Oneiric Ocelot

k.p.h

What a crash fest .! Seriously, why the switch to Unity and Gnome Shell is about as buggy as Candymans underpants. Compiz is a mess now.

Obviously having some problems, actually on my third re-install in 24hrs

I just can't figure out the direction they are planning on taking with Unity, is it more user friendly ?

Silver Clown

I'm not a massive fan of unity or gnome 3 tbh..... they frustrate the living daylights out of me! Personally, I don't consider unity to be user friendly, well for the desktop or laptop at least anyway. I feel unity is better suited to touch screen or mobile devices.

I no longer use ubuntu these days because of unity and how buggy it is. Maybe try one of the other desktop environments if you want to stay with ubuntu though.

k.p.h

You know what I was just thinking that it felt as if I using Android on a big screen..! I must say I got a good bit of work done between the re-installs but that was just down to the usual linux usability not Unity.

Maybe they are trying to break into a different segment of the market. What other environments would you recommend ? TBH I really liked 10.04 with Compiz, it worked well, Productive and Compiz added a bit of a fun factor to it with the effects.

I'm having trouble getting anything going really with the ATI drivers, Old Gnome, new Gnome, Unity all failing when I try anything beyond the standard.. And a simple copy/paste was crashing CodeLite on me earlier too ..

Stuxnet

k.p.h wrote: »

I just can't figure out the direction they are planning on taking with Unity,

didnt you get the memo

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/820

they are going down the mobile route, hence the tablet display, ive given up on ubuntu, mint 12 is ok, but kinda hate the route gnome 3 have gone also

settled my ass on mint debian: xfce, never going back, it rawks

k.p.h

No missed that one Haha, It actually makes sense, but dose not help me much.. I wonder are they going to completely leave the desktop behind as they focus their attention elsewhere .? And I wonder what type of community support they are going to get, I imagine the Ubuntu forums will be barren places when all the posts are going to be from 12yo girls wondering why they can't log into facebook..!

Just spent the last hour getting KDE going with Ubuntu, looks and acts OK, not great but better than Unity. Should probably just have went and got Kbuntu. Don't know if I would have it in me to get xfce going now. Maybe next week or something spent too much time arsing around as it is.

I'm very disappointed TBH, Ah well, maybe my girlfriend will like the new Ubuntu. :rolleyes:

Stuxnet

you could always go back to ubuntu 10.04 long term support, with the traditional desktop, it'll be supported with fixes & updates till April 2013

i find xfce on xubuntu horrible..

mint 11.04 is rock solid, and supported till Oct 2012

infact any linux mint respin is usually awesome

Silver Clown

I'm using the KDE version of PC Linux OS atm. KDE 4 is fine these days since they have fixed the bugs that plagued it in the early days. LXDE isn't too bad either if you prefer using gtk applications.

I quite like Mint as well. When they get the KDE version of the Debian Edition released, I'll be switching to that.

k.p.h

I'v just replaced Ubuntu with Mint, had to do it. Going to see how xfce works with it for now. The thing about the debian edition,well, basically is it a pain in the arse sorting it out and getting it up and running..? Graphics drivers are always an issue etc .

Silver Clown

I don't need any proprietary drivers for graphics so I don't know what they're like to install, although I do need to install wireless drivers on my laptop. I find it easier to install the wireless drivers in the Debian Edition of Mint that what I do in Debian itself since make, build-essential and a compiler are included in Mint but not Debian (it's strange Debian don't include those tools IMO).

Anyway, if you're using the XFCE version of Mint, you're using the Debian Edition. They don't make an Ubuntu version with XFCE anymore.

PrzemoF

k.p.h wrote: »

Obviously having some problems, actually on my third re-install in 24hrs

Hey, why do you need to reinstall? It's linux - try to find out what's wrong!

Johnboy1951

repeating the same actions (reinstalling the same OS) and expecting a different result does not seem reasonable .... so why not try a different 'flavour' of Linux? ..... there are hundreds to choose from ..... quite a number NOT based on 'Bunty' ...... which may play better with your hardware ....

k.p.h

I was working under the confines of just having a HDMI out for display. So when it went arse up, well nothing to look at, nothing to fix.!

