Some they giveth some they taketh away

MINT is Ubuntu with codecs added and a slightly different interface, so if Ubuntu is bad, so is MINT. Plain and simple.

 

Yes you would have thought so.....but its not

 

Every distribution has its own pros and cons. I feel that MrK does present them in a fairly even way, but in the end it is up to the end user to make a decision.

With all the positive press Ubuntu is getting it is good to have someone point out its flaws, how else would anything ever get fixed or improved?

I also have had issues with regressions since 8.10 and I have issues with the way Ubuntu handles open bugs for LTS Server editions(but that is another story). So, all is not perfect in magic Ubuntu-land. I have great respect for Canonical and the strategy they are implementing to get Linux out into the mainstream but why can we not state our dislikes against it without it being called biased?

As for his support for OpenSuse, it seems that is what he found to work the best on his systems. Personally it stinks on mine so I don't use it, well that and Novell's bedfellow status with Microsoft. This is the beauty of Linux CHOICE.

In the end if you feel his review is biased you could always write your own and praise Ubuntu, it is a free online world(mostly).

And yes this is posted from my Ubuntu box.

 

Actually mint is derived from Ubuntu (and Debian) and developed separately with codecs added and a better designed interface with improved menus, a better default set of installed applications a better updater.... yadayada.
It is superior to Ubuntu especially out of the box. Its tweaked and polished.
Mint runs smoother on all my systems.
A more tangible example would be my printer setup. In Ubuntu I need to do a lot of jumping through hoops at the terminal to get this printer working, building source drivers etc.
In mint its just two .debs and the printer works better. eg. the ink monitor works in Mint but not Ubuntu. It also prints to cd where Ubuntu failed.

Go figure...

 

This is my experience as well, but with suspend/resume instead of printers. Suspend refuses to work properly with Ubuntu (no keyboard/touchpad input upon resume), but Mint handles it flawlessly as far as I can tell.

Ubuntu's updater: I schedule nightly updates, and about a month ago I woke up to find that Ubuntu would no longer boot. Running GParted from the LiveCD reported my Ubuntu installation as Debian Lenny (!!). No such screwed-up abracadabra from Mint yet, fingers crossed.

I don't know what goes on underneath, but I highly doubt that Mint is simply Ubuntu with a green paint job and some package changes. Among other things, they'd hardly need to wait two months after each new Ubuntu version to release Mint, if that was all that's involved.

 

A few observations from a linux novice:

linuxforall: You obviously know what you are talking about, but your knowledge comes across as watered down when you start making personal accusations. Don't get me wrong, It is just my opinion, and not very strong at that, and I've enjoyed this thread and hope you continue to post.

Are many of us Mrk fanboys? Yes, I'm one of them, absolutely. He was here from the beginning and has a reputation for giving spot on advice freely. So you are starting behind the eight-ball, so to speak. Yes, he is also an OpenSuse fanboy, he admits that. I'm an Ubuntu fanboy, I admit that. Although Mrk makes some very valid points about regressions (see the thread on the Ubuntu Forums that instructs one how to remove Pulse Audio) I have not had any problems with Karmic. Actually, it is the best distro (or OS) that I have ever used.

I would like to see everyone back arguing in this forum as long as the advice posted by blue is heeded . I say this selfishly since, when the conversation stays within certain parameters, it is always a learning experience for me.

If all else fails, we can have an arm-wrestling tournament.

 

Most people never even heard of linux until ubuntu came along.
I read about ubuntu on this forum and decided to try it. how many people here wouldnt know about linux if it wasnt for Ubuntu?

I have tryed tons of different distros such as Fedora,ubuntu,Suse,Debian,Arch,Centos etc.

Every operating system has pros and cons.

For me Debian has worked the best on my systems. fast and reliable.
I did have dependency issues with Suse
I like Fedora but due to the nature of it an update can cause alot of issues. I Cant wait to try Centos6aka rhel6
Second most reliable has been Ubuntu. I dont like the fact ubuntu uses beta software in final versions. I also dont like the fact that 10.04 (LTS) will use untested software aka the unbuntu software centre replacing synaptec,gdebi and update manager. You dont see microsoft or red hat shipping a beta bootloader or other untested software in a long term supported product so why does ubuntu?

 

Godwin's Law.

