[GRLUG] My Ubuntu Trial

Mon May 15 22:25:48 EDT 2006

Dude, like, KDE is SOOO much better than gnome.

I to am running a mandrake -> Kubuntu.  I got fed up with the
inability of Mandriva to upgrade only using urpmi and I heard good
things about apt.  Unfortunately I had to upgrade Ubuntu by wiping and
reinstalling, just like Mandrake.

I came to the realization that the inability to have a graceful
upgrade was do to my insistence of playing around with the newest
versions of programs and DE's and adding extra repositories.  Oh well,
I'm having fun.

Did I mention KDE is better than gnome:)

On 5/15/06, Godwin <geektoyz at gmail.com> wrote:
> Heh!  The box relaying this mailing list was a "Ron special".  I liked
> the name "shinobu" so I kept it.  It too was a Mandriva box which was
> baptised and reborn as Debian.  :-)  I think, though, Mandriva and
> SuSE had the nicest non-default KDE "look-n-feel" I've seen.  I'm more
> of a plain vanilla desktop user though so Slax is appealing for KDE.
> Still, I prefer <gulp> Gnome.
>
> Shall we start a KDE vs. Gnome flame fest?
>
> No.  Not really.
>
> G-
>
>
> On 5/15/06, Roberto Villarreal <rvillarreal at mktec.com> wrote:
> > That was a nice write-up Ron.  Informative, and void of flames.  It would be
> > interesting to hear others' accounts of attempting a side-by-side comparison
> > like you did.
> >
> > Though, for what it's worth, I was the recipient of a Mandriva box (from
> > you)... I ended up having to wipe up and put Debian on because I couldn't get
> > something to work.  It had something to do with configuring stuff with the
> > GUI, as the box was for my computer-dumb father.  I was able to get it to
> > work fine with Debian's GUI equivalent though :-).
> >
> > Roberto
> >
> > On Monday 15 May 2006 7:05 pm, Ron Lauzon wrote:
> > > I posted this to my blog, but since that's mainly for friends and
> > > relatives to keep up with what's going on in my life, I think I'll post
> > > it here for you to see as well.  Give me a moment to put on my asbestos
> > > undershorts.  8-)
> > >
> > >
> > >       My Ubuntu Trial
> > >
> > > While at Penguicon, I was around a whole lot of people who were
> > > promoting Ubuntu Linux. They seemed to really like it, so I decided to
> > > give it a try here at home. So I wiped Akane and reloaded her with Ubuntu.
> > >
> > > First impressions are that it's very polished. They spent a whole lot of
> > > time making the installation painless for many users. Hardware support
> > > seems very good.
> > >
> > > But can it do everything that Mandriva can? I decided to find out.
> > >
> > > First off, I did not turn Akane into a "Motoko with Ubuntu". I only took
> > > it to a point where I was sure that I could get everything running. So
> > > once I reached a certain level of functionality, I simply verified that
> > > someone else got X working on Ubuntu and that they described what they
> > > did (like VMWare, for example) and left it at that.
> > >
> > > Installation:
> > > At first, both Ubuntu and Mandriva are pretty much tied. There are
> > > differences (Ubuntu gets most of its packages off the web, while
> > > Mandriva has the option of getting all the packages from the set of
> > > install CDs). But as far as ease of installation, it's about the same -
> > > for an normal workstation.
> > >
> > > Installing the more advanced things (like Apache) was a bit more
> > > problematic on Ubuntu. Not that it was hard, but with Mandriva, I simply
> > > need to select "Web server" from the main installation screen and 90% of
> > > the packages