I've been hearing that name popping up alot these days and with dell installing it in its new systems it just makes me more curious about it. is any one here using it? what difference does it have compare to microsoft's OS and mac's OS besides it being open source and all?

is it any better?? easier to use?? more support from third-party?? better security?? is it compatible with existing commercial softwares that are being use with the other 2 OS??

[URL]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6610901.stm[/URL]

Re: ubuntu

so far, the only thing I've read is that eye candy GALORE

Re: ubuntu

when i first heard about it i thought it was an open source third party design software like photoshop/flash

Re: ubuntu

i am running ubuntu on my desktop at home and have been for a year or so after i switched from debian.

the default install look is probably the nicest ive seen and is simple.

see below for info:

[url]http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/desktopedition[/url]

there is probably almost any program you want out there in an open source version, and the package system lets you search for it and download it easily.

i am sure not as simple as mac osx as it isnt as slick on the frontend, but it is a unix back end like the new os x which is the selling point.

i have it running right now at home and am streaming my mp3s to me here at work so i have something to listen to, so there is all kinds of stuff to mess with.

Re: ubuntu

It's a nice Linux distribution, oriented to people without much experience in Linux or with bad previous experiences. Installs easily, the desktop looks a lot like Windows, and you can get the install cd's delivered to your house for free in case you can't/won't download it from the net. It's like an embelished and simplified Debian that tries to give linux newcomers a better opinion of this OS (until they grow up and move to Debian, SuSe, RedHat, etc)

Re: ubuntu

A lot of recent hooha over it due to its eye-candied interface and what a lot of people are doing with it. That's about all.

Re: ubuntu

I've spent half of today trying to play with it. I downloaded/installed Ubuntu 7.04 as a second partition on my Windows Vista sandbox and it installed with no problem. Problem is it was slow as hell. horribly slow. googling around the webbernet showed that everyone had the same problem. some answers were "windows 2000 is 7 years old, of course it's going to run faster than a brand new OS" but they were all crap... the copy of Vista that I was running was miles times faster than ubuntu.

then I found someone mention [url=http://www.xubuntu.com]xubuntu[/url] was their answer... looking around I realized that xubuntu is the version of ubuntu that is made for slow PCs. different desktop emulation type which has half the requirements of the full-blown version of ubuntu or something. Downloaded it, and have had all sorts of problems installing it. problems with the partitioner during install, and video problems on the first pass made it impossible. I just found an explanation for my partitioning error [url=https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/107259]here[/url] and now it's installing so far so good. the full version looked promising, except that it was slow. I'll let everyone know in a day or so once this one installs and I get a chance to play with it a bit to determine if it's worth getting over xubuntu. only thing I'm concerned about is not being able to use Visual Studio... but I guess if I don't have a Windows PC I don't need a Windows app development environment

am going to try to use it as a complete replacement to my home desktop (other than cd/dvd burning, since there's no burner on it) to see how productive I can be without Microsoft (with free/open source apps)... but as long as I have firefox, filezilla, thunderbird, openoffice, paint.net, google sketchup, google earth, audacity, and instant messaging (gaim?) I should be pretty happy/functional

it should be a good virus-free, stable solution for a children's PC

Re: ubuntu

so is your pc a bit older? try instead of using gnome/kde using fluxbox for your window manager. super lightweight and functional.

[url]http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/[/url]

(im typing this msg via firefox running ubuntu on my main pc btw :) )

Re: ubuntu

it's a 2.6ghz with 512mb of ram... it's like a year old.

i'm running xubuntu now and it's pimp. so far so good, except for the huge learning curve. if I hadn't been using basic unix shell at work I'd probably be totally lost.

I already don't know how to download/compile/install programs :oops:

or even change the time :oops:

Re: ubuntu

cool, that is a faster cpu that what i am running on. had 512m of ram for a long time until i got WoW and Ironforge was laggy, then i got a 1g :lol:

to change the time you gotta be root and just type "date"

usually from your non-priv account via:

$ sudo date

That will run the date command as root.

