The Ubuntu Trap

[Burgresso]

This is something I've been thinking about for a while. Let me preface this: this is not a bash on Ubuntu. I love Ubuntu.

But Ubuntu traps you, or at least can, depending on your skill in Linux. For a while I've been flirting with trying other distros and have installed and tried a bunch of live CDs and DVDs. None compares with Ubuntu - at least out of the box - and for a my skill level, other distros are just two hard to get working.

Let's say I want to try CentOS, but to get it to work with my rt2500 wireless card, I would need to follow these intimidating directions (http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/CentOS4_rt2500_Howto). Same for Zenwalk (http://support.zenwalk.org/index.php/topic,4490.0.html). And this is just for wireless for these two distros. What about setting up media codecs or getting apache to work... tweaking and get these right could take forever, at least at my skill level.

Sigh. Ubuntu, I love you. And I guess I'm not going anywhere.

[Sammi]

Yeah I understand exactly what you are saying. I downloaded a lot of .iso files of other distros, which I was going to try out. But Ubuntu just didn't give me any incentive. It's just too good to leave :p

I don't feel that I'm missing out, because I'm not trying all the other exiting distros, because Ubuntu is where it's all happening :D

[pichalsi]

I have to agree... I was thinking about trying Gentoo, but i am too lazy and dont want to "waste" my time compiling and setting up things, Ubuntu just works :)

[Rackerz]

I know what your saying as well. Ubuntu has most of what you need and it isn't hard. Your not missing out by not trying other distros, because Ubuntu has what they have. (Sort of :))

[Tomosaur]

The problem with Ubuntu for me is that it installs way too much crap which I don't need. I preferred the old installation where you got at least a bit of choice about what to install. I think it needs to find a balance between getting a functional system up, and installing things the devs think are 'cool' or whatever. I too hate the idea of installing a kernel and then adding everything bit by bit, but I hate having a clogged system too.

[3rdalbum]

The good news is, unlike Windows, you can find out what that crap is and remove it :-) I saved over 200 megabytes by uninstalling stuff in Breezy that I didn't need:

PCMCIA? Don't need it, I'm on a desktop.
Bluetooth? Don't have it.
Swahili language pack and fonts? Can't speak it.
SANE? Don't have a scanner.

etc etc.

[Polygon]

Ubuntu installs a bunch of stuff that users may or may not need by default is because they want the default installation to work for as many users as possible, whether they are using a laptop, using a blue tooth mouse or speaking Swahili.

but it is a plus that you can remove all of that stuff quite easily. Gotta love aptitude and synaptic.

[dbbolton]

I have to agree... I was thinking about trying Gentoo, but i am too lazy and dont want to "waste" my time compiling and setting up things, Ubuntu just works :)
you should try sabayon.

[macogw]

you should try sabayon.

You sound like RAV TUX :)

[deadlydeathcone]

Let's say I want to try CentOS, but to get it to work with my rt2500 wireless card, I would need to follow these intimidating directions (http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/CentOS4_rt2500_Howto). Same for Zenwalk (http://support.zenwalk.org/index.php/topic,4490.0.html). And this is just for wireless for these two distros. What about setting up media codecs or getting apache to work... tweaking and get these right could take forever, at least at my skill level.

I just installed Zenwalk on an old computer as a learning experience and am going through pretty much the same thing ... there are just so many baffling things about that distro, especially on a machine that doesn't seem to like Linux in the first place. I can provide some intimidating instructions about the rt2500, though: download and install this package (http://packages.fivethirteen.org/rt2500-1.1.0_b4-i486-42.1.tgz), then edit /etc/wifiradar.conf to include your wireless card. Done! (note that if you want to know how to use Via drivers without them locking up your computer EVERY TIME... that I can't help with :p )

I agree that Ubuntu really can't be beat, at least for me. The only reasons that I've found to use others are to either learn more about the inner workings of Unix (Zen and Arch are great for that) or to try another desktop environment, as Ubuntu only really does Gnome well. Just don't expect them to be easy or even documented... after all the people who use those distros might not even care about things like that and instead prefer things like having complete control over every piece of configuration or even the challenge of something completely alien.

[teet]

This is something I've been thinking about for a while. Let me preface this: this is not a bash on Ubuntu. I love Ubuntu.

But Ubuntu traps you, or at least can, depending on your skill in Linux. For a while I've been flirting with trying other distros and have installed and tried a bunch of live CDs and DVDs. None compares with Ubuntu - at least out of the box - and for a my skill level, other distros are just two hard to get working.

Let's say I want to try CentOS, but to get it to work with my rt2500 wireless card, I would need to follow these intimidating directions (http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/CentOS4_rt2500_Howto). Same for Zenwalk (http://support.zenwalk.org/index.php/topic,4490.0.html). And this is just for wireless for these two distros. What about setting up media codecs or getting apache to work... tweaking and get these right could take forever, at least at my skill level.

Sigh. Ubuntu, I love you. And I guess I'm not going anywhere.

