I've been running Windows 8 since the RTM went to MSDN. I adjusted to the cheese-moving pain of Windows 8 within a week.
Four months into Ubuntu with Unity I eventually adjusted to the cheese-moving pain of Unity by switching to Mint.
Ubuntu has no leg to stand on when it comes to new versions of an OS making unwanted changes to UX.
[Before anyone chimes in here, I know you can set up Ubuntu to work with other desktops than Unity, but IMO there's not really a compelling reason to stick with it when the out-of-the-box experience is inferior to another distro.]
Same here. Windows 8 is a clear improvement over Windows 7 once you acclimate to the new interface (which you only need to spend a tiny fraction of your time using anyway).
I've noticed that a lot of the criticism comes from people who tried Windows 8 in a VM, where it's difficult to hit the corners, and people who dabbled with dual booting it or using it on secondary machines, without truly committing to learning the new interface.
Not me. I installed Windows 8 as a partition. It was a nightmare. There are four corners of the screen that seem to do different things when you point there. After about two weeks of casual use, I gave up and went back to Windows 7. My head seriously hurt trying to remember (guess) which corner did what, in order to go "back and forth" between the different UI paradigms (which by the way is UNNECESSARY to have more than one paradigm on my UI).
I have no interest in the new "tablet" paradigm that's being forced onto desktops. It doesn't make sense. I dumped Ubuntu for a similar reason (Unity was/is awful) - I put up with it in Ubuntu for about 8 months. I now run Windows 7 and Linux Mint.
Now you may argue that I wasn't committed to learning the new UI after only two weeks, but you know what? It either works, or it doesn't. I could learn to walk with a warn-out hip and a limp, but it doesn't make it ideal or optimal.
Corners? Yeah, I don't like those either, and I hated Windows 8 at first.
But there turned out to be a simple solution: the Windows+letter shortcut keys. Start with the Windows key (literally), or use Windows+I for quick settings (power, wireless, etc.), Windows+X for power tools, or any of the other Windows+letter shortcuts.
After getting used to those keys I started to like Windows 8 after all. I'd always used the Windows key to open the Start menu on Windows 7 and earlier, there were just some new Windows+letter combinations in Windows 8. Handy stuff.
I'm not saying you should switch back to Windows 8 again, but if/when you do, just go through the whole alphabet trying every Windows+letter combination to see what they do. You won't need those four corners any more.
For my part Unity is the first time I have an UI that doesn't make me swear and wish I was back to using my old Amiga....
I installed Ubuntu 12.04 with the intention of ripping out Unity for a tiling window manager, but gave it a day or so, and that was enough to realize that with minimal adjustment to keybindings etc., it was pretty much exactly what I wanted with the exception of the loss of spatial file browsing which still annoys me,but then again I rarely use use the gui for finding files so it's something I can live with.
Forgive me, but I don't know what you mean by "cheese-moving pain". Two questions: first, is this a well-known term that I've just not run across? And second, what do you mean by it? (And if the answer to 1 is "no" then, WTH?)
Well, even you'd have to admit that this comment flogs the goat. There is so much goat flogging going around on HN, it's no surprise. Obviously we're lacking a gilded trough.
I've never read the book the phrase comes from actually, so I can't speak to it directly. I'm only aware of the phrase "moving the cheese" because it has become a bit of a meme over the past few years in development/IT (this may be a regional thing).
I hear you on Ubuntu, I've switched from recommending it as a Windows alternative to Mint. Linux Mint is lovely; too bad I still have a Windows dependance due to a few legacy desktop apps.
Mint's packaging and documentation is significantly worse than Ubuntu's. There is no reason to use Mint and not Debian or Ubuntu, except that you are interested in Cinnamon (which I have never once found to work)
Right now on Debian, every desktop sucks out-of-the-box - I've been bouncing around them trying to find something that will satisfy my preference for a traditional desktop. As Debian doesn't do much in the way of UI customisation, so this pretty much means every core desktop sucks at the moment without a downstream maintainer nailing it down properly. XFCE is a little coarse though it would be usable... if only it didn't stop my laptop from properly resuming from sleep (other environs don't do this).
I've used Mint's LMDE distribution and liked the desktop in it, but the community around it doesn't seem too big, which makes me a little nervous.
