BigLar

Picked up a copy of Ubuntu 5.10. The next release (recently) is 6.06.

While I can't figure out their version numbering scheme (), the reviews look OK. Anyone have anything good/bad to say about it?

H2O_Goalie

Great software...I run it on one of my PCs at home and rebuilt a friend's PC with it. Good stuff.

ScottC

So far I'm pretty impressed. It still isn't anywhere near being a true replacement for mom and pop users, but anyone with some basic linux skills will get along just fine. System requirements are pretty steep though; on a machine with 256Meg or ram it won't run well at all, and I had some problems getting the video card working, but other than that it does the job.

blahman

I think they're numbered after their Year.Month which they were released. Eg. 6.06 was released 2006 June. Something that I figured whilst doing research on Ubuntu (today's the first time I've heard of it).

altaskier

We just got a new server (2 processors, 5000 GB of hardware RAID 5 disk storage) and decided to try Ubuntu rather than Scientific Linux (a free version of Red Hat). We are pretty happy with Ubuntu, though we did have some challenges installing the AMD64 version with our graphics card (eventually resolved by getting all updates).

QuantumMeruit

I think Ubuntu goes a long way towards providing the "out of the box" experience for non-technical people while still retaining the control and "under the hood" experience for the Linux zealots. Someone can sit down at a box with Ubuntu installed and get to a web browser or word processing without breaking into a sweat (which is more than you can usually say for Linux distros). There are certainly quirks that some experienced Linux people aren't fond of but the Ubuntu community forums have been very helfpul for me in working through those quirks...

typical

Had a horrible, horrible time trying to get it to work with my spare PC (Athlon 1600+, old graphics card, old monitor).

In the end I had to drop into the shell, edit xorg.conf, add a modeline using frequency details provided by Powerstrip in Windows, change the graphics card driver from 'mga' to 'vesa' and restart X with the three-finger salute, before I could even install the bloody thing.

*sigh*

ScottC

Yeah, that sounds like the Linux I'm used to.

16 years into Linux and it still isn't ready for the mainstream user, this is the reason it'll never become popular for mom and pop.

the_happiness_store

I was very surprised that I was not asked for root user information during initial install. Ended up adding root password after installation and reboot.

Dodge DeBoulet

The OpenSuSE 10.2 distribution I installed on an older Compaq 1.6GHz desktop a couple of weeks ago is pretty impressive. I had installed SuSE 9.2 Professional on it previously, but Novell has stopped providing automatic updates for that version. The upgrade managed to keep all of my settings and installed applications intact (upgrading them to current versions where appropriate).

I had a problem with the original 9.2 installation due to the fact that EzBIOS had been installed on the system's hard drive to patch the drive parameter table, and that caused all kinds of strange things to happen. There was also a glitch with GRUB (the boot loader) on the 10.2 update that a reinstall of just the GRUB package fixed.

Otherwise, the installation process wasn't significantly different from that of Win2K or XP, with the added bonus that SuSE automatically fetches the latest updates as part of the installation.

And it actually ran acceptably with only 256MB. I've since upgraded to 1GB on that box, and the difference in performance is dramatic, but I wouldn't have called it unusable for web browsing or basic desktop productivity tasks w/OpenOffice before the upgrade.

A couple of things about OpenSuSE are a bit annoying, though:

• Multimedia support is severely crippled. You need to download an alternate xine engine to enable playback for MPEG, DVD and any of the Win32-specific codecs.
  
• 3D Acceleration support for nVidia isn't provided in the distribution, and you need to have the kernel sources installed to compile a kernel-specific module. Not terribly hard for the moderate-to-advanced user, but your average J6P would probably blow a couple of neurons trying to figure it out.
  
• smbfs is now cifs, so if you're upgrading from an earlier version, there's a bit of tweaking required for any scripts you might have used that mount shares on Windows or Samba hosts.

evilroot

the_happiness_store: Yeah, Ubuntu seems to abhor the use of a root account. One of its biggest quirks . . . . of course you can always just do a "sudo passwd" and fix it.


Either way, I've had pretty good success with Ubuntu. Especially on alternate platforms it tends to have a far higher probability of working "out of the box" than most other distributions, and includes a well balanced set of applications. I've had great success with it on Mac laptops as an alternative to OS X for slower G3 machines!

SpaceBass

I'm very impressed with OpenSuSE 10.2 as well. I personally prefer it over Ubuntu on many levels... I actually think its pretty close to a "mom and pop" solution. I installed it on an older PC my parents had that they wanted to use for email and web browsing. Neither of them is very computer literate and it works great for them....

Personally, OpenSuSE 10.2 is my server platform of choice. Its what I use for 2 out of 3 of my linux servers at home and I love it.

I've had nothing but problems with Ubutntu- but I think I'm in the minority here...

remyontheroad

I just installed it this week and am pretty happy with it.

It's my first foray into Linux and having never touched it before but heard lots of offputting stuff, I was pretty surprised at how easily it went in.

The only difficulty was getting the right nVidia drivers.

It was a bit of a pain, but I'm semi-geeky, and familiar enough with command line from windows that I got it set up pretty easily. There's of good documentation out there.

I've downloaded and installed Asterisk (inspired by FT, of course), which I think is going to be a little harder.

Not sure why, but I opted to go this route, rather than to install TrixBox (asterisk+linux in one easy download), but I figured that I'd like to keep playing with Linux and I'd rather have the most user friendly flavor installed instead of what comes with TrixBox....

Of course, now that it's installed, I have no idea how to launch it...

But hey... I've gotten this far with no problems, and I like most of what I'm seeing of Ubuntu so far.

(Please note that, I don't really know what I'm talking about!)

SpaceBass

Ok... the bug has gotten me... I'm downloading the latest build now and about to install it on an older dell box that I keep for testing distros and OSs...

I also just finished listening to FLOSS weekly which had a great interview with Jeff Waugh- an early member of the Ubuntu team...

I'd be willing to host this box in my DMZ and set up accounts for FT members.... with a good X11 server or VLC client it would be easy to take a test drive remotely... let me know if there is any interest.

phachak

As with previous versions of linux, the thing that trips me up is drivers. I know that the fault lies with many mainstream hardware makers who have still not caught on with Linux, and don't provide driver support. Anyways, installed Ubuntu on my acer laptop, couldn't get wifi to work. Once I solved the wifi driver problem, I found that the ACER laptop has a special driver needed to manage the buttons upfront, without which the wifi device is off. Got too deep for me to fix (required creating make file for your system and compling a driver), in a small amount of time so no Ubuntu on the laptop. I do have it installed on a dell desktop without any problems for those times I need to run some linux apps, but I don't spend as much time on the desktop as I do on the laptop. So instead of two thumbs up, I would give it one thumbs up instead.