Comments on: Ubuntu 8.04: Not quite there, yet

By: forsaken

forsaken — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 22:22:34 +0000

yeah, tried it out, modern pc you dont -need- to know the details.
anyway everything goes fine however…
where’s the control?
where’s the diversity?
where’s the rest of the repository gone?
it just aint debian
infact it isnt even close
just blergh. beta firefox, one colour scheme, hardcoded .debs that cant be removed else they break everything, .debs like that bootloader screen that I dislike… reminds me of windows xp when I tried to remove the windows xp login picture and animation with something else and broke it…
just a whole load of hype, back to the source, back to debian for me.

By: jacky

jacky — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:01:14 +0000

I have a Dell Dimension E521 (AMD) and with Gutsy it would freeze up after an hour or two, every time. It was a known issue on these machines. I even tried about 6 different BIOS updates that Dell put out to fix the problem. Once I upgraded to Hardy this behaviour suddenly stopped! After 8.04.1 came out I installed Compiz, which I had uninstalled long ago hopeing my system would stabilize, and found that it now works perfectly! Although 8.04.1 has some bugs that 7.10 didn’t have it is, in my opinion, far better.

By: michael skramstad

michael skramstad — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:49:31 +0000

Opening multiple Firefox browsers running Flash causes Flash areas to turn grey, and the browser crashes sometimes. I run the AMD 64bit OS and I used to use the 64bit FF browser until I got tired of FF crashing and seeing grey Flash zones.

To resolve these problems, experienced by many Ubuntu fans, I installed Swiftweasel. You can download it here http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=195473&package_id=….

The Debian packager will install it automatically. It runs great on my Athlon AMD64 Hardy 8.04 server/desktop box, with Flash 9.

By: Wayne

Wayne — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 05:45:48 +0000

Recently installed Ubuntu 8.04.1, and I am extremely happy with it. Maybe I am fortunate to have a compatible machine - have Dell 1100, 2 years old. Everything works, Tracker search work brilliant, firefox, fonts, multimedia, wireless (with Edimax EW-7318USg) etc etc

I just wonder if limiting the default Ubuntu to a CD image is actually hurting. I know there is a DVD version but the default where everyone bases their opinion on, is the CD. I wonder if they have to leave out features and support so that it can fit on a CD. Space is limited and high compression is also used. I believe that alot of problems would be solved if they go for a 2 CD default install and/or a DVD, or even a USB stick. I know people like a single CD download and install but they should know there are consequences to this. There are also people who have extolled the single CD download and install but then complain that more applications should be installed by default or help documentation is not there, my printer is not supported etc - hmmm, can’t have it both ways.

By: Clyde Boom

Clyde Boom — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:35:06 +0000

Your readers may be interested in the comments about Hardy - as can be seen at Mark Shuttleworth’s post at:

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/145

The post is named “Ubuntu’s role in bug management for the whole free software stack”. And lots of people are unhappy that this version is so poorly executed.

Your readers may also want to learn some more about Ubuntu Linux by watching some sample Ubuntu Linux training videos at:

http://www.iLearnLinux.com/Ubuntu-Linux

You can have a look at the free Ubuntu Linux book blog and see an Ubuntu Linux book being developed - daily.

And you can comment on this book and help develop its progress!

http://www.UbuntuLinuxBookBlog.com

Thanks for the post!

Clyde Boom, http://www.iLearnLinux.com
The Easy Linux Training Guy - Easy, self-paced Linux training - in Plain English!

By: Fazlur Rahaman Naik

Fazlur Rahaman Naik — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:38:56 +0000

I too completely agree with the review. i also experienced the same problem with audio & video. Some times the nautilus crashes, if u press any key. Lot more to improve in Hardy …

By: smchris

smchris — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:50:31 +0000

Sad. My history with Ubuntu has been poor. A v.6 install CD hung on boot with my old test machine. Screw it. Later I tried a Kubuntu live CD, looked at it, and basically asked, “Why?” But last year I put a 7.10 on a machine I don’t use much and found that there was a lot I liked about the Ubuntu interface. Unfortunately, I guess I didn’t put it through its paces enough.

When my desktop motherbaord died in April, there was an excuse to dump the old software and try 8.04. So close. But the Debian setups for myself and my wife are very full-featured. We demand acceleration, networked printers, and multi-OS kvm/qemu for fun and work. We run XP for Windows web tools (yeah, Flash “play” runs slowly but otherwise _very_ acceptable) and have full-featured local Apache/PHP/MySQL+PostgreSQL servers, the database servers are linked to OpenOffice.org, I want some linux media tools and I run Windows 98 for some proprietary personal stuff like QST amateur radio magazines on CD, old games and the like.

Again, so close with the great majority of the above. But, even with an Ubuntu install to a fresh hard drive with my Debian install attached and accessible for reference:

1. It’s been over a month and I cannot get the old networked laserjet 1100 to work. Same cupsys.conf as Debian. Doesn’t matter which of the half dozen drivers I choose.

2. The kvm session seems to work well with XP and Samba. DOS-based OSes, however, lock the x-windows randomly (but soon) after startup. What’s the xorg.conf option? “UseEvents” “false”? Doesn’t help.

Both are serious concerns to me but I guess it is the cups that really frosts me. I’ve found a blog in French where someone asserts the laserjet 1100 just isn’t supported. In the end, it’s a trust issue. Ubuntu can’t inherit the reputation of being “based” on Debian if one hand screws things up while the other hand adds enhancements.

So I’m back with my old Debian boot — but it feels like a moment of limbo. I haven’t wiped the 8.04 yet but I’m really tired of research trying to fix things that work fine in Debian. Quintuply annoying when so much _is_ right about Ubuntu but I may have to conclude with a lot of people on the web that I can’t trust Ubuntu to be “there” yet. Maybe if you want grandma to email and cruise the web it is one of the simplest linuxes to maintain but not something I’d trust relative to some other distributions for a serious and comprehensive range of work.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:25:29 +0000

I had some good and bad experiences with Kubuntu 8.04 x86-64. Some of the things that were cleaned up that made me happy were flash plugin installation, which, although it crashes like in 7.10, works MUCH better and installed perfectly. The addon issue I resolved by going into about:config and creating a new boolean row with key “extensions.checkCompatibility” and setting it to “false”.

Unfortunately, the kernel they chose for 8.04 completely breaks sound on my computer (ASUS P5B motherboard), which forced me to recompile the kernel with a patch created back in March - yes March.

Overall, not a bad release, but I had expected much more from an LTS.