If what you want is a "traditional desktop" UI and you're running Debian, ISTM you'd have plenty of options. You can install a complete environment (GNOME 2, XFCE) or one of the many tiling wm's (awesome, dwm, xmonad, &c).
As far as I am aware, gnome 2 was losing maintainer focus. Certainly right now, it's hard to clearly find gnome 2/debian sid results on google - something that is important when things go wrong. XFCE is somewhat coarse but usable... if only it wasn't the only desktop that prevented my laptop from resuming from sleep. The tiling WMs I haven't installed, but when looking at their webpages don't seem to be traditional desktops - floating windows, ability to put thing on the desktop itself. The latter item is important to my workflow, and I can't understand the religious zeal with which people think that the desktop must be clear these days...
Right. Correction to my comment above: I meant to separate the tiling wm's out of "trad desktop" distinctions: I don't think the tiling wm is what most users think of when considering desktop UIs. Still, I from what I've seen wm's like awesome or xmonad do a good job of maximising screen real estate and make everything keyboard-centric, which saves a lot of time for developers.
XMonad is really great, provided you're willing to spend some time learning Haskell to configure it, which isn't a trivial task. It's in my book a very rewarding experience.
Stabbing others in the back is no way to behave, especially when they're pumping what the user types in the launcher straight at amazon and closing bugs when people complain that their launcher commands are showing inappropriate images.
>especially when they're pumping what the user types in the launcher straight at amazon and closing bugs when people complain that their launcher commands are showing inappropriate images
That objection doesn't make any sense because those complaints are unrelated to the complaints people have about Windows 8. If you want to say that directly attacking your competition is un-classy, fine (although a better criticism might be that directly attacking your competition is known to be ineffective marketing). But to say that specific random shortcomings of Ubuntu have any bearing on the matter is silly.
'Stabbing in the back' generally implies betraying someone who trusted you. I don't think that's really applicable here: Canonical are directly competing with Microsoft.
For what it's worth, that slogan seems to have been changed now: the home page now just says "Your wish is our command." Though I'm sure critics will still see plenty of irony there.
So you are saying Windows 8 is bad means backstabbing Microsoft? Everyone seems to be doing that lately.
As far as I know they're not sending the requests directly to Amazon and there are currently 2 ways to disable that. Have you tried disabling metro ? Good luck with that.
Also Dash no longer displays adult content from Amazon.
Lots of people are quick to jump on this "Avoid the pain of Windows 8" comment but people need to relax. Their is something major being overlooked here. Ubuntu is giving away their OS for FREE. $0
Windows 8 will be cheaper than previous Windows upgrades but lets not forget about the pillars of free software and why to support it.
I don't recall ever seeing respect as a pillar of free software. I always thought the first pillar was freedom. Canocial can be as rude as they want, but as long as they do not make it difficult for me to do what I want with their software, their software is free.
Free Software is about acknowledging and enabling your rights and value, both individually and within the community. Freedom of availability / modification / etc are the tools to achieve that. However, just because you give me something for free, doesn't mean you value me and want to empower me. And you can't value someone if you don't respect them first.
Perhaps this is all just arguing semantics, but the idea that motives matter is important to me.
Starting drama with the competition is a good move, it makes your company/product relevant, causes people to talk about your company/product, and shows that your product/company has personality. The term "Avoid the pain of Windows 8." is not overly offensive and does not lack class.
Care to send me a description of your setup? If I use the nvidia binary driver with twinview then the rendering is glacially slow. It's fast with nouveau but then I have display artifacts everywhere, regions of the screen get filled with solid blue.
Very much so. The pain with Windows 8 is going to be the UI change- switching to Ubuntu will require a very similar adjustment to a new UI (one that, ironically, Canonical forced on a userbase that was unsure about it).
I've been on Ubuntu for years. Whatever pains I had were minor annoyances compared to pains experienced while using Windows up to version 7, which was considered to be good compared to the others. Windows is only friendly until you have a problem, after which you're screwed. I mean I'm a freaking dev and I can't figure out how to investigate problems on Windows which start to happen after maybe 4-5 months of usage, after which the probability of reinstalling it completely converges to one.
OSX is the most user-friendly of the 3. However with Ubuntu you get freedom in all senses of the word. People complain that Ubuntu has hardware issues, yet they never tried building a Hackintosh, not to mention that you're not allowed to do it anyway. Of course you have more problems on Ubuntu with hardware, but there is hardware supported out of the box and for the others for any issue you may have at least you'll find a solution.
