[Closed] So Ubuntu.... whats your experiences

I changed to Ubuntu bout 2 years ago now. I started off popping back to XP for bits. Now I dont use XP at all. Never have any issues with it. 10x faster than XP. Boots as quick as Win7. Less/no virus's.

Generally you can set it up on a "Live CD" that you can boot off and run without making any changes to your PC. That might be a good way of trying it out before you commit to changing.

Spent about a month or so with it, worked well, as a general computer will be fine if you need specific programs you might get a tad frustrated with the open source alternatives but as its all free with some perseverance you'll be fine, I had some issues setting up myth tv (think media centre for windows xp) with my tv tuner card so reverted back to windows. Shame! Might try it again now with a change of system.

I recently decided to have a dabble too.
Mixed experiences.
Have it on a laptop as a dual boot with XP. Boots quicker and works fine for most surfing/emailing duties. Sometimes the wifi doesn't want to connect and I have to disable/enable it.
However a major bugbear is lack of printer support. I have a canon printer connected to the desktop and shared across the network. Ubuntu doesn't have the particular drivers for it so I have been unable to print from ubuntu, so largely given up using it on the laptop and gone back to booting xp each time.
Had a better result on an old desktop that I had rescued from work. HDD was knackered so unusable. Popped a cheap 160gig drive in and did a fresh install of ubuntu- all works well. Got it sitting under the TV as a file server, able to stream films from a networked hard drive and watch on the Tv, plus useful for iplayer on the TV, youtube etc.
I think if you have an old PC that has got slow it is a very good idea to stick ubuntu on.
If you want to print, check compatability first.

I came over from Fedora on my server, I now run 9.10 on that. It seems pretty solid and easy to use. So I dropped F11 from my desktop and put ubu 10.04 on it and the whole world fell apart, loads of my normal packages were not on it (ok, they're not everyday packages to be fair) and it keeled over a few times before I even had a normal stable desktop setup running, so I've gone back to F12 for now (which has its problems but at least I know my way around it well enough).

Given a little time for it to settle I'd give it another go, on my server it's running a virtual windows machine too for testing but you could use it for those odd progs you can't find an equivelent of in linux.

Quick enough with a gnome desktop, pretty enough, plain enough that I'd give it to a relative with no non-windows skills.

I prefer mint as its more finished than ubuntu. Use virtualization for amy windows tasks job done

epson printers are not supported and i guess there are others
all to do with if the linux community has been given access to code they need to do drivers i believe

edit feel free to correct this!

Use it on my work machines, netbook and at home.

Once you have it running it's brilliant, but I haven't yet managed to get my Radeon HD4800 running with it properly, despite trying about 5 drivers, but I need pretty heavy 3d stuff.

Online forums are pretty helpful.

I've got Ubuntu Netbook Release running on my netbook. Fast and reliable. Finds wi-fi etc easily and no problems with my hp printer.

Was running mint on my laptop which wasn't quite as easy to set up but a lot of that was down to some weird hardware issues which have caused trouble even with windows. However the hd has died (not related to mint, was on the way out anyway) so not using it any longer.

Used to use it on my laptop (dell inspiron 6000) but I couldn't use the s-video output so I got rid of it and went back to XP which is a lot slower in comparison. Also I don't like the text rendering at all, it's worse than a mac! Fonts all over the place and just looks cheap.

Might try that Linux Mint some time if anyone knows how to get it working with an s-video output on my laptop!

On the desktop:

- Ubuntu's support can be poor (I've had bugs open for years with loads of "me too!" posts but no proper reply from the devs, I've also got so tired of waiting for Ubuntu to look into a sound problem that I learned C and fixed the driver myself).

- X is unstable, and when it crashes you lose all the apps you had open

- Open source clones of proprietary apps are generally inferior (Office vs Open office, iTunes vs RhythmBox/Amarok, iPhoto vs fSpot etc) but they are of course free and a few are better than proprietary software like XBMC vs MCE, the x264 encoder and LAME for instance

- If you require any more than the most basic setup, you will probably end up editing config files such as fstab, xorg.conf, smb.conf, etc. All of these use unique formats, so you need to read their individual man pages.

- Suspend/Resume *still* doesn't reliably work

- Hardware support is sometimes better, sometimes worse than Windows.

- If you want a newer version of e.g. Firefox, you have to get it from outside the repositories

I put ubuntu 9.1 on two old Dells and it works great for surfing and email - faster to boot and run.
I also put Ubuntu 10.04 onto my main PC (still a bit old) to see how it ran and it's really nice. Very quick and easy to install and can be removed within seconds. All my systems are dual boot just in case I neeed something Windows specific.
I would have thought that for most people Ubuntu in one form or another is all that's required and safer than windows.

