Ubuntu was not a good fit for me it felt like Linux with training wheels(
It's as if my mother came over to my house, while I was out and cleaned up...... now I can't find a damn thing.
I like things to be where I know they are.
I'm dual-booting Slackware 12 and Ubuntu 7.04, I like them both. As I posted on another forum today: contrasting distros, contrasting DEs - variety is the spice of life.
It's as if my mother came over to my house, while I was out and cleaned up...... now I can't find a damn thing.
I like things to be where I know they are.
It's as if my mother came over to my house, while I was out and cleaned up...... now I can't find a damn thing.
I like things to be where I know they are.
That's good. I think I'll quote you for my blog. To extend the analogy, I don't mind that she cleaned up, it's just that a note about where I can find things would be helpful.
On the other hand, having finally stepped back and figured out where everything is, Ubuntu turns out to be pretty similar to Debian, and I think that's great. Now that I've finally sort-of-mastered Ubuntu, I don't see any reason why i would want to run it, since I already know how to run Debian, but for a lot of people, it's probably a great introduction, and for others, a great alternative.
Back in the day, Debian was my newbie distro. I had a hard time installing certain drivers and whatnot, so I just lived without them. But apt-get put a ton of software at my disposal. I could do most things, and I was running actual linux... and I loved that! So I can understand the appeal. Ubuntu is making Debian accesible to beginners who (understandably) want a more complete experience.
Last edited by blackbelt_jones; 11-14-2007 at 02:04 AM.
A new release of Ubuntu means another attempt for me to come to terms with Debian's Celebrity Wild Child. I have installed every Ubuntu release since Warty. Each time, I start out being impressed and enthusiastic, become angry when something ridiculous happens, uninstall it in a fit of pique, and then post something on the internet about why I hate it. This time, I am resolved not to uninstall it. I have a second computer, so that living with Ubuntu doesn't mean living with all the time. I want to come to terms with Ubuntu, which is now the most popular Linux distro that ever was, and for good reasons. It's also the most despised distro among the established Linux community... also with good reason. In the past few days, I've read blogposts mocking Ubuntu users as "sheeple" and accusing Ubuntu haters of pettiness and jealousy. Frankly, I think both groups understand the software better than they understand each other.
My vague ambivalence toward the Ubuntu Humanity Juggernaut sharpened into dislike when I spent a good part of a frustrating afternoon trying to find KDE in the Butnut repositories. I repeated the experiment last night, with my latest install, and this problem still hasn't been fixed. There is no "kde-desktop" in the Ubuntu repositories. An apt-cache search finds a whole gaggle of KDE applications, but not the desktop itself.
The reason? Because Ubuntu has renamed KDE "Kubuntu-desktop".
Now, at first I was annoyed by the rechristening. I thought it was a pointless inconvenience, but I came to see that this kubuntu-fluxbuntu-xbuntu thing is a great idea for making the major desktop environments comprehensible to new converts to Linux. Looking back to my early days, it was a long time, more than a year, before I understood that Knoppix looked one way because it ran with KDE,and the reason why Red Hat 9 looked so different was because it used Gnome as a default, and that Red Hat 9 could easily be made to run KDE and look more like knoppix. Ubuntu's approach will make this a lot easier for a new user to take in.
This is why Ubuntu deserves its success, because it takes Debian-- one of the most reliable distros, and certainly the one with the richest arsenal of software applications, and makes it available to the Windows-afflicted with some very slick engineeering, engineering that is beyond intuitive. It's actually empathetic. Ubuntu is designed with some real insight into the thought processing of the beginning user.
So why am I pissed off? Because of a lack of empathy for me, the experienced linux user. In reeenginnering Debian, Ubuntu creates detours in the familiar highway of GNU-Linux administration, and then doesn't bother to put up a sign. And so, before I know it, I'm off the road.
The description of "kubuntu-desktop" in the repositories goes like this:
kubuntu-desktop - Kubuntu desktop system.
Redundant, isn't it? The desktop so nice, they named it twice.
Now, here's the thing that bugs me. Suppose they had put it in the repositories like this.
kubuntu-desktop - The KDE desktop for Ubuntu.