For me Ubuntu represents freedom. Freedom to fix issues with it, freedom from a gatekeeper, freedom to own it entirely in every possible way. I see that few people, few devs actually, place emphasis on the ability to own something. And then they get pissed off when the gatekeeper changes the rules. Well, you make your bed, you sleep in it and so on.
I installed Ubuntu after Windows lost track of its installed components (the list was blank), and realised that I could at least use an OS for which such a problem was fixable without needing a MS technician.
I manage 100+ VM images and 20+ hosts, and we've run Debian on all of them for many years, and I also run Ubuntu on a number of machines. We've never once managed to get a corrupt database, so it's not exactly something that's common. And should it happen, you have backups, right?
Now, some quick searches reveal that if you don't have a backup, it is still just a matter of forcibly install dpkg, debconf, apt and apt-utils with appropriate switches to prevent the dependency resolution from complaining, copying the dpkg.status backups that are automatically copied to /var/backups/ to /var/lib/dpkg, and then force a "reinstall" of all the packages that are listed as installed to get the rest of the data (.info files etc. back).
If you somehow managed to wipe out both /var/lib/dpkg and /var/backups _and_ not have a backup of your system, I'd have little sympathy, but even then you can restore most of a system by getting package lists for your specific distro version and force reinstalls of all the base packages. Restoring dpkg info for any custom installs would be a bit more work, but not worse than getting an iso of the distro, mounting it, and obtaining a list of matching packages for the files in your system directories.
But the latter is not necessary. Your system will keep working. You'll just run into occasional problems installing new packages and having to force installs when something pulls in a package you actually have installed but don't have a record of.
Users who upgraded ubuntu versions were able to simply select gnome from a drop down menu at the login screen. People who installed 11.04+ (I think) had to install gnome after the main installation.
Changing the default is the only way you can get rapid improvement in a market. Making it easy to switch back satisfies those who are significantly upset with the change. It is the best compromise I have seen between progress and supporting legacy users.
Also, unity only changed the desktop. The apps you run were the same. Metro has a different UI paradigm for the apps themselves.
>(one that, ironically, Canonical forced on a userbase that was unsure about it).
You don't have to use Unity. I see Unity as a potential innovation driver but something I probably won't use for a long time. You will have to switch to an unfamiliar UI, but you get to decide which one it will be. And if you use Gnome or KDE, you will have a ton of control to make the UI bend to your will (assuming you don't mind banging your head against it for a few hours to get it configured just right).
Why would the average consumer care? It is old school diehards who are angry about Gnome 2, not new consumers who are slightly more likely to switch in the light of Windows 8 upheaval.
Exactly. It's also awkward because Windows 8 is really good. I have been running it for a month and will definitely upgrade when it comes out. I like Ubuntu and it definitely runs great under Windows 8's new hyper-v client so "avoid the pain of Windows 8" makes no sense to me.
I'm not saying that you are wrong but that fix seems to about suppressing error results and a quick glance at the diff doesn't immediately look like it introduces any filter (unless all images are suppressed from Amazon).
Either it is fixed (and that should be properly indicated) or it should be taken seriously and fixed VERY quickly. The attitude of don't care/won't fix isn't acceptable for a public release by a supposedly professional commercial organisation or really anything beyond hobbyist scale. Canonical/Ubuntu is too big to let this default behaviour out of the door. If they can't fix it instantly they should disable the whole feature (as default) until they can fix it.
Edit: I've checked the diff again and maybe combined with server side changes it may resolve the issue. The point remains that the open issue should be properly closed.
Better yet, make sure you remove Unity altogether. I've been using Quantal since beta 1, and while Cinnamon wasn't so stable for me, Gnome 3.6 works smoothly.
It also works almost flawlessly out of the box on the Retina MacBook Pro. The only thing that requires adding is the Broadcom b43 modules and possibly the proprietary nVidia drivers.
Yes, it defaults to full retina resolution (2880x1800). Although it doesn't look too bad like that, and Ubuntu let's you modify the UI font size, I'd probably run at a more reasonable 1920x1200.
This is a cliched reply that would be appropriate a few years ago.
Nowadays, I've found that I can install Ubuntu on more laptops and desktops and get better driver support from the initial install than even Windows can in many cases.
