[S-99]

I can't believe the new release of ubuntu has some huge ass bugs in it, that aren't really fixable at the moment. Mainly it's trouble with the new 2.6.22-x kernel they're using. My internet upon restarting the machine wont work anymore, and even upon installing my nvidia-glx-new drivers it will make the net not work also. Then i can get the internet to work for like 10 seconds if i disable and re-enable my nic interface in gutsy. How did this get released like this? For what is ubuntu's best release with the amount of improvements and streamlining they've done for gutsy, they have a few major problems right now.

So sad, back to feisty for me, linuxmint 3.1 a good alternative, the distro that does gnome a favor.

Has anyone else experienced these bugs with gutsy as well? A whole ton of research pointed out that the problems started popping up in gutsy tribe 4 or 3, one of those.

[IceFire]

How do you know its Gusty itself?  Maybe its a problem with your install?  I'm running Gusty in a VM at the moment and its working fine...that seems to be a more demanding environment than running it normally.

[achtung]

They're using the latest kmod-nvidia drivers I assume.  So I can't install it on my laptop.

[S-99]

I do know it's gutsy itself. Many other people have had the same problem as me. In particular those that are nvidia users who install the restricted nvidia driver. For some reason installing that driver makes the internet not work for many including me. And damn that pisses me off, because installing the restricted driver not only gives me 3d, but it also turns off the fan on my card when it's not doing anything intensive which makes my computer quieter. As long as i can't use my video to full potential on gutsy then i wont use gutsy.

As far as the reason to why installing the video drivers would make the net not work is pretty ****ed up in my head (the video card is a completely different piece of hardware from my nic). Gutsy got released buggy, simple as that, other people have had the same problems, and others with similar net problems from different happenings. This really sucks, because kubuntu gutsy is kickass compared to feisty. The drivers from nvidia.com for linux is the same version of nvidia drivers in the gutsy repos at the moment. For ****s and giggles i downloaded the bin from nvidia, and i still got the same problem. After that, it knetworkmanager liked to **** up a lot, as well as the networking as a whole in general.

I was going to test gutsy with an older version of nvidia drivers (like the ones from feisty or something), and try an older version of knetwork manager, but i gave up, i don't have time for troubleshooting as curious as i am, one of my classes this week i need to do homework for and 3 exams.

If using an older version of the nvidia drivers fixes the problem, someone plz tell me. I don't have time to test out the theory myself. ****, i was without a working computer because of gutsy.

[Nuke]

i do have some problems with staying connected to my wireless network with fawn. i get maybe about 20 minutes where my net works, then i have to disconnect from the router and reconnect. i think my problem is a power management thing. i think the system is powering down the pc card when its not in use, then failing to power it up again as needed. but thats just a theory. sence i had to force acpi so i could have a working battery gauge. i still get the same problem with acpi=force removed from the kernel line.

[WMCoolmon]

And this is why I get annoyed when people get all high and mighty about how much "better" Linux is than Windows, in any respect.

That being said - I just upgraded to Feisty, and haven't had any serious problems so far. I just got Flash working in native 64-bit mode, which I was never able to do under the previous version.

[S-99]

I just turn to linux because i don't need to use windows for anything anymore. I've learned linux enough, plus it saves me 100$ or more not needing to buy an OS, and stuff like replicating the aero interface in linux takes a lot less hardware to accomplish. Overall, linux takes less hardware to accomplish, most distros run great on 256mb or less on an old processor, after that there's lightweight distributions like Antix which can be run on even less desirable ****ty old hardware. One thing that i especially like about linux is live-cd's and thumb drive installations of linux (you can't do this at all with windows). Another thing this all comes down to is that it's apparent that linux is no where near as bloated as other operating systems.

Two things i will stick by that is definitely better than windows in linux is administrator privilege handling and software updating. Need to do something administrative in linux? It wont let you unless you know the admin password (at least in vista if you're going to change something administrative it lets you know what you're going to do before you change a setting).