That's actually a better explanation, and I also believe that it would have put "kde" and "desktop" where apt-cache search would have found them. That's all that it would have taken for me not to spend an afternoon trying to find the KDE desktop, trying to visually scan all of the hundreds of listing generated by "apt-cache search kde", trying to find something that wasn't there.
I'd love for somebody to explain to me why I shouldn't be angry about this. A huge amount of time, effort, ingenuity and money has gone into adding very slick and intuitive interfaces and features so that the "everyday (i.e., Windows) users" can easily use Ubuntu. But it really looks like not one thought was wasted on me, the demographically insignificant Linux user, trying to find KDE the way he always has, after they've made their changes. It would have taken no time,no money, no ingenuity, to anticipate and solve this problem, and it wouldn't have interfered one iota with their grand design. All it would have required is for them to care. But why should they care about us? We're just the ones who gave them the software.
This is one particularly blatant example of how Ubuntu seems to punish me again and again for being a Debian user. You can grumble about Ubuntu being a mediocre product, but it's not. It's the most important Linux distro in years. In many ways, and, it's the breakthrough we're all waiting for, but I feel like those of us who have worked so hard for so long for Linux to succeed are not being considered at all. I'd just like to be invited to the party, that's all.
Another example, somewhat less blatant, and more geeky: I've often complained about the fact that Ubuntu has no /etc/inittab file, which I am used to editing to change the runlevel (to disable the X server and run from the plain console), and sometimes to add additional console screens. For a number of reasons, I prefer to run X from the console, rather than a desktop manager like kdm or gdm. For the first time in any Linux distro in my experience, the file isn't there in Ubuntu. So how about a text file, telling me what the hell is going on? It could be called "inittab-removed.READ_ME or something. Just a little sign post? Maybe some suggestions of what to look for, so I'm not just left standing in the middle of nowhere with my dick in my hand? If the runlevel can be changed, tell me how. If the runlevel can't be changed, tell me so I'm not wasting any more time on it. What would it cost for you to to show us that much respect for the veteran Linux user, since you've gone so far out of your way to do everything for the Windows user short of wiping his nose for him?
The Ubuntu Code of Conduct says that when there are disputes, consult the community... and that's what I have done here. If anybody has another point of view, I'd like to hear it.
There's nothing difficult about installing the KDE desktop thingy!!!!!
Open the package manager and do the update thingy.
Click on the search thingy and type in " kde ".
Cursor down to the block that says kde............
Put a checkmark in the kde block.
Click on the apply thingy and approve .............
Voilla ............. It get and installs the KDE thingy ...........
What's HARD about that?????
There's nothing difficult about installing the KDE desktop thingy!!!!!
Open the package manager and do the update thingy.
Click on the search thingy and type in " kde ".
Cursor down to the block that says kde............
Put a checkmark in the kde block.
Click on the apply thingy and approve .............
Voilla ............. It get and installs the KDE thingy ...........
What's HARD about that?????
Of course you reboot and click on the session manager and select KDE, and away you go ..................
JLT2007
I should have know this that winter in Krakow when the gestapo smashed through the door in the early morning and set the dogs on me. It would have saved me some destitute times in Treblinka.
I think the issue as described was being left in the middle of nowhere holding ones thingy...
pysch-major
There's nothing difficult about installing the KDE desktop thingy!!!!!
Open the package manager and do the update thingy.
Click on the search thingy and type in " kde ".
Cursor down to the block that says kde............
Put a checkmark in the kde block.
Click on the apply thingy and approve .............
Voilla ............. It get and installs the KDE thingy ...........
What's HARD about that?????
JLT2007
are you saying that kde-desktop is listed as kde-desktop in synaptic, and not as kubuntu-desktop like it is in apt-cache? That would be very weird.
You're missing the point in a big way. They changed the road without putting up a sign. It's as easy to turn left as it is to turn right, but if you've always turned right and nobody tells you not to turn right, you 're liable to travel out of your way.