With Windows, I've had to scrounge around for drivers and pray they're compatible with Windows 8 Professional 64bit Premium Plus Bonus edition on the same laptops.
No official Google Drive[0] support (but we do have Dropbox)
No official Garmin Connect[1] support
All in all, that's not bad. All monitors, ebook readers, mp3 players, cameras, printers, wifi, mice/keyboards have all been perfect out of the box for years (for me).
The only thing that really annoys me is that the Google Nexus 7 (and apparently all other Android 4 devices) use MTP now, which is still kind of a hassle to get working reliably.
Apart from that I totally have to agree with you - even the proprietary graphic card drivers haven't given me any real problems for the last 2 years.
There is a Google Drive client (just unofficial). And that is completely unrelated to Ubuntu and GNU/Linux. That is Google's fault for not caring about GNU/Linux.
I'm not sure if I agree with your finger pointing. Because it doesn't matter whose fault it is. Lack of graphics card drivers, printer drivers, etc were always the fault of the vendors, but users don't care about that. They just don't use Linux because "my printer won't work" or "it's a hassle to setup my printer".
But, again, all of this isn't much of an issue anymore.
(Also Google loves Linux and particularly Ubuntu. I'm not sure why they are dragging their feet on Google Drive but it's not because they don't care)
Ubuntu doesn't have the market share to justify vendors allocating resources to develop drivers for it. Not sure how that puts the vendor at "fault", it's just simple economics.
I find this troll genuinely amusing as "just works" device support is a major reason I've been running Ubuntu heavily since 2005.
In fact, the last time I ran into any issue wasn't on a desktop. It was Ubuntu server on a newly launched Cisco UCS blade nearly 2+ years ago. At the time, I'm not sure what if anything could recognize a VIC out of the box (Ubuntu does as of 11.04).
I've been an Ubuntu user since Warty and donated way back in the day. I've been nearly exclusive with their desktop every release since. Most of my servers have run an LTS release. And I agree, most of the time it "just works". But I agree, that there are plenty of "windows only" type things that flat out won't work. On the laptop on which I type: fingerprint scanner(don't really care) Hybrid video(kinda care, but at least the crappy intel GPU works) WiFi(at least there's a proprietary driver available)
On my Ubuntu desktop, my video capture dongle is barely supported. It tries to upload the proprietary firmware every 60 seconds. (I created a blacklist in my module config to stop it)
NONE of these are the fault of Ubuntu or the Linux community. But I do understand the sentiment of Joe "just found out about Ubuntu from a geeky friend" Smith thinking it sucks cause he can't use his slick new AMD GPU without a bit (or a lot) of pain. To be fair, that pain exists on Windows too.
Its not a troll comment. I just spent 3 hours poring over how CUPS worked in 12.04 and trying to find out why my USB printer is not working. I just could not fix it and rebooted my laptop to Windows to print. And this after installing the official drivers and reading the official install guide, etc. The damned thing was that they have changed CUPS yet again in 12.04 and whatever the official docs says is not valid anymore.
This sort of thing has been there around Linux for ever. I have reached a stage where I am just too bored to do the endless investigation and fixing any more. I will just use Windows, which contrary to all the complaints that people keep making, actually "just works"
Sure it is, it's a short, inciteful quip that required little effort and provided absolutely nothing in the way support yet produced a 30-odd comment tangent, a solid 20% of all commentary. Pretty much the definition of a reasonably successful troll.
>I will just use Windows, which contrary to all the complaints that people keep making, actually "just works".
Because one of your anecdotes is worth more than all of theirs.
For the last few years, with the exception of a cheap, crappy handheld scanner, I've spent about ten times as much time downloading and installing drivers on my partners various Windows and OS X laptops than I have spent doing the same on Ubuntu.
Drivers for our HP printer for example? 200MB+ download for OS X and Windows. Works the moment you plug in the USB cable on Ubuntu and have been for years.
That notion is pretty alien to me. I've thrown Ubuntu onto some pretty useless old machines and had better hardware support. Example: I found out a couple of years ago that two-finger scrolling was possible on an nine-year old machine. The option to enable this in Synaptics/Windows simply wasn't there.
This a common myth. I'm going to assume that you don't tinker with your machines often. Whenever I do a fresh install of Windows, I go on a wild goose chase for drivers.
