Distrowatch on Dapper - "a disappointment".

[magnusbb]

Despite having been delayed by six weeks for "polish" and carrying a "Long Term Support" tag, the Ubuntu 6.06 release was a disappointment. This was probably exacerbated by the expectations the development team and Ubuntu user community had created prior to the release. Unfortunately, while the new product works perfectly well for a great number of Linux user, the many reports of serious issues hint at quality control problems and a failure to effect the promised "polish" in time for the release. The new graphical installer, which has now become the default way to install the distribution, is still immature and many users reported crashes while trying to install Ubuntu. The live CD itself is often unusable - on your DistroWatch maintainer's main system it takes over 20 minutes to complete its boot process! Further problems with printing and display on systems with ATI graphics cards have added to the perception that Ubuntu 6.06 is not on par with the project's previous three releases.

From: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20060612#opinion

The latest issue of Distrowatch Weekly states, considering the latest releases of Linux distributions the last quarter of 2006, that Dapper is "a disappointment". This is the first truly negative review I've seen of Dapper and I wonder what the community thinks. Fedora, on the other hand, has with its 5th release, made a "a solid, dependable and reasonably bug-free operating system", according to Distrowatch. It concludes stating the following on Fedora - "It is possibly one of the most stable and dependable Linux distributions ever built!"

[mjm115]

Personally, I think it was a success. I have had no major issues, with the exception of multimedia, but I was able to resolve this by switching back to xine from gstreamer. Everything else worked perfectly fine on both my 32 and 64-bit systems.

[alaaji]

I have to agree with Distrowatch for the most part. This isn't the only negative review that I've seen. When I first tried Breezy, I loved it. I did a clean install of Dapper and some things worked better which was expected but I had a few problems with things that just worked with Breezy. A bit weird in my opinion. They took a step forward and backwards at the same time. Oh well, it's still my favorite distribution and I don't think that I'll ever switch again.

[aysiu]

I agree with DistroWatch. I like Dapper, but a six-week delay only heightens expectations.

They should have just left the release date at April and tried for an October polished release. I can't tell you how many Espresso/GParted issues I've seen on these forums.

[Stormy Eyes]

I saw a good critic once. He was dead.

[Jucato]

In some ways I can agree. There have been too many "unfortunate" experiences in upgrading/installing. However, SUSE went through the same problems when it released 10.1. So I guess it's not too uncommon for dist-upgrades to be plagued with troubles. However, these experiences of users are really hurting Ubuntu's image because the delay supposedly promises "polish" and because Ubuntu's claim to fame is that has been easy to use as a desktop distro.

One thing that bothers me about all these is that when people see the Ubiquity installer on the Desktop CD, they immediately expect an installer of the same capabilities as those from MEPIS, KNOPPIX, PCLinuxOS, etc. They obviously do not understand, even after being explicitly stated again and again, that the Desktop CD installer is just meant for a very, very basic desktop install, that more advanced options including the ability to install GRUB in a place other than the MBR is only offered through the Alternate Install CD.

I guess misconceptions and expectations can't be helped when it comes to a very popular distro like Ubuntu.

[nocturn]

that the Desktop CD installer is just meant for a very, very basic desktop install, that more advanced options including the ability to install GRUB in a place other than the MBR is only offered through the Alternate Install CD.

I guess misconceptions and expectations can't be helped when it comes to a very popular distro like Ubuntu.

This is something that IMO wasn't made clear enough. I think the desktop installer is nice, but it is too immature to be the default method of install in this release already.

From what I gathered though, Mark had a lot riding on this release (like the SUN deal), so another delay would have been unthinkable just as postponing LTS to 6.10.

Don't get me wrong, I love Dapper and it has been good for me, but there were a couple of showstoppers in it that should not be there for an LTS version.

[Jucato]

The thing is, is there an official statement that the Ubiquity installer is the default installer for Ubuntu? People just make the presumption based on experiences from some of the distributions I mentioned. The thing that this same people forget is that those distributions don't offer any other installer other than those in the Live CD, whereas Ubuntu has 3 alternatives. I guess the name "Alternate Install CD" is misleading, leading one to conclude that the Desktop CD is the default installer.

This is a quote from one of the download mirrors: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/releasenotes/606


Desktop CD
The desktop CD allows you to try Ubuntu without changing your computer at all, and at your option to install it permanently later. This type of CD is what most people will want to use. You will need at least 192MB of RAM to install from this CD.

