Ubuntu LTS is the only GNU/Linux distribution that keeps me on Linux on one of my laptops (an Asus netbook).
All the other distributions fail short of 100% laptop support out of the box.
As I am no longer on my 20's with lots of time to spare, either it works out of the box, or it doesn't. I don't care about starting weekend projects that become week long projects just to get something working.
Or just trying out distributions to see how they look like. My first distribution, Slackware 2.0, was a long time ago.
Ubuntu is great and I do like Unity as desktop environment on my netbook.
I'm in my 20s and I feel the same way. It was fun initially to play around with different distributions, but I liked my work and I wanted to get things done without having to spend unnaturally long amounts of time setting things up.
In my case, I frequently update to x.04 releases or x.10 if they are more stable for updated packages that I rely on.
Yeah, we get it. You are really worried about yourself and your time. Yeah, we get it that you want to make a generalization that "All the other distributions" don't have 100% support. Which is obviously not true by any respect. I'm typing on one right now that both Debian and Arch work without issue.
"I don't care about starting weekend projects that become week long projects just to get something working."
It's been almost 10 years since I've had that experience with Linux. This is over 4 desktops and 3 laptops. Can we please bury this meme?
What is it with Linux that someone really needs to hop in an talk about what's wrong with it, no matter what the topic beyond the mere mention of Linux?
Edit: To clarify a bit about this silly meme. Many people find some hunk of junk that the don't use anymore and that they never thought about working with Linux when they bought it. Then they are surprised it doesn't just work. To me, that isn't much different then buying a PC and trying to install OSX on it and complaining about how it didn't just magically work. Many laptops and desktops are certified and targeted to work with Linux. From many of the large manufacturers. You obviously might have trouble if you are trying to cram something onto something that it is not designed for. Are you even an engineer? How do you not realize that?
I've found unity is a bit heavy for my poor little netbook, and have found xfce a bit better for performance.
I use Linux mint (which is based on Ubuntu) for my main dev machine. The only limitation I've had with it is video- it can't handle the goPro stuff very well.
I rather like the notion of Ubuntu's Unity interface. It reminds me of my favourite window manager, Window Maker, which I'm running at the moment. I recommend Ununtu to those who don't want to muck about much. Like you, I don't have time or the inclination to mess with the config files anymore. Server, yes. Desktops? They need to work pretty much out of the box anymore. This is 2014 afterall, and modern laptops and desktop boxes have support in the latest kernels, either in Linux or FreeBSD.
Linux Mint is even more friendly than Ubuntu if I'm honest. It has all the codecs, various desktop flavours, and is generally what my wife and kids prefer these days.
typing this on an HP Pavilion 15 Laptop. Installed Arch Linux, and Catalyst Drivers. works without flaw. Much better than the Windows 8 that was on the machine.
of course, I avoided Unity and went with KDE 4, because I'm not a massochist. Blue Ribbon, otherwise.
What I really loved in Ubuntu is that they were the first distribution that really considered itself an OS, not "a way to install Linux" and make choices about what it should include.
All the other distributions started by asking whether you wanted KDE or Gnome, Abiword or OpenOffice, and ended up installing a bunch of software you may or may not want "just in case". Ubuntu made choices, if you didn't like it you could always change it later on or use a different distribution but you had a consistent OS to start with.
I was an Ubuntu user for a few years. I remember when they'd ship the CD's out for free. One of those things that made Ubuntu great. It was also really good at presenting a very usable Gnome 2.x desktop that was ready to use from the first boot, and I was a very happy user for a while, until they started shipping software a little bit too soon (PulseAudio for example; suddenly Ubuntu didn't have sound out-of-the-box anymore on my machine) and I've once been bitten in the behind by an update that made my video card unsupported all of a sudden, so that prevented X from starting... and then they replaced Gnome with Unity and I kind of stopped caring around that time so I went back to my previous distro. Hopefully for good. :)
Congratulations to Mark for starting this otherwise great project! May it have many years ahead of it!
