10 problems in Ubuntu

[quinnten83]

I just read this article on Linux.com, and I must say that I agree.
I think Ubuntu should start being more of an innovator.
What do you think?

Link: http://www.linux.com/feature/139214

[lisati]

One of the ideas behind Ubuntu is that it is "Linux for human beings" - being innovative is good, but where do you draw the line between innovation for its own sake, and ease of use?

If it wasn't for Ubuntu's ease of installation I'd probably have been put off by other distros......

[flytripper]

hmmm yeah.. my mum would die when she started up and found 640x480 and no sound lol

[quinnten83]

Well, innovation does not have to be user-unfriendly?
Why not make something that will solve issues, or introduce or improve on a feature in such a way that e newbie user immediately takes to it?

[Tomatz]

Also ndiswrapper should come installed by default. I mean how many new users do you see on the forums with laptops etc that can't get there wilan etc setup.

Ubuntu without the Internet is hard work and just having ndiswrapper installed by default would make things a hell of alot easier,

[lisati]

Well, innovation does not have to be user-unfriendly?
Why not make something that will solve issues, or introduce or improve on a feature in such a way that e newbie user immediately takes to it?

Point noted!

<offtopic>
I remember back in the days when I was first fumbling around with MS-DOS I wasn't sure about Windows (it was at about version 3.1) or GUIs in general, figuring that they had their place, but messing around with the command line & text-based menus had its place too. Then I converted to Windows, and having tasted Ubuntu, I'm back at not being sure about Windows - the only difference this time is that I'm not quite ready to write off GUI-based interfaces. A well designed GUI has its place, and the CLI has its place - and there's sufficient variety in the GUIs available for Linux to keep the discussion (debate?) alive.
The Gnome GUI provided with Ubuntu played a part in helping me become interested in Linux.
</offtopic>

[kpkeerthi]

I just read this article on Linux.com, and I must say that I agree.
I think Ubuntu should start being more of an innovator.
What do you think?

Link: http://www.linux.com/feature/139214

I completely agree. The author knows what he is talking about. Thanks for posting.

[frodon]

Some points are a bit of FUD, for me the author is mixing a lot of different things which some are not related to ubuntu at all :

1- There are some tools to configure GRUB and in general GRUB is not something a beginner should tweak at all. Leave to advanced users advanced tweaking, it's the best advice to give.
2- Mounting, i don't know what issue he had but i never had mounting issue with hardy. External drives are just auto-mounted with full rights even with NTFS which a linux user shouldn't use.
3- Sound config, again i wonder what he's takling about. Anyway the best for users willing to have good sound is to buy a sound card with hardware sound mixing, sound issues are mainly related to software sound mixing.
4 networking and IPV6, this issue is definitively not related to any OS matter.
5- Building from source. Since i use ubuntu (started with hoary) i never needed to do such things so i guess this is an advanced trick for advanced users who have advanced needs.
6- Documentation. Hum, this can be improved for sure but compared to paid OS the situation of ubuntu isn't bad.
7- Power managment is not related to ubuntu but to linux kernel development. As for hibernate and sleep if you make sure to buy a linux compatible laptop searching a little before buying a laptop this is not a problem.

This looks like a well written article, it smells good, it has the taste of good article but it isn't. Too much not ubuntu related stuff are mixed in this article, at the end it just muddles the reader about what the real problems are. Some points are really valid though, power management for instance is one of the current priority of kernel developers and linux must provide an answer to this need in further kernel versions.

[KillerSponge]

I must say I haven't experienced any of these problems. Everything, including screen setup, audio, network, other partitions, etc. This was with my desktop, my notebook and my mothers notebook.

Powermanagement and hibernation could be seriously improved, my battery drains a lot faster when on ubuntu, and hibernation works, but getting out of hibernation takes longer than a full reboot...

Sure people have problems, and the developers should continue working on them. But it's difficult to find the balance between stability and innovation.

[tadcan]

I was strangely gratified to read point one about screen resolution. I updated 8.04 and now I have 640x480 resolution. Being a clueless user, I wish it didn't happen.

For those that can help

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=843723