UBUNTU 8.04: Big disappoinment

[xferaa]

I'm a Ubuntu user since first versions.

After testing so many distros for a long time, I was quite happy that at last there was a desktop version of Linux that would work almost without any problem and was easy to use for beginners but keeping all the power that linux can offer.

I liked a lot that most of the hardware was detected and configured properly (no more dealing with compiling drivers or kernels just for something to work) and that the system was stable enough having the latest open source software (which was the only way to move $$Windows$$ users to freedom).

Well, yesterday after installing new version, I had the feeling that I was back to those days when linux was far from a operating system for everyone and were likely to end up going into bed at 5am with a big headache after been trying to configure the system to support your latest and nice graphic card.

I found among other things this issues after installing ubuntu:

- Repositories were either not working or very slow (meaning that the installation will take a lot lot lot time to configure apt)

- System is quite slow compared to old versions (lots of unnecessary services and app's running as default from the beginning)

- Evolution server process took my CPU to 80% most of the times I started ubuntu (having to kill the process to be able to for example, surf the web)

- Firefox 3.0 (Even slower than older version, why use the beta already in a production system??? Marketing may be???)

- One of the most annoying things was that I was unable to mount NTFS partitions from external usb devices. (There is a permission issue with ntfs-3g)

- Also I activated restricted drivers for my ATI card as usual and when I restarted resolution was set to something like twice the resolution supported by my monitor (having to edit xorg config files by hand)

- Desktop image and icons will not appear randomly sometimes when you start gnome (having to log out and back again for them to appear)

- Apt-get gives an error when updating repositories because is unable to access /restricted Translation-en_US and some others, so installing an application using apt is almost impossible.


Probably, some or most of this issues happend to me or a few people only or just because of my specific hardware configuration) but I really doubt that everyone that installed ubuntu did not have to deal at least with one of the issues above (or others I did not encour)

Ubuntu team should prepare and check more the distro before releasing it and if the servers cannot handle all the load that is required for the amount of users that are going to download/install this. They should find an alternative solution or improve their networks before releasing it. I'm sure that I like many others, we wouldn't mind to donate some money for servers if needed.

So now the question is? It is worth to fix all that issues and keep using ubuntu hoping that in the future things will get better or should I go back to the good old debian?


I'd like to hear your comments


Thankx!

PD: Sorry for my bad english

[Joeb454]

Sorry to hear you've had a bad experience. I've had no issues with Hardy whatsoever. It all worked "out the box" on my machines (except 1 with an Nvidia card, need to install with safe graphics mode).

For me it runs great - far better than Gutsy

[Mazza558]

I agree with you on ATi - the drivers this time around are extra-awful. I have no other problems with Hardy though.

[acelin]

Sounds like you have really bad luck. I had none of these problems whatsoever.

[K.Mandla]

Moved to Experiences and Testimonials.

[ShadowGray]

The repos and apt-get problems can be explained by the fact that it's release week. The servers are flooded... everything is going to be slow.

And every new release of every program is going to have flaws, you can't possibly predict every single condition that the program is going to be run on and what bugs you'll encounter. At least it wasn't a mess like Vista or ME.

So, stop trolling, if you don't like ubuntu, find another distro. Otherwise, weather through the small kinks here and there.

Plus, if you really wanted stability, why get an OS on the day of release. Technically, the smart thing to do is to at least wait a month.

[FuturePilot]

- Repositories were either not working or very slow (meaning that the installation will take a lot lot lot time to configure apt)

Everyone is trying to download/upgrade Ubuntu. A server can only handle so much traffic at a time.

- Evolution server process took my CPU to 80% most of the times I started ubuntu (having to kill the process to be able to for example, surf the web)

Bug
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/151536

- Firefox 3.0 (Even slower than older version, why use the beta already in a production system??? Marketing may be???)

Probably so they wouldn't have to support Firefox 2 after it hits EOL which was what happened with Dapper and Firefox 1.5

- One of the most annoying things was that I was unable to mount NTFS partitions from external usb devices. (There is a permission issue with ntfs-3g)

Have you tried ntfs-config?

- Apt-get gives an error when updating repositories because is unable to access /restricted Translation-en_US and some others, so installing an application using apt is almost impossible.

Receiving errors from Translation-en_US is normal.

People seem to forget that a freshly released OS is bound to have bugs. This happens after every Ubuntu release. It will stabilize. Give it a while.

[xferaa]

What about speed issues? You didn't say anything about that.

[FuturePilot]

I haven't noticed any speed issues. If anything it's faster.

[eptech1]

For me, who has also been around from around the beginning of Ubuntu, this is a very solid release. I had to plug in wired to download b43-fwcutter, then after a reboot you was up and going wirelessly. Then I had to install nvidia driver using restricted device manager, and its speed has been great. The one complaint I have is the speed of downloads, as I got it ready for rails development, but it was release day, if I didn't expect that, I wouldn't have had my head on straight.

All in all, I haven't had any issues. It definitely sounds like at least part of it is hardware related, and it's unfortunate that you've had such a tough go of things thus far.