Similar story. It started as a tidied up Debian fork. Then since about 12.04 LTS it turned into a tidied up Debian unstable fork with all the bugs in it. As a server only and LTS only user, I had no end of problems from there on with unstable kernels, duff and buggy packages, update roulette and terrible support.
We're on Debian 7 now and it's rock solid, relatively bug free in comparison and the support is good. Just where I want it to be.
The best outcome for me was that it caused Debian to rethink their release cycles a bit.
Yup, the free CDs is what I remember as the first thing about Ubuntu - and the fact that it worked out of the box.
There is a fun story as well:
We were in college (in India) at the time and my friend went ahead and ordered 100 CD's or so (they actually encouraged it at the time for distribution). The package arrived at the local Post Office after a few weeks and he was asked to go collect it, which seemed strange. Anyways, he went and to his wonder was told to pay import duty on it by the customs! He argued for a while saying it was educational material and that it was being shipped for free - to no avail. He finally gave up and asked them to keep it for themselves and walked out.
In the end, they chased after him before he left the premises and gave it to him - no import duty, nothing.
Every update was a lesson in frustration. So I thought either I'm stying on LTS or I use another distribution.
Right now I am using Debian stable for my "it has to run" systems (the ones my gf is using too) and tried Arch on the other systems.
So far I am pretty much sold on Arch linux (my Linux knowledge got better too) - but I still don't know if I'm just using Debian stable for things like my HTPC.
I've had Ubuntu as my primary desktop for about a decade and the regression issue is my biggest one, especially with three monitors. Fortunately it takes me far less time to go from non-booting desktop to something usable these days, but I think that can be chalked up to practice more than improvement. That said, for the most part it continues to run smoothly, provided I wait about a month or two after each release before upgrading. Otherwise, I remain a fan - including Unity.
I started using Ubuntu from 8.04 when Windows crashed on my first personal laptop. When I saw 11.10 Netbook Edition with Unity I viewed it as something which would be geared towards touchscreens with limited advantages otherwise. So after briefly trying desktop unity in 12.04 I switched my development machine to Fedora with Xfce and XMonad. Now I only use Ubuntu on the occasional virtual machine for testing, but I may try running it on my touch ultrabook some day.
May I ask what you are missing from Debian as a desktop ?
I went from Ubuntu minimal to Debian (stable, nonetheless),tiling wm for me, gnome for friends and guests, and found Debian easier to maintain (for me and my friends whose computers I manage).
I must say I feel Debian's desktop experience is really top notch and crosses all the check marks of what a desktop is supposed to do (for me at least) and so I don't really see what is gained from switching from Debian to Ubuntu regarding desktop features.
So, before I knew what linux was (and was teased on various forums) I ordered some free CD's from Ubuntu. (I didn't have the internet at home). (eventually I got them; ubuntu 5.04 I think [Horny Hedgehog from memory])
When I received them I was pleased, everything worked.. well, not everything, but it sorta worked! I had a desktop environment and a command line and I felt a small sense of accomplishment because I'd navigated the strange menu's safely before anakonda or full-framebuffer installers
Because of the peer pressure I learned about how to do my bits, and I carried on.
Later in the year I found fedora, and Blue is a nicer colour than brown (I was young and fickle) but it was less user friendly, so I committed to learn that and get off the "Noob Friendly" Ubuntu OS.
Many years later I got a small laptop for my mother, at this stage in my life I was "awoken" and I knew the power a machine could hold if it ran linux, so I put ubuntu on it- She's not the most technically apt lady in the world but was able to do most things with ease, and I put that down to having a "Good UX outside microsoft" (since most people who learn the microsoft way are generally committed to a mindset and anything outside of that is pushed away).
A few issues with Flash, some performance hiccups on some websites that seemed to try and avoid supporting linux in strange ways (that I take for granted I know how to bypass) and eventually the machine gave up the ghost.