The current Linux kernel supports more devices than any single Windows release. Linux also supports more legacy devices than Windows Vista or Windows 7 and supports numerous architectures not supported at all by Windows.
In the case when there's no support for certain hardware, it's often the manufacturers who are at fault. They don't spend the resources to create the drivers or they make it difficult for the Linux community to make them.
Support for devices is generally ok. Things will generally "work". However, configuring the devices can be an extreme pain. An example, which is trivial in OS X and Windows, is tablet drivers. In order to adjust sensitivity on my bamboo tablet in Ubuntu, I had to make adjustments via the command line after adding PPAs, installing packages, and fiddling around with values for over an hour. Don't get me wrong, I love the command line, but some things just shouldn't have to be done there.
12.04 on Dell E6530. Display drivers don't work properly (you need to turn Optimus off in the BIOS). Logitech wireless mouse didn't work properly. Multimon support is lacking. 64 bit version is unworkable, 32 bit requires a lot of tweaking. I spent a whole day installing 64 bit, installing 32 bit, different drivers, trying Bumblebee (doesn't work). At some point an update came that fixed the mouse issues (this was 3 months ago).
In Windows 7 everything works perfectly out of the box. Two external monitors, no problem (Ubuntu only supports one). Wireless mouse, no problem.
A friend of mine had an external WD drive that I could not get to work Under Windows 7. It worked under Linux, but not windows.
I finally found out that there was an incorrect drive letter allocation (stuffed if I know why). We frigged around trying to allocate a drive letter through admin settings. We finally got it to work, but it wouldn't recognise the file system. We reformatted it and it worked fine.
Then there was the time the keyboard wouldn't work under Windows 7. It appeared and disappeared. It also worked under Ubuntu.
The point is that your mileage will vary depending on the hardware and operating system. I find Linux easier to fault find, whereas Windows is a disaster to fault find. My Windows faults normally end up with "just re-format it and start again".
This is all obviously anecdotal but one would assume Windows would be #1 priority for hardware vendors to test against as it's the most popular platform. Microsoft also has WHQL which helps to some degree in ensuring quality. I can't imagine an x86 laptop vendor not testing their hardware with Windows but I can definitely imagine them not testing Ubuntu.
In terms of recovering from faults Windows is much easier for me which isn't surprising since I've been using Windows for a long time. I find things like the Device Manager to be more user friendly than looking at kernel logs.
(I also have an external WD drive, no problems)
EDIT: By the way power management in Ubuntu on this laptop is all broken as well. It doesn't detect closing the lid, I have to go through some voodoo sequence to get it to sleep.
It's not a myth. Linux support for newer hardware is still abysmal. Video card drivers still suck. Multiple display (more than two) support is bad-bad-bad. Unity and xinerama still don't click.
I haven't had a problem finding a driver since I installed 8.10 on my netbook and had to compile madwifi from source. The problem went away with 9.04 and I haven't had any issues since then.
I literally can't remember the last time I had driver issues in Ubuntu. The last time I had one in Linux at ALL was early Raspberry Pi builds that didn't include Broadcom drivers. And even that was easy to fix.
'OSX' being the operative term here. Windows is an entirely different kettle of fish. If your hardware is considered too outmoded or somehow slipped by the Windows driver dragnet, you're SOL. There are very few times I have installed Windows and _not_ had to go to another computer to get the network/wifi driver onto a USB (or CD!) and transfer it to the Windows machine so I can get the rest of the missing drivers.
Having 'Device Manager' full of yellow question marks is _common_, even in Windows 7. http://i.imgur.com/zembU.jpg
Anyone who thinks otherwise either has kept their Driver CDs, has the original installation still on the machine, or is just plain lucky
A friend of mine was so sick of the XP installer's failure to do network cards that he made a 'super-installer' .iso which was the basic XP installer plus 676 different network card drivers. "This CD will find your network card under XP".
haha, nice! What a joke. This happens even on Windows 7. Granted, I have only had it happen on Windows XP/Vista-era machines, but yeah, I guess the point is that Ubuntu pulls it off without a hassle in most cases
That sounds like a corrupted EDID on your monitor. dmesg probably spits out some useful errors. OS X is more forgiving of bad EDID checksums, I believe.
