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#1: Ubuntu 4.10 Warty the review. Author: richard, Location: Kent, United Kingdom

Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 8:26 am
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Ubuntu 4.10 Warty - The Review
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

Right from the start let me say that I have never really used either Gnome or a Debian based distribution before. In the past I have tried a lot of distributions that have been KDE based including SUSE and Ark.

I have had brief looks at Gnome but have always been told that it is KDE's under developed sibling and so have not really given it any real attention. It is also a cutting edge distribution using the 2.6.8.1 kernel and Gnome 2.8 though for you KDE loyalists there is not a sniff of it at all.

For those of you who want to have a go with it you can download it from http://www.ubuntulinux.org/. You can also have a look that the screen shots there as well.

What is Ubuntu?
The simplest answer is to Jeff Waugh from Canonical the company behind Ubuntu:
"At its core, Ubuntu *is* Debian. Our six-monthly releases are based on Debian's "sid" development branch, with lots of bug fixing and integration work (which goes back to Debian), and some special additions such as the very latest GNOME releases. Ubuntu 4.10, which we call the "Warty Warthog" shipped GNOME 2.8 in our Preview release last night. Smile We provide 18 months of high-impact, data loss and security support with every release."

The Installation
The installation procedure is based around the "new" Debian Sarge installer and if you are used to using a graphical installer such as YAST then you are going to be in for a bit of a shock. Aside from that, the installation was very nice, friendly and easy wording and no difficult selections. When it came to setting up a user, it told me something about the user to use "instead of the root user", considering that there is no root user, Ubuntu has disabled the root user (sudo is used, same way as OSX does it). It did not ask anything about package selection and the only thing it asked about hardware was the choice of screen resolutions (this should be improved). Apart from that the install went very smoothly with all my hardware being detected without a hitch. I have to admit though that I am not to keen the disk partitioning part of the install and opted for the offered defaults which may not be to everyone's liking but they seem to do the job.

The Desktop
The first thing you notice once you have logged in is that there are no desktop icons by default. This is actually quite refreshing and also is very reminiscent of Windows XP. It also fits my working style, as I like an uncluttered desktop as I find it easier to save things there in whilst I'm working on them and then move them once I have finished with them. Also the trash finally sits on the panel, I always wanted to have it there and not hidden behind my windows. That's probably a GNOME 2.8 improvement but it's the first time I'm seeing it. It's especially useful because you can just pick up anything, throw it into the corner and it will be gone.

The "Computer" menu at the top seems to be a similar idea to the "System" menu of Ximian. Accessing Home, Network, etc. folders from here instead of from desktop launchers seems like a good idea to me. It's a bit weird to have "Desktop" there, which opens the desktop in a file manager window. This doesn't seem right to me from a consistency point of view, but on the other hand, it's extremely useful...

The theme artwork is also pretty nice but everyone can see that on the screenshots. that are available are available via links on the website. I also like the cursor theme, which is very simple and friendly looking. Some parts about the Industrial-based theme could certainly still be improved. For example the checkboxes are as dark as the background which at first made them look deselected to me and it looks bad in menus. I think they would look much better with a white background.

GNOME 2.8 so far makes me very happy. The only gripe that I have is that I cannot find anything like KDE's menu editor so that I can sort the application list to my liking. I don't know if this is a Gnome thing or if the developers have locked this down. With regards to the installed applications the one thing I like is that they have not gone overboard unlike some versions of Linux

Office package : Open Office 1.1.2
Web Browser: Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Preview Release
Email: Evolution Groupware Suite 2.0
Graphics: The Gimp 2.0
Movie Player : Totem 0.99.15.1
Music Player: Rhythmbox 0.8.5
Instant Messenger: Gaim
IRC Client: Xchat

Software installation and updating is handled by Synaptic but the choice of software is not as great as that offered by a pure Debian install. There are also issues if you try and use the Debian repositories, making me think that this has had a lot of changes made to it.

Considering that this is a first preview of the first release and that all the exciting things seem to be planned for the second release, I'm fairly impressed. This is definitely not your standard distribution. I'm not overly keen on the no-root option, I know that it is supposed to make things easier for those people who are making the move from Windows. It is also not the first distribution I have played with that has gone down this root (pardon the pun), the other being Ark Linux and I get the feeling that we will be seeing more of this as time goes on. There is also a lot of work that needs to be done to get this to gold status and judging from the mailing lists there is already an enthusiastic band of followers giving feedback to the developers. How this will translate into the next release I don't know but if they keep going and iron out the bugs then I think that Ubuntu will have a bright future indeed.

By Richard
http://www.usalug.org
Running: Ubuntu 4.10 "Warty" Preview Release - Kernel 2.6.8.1-2-386
Original review posted: http://usalug.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4125

#2: Re: Ubuntu 4.10 Warty the review. Author: mr_ed, Location: 42 miles north of Ogdensburg, NY

Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 2:11 pm
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richard wrote:

GNOME 2.8 so far makes me very happy. The only gripe that I have is that I cannot find anything like KDE's menu editor so that I can sort the application list to my liking.