I bought a new machine and put ubuntu on it (13.10 I think) and she was somewhat less than pleased, the UX had changed, she didn't know what was available anymore, nothing was organised in a way she understood.. and so I installed mint, she's now happy.
So I'll say this for Ubuntu, they put linux in the hands of people who we should really be targetting, it allowed me access to linux acting as a base plate and later acting as a full blown system for someone who was not interested at all in computers. And they pushed a trend for that, so we should all be thankful.
A follow on from this story and many moons after my "fickle" switch to Fedora/RHEL.
At this point in my life I'd been involved in a half dozen large companies and used linux on enormous scale.
I moved to a company that was using ubuntu LTS (10.04) (old at the time) in production, it was heavily invested and I expected that wouldn't change as Developers were very hesitant to change to debian (which is too old/doesn't make things easy enough) or centos/RHEL which suffers the same issues and has the added benefit of having SELinux (which I'm an advocate of understanding rather than disabling).
I go through my daily security advisories and a local privilege escalation means all our virtual machines and virtual machine hosts are affected, luckily it's patched as 10.04 is still supported so I apt-get update;apt-get upgrade and send out an email saying the server will be down for 30 minutes while it receives patches.
I was wrong, it was down for 6 hours.
unfortunately someone upsteam caused that particular kernel update to rebuild all initramfs' on the machine, and had also named lvm2 to lvm, so now my drives wouldn't mount.
On any kernel version/initramfs version
normally you can drop to shell load the module, mount the drives and continue startup, but unfortunately that stopped a lot of things from loading such as the bonding we had in place on the nics.
obviously I didn't know why it broke at the time and was attempting to get help from #ubuntu on freenode.
the response was "Sometimes it's better not to know why it broke"
that server was smoothly running CentOS before I left that company.
So in my opinion support and enterprise is where it falls down.
For me the biggest thing about Ubuntu is that it does not feel like a distribution. It's an OS. They don't just pack others stuff inside one image and call it a day. Ubuntu does things in a way that they feel is the correct way. If there is a suitable OSS package for that, great. If not, then they make it. Fedora, Debian and others just gather what's there and ship it. AFAIK Elementary OS is the only other distro that works kinda like Ubuntu, but it looks like an OSX clone.
There's gotta be a lot of OSX users like me who'd switch in a heartbeat given better laptop options. I know they're getting better, but it still isn't that close.
I ditched Windows back in 2006 and it was a close run thing between Ubuntu and OSX, but I had just started a family and the combination of iPhoto and iMovie was a big draw to OSX. Also, again due to above said family, I didn't have the time to spend tinkering and configuring things. I needed something that worked right out of the box, and would keep working. That machine finally packed in a few months ago and time machine backups saved my arse twice in that time.
Back in 2006 Linux on the desktop looked like it might eventually break through and become a mainstream option. Now I don't think so. The commercial desktop OSes, particularly OSX, are pulling ahead technologically in ways Linux can't match fast enough to stay relevent. Apple can do in one or two yearly updates what would take a Linux distro 5 years or more to match. The main opening is against Windows, which is struggling to get back to providing a useable basic desktop. Yet even with MS shooting their own feet off every other release, the Linux desktop still isnt getting any mainstream traction.
It's really very depressing. I remember 2009 being declared the year of the Linux desktop. 15 years later that looks as far away from coming true as ever. I might have to buy a retina iMac to cheer myself up.
A lot of Canonicalers are getting the Dell XPS 15. It's practically a macbook clone. The main difference is the battery life - with the smaller battery it's like 3.5 hours, bigger battery is like 5 hours. But that's with a quad Core i7, and 16 GB of RAM. I'm super happy with mine. I think most of the difference in battery life is just software at this point... Apple definitely has some magic sauce in there.
That definitely describes me. There is no program I run on my MBA that I can't run on Linux (or a just as good equivalent) and I don't even particularly like OSX, but the whole OSX on an MBA package is hard to beat.
