Biggest Beef with Ubuntu

[toolazy2work]

Im not sure if this is the right place to be posting this, but I figured that this would be a good place to get developement Ideas, so here it is....

What is your biggest beef with Ubutnu and linux in general.
I have a few.

Sound - Only one program can have control of the sound card at once. If you try to play a youtube vid at the same time as listening to music, it doesnt work. I have tried on multiple machines, and i think its just the way that linux is programed.

Efficient Browser - Firefox is the slowest thing to run on an ubuntu box. Opera is just as bad. Ive tried swift fox, but it didnt really show improvement. I dont know why it takes 2 mins to load up the firefox browser, but it does.

Driver loading - Windows (I know, but its the industry standard and when it works, it works) makes it very easy to load new drivers onto the system. Its maybe a five min process if everything goes to plan, using a gui to do it. Unbuntu does not have this feature (at least in 6.06, which is what i run). It requires the use of a bit of command line code. I am a computer tech / geek and i have not been able to find a standard way of loading drivers, like a new sound card driver for example.

Web Cam support - Not many web cams are supported by Ubuntu and linux in general. I dont know why this is as I am not a programmer, just an IT guy.

These are just things that i noticed that are troublesome to at least me (sry if this turned into a rant). These are just some I noticed that were lacking in the Ubuntu OS. I have been a user for about 2 years. Dont get me wrong, I LOVE UBUNTU. It is very easy to use, the interface is fantastic, but it was just lacking in those areas. Keep the good work up, as you all are helping to make the NEW industry standard for operating systems.

Nick
P4 2.4ghz
1.5 DDR 533

[smartboyathome]

In 7.04+, there is a Restricted Driver Manager, so it is now very easy to load drivers.

[23meg]

Moving to Community Cafe. Let's keep Ubuntu Idea Pool to concrete ideas.

[ticopelp]

Sound - Only one program can have control of the sound card at once. If you try to play a youtube vid at the same time as listening to music, it doesnt work. I have tried on multiple machines, and i think its just the way that linux is programed.

I've never had this problem. I play sound from multiple sources all the time.

If you want a faster browser, try Ephiphany:


sudo apt-get install epiphany-browser

Very lean and fast, I use it on my older laptop because Firefox is such a memory hog.

[TheTruth34]

my 965 mobo being blacklisted =(

[happysmileman]

Sound - Only one program can have control of the sound card at once. If you try to play a youtube vid at the same time as listening to music, it doesnt work. I have tried on multiple machines, and i think its just the way that linux is programed.

Fixed in 6.10 for all except a few badly programmed apps (wengophone springs to mind)


Efficient Browser - Firefox is the slowest thing to run on an ubuntu box. Opera is just as bad. Ive tried swift fox, but it didnt really show improvement. I dont know why it takes 2 mins to load up the firefox browser, but it does.
Get Epiphany on GNOME then, same rendering engine as firefox but better integration with GNOME. Or use Konqueror on KDE


Driver loading - Windows (I know, but its the industry standard and when it works, it works) makes it very easy to load new drivers onto the system. Its maybe a five min process if everything goes to plan, using a gui to do it. Unbuntu does not have this feature (at least in 6.06, which is what i run). It requires the use of a bit of command line code. I am a computer tech / geek and i have not been able to find a standard way of loading drivers, like a new sound card driver for example.
For me I plug in the hardware and it works with any installation or a reboot, depends on the hardware though, proprietary software requires installation but still not a reboot, unlike WIndows which reboots about 800 times for each piece of hardware.


Web Cam support - Not many web cams are supported by Ubuntu and linux in general. I dont know why this is as I am not a programmer, just an IT guy.
Only ever used one webcam with Linux so can't argue, mine was recognised and worked OOTB though

And I'd strongly advise you to update from 6.06 as I can't see any real reason to use it.

On topic my biggest problem with Linux was just getting used to new directory structure and all, I'm over it now and find it hard to find things on Windows when I go back to it... Also my printer/scanner wouldn't work, but then it broke completely so I got a new one by HP and it's fine

[der_joachim]

Sound - Only one program can have control of the sound card at once. If you try to play a youtube vid at the same time as listening to music, it doesnt work. I have tried on multiple machines, and i think its just the way that linux is programed.

Alsa sharing (http://alsa.opensrc.org/AlsaSharing) has been around for quite some time already.

[n3tfury]

Im not sure if this is the right place to be posting this, but I figured that this would be a good place to get developement Ideas, so here it is....

What is your biggest beef with Ubutnu and linux in general.
I have a few.