Printer drivers seem to be the main one for me, I have a canon network inkjet all-in-one and a xerox 8560. The Canon I finally located the Linux network print and scan drivers finally on a UK or AU Canon site (which had an easy to fix glitch in the install file, Google around - you'll find them). For the 8560 had to get the Windows PPD from the Xerox site as the Linux drivers section was inaccessible and the pre-installed CUPS one didn't recognize paper handling. Still get a constant "printer is out of ink" warning - but it prints.
When it comes to laptops number one becomes the wireless card.
I usually avoid video issues by making sure the computer has an nvidia card or laptop has an nvidia chipset- learned my lesson there.
Ubuntu still rocks but the UI is not designed for anyone but new users. The ability to add panels, right-click and edit them to add new items, the launcher has black magic under the hood that maps to what used to be desktop files stored in a logical location $HOME/Desktop to now in some hidden folder very deep, etc.
But, Ubuntu is still the best desktop and server Linux and you can always install Xfce if you're a power user although it feels weird compared to the excellent Gnome 2.
Until Unity, Ubuntu was unstoppable IMHO. It's still good though.
After about 8 years of screwing around with my window manager and whatnot I switched to Mac OS X and did not find that the lack of configurability was a significant detriment to my productivity. In fact, in some ways it was beneficial, because I spent fewer days trying out new window managers and configuring them. Going back to Linux with Ubuntu, I rather like Unity because it gets me past the hump of all that nonsense and is perfectly adequate at multiplexing browsers and terminals for me.
Back when Metacity was young, you could hardly move without hearing screams from people about how lame a window manager it was, especially compared to things like Sawfish and FVWM. It's really quite surreal to hear people decrying the lack of a built-in power user stuff like Metacity today. Of course we're talking about the whole desktop environment, but still, I hear what I hear.
In any event, if you're a power user, you're going to screw with these defaults until you're blue in the face and I see no evidence that Ubuntu is going to take away that luxury. But I'm back from OS X now because I feel that coming with Apple.
My reason for never trying Apple products (I hope I don't get buried in down votes) but end of the day ... here goes, I just thought they (Steve not Steve) had a smug attitude. That bothered me. I guess it still does. I don't want to hold that long term, but the more I read ... never mind this is about a good Linux distribution, Ubuntu (holding a candle out for Unity to improve ... a lot). (hint forget mobile, let Android and iOS have that). We desktop users are not feeling the love now, new users sure, the rest, nah.
It's a little gauche to whine about downvotes. If I were to downvote you, it would be for your style, not your sentiment.
But I think I see what you're getting at. I have a slight aversion to 37signals products for this same reason. We idolize people who do great work, and cut them too much slack. We have a few generations of people who want to be Steve-o simply so they can be abusive and anti-social while receiving praise.
Until recently I found Apple products to be excellent. They're still really good, but the equation used to be good versus great, and it's turning into good and free versus excellent and constrained. I don't know where the tipping point is, but I feel myself getting near it.
I'll grant you that Ubuntu is the best (at least one of the best) flavors of desktop Linux, but server Linux? Strongly disagree. Why not just use vanilla Debian?
Never tried vanilla Debian or not in years. Ubuntu sold me on apt or I might not have spent more then a few months at a time on Linux like I used to do with Red Hat, SuSE, Fedora, etc.
Canonical has specifically said that they're targetting the new users, and that if you're a power user, there are tons of other distros out there made just for you. There aren't a lot of choices for newbies, so that's the niche they're aiming for.
Out of curiosity, why do you say Ubuntu is a better server linux than it's daddy, Debian?
I tried an attempt at an answer for icedancer I think it was just now but here goes, I tried Debian years ago but the setup wasn't clicking for me. My first attempt at Linux was in 1994 with Slackware, I've tried Red Hat before the split, SuSE (liked YaST it made RPM palatable - hope I'm not repeating myself) anyway Ubuntu on the server in a CLI and on the Desktop clicks for me.
Unity works, it is still a lockout and I feel like a visitor to my Desktop since Unity. This was not how earlier Ubuntu felt with Gnome. For games (due to performance) Xfce is good and would be ok for general use I think.
Just upgraded. If anyone is running the open AMD/ATI drivers and the UI becomes slow and unusable you should try to install the proprietary drivers. It made the UI snappy again because everything seems to require hardware acceleration now.
this is totally childish, i have been using ubuntu for last 6 years and never have had complains with their working. they used to do splendid job by delivering the cds at door steps in shipit program. but this step of defaming competitors is never gonna help, it is going to become a part of criticism.
