36 replies to this topic

[Jeigh]

On the first day of this month Cononical released the latest iteration of their linux distribution, Ubuntu. Now to revision number 6.06 they have achieved many of the necessities to having a desktop linux distribution that is useable by the masses. Originally intended to be released in April (I believe) it was delayed to polish up a few things and I think it was well spent. I have seen numerous threads on this forum about choosing a linux distro to try as the first distribution, and hopefully this review will entice many to choose ubuntu for this purpose. For more 'hardcore' linux users I hope it makes some of you see it as a viable platform (although I'd never bother trying to sway you into switching from that which you are loyal to heh).

Being touted as an LTS release (Long Term Service - the first release that they will support for 5 years instead of 6 months so that it is more viable for server use), the first noticeable difference in 6.06 is the fact that it has a live cd. Ubuntu, no matter how user friendly, has been harshly criticized for its stark text based installer even though it only ever asked very simple question and then handled everything itself. Now you can boot into a fairly robust, quick responding live cd to explore ubuntu and simply doulbe click the icon 'install' on the desktop if you decide its right for you. A quick jump through a graphical installer will now take you through the choices the old text based installer asked. The only thing I didn't love was how the partitioner worked, felt a little counter-intuitive to what I'm used to, but might be fine for people not used to partitioning hard drives. Either way the install is quick and painless. Probably under 20 minutes for the entire prodcedure from putting the cd in to rebooting into the new install.

Another nice touch is that Ubuntu has always been great at setting up grub. I've had up to two windows xp installs and 3 other linux distros installed (including gentoo, slack, etc) and ubuntu set up grub to see all of them automatically and all were bootable. This is great for new users just trying out linux since if they partition up their drives or install ubuntu on a seperate drive and want to keep windows then ubuntu doesn't even expect them to have to worry about it, it simply sets up everything for them.

Booting in you'll start noticing why I think Ubuntu is getting so close to what the desktop linux experience needs to be. The basics automatically just work. A normal install has everything I own working at least to some extent. Graphics drivers are installed (albeit not the optimal ones... but they work for maxing my desktop resolution and still having perfect performance in that respect), my monitor rates are set properly, keyboard special keys work (some of them), etc. My printer and webcam are recognized properly but there are a few issues I'll need to tinker through, but for the most part they are already working better then they would having just installed a windows xp install (both my printer and webcam are kind of weird ones so its not surprising they dont work off the bat).

It comes with a healthy set of applications, including Open Office (MS Office near equivalent but free), firefox web browser, email client, handful of desktop games, media player, music player, and other essentials. Basically the only issues I had in getting my day-to-day activities set up was getting video and mp3 codecs installed, but a quick search on ubuntuforums.org and a quick search through Synaptic (more on that in a sec) allowed me to install some other media players and music players and codecs/plugins. Now flash, video, mp3's, etc all day fine on my system.

Synaptic is the graphical frontend for at-get. Apt-get is what made me stick with Ubuntu. Other distros have similar abilities (Emerge in Gentoo or example) and what this does is allow a user to simply type "sudo apt-get install _____" at a command line or search for a keyword and click 'sintall' in synaptic and it will install the program. It takes care of everything. It's easier then even installing things on windows where you need to hunt down the software from websites or disks. Now some people who are more hardcore linux users don't love using this method for all things since it doesn't always install the latest and greatest software version but for a user new to linux Synaptic will make your life very easy.

Things just work in Ubuntu. A new user might have some issues but on the whole they can quickly, and more often then not easily, check into the issue at the ubuntu forums and find someone who has provided a solution. If not, the community as a whole is amazing and would be happy to help them work through the problem. Frankly I can't think of a distro that would be more appropriate for someone who has no experience with linux, and I still use it as a primary distro at home even though I've used numerous others. Some may be faster, some may have more in depth controls, but overall Ubuntu has a great mix of control and ease of use.