Give it a try - you'll probably like it.

Ubuntu's support can be poor (I've had bugs open for years with loads of "me too!" posts but no proper reply from the devs, I've also got so tired of waiting for Ubuntu to look into a sound problem that I learned C and fixed the driver myself).

But isn't that the point / selling point for open source software? It's free. But you can't expect someone to rustle up a fix for your problem overnight as there isn't anyone paid to do that, so you either need to do it yourself or you wait for the community to help you out. It's a great concept for those who don't like paying for stuff but at some point it will fail, surely, as giving something away does not pay any bills or put food on the table. Hardly a great business model.

For the more technical stuff I do at work it is far better than the corporate images we have available. It's equally good for playing music, but does not easily do the whole iPhone thing.

On the other hand, it can do Exchange calenders and mail, but the available spreadsheet stuff is far inferior to Excel for what I need to use it for. However, I could use Citrix to connect to a lovely, top of the range virtualised copy of Excel, or I could even use that XenDesktop stuff to get a full on Win7 desktop if I wanted to.

But isn't that the point / selling point for open source software? It's free. But you can't expect someone to rustle up a fix for your problem overnight as there isn't anyone paid to do that, so you either need to do it yourself or you wait for the community to help you out. It's a great concept for those who don't like paying for stuff but at some point it will fail, surely, as giving something away does not pay any bills or put food on the table. Hardly a great business model.

Who said overnight? I've had bugs open with them for *years*

I think their business model is selling support to businesses, so I suppose it's really not in their interest to be too helpful to Joe Public

On the server it's pretty decent and performance is good, although there are some stupid things such as shipping with a broken sendmail config that just cause needless arse-ache.

- Ubuntu's support can be poor (I've had bugs open for years with loads of "me too!" posts but no proper reply from the devs, I've also got so tired of waiting for Ubuntu to look into a sound problem that I learned C and fixed the driver myself).

That's the problem with using a distro that leeches from upstream without contributing anything back. Distros like Fedora, SuSE, Debian etc have upstream developers working on them & you're more likely to get a fix. With Unbuntu you're stuck waiting for someone else to fix the problem. Most of their developer effort goes into their management product or into basic usability.

But isn't that the point / selling point for open source software? It's free. But you can't expect someone to rustle up a fix for your problem overnight as there isn't anyone paid to do that, so you either need to do it yourself or you wait for the community to help you out. It's a great concept for those who don't like paying for stuff but at some point it will fail, surely, as giving something away does not pay any bills or put food on the table. Hardly a great business model.

Open Source Software is a great business model. If you want an SLA with OSS you can pay a company such as Red Hat, Novell etc for it. Look at the number of large proprietary software companies that are trying to copy it. OSS frightens them.

I work for Red Hat. We're a $5B market cap. company included on the S&P 500, totally built around OSS. It pays very nicely thank you. 🙂

Well quite, but then the 'it's free lol' argument doesn't work so well.

Where are red hat based in the uk btw?

What you mean is the product is not a good busines model. It only works when you wrap a service around it such as the SLA / support. Which for Joe Public is not going to happen. The reason that Red Hat and the like are making mooney these days is because they have developed chargeable services around the free product. The basic premise of OSS is not a good business model. Great as a hobbyist movement but not a busines model.

I'm not sure I agree that the large proprietary software companies are trying to copy it. What they are doing is, to a degree, hedging their bets and mostly protecting their revenue streams. IBM are not entirely altruistic about their involvement in the OSS space. Neither are Oracle. These are cpmanies that generate vast sums of revenue and claerly don't want to lose them. Do any of these proprietary software companies give their proprietary software away for free? Oracle 10 free for Linux? I don't think so.

So, if Red Hat didn't have a chargeable support business would you still be working for them?

Well quite, but then the 'it's free lol' argument doesn't work so well.

Main Red Hat UK office is in Farnborough, & a smallish office in London.

Installed it on my old laptop. Its OK - quicker to boot and less CPU intensive. For web browsing its fine, for mainstream apps I wouldn't use it.

I had big problems getting my wifi working to start with and hit the forums to get help. They're very techy (even for a so-called 'IT technician' like myself) and you have to do some digging for support. I offered a pint to anyone who could sort it out and got a very snotty response from an uber-geek somewhere saying 'the Ubunutu community dowes not take payment, please do not come here making offers of reward... blah blah'. When our Broadband was changed and it didn't work again, I couldn't be bothered going through it again as windows just worked (and the missus bought a shiney new laptop...)

I've got it running on an old laptop specifically for the kids to use for browsing, some basic word processing etc, and it's fine. Picked up all the hardware and peripherals first time it booted up without any fuss whatsoever.