Software updating all comes from one spot for every single program installed, and that's the repositories, and that's all from one program such as synaptic package manager. In windows if you're software automatically updates itself it's either microsoft update (microsofts repository for updating everything microsoft, applauding microsoft for this), but if you have say java, flash, or other programs that automatically update themselves, then those need to have their own auto-updating programs to sit in memory until an update is out for those programs (this takes more resources depending on how many programs that are non-microsoft that auto-update themselves).

I'm not saying i'm anti windows. Windows is a great OS, and vista certainly is worth the upgrade, but i'd only buy home basic since i don't even use a 3d accelerated desktop in linux, it's cheaper because i don't need everything from vista, and i just plain old like the vista basic theme a lot more appetizing. Aero is really the one bad thing i don't like about vista (unnecessary bloat requiring unnecessary hardware requirements), but aside from aero vista has tons of useful stuff inside of it. What i want to say here is that vista has good bloat (because it's a large installation), but i think you get what i mean (currently taking a vista class in my college for ****s and giggles, because i don't know vista as well as xp, especially since i fix computers for money).

[Mars]

The only problem I've had is ATI driver issues, which I always have for about 3 months after a new release.

[Scuddie]

Blame your Gutsy problems on SLUB.  It's a fairly new allocation method, and many drivers (X-Fi beta drivers, for example) don't function properly under the environment.

[Nuke]

And this is why I get annoyed when people get all high and mighty about how much "better" Linux is than Windows, in any respect.

That being said - I just upgraded to Feisty, and haven't had any serious problems so far. I just got Flash working in native 64-bit mode, which I was never able to do under the previous version.

that said i wouldnt rate any os with more than a couple stars on a 5 star rating system.

[Mars]

that said i wouldnt rate any os with more than a couple stars on a 5 star rating system.

QFT

I have an equal number of show stopping issues on both Windows and Ubuntu; all I want is something that works.

[IceFire]

I do know it's gutsy itself. Many other people have had the same problem as me. In particular those that are nvidia users who install the restricted nvidia driver. For some reason installing that driver makes the internet not work for many including me. And damn that pisses me off, because installing the restricted driver not only gives me 3d, but it also turns off the fan on my card when it's not doing anything intensive which makes my computer quieter. As long as i can't use my video to full potential on gutsy then i wont use gutsy.

So you should have said that instead of mentioning that it has "huge ass bugs"

[WMCoolmon]

I'm using Feisty as my primary OS now, now that I've gotten it working, but the process required to do that was something that was easily beyond normal users and I would never, ever recommend a novice or occasional computer user try. The process to get Flash working in Firefox was also simple, but extremely difficult to find.

Linux is a good OS, but it's not really a practical OS. Now that time has become an issue for me, I can understand why people are so concerned about switching to Windows; I don't want to take the risk that my boot sector is going to go belly-up, or that the auto-updater is going to rewrite all of my boot/grub/menu.lst Linux entries to point to the wrong partition (which is what happened).

These are things that are mostly glossed over when people talk about using Linux as a replacement OS, but these are the things that will hurt Linux in the long run. Since most of the people who write software for Linux have the technical know-how to easily circumvent the barriers that would stop users cold, when people discuss development, those sorts of things get sidelined.

Anyway, on a 5-star rating scale, I'd give Mac OS X 3 stars. Any OS that's smart enough to let me drag-and-drop entire programs, and keep all their data in one easy-to-uninstall place, plus provides the ease-of-backup of a separate Users folder, and also supports user permissions, has a good core going for it that's easily superior to Linux and Windows. Apt repositories are great, up 'til you need to get at a program that isn't in one of the default ones (Such as a program that you buy).

