Ubuntu 7.04

July 12, 2007 08:59

4.5/5
As a Linux user for 4 years now, I'm very familiar with the good and bad. There is much more good now than 4 years ago, but the bad still lingers. Video editing for anything more than the basic, is slightly better than a joke. Kino is the best editing solution for Linux, but compared to anything in the Windows or Mac world, it's primative.Other solutions that claim to do pro editing, like Cinelerra and Jahshaka are very user un-friendly and rarely work as advertised. Rhythmbox is however, a very good-user-friendly application for managing music. No songs are for sale like I-Tunes, but everything else about it is nearly as good as I-Tunes, including downloading podcasts.One final note, you don't need to do all the 3 party application nonsense for partitioning the hard drive prior to installing Ubuntu, as your review claimed. Who the hell told you to do that!It is a good idea to do a disk defragement on Windows prior to installing Ubuntu, but that's it. All you have to do is boot into Ubuntu on a CD from a Windows restart and click on the "install" icon in the upper left corner of the screen. Ubuntu's CD is pre-loaded with a very easy to use automatic partitioning tool called G-Parted. If you choose to use it for manual partitioning, you can do that too.So skip the Norton partition Magic and skip the Wubi, it's not necessary.

- tvphil

April 23, 2008 01:45
Mediocre
1.0/5
The support forums tell the true story. There are a few basic applications that work well. Otherwise, there are just too many glitches that are beyond the standard solutions on the support pages. My initial euphoria wore off when I realized the system had no sound. None of the standard fixes worked. After drilling deep into the forums, I stumbled on a hack to the sound stack to get it to recognize my driver. It worked, but it was not encouraging. Then there are the situations where applications and functionalities like wireless get broken by routine updates. Even less encouraging. Too many hacks are required just to keep things working. Is there any QA procedure or standardization to prevent these situations? It seems that the integration of problems and solutions into the support knowledge base is haphazard at best.

It seems that the effort spent on cool desktop effects would have been better spent on developing some utilities for installing and compiling drivers and such. Are priorities being set by needs or by developers' egos? All the desktop effects do is show the limitations of the graphics rendering, which looks downright primitive when compared to Windows or Mac OS.

I experienced some of the well-known power management bugs: failure to sleep/suspend, failure to wake, and inadequate processor power control. With Gutsy Gibbon I hoped for deliverance......NOT! Click response for window resizing/restoring and within applications became extremely erratic. Then shutdown failed, freezing on a text screen. Showstopper. Either there's a complete turnaround with Hardy Heron of Ubuntu will be gone from this machine.

- Igiveup2

June 6, 2008 02:23
Mediocre
1.0/5
At first, I was in love. It was so cheap and it worked. Now, being the highly educated Jewish person I am, I was quite appalled when I found out that it was made by Africans. That's right. Underpaid, disgusting, sweaty, AIDS-infected black people. That automatically makes it not worth looking into, not even if it is free; it would be like buying kosher steak and finding out it is covered in pork juice. Disgusting!
I was told by a friend about a version of Ubuntu called "Jubuntu", I got even more appalled by this. How dare those Arab Africans call us "Ju's"?! To think of what we had to go through with the holocaust and they feel it's okay to make derogatory terms like that. And all we get are memorials made out of buttons, and a crappy distro? Yeesh, what a bunch of nebbishes. How dare them. I've recently gone out and bought a copy of Windows, I feel it's worth the price to have an operating system that isn't made by "them".

- Rabbi Ishmael Goldberg

- Ishmael123

July 16, 2007 01:28
Good
1.5/5
When I got my free, factory-pressed discs in the mail, I popped one in my machine (not after creating an image of the hard drive) and got to it. To my pleasant surprise, all hardware in the tower was recognized, including my wireless PCI card.

Unfortunately, that was where the ease of use ended. Setting the wireless card as the default networking device immediately brought my home network into view, but it took manual configuration to actually get it online. I was up to the task, while a novice would have thrown up their hands right there.

Installing my printer was a task I was not up to. I found the driver software quickly, but was overwhelmed by the changes that had to be made and the terminal commands that needed to be typed in. Most of this stuff was in Linux jargon, which could prove gibberish even to the most advanced Windows user.

Every Linux fanboy I've come in contact with says you have to get used to it, just like you have to get used to Windows. Well I'm sorry, but even my grandmother can double-click an install file, then click "next" and so on; she doesn't need a user's manual for that.

Another comment I've received from a particularly pushy Linux pusher was that anyone who wants to go far with computers ought to know terminal programming. Again I'm sorry, but one can go farther with Windows XP and a search engine to track down freeware than they'll ever get trying to start from scratch. And frankly, not everyone has as much technical "ambition" than a Linux veteran who earns a living setting up other people's machines.

Ubuntu calls itself "Linux for human beings." I'm afraid it's not even close. Sure, it might be more user-friendly than Red Hat, but whose standards are we to go by? A first-time PC user shouldn't have to go through a phonebook's worth of literature to become reasonably productive with a computer, at least not with Windows. In order to love Linux in any form currently available, you must either learn to write your own code, hire someone to do it for you, or condition yourself to do without. There is no way around this.

