A Man and his Penguin

I’ve written a post about “9 things that disappointed me in Ubuntu 8.10″ and recieved a heap of comments on it; quite surprising considering I didn’t submit it to FSDaily!

Now that I’ve used the system for longer, here are 11 things that I like about Ubuntu 8.10:

1. I appreciate the effort that’s been put into the new status switching menu in Ubuntu (Fast User Switch Applet). I don’t find it incredibly useful, but it’s a good start toward making the Gnome desktop more unified and more intuitive (god, how I hate that word!).

2. Ubuntu developers and people in the community are sharing workarounds for at least one of the problems I mentioned. I got Gnome sounds working again through a quick HOWTO on the Ubuntu Forums. I was less impressed that removing PulseAudio stopped me from being able to log into Gnome, but once I put it back everything started working again.

3. The new KDE 4 version of K9Copy looks good. I haven’t done any DVDs yet but I’m sure I’ll take advantage of the extra control it gives.

4. I haven’t suffered any catastrophic Firefox 3 crashes yet on Intrepid. On Hardy, Firefox used to go down and actually bring the entire system down with it. Funnily enough, it never happened with Flock.

5. 64-bit is truly here. To be honest, it’s my first time with a 64-bit operating system, but I’ve heard that it used to be rather difficult to set everything up. With Intrepid, so far installing programs has been just as easy as 32-bit, and I’d forgotten it was 64-bit until I saw Synaptic install the ia32 libs.

6. Updates are still flowing, and are safe to install. I used to never apply updates unless I believed they would fix my bugs, for fear of them mucking up something. This time around I’ve been installing them when they come out, with no ill effects, and with one noticable benefit (the icons beside the text in the Fast User Switch Applet - yay, now it looks right!). Not even the kernel updates, which are coming along very quickly, are ruining things. I don’t recall having to install a new linux-restricted-modules version either; looks like DKMS is handling things spendidly.

I don’t have the “proposed” repository enabled, but if I hear about any wireless fixes… I’ll add it like a shot!

7. And all the old kernels are gone, or at least are no longer on the GRUB menu. I remember reading that this was an Ubuntu feature now - it removes old kernels once you’ve had a successful bootup on the new kernel. It was still a pleasant surprise for me even though I never actually hit the GRUB menu.

8. The end of Xorg crashes? Even the Nvidia driver has been well-behaved so far. My system appears more stable except for the wireless. Xorg.conf is an almost useless file now, which I’m sure means we’ll all have to transition to a new way of doing things, but it really will be a transition to a better way of working with screens and input devices.

9. Am I the only one who sees the big potential with the “Create a USB Startup Disk” program? You can use it to trial a new Ubuntu version on your computer without having to repartition your hard disk, and without settling for the limitations of the Desktop CD. You could use your regular programs live from USB, via a flash drive, to check that everything works satisfactorarily. If I upgrade my workmate’s computer to Intrepid, it will only be after doing a full set of tests, with her programs, having the whole system running from flash drive.

I expect it would be especially useful for enterprise migrations, but it’s a pity they won’t actually be using it like this until the next LTS version.

10. Although the Printers setup program has completely changed (FOR THE SECOND TIME IN AS MANY VERSIONS! GRRR!) it is now more Gnome-like and less intimidating, and makes it a piece of piss to install a networked printer.

I mean, it wasn’t difficult to do in Hardy, but now it’s ridiculously easy. Even though the printer is connected directly to my father’s computer rather than to an Ethernet port in my router, the Printers program just immediately listed it as though it were a local printer. I was very impressed by this. I just had to click it, and then click “Next” a couple of times and the job was done. I have installed a similar printer, locally, on a friend’s computer running Windows, and it required me to run two programs and reboot before it would print. And that’s as a local printer!

11. Intrepid still agrees with me more than Windows or OS X, and I still like the way Ubuntu is maturing.

Now to answer some comments from my last post:

@Dave K: I’d like to keep the latest version of Ubuntu. I know I don’t have to have it, but the newer versions of all the programs are handy. I’ll consider a move back if the wireless issue gets too bad. I did have a reason to upgrade: I thought Intrepid was going to fix the Pulseaudio problems, and improve the reliability of my wireless card. Neither of those happened despite there being a lot of hoopla about those precise things.

When everything works perfectly, as it did during the Dapper and Feisty days, I skip an upgrade. (I never ran Edgy, and I didn’t run Gutsy on that computer either; I only ran Gutsy on this new computer).

If I sound like I was personally hurt, it’s just because I was a little dispairing.

@Jason: I usually give distros a month or two to settle down as well. I upgraded from Gutsy to Hardy on this computer after I had installed it on two other computers. I jumped in a bit early this time.

@Timinpx1: You’re right, there aren’t “lots of little bugs to get familiar with” introduced in new versions of open-source application software, at least none that I’ve seen. The little bugs have been with new Ubuntu versions. I never grew up in the Windows world, but I don’t remember these sort of problems with the classic Mac OS except for a general loss of stability and speed between Mac OS 7.5 - 7.6.1 (that’s five versions!) and 9.0-9.1 (three versions).

@6205: Extra 700 megabytes of RAM available, is the benefit for me. I still fill up all my cache anyway whenever I rip a DVD, regardless of whether I’ve got 2 gigs or 4 gigs installed
@Appsmanster: Ahh, looks like the Jockey issue is peculiar and not necessarily to do with the “Install Ubuntu” option. Thanks for the report. A Mac would not be an easier choice for me - it would drive me insane as surely as if I was using Windows. The Linux way of doing things is the way I prefer.

@Oli: You’re right, but I do only have fairly limited internet quota which prevents me from downloading too many prereleases. I share the connection with my father. I did download Hardy beta and submit bug reports, and I remember downloading an alpha of Feisty that simply wouldn’t log in, making it a complete waste of 700 megabytes of download quota! But yes, I should make more of an effort. I should also tell you that I’ve never had a bug that I’ve reported or contributed information towards, fixed. Except for the one I reported to Nvidia, but they didn’t really fix it; they just moved the problem to a different series of cards
Thanks all for reading and replying to the earlier post, and please keep reading and replying to my blog!

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 8th, 2008 at 8:21 pm and is filed under Open-source application software, Ubuntu, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.