Sound - Only one program can have control of the sound card at once. If you try to play a youtube vid at the same time as listening to music, it doesnt work. I have tried on multiple machines, and i think its just the way that linux is programed.

Efficient Browser - Firefox is the slowest thing to run on an ubuntu box. Opera is just as bad. Ive tried swift fox, but it didnt really show improvement. I dont know why it takes 2 mins to load up the firefox browser, but it does.

Driver loading - Windows (I know, but its the industry standard and when it works, it works) makes it very easy to load new drivers onto the system. Its maybe a five min process if everything goes to plan, using a gui to do it. Unbuntu does not have this feature (at least in 6.06, which is what i run). It requires the use of a bit of command line code. I am a computer tech / geek and i have not been able to find a standard way of loading drivers, like a new sound card driver for example.

Web Cam support - Not many web cams are supported by Ubuntu and linux in general. I dont know why this is as I am not a programmer, just an IT guy.

These are just things that i noticed that are troublesome to at least me (sry if this turned into a rant). These are just some I noticed that were lacking in the Ubuntu OS. I have been a user for about 2 years. Dont get me wrong, I LOVE UBUNTU. It is very easy to use, the interface is fantastic, but it was just lacking in those areas. Keep the good work up, as you all are helping to make the NEW industry standard for operating systems.

Nick
P4 2.4ghz
1.5 DDR 533

opera slow? it's just as fast on my ubuntu box as my windows box. ymmv i guess.

[FuturePilot]

Sound - Only one program can have control of the sound card at once. If you try to play a youtube vid at the same time as listening to music, it doesnt work. I have tried on multiple machines, and i think its just the way that linux is programed.
It depends on the sound card. Most lower end or integrated sound cards will have trouble doing what you described. PulseAudio is supposed to fix this
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/cleanup-audio-jumble


Efficient Browser - Firefox is the slowest thing to run on an ubuntu box. Opera is just as bad. Ive tried swift fox, but it didnt really show improvement. I dont know why it takes 2 mins to load up the firefox browser, but it does.
I'm not sure why that is. Firefox loads up for me in 5 seconds (and that's the first time it's loaded) Some claim that Firefox has become rather bloated, and I can see running it on an older machine it may seem slow. Epiphany is a nice light weight Gnome web browser

Driver loading - Windows (I know, but its the industry standard and when it works, it works) makes it very easy to load new drivers onto the system. Its maybe a five min process if everything goes to plan, using a gui to do it. Unbuntu does not have this feature (at least in 6.06, which is what i run). It requires the use of a bit of command line code. I am a computer tech / geek and i have not been able to find a standard way of loading drivers, like a new sound card driver for example.

Web Cam support - Not many web cams are supported by Ubuntu and linux in general. I dont know why this is as I am not a programmer, just an IT guy.
These two are related. There's a reason why installing drivers seems so easy in Windows. It's because hardware manufacturers provide drivers for their hardware. You just pop in the CD and away you go. If the manufacturers didn't provide drivers, Windows would support almost nothing out of the box. That's also the reason hardware such as webcams don't really work in Linux. The manufacturers refuse to provide Linux drivers or at the very least, documentation of the specs of the hardware itself. You can't blame Linux for lack of hardware support. Blame the manufacturers

[toolazy2work]

Thank you all for your responses. I have found them helpful. The reason i was sticking with 6.06 is for the LTS. Its on a work machine and i didnt want to lose anything, but i suppose it should probly upgrade. Does anyone have any suggestions for what ver. to which i should upgrade? Should i go with 7.10? or 6.10? I dont know, which has been most relieable to you all?

Thanks again,
Nick

[OldTimeTech]

According to everything I've read....you should upgrade to 6.10, then 7.04 and then 7.10.

You need to be on 7.04 to go to 7.10 according to the sources at Ubuntu.

[gn2]

Should i go with 7.10? or 6.10? I dont know, which has been most relieable to you all?


I would suggest 7.04.
It has been the best version I've used, it works on all my hardware whereas 6.10 and 7.10 wouldn't.
6.10 only has six months of security updates left, 7.04 has a year to run, by which time 7.10 may be sorted enough to run on my old laptop.

[igknighted]

If you are having hardware issues, the answer is to upgrade. You will get 18month newer drivers for almost all of your hardware. Chances are, a lot has changed in that time and more of your devices will be supported.

I will second pulseaudio for playing sound from multiple sources (and much more). This is a very advanced sound system, in my opinion it is far superior to any other OS.

