Why multiple partitions? *Laughs* You need a separate home partition and a separate root partition.. Why? Well maybe you want to replace/upgrade your OS without having to wipe your personal files (home folder)? And why a Swap partition? Because you don’t want to be mixing your virtual memory with your personal files and your OS? DUH!

Installing Ubuntu was slow?! I installed Kubuntu today and it took (formatting+placing files+install drivers+configuring hardware) 15 minutes! Before you install everything you need to select a language, timezone (city), keyboard layout, name and password and you leave it alone and it will all take care of itself. Formatting ALONE on a 500GB drive with Windows XP takes over an hour! And all the files still need to copied and drivers need to be installed MANUALLY so “see HOW you like that.”. Not to mention that halfway through the install of this so called ‘real OS’, Windows XP, the install halts and asks you for the some stupid options before it can complete the other half. You are a lier.

X11 is a joke?! Give me a break. It is the most advanced GUI technology out there. Why does it need to locate the graphics card(s) and the network? Because linux has a command shell and X works on top of that shell. (Why? Because if the GUI crashes you don’t crash the entire OS (like with Windows).) So it needs to talk directly to the graphics hardware with it’s own drivers (which also makes it portable to run on any *NIX) to be able to have direct rendering (something that you want to have in a “real OS”). It needs to locate the network because the entire idea behind X is it being a distributed GUI. You might (read = do) not understand that because you have always worked with a half-baked piece of crap called Windows.

Somehow everything that does not work like Windows is bad to you. If you even knew how OS’s really worked you would be able to see what pile of crap Windows is. Even Microsoft acknowledged this by deciding to dump their OS and make a new one from scratch (Vienna) because it was too much crap to built a new OS upon. For your information: Microsoft never made a new OS from scratch; they just coded upon the codebase of their previous released OS. You can’t deny that it is even proven by the Wine project. DirectX 10? It is DirectX 9 with 3 extra functions (new water shader + grass/fur effect + layers of fog looking like on piece of fog – doesn’t sound so sexy now, does it?) with a change in ‘architecture’. If you dig deep you can still see pieces of Windows 3.11 in Vista.

So I suggest you do some research (which is what journalists are meant to do – you know… people who write articles?) for writing future article (in case you won’t get fired for publishing nothing but trash.

Why multiple partitions? *Laughs* You need a separate home partition and a separate root partition.. Why? Well maybe you want to replace/upgrade your OS without having to wipe your personal files (home folder)? And why a Swap partition? Because you don’t want to be mixing your virtual memory with your personal files and your OS? DUH!

Installing Ubuntu was slow?! I installed Kubuntu today and it took (formatting+placing files+install drivers+configuring hardware) 15 minutes! Before you install everything you need to select a language, timezone (city), keyboard layout, name and password and you leave it alone and it will all take care of itself. Formatting ALONE on a 500GB drive with Windows XP takes over an hour! And all the files still need to copied and drivers need to be installed MANUALLY so “see HOW you like that.”. Not to mention that halfway through the install of this so called ‘real OS’, Windows XP, the install halts and asks you for the some stupid options before it can complete the other half. You are a lier.

X11 is a joke?! Give me a break. It is the most advanced GUI technology out there. Why does it need to locate the graphics card(s) and the network? Because linux has a command shell and X works on top of that shell. (Why? Because if the GUI crashes you don’t crash the entire OS (like with Windows).) So it needs to talk directly to the graphics hardware with it’s own drivers (which also makes it portable to run on any *NIX) to be able to have direct rendering (something that you want to have in a “real OS”). It needs to locate the network because the entire idea behind X is it being a distributed GUI. You might (read = do) not understand that because you have always worked with a half-baked piece of crap called Windows.

Somehow everything that does not work like Windows is bad to you. If you even knew how OS’s really worked you would be able to see what pile of crap Windows is. Even Microsoft acknowledged this by deciding to dump their OS and make a new one from scratch (Vienna) because it was too much crap to built a new OS upon. For your information: Microsoft never made a new OS from scratch; they just coded upon the codebase of their previous released OS. You can’t deny that it is even proven by the Wine project. DirectX 10? It is DirectX 9 with 3 extra functions (new water shader + grass/fur effect + layers of fog looking like on piece of fog – doesn’t sound so sexy now, does it?) with a change in ‘architecture’. If you dig deep you can still see pieces of Windows 3.11 in Vista.

So I suggest you do some research (which is what journalists are meant to do – you know… people who write articles?) in the future to write articles that are actually good.

also as far as i see microsoft is on the decline at a reasonably fast pace , quickly being overtaken by mac and linux , if some “users” such as yourself cant cope with that then you can have fun with your bloatware

is this guy serious?

is he complaining because Jon was using a “bleeding edge” OS?

fyi Linux hippy, it’s almost august now and STILL Ubuntu has no interoperability with Vista.

Bleeding edge? thats’s like saying that Gears of War is “bleeding edge”. Just because it’s been out for a few months doesn’t mean it’s not already a mainstay.

Admit it, Windows is here to stay, and when Microsoft releases a new OS, at least 50% of all software in the world will be out-of-the-box or out-of-the-inbox compatable with it within 4 months.

what’s easier, spending hours and hours downloading and editing and patching and running WINE and misspelling one word on the installer… or simply putting in a couple hours of overtime to afford a “bleeding edge” OS.

2 more things:
the “virtual desktop” did not first appear on osx, it was on xp, called powertoy. I have it on my other laptop(running xp) today.

