Bye-bye Ubuntu…
People who’ve been following my blog know I hate Apple. What I talk much rarely about though are my issues with Linux. With years as a software developer, I’ve progressively become a strong believer in Open Source and interoperability. What sucks is that my favorite OS so far is Windows XP…
I’ve tried several Linux distributions in the past, and they all failed on me at some point. A few months ago I installed kubuntu 9 on my laptop (a 6 years old machine I use to watch videos, surf the internet, and software development).
Everything was fine…I mean, Kubuntu’s performance was far from what I could achieve with Windows XP (HD video is a no-go with kubuntu on my machine, while on XP it’s ok), but I lived with the idea that it’s the price to pay (especially with an Intel graphics card) if I want to benefit from the cool features of KDE (ripping an Audio CD in Konqueror is an extremely cool experience), Amarok, and of course all the development tools.
Anyway, 2 days ago Kubuntu suggested me to upgrade to the latest version, Kubuntu 10 (Lucid Lynx). I clicked on upgrade, the system installed all the updates, rebooted, and crashed.
I tried lots of things, it simply seems Ubuntu 10 doesn’t support my hardware anymore. At first I thought the upgrade had failed because of some of my configuration files, but neither the Live CD of Ubuntu or Kubuntu work… Basically whenever the system tries to start the X window manager, it crashes. Incompatibility with my graphics card? I don’t know, and the log files from Xorg or dmesg don’t seem to give any useful information or error.
For the first time in months, I booted this machine on Windows XP. And guess what, it worked fine, like it always did for the past 6 years.
I still need a Linux distribution on this machine though. I use some of the tools there on a regular basis so I can’t live without a Linux machine. I’ll give a try to other distributions, suggestions are welcome.
(For those interested, my computer is an Amilo M1405. The graphics card is an intel i810. If people with the same hardware configuration could report success/failure on Ubuntu 10, that would be great)
Try Linux Mint, it’s really awesome 😉
well first install Xp then download
Virtual PC 2007 form microsoft then install Linux on that so you will have 2 Operating Systems on one hard drive just just used to Virtual PC and you will get it
Hope this helped
I’m using Ubuntu 10.04 with Gnome on my laptop. It’s got the same garbage video card on it but I’ve not had any trouble so far.
It’s fast and does everything I need it to do. It’s my ‘productivity’ computer because there is no way I can play games with the trashy video card that it came with. I’m glad laptops have started using real cards now.
Best linux distribution so far is Gentoo. Though it is source-based, is developer-friendly, and is not user-friendly.
You can never say “I am running 1020.1 version of Gentoo”. Gentoo continuously upgrades itself (well, you continuously upgrade Gentoo with “emerge sync && emerge -avuDN world”).
It has very flexible mechanism of dealing with packages that are considered by maintainers to be not yet stable enough: I have an explosive mix of stable, unstable and “very-very unstable” software installed.
Gentoo the best solution of “dependencies heck” problem I ever seen. After upgrading some library, you just run “revdep-rebuild”, and it shows which binaries and libraries have to be recompiled due to changes. And recompiles those that are installed via gentoo packages (portage system).
By the way, there is no “libwtf” and “libwtf-dev”. You just install libwtf.
You can optimize everything for you current CPU.
———————
worst things about it: Gentoo is not that user-friendly. My first installation took like 2 weeks. Last one (third) took 1 week. I reinstalled it each time after major computer upgrade. There’s not much need to do it, you can easily upgrade anything without reinstalling whole system, just be sure that your kernel supports new hardware.
Gentoo works for me more than 5 years. Flawlessly. Ubuntu 8.10 was awful compared to Gentoo, I removed it after 3 hours. Debian is pretty ok, used it for a year, but Gentoo is muuuuch better 🙂
If you really like KDE4 then OpenSuSE is a must. Why?. Because is the distro that cares the most this desktop manager.
Maybe it’s slower than kubuntu at boot time but, everything goes smooth once you are onn your desktop.
Give it a try, you won’t regret.
Archlinux.
I understand …
and the recent portable ubuntu remix? now 9.10 karmic koala
Install it on XP …
info: http:// portableubuntu.demonccc.com. ar/es/news
I have an Amilo too and Windows XP is he best OS in the world!
Talking about Linux, Ubuntu is the most known and user friendly but not the best. There are some distribuitions better than Ubuntu. One of this is Arch Linux, but is quite complex to install (you need to compile on your own) or if you like Debian there is Knoppix.
Also Mandriva and openSUSE now are competitive!
Make your choise! 🙂
(K)ubuntu only with NVidia.
Intel cards are evil. Stay away from linux when you have a SiS or Intel vga.
I really like Fedora. + it fully supports my Intel GMA x3100 (atleast i didn’t have a problem till i made a hackintosh out of my laptop).
I hate Linux (Unix) based systems for many reasons, the reliance on Cli being the big one, but stupid issues like “Not working at all after an update” or simply not supporting hardware play a supporting role.
I love Open Source, but unfortunately I have Linux/Unix/BSD etc…
@Ph7: Though I like arch, I think trying it won’t help him that much :þ (Unless a ncurses installer which is everything but user-friendly is fine for him too).
I’d try Fedora, or, since I talked about Archlinux, that Chakra live CD.
@MaxMouseDLL easy and fast to use stuff is always with no exceptions hard to learn. You did not manage to learn the power and beatu of cli. You fail.