Note the lack of the term "default", but the presence of the phrase "will want to use". Big difference there. Big difference.

[tmahmood]

Well as for me.. I've installed Dapper in two systems. I felt that opinion was kind a biased to Fedora. I heard fedora have lot of bugs and stability issue. I 'HEARD', I'm not sure of it. But one of my teacher tried it and then dumped it. He is now using fedora 4. He says 4 is more stable then Fedora 5!
I am using Dapper and it is really stable for me. and It was not a disappointment to me. but yet the Installer needs some fixing.

Some problem I think NEEDS to be fixed.

1. when I boot up using the Desktop CD it was very slow. It took more then 10 minutes to load the installer or any programs that I tried to run. so you can say it was unusable although the system had 512MB of RAM. Then created a swap partition using fdisk and restarted and everything was good This thing works like a charm. If you are experiencing slowdown or you have less the 512MB RAM then you can try this

2. At selecting partition window I took Manually edit Partitions and I formated a partition as a ext3 file system and In the next step that partition was not detected!! hell I had to start the installer again. and the Disk detection step is so damn slow :-x

3. Selecting Time zone was another pain. I had to set time and timezone twice to selcet the currect time and timezone!

there were some more minor issues but I was really impressed when I was able to Install Dapper without any other hassels and under 30 mins. It detected the internal GFx card, Sound card, modem out of the box though Windows XP installation was a complete mass. It took 1hour to finish the basic installation and I had to work in 640x480 resulation with 4bit(!!) color and without sound until I installed the drivers.

Now comparing with windows XP installation hessles I feel Its a really great job by Ubuntu developers.

[ArizonaKid]

Ubuntu still is a Linux distribution, which leaves it open to work well on certain systems, but horrible on others.

For my notebook, an HP Compaq Business Notebook NC6220, the results have been spectacular. Dapper has performed wonderfully. Before Breezy, I had known issues with hibernation, loss of sound when booting out of sleep mode, and a finicky wireless reception. All these issues were resolved with Dapper.

I do agree with the live CD critique. The partition manager in the live CD has not performed well for me on Dapper. I ended up installing via the text-based installer, which I am actually more comfortable with, and had zero problems.

I have a couple of friends who want to try out Ubuntu and I always tell them to check the forums, Wiki, and general support areas to see if their hardware is “supported” (i.e. will work).

[muhkayoh]

I'd have to agree that the live CD was a flop for me. It was so slow and subject to freezing that, if my experience was at all typical, I'd have to believe the Live CD would scare a lot of potential users away (obviously the opposite of what it's intended to do).

I went ahead and installed Dapper via the text based approach and have had no serious issues in my first 24 hours as a Linux user (former Windows). But I do hope the Ubuntu team is able to improve the method of getting the system out to the potential user. I was hoping to be able to sway some friends and family over to Ubuntu, but at the moment, it's just a little too scary for them.

Matt Jordan

[gmc]

I knew someone would pickup on this article. Personally I'm not having any problems with Dapper right now, though I've not installed it since the official release (beta w/ updates). It appears to me that one of the problems, was the introduction of the 8.25.18 ATI drivers just 2 or 3 days before the release. Now If you check the forums, you'll see lots of people asking for this inclusion of this driver so I can understand the developers trying to please these people (Do the dev's even read these forums?). I realize that not all the installation problems can be attributed to this driver, it just seems to me that the last 3 or 4 weeks should have been used to iron out problems and not used to keep adding new and relatively untested software/drivers to Dapper.

I dearly love Ubuntu and as I say, I'm not having any problems with Dapper. This is just my opinion.

G.

[yaztromo]

Why was there not an option in the Kubuntu graphical installer for ReiserFS. I had to create the reiserfs partition manually then install to it. That itself spoilt what could have been a very slick release.

[bored2k]

I agree with the author of the article. To me, Dapper was a complete disappointment in so many ways that I'm not even going to begin enumerating. I know, truth hurts.

[paul cooke]

I agree with the author of the article. To me, Dapper was a complete disappointment in so many ways that I'm not even going to begin enumerating. I know, truth hurts.

My DVD burner won't burn DVDs anymore... it just broke in the upgrade... apparently, a lot of people had their DVD burners break shortly before release... It's annoyed the heck out of me because I'd promised to burn the DVD version for a friend who only has dialup.

I don't know yet if my printer will work still as I haven't tried it since upgrading. I've got that fun this evening.

