Ubuntu 11.10 thread

Myself, I do not see anything wrong with Shuttleworth being in it for the money. Why shouldn't people who contribute to Linux get paid?

 

Because it becomes less about what is best for the linux community, and more about his own agenda.

 

Sorry mate you saying that you still you using the default open source drivers or the propriety ones? Might try using the open source ones, catalyst 11.9 is giving me heaps of problems.

 

I gave up on Ubuntu after a month of struggling. Should never have upgraded from 11.04....

I've spent all day toying with #! crunchbang and my god it's a ton of fun

 

Hey guys got some great news for those with ati + gnome 3.2 problems

[Phoronix] AMD Catalyst 11.10 Linux Driver Released

has a preview (?) of the cat 11.10 drivers, and after installing them I am experiencing none of the corruption problems I had with cat 11.9

Workflow is much smoother than open source drivers too!

Really recommend giving them a shot!

 

Crunchbang is my favorite distro of the last several years. Their is just something about it that is so damn cool. That and it is based on Debian which is fast,fast,fast. I tried Archbang for 6 months, but I prefer '.deb' package format.

Thanks for that, will update now and check back to see if this fixes a number of issues I had with 11.8,9 -- using opensource currently.

 

Confirm that 11.10 Catalyst work now with gnome-shell, but I am still out on whether they are better than the opensource alternative.

 

Have you found any problems with them (11.10?) and what opensource drivers were you running previously?

The main problem I had with the open source drivers is that my fan in my laptop would go crazy while running ubuntu, its much quieter with the propriety drivers.

HOWEVER, cat 11.10 is still not perfect, occasionally gnome shell randomly resets it self (hasn't happened for a while now, but not sure what brings it on), and a couple of annoying glitches, such as window movements being quite jerky (i.e. dragging them around) and another (bug?) that when I right click/popup appears, the region of the notification flickers and shows the desktop

Kinda stupid problems to have, but they are the main problems.

 

Same here. Got bored and decided to do the upgrade to 11.10 on my xubuntu x64. So much stuff changed, terrible login screen, slower bootup, screen flickering. I wiped it and am now trying out SalineOS x64. So far the only issue is to fix my function hotkey to control screen brightness. I get the graphic popup, but the brightness doesn't change.

 

I tried to install it on my averatec 3200 but, cause of the loose power cord it made it more frustrated. If you look at my profile you will see it will not boot the any cd.That loose wire is causing problems on top of the problems when I tried to install 11.10. It would instal partially and freeze, nothing would work except rebooting. I have time just not the money to buy like system 76 new laptops the specs are way cool man. I really want to support linux; opensource; Electronic frontier foundation; conical.

 

Thats an awfully old laptop.
Why don't you find something more reliable, at least a little newer and more upgradeable like a thinkpad t43 with ddr2 RAM or if you can afford it maybe even a dual core hp/compaq n6400. All can be found for about 100$ or under.

The system76 thing is silly if you just want something usable, and I'm not sure if ubuntu is even supposed to run on the specs of that averatec. BTW Always try Xubuntu for increased speed, just install xubuntu-desktop with synaptic.

 

you didn't mention how much ram that laptop has. ubuntu 11.10 requires 384mb ram to install from the regular live cd. imo, 11.10 probably isn't a good choice for that laptop due to it's bloat. I would recommend antix because it runs good on low ram and is still an active distro. get the regular M11-686 version and when installing setup a 2nd partition for swap with 1-2x the amount of ram you have.

 

I've read that there are advantages of going with Mint linux over Ubuntu, can someone confirm?

 

Mint is basically a more polished and customized version of ubuntu.
With mint you already get the codecs installed for playing most media formats, and you get the mint menu which basically has a "favorites" area for your preferred apps. For ubuntu, all you really have to do is type 1 line of code in the terminal to install the "restricted formats" and it will install the codecs too.
The biggest difference today is the desktop environment. ubuntu has changed its standard desktop to its own unity interface, which previously was only used on its netbook edition. This has gained a lot of criticism, more that i can begin to write here. Mint 11 has kept with the traditional 2.x gnome desktop which is extremely popular, even though gnome is moving on to 3.x which is different and has gained criticism also.