Asus Zenbook UX* line. Only thing that does not work out of the box with Ubuntu is ambient light sensor. Light, powerful, good (not awesome) battery life (4-5 hours), excellent display, ... Also Lenovo X1 Carbon, but the latest model comes with dumbest keyboard ever.
I have a Dell XPS 13 developer edition that came preinstalled with Ubuntu. It's almost as good as a Mac; it's light, it has good battery life, a nice 1920x1080 screen. Things lacking compared to MacBook air: no Thunderbolt (though does the Air have it?), the trackpad isn't made of glass and doesn't feel as good as a Macbook one, but it's reasonably close (and buttonless).
All in all, it's an acceptable Mac alternative for me.
I just run Ubuntu on a retina macbook. It's pretty easy to set up, if you use http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ as a boot manager (the Linux kernel has built-in EFI support these days), and the hardware support has been quite good in my experience.
I use Ubuntu on a HP EliteBook Folio 1040. It's relatively nice hardware. The touchpad cannot really do middle click, but I always use external mouse, so I don't care.
I am sure ThinkPad T440s would be a nice machine, too.
As an Ubuntu user since 10.04, what I would really like to see is Ubuntu matching or beating Windows/OS X with regards to battery life. When I first installed 10.04, my ubuntu setup actually beat Windows Vista in battery life and stability.
Then 10.10 came out with serious power regressions (related to kernel regressions, Unity, etc.) - which I still blame from killing my battery.
Since then, Windows 7 and 8 have gotten more stable and better battery life while Ubuntu has struggled to keep up. With 14.04, Ubuntu is better (finally with basic support for NVIDIA PRIME)but has yet to catch up with Windows.
Seriously, Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu devs, if you are reading:- Ubuntu is promoting global warming and creation of electronic waste with its current actions. Forget the features and fluff for now - Fix the battery issues and make sure things just work.
Thank you Ubuntu for all the great work you guys have done for Linux over the last 10 years. Still love you.
I like Ubuntu, we use (LTS releases) at work and it's been very stable and easy to maintain. It's also by far the most popular Linux distro for a lot's of reasons. Although i rarely use it at home (switched to OSX) I still keep myself updated and try every release.
Imho i feel they should get more in the "latest technologies" bandwagon like they did a few years before Unity (for those who remember Ubuntu pushed always the latest GNOME releases with the latest technologies developed by RedHat and get it right even before Fedora) and upstart in order to not cause more fragmentation on the Linux desktop.
Let's take Unity example: First was desktop on top of GTK2 which looked and worked better than gnome-shell. Then the transition of GNOME3 started and now GNOME was able to get a ecosystem of applications that fit's on GNOME not Unity, so currently GNOME apps don't fit on Unity desktop and even gnome-shell perhaps it's more useful than Unity.
Same for upstart: It started as an new modern init system but then systemd came out and become the standard in Linux (or at least it's trying to). Now Ubuntu is migrating to systemd because their init system never gained traction. Not to mention the manpower they invested and now they don't get any result out of it.
I fear the same will happen with MIR since it will NOT become the standard on Linux like Wayland.
For the future I hope Canonical don't pull the plug on Desktop and Server (which is also very popular) and give it's users the choice of using Wayland, GNOME, X11, systemd, XFCE, LXDE or other technologies instead of the "home made" technologies. Also let's hope for more bright 10 years ahead trying to get Linux Desktop in the right direction giving people a choice between Operating Systems.
I've had a play with Ubuntu on the Nexus 5. I don't think it's a daily driver for me yet, but I'm excited and they look like they are working hard to get there. Can't wait.
"Linux for human beings" sounds like an oxymoron to me, after 5+ years of tinkering with Linux on the desktop.
After years of Ubuntu (and Arch, Debian, Mint etc.) I'm not ashamed to say I'm really happy on OS X. Less customisation and more time to focus on actual work/leisure.
