alanwilliamson
They claim ubuntu is the easiest Linux distribution to get to grips with. It just works was a tag line from an older version I believe. Being a long term Redhat/Fedora user I consider myself way above average when it comes to handling Linux. So getting ubuntu installed and running on my desktop should be a piece of cake then? aaah no.
Infact, to tell you the truth its been one frustration after another.
On the plus side of things, I can confirm that it detected all my hardware including soundcard and network cards and popped me into a relatively high resolution straight out of the gate. Although in all fairness, Fedora managed the same. After a little Googling, I did see some others in equal bewilderment as to the ease of ubuntu, with a similar experience from Ed Bott over at ZDNET.
I've tried ubuntu and the results for me at least aren't good. I will go back to Fedora and actually get some billable hours clocked up. If ubuntu works for you, then my hat (red?) is off to you.
Infact, to tell you the truth its been one frustration after another.
.
- FireFox comes pre-installed at version 1.5.0.4; yet it cannot download any file, popping up a yellow window stating "XML Parsing Error: syntax error". At first I thought this was just a one-off site that was causing this error (SourceForge) but no, it was every site. I have to resort to wget for downloading files.
- Granted you can install Eclipse 3.1 via the built menu system. However, it doesn't work since there is no Java installed in the underlying system. I since discover there is a Java installed (1.4) but Eclipse can't find it.
- Installing Java 1.5 proves to be a nightmare. I finally find a HowTo on JavaLobby, that first advises I start vi'ing files (wait a minute, isn't ubuntu suppose to be for dummies .. vi?) adding in more repositories for the apt-get tool to find Java. After going through this, everything seems to install with no errors. Except now, if I hit javac i get the 1.5 version, but java is still 1.4! So the path is all screwed up.
- Next is to try and access some Windows shares via SMB. Ubuntu comes with a nice desktop to allow me to browse to them and access them via the smb:// URL. However, the software to allow me to mount the remote partition is not with the standard bundle. Looking at the official guide, this is not going to be a trivial task for the non-Linux user! Don't wish to point fingers here, but Fedora can do this straight out of the box with no faffing around whatsoever.
On the plus side of things, I can confirm that it detected all my hardware including soundcard and network cards and popped me into a relatively high resolution straight out of the gate. Although in all fairness, Fedora managed the same. After a little Googling, I did see some others in equal bewilderment as to the ease of ubuntu, with a similar experience from Ed Bott over at ZDNET.
I've tried ubuntu and the results for me at least aren't good. I will go back to Fedora and actually get some billable hours clocked up. If ubuntu works for you, then my hat (red?) is off to you.
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- Published:
7:08 PM GMT, Monday, 14 August 2006 - Categories:
Technical - Tags:
ubuntu installation linux java - Comments:
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Tell me about it.... I have been using Fedora 6 on a Desktop machine and decided to install Ubuntu 6.10 on my laptop for the sake of seeing another Linux installation.
I have had the worst problem with the vi editor. I enter a document and when I tried to move around with my direction arrows I get A, B, C, and D. I also really don't like the sudo permissions of the first created user and the my Ubuntu installation failed to add a "User and Groups" option to my System Preferences menu. Rather than seeking an "easier" linux I will try out Madriva or got back to Fedora 6.Sorry about your problems, but let me tell you about my experience. Differently from you, I had no linux experience at all. I installed the server version of Ubuntu 6.06, and found myself without a desktop (of course!). In a matter of minutes i installed gnome-desktop and with a couple of synaptic hours I had a wonderful system perfectly running. I have since followed a number of tutorials that helped me install all that is not in the main repository (universe, multiverse, additional software and so on): everything worked with an incredible easiness. I started having problems only when trying the experimental compiz versions that are actively developed in these days by the group at compiz.net, but this is hardly surprising. Never had a single problem with firefox, which acts exactly as my windows version does. I don't remember what I had to do to install java, but frankly it didn't seem so complex: did you follow the ubuntu starter guide? It's a collection of tricks for having things like flash, a pdf reader and so on running. Java is in there, I'm sure.
I've managed to setup Java on Kubuntu. I've collected a few useful links about this over the last few months:
http://www.evolutionnext.com/blog/2006/06/27/1151429024151.html http://http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free/s/sun-java5/ http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/debianjava.htm MatsA theory about your Firefox problem...I've seen similar things a while ago. In my case it was when I opened a profile created with FF1.5 using FF1.0.x. I wonder if something similar has happened, a version change, or just random corruption, caused it to flake out. I'd try creating a new profile and see if that helps. I use FF on Ubuntu and have never seen that problem.
As for installing Java, it's not hard, but it's not obvious either, which can cause confusion and wrong paths. Here are instructions I wrote up that may be of use (and will fix the 'java' being 1.4 while 'javac' is 1.5 problem) http://www.kallisti.net.nz/EMusicJ/InstallingJava