Overall this is a great update to a great distro. The largest 6.06 specific changes are the live cd/graphical installer, updated packages, better recognition of hardware, redesigned gnome theme, and a handful of smaller changes that really just make everything feel more 'right'. I Highly reccomend checking out Ubuntu 6.06 (OR Kubuntu for KDE fans, or Xubuntu for xfce fans)

[XIII]

On the first day of this month Cononical released the latest iteration of their linux distribution, Ubuntu. Now to revision number 6.06 they have achieved many of the necessities to having a desktop linux distribution that is useable by the masses. Originally intended to be released in April (I believe) it was delayed to polish up a few things and I think it was well spent. I have seen numerous threads on this forum about choosing a linux distro to try as the first distribution, and hopefully this review will entice many to choose ubuntu for this purpose. For more 'hardcore' linux users I hope it makes some of you see it as a viable platform (although I'd never bother trying to sway you into switching from that which you are loyal to heh).

Being touted as an LTS release (Long Term Service - the first release that they will support for 5 years instead of 6 months so that it is more viable for server use), the first noticeable difference in 6.06 is the fact that it has a live cd. Ubuntu, no matter how user friendly, has been harshly criticized for its stark text based installer even though it only ever asked very simple question and then handled everything itself. Now you can boot into a fairly robust, quick responding live cd to explore ubuntu and simply doulbe click the icon 'install' on the desktop if you decide its right for you. A quick jump through a graphical installer will now take you through the choices the old text based installer asked. The only thing I didn't love was how the partitioner worked, felt a little counter-intuitive to what I'm used to, but might be fine for people not used to partitioning hard drives. Either way the install is quick and painless. Probably under 20 minutes for the entire prodcedure from putting the cd in to rebooting into the new install.

Another nice touch is that Ubuntu has always been great at setting up grub. I've had up to two windows xp installs and 3 other linux distros installed (including gentoo, slack, etc) and ubuntu set up grub to see all of them automatically and all were bootable. This is great for new users just trying out linux since if they partition up their drives or install ubuntu on a seperate drive and want to keep windows then ubuntu doesn't even expect them to have to worry about it, it simply sets up everything for them.

Best of the best for Ubuntu is the free cd ordering you can do through thier website http://www.ubuntu.com where you can create your LaunchPad ID through this link: https://launchpad.ne...n=shipit-ubuntu, which will redirect you again after that to shipIt page to continue your request, you can request up to 10 CDs for free.
Ofcourse i agree completely with Jeigh, it's the best Linux distro for people who didn't taste linux before, the easiest while having all linux applications and features, at the same time, it's not microsoft doors like and i think doors is a better name for it, because these wholes can't be called just windows
anyway, i used to use ubuntu breezy, as i can't still setup the new release because i'm away from my lovely laptop which have linux on, working on these microsoft caves workstations till i get back to my lovely pc.

[Jeigh]

Oh yea, completely forgot about ordering the cds for free from them. Plus now they are offering cds of kubuntu and xubuntu where before it was just straight Ubuntu which is nice. (well I'm sure they do kubuntu now, not 100% sure on xubuntu but I'm too lazy to check...)

[XIII]

Oh yea, completely forgot about ordering the cds for free from them. Plus now they are offering cds of kubuntu and xubuntu where before it was just straight Ubuntu which is nice. (well I'm sure they do kubuntu now, not 100% sure on xubuntu but I'm too lazy to check...)

lol, no, still they didn't do Xubuntu, but i think it will be available so soon, Ubuntu Rocks

[nightfox]

lol, no, still they didn't do Xubuntu, but i think it will be available so soon, Ubuntu Rocks

I agree... it isn't one of those Linux OSes that you get all confused in. It's really quite simple. Though I don't like the default colour theme (too much brown). I wish I would have found Ubuntu back when I was getting new to Linux.