I have a laptop and a desktop. surprisingly, i don’t have a server. so when we say it’s a microsoft centric world, we mean that microsoft makes products for humans that work. if anything, the fact that servers and databanks and supercomputers run linux or unix (save for Virginia Tech’s supercomputer running OSX), and the fact that all the non-PC equipment STILL works with windows, prooves that windows is here for good.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is this: Between system help, online help, forums, and chat , anybody who can’t make Ubuntu (or any other Linux) work is a complete dipshit.

First of all, I would like to say that I do not like to aggressively favor one OS or another. In other words: I give Linux (or in this case Ubuntu) every chance it deserves. In fact, it runs quite well on a single OS-system. However, I am not a technerd that installs any OS for ‘fun’. An OS for me should simply work. It’s a ’shell’ or ’server’ for other applications. In this case I wanted to try out some Linux specific software. Bad idea.

Antyway, I wanted to try to install Ubuntu on a seperate harddisk, next to a fine and stable working Vista Ultimate. The friendly looking Ubuntu install lead me quickly through the whole installation. Matter of choosing the right disk, make some partitions etc. Very impressive. Until I rebooted. Nothing happened, only a black screen mentioning that there was no OS available. Panic. Luckily the Vista boot cd contains some repair tools. At first, those were not bringing help too, because the Windows disk was completely not recognized as a system disk anymore. In the end, I deleted the two Linux partitions with an old XP install cd, booted once again from the Vista install disk and managed to make Vista bootable once again.

For me as a ’simple user’ it is unimaginable that installing an OS on a SEPERATE harddisk in the end nukes two systems at once. This means that the MBR (yep, I learned many new terms during those dark hours of trying to recover a system) of Vista as well as of Ubuntu were destroyed or at least in a non-functional state. This should never happen. If you are a real Linux (or Windows) guru, such problems will undoubtitly be easy solvable. But distributing Ubuntu via internet and coverdisks as super easy and user friendly os is simply not fair. If you look around at the internet, many people get into great troubles because everything really looks very sweet and simple. But IF something goes wrong, it goes wrong badly.

There should be AT LEAST a user friendly recovery tool available on ANY live cd with installation options. If something goes wrong, it should be possible to bring back everything back in the former state. In other words: if people install Ubuntu (or any other Linux) as an extra OS to check out (the most common) this should not lead to a completely dead system.

For me Ubuntu will end up in a box. Handy as a live-cd in case of emergency. But defenitely not as a second OS. It’s simply not worth the hassle. ‘Simple’ users do not expect such dramas to come from a very easy looking install. You can’t blame them for ‘not thinking’, during installation there is not a single warning that something bad might happen. Linux still is -unfortunately- designed for techies. It can be a wolf in sheeps’ clothes. Windows also has its problems, of course. But in matter of doing something very destructive it is a lot safer. Most of the time :-)

Once again: I don’t hate Linux, I don’t hate Windows. In Linux (and Ubuntu) I still see to many ‘unfinished business’, however. This can make or brake it, because especially Ubuntu is now at a very accesible level for many people. Also for the non-nerds and geeks. If a ‘normal’ user is bitten by Ubuntu, however, it will never look at it again. At the moment many people ARE bitten and the results are visible all over internet.

Greetz,

Ronald.

Does Ubuntu have some issues? Yes!
Does XP or Vista have some issues? Yes!
Do other Linux distro’s have issues? Yes!
Mac’s? Yep!

In Ubuntu I’ve encountered numerous sound ‘card’ issues with my built in AC97 codec for 5.1 surround sound. Seems it’s not true surround sound and my sub-woofer won’t woof. Certain other distro’s won’t even enable sound.

Also, in my dual boot system when I first installed Feisty and booted into XP I got a BSOD. Had to fix the MBR, do a check disk then reload grub from the Live Cd.

So with these problems do I say Ubuntu or Linux in general is junk? Is it grub’s fault for the BSOD?
That XP or Vista is better?

The answer to all those questions is NO!

I blame the manufacturers for my sound card problems. As you should be blaming ATI.
They (The manufacturers) won’t or don’t want to write drivers for Linux. And they won’t supply the code which would allow the developers to build compatible drivers.

As for the BSOD? I have seen that more then once with just a standard install of Windows. It’s known to happen and is pretty much expected especially when you have an install that is over a year old.
I’ve even encountered a BSOD during a fresh install of XP! LMAO!!!

But do I say XP is junk because this happened? Well………….LOL!!!

Seriously, it’s a matter of choice. I choose to install Linux and play with settings. I do that in XP also.

I research any possible problems or current problems and try to find a fix for them. That way I’m pre-prepared for grub problems or any of the other ‘can of worms’ you may encounter.

I choose to have the freedom that Linux provides me.
I can customize Linux till my heart’s content. I have my choice of distro’s and interfaces.
I’m DRM free. I don’t have Big Brother phoning home with my surfing or personal data.
I don’t have to run virus scans, spyware scans or worry about rootkits.

Those freedom’s more then make up for the minor problems I have encountered with Linux.

Next time you want to write a review about an operating system don’t jump into it head first with your eyes closed. Research it first and keep an open mind.
And just because you encountered a few minor problems don’t go screaming about how it’s junk.
It’s an Operating System! Not some game cd.
You have to be prepared for unexpected results or bugs.
And that wisdom pertains to all OS’s, not only Linux.

TaZMAn