As others have stated, I really don't think you're missing out on much. Once you get things installed and set up, "linux is linux". Okay, so that probably isn't entirely true, since you still have to keep your systems updated but most of the major distros have an acceptable package manager of some sort. If you really want to test other flavors of linux, you could always dual (or triple) boot...

-teet

[mips]

I have to agree... I was thinking about trying Gentoo, but i am too lazy and dont want to "waste" my time compiling and setting up things, Ubuntu just works :)

Try Sabayon which is Gentoo. If you download the DVD you would not have to install any additional software/codecs etc.

I downloaded the mini editition cd and all i had to add was Java as they could not fit it on the cd.

[Artemis3]

As usual, the more closed the hardware, the more you will suffer. Don't forget also the pletora of ubuntu derived distros addressing many issues the main lacks (ie. multimedia working by default (http://lt.k1011.nutime.de/), etc). As others have said, Sabayon Linux (http://www.sabayonlinux.org/) is worth trying. Get the livedvd and give it a ride. It is not Ubuntu, but a precompiled Gentoo which can become a regular gentoo or remain updated with the binaries provided by Sabayon.

[pichalsi]

Yeah i have Sabayon on DVD but dont have enough time to put it on a HDD... ill probably give it a try later

[Burgresso]

So....

As a caveat, I tried Fedora for the heck of it one more time. Got wireless working, then xorg kept breaking, and when i rebooted, no internet. Sigh.

So I'll try another way exotic distro, one I should get able to work: Xubuntu :)

[AndyCooll]

It is true that Ubuntu is easy to install ...and just about right. However distros such as SUSE, Mandriva, PCLInuxOS, Xandros, Freespire ...heck, even Debian can be just as easy to install and get satisfactorily up and running. It's all a matter of what you get used to and what suits your mindset.

I started out running Fedora Core and I could have that up and running just the way I liked it quite quickly. However, I've been running Ubuntu for the last year and a half now. So when I thought I'd have a look at FC6 I found it so much more difficult, because I'd forgotten the way it works and have become so familiar with Ubuntu's ways.

:cool:

[neoflight]

what do u think of xubuntu in terms of setting up,wireless and multimedia?

[coder_]

Setting up wireless is one of the most painful things in Linux, I think. And luckily the Network Manager in Ubuntu (Maybe Ubuntu specific? Or a regular Gnome app? I dunno.) is FANTASTIC! I got my card instantly recognized, no configuration required. Although, I am one who likes to mess around in the configuration, wireless is a pain in the butt :P That's one area where I love Ubuntu. What I hate is its "censorship" (Or more, Gnome's "censorship"). How they hide screensaver options and such like that to make it more simple. It loses power and configuration abilities due to these, which I dislike. Although, I think it is a Gnome thing rather than Ubuntu thing.

I also love experimenting with other distros - About to install Gentoo!! :D

In my experience, other good desktop systems include:
- SuSE
- Fedora
I got all my stuff up and running on these distros as well as Ubuntu. Check them out if you are experimenting and want a good, powerful, configurable desktop.

Gentoo looks AMAZING for configuration geeks like me :) If anyone has any experience or good links on Gentoo, pass 'em my way. (Maybe a personal message or summut)

Wow, this post was.... off topic... I don't even remember what the first post was about... Or why I started writing XD Oops...

[Burgresso]

what do u think of xubuntu in terms of setting up,wireless and multimedia?

Wireless was same as Ubuntu...but when I tried to update to nvidia...oh my. WTF? It went nuts. How could it be so different? So...I went back to Ubuntu :)

[happy-and-lost]

I also love experimenting with other distros - About to install Gentoo!! :D

Gentoo looks AMAZING for configuration geeks like me :) If anyone has any experience or good links on Gentoo, pass 'em my way. (Maybe a personal message or summut)


If you get anywhere with Gentoo, then do enlighten us! I just had a go and it scared the living b'jeezers out of me.

Yeah. I know what you mean. Ubuntu is so easy, it hardly seems worth changing. It does provide a good learning platform for managing Debian based systems, though.

[bd80599]

Shameless self-promotion alert...but

I know where you are coming from; I work in the IT industry (I am a project manager and I have some Unix experience), and when I installed Ubuntu, 95% of it was very easy. But some of the more advanced things were very hard (I have a HP scanner that isn't part of the SANE database, so firguring out how to get it to work was a real education).

My variant of the "Ubuntu Trap" is from the other angle - take a new user with limited computer experience. Again, you have the 95% rule, which means that they'll be able to get the simple stuff like e-mail, internet, office working. But at some point they will want more, and that "more" will require doing some stuff that might seem intimidating to a novice computer user, such as updating a source.list file to add repositories. Easy for us, but not so easy to others.

Also, there have been times where Firefox has locked up on me, and Ubuntu did not bring up the "This program is not responding..." dialog. Now I know how to use the kill command, but compare that with a novice computer user who has only used Windows, who is used to opening up the task manager.

So (and here's my shameless plug), ever since I switched to Ubuntu, I've been documenting each step of config that I've done (at http://all.ofthe.info - /end plug). Hopefully I'll be able to boil everything down so that a novice can do a fair amount of the basic and intermediate config to get as much of the user experience as follows.