[nickle]

I always thought the 6 week extension "to add more polish" was one of those corporate white lies. I think the developers simply knew they were behind schedule same as SuSE, but didn't want to say so. I also work for a big corporation and such fibs are not unusal, since being seen to miss timelines is considered one of the worst sins. It is also possible this "white lie" was important to support the negociation position with potential partners such as Sun Microsystems.
Particularly seeing the mass of corrections that were done in the last 6 weeks, it is impossible to think the release would have ever been ready to function at the expected level. In particular I had huge problems with Kubuntu; this in fact caused me to change to Ubuntu for the first time.
All this doesn't bother me so much, Dapper works fairly well for me now, but it is clearly not one of the "polished" wonders of the world.
Certainly if I decide to go back to KDE it will not be Kubuntu, as I feel it is second rate compared to the Gnome implementation.

[grsing]

I definitely agree on the LiveCD taking forever to load (I thought it had crashed, actually). Besides that, Dapper is an improvement, though it's not earth shattering or anything. As others have said, it's still Linux, make of it what you will, and if you don't like it, you don't have to use it.

[magnusbb]

On my machine Dapper works excellent. I can't really, and you'll have to believe me, feel the performance boost that many had predicted, but it's definitely smoother in terms of software - GNOME 2.14 is better than 2.12, and the inclusion of GStreamer 0.10 is also worth a mention.

On my laptop, the most important change from Breezy is out-of-the-box support for my Wireless network, even the more sophisticated WPA-network at the university worked at once. The last addition, not out-of-the-box, but a result of the fresh software that Dapper includes, is the latest patched packages for font smoothing which turns my fonts into something better than Cleartype on Windows.

[K.Mandla]

I've had no issues with Dapper. And the few issues I did have, I ironed out way back around Flight 5.

I agree with the idea that the delay caused some heightened expectations ... but who's to blame for that? [-X

[CronoDekar]

I had mixed experiences with Ubiquity myself. On this computer (512 RAM, P4 2.53ghz, 3 years old) it went just fine and dandy, even doing manual partitioning (though I should note that I reduced NTFS with the GParted Live CD). On my old computer which I put Xubuntu on (128 RAM, P3 800mhz, older), it was really laggy, particularly during the manual partitioning, and eventually crashed, though fortunately it was before it actually started partitioning so I could still run Breezy Badger while I downloaded the alternate CD. Though of course, it was at the minimum RAM listed for the Xubuntu desktop CD, and as I should know "minimum" rarely is satisfactory.

Can't say I'm disappointed by Dapper Drake, but then again this was my first venture into Linux for this computer, and I didn't have a whole lot of expectations either.

[LMP900]

This is news to me. I guess I haven't been reading much but I always thought that Dapper was a success since it was released. I didn't know there were so many that were disappointed with it.

I've used FC5 and I had a good experience with it, but I simply prefer Ubuntu.

[neighborlee]

I had mixed experiences with Ubiquity myself. On this computer (512 RAM, P4 2.53ghz, 3 years old) it went just fine and dandy, even doing manual partitioning (though I should note that I reduced NTFS with the GParted Live CD). On my old computer which I put Xubuntu on (128 RAM, P3 800mhz, older), it was really laggy, particularly during the manual partitioning, and eventually crashed, though fortunately it was before it actually started partitioning so I could still run Breezy Badger while I downloaded the alternate CD. Though of course, it was at the minimum RAM listed for the Xubuntu desktop CD, and as I should know "minimum" rarely is satisfactory.

Can't say I'm disappointed by Dapper Drake, but then again this was my first venture into Linux for this computer, and I didn't have a whole lot of expectations either.

I also had problems with SLOW to boot livecd..I just thought it was 'alpha' code so I forgot about it..it booted in time so that was ok by me. The other issues well..if its just a 'few' users compared to hundreds of thousands then to me thats just the way it goes...windows as well as the other major distros , has had similar issues..I have no idea about mepis and to think its just one guy doing it??

I am up in the air about what to use now due to this article..I like ubuntu and what it stands for , but atm im also 'conerned' that the LSB is taking a back seat when its clearly installed with like fedora and suse and mandriva. Whats the hold up with ubuntu /debian over the LSB ??????

cheers
g.leej

[Naglfari]

I agree with the author of the article. To me, Dapper was a complete disappointment in so many ways that I'm not even going to begin enumerating. I know, truth hurts.