I'm on Ubuntu, I haven't customized anything except the background color of the terminal :) And this from someone who was a developer on Windows for 14+ years.
Ubuntu is really user-friendly... until you are having any kind of non-trivial problem, which can happen to anyone if they are unlucky with their drivers, the sound doesn't work, etc.. Then you are relegated to copying command line gobbledygook from askubuntu into the terminal, being able to understand nothing about what it does. At least with those tedious "click on X, then on Y when that pops up"... you're able to understand the gist of what you're doing.
I'm a programmer so I've become somewhat accustomed to working with the command line. But it's hardly a nice user interface for most people.
I love, love Unity; I love keyboard shortcuts for getting things done quickly, and Unity's keyboard shortcuts are intuitive and cover just about everything. And the visual design is beautiful.
...I just know that if the average person could walk into their Best Buy and get a Windows laptop for $X and an Ubuntu version of that laptop for slightly less, we'd see Ubuntu everywhere. One can dream.
I tried to switch from Windows to Ubuntu multiple times but I go back to Windows each time.
I have mainly 2 issues:
- Upgrade to newer version always fails. I'm left with a broken OS at the end.
- Although the UI has improved a lot since the early days of Ubuntu, I still don't like it. I know I can customize it but it always causes issues on some apps.
Ubuntu got popular during the 3 year period between Debian Woody and Sarge. I think many Debian users jumped ship because they got bored of waiting for a new release so a new distro that was basically Debian but up to date was welcome.
The joke around that time was that Debian was either obsolete or unstable.
> Like it or not, Ubuntu or whatever your OS of choice is does have root access to your machine. Not literally of course, but it's effective access given that their code is running with root privileges on your machine and chances are you haven't reviewed it lately. You trust your distro to make sure that code is secure, stable, and acting in your best interests.
Actually, I trust that of the millions of Ubuntu users, there is at least one person who would sound the alarm if Canonical had slipped spyware into their distribution (as, of course, people did about the absurd Amazon lens). Free software means trusting the public at large to audit the software rather than trusting the software's producer.
If Ubuntu is not avail now, then I have to go payment course for learning Windows
Ubuntu is pure white box to learn. I am enjoying it from my college life where I just touched the computer initially, then immediately ubuntu was loaded.
I have an ambivalent relationship with Ubuntu. Personally, I hate Ubuntu but I'm glad it exists. It means a few more people who otherwise would have used Windows, don't. I keep coming back to Slackware because it's in a nice sweet spot where "stable", "just works", "lets me configure it just the way I want" and "doesn't bother me with needless distro-specific cruft" all intersect. So Ubuntu is definitely not for me. For the people it is for, it does a pretty good job.
One of the main reasons Ubuntu got popular (compared to other distros) on Sri Lanka because they shipped free CDs. Lots of people in Sri Lanka didn't have Cable or DSL internet connections by that time. It was limited to a smaller area of the country - even when people had it, it was 512kbps.
No one was going to bother download a huge distro DVD to try out a new OS. However, when you get a CD, you tend to try it out. The smooth installation process certainly helped a lot.
I actually think Ubuntu has done wonders to enhance the usability of debian out of the box. We've come so far in 10 years, when I first used debian, I had to write an X config by hand, now thats all automatic, its so much easier to use. I stopped using Ubuntu even though I was an early adopter, and went back to debian, but the development downstream of debian has clearly from my point of view rolled back up hill.
[+] [-] pjmlp|11 years ago|reply
All the other distributions fail short of 100% laptop support out of the box.
As I am no longer on my 20's with lots of time to spare, either it works out of the box, or it doesn't. I don't care about starting weekend projects that become week long projects just to get something working.
Or just trying out distributions to see how they look like. My first distribution, Slackware 2.0, was a long time ago.
Ubuntu is great and I do like Unity as desktop environment on my netbook.