Although the Package manager is meant to be really easy, I found it a bit of a faff sometimes. Other than that, it's been great.

Used it for years.
Netbook Remix on the eeePC, and stock 64bit on 2 desktops and XBMC media centre machine ([i]edit: and a Macbook[/i]). All 10.04 Lucid Lynx, all stock plus a few extra preferred apps.

Only real "bug" I've noticed recently is that sometimes the WiFi connection attempt can seem a bit slow to trigger after login. HP printers work fine - have done for years. Can't remember the last time I had an X crash - maybe 5+ yrs ago?

Did consider defecting back to Fedora 13, and have partitioned drive ready, but have not got around to it yet.

Disclaimer: I've been using Linux almost exclusively since before Win2000 was released, so I find W2000/XP/etc. a real chore.

What you mean is the product is not a good busines model. It only works when you wrap a service around it such as the SLA / support. Which for Joe Public is not going to happen.

It sort of happens with some of the larger desktop companies providing hardware with Linux pre-installed. And Linspire had a go at it. I can't see anyone supporting it on random hardware though.

The reason that Red Hat and the like are making mooney these days is because they have developed chargeable services around the free product. The basic premise of OSS is not a good business model. Great as a hobbyist movement but not a busines model.

The OSS community model helps drive down costs & increase innovation etc. That gets passed on to the customer. From that perspective it's a good business model.

I'm not sure I agree that the large proprietary software companies are trying to copy it. What they are doing is, to a degree, hedging their bets and mostly protecting their revenue streams. IBM are not entirely altruistic about their involvement in the OSS space. Neither are Oracle. These are cpmanies that generate vast sums of revenue and claerly don't want to lose them. Do any of these proprietary software companies give their proprietary software away for free? Oracle 10 free for Linux? I don't think so.

Sun in their dying days tried it. I'm not sure where Oracle are going right now 🙂

IBM do make some key contributions to OSS. They also have some apps that clearly are threatened by OSS projects like JBoss. (I used to work for IBM BTW 😉

So, if Red Hat didn't have a chargeable support business would you still be working for them?

Yes i would, if there was a job available for me.

epson printers are not supported and i guess there are others

Curious, my 2 different epsons (one deskjet and one laserjet colour) are both supported out of the box on 9.10?

I've never had any problems that I can think of with ubuntu running on my netbook, my sons netbook, my laptop and my server. Yes, some programs are slightly inferior and you may have to look around a bit sometimes to get things working how you want but it's free, it's free, it's free.

If it's not good enough for you then pay money. And no doubt still wait years for people to fix bugs.

I'd say give it a go lowey, try a liveCD first if you want to get used to it but if you're using using it for simple games and browsing and stuff like that it'll be just fine. Give us a shout if you need support with anything.

The OSS community model helps drive down costs & increase innovation etc. That gets passed on to the customer. From that perspective it's a good business model.

Don't you mean community model, as I suggested? If you have a product that you give away for free , the fact that the community increases innovation maybe a valid point but how can it drive down costs when there are none to start with? Surely one of the significant drivers for a busines is to make money - at a minimum to cover your costs. If you give your stuff away for free where does your revenue come from? Ergo, it is not a very good [i]business[/i] model.

Yes i would, if there was a job available for me.

And where would they get the money to pay you or would you do it for free? And if doing it for free where would your income come from?

Don't you mean community model, as I suggested? If you have a product that you give away for free , the fact that the community increases innovation maybe a valid point but how can it drive down costs when there are none to start with? Surely one of the significant drivers for a busines is to make money - at a minimum to cover your costs. If you give your stuff away for free where does your revenue come from? Ergo, it is not a very good business model.

You give your product away for free, but charge for support for those that want it. If the product is of high enough quality, there will always be people who want to buy an SLA for it, or to buy influence in the development of the project.

The main OSS communities now are not really "free" resources, so there are associated costs. The majority of the key developers are paid by the major OSS contributors, they're no longer people doing this as a hobby. So developing in a community splits the costs amongst the contributors, & also provides the for-free distros with development. There's been analysis of the theoretical cost for developing a Linux distro from scratch using the old proprietary software model, & it's a prohibitive amount. There's few if any companies who could afford that nowadays.

And where would they get the money to pay you or would you do it for free? And if doing it for free where would your income come from?

From a rich benefactor like another Linux distro mentioned in this thread relies on ? 😉

I think 10.04 was rushed and pushed out too early ( still have it on my laptop havent gotten around to installing mint). I find it bloated buggy and slow in comparison to 9.04. I do find mint 9 a lot better oit of the box. I do have to fanny on with cups drivers for my canon printer mind.

Oracle 10 free for Linux