I'm still pretty new at this..do you mean "not as good as it used to be" disappointed, or "not very usable disappointed", or just Wipedrive and re-install Windows disappointed???

[RAV TUX]

This is something that IMO wasn't made clear enough. I think the desktop installer is nice, but it is too immature to be the default method of install in this release already.

From what I gathered though, Mark had a lot riding on this release (like the SUN deal), so another delay would have been unthinkable just as postponing LTS to 6.10.

Don't get me wrong, I love Dapper and it has been good for me, but there were a couple of showstoppers in it that should not be there for an LTS version.
I think including an installer on the live CD was a big mistake, this whole, desktop and alternate CD was a silly, confusing and un-needed change.

They should have left what wasn't broken alone.


I have been using Ubuntu on my older computer since Hoary Hedgehog, I found Breezy Badger a noticable improvement without the pomp and circumstance. For the most part I like the changes on the Dapper Drake my only compliant on Dapper on my older computer which I use Ubuntu exclusively on daily is there are a few things that always just worked on Hoary & breezy that don't work on Dapper.

Solarwolf for example. Not a big deal but aside from KSudoku the only other game I play regularly on Ubuntu. So it is a disappointment for this to not work.

I have yet to get Ubuntu to work on my new computer: EM64T Dual-Core but Ubuntu is NOT the only Live CD that failed to work on my new computer:

the failure list is as follows:

1. SUSE
2. Fedora Core 5
3. Mepis
4. Ubuntu
6. Scientific Linux
7. Gnoppix
8. Debian

So I am both happy and disappointed, Happy that Ubuntu 6.06 works great on my older computer but disappointed that it doesn't work on my new computer.

there are several live Distros that do "Just Work" on my new hardware:

1. Dreamlinux XFCE Studio Edition
2. Knoppix
3. Musix
4. Gentoo
5. dyne:bolic
6. Mophix Combined Heavy GUI pre4
7. Kinerret

(of the Distros that "Just Work" I am most inclined to install: Gentoo &/or dyne:bolic)

If they can make live CD's that "Just Work" with my new hardware why can't Ubuntu?

[tranceash]

After reading this article and a few other Ubuntu disappointments over the internet, I have made a list of things that people have complained about

1. Printing issues (clean install and after upgrade)
2. Deletion of partitions
3. Missing applications after an upgrade
4. Slow live CD installer
5. Cannot mount and unmount on KDE desktop

If these are the problems users are facing why is there no single one thread that rules them all which addresses these problems or a how-to guide to correct these problems.
Also we are dealing with open source code here; I am sure a lot of ubuntu developers or Ubuntu enthusiasts can write python scripts that correct these problems for users that are facing these problems.

What does the Ubuntu community think about my opinion?

[mstlyevil]

Compared to the problems with Breezy when it was released, Dapper is a breeze. There will always be issues when software is first released. I recommend people just use the alternate installer and file bug reports. If enough people file bug reports, these issues will be fixed.

There is nothing wrong with expressing your disappointments but at least file bug reports with launchpad so these things may be fixed.

Dapper is a success overall regardless of a few problems. This is the most stable Ubuntu release ever. I have had some trouble with the live cd installer but overall my experience was positive with it. Dapper itself is the most trouble free distro I have used to date.

[Jucato]

You could add #6


6. Installing GRUB on MBR by default

I guess I'm just one of the lucky ones who could get the Desktop CD up and running in a few minutes, and also install the system in less that 20 minutes. :D

Btw, I never heard of people having troubles mounting/unmounting in Kubuntu Dapper. It's the first time I've heard of it.

[zugu]

Don't worry, people, the 6 months release cycle for Ubuntu is one of the best things that ever happend to Linux.

*buntu will get better and better. And better.

[sharkboy]

Compared to the problems with Breezy when it was released, Dapper is a breeze. There will always be issues when software is first released. I recommend people just use the alternate installer and file bug reports. If enough people file bug reports, these issues will be fixed.

There is nothing wrong with expressing your disappointments but at least file bug reports with launchpad so these things may be fixed.

The issues people have had were well known before the Dapper release. There were several threads urging not to release Dapper prematurely due to these issues. Shuttleworth himself closed an umbrella please-don't-release bug two days before the launch, with the words that 'Dapper isn't perfect'.

My opinion is that if you make promises of stability, polish, ease of use etc, while being the most popular GNU/Linux distro, you've got a responsability not to ship too early. I think distrowatch is right.