[+] [-] jonalmeida|11 years ago|reply
In my case, I frequently update to x.04 releases or x.10 if they are more stable for updated packages that I rely on.
[+] [-] hiou|11 years ago|reply
Yeah, we get it. You are really worried about yourself and your time. Yeah, we get it that you want to make a generalization that "All the other distributions" don't have 100% support. Which is obviously not true by any respect. I'm typing on one right now that both Debian and Arch work without issue.
"I don't care about starting weekend projects that become week long projects just to get something working." It's been almost 10 years since I've had that experience with Linux. This is over 4 desktops and 3 laptops. Can we please bury this meme?
What is it with Linux that someone really needs to hop in an talk about what's wrong with it, no matter what the topic beyond the mere mention of Linux?
Edit: To clarify a bit about this silly meme. Many people find some hunk of junk that the don't use anymore and that they never thought about working with Linux when they bought it. Then they are surprised it doesn't just work. To me, that isn't much different then buying a PC and trying to install OSX on it and complaining about how it didn't just magically work. Many laptops and desktops are certified and targeted to work with Linux. From many of the large manufacturers. You obviously might have trouble if you are trying to cram something onto something that it is not designed for. Are you even an engineer? How do you not realize that?
[+] [-] dhimes|11 years ago|reply
I've found unity is a bit heavy for my poor little netbook, and have found xfce a bit better for performance.
I use Linux mint (which is based on Ubuntu) for my main dev machine. The only limitation I've had with it is video- it can't handle the goPro stuff very well.
[+] [-] forca|11 years ago|reply
Linux Mint is even more friendly than Ubuntu if I'm honest. It has all the codecs, various desktop flavours, and is generally what my wife and kids prefer these days.
[+] [-] anonbanker|11 years ago|reply
of course, I avoided Unity and went with KDE 4, because I'm not a massochist. Blue Ribbon, otherwise.
[+] [-] bigbugbag|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eloisant|11 years ago|reply
All the other distributions started by asking whether you wanted KDE or Gnome, Abiword or OpenOffice, and ended up installing a bunch of software you may or may not want "just in case". Ubuntu made choices, if you didn't like it you could always change it later on or use a different distribution but you had a consistent OS to start with.
[+] [-] cyphax|11 years ago|reply
Congratulations to Mark for starting this otherwise great project! May it have many years ahead of it!
[+] [-] ooz|11 years ago|reply
We're on Debian 7 now and it's rock solid, relatively bug free in comparison and the support is good. Just where I want it to be.
The best outcome for me was that it caused Debian to rethink their release cycles a bit.
[+] [-] deepakprakash|11 years ago|reply
There is a fun story as well: We were in college (in India) at the time and my friend went ahead and ordered 100 CD's or so (they actually encouraged it at the time for distribution). The package arrived at the local Post Office after a few weeks and he was asked to go collect it, which seemed strange. Anyways, he went and to his wonder was told to pay import duty on it by the customs! He argued for a while saying it was educational material and that it was being shipped for free - to no avail. He finally gave up and asked them to keep it for themselves and walked out.
In the end, they chased after him before he left the premises and gave it to him - no import duty, nothing.
I got my CD from this set. :)
[+] [-] brusch64|11 years ago|reply
Right now I am using Debian stable for my "it has to run" systems (the ones my gf is using too) and tried Arch on the other systems.
So far I am pretty much sold on Arch linux (my Linux knowledge got better too) - but I still don't know if I'm just using Debian stable for things like my HTPC.
[+] [-] enobrev|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cyorir|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidw|11 years ago|reply
By and large, I'm very happy with it, although I wish they'd sink a bit more time into avoiding regressions than trying to create new things.
I like the predictable release schedule, and the fact that it's a bit more focused than Debian.
Yet, underneath it's still all (almost at least) free software that I can hack on if needs be.
These days I use Xubuntu, with Xfce, because that's a bit more to my liking as a desktop: focus follows mouse is not something I care to do without.
