anton123
October 13th, 2005, 04:16 PM
Hello,
First of all, let me congratulate the Ubuntu team for designing a great Linux distribution. It works great and it has a smart, graphical setup stage. Some people complain about the lack of a less than graphical install but such an install can belong only to the category of a command prompt. To me, Ubuntu's install is very graphical indeed. A good install observes the details in a smart way and cares about graphical aspect on the second hand.
Of course, there is room for improvement in functionality and that is what I want to state.
First of all, everyone has a different processor architecture(ex: i386/486/586/686, amd k5/k6/k7/k8, etc). My question is the following. I have an amd k7 (i686 processor), yet Ubuntu installs a i386 kernel. Such kernel can not fully exploit the instruction set of the i686 architecture and thus, my computer does not run at its full potential should the Linux kernel have been compiled for the corresponding architecture. I know that there are a variety of architectures out there (Intel, PowerPC, Sun, etc). Wouldn't it be great if during the setup, Ubuntu detects the processor architecture so that before installing a kernel it displays something like:
Ubuntu has detected that your computer's processor architecture is based on the Intel i686 instruction set. Ubuntu has already selected the best kernel based on this information. What would you like to do?
*Install linux-image-2.6.14-7-686 (recommended)
*Install linux-image-2.6.14-7-386 (for the Intel i386 instruction set)
*Install linux-image-2.6.14-7-486 (for the Intel i486 instruction set)
*Install linux-image-2.6.14-7-586 (for the Intel i586 instruction set)
Where "linux-image-2.6.14-7-686" image version is hypothetical unless Ubuntu 6.04 will use kernel 2.6.14. Wouldn't this be a smart way of matching kernel/architecture for the Intel/AMD 32-bit platforms? After all, you want to make Ubuntu 6.04 throw Windows Vista in the dust. So, how about kernel performance and choice primarily during setup and secondarily after an install? The same idea for the other platforms also.
Also, another suggestion is about the partitioner. Can it be possible to be more explicit about the stage where the resizing of a partition takes place? For instance, for a 60 GB hard drive:
Ubuntu will now resize the partiton from 60 GB to "X" GB. The partiton of "X" GB will remain as it is while the newly created free space will be used to install Ubuntu.
What do you guys think? I am mostly concerned with the kernel selection choice.
First of all, let me congratulate the Ubuntu team for designing a great Linux distribution. It works great and it has a smart, graphical setup stage. Some people complain about the lack of a less than graphical install but such an install can belong only to the category of a command prompt. To me, Ubuntu's install is very graphical indeed. A good install observes the details in a smart way and cares about graphical aspect on the second hand.
Of course, there is room for improvement in functionality and that is what I want to state.
First of all, everyone has a different processor architecture(ex: i386/486/586/686, amd k5/k6/k7/k8, etc). My question is the following. I have an amd k7 (i686 processor), yet Ubuntu installs a i386 kernel. Such kernel can not fully exploit the instruction set of the i686 architecture and thus, my computer does not run at its full potential should the Linux kernel have been compiled for the corresponding architecture. I know that there are a variety of architectures out there (Intel, PowerPC, Sun, etc). Wouldn't it be great if during the setup, Ubuntu detects the processor architecture so that before installing a kernel it displays something like:
Ubuntu has detected that your computer's processor architecture is based on the Intel i686 instruction set. Ubuntu has already selected the best kernel based on this information. What would you like to do?
*Install linux-image-2.6.14-7-686 (recommended)
*Install linux-image-2.6.14-7-386 (for the Intel i386 instruction set)
*Install linux-image-2.6.14-7-486 (for the Intel i486 instruction set)
*Install linux-image-2.6.14-7-586 (for the Intel i586 instruction set)
Where "linux-image-2.6.14-7-686" image version is hypothetical unless Ubuntu 6.04 will use kernel 2.6.14. Wouldn't this be a smart way of matching kernel/architecture for the Intel/AMD 32-bit platforms? After all, you want to make Ubuntu 6.04 throw Windows Vista in the dust. So, how about kernel performance and choice primarily during setup and secondarily after an install? The same idea for the other platforms also.
Also, another suggestion is about the partitioner. Can it be possible to be more explicit about the stage where the resizing of a partition takes place? For instance, for a 60 GB hard drive:
Ubuntu will now resize the partiton from 60 GB to "X" GB. The partiton of "X" GB will remain as it is while the newly created free space will be used to install Ubuntu.
What do you guys think? I am mostly concerned with the kernel selection choice.