computer, when in fact you only need to restart X/gdm:sudo dpkg-reconfigure xorg
sudo invoke-rc.d gdm restart
Should do the trick. You can also kill X by the ctrl-alt-backspace combination -- which will, if you have a display manager runnin (like gdm, kdm or xdm) restart the GUI.
It's not exactly obvious -- and Debian has some of the same problems with finding out where to understanding the system -- they do however have extensive documentaion available as a package, or from http://www.debian.org">http://www.debian.org
Both Debian and Ubuntu does suffer a bit from Debian's old roots -- there's the old, command line approach, for those that know the system well, and the shiny, almost complete gui approach (largely based on Gnome) for the new user. Works fine until the there's a GUI-problem.
BTW: Maybe there should be a "Preveiw"-Button for comments?
nivis - Friday, February 15, 2008 - link
As many people will want to install Ubuntu together with Windows It'd be great if you looked into the problems you may and probably will stumble into then. Especially when you are using fakeraid like Intel Matrix.I think Ubuntu can be really great although it really needs to be easier to install on systems like the one I described.
dm0r - Friday, February 15, 2008 - link
I'll start to count the days for it :Dstrikeback03 - Friday, February 15, 2008 - link
I didn't get through all the comments on the last post (way too many), but did you mention what hardware this will be run on? I have installed Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10 on a few different Intel-based systems, and getting it installed on my home computer was much more difficult than the ones at work. The only substantial difference would seem to be the P965 chipset at home vs. the P35 in the work computers.xeutonmojukai - Sunday, February 17, 2008 - link
Ryan mentioned that he was going to be using one of their test beds that had been used as a Hackintosh prior to this new setup.Hopefully that helps. ^_^
InternetGeek - Friday, February 15, 2008 - link
Nice to see a review from people I can actually understand. Might be nice, though, if before posting the review you guys posted a methodology of how you'll be reviewing ubuntu and other open source OSs.As a web developer, though 95% .NET oriented, it might be nice if you guys could talk a bit about developing tools included in the OS. I'm stil interested on Linux for this, but I can't dedicate 36 hours a day to learn to do everything. And no, it's not fun, for me coding is fun not fighting with some command line tool that's barely documented.
Xenoterranos - Friday, February 15, 2008 - link
man bashthat is all.
wired00 - Monday, February 18, 2008 - link
...exactly why linux will never overtake windows.it will never move forward if all the linux nuts are living in the past and stuck with shell. Windows moved on from dos years ago, why is it so hard for everyone in linux world to do the same thing? The only use is when connecting to servers via SSH, but for desktops its rubbish. The sooner shell is pushed to the depths the better...