Can we please save that term for those complicit in crimes against humanity?

Isn't that a little harsh? (Considering that we're talking about an operating system here...)

Would it be nearly as popular if not for the free CDs that Canonical sends out via http://shipit.ubuntu.com ?

Apple IIe and IIc, along w/ Commodore VIC 20 and 64 were the first computers I used.

Then, my first GUI experience with the Apple Mac.

I recall how advanced it seemed (and was) at the time.

Memories...

I'm always happy to hear of such examples (grim as the overall picture of humanity remains).

Or the new hardware required to run (the increasingly-bloated) said costly OS itself- much less with all the security software needed.

I'm glad it has worked so well for you.

If you should come across hardware that doesn't meet the specs for Ubuntu, you might want to consider something like Vector, which purportedly runs on as little as 128 MB RAM (for the regular version-half of that for the 'light' version) and is said to be excellent for newbies.

This and the other similar comments are consistent with what I've seen elsewhere about Mint.

I therefore have to ask:

Other than requiring twice the RAM* for installation and the controversial political statements of Mint's developer (for those for whom that's an issue), is there any real reason to choose Ubuntu over Mint?

(*Note that Mint also has a lighter xfce version)

I wonder how many Ubuntu users would have chosen Mint instead had they only known about it/ been introduced to it/ been enticed by a free CD, etc.

I'm curious as to how they make any money from Ubuntu. I have not seen enterprise/boxed products such as those that Novell and Red Hat offer.
..........................

As for me, running live from CD on a Dell Latitude C600 with only 256 MB of RAM, antiX MEPIS has been the only distro thus far that I've been able to do all of the following with:
-load fully
(Open Suse and Mint 7 xfce crashed before getting that far)

-login
('guest/guest' doesn't get me anywhere in PCLinuxOS)

-configure dial-up and successfully connect
(ZenWalk manual says to see the Wiki...)

-surf without continuous freezing and crashing (Simply MEPIS) or pages spontaneously jumping back and forward (Puppy- Sea Monkey)

Now if only I could figure-out how to close port 80 with antiX and get it to even recognize my printer....

 

Ubuntu hasnt become popular due to free CDs, in this day and age of high speed broadband, who in right mind would like to wait a month or more for a distro CD to come. Its popular because it just works. Lodore makes the valid point there, I don't have to add anything more.


steve161,
Thanks for your kind words, I started Linux with SuSE and in a way I am thankful for all they have pioneered for desktop linux. Sadly current SuSE is quite lacking in many departments and I wouldn't dare suggest SuSE to a Linux noob.

 

you are welcome. I look forward to your contributions to this forum (the best linux forum in my opinion). Thankfully, this sub-forum has been free of the problems that other forums have. There are a lot of terms out there: Forgive and forget, Turn over a new leaf, etc, etc.

I still think the arm-wrestling thing would be cool.

 

And the funny thing is, they take forever to add STABLE product releases to their repos.

Has Firefox 3.6 been pushed to the repos for Karmic yet?

 

Ubuntu is ok i guess, haven't used it that much in the past year... I personally only care about KDE and then we are talking about kubuntu, which is a complete train wreck. Until canonical offers an adequate distro for those who use KDE i can't see any reason to use *buntu over openSUSE.

 

In all fairness Ubuntu has quickly been on top of every upgrade so far (3.5.5>3.5.6>3.5.7) up until now. I don't think 3.6 is going to happen in Karmic. I even posted in the Backports subforum at ubuntuforums asking that very same question. If you want 3.6 then use this ppa...

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable

It's the actual Firefox 3.6 (not a daily build). I'm using it.

Later....

 

I'm aware of it, and I've been using it since a day after the release.

But my point was: why the zeal to add beta/untested software into - of all things - an LTS release, but so slow in adding stable updates of popular software? Doesn't seem to make sense to me. Firefox (and OpenOffice) isn't an obscure program either, it's something people use on a daily basis.

I like how there are so many PPAs available for Ubuntu, thanks to its popularity. But if the people in charge of the official repos would get off their bums and shake a leg, I daresay a lot of those PPAs wouldn't be necessary in the first place.