[+] [-] johnchristopher|11 years ago|reply
I went from Ubuntu minimal to Debian (stable, nonetheless),tiling wm for me, gnome for friends and guests, and found Debian easier to maintain (for me and my friends whose computers I manage).
I must say I feel Debian's desktop experience is really top notch and crosses all the check marks of what a desktop is supposed to do (for me at least) and so I don't really see what is gained from switching from Debian to Ubuntu regarding desktop features.
[+] [-] dijit|11 years ago|reply
When I received them I was pleased, everything worked.. well, not everything, but it sorta worked! I had a desktop environment and a command line and I felt a small sense of accomplishment because I'd navigated the strange menu's safely before anakonda or full-framebuffer installers
Because of the peer pressure I learned about how to do my bits, and I carried on.
Later in the year I found fedora, and Blue is a nicer colour than brown (I was young and fickle) but it was less user friendly, so I committed to learn that and get off the "Noob Friendly" Ubuntu OS.
Many years later I got a small laptop for my mother, at this stage in my life I was "awoken" and I knew the power a machine could hold if it ran linux, so I put ubuntu on it- She's not the most technically apt lady in the world but was able to do most things with ease, and I put that down to having a "Good UX outside microsoft" (since most people who learn the microsoft way are generally committed to a mindset and anything outside of that is pushed away).
A few issues with Flash, some performance hiccups on some websites that seemed to try and avoid supporting linux in strange ways (that I take for granted I know how to bypass) and eventually the machine gave up the ghost.
I bought a new machine and put ubuntu on it (13.10 I think) and she was somewhat less than pleased, the UX had changed, she didn't know what was available anymore, nothing was organised in a way she understood.. and so I installed mint, she's now happy.
So I'll say this for Ubuntu, they put linux in the hands of people who we should really be targetting, it allowed me access to linux acting as a base plate and later acting as a full blown system for someone who was not interested at all in computers. And they pushed a trend for that, so we should all be thankful.
[+] [-] dijit|11 years ago|reply
At this point in my life I'd been involved in a half dozen large companies and used linux on enormous scale.
I moved to a company that was using ubuntu LTS (10.04) (old at the time) in production, it was heavily invested and I expected that wouldn't change as Developers were very hesitant to change to debian (which is too old/doesn't make things easy enough) or centos/RHEL which suffers the same issues and has the added benefit of having SELinux (which I'm an advocate of understanding rather than disabling).
I go through my daily security advisories and a local privilege escalation means all our virtual machines and virtual machine hosts are affected, luckily it's patched as 10.04 is still supported so I apt-get update;apt-get upgrade and send out an email saying the server will be down for 30 minutes while it receives patches.
I was wrong, it was down for 6 hours.
unfortunately someone upsteam caused that particular kernel update to rebuild all initramfs' on the machine, and had also named lvm2 to lvm, so now my drives wouldn't mount.
On any kernel version/initramfs version
normally you can drop to shell load the module, mount the drives and continue startup, but unfortunately that stopped a lot of things from loading such as the bonding we had in place on the nics.
obviously I didn't know why it broke at the time and was attempting to get help from #ubuntu on freenode.
the response was "Sometimes it's better not to know why it broke"
that server was smoothly running CentOS before I left that company.
So in my opinion support and enterprise is where it falls down.
[+] [-] portmanteaufu|11 years ago|reply
I started with the same release myself. It was called "Hoary Hedgehog"[1], but I like your version too.
[1] http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/hoary/
[+] [-] hpaavola|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SunShiranui|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] latch|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonh|11 years ago|reply
Back in 2006 Linux on the desktop looked like it might eventually break through and become a mainstream option. Now I don't think so. The commercial desktop OSes, particularly OSX, are pulling ahead technologically in ways Linux can't match fast enough to stay relevent. Apple can do in one or two yearly updates what would take a Linux distro 5 years or more to match. The main opening is against Windows, which is struggling to get back to providing a useable basic desktop. Yet even with MS shooting their own feet off every other release, the Linux desktop still isnt getting any mainstream traction.