Also the best part about ubuntu/debian is the package management system.

Look thru your menu for 'synaptic', or get to a 'run' prompt and type it there. it will download a new list of software from a mirror, usually a text file thru the www.

when it is done it will show you categories of software and you just click on what you want and it will pull it down from the repository. the best part is it will figure out what dependancies you have/dont have and also download them for you.

you can then come back tomorrow, next week, next month whatever and rerun the program and get a list of new software and also it will show you what software you have installed that is out of date. you can then click upgrade and it will pull down the new version and remove the old one, all w/o you having to worry about files being left around.

Re: ubuntu

figured the time part out pretty quick... might've done it the hard way though. changed the root password, su'd as root, authenticated, and did a time -u for a time that's 5 hours ahead of me due to GMT

will check more out later... getting tired of sitting here. thanks for your help

Re: ubuntu

i hate how everything needs to be compiled :what

I can't figure out how to install openoffice. i wonder if dell offers any user support for this.. they'd be fn swamped if they do

Re: ubuntu

dell just announced they are going to be offering ubuntu instead of MS as a default OS install. No idea what/if they are going to give support though. I bet it would be a nightmare for the callcenter for typical dell customers trying to talk to support for something like this :lol:

you shouldnt have to compile openoffice, it is a in the repository.

Here is a howto on the gui program to install precompiled packages:

[URL]https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticHowto[/URL]

If you are a command line junkie like me than check out 'aptitude', it does take a bit to get used to though:

[url]https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptitudeSurvivalGuide[/url]

Here is a list of the packages out there:

[URL]http://packages.ubuntu.com/[/URL]

Re: ubuntu

[QUOTE=picklemonkey;485854]it's a 2.6ghz with 512mb of ram... it's like a year old.[/QUOTE]

[S]You tried unbuntu on that and it was slow? :shock: I thought these nix os'es are suppose to be sprightlier than Windows?[/S]

Re: ubuntu

[quote=picklemonkey;485854]it's a 2.6ghz with 512mb of ram... it's like a year old.[/quote]

:shock::shock::shock::shock::shock:

you got that shit brand new ? You cant be joking that you skimped on a PC a [B]year[/B] ago and picked it up with those specs ? and you WORK in the PC industry ? (or was this a freebie from work?)

I built mine back in 04 and its a 3.2 ghz with 1 gig ram

Re: ubuntu

freebie. suppose it could've been two years by now

besides, I don't do PC gaming. I don't need anything fast to know computers.

Re: ubuntu

what's a good video/audio player?

Re: ubuntu

mplayer - [URL]http://www.mplayerhq.hu/[/URL] vlc - [URL]http://www.videolan.org/[/URL]

those are the only two you will ever need for video.

audio?

command line:

cplay - [URL="http://mask.tf.hut.fi/%7Eflu/hacks/cplay/"]http://mask.tf.hut.fi/~flu/hacks/cplay/[/URL]

gui:

amarok - like itunes but 10x better - [URL="http://amarok.kde.org/"]http://amarok.kde.org/ [/URL] xmms - like winamp - [url]http://xmms.org/[/url]

Re: ubuntu

I had installed vlc before asking... the video had a low color bitrate. seemed like 256 colors or something, but the OS was in full 24 bit color :not me:

Re: ubuntu

^^pebcak :lol:

Re: ubuntu

probably :)

Re: ubuntu

i cant remember but there is a package out there that has a bunch of windows32 drivers in a package that will let mplayer/vlc play about any format, search for that...

also try mplayer, it seems to play EVERYTHING by default. the only reason i have vlc is because mplayer doesnt have dvd menu support, and vlc does.

Re: ubuntu

but the 256 color thing :what

I can see how it can be productive but it frustrates me because I don't know how to find anything I want to do... whereas I'm a pro in Windows.

Re: ubuntu

check this out:

[url]http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html[/url]

windows <-> linux software list

Re: ubuntu

is shockwave unsupported? i'm on a page that requires it but adobe.com won't let me download it.