[Nuke]

the thing about linux is you really need tu build a computer from the ground up with linux friendly hardware. get for example a nic which has no or poor drivers and its quite a hassel to get it to work. for example the usb 2.0 wireless network dongle i use (because my double wide video card blocks one of my pci slots, and the other is used up by my sound card. leaving only a pci8x, a second pci16x, some proprietary audio riser, and another unidentified slot, which i think is a 1x pci slot). anyway i spent a good 3 days setting up that dongle, and i dont even remember what i did, so if i had to do it again it would probibly take me another 3 days. for linux to be feasable every peice of hardware would need to come with proper linux drivers. other devices such as my trackir have no current drivers at all.

ive never gotten the chance to use osx so i dont know about it. alll the reviews sound good but still, its only 3 stars. i want a 5 star os. that windows clone, i forget what its called, reactos or something, seems to have potential. id be willing to use a windows computable os so long as its suffietiently stable.

[S-99]

I don't really think about it in terms of how much linux sucks, then again you guys brought up some interesting issues and problems. The only real major thing concerning drivers right now is wireless card support in linux is steadily getting better, but slowly, people are working hard on that, at least you can use broadcoms in linux now. As far as drivers go, linux has drivers for all of my hardware and got it up and running great, except for that old x360 controller of mine (someone did make a driver for x360 in linux, but they provided no instructions on how to install it).

Unfortunately i'm using feisty as my primary os again too (i really wanted to use gutsy pretty badly). Why the hell use osx anyway? It's not really that great. I mean if you really wanted to run unix you have several other alternatives than osx. And yes, i'm waiting for reactos too. As much as people like free operating systems, you know they're going to love a free windows even more. Hell if reactos gets good enough, it's really the only platform that i will see that's an alternative windows environment that runs windows programs and linux programs (i'd kill to run linux programs through emulation in windows...some linux favs aren't ported to windows yet). Why would many want to adopt one of the old habits of windows anyway? I laugh at people who pirated theirs and can't do windows update or refuse to do windows update. Not to mention pirating windows has gotten waay too difficult.

You not only have to find ways to circumvent wga, you have to keep your fresh installation of windows from telling microsoft that you installed it (or else your installation gets turned into a 30 day trial). Too much trouble to pirate windows, almost as much trouble as it is to pirate other programs. Linux frees you from being a pirate. The only software i ever pirated was paintshop pro, microsoft office, and nero (i use to pirate win2k itself). Lo and behold for me there's gimp, openoffice, and k3b (k3b just not ported to windows yet though).

You do have to admit, OSS is kickass high quality stuff.

[WMCoolmon]

My point is that OSS is not consistently high quality, in fact, it's much less reliable than Windows. I needed third-party applications from random users that took a fair bit of searching, even with considerable technical knowledge and prior experience searching for what I was looking for. Those applications set up my video card and flash plugin for Firefox. Also, the Ubuntu updater stopped working halfway through the install process and didn't give any reason for it, nor did it seem to realize that it had gotten stopped. Finally, in order to use the two mouse buttons on my mouse, and to make the login screen appear on the right monitor, I had to edit my xorg.conf file.

None of that would've been possible for normal users; possibly they would have rebooted their computer and it wouldn't have worked due to the partial update. I was able to work around that, but only because of a lucky guess. The rest of the things that I did were done with knowledge gained through days or weeks of troubleshooting problems with Linux.

Computers are widespread enough nowadays that they need to be intuitive and need to use a consistent set of simple principles to operate, that can be learned quickly and without necessitation of memorization of a bunch of commands. If an operating system doesn't provide that, it won't be accessible to normal users who don't consider a computer an end in itself.

Most people don't like free operating systems; the numbers speak for that. They may like the idea of a free operating system, but what's required to obtain that is too much for them. The OSS community has to understand that it must compete with Windows and OS X in order to be a desktop substitute.

If OSS really were a high quality alternative to Windows, we wouldn't be having this discussion, because everybody would be using OSS.