[N]F

[Jeigh]

Ah yes, the "brown, brown, and more brown" motif haha. Honestly, for BEING pretty much all brown it's really nicer then I would think haha. I mean, I never keep the default theme more then the time it takes me to find one my usual one... BUT its still not too horrible. I think it also does a good job at distinguishing them from the normal windows-esque blue and silver sets... sure I would have personally picked a different color but they're crazy for earthyness over there haha. At least it comes with the common gnome themeset so you are only moments away from clearlooks and other non-brown themes.

And yea I'm not surprised they don't ship Xubuntu yet, since it's the first release they probably want to see how it'll do before firing up the cd burners.

[pawitp]

Ubuntu is really good. I'm not a linux newbie but I still use it since it have the "apt-get" and some user-friendly ness, I mean who want to be on the expert-mode all the time. I can easily reinstall if I mess something up. I'm using ubuntu Dapper Drake right now with Compiz and XGL server. I combined the Vista and OSX themes. Now it looks really great. It looks different. My friend looked at it and didn't realize it isn't windows, he asked me if I can install the eye-candy on his windows XP! I'm still convincing him to switch to linux but he just won't because he thinks linux is very hard seeing I'm on the commandline. I'm looking forward to Edgy Etch (6.10) which will contain bleeding-edge softwares (probably incl. XGL).
This is a screenshot of my desktop: here
And here is the cube effect: here

[Jeigh]

They actually have built in packages now for XGL, its a big draw for new users to 6.06. They are planning to have it even more integrated for 6.10 since that release is apparently going to focus alot more on the interface and making the distro more appealing at a glance since they've put so much emphasis on making it usable up until this point (this is not to say they are going to ignore issues that don't relate to the look/feel, but they are going to try to make it snazzier for 6.10). SHould be interesting to have an option like "You have ____ video card, would you like to enable XGL?" right in the installer.

[minnieadkins]

I snagged a few unbuntu cd's a few months back. It was a lower version than this obviously, and I ran the live cd. It seemed cool. I'm new to linux, but I ended up going with Mandrake 10 rather than Ubuntu. Should I try out ubunu instead though? I'm still new, like I said, and I'm just learning. I think linux is great, but Windows has spoiled me with it's use of use and treating me like an idiot if I don't know something lol. I'm fairly comfortable with computers and just getting in to it, and I'm starting with a few simple bash commands.

Really don't know where to begin, but I think it's great .

[Jeigh]

If you are comfortable with Mandrake 10 then I would say stick with it for awhile longer. If it feels a bit weird to you still, there would be no harm in at least giving Ubuntu a shot. Frankly I've tried Redhat/Fedora, Mandrake, Suse, etc. PRetty much all the 'easy to use' distros and the first that I actually felt was easy to use was Ubuntu. The others have all come a long ways over the past year or two as well, but Ubuntu just does alot of things right. Most importantly for me, they have the hardware autoconfiguration and software installations simplified to a level that they are hard to mess up. I have only seen a dependency issue on ubuntu once since I started with it and that was fixed by simply reinstalling the package in question... I left most other distros because of dependency woes.

SO yes, if you love Mandrake there wouldn't be a reason to switch obviously. If you wouldn't mind trying something new I'd suggest trying Ubuntu. Hell even just make a small new partition and leave mandrake on their along with ubuntu and windows and then you can test out ubuntu (including the features the live cd cant really show off well) and then if you like it just take over the mandrake partition lol.

[xboxrulz]

nice review but Ubuntu was stated to become a bleeding-edge technology release (aren't all Linux distros like that anyways?) So, I don't know if a lot of people would want to use it.

xboxrulz

[Jeigh]

What do you mean by a bleeding edge tech release? IT's just like it's always been, one of the simplest and easiest to use distros available (if not THE simplest and easiest to use). Its not the most powerful bleeding edge distro by any stretch of the imagination, tho.