[ComplexNumber]

From: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20060612#opinion

The latest issue of Distrowatch Weekly states, considering the latest releases of Linux distributions the last quarter of 2006, that Dapper is "a disappointment". This is the first truly negative review I've seen of Dapper and I wonder what the community thinks. Fedora, on the other hand, has with its 5th release, made a "a solid, dependable and reasonably bug-free operating system", according to Distrowatch. It concludes stating the following on Fedora - "It is possibly one of the most stable and dependable Linux distributions ever built!" i would agree with that in its entirety. fedora has made a "a solid, dependable and reasonably bug-free operating system" from my experience, and i would definitely agree with this: "It is possibly one of the most stable and dependable Linux distributions ever built!". likewise, the installer on dapper ALWAYS and consistantly crashes whenever the user has to backtrack over their steps during the partitioning. i know its written in python because i kept on getting "traceback" errors, so i had to go back to the beginning each time. on about the 8th attempt, i did manage to install dapper, but only because i managed to go straight through the custom partitioning without backtracking.

[secdroid]

Handy summary of issues, tranceash Thank you.

I've been booting the live cd flights as Dapper progressed. Overall, I've been impressed. However, the live CD installer was the one thing that gave me pause. It looked to be somewhat buggy very late in the development cycle. My gut said "rushed to market."

I've been trying to decide between Fedora Core 5 and Dapper as my main box OS. The Ubuntu Community tips the case for me.

I'm a multibooter. Grub boots WinXP (rarely), Fedora Core 3, and a test Linux. I want to replace FC3 with Dapper. Should I look into the Alternate Install CD?

[stig]

Don't worry, people, the 6 months release cycle for Ubuntu is one of the best things that ever happend to Linux.

Only if you are fortunate to have successful upgrades!

I have Ubuntu installed on two PCs and the attempted upgrades from Hoary to Breezy and Breezy to Dapper failed badly and repeatedly. In each case I have had to do a clean instal instead - and then remember what extra applications were on each PC, set up the network again, etc.

[Sushi]

I do have some issues with Dapper...

- Deskbar crashes constantly. It crashed in beta-Dapper as well, so I disregarded it as a beta-bug. But now, after fresh install to finished Dapper, it still crashes!

- Firefox is one huge crash-fest. One second it's there, the other it's not. Poof, it just vanishes. This one is driving me up the walls.

- Espresso-installer does not work for me. Like Firefox, it just vanishes during the install

- I can't burn DVD's in Dapper. I could in Breezy, but not in Dapper

I'm getting a new computer shortly (my current one is failing. No, the problems I have experienced are not due to the hardware), and I will try a fresh re-install then. Hopefully things work better then. But as things are right now, things are not working like they should.

[mstlyevil]

Handy summary of issues, tranceash Thank you.

I've been booting the live cd flights as Dapper progressed. Overall, I've been impressed. However, the live CD installer was the one thing that gave me pause. It looked to be somewhat buggy very late in the development cycle. My gut said "rushed to market."

I've been trying to decide between Fedora Core 5 and Dapper as my main box OS. The Ubuntu Community tips the case for me.

I'm a multibooter. Grub boots WinXP (rarely), Fedora Core 3, and a test Linux. I want to replace FC3 with Dapper. Should I look into the Alternate Install CD?

Absolutely use the alternate install CD. I used the Ubiquity installer and if I have to use the partitioner, I always have some problems. I don't have these troubles with the alternate install CD.

Dapper otherwise has been very stable for me and has worked extremely well with my hardware. I did however buy my hardware with Linux in mind so that is probally one of the reasons I don't have the hardware troubles some are reporting.

[paul cooke]

I don't know yet if my printer will work still as I haven't tried it since upgrading. I've got that fun this evening.

My printer works... it was detected by KDE's add printer wizard... unfortunately, the printer wasn't in the list of HP printers in that wizard.

It was only after hunting in the forums that I discovered my driver had been installed, but I had to manually specify the driver file to the printer wizard.

I'm not sure why the drivers in the hplip-ppds package are not picked up and shown in the KDE wizard... it would be nice if they were.

[bruce89]

I am the only one here that doesn't have any issues with Dapper? Why did Breezy use 100% CPU at all times?

[mjm115]

I am the only one here that doesn't have any issues with Dapper? Why did Breezy use 100% CPU at all times?