It's really very depressing. I remember 2009 being declared the year of the Linux desktop. 15 years later that looks as far away from coming true as ever. I might have to buy a retina iMac to cheer myself up.
[+] [-] NateDad|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tormeh|11 years ago|reply
Any other company with their own Linux distro and hardware would also work, I guess. I really like Unity, though.
[+] [-] dagw|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hpaavola|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wazoox|11 years ago|reply
All in all, it's an acceptable Mac alternative for me.
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|11 years ago|reply
OSX is just a slicker environment. If I wasn't committed to a tiny form factor with my netbook, I'd go all Apple products.
[+] [-] broodbucket|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ForHackernews|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sampo|11 years ago|reply
I use Ubuntu on a HP EliteBook Folio 1040. It's relatively nice hardware. The touchpad cannot really do middle click, but I always use external mouse, so I don't care.
I am sure ThinkPad T440s would be a nice machine, too.
[+] [-] _nedR|11 years ago|reply
Since then, Windows 7 and 8 have gotten more stable and better battery life while Ubuntu has struggled to keep up. With 14.04, Ubuntu is better (finally with basic support for NVIDIA PRIME)but has yet to catch up with Windows.
Seriously, Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu devs, if you are reading:- Ubuntu is promoting global warming and creation of electronic waste with its current actions. Forget the features and fluff for now - Fix the battery issues and make sure things just work.
Thank you Ubuntu for all the great work you guys have done for Linux over the last 10 years. Still love you.
[+] [-] apozem|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattfrommars|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lmedinas|11 years ago|reply
For the future I hope Canonical don't pull the plug on Desktop and Server (which is also very popular) and give it's users the choice of using Wayland, GNOME, X11, systemd, XFCE, LXDE or other technologies instead of the "home made" technologies. Also let's hope for more bright 10 years ahead trying to get Linux Desktop in the right direction giving people a choice between Operating Systems.
[+] [-] bubblemachine3k|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamors|11 years ago|reply
After years of Ubuntu (and Arch, Debian, Mint etc.) I'm not ashamed to say I'm really happy on OS X. Less customisation and more time to focus on actual work/leisure.
[+] [-] monochr|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NateDad|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dewie|11 years ago|reply
I'm a programmer so I've become somewhat accustomed to working with the command line. But it's hardly a nice user interface for most people.
[+] [-] weavie|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bufordsharkley|11 years ago|reply
...I just know that if the average person could walk into their Best Buy and get a Windows laptop for $X and an Ubuntu version of that laptop for slightly less, we'd see Ubuntu everywhere. One can dream.
[+] [-] maouida|11 years ago|reply
I have mainly 2 issues:
- Upgrade to newer version always fails. I'm left with a broken OS at the end.
- Although the UI has improved a lot since the early days of Ubuntu, I still don't like it. I know I can customize it but it always causes issues on some apps.
[+] [-] danbee|11 years ago|reply
The joke around that time was that Debian was either obsolete or unstable.
[+] [-] tatterdemalion|11 years ago|reply
Actually, I trust that of the millions of Ubuntu users, there is at least one person who would sound the alarm if Canonical had slipped spyware into their distribution (as, of course, people did about the absurd Amazon lens). Free software means trusting the public at large to audit the software rather than trusting the software's producer.
[+] [-] _navaneethan|11 years ago|reply
Ubuntu is pure white box to learn. I am enjoying it from my college life where I just touched the computer initially, then immediately ubuntu was loaded.
[+] [-] bitwize|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandaru1|11 years ago|reply
No one was going to bother download a huge distro DVD to try out a new OS. However, when you get a CD, you tend to try it out. The smooth installation process certainly helped a lot.
[+] [-] Aloha|11 years ago|reply