This is the only thing I don't like about GNOME, as well, and there are a lot more people out there with that complaint, but I think it was a design choice to make things "simple" for the user.

#3: Author: Xeroid, Location: Georgia

Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 2:54 pm
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Nice richard. Smile

Thanks.

Here is a link to a screenshot richard has posted.

#4: Author: richard, Location: Kent, United Kingdom

Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 8:21 pm
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Xeroid wrote:

Nice richard. Smile

Thanks.

Here is a link to a screenshot richard has posted.

I've just uploded another screenshot for those who are interested.

#5: Author: Xeroid, Location: Georgia

Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 9:15 pm
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Here's the link to richards new screenshot. Smile

http://usalug.org/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=427

#6: Author: VisionD,

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2004 7:15 am
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Hi guys,

to edit the menu please try the following (worked in Gnome 2.6 AFAIK):

1. Open Up Nautilus

2. Enter applications:/// as URL

3. Change the menu to your liking.

Greetz
VisionD

P.S.: Nice review richard. Keep it up. Will try Ubuntu Linux again. Dropped it the first time because of the lack of WLAN support but now i am able to connect to a LAN for the first installation and then configure my WLAN via ndiswrapper (which will hopefully be in the repository).

#7: Author: richard, Location: Kent, United Kingdom

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2004 7:21 am
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Welcome to USAlug VisionD. When I get Ubuntu reinstalled (running Fedora Core 3 rc2 at present) I'll give it a go.

#8: Author: VisionD,

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2004 9:04 am
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Yeah,

coming from Germany that was a pretty far travel Laughing

Greetz
VisionD

P.S.: Did you delete Ubuntu already? Is it so unusable??

#9: Author: richard, Location: Kent, United Kingdom

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2004 9:12 am
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No I didn't delete it because it was unusable but because I haven't found a distro that feels right. Just ask any of the guys here about what I'm like Smile

I have also had problems getting it to run on one of my machines which contains 1 scsi drive and 4 ide drives. I want to the scsi to act as the boot drive but grub keeps installing on hda and you cannot change it. This is the main reason I like gui installers. Its easier to change the advnced options during an install.

#10: Author: Germ, Location: Planet Earth

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2004 11:03 am
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Hi VisionD. Welcome to USAlug.

Nice review, richard. Wink

#11: Author: mr_ed, Location: 42 miles north of Ogdensburg, NY

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2004 1:48 pm
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VisionD wrote:

to edit the menu please try the following (worked in Gnome 2.6 AFAIK):

1. Open Up Nautilus

2. Enter applications:/// as URL

3. Change the menu to your liking.

Yes, that does work, but it's very clunky. If I install a new program, should it not automatically add to the menu? Like... Mozilla Firefox, for example. xsane?
To add all the KDE games to my parents' install, I have to go to the kde/bin folder and find each one manually, assuming that I can find out their names. Then I have to change every single icon to match. It's more trouble than it's worth.

I think that at freedesktop.org they're working to make those .desktop files more unified. That would be nice.

#12: Author: VisionD,

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2004 4:58 am
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Hi mr_ed,

good to hear, that it works.

I think that the problem with the missing menu entries is pretty much distribution dependent. I use Gentoo and there the menu entries are generated automatically when i install a new program for the desktop.

Did you try to log out and log in again in X? Maybe the menus are regenerated this way.

I only changed the menus once til now because i think that the entries are pretty intuitive. Only adding my good old emacs in "Others" instead of "Development" disturbed me pretty much Surprised

Looking forward to try Ubuntu again.
VisionD

#13: Author: mr_ed, Location: 42 miles north of Ogdensburg, NY

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2004 1:48 pm
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It _is_ distribution dependent, I agree. In Arch, after restarting X, all the GNOME programs show up, but nothing else.

I've tried playing with the .desktop files, but they just don't show up unless I use Nautilus. Sad

It's very counterintuitive.

#14: Author: VisionD,

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2004 4:05 pm
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@Richard:

I just installed Ubuntu. Man, on the one hand i love it, on the other hand i just can't get productive with this thingy.

For example i just can't figure out howto mount my FAT 32 partitions probably (i have two with data on it). Did you experience similar problems, richard?? Did you get it to work??

Description: I added two mountpoints in /mnt. When i call mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/data for example, then automagically a window pops up and shows the root of these partitions.... This is what i love about it!!!

BUT: When i click one of the icons nothing happens! When i use the right mouse button they even disappear!!!!

I really have to register for the mailinglist and try to give some feedback. When they get this distri up and running probably then it will be soo cool Cool

Greetz
VisionD

P.S.: STRANGE THINGY. I can play my music files by calling rhythmbox from the console with the path to a MP3 but when i start rhythmbox and point it to the directory via GUI to search for the MP3s it finds nothing Confused

#15: Author: mr_ed, Location: 42 miles north of Ogdensburg, NY

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2004 5:30 pm
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Weird. Confused

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