No. I haven't had any issues yet either. And this is on both my 64-bit and 32-bit systems.

[Naglfari]

I am the only one here that doesn't have any issues with Dapper? Why did Breezy use 100% CPU at all times?

I have Dapper installed on my laptop, with no issues. I did have some install problems, but thats just because I screwed up the CD.

I've also been playing with the live CD's for Kubuntu and Xubuntu for the last 2 days, and like them too. Now I'm wallowing in the decision making phase, of which one to install for good :confused:

[RAV TUX]

Handy summary of issues, tranceash Thank you.

I've been booting the live cd flights as Dapper progressed. Overall, I've been impressed. However, the live CD installer was the one thing that gave me pause. It looked to be somewhat buggy very late in the development cycle. My gut said "rushed to market."

I've been trying to decide between Fedora Core 5 and Dapper as my main box OS. The Ubuntu Community tips the case for me.

I'm a multibooter. Grub boots WinXP (rarely), Fedora Core 3, and a test Linux. I want to replace FC3 with Dapper. Should I look into the Alternate Install CD?
I had more problems with fedora core 5, SUSE, Mepis, my advice stay away from those Distros. If you want an alternate install CD try Gentoo, dyne:bolic or if you want rock solid stability, reliability and speed stick with Yoper.

http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/about.xml

http://www.dynebolic.org/

A rock solid, very intelligent Distro is Yoper out of New Zealand:

http://www.yoper.com/


__________________________________________________ ____________________________________

EDIT: I miss understood the question "alternate" you meant Ubuntu 6.06 Alternate CD...again I am not a fan of the Desktop install CD concept, this only breeds confusion. I have always used the Install CD(Alternate) in the past to install Ubuntu.

Why fix something that isn't broken? especially in midstream.

[zenwhen]

Everything went smoothly for me, and works better for me now that it ever did with Breezy, Hoary, or Warty. I had a few issues to begin with but those were all with non-supported packages.

[secdroid]

Thanks, mstlyevil & yozef. I'll download and test the Dapper "alternate install CD." Looks to be more to my taste.

yozef, my current test linuxes are DSL & DSL-N http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall

I'm interested in lightweight linuxes for used laptops & usb pendrive installs. (I did note the Ubuntu pendrive thread. I'm going to keep my eye on this. Just a bit heavy for my taste, unless one starts with a stripped down Ubuntu Server & Fluxbox or Ice. YMMV. )

BTW, I've been reading Keir Thomas's "Beginning Ubuntu Linux" book (Apress ISBN 1-59059-627-7) and the sample chapter from the forthcoming "Official Ubuntu Book"
http://www.phptr.com/title/0132435942
http://www.phptr.com/content/images/0132435942/samplechapter/Hill_ch06.pdf

Great resources for those new to Ubuntu!

I'm going to look around to see whether there's a place for my rusty Unix skills in helping the Ubuntu Community. Not sure if Automatix is the place for me, but there must be somewhere. Shuttleworth is very compelling! ;)

[michaeljb2005]

I have had lots of questions about it but that's because I'm new! Dapper has been excellent for me so far. I've had zero problems with bugs so far! (knock on wood) Just general questions on the gdm desktop environment (I used to use kde). I think that any problems will be fixed over time.

[richbarna]

I am the only one here that doesn't have any issues with Dapper?
Me neither, Live cd 2 minutes to boot up, install and up and running.
I didn't have any problems before upgrading from breezy either.
But then again I,ve got pretty standard run of the mill hardware.

I think that if some people stuck to burning the iso's at 4 or 8X there wouldn't be so many problems. I can just see people now spinning off those iso's at 52X and the complaining that it won't boot.

[caldevil]

I converted from fedora core 5 to dapper and dapper is working really fine for me. Well there were so many problems with fedora 5 when it first get released, though after some updates it was OK.

[mstlyevil]

Me neither, Live cd 2 minutes to boot up, install and up and running.
I didn't have any problems before upgrading from breezy either.
But then again I,ve got pretty standard run of the mill hardware.

I think that if some people stuck to burning the iso's at 4 or 8X there wouldn't be so many problems. I can just see people now spinning off those iso's at 52X and the complaining that it won't boot.

I burn mine at 24X and never have a problem with my ISO's. 52X is a waste of time with all the ruined cd's I have had to reburn in the past.