I bet Ubuntu will work good after manual kernel recompilation. Try this.
Also check that GRUB installed to MBR is of 1.9x version. If it is not – boot with any recent livecd and grub-install.
@lattenwald: as I said, the live CD of Ubuntu or Kubuntu won’t boot on my machine (black screen after the first loading screen). And I think it’s not a problem with Grub as I can boot perfectly in recovery mode.
Also, I don’t want to go as far as recompiling my kernel. I don’t take any kind of pleasure in installing an OS, for me it should be fast an automated.
I went with OpenSuse, so far so good.
run cygwin on windows.. there’s almost nothing truly linux only.
but if i were to install a new linux dist today, i’d give archlinux a try out of curiosity (never used arch before but debian made me sad for years)
Here’s a second recommendation for Gentoo. Again, it requires a bit of dedication to know WHY you’re doing something instead of just WHAT you’re doing. Ubuntu is the worst for this – they try to gloss over the whole process. Gentoo will easily let you shoot yourself in the foot. But the beauty of being able to merge config files across versions (with an interactive diff), total package management (don’t need printing support? no problem – don’t use the “cups” USE-flag and voila, no wasted memory, no *** drivers, nothing).
Shed the chains of “releases” and enjoy a system that’s as up to date as YOU want it to be!
Also, the Gentoo forums are full of friendly and knowledgeable people that can help you out of any problem and recommend you better ways to do things.
As for a live CD, have you tried the sysrecuecd? It’s a thing of beauty. http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
Your problem is to try to get the speed on some stuff with a desktop system that need good cpu’s and gpu or a good configuration
You can try asking on the official KDE SC forum for tips to increase the performance on a low end machine or just change the desktop environment, changing between distros with KDE SC will end on the same result if you dont configure your system (Arch, *buntus, Gentoo and their parents can be configured for better performance, theres no better distro IMHO)
And like somebody said above, dont try even gnome desktops on a SiS gpu machine, maybe mint with xfce or another that comes optimized for low end systems can work but lately is failing on most desktops
Get linux mint 9
ubuntu suck BallZ
i had kubuntu also, and when i tried to install boot cd, it froze at the terminal after installation in 5, 4 etc, etc. so i tried safe gui install, took forever but it finished. but it still wouldnt boot, so it sucks 😛
Mandriva. Is the best. Been using it for +10 years and always came back to it.
ubuntu 10 has issues with video hardware having to load with the plymouth boot screen. it killed my brand new laptop with a very nice nvidia card. i downgraded back to 9.10. there is nothing gained for me or most people with lucid. Ubuntu carries some great repo’s with a lot of useful software. If you have to pick a different distro and love kde, go with the tried and true no bs Slackware. It is stable, runs on old hardware cause it is designed for it. I still use Ubuntu even though their upgrades tend to break more than they fix, but that is the price for using bleeding edge debian unstable releases as your base OS. XP is still a great os, btw. But it does lack some great tools, as do all windows releases. I run it in a virtualbox just in case i cant find a linux utility to do something that i need done (very very very very rare).
Sorry to hear your woes about ubuntu. I finally relented, and decided I HAD to get into linux one of these days and INSTALLED ubuntu. Been trying to learn Debian, but it seems to just hate me and my machine (I liked the core philosophy behind the OS). Ubuntu, so far, has been running pretty clean for me, and is now becoming my main OS (windows 7 actually runs a bit faster, so I understand some of the complaints), but for me ubuntu is just a means to an end. My main goal is eventually to get to one of the core linux distros (probably just debian, but I’d like gentoo), but it’s just so time consuming to jump full string into it. So I’m taking ubuntu and running with it, with the knowledge that aptitude is good, synaptics bad. (i.e. terminal good, gui bad).
Try Fedora 10?
LOL, so many useless comments. Suggesting your favorite distro is fine (one of the great things about Linux: choice), but using someone’s post about a bug they encountered to rant about why you hate Linux is juvenile and pointless. How about a solution to the bug you were hit with?
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Bugs/Lucidi8xxFreezes
Use workaround A to get it installed (or to boot), then install the “Potential Workaround”
@FANUM: thanks a lot! I ended up buying a new computer in the meantime (which now has issues with nvidia drivers, oh well), but this definitely looks like THE solution for my problem, and hopefully it will be useful for people who come on this page with the same issue 🙂
Once you go Arch, you never go back!!!
Linux Mint 9. thats where its at.
Slackware 13.1 is for you.
hello (word) :p
i understand you have problem with kunbutu, but i don’t see why because i don’t speak english good. my search on web for goodest distribution of linux give me that netbsd is the mostly distrib, this distrib run with more of 30 architectures of processor and the sloggan is “of course it run, is netbsd”
well, i have a psp go, buyed there was 15 days from now, and i just downloaded your lastest hbl 113 is the most thing for me because i don’t want lose my original firmware.
my first idea was instal debian on pspgo, and wine, but i think netbsd can be a mostly.
but my since it, i find article, say developpement kit are already for psp and i continue y search for devellop my own firmware for psp… thx you for your hbl
bye.
Hu?
There is no problem to run Ubuntu 11.04 on Amilo m1405.
First start from Live-DVD and all Amilio Features are working fine – including wlan, usb, fn-keys (…).
AND a dead Akkupack is loading !!? Magic or Feature ?
Go for it!