[S-99]

It's really about finding the right oss that's out there. K3b, openoffice, and gimp are high quality ones that i know about and use. Firefox is oss. So on, i really don't like firefox that much though; eventually for me sometimes it likes to ignore the fact that i click some links. So i moved onto konqueror which is a ridiculously good browser alternative to firefox and ie. Yes there is low quality oss out there, but there is just as much low quality windows apps out there too. Some of those big names are norton and mcafee (avg and avast worked a lot better than those). And as much as people search for apps for windows, they do just as much searching for apps in linux as well. The one reason why people are unused to searching for apps for linux is because they're used to searching for apps for windows so they know which are the good ones for windows, but they don't know yet which are the good ones for linux.

Definitely modifying xorg is one reason why novice users won't like linux. That's another reason why i liked gutsy, i didn't need to modify my xorg at all, it was set up with all of the right resolutions for my monitor, found my mouse, keyboard. Gutsy even detected my video card correctly and found the corresponding nvidia drivers for it with the restricted driver manager, then it just made me restart my computer and i had 3d acceleration without modifying xorg myself having to replace the nv driver entry with nvidia.

That's why i was really psyched about gutsy, gutsy is a lot more automated with the small details like xorg. After that ubuntu does good software selection to include in their distro's. One thing i did notice is that the  kde apps tend to be more high quality and advanced compared to gnome apps. I love the software selection ubuntu chose for kubuntu. The one thing i really didn't like about feisty though was that ktorrent would crash all the time (they grabbed a bad version of ktorrent to put in their repos for feisty).

I really don't know why people have so much trouble with flash in linux. Regardless of whether i'm using firefox or konqueror, if i'm at a page that requires flash, it'll bring up a window saying that you need flash to view this web page correctly, click here to download and install (much like the way ie installs flash for users), after that i have flash and it works.

[jr2]

As far as pirating Windows goes, if you mean XP, it's easy as pie... just extremely hard to find the solution that works.  The solution that works is as easy as one-two-three... I've done it.  (I explained in another thread; XP Pro that I bought kept asking me to reactivate every like 3 days and it sucked because every time I sneezed near my hardware, Windows put up a shrieking fit... so I had had enough of that BS.)  XP Pro Corporate, + keygen + WGA crack = done.  But I had to try about 10 cracks before finding one that wasn't a virus and actually worked.  (I can use Windows update & M$ says I'm golden.  )

[Nuke]

all you really need is an iso of the enterprise edition. wich is activation free. to update just apply the deployable service pack bundle. i dont use a majority of the windows apps anyway. for example i use notepad++ over notepad and wordpad. i even have a profile set up for fs table files which colorcodes tags and variables. i use winamp for audio, and firefox as a browser. i still use things like the calculator and windows movie maker, but very rarely. all the windows apps on vista seem to suck and most of them arent reverse compatable. it doesnt even have conf and i dont think meeting place is reverse compatable. then i use pidgin for a messanger.

i wish microsoft would quit bloating up my system with utilities i will never use. i have to pay  for programmer time on that ****. what they should do is provide the os and stick all that other crap in a plus pack. the only reason i got vista ultimate is because i figure the networking code in home or basic would be intentionally crippled. this is why i really like the idea of reactos. i no longer have any confidence left in windows, its just every bad design philosophy repeated.

[S-99]

Windows including too much software making it too bloated? The only really cool way to handle is like you said. If ms includes like a plus pack, or rather just includes a second cd in the box with your installation disc.

That's the way ubuntu does it. They have the install cd, which after you're done installing only has the necessary basic software you need (media player, web browser, office software, browse networks, and multi-instant messenger, there's some extra apps, but not many, the primary kubuntu install cd is beautifully not bloated out the ass like say mepis with software i'm not going to use), and if you want extra apps and features or perform more robust of an install you pop in the second cd.

Windows could be less bloated by including the software most everyone isn't going to use like windows movie maker, games, msn explorer, and put it on a secondary cd in the box for windows along with the install cd which would just have the bare essentials on it. Well, people do play the games, and use windows movie maker, but it'd provide for less of a bloated install by putting all of microsofts non chelant software on another cd users can pop in later if they find out they want it or need it.