It's also worth noting you can install or download different desktops for either mint or ubuntu. you can get KDE, XFCE, LXDE, GNOME, and more.

Your best bet is to download the cd image of both, and either burn to cd, install to usb drive, or run in a virtualbox to test them out and see what you like. also visit distrowatch.com to learn more about each distribution.

 

Just wanted to say catalyst 11.11 have been released... any one using ubuntu/gnome 3 try them? Has some of the glitching (e.g. popup menus) been fixed yet?

Gave up on gnome 3 + ati, running kubuntu atm.

 

Was looking at Distrowatch. If you look at the past 30 days data, Ubuntu is now No. 4... Time to move to something else?

 

Mint has some nice customizations, especially in their Debian Editions. What really bothers me, though, is that adsense hijacks your google searches.

 

I believe that has been changed in 'Lisa'.

 

OT but Mint 12 is using Mate Desktop UI which is a variant of Ubuntu Unity. It doesn't look too bad but it has had some bugs like a 100% pegged CPU. The good news is you can switch back to gnome.

 

I wouldn't judge it by popularity alone. I use Arch/Bang and it is not to near the top.

If it does what you want it to do, use it. Trends are really nothing to go by. Not to mention that distrowatch only counts page hit. So it could be more people are not seeking anything else and are just happy users.

 

@corbin

I pretty much stick to Ubuntu because it is what I recommend to friends. Well, I have gotten three converts in the past year all on Ubuntu. My heart is more with Fedora I guess. It is more of a challenge. My Linux bus is my fun box. When I got a new laptop last year and there seemed to be no point selling my old one, I got back into Linux.

Now I am torn between sticking to Ubuntu and recommending it to others. Or just going to Fedora and not worry about trying to get people on Linux.

 

I'm going to lend you some advise, take this as you will.

There really is no difference between one distribution of Linux vs the other. What you end up with is how does it accomplish the end result? What I mean is, if your a (insert environment here) user, they all have them with slight tweaks.

Fedora may be more of a challenge. All set up and spending time getting it setup what would separate Fedora from Ubuntu? Ubuntu will give you more out the box then Fedora as far as ease of installing mp3 support and whatnot. So my point is, on a finished the way you want it system, there would be little difference.

Now we could talk about principles that are different. The core philosophy of Fedora is very different then Ubuntu. If the core values of what X distro hopes to accomplish suits you then use it in that manner with that in mind.

Another factor is tools. Surely Fedora is very different then Ubuntu or SuSe. But you have to remember they all in the end accomplish the same result, some easier and some harder.

That's like me using Arch/Bang. I like hand configuration options and they are easy for me. I like the rolling release model, I like the KISS method. I also know that in the end I get exactly what I want and nothing more or less, this is nice. Sure, if I installed Gnome it may indeed look the same as (insert distro here) version of Gnome, I would however argue I can tune my system to a finer degree and make it faster then X distro (except maybe Gentoo, been there done that and over it lol).

It's all about choice and that is good.

 

On your first point, agreed. Once set up there is really no difference between Fedora and Ubuntu. Ubuntu has better fonts, no matter how much I tweak Fedora and wireless connects much faster F15. I feel that Gnome 3 runs a bit smoother on Fedora, but I cannot confirm. Fedora reports crashed and problems more frequently which I report. Strangely, the crash does not affect what I am actually doing. In the end very small things...

I guess this may sound strange... when I got back to Linux last year I was happy enough to have a stable Linux Install. Than I went to 11.04, F15 and 11.10 Beta 1 and 2 and Final. I have F16 on my HD waiting to be installed. Maybe I am getting to this point that installing and setting up Linux is starting to become a hobby? Other times I feel like jumping from one install to another is a serious waste of time.

I do not go install custom rom's on my phone, since I need it for work, and am very conservative with what I do with the Mac.

Am rambling. Thanks again.

By the way. Nice little site you started up there.

 

I tried Fedora 16. It was really cool but no amount of tweaking helped with the fonts which was a deal breaker for me. Using Mint 12 now and they are much better.