If you use KDE, let me recommend Konqueror as a browser choice. It loads quickly, shares its heritage with Apple's Safari browser (and soon they will share the WebKit engine even), and integrates great with KDE. It can be used with gnome, but it loses a lot of its luster.

"LTS" is kind of a myth. Unless you are running a server, I would never recommend sticking to an LTS release. Especially on a distribution like Ubuntu that doesn't backport ANY new apps. For servers, continuity and uptime are important. So the LTS philosophy works well. But desktop users are better served by the newest, most efficient applications and drivers, and this is not what LTS does well.

[SunnyRabbiera]

well lets go down the list shall we?




Sound - Only one program can have control of the sound card at once. If you try to play a youtube vid at the same time as listening to music, it doesnt work. I have tried on multiple machines, and i think its just the way that linux is programed.

well as mentioned this might be a sound card issue, I have encountered this myself and I have learned better then to use more then one app that uses sound.
its a bit annoying from a multitasking point of view but sound is a rather odd bird right now, luckily there are more and more sound services developed for linux right now to replace older systems like ALSA.


Efficient Browser - Firefox is the slowest thing to run on an ubuntu box. Opera is just as bad. Ive tried swift fox, but it didnt really show improvement. I dont know why it takes 2 mins to load up the firefox browser, but it does.

Firefox on ubuntu can be like a snail stuck in superglue I have learned.
There are faster browsers then it like epiphany or KDE's konquero, I think this is more of a memory issue from firefox then anything else, though depending on your specs opera can be slow as well


Driver loading - Windows (I know, but its the industry standard and when it works, it works) makes it very easy to load new drivers onto the system. Its maybe a five min process if everything goes to plan, using a gui to do it. Unbuntu does not have this feature (at least in 6.06, which is what i run). It requires the use of a bit of command line code. I am a computer tech / geek and i have not been able to find a standard way of loading drivers, like a new sound card driver for example.

Web Cam support - Not many web cams are supported by Ubuntu and linux in general. I dont know why this is as I am not a programmer, just an IT guy.

This is both the same issue, driver support.
The ones to really blame for issues like this is not Linux but the companies who make the hardware...
remember: companies see one company when they make a product:
WINDOWS
If you asked them for linux support they will probably say something like "whats that?" or "sorry we are not supporting it at this time"
But linux is slowly but surely catching up in this market, distributions like ubuntu and others are making ways so that oddball drivers can be installed in the very near future.


These are just things that i noticed that are troublesome to at least me (sry if this turned into a rant). These are just some I noticed that were lacking in the Ubuntu OS. I have been a user for about 2 years. Dont get me wrong, I LOVE UBUNTU. It is very easy to use, the interface is fantastic, but it was just lacking in those areas. Keep the good work up, as you all are helping to make the NEW industry standard for operating systems.

Well Ubuntu is one of the easiest ones out there, but if you feel that ubuntu doesnt do the job there are plenty of other linux variants out there.

[NJC]

"LTS" is kind of a myth. Unless you are running a server, I would never recommend sticking to an LTS release. Especially on a distribution like Ubuntu that doesn't backport ANY new apps. For servers, continuity and uptime are important. So the LTS philosophy works well. But desktop users are better served by the newest, most efficient applications and drivers, and this is not what LTS does well.

Well said - and 100% agreed.

[Colro]

7.10 is great, and it's been stable for me. LTS or not, 6.06 is old. You'll get much better hardware support with 7.10 -- though you might want to try out the LiveCD and decide for yourself.

[esaym]

6 month release schedule, always changing, always breaking, always bloated

Moved to debian testing and now I am happy :KS It is always updated and can be as thin or fat as I want it.

[Sklasko]

Speaking of Debian, I've been curious for a while as to how suitable Debian is on a desktop (well, technically laptop for me) system compared to Ubuntu.

[Mr_Cynical]

I've never had this problem. I play sound from multiple sources all the time.

If you want a faster browser, try Ephiphany:


sudo apt-get install epiphany-browser

Very lean and fast, I use it on my older laptop because Firefox is such a memory hog.

You might just have stopped me having to hack madwifi support into Fedora. I've been having constant-load hard drive problems, and read on another forum that Firefox (or one of the indispensible extensions) can cause this, so I'll give Epiphany a go and see what happens.

[-grubby]

Speaking of Debian, I've been curious for a while as to how suitable Debian is on a desktop (well, technically laptop for me) system compared to Ubuntu.