Re: ubuntu

search for it in the package list, i know it is available but i dont remember the package name offhand.

Re: ubuntu

BTW, those of you checking out ubuntu and are into sound production, multimedia stuff, check out [URL="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio"]ubuntu studio[/URL]. Unfortunately their homepage seems to be down :roll: But the address is [url]www.ubuntustudio.com[/url] .

Re: ubuntu

pickles check this out:

[url]http://www.albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html[/url]

will autodetect your nvidia or ati card and install the right drivers.

Re: ubuntu

hate to dig up old threads but, dl'ing ubuntu now and was wondering how everyone's (that is using) experience has been with linux? going to run off live cd to determine whether or not i'll install, but i've finally had it with vista. pickle, reso input?

Re: ubuntu

my biggest complaint was with playing media. also sad that some apps weren't avail that I absolutely wanted. I thought about trying 7-10 but haven't touched that computer in a few months

Re: ubuntu

I´m also starting with a bit of linux, I have xandros installed on another computer. Looks fun and I will play with it on the weekend, its kind of funny that I have to do everything with CLI, but I guess I just need to get used to it.

Re: ubuntu

[quote=picklemonkey;564100]my biggest complaint was with playing media. also sad that some apps weren't avail that I absolutely wanted. I thought about trying 7-10 but haven't touched that computer in a few months[/quote]

Yeah, after doing some digging today, i found out that all my CS3 programs won't work and I'll be stuck using open office ( as i am an outlook fan ) but other than that i'm psyched about it. I guess there's give/take with everything.

Thanks Pickle

Re: ubuntu

I use Thunderbird for email, filezilla/firefox for ftp and http, and can deal with openoffice or staroffice for an office suite. the biggest downfall was not having Visual Studio, DVDShrink/DVDDecrypter, Nero, Soulseek, or Google SketchUp, and the video playback seemed poor... but that one probably just required some more digging

Re: ubuntu

wondering also if i would be able to use my microsoft mouse. I have the notebook presenter mouse 8000 and love this [URL="http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=085"]thing[/URL], really don't want to eat the cost of this mouse by changing os. anyone know if it will still work. i did some digging and got mixed reviews.

Re: ubuntu

you should be able to use your mouse you might have to mess with your x11 / xorg.conf file which is still probably the worst thing to do it is too oldschool.

as for media you should be able to play every format under the sun with vlc / mplayer

since alot of the codecs arent gnu compatible they arent included in the distro by default.

check out [url]http://www.debian-multimedia.org/[/url] and add some relevant urls to your apt.conf

Re: ubuntu

thanks man, i actually installed xp black last night. the version i came across has partition magic already included, considering throwing ubuntu on as well and decide which i like better. thanks for the links and the info.

Re: ubuntu

check out xUbuntu. worked on my machine much better than Ubuntu standard. Ubuntu barely ran at all!

Re: ubuntu

after playing around with this xp black version today, i've finally decided to install linux. the xp black runs so much smoother than vista did on my laptop, but after installing found all kinds of spyware and crap on it. so frustrated at this point i just want to throw it.

will dl and install xubuntu tomorrow and get back to you. again thank you.

Re: ubuntu

download xp lite from piratebay, fast as fuck and i havent found any problems with it at all.

Re: ubuntu

[COLOR=Orange]If this is the best desktop distro Linux has to offer, your better off running Windows 98, it's just as buggy. I recently installed Ubuntu on a Sony Vaio laptop, 1.3GHz, .5Gig/Ram.. just the basics, did not expect any of my hot keys to work as the OS is not supported by the manufacturer, but as far as the OS:

Terminals Services Client: Freezes nearly every session, sometimes after 10 seconds Mail Client: No errors or messages, just crashes No solid media player: Can't even get good old XMMS to run properly to play streams. External Media: can't read from an external drive formatted in NTFS, ... must be FAT32 which rules out any large drives (might be some LNX pros on ms that know a workaround)

Likes: GIMP for photo editing (available for Windows too), GUI is clean and simple [/COLOR]