Let me turn it around, if I may. What's HARD about saying: "Well, we're changing the name of a very important piece of software. Will this make it harder for anyone to find it? What can we do about this? Putting a note in the desktop description would have taken five minutes, but nobody thought about that. And that's the part that amazes me. All it would have taken would have been for someone to ask how this would look to a Linux user. And obviously, no one asked.
I'm not just *****ing for the sake of being a *****. The larger point is that developers should look at their Linux distro from the point of view of a linux user from to time. I consider this particular incident to be strong anecdotal evidence that sometimes this just isn't happening. They're falling all over themselves trying to woo the Windows users-- and they're coming up with wonderful ideas. I'm not asking them to stop... but a note! A few words! Just put the word "kde" somewhere in the description for the software formerly known as KDE. That ought to be obvious.
So searching for and installing "kde" is somehow confusing to you?
(See attached)
Or for the graphically challenged:
Code:
sudo apt-get install kde
OMG, don't tell me.
Well, I saw that, of course. But the word "modules" me think that it was something else. So that's the KDE desktop?
Well, I'll have to look into this. I may have to print a retraction soon. We shall see. I've been wrong before. As a matter of fact, I've been very very wrong before.
Incidentally, regardless of any of this, I have installed Ubuntu on one of my two old computers, and as permenently as I ever install anything. (The other is a dual boot of Slackware 12 and Vector SoHo. I've had a lot of communication problems with . It's been a hell of a frustration to struggle so much with a distro thats supposed to be so god-damned easy, but having finally found the patience to work through these problems one by one, I have finally joined the long and ever-growing Ubuntu conga line. Ubuntu is Debian with a touch of elegance... and that is what I am finding irresistable. Debian has always been awesome, but for me it stopped being elegant after Woody.
Last edited by blackbelt_jones; 11-19-2007 at 08:37 PM.
Ubuntu is Debian with a touch of elegance... and that is what I am finding irresistable. Debian has always been awesome, but for me it stopped being elegant after Woody.
You may change your tune in about 5 1/2 months when it's time to upgrade. I recently upgraded my laptop from Ubuntu 7.04 to 7.10. The performance of the nVIDIA drivers was halved, and I'm getting random crashes from Firefox and Evince. From what I hear, problems after upgrading are fairly common in Ubuntu.
My main desktop, however, has been tracking Debian testing for a little over a year. In that time I've only had one problem that took less than a minute to sort out. This happened when Debian changed the default TeX distro from TeTeX to TeX Live, resulting in about 300 MB of new packages to download and 200 MB of old packages to remove. Not a bad error rate, I'd say.
On the bright side, the fonts in Gutsy look fantastic. The best I've ever seen in any operating system.
To be fair, isn't tracking Sid for a year a slower, more gradual process than jumping forward a full version in Ubuntu?
I've had problems upgrading from one version to another, and in the unlikely event that I ever keep the same distro installed long enough to require an update, I think I'd prefer to start over. I keep my /home directory in a seperate partition, so very little is lost. There are some things I find too problematic to deal with. Another is resizing partitions.
Even if the "KDE" package in Ubuntu refers to "modules", and not the whole desktop environment, I suspect that apt effectively makes it all the same, since the desktop environment is a dependency of the modules. It's like when I install mplayer by apt-getting the mozilla-mplayer plugin.
So I think that sort of makes me wrong, though I have been wronger... and will be again! But anyway, never mind.
To be fair, isn't tracking Sid for a year a slower, more gradual process than jumping forward a full version in Ubuntu?
It is, but not as much as you might think. I've already mentioned the change from TeTeX to TeX Live as being a big event. KDE is another one that requires a big download when a new version comes out. Especially since many of the KDE applications synchronise their release schedule with the KDE desktop.
Even if the "KDE" package in Ubuntu refers to "modules", and not the whole desktop environment, I suspect that apt effectively makes it all the same, since the desktop environment is a dependency of the modules. It's like when I install mplayer by apt-getting the mozilla-mplayer plugin.
That's the process exactly, but I don't like to install the "kde" meta-package. That installs everything, kitchen sink included. I prefer to install the "kde-core" package and add the applications I need one by one. I'm not sure if Ubuntu has a package called "kde-core".
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Originally Posted by JohnT
