Ubuntu 6.10 "Edgy Eft" review

[Valour]

While still far from perfect, Ubuntu 6.10 "Edgy Eft" is both an improvement over the so-called "long-term support" release and a decent operating system in its own right. It's in a much better place than any other free-of-charge operating system has been before now, but I don't think it'll give any commercial operating systems a run for their money.

Ubuntu 6.10 "Edgy Eft" review

[Thomas]

I must say I'm glad to read a 'realistic' review of Ubuntu that does not just proclaim 'Ubuntu is worderful, just install it and forget everything else'. In fact, Ubuntu is easy when you do exactly what they planned you would do but for everything else it's terrible. There 's almost no config tools in the distro.
Thank you for the review.

[J.F.]

Perhaps that is what truly separates commercial distros from the free-of-charge ones; with commercial operating systems you pay for the company's best effort at creating a perfect software distribution, not a company's best attempt to create a product that requires paid support services.

You are, of course, talking about commercial LINUX distros. Microsoft certainly doesn't match the statement.

Not a bad review. Ubuntu is a decent FREE distro for people who, while novices, aren't afraid to get their hands wet messing around with linux. It has good stability, but does this by being slightly behind on many software packages. For example, the kernel is 2.6.17, while other distros the same age are using 2.6.18. You'll find most of the software is the same way - one or two revisions behind what others are using.

You might want to do a review of Xubuntu for laptops and other lower end systems sometime. I have that on my ECS G320 and it's pretty nice... much better than using a full Gnome or KDE environment. Xubuntu is also pretty good for older G3 PowerPC Macs. That's what is on my iMac DV+.

[Valour]

Originally Posted by Thomas

I must say I'm glad to read a 'realistic' review of Ubuntu that does not just proclaim 'Ubuntu is worderful, just install it and forget everything else'. In fact, Ubuntu is easy when you do exactly what they planned you would do but for everything else it's terrible. There 's almost no config tools in the distro.
Thank you for the review.

Thanks -- glad you liked the review. I think the general lack of decent Ubuntu reviews is due to the fact that most of the ones that are out there are on blogs written by Ubuntu fans.

[Thomas]

Originally Posted by Valour

I think the general lack of decent Ubuntu reviews is due to the fact that most of the ones that are out there are on blogs written by Ubuntu fans.

Yes that's really the problem. And Ubuntu's very good for marketing, too.
Telling people that they use a 'Linux for Human beings' make them happy even if their system isn't that good in the end.

[pwc]

Your "Edgy Elf" review sure was enlightening, I had been struggling with ati drivers for several weeks. At least I know now that it's not me or my computer which has Radeon X1300.
Reading the review left me wondering if your still planning a Ubuntu guide as indicated in email awhile back. And if you are, will you have a workaround for this?

[Valour]

Originally Posted by pwc

Your "Edgy Elf" review sure was enlightening, I had been struggling with ati drivers for several weeks. At least I know now that it's not me or my computer which has Radeon X1300.
Reading the review left me wondering if your still planning a Ubuntu guide as indicated in email awhile back. And if you are, will you have a workaround for this?

That guide is almost finished, and there is indeed a workaround for the ATI problem with the live CD. There are also detailed instructions for installing the ATI drivers to get hardware 3D acceleration.

If you just want a quick fix right now, don't use the live CD. Use the "alternate" install CD instead and install in text mode. Then when Ubuntu is installed, choose the second boot option to go straight to a root terminal. Edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and replace the Driver "ati" line with Driver "vesa" and you're all set.

[Valour]

I never really got into Xfce. Maybe I should give it another shot, though, and Xubuntu's probably the best way to do it. I don't even know of any other distros that standardize on Xfce.

That WAS Microsoft's best attempt at a perfect software distribution. On the other hand, they do sell support contracts as well, so maybe that was all part of the plan...

[J.F.]

Well, I was giving them the benefit of the doubt about offering their "best" efforts. Bundle deals and product tie-in don't exactly make quality a priority for MS. If it doesn't quite work right, well - there's always Service Pack 7.

[J.F.]

Or you can wait until it tries to load X, then do Ctl-Alt-F1 to get a terminal, edit xorg.conf, then Ctl-Alt-F7 to get back to the X console, then Ctl-Alt-Backspace to restart it. Had to do that with my iMac since the monitor isn't detected properly by Ubuntu.