The live cd also boots for me in under 2 minutes. The only complaint I have had was with the partitioning errors I have run into. But with a little paitience those can be worked out also. Also I can load the CD, boot it and install Dapper in under 15 minutes. It took me an hour to install Vista on the same computer.

[GeneralZod]

As a KDE-user, I've found that Dapper has had the least amount of show-stopping KDE-specific bugs out of Hoary, Breezy and Dapper, so that's a plus, I guess. I am, however, having problems with unmounting stuff like a previous poster. Sadly, everything else has been regressions for me: it's become unstable (it's hard-locked 3 times in the last couple of days, whereas Breezy never crashed once); hibernate on my laptop no longer works; bogofilter will occasionally lock up and consume 100% CPU until killed; the list goes on.

Having said that, this install has been dist-upgraded from whichever flight was released at the end of March, so maybe a clean install will "fix" some of the problems. If not, I'll revert back to Breezy.

[Yossarian]

I dist-upgraded from breezy a few days after release, and it broke everything.

So I'm back with the Breezy Badger (the most solid OS I've ever seen), and now that I've partimaged my reinstalled breezy (with a little help from the Pyschocats excellent guide) I might try it again some time. For now, good enough is.

[secdroid]

I dist-upgraded from breezy a few days after release, and it broke everything.
If you have a test partition or test machine available, you might want to consider doing a test install of Dapper rather than an upgrade. I've read quite a number of posts from people who had difficulties with upgrade, but got clean installs.

IMHO, upgrades work best for people who who have nealy "stock" installations with relatively few added programs or customizations. With best intent, upgrading "real" installs is a pretty difficult thing. Assuming a good data backup, doing a fresh Ubuntu install and program installation via tools like automatix is pretty easy.

One of the few good things to come from my Windows experience has been my appreciation of the value of periodic clean installs. Mandatory for Windows, but valuable for Linux too.

[kazuya]

Dapper for me is what brought me back to Ubuntu. I think it is a success. I installed by first instaling breezy, then changing sources from breezy to dapper, by doing a find and replace and then distr upgrade.

I was very impressed at how far it has com. I replaced both my AMD 64 machine and my AMD 3200 PC.

It works great since upgrade to dapper, I cannot complain; Fedora is yet to function as well as, but I am currently testing Fedora now.

Vector Soho and Mepis are still a bit higher in performance and ease of configuration or setup. The package management in Ubuntu though is a winner compared to the rest. SUSE is not nearly comparable to Ubuntu. Nor Fedora 5 thus far...

I'll keep testing. But I see a great deal of progress with Dapper compared to Breezy. For my PC, I know dapper performs much faster and boots up faster as well. Aptitude and synaptic work great together. The easyubuntu cheat is awesome as well. Wish I knew of that in the earlier days...

rock on.

[matc]

Dapper has been a big disappointment to me. Having looked forward to upgrade (the upgrade from hoary to breezy went wothout big trouble), it seems like a bad joke to me today.

Problems on my desktop PC:
- My ATI Radeon 9000 refuses to work with 3D support (I know this is discussed in many threads here). Neither fglrx nor the radeon driver with dri/drm work properly. That's bad because many games I own only work on Linux.
- My parallel port Printer stops printing after about 2 pages and the only way to restart it is reboot
- Same with my parallel port scanner when scanning with more than 300 dpi
- I cannot change my screen resolution 'cause the applet seems to be missing (in a fresh install)

Problems on my laptop:
- Wireless LAN has become an irrational dream. in breezy, everything worked almost fine with ndiswrapper. Now my Prism 3886 seems to be supported by another driver that doesn't work (found no real help on that in the net) and I can't connect to a single network. Reverting to ndiswrapper doesn't work either.

General Issues:
- Firefox locks the desktop each 2 Minutes and scolls the pages without sense
- Desktop and Laptop have totally different KDE menus (example: the desktop has one panel system settings and the laptop has a menu System Settings - both were upgraded via the same packets+mirrors)
...

Having used breezy, I thought of migrating our file server from Debian Sarge to Ubuntu this August. Now this seems way too insecure...

[Sonique]

I didnt read other other posts sorry but anyways:

like what the hell? 6 weeks!! thats it! ubuntu made the idea of a 6 month cycle so they can break there own rules. also fitting to 6 months isnt easy, look at microsoft! one of the biggest companies in the world and are having trouble to bring an new OS like 5 YEARS later.

