Ubuntu is amazing!

[linuxnewbie42]

Yeah I think ubuntu is great. I wanted a smooth distro switch from Redhat 9 to Ubuntu (Warty) 4.10 and thats what it gave me. I was amazed at how straight forward the install process was.

[linuxnewbie42]

Yeah I think ubuntu is great. I wanted a smooth distro switch from Redhat 9 to Ubuntu (Warty) 4.10 and thats what it gave me. I was amazed at how straight forward the install process was.

[NotJustANewbie]

I happen to disagree. I don't like Ubuntu due to the lack of user-friendliness (is that word?).

My dad on the other hand (who introduced me to the world of Unix based OSs) disagrees with me and adores the Debian derivative...

[ions]

Lack of user friendliness? Can you expand on that?

[beerman]

Originally posted by ions
Lack of user friendliness? Can you expand on that?

I'm going to have to ask the same question. It's probably one of the most user friendly distros I've used. You pop the CD in, follow some simple instructions, and in most cases, it installs and detects hardware without a problem.

[arcorreia]

As a matter of fact I think I've read somewhere that it's the version of Linux that is being widely used in Spain both by the central government but also by all local administrations.
Spain as opted for the use of free software in administration and they decided to go with a version based on Debian for it's stability.
For those, that like me, are used/prefer KDE there is another version called KUBUNTU with KDE 3.4
It seems it's a pre-release version but all the comments I saw say the same, Ubuntu is already great with Gnome but under KDE 3.4 it really shines.
I'm using Mandrake 10.1 Powerpack for the moment so I've tried the live CD. It works well, it detected all my hardware, I had imediate access to internet without having to configure anything, though my configuration is not a simple one (I go through a USR 8054 router to access a cable modem). The only thing it didn' t detect was my TV card.
I understand the choice of sudo for most uses, but being a system manager I'm used to su all the time and I'm not sure sudo will do all the tricks.
That is my only reserve for the moment in adopting Kubuntu though I am seriously thinking about going to a Debian based distribution. Mandrake is quite stable, easy to install but it becomes a pain in the a.. in what regards it's $ politics.
I'll probably buy another hard disk just to install Kubuntu and when I'm satisfied enough with the results I'll discard Mandrake.

[Truthfatal]

I liked the liveCD, but I could never get it to install.

The installer hung up after I picked my language.
This was using the pressed CD they mailed to me..... not a messed up burned disk.

meh, I get plenty of gnome using Fedora Core 3.

[arcorreia]

Originally posted by Truthfatal
I liked the liveCD, but I could never get it to install.

The installer hung up after I picked my language.
This was using the pressed CD they mailed to me..... not a messed up burned disk.

meh, I get plenty of gnome using Fedora Core 3.

I think that the CD you received is the Live CD and as far as I know there is no option in it to make an install but I may be wrong.
In what regards the burned disk, it's what I've done, the system automatically downloaded the file and burned it into a CD without my intervention. Everything worked out fine and I've no problems with it. As I told before I'm using MDK 10.1, my browser is the latest version of Firefox and it was the last one, I suppose, that invoked cdrecord to burn the CD after downloading the file.

[Truthfatal]

When you order their Warty Warthog CD the send you two. One liveCD and one install CD - both clearly labeled and beautifully packaged.

I don't really worry about it.

[Hadiz]

Is Ubuntu as easy to use to configure as an mail/web/file server as say FC3?

I want to get an old crappy machine of mine working as a web server w/ FTP access and thinking of going with Ubuntu to do so if it's fairly straightforward.

[ions]

No. Ubuntu does not have those options during the install process to give you a stripped down install for such purposes. It is a desktop distro and makes no pretensions to be anything else. There are more appropriate tools for those jobs than Ubuntu.

[J-Val]

I'm more of a KDE fan, I like the way it looks and some of its packages better than I do gnome. So when I started with linux, all I've been using is Mandrake- since it offered everything to everyone, However it is really bloated for me, and I never know what exactly I need and dont. Plus its an RPM based distro- which the more I spend time with it, and URPMI the more frustrated I get. URPMI helps solve the issue with dependency hell, but there are other annoyances with it that's making me reconsider using Mandrake.

Im using the Kubuntu Live CD 5.04 which I burned, and everything is working great now. It even recognized my IPOD as a hard drive (which I formatted for windows) something that I had to FORCE mandrake to do. My only problem is with my printer, but I had that problem in MDK also so no points lost there.

My only reservations are that I'm not familiar at all with any Debian based distros. I tried debain a few years ago and couldnt get the damn thing to install, but now I'm reading that apt-get > RPM, and this flavor is slick and has detected just about everything I needed it to, without having to force it.

My final question is this...can anyone tell me how dual booting will work? Will it be as nice as MDK was- and being able to boot to XP/Kubuntu with no problem? Or am I going to have to force crap to get it to work?

Thanks

[jefjj01]

Could you explain the printer problem? For my Epson CX5400 I had to install the cupsys-driver-gimprint to get more options to show up in the available printers dialog box. Also, I installed Ubuntu on a friends machine and I had to install some other HP specific files to get his HP to work. I just did it all through synaptic (GUI to apt-get) so it was real easy.

If you ever have any problems I would look on the Ubuntu forums. They are easy the most friendly, helpful boards to find answers to Ubuntu questions.

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/

[J-Val]

I had to manually track down the specific drivers for my HP PSC1350- and use the correct linux driver for that printer, in order to get all the features to work. It's still not perfect though. I also had to use the CUPS "web" interface to get it to recognize my printer.

Think of adding hardware in windows NT 4.0 (no auto detect) - and thats basically what I had to do here. I had to reload CUPS to get it to recognize the correct printer.
Linuxprinting.org was a very good help with the process, but it was just a pain. Once it was properly configured, I was able to use it no problem, and it printed just as well in MDK as in windows. The only problem now is when I reboot between OSs (XP & MDK) and I leave the printer on, it becomes unusable. Example- I am in XP and print something. Then I reboot into linux, leave the printer on, and try to print something else. It gets spooled, but it never prints, and vice versa. I just have to remember to power cycle my printer everytime I reboot from one OS to the other.

[jefjj01]

For my friends machine I remembered what I had to install. It was the hpoj driver that you can get by using synaptic. It is also officially supported now.

My friend had a HP1250 and after installilng the hpoj driver everything worked perfectly, including the scanner.

I found a few pointers in the forums that may help...

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthre...highlight=1350

And heres another post that may work.

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthre...highlight=1350


Unfortunately, there is a difference between the Live CD and the regular install. Things that do not work with the Live CD will "just work" with a regular insall.