[pawitp]

The fact is that Ubuntu 6.10 will be a kind-of bleeding edge release, that's why they made 6.06 Long Term Support! Every distro got to have something new at some point right? Anyone aiming for stableness should not upgrade to 6.10 but wait for the next version beyond 6.10 All updates will be available so no fear your computer will be outdated. I'll definitely upgrade to 6.10 BEFORE it's released, I loved the bleeding-edge!

[Jeigh]

Oooooh, 6.10, right. Yea it will probably be more bleeding edge, but I still think most stuff will be heavily optional. I cant see them completely alienating there main audience

[pawitp]

Well, 6.10 is named Edgy Eft.
[quote name='https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2006-April/000064.html']First things first. The codename of Dapper+1 will be:

The Edgy Eft

And here's why. Edgy is all about cutting edge, perhaps bleeding edge,
brand new code and infrastructure. It will be the right time to bring in
some seriously interesting but definitely edgy new technologies which
lay the groundwork for the next wave of Ubuntu development.

An Eft is a youthful newt, going through its first exploration of the
rocky territory just outside the stream. And that's exactly what we hope
the development team will do with Ubuntu during the Edgy cycle - explore
slightly unfamiliar and uncharted territory that is perhaps a little out
of the mainstream. [/quote]
But I think I WILL be stable. It's just the opensource versioning and stableness is more "strict" than proprietry software. Often, beta opensource software is stable enough for microsoft to release it if microsoft to developed it.

[xboxrulz]

What do you mean by a bleeding edge tech release? IT's just like it's always been, one of the simplest and easiest to use distros available (if not THE simplest and easiest to use). Its not the most powerful bleeding edge distro by any stretch of the imagination, tho.

I don't think Ubuntu as the easiest and simpliest distribution ever, it actually annoys me a lot.

Ubuntu has many restrictions and too many of its tool still uses the command line system and doesn't have a GUI which is important for newcomers.

Furthermore, I still can't figure out how the heck do you all the computer open a application in a new X Server 'cuz it locks it and not allow me.

xboxrulz

[Jeigh]

Hm, what kinds of things do you feel you need to use the command line for in Ubuntu? I mean, I know I personally use it for most of the things, but I can think of a way to do virtually everything through the interface. I know one of my friends was using my computer and had never touched linux before and just messed around and found most of the things that they would normally need to know before I even realized they were on the comp.

I ask only out of curiosity, I think they've implemeneted in the last couple releases alot of ways to circumvent he command line.... not that I feel you SHOULD

[xboxrulz]

well, maybe that changed a lot of things since 5.10, which was my last use of Ubuntu.

xboxrulz

[KazDoran]

They actually have built in packages now for XGL, its a big draw for new users to 6.06. They are planning to have it even more integrated for 6.10 since that release is apparently going to focus alot more on the interface and making the distro more appealing at a glance since they've put so much emphasis on making it usable up until this point (this is not to say they are going to ignore issues that don't relate to the look/feel, but they are going to try to make it snazzier for 6.10). SHould be interesting to have an option like "You have ____ video card, would you like to enable XGL?" right in the installer.

Simple reason for XGL not being an option to put in the installer. It's still beta software, and not everyone with the specs for it has got it working correctly. I've got it working at the moment, but it still gave me a bit of a headache when suddenly all the Gnome window decorators were gone. No way I could select windows, nor they'd appear in the taskbar at the bottom. It took a few symlinks and a new lib file to put it working correctly, which means Ubuntu 6.06 wasn't completely ready for XGL (although it works just fine in my comp).

Maybe 6.10 will change this (fortunately it will) and will allow for XGL to be installed with one or two clicks.

Also, mind that a few of the plugins developed for XGL are far from being stable, taking otherwise stable systems to crash. Again, hopefully, that'll be solved. Not an issue from Ubuntu's dev team as far as I know, anyway.

[xboxrulz]

actually, it's harder for Ubuntu to include XGL because NVIDIA and ATI are supporting AIGLX.

xboxrulz