[luca.b]

One install (alternate install) and two dist-upgrades on three systems overal (including a production machine). The only issues I'm experiencing are on the laptop, and because of the non-free fglrx driver (ATI sucks).
No problems at all in everything else.

[hizaguchi]

Like so many others, I'm not a fan of the live CD. Took forever to boot, ran horribly slow, and all that. I understand the advantages of a live CD (you can test the hardware support before you commit to the OS, Linux newcommers get a nice, pretty welcome), but I really hope the ncurses installer remains an option. It is just plain faster, no matter how much improvement goes into the graphical installer. And the speed at which I can get a computer installed is way more important than how pretty the experience is.

The old installer is one of the best and easiest to use OS installers I've ever seen. I understand that people want graphics, but 99% of the time trying to make a pretty installation program just turns out over-complicated. Really, the only installation I've ever seen where the graphical interface actually made things easier is PCBSD. Any chance Ubuntu could just borrow from them?

[awakatanka]

If you have a test partition or test machine available, you might want to consider doing a test install of Dapper rather than an upgrade. I've read quite a number of posts from people who had difficulties with upgrade, but got clean installs.

IMHO, upgrades work best for people who who have nealy "stock" installations with relatively few added programs or customizations. With best intent, upgrading "real" installs is a pretty difficult thing. Assuming a good data backup, doing a fresh Ubuntu install and program installation via tools like automatix is pretty easy.

One of the few good things to come from my Windows experience has been my appreciation of the value of periodic clean installs. Mandatory for Windows, but valuable for Linux too.I installed a while back on my brothers laptop a clean install of kubuntu breezy and added some apps that are in the repo. He doesn't has any rights to install anything and a week ago i did a dist-upgrade. It was a total failure.

I thought it was one of the strong points of a debian based distro, easly upgrade to new version.

Also tryed it with a test pc at work install ubuntu breezy and after that dist-upgrade to dapper, again problem. I did it also a few time when dapper was still alpha/beta and didn't had troubles then, but now it has. Sorry but it was one of the strong points a debian based distro had and now i can't trust it.

Also got some strange lockups if i right click on desktop in kde, the right click menu doesn't come up and it hangs.

Livecd is realy slow compared to other livecd's but installer does it job now but still got the feeling it was rushed.

[therunnyman]

Is the verse, "I got soul, but I'm not a soldier," really stupid, or is it just me? I grow old, wear my trousers rolled, but if that's what's passing for lyrics these days, throw me in a quiet home and let me sleep in my own ordure.

Here's my thing, and I think it's pretty serious: Dapper can't hang with RAIDs consisting of more than two disks, not without hours of cautious, painstaking and delicate watchmaker tinkering, anyhow. Since the dawn of time, Linux has been the OS of choice for servers, right? Because of its stability, security, self-explanatory existence? Even a triceratops could use it?

If I can't make a nice RAID 5 - especially when the installer says, hey man, make a RAID 5 - what's the use? Dapper can't even enumerate ancillary devices correctly. Gotta draw the line at disks. If a Linux OS an't handle disks, f$%k it.

And, and, bastard developer...oh, nevermind.

runny

[xeero]

It would be nice to see percentages for these things. Like how many users had critical problems and how many are usable. Since Ubuntu has a huge user base, we'll undoubtedly see more problems in absolute numbers. like someone else mentioned, other big software products have their problems too.

For me, I've recently switched from Mepis to Dapper. Dapper has also made me a Gnome fan. I still think Mepis and KDE are good, but now I like Ubuntu and Gnome better. :D

(btw, what prevented me from sticking with Ubuntu (Breezy at the time) before was the whole sudo thing. but, i created the first user as my "root" user and edited my setup so that users are asked for the root password instead of their user password for system admin stuff. this setup works okay for me.)

But... just yesterday i noticed that Swiftfox crashed on me twice. also, Nautilus disappeared on me once. :-( not good. i'll see if this continues. everything else on the surface seems good. but, haven't tried Samba or printing yet.... if i try them and they don't work, then maybe i'll try Breezy again.

Regarding the live-CD, i don't really use it to demo for myself or anyone else, since in general they're painfully slow. but, what i love is that there are many distros that come on a single cd. better than using up 3+ cds when you don't even use many of the included apps anyway.

IMHO, I hope that Ubuntu concentrates on reliability instead of trying to be bleeding edge. The previous post is right. If you can't count on the basic functions being handled reliably, then all bets are off! I want to see Ubuntu succeed.