I have Mint(not DB version) up and running with KDE, but it boots with no keyboard and mouse so I have to boot previous version for it to work. Works great so far as in I'm able to do anything I want bar get the sound out through HDMI. Obvious issues really are with the ATI drivers.

My approach probably is not the best either I tend to try to bludgeon things into working.

I think the whole issue with Linux is plugins and drivers, The very thing that makes it great e.g open source, free is held back by the fact that it has to interact with hardware and software that is not open source and free. With particular emphasis on graphics.

I think I'm going to hang onto this for a while , and as SC mentioned their is a KDE version of Mint Debian in the works at the moment so I think I will wait for that, rolling updates and KDE polished up by Mint. Sounds like it might be the most attractive and functional disto in the future.

One thing for sure its entertaining anyway, lot of Linux soul searching. Feel like a girl in a shop trying on dresses, dose my bum look big in this one

PrzemoF

OSI wrote: »

This is both the blessing and the curse of Linux. While it is great that I can dive in and find out exactly what is happening to the system, tweak it, fix it, etc. I do not want to have to spend hours working on a fresh install just to get the thing to a usable state.

Linux will never get to become a mainstream desktop OS while that continues. And the attitude some exude of "It's Linux, stop bitching it doesn't work and fix it yourself" is just utter bollox tbh.

Blessing if you have evough knowledge, curse if you don't.

I prefer "It's Linux, stop bitching it doesn't work and send me your dmesg, so I could help you"

<flame war mode on>
I hope you're not suggesting that windows "just works" :eek:
<flame war mode off>

croo

Is it really a linux problem?
After all, there are a few million using the android "distro" with no problem!
It seems to me that when you run the operating system on hardware designed for it, for you can expect few problems but when you install another, you can, but there are often issues.

I seem to have been lucky myself because all my systems/hardware run without problems. Mind you, I do buy hardware with linux in mind so perhaps it's not just luck.

Many people are "test driving" linux on any old hardware and surprised/disappointed when problems arise. But is it the problem of the OS really? Like I said, when we see distros deployed on hardware they're intended for, as with the android hardware, results are impressive.

By chance I just spent 1 day so far trying to fix a notebook for a friend. They had the great of idea of wiping their HD to reinstall windows from scratch. Unfortunately they didn't have the OEM disk to re-install but rather used a basic version of windows. Nothing works. And with no networking he couldn't get online to download the drivers... even if he knew what he was looking for - which he doesn't.

I popped in a USB with ubuntu live and it found all the hardware.. then I could download the drivers and put them on his windows C: drive ready to install from windows. Luckily the OEM (lenovo) provides all the drivers on their website so I am not scouring the web. But even still with every install there is the seemingly mandatory reboot which means that getting his system back to a fully functional one is a laborious and time consuming task.

I think know which OS was easiest to install!

Johnboy1951

I had to install Win 7 on a Vaio laptop recently ..... without either Win or Sony disks
It took two full days connected to the internet to update everything on the Win install BEFORE any applications were installed ... such as Firefox, VLC, Skype, Pidgin etc.
Even then there are some parts that appear to need some Sony driver or other but it could not be found - by me or by the update thingy in Win.
One pleasant (if it can be called that) surprise ... it successfully registered without problems after the install.

I did a dual boot on that laptop, using PCLinuxOS KDE.
It installed in 15 mins, and in another 15 mins was fully updated ...... operating system AND installed applications. The required apps were already included in the ISO, so nothing to install at that time.

So yes ...... a huge difference in the install experience. This was the first Win 7 install I had done without the OEM software.

It is really annoying when Win reboots ...... hangs while going down for some time, doing something about the updates ........ and then hangs again while doing more stuff with the updates ....... except it was for my son's partner I would not have stuck with it .... but the good news is that she is using PCLinuxOS since she got it back and has not found anything she wishes to do that cannot be done in Linux.
Of course it defaults to booting PCLinuxOS with a short time out

boomslang

I have found ubuntu 11.10 to be ok - admittedly after I added my tweaks etc. (gnome-shell, icon resize, login screen wallpaper changed, window controls back on and to the right etc) Mint 12 while to be commended has tried to do too much at once to please all it's users. So right now for me I'm finding ubuntu a slightly better experience. Although I did prefer opensuse but find the current 12.1 bad.
So for now ubuntu 11.10 will do the job