 

Ubuntu and any desktop release is a voluntary effort, in case you are impatient about stable release, bear in mind, to make it to the stable release, there is lots of testing involved so instead of bitching, moaning and fretting, get your behind down, join team Ubuntu to expedite the testing process. In case you don't have that patience, just tick the proposed or backports and you will get cutting edge delievred right at your doorstep, still not satisfied, add the myriads of ppa and you got yourself access to more of the latest.

The biggest complaint on LTS Ubuntu is slow release but to make it to LTS, strict quality control is imposed by team Ubuntu to bring about stability so its always a pay off.

Here we have comlaints about so called stability and then there is complaints that the release takes time, what a paradox

Try other distros for cutting edge, apart from Ubuntu, only sidux offers quicker release. Fedora ships with latest but then during then updates are slow unless third party repos are added.

 

Nah will take peyote over arm wrestling any day

 

It seems that other distros handle it the same way. In openSUSE, e.g., there are no ppa's but you have to add the "openSUSE BuildService - Mozilla" to your repos in order to get FF 3.6. In the normal update repo there is still 3.5.7. And as mentioned in another posting, CentOS still uses FF 3.0.16 (albeit fully patched)

Yes, Linux people are rather conservative. Stability counts a lot. But I agree with you that against this background it's rather strange that Ubuntu uses beta software in their new releases - that's not what I would call a consistent policy.

 

Ubuntu LTS is not yet final but in testing phase, only the release will reveal if at all Canonincal would use beta software.

 

To get back to the original topic:

1. Karmic took away the ability to turn off/on services

2. Karmic and Mint 8 eventually crash whenever I use a wallpaper changer (wallpapoz, wally) unlike Jaunty and before.

3. I dislike the new "software center" and want the old one back.

 

1) sudo service xxxx stop for instance to turn off gdm all you have to do is type sudo service gdm stop, far better than previous /etc/init.d/gdm stop

2) wallpapoz and wally are the culprit here and not Ubuntu, debian or Mint, they crash on all three here.

3) Thats matter of personal choice, best way to get heard is petition, poll at Ubuntu forums and launchpad. You still have choice of synaptic which I consider to be the best among all the offerings and even install that on KDE as well.

 

Agreed. But they did it in Karmic which is not LTS, of course. But we all know that most Ubuntu users upgrade to the newest release - be it LTS or not. Thus, millions of users have to deal with beta software.

 

This a user preference really, you should be able to still use /etc/init.d scripts according to the LSB.

With Debian at least you can optionally install it(and when implemented will be LSB compliant), but as it is Ubuntu's baby if you use ubuntu you use Upstart the way they want you to....

Oh and cron, anacron, atd, they too will be things of the past and you will use upstart to schedule jobs and the like.
A little agressive IMO

 

I can use command lines in a pinch (just like DOS) but I would much rather use the GUI that came with Jaunty and before.

Wallpapoz never crashed in Jaunty for me. Any idea why wallpapoz and wally crash in Karmic?

True, but everything I am posting here are personal choices (and gripes).

 

sudo apt-get install bum

I would take an educated guess from what I see in the logs, its probably and most likely an issue with the newer gnome in Karmic since walpapoz has not been updated for a while.

from the wallpapoz site

20 July 2008, I think this is sad news for you. I decided to postpone the development of new version of Wallpapoz for a very long time. Well, this sentence is a soft version of this sentence: I quit developing Wallpapoz. Many users ask many improvements (symbolic links, tighten integration with beryl/compiz, dual monitor support, etc) for Wallpapoz. I do not have enough willing to do the job because Wallpapoz version 0.4.1 is already good enough to do the job. I developed Wallpapoz in my colleague years. I had plenty of times back at the time. But things have changed now. I am sorry, folks.

If there is someone who want to do the job, just tell me. I will give svn access.

I just want to say that Wallpapoz has given me good times. I have received many emails (more than 90 emails) about Wallpapoz from asking features and thank you email. I am very happy to know that Wallpapoz has helped many people.

Thank you!

Akbar

wally is a bit of a surprise as its fairly new and uses qt4, have you checked the logs btw?





Of course thats what forums are for but if you really wish changes, then make it heard at Ubuntu forum and launchpad, at least there we can hope that Ubuntu devs are listening and taking heed.

 

For LTS Canonical has taken a conservative line from start, sometimes a bit too much, I don't think they would jeopardize LTS release with untested, buggy, beta software by any chance.