I don't know if you noticed, but Ubuntu hasn't been picking up new users at a dramatic rate. And it's easily in the top 3 Linux distros. What do they actually have to lose?
If I use Ubuntu on my laptop, and Ubuntu says something about Windows 8, am I going to stop using Ubuntu because I am so offended on Microsoft's behalf? Not really.
I completely agree with you. I am not going to stop using ubuntu, but what i am saying is this is not an act of maturity. we love Linux for the Base context of being free and open source which is not going to change. The Reason for not getting picked up i assume is the constant UI changes Ubuntu is doing. well i did't actually like the UNITY Desktop. What if they could have just maintained a sleek UI and added more and more nice features. I hope that would have helped.
I'm a little confused. I don't see a change log. I also don't see an easy way to upgrade from 12.04 which is what I currently run. Do I need to do a full reinstall? Am I missing something? (probably)
I've been running this for a few days now on my macbook air (mid-2012, aka 5,2) and it is flawless. 12.04 needed to have ACPI switched off, I guess at some point the fixed that but I didn't think to check until I decided to take the plunge with beta2 and the clean install booted absolutely perfectly! #Ubuntu #Winning
Just did the upgrade from 12.04 and most things worked fine, but I lost the sound output in the way. After a quick search on the ubuntu forums, I found the way to restore it, and voila, sound is back and everything is working like before. A little strange, though. If I expect any issue, it's probably not about the sound...
This is the first release of Ubuntu that I am not excited to upgrade to. The whole Amazon web search is bothersome to me. I can understand Canonical wanting to make money, but getting in bed with Amazon is kind of weird. Also I did not see any features in 12.10 that I was excited about. Disappointing release.
I thought that too, until I tried binding Super+T to launch a terminal in Gnome Shell. Turns out Unity eats all Super keypresses even when it's not running.
One workaround is to install CCSM, rebind the dash key to some key combo you'll never actually need, then set your key bindings normally.
Updated Ubuntu to 12.10. It booted up with grub rescue. What a pile of shit. Avoid the pain of Ubuntu. Never mind complaining about Windows until Ubuntu gets its own act straight. Can't waste any more time with this crap.
Say, has somebody come up with a clever way for me to try this and then revert if I'd rather stick with 12.04 LTS? Besides, of course, backing up and restoring everything?
Well, what you can do is boot from a live usb stick, mount your drive, move /* to /old/ and install afresh. If everything works as desired, you can move back your /home/user directory or selectively get your home directory back. If you don't like it, move everything back. Then you only need to restore grub, which should be easily doable using a chroot from the live media.
Thanks! Alas, that means I have to deal with a fresh install. Which I may do, but it's not the straightforward things I was hoping for.
What I'm really looking for is the sort of upgrade/rollback process I'm used to creating for my production apps. One-button upgrade, one-button rollback.
Looks like Ubuntu isn't there yet. I suppose the easy thing is just to get another disk, clone my existing setup, and do the upgrade. If I don't like it, I'll just swap in the backup disk.
Install it on a USB key. If you want to try the upgrade but have a perfect backup of 12.04 LTS, you can image your drive (depending on resources) with the "dd" utility. WARNING: be very careful with this. You can easily destroy things with dd.
My major issue with Ubuntu upgrades are hardware related, and another set are issues that only show up after a few days of use. So I'd rather try it for a week and then roll back if it's a net negative.
Yes, they do suck. I regularly see and help people that are dealing with broken systems because of stalled/incomplete/broken in place upgrades.
Regardless, it's easy to not lose your setup, run the latest OS AND not do in-place upgrades.
Just put /home on a separate partition and you're done. Use dpkg to make a list and restore a list of applications (same with repos). A few files to backup and a few minutes to wait for the apps to redownload. Completely clean system. Same apps. All the while /home was untouched.
I've never had a single issue with the in place upgrades, and no putting home on another partition is not sufficient. Lots of stuff in /etc has been customized and that would need restored as well. I've been through half a dozen or so and they've always worked fine for me.
Well done Canonical..well done.
Here's a nice alternative for those having problems with the site. http://releases.ubuntu.com/quantal/