If the open source community actually intends to topple Big Red one day, they need to come up with a distro that is a feasible alternative for truly productive use. More and more people are starting to make a living off their computers, and the need for extra functionality could arise at any moment of any day. There's only one family of operating systems whose ease of use, and universe of available third-party software and hardware, can provide such functionality whenever it is needed.

No matter how many Linux advocates can swear, nor how loud, that Microsoft's advantage comes from making deals with OEMs, the plain truth is that everyone starts from scratch. M$ did not start at the top. They worked their way to the top, and they did it by creating a product that everyone can use. Whether they stole the GUI from Apple is irrelevant; the point is that they made a product that satisfies the customer.

You cannot enter the market with a bare-bones product (free or not), print "Some assembly required" on the box, and expect everyone to throw away what already works and spend all their time learning how to use yours. Even if your product is more secure, it doesn't mean a thing if you can't do anything with it. And don't try telling grandma that the use of a printer (or the Internet) is more luxury than necessity. She'll choose luxury every time; she earned it. "The customer is always right."

- santuccie

December 3, 2008 09:33

3.5/5
Stability and Durability 4
Ease of Use 3
Speed 5
Features 3
looks 3
This Operating system is a good alternative to Windows, but kind of takes me back to Windows 98. Doesn't provide as many features as Leopard does, but is stable enough to hold it's own against Windows. If you are totally inexperienced with Linux I recommend going Mac or just staying with Windows if you can put up with it.

- Strega222

August 5, 2008 03:13

3.0/5
I started using Linux at this year, my freshman year at college. I am a computer engineer, so its one of those environments you must be familiar with. Over the summer, I decided I would build a media server for my house next year. I took a 6 year old HP running an AMD Athlon 2000+ processor, downloaded the live DVD, and installed Ubuntu within 25 min (excluding the download time). Great! Linux! It has some nice things out of the box... all the basic stuff like office, web, some media. I went ahead and followed a guide online for turning Ubuntu into a media server, and now I can access my 500 GB harddrive of music, movies, etc from anywhere in the world with my iPhone. Super cool! But if I didn't know how to program, or wasn't knowledgeable of the way networking and internet services work, I couldn't have done it. I think few people who did not major in a computer field or spend way too much time in the computer section of Borders would find Ubuntu (and really all of Linux) far too complex. The package manager for installing software is great... as long as you know what you are looking for, meaning the software's name in the package explorer. The biggest problem? You can't go to Best Buy and pick up software. As much as some people will deny it, its far more useless than even OS X for games. It's not really any simpler to use than either Windows or Mac. It's nice that it works on almost anything, but after 4 attempts (and complete reinstalls) I could not get it to work with an older Nvidia gfx card (a geforce 2 circa 1998 or something) and was stuck with an 800 by 600 desktop.

Bottom line: If you don't have everyone in your neighborhood or dorm coming to you to fix their computers, you probably will not enjoy Ubuntu. For those happy few who know Red Hat is not a fashion fopah, Vista and OS X ain't all that bad. Vista is fairly simple to use and easy to do a great many things on, while nerds can still do quite a bit with it. OS X is even simpler to use, but in my opinion is too controlled for someone who enjoys Linux to get into its guts.

- nickj1088

July 5, 2008 06:18

4.5/5
Ubuntu is the #1 Linux distribution on the planet. Its very secure, no viruses etc and very stable. You won't see it crashing ever. It has all the softwares built right in which you might require after the installation. For e.g. it has OpenOffice.Org suite for your office needs, Mozilla Firefox browser, Evolution e-mail client, a built-in pdf reader, rhythmbox music player etc. At first it won't let you play any of your media files due to patent issues. But once you'll play a media file, it'll say "search for the required codec?", just click yes and the multimedia support will be installed. Another feature that I would like to mention is the click and install software. Just search for the required kind of software, select it and it will be installed automatically. No hassles. I'd also like to mention that there are no threats of viruses and malware on Ubuntu. Take my word, try it, it even runs from the CD without altering your hard drive.

- hellknight_mnd

May 7, 2008 07:42

3.5/5
The best version of linux been able to find so far with out all the extra eye candy inless you whant it. The 64 bit version includes most of the stuff the 32 bit version includes. Windows 64 bit is still lacking software support.

- chris_sundown13

March 18, 2008 12:52

4.5/5
Has been stable for 3 months some configuring. But the Ubuntu community has helped me in many situations

- Damispyderbyte

March 14, 2008 11:10

4.0/5
If you have a dell 410 xps and install another hard drive and use the live cd to install it you should be good to go. I removed my vista HD
For short time should I would not erase it. I can dual boot both OS's. It took a few months of learning how get things to work and where to find stuff. Over all it matches up pretty good to Vista. XP is still slightly better. But for a free OS it gets high marks. This OS is capable of being better than any window products if you can learn tweek this OS.

- johnhop1970