It's pretty good. You'll have to install most proprietary drivers (if you need any) manually though.(at least for my NVIDIA 6100)

[FG123]

Well, back when I was still running Feisty I would have said my biggest beef was how it felt like 64-bit users were treated as second-rate citizens in terms of codec support and a few extra niggly bits to support, but Gutsy has improved so well in 64-bit that it's perfectly viable for me, and how!

[igknighted]

You might just have stopped me having to hack madwifi support into Fedora. I've been having constant-load hard drive problems, and read on another forum that Firefox (or one of the indispensible extensions) can cause this, so I'll give Epiphany a go and see what happens.

Hack madwifi onto fedora?


su -
rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-7.rpm
yum install madwifi

Be careful, as the default might want to pull in the i586 kernel instead of using the i686 kernel like it should. Just use 'yum search madwifi' to find the proper package for i686

... hardly a hack.

[osx424242]

Just curious, do you have any Firefox extensions? Also, do you have Firefox set to "Show my windows and tabs from last time?" Either of these could greatly extend your Firefox startup time (I'm not saying that these _are_ your problem, just that those two tend to be likely culprits). Try setting Fx to show a blank page on startup (bookmark all your current tabs first!!!) and then disable all of your extensions. If it starts up quickly, do a binary search through all of your extensions to narrow down which one is (or ones are) causing your slow startup. If you've already tried all that... do the 6.06->6.10->7.04->7.10 that others here have suggested :). LTS is great if you get everything working perfectly and are willing to pay $$ to keep it that way; otherwise it's just a marketing term.

[bluedragon436]

I have heard about this issue, I am not sure if this was really an issue with 7.04, but I know that since I have upgraded to 7.10 I have not had an issue with this thank goodness...I don't do multiple things at once that require the sound card usually..but every now and again I do and it sucks if doesn't work.... so this wouldn't be a beef for Ubuntu for me...

[sayuki288]

i seem to not have all the issues that's been said by the poster?

[igknighted]

Be careful, as the default might want to pull in the i586 kernel instead of using the i686 kernel like it should. Just use 'yum search madwifi' to find the proper package for i686

Nevermind, I just tried it last night reinstalling fedora on my desktop and it grabbed the proper arch. They just released a new kernel (2.6.23.1) and the repos don't have kmods for the drivers yet. Stick with 2.6.22.9 for a few days before you upgrade to 2.6.23.

[toolazy2work]

Hey all, just thought i would let you know that i formatted and am now running 7.04. Hopefully, they worked out the bugs :-D. But quick question... What is the site of the ubuntu wiki that tells you how to do pretty much everything?

[gn2]

What is the site of the ubuntu wiki that tells you how to do pretty much everything?

https://help.ubuntu.com/ and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ may be useful.

[toolazy2work]

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Feisty is by far the best guide for anything dealing with ubuntu. I am using Fiesty now, and i love it. Im so glad i upgraded. My sound works great, drivers work well, though i had a bit of trouble becuase im using an Nvidia Geforce4 TI 4200, but what evs. Ive still not tried the webcam but that will be coming shortly.

[esaym]

Speaking of Debian, I've been curious for a while as to how suitable Debian is on a desktop (well, technically laptop for me) system compared to Ubuntu.

Just really depends on what you are looking for. I wanted more control and a thinner install and I really hated messing with the new releases every 6 months. Some info here http://www.lindsay.ath.cx/ubuntu_vs_debian.html

Everything in ubuntu (minus some of the newbie configuration frontends) comes from the debian unstable repos.

[meg23]

Back to webcams, its not Ubuntu's fault. Webcam companies not only neglect linux users, but they refuse to release open drivers for linux development team to port to linux. People are working on drivers for logictech cameras, however the drivers are difficult to program when you have little or nothing to go on. Logictech already makes its money on the hardware, I don't know why they wouldn't release divers to Ubuntu and let the team port them to linux, for free like always.

[Palmyra]

Sound - Only one program can have control of the sound card at once. If you try to play a youtube vid at the same time as listening to music, it doesnt work. I have tried on multiple machines, and i think its just the way that linux is programed.

I have a streaming video with MPLAYER-plugin, Audacious, and YouTube video all playing audio at the same time. Your problem may be either Dapper or specific applications.

You need to upgrade, because there are huge differences between Dapper and subsequent upgrades.

[jpittack]

Since I just love breaking and fixing computers, nothing is every a bad thing, unless it just plain doesn't work. So far, everything works with work, thus, my biggest beef-The default volume. I freak out everytime.

[kkmc92]

My biggest beef? Let me think. Oh yeah!!!
I CAN"T INSTALL IT

If anyone has any ideas please visit my thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=603674