 

Yup, although I read of this way to get Ubuntu Fonts on Fedora 16. Mint 12 might be another way to go.

 

Thank you.

Trying to find time to keep it updated is tough. Just did an article on .bashrc if interested.

Thanks again.

 

A little (LOT) over my head... but with site like that, maybe not for too long

 

I hope I can help.

If you are interested in learning, why not try installing a distro that will not hold your hand? Arch would teach you a lot and really put you in the fast lane of learning. Plus tuning your system becomes a lot of fun and just pushing things to the limit never gets boring.

I would also recommend Gentoo or LFS, but I will refrain as I don't want to send you into shock .

I would be willing to help out if you needed. All the above have great documentation however.

I challenge you to unlock the true power of your machine .

 

Arch has Gnome 3.2... might just take that challenge.

Christmas is slow in my line of business... if it take me weeks to get it running I do have another laptop. Software looks like it will be hard to install, compile your own... but I am a happy camper with a decent browser, LibreOffice, Dropbox and Shotwell.

Okay... downloading from an Australian mirror site...

 

Great!

Open another system and check out the https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners'_Guide.

The documentation is great and as long as you follow it to the letter, you will be fine.

EDIT: Just so you know, Arch is a binary distribution. When you get into the AUR then you compile. You will learn to love the AUR. But thats another subject.

 

Since I'm running Linux on my Averatec with relatively old hardware (AMD Turion 64 1.6GHz single core, 1.2GB DDR RAM), I've been looking for ways to make things feel snappier. I've been running Ubuntu on it since 10.04, but since then it's grown noticeably more sluggish (especially with Unity and all).

I then tried out Xubuntu and was amazed at how much faster it was. Did a quick reformat and now I'm running Xubuntu 11.10!

 

Hi! I want to try Ubuntu, I already have an image ready on a DVD. If there's a problem with my hardware, can I just shut down the computer and go back to Windows without any problems?

So basically, what's the worst-case scenario when booting from a live CD?

 

If you boot Ubuntu from Live DVD/USB flash and did not install it. It will *not* affect your windows at all. Simply, restart without the DVD/USB and you will login to windows normally.

 

When I go back to Windows, what will happen to the installed drivers on Ubuntu?

 

There won't be any drivers installed. It's Live CD remember. It just boots from the files it has on CD/DVD/USB.

 

If you want to keep your files and settings in Ubuntu saved after reboot *without* affecting windows you can install Ubuntu fully on a USB flash.

Personally, this what I have now. Ubuntu is fully installed and running from a 16GB USB flash and simply I can boot from this flash and have full running Ubuntu (I am also able to access windows files) without installing anything on my hard drive or affecting windows.

If you just run from Live CD/USB without installation every time you reboot it will run as a *fresh* copy

 

Ok, I'm just worried because I have read that Linux doesn't run well on HP with switchable graphics.

 

That is true, the Nvidia switchable graphics systems dont run well with linux.

But the worst case is that, it will use only one of the gpus, or may have some overheating problems, which will make it shutdown, with no harm done.

You may be able to disable it in the BIOS settings before loading up linux.

 

Give wubi a try?

 

Catalyst 11.12 is out... but apparently gnome 3 is still unusable... when will amd fix this !!

 

I created an iSCSI mount, and put the newest Ubuntu beta, Precision, on one of my D830's yesterday.

A few notes:

a) Everything works great out of the box. The iSCSI capability can saturate the Gig-E ethernet, even with my old CPU.

b) Very fast.

c) Booting through PXE works great.

d) Working on trying to get the laptop booting through an ath9k Wi-Fi card, which apparently is possible with the latest iPXE. Eventually would like to append iPXE to my D830's BIOS as an option ROM.

On that note, anyone know what sort of tools are required to work with the BIOS on the Dell Latitude D830's? I believe it is a Phoenix BIOS, but I'm not sure. Google searches seem to only turn up people hacking the BIOS' with the view towards piracy or bypassing MS registration codes, which isn't what I'm interested in.

 

Installed it on my 10-year old ThinkPad and everything is super smooth. No need to tweak drivers.



-- sent from my IBM ThinkPad R40 --