Just my 2 cents...
-Andrew

[Lord Illidan]

I want to try out Zenwalk again. Had a few probs with package management in the past.

And I want to see how well DSL performs on this dual core pc.

[raul_]

I had a brief experience with Suse but without Synaptic i felt lost :mrgreen: it's just a matter of time though...

[Lord Illidan]

I had a brief experience with Suse but without Synaptic i felt lost :mrgreen: it's just a matter of time though...

I installed synaptic on Suse and started going on quite well, until I got fed up with some dependency errors while trying to upgrade KDE.

Then I said...you know what, I am trying to run SUSE like Ubuntu, why not run Ubuntu in the first place..and back to Ubuntu I went.

[raul_]

I installed synaptic on Suse and started going on quite well, until I got fed up with some dependency errors while trying to upgrade KDE.

Then I said...you know what, I am trying to run SUSE like Ubuntu, why not run Ubuntu in the first place..and back to Ubuntu I went.

Shhh! Don't let the SuSe guys find that :rolleyes:

[Lord Illidan]

Shhh! Don't let the SuSe guys find that :rolleyes:

I was going to post on their forums, but they are not like this...so wtf...I just pulled out the cd of Dapper, and booted Ubuntu again!

[IYY]

It makes perfect sense that at some point, a single distribution will become the Linux on the Desktop distribution, and all others will not be needed (of course, there will still be a need for server distributions, super lightweight or super reliable distribution, embedded and so on). Currently, it seems like Ubuntu is moving to fill that role, and there is nothing wrong with that.

[Sammi]

It makes perfect sense that at some point, a single distribution will become the Linux on the Desktop distribution, and all others will not be needed (of course, there will still be a need for server distributions, super lightweight or super reliable distribution, embedded and so on). Currently, it seems like Ubuntu is moving to fill that role, and there is nothing wrong with that.
A true believer :D

[Gargamella]

yeah it has vitiated us all ;D

[coder_]

Currently, it seems like Ubuntu is moving to fill that role, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Big problem! That's a huge problem! Why would we want that? We'd be back like MS, with really only a few choices! Distros should help each other, not try to "beat" each other out to be the top creating tension! I like my choices!

[Sammi]

Big problem! That's a huge problem! Why would we want that? We'd be back like MS, with really only a few choices! Distros should help each other, not try to "beat" each other out to be the top creating tension! I like my choices!
In response to the highlighted text: That's exactly what Ubuntu is doing. It's one of the most cooperative distros out here IMHO. Just think of distros like Debian and Mepis, which Ubuntu is closely related to. Ubuntu is very open and friendly towards these. And think of all the variants of Ubuntu, like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, and many many more. All openly encouraged by Canonical.

[steven8]

Ubuntu may wind up being the top distro, but I seriously doubt it would become a MS, with Canonical denying computer manufacturers the right to install another OS under some sort of penalty. Mr. Shuttleworth and Canonical are not like that. Have no fear of your choices being taken away. If Ubuntu gets to the top, it'll be because it is the best, not because it bullies others out.

[jocheem67]

Ubuntu like MS? Where does that idea come from? It's free isn't it...It's oss...which is great. Ot Shuttleworth is screwing us like hell ( no way ).

I tried opensuse and pclinux which are mpore difficult to set up. At start I didn't mind, liked to fool around with the more in-depth command-line stuff. But now it's just a working ubuntu-desktop. But I must admit that since I'm not playing with my ubuntu anymore, I also fire up xp more and more since some apps. just work a bit better. Well that's my fault I guess.
What I'm doing now is just looking at the apps that work nicely, and not bothering bout the OS that's behind it. Avidemux for my videoconverting, together with dvd::rip. Firefox for browsing, openoffice for my writing stuff. All ubuntu ofcourse.

But when I want to categorize music it's gonna be foobar2000 with xp, watching video's is gonna be mediaplayerclassic, and making music is always ableton live. Don't really like that wine-stuff...

Guess I'm not the only-one kind of not really caring bout the os, but caring bout the favorite apps. ?

[Lord Illidan]

Big problem! That's a huge problem! Why would we want that? We'd be back like MS, with really only a few choices! Distros should help each other, not try to "beat" each other out to be the top creating tension! I like my choices!

Since Ubuntu is Open Source it means that other distros can take what Ubuntu does and improve on it...so basically it's a win win.

[bro]

I'm trapped too. But it doesn't feel trapped, it feels like 'finally working'. The much boasted -'your linux desktop is ready' - about Suse 10.1 did all but instantly crash on my laptop (didn't recognize a long list of hardware), it wasn't the least workable from the start. It gave me lot's trouble when I wanted to start solving those problems.

Just the other day I tried the Enlightenment17 live cd. Awsome stuff, looks great, I'm sure it would work great, but my sound didn't work... I didn't even try to fix it, I think it's in beta anyway.

So why bother, Ubuntu recognizes my hardware better then mswindows does despite the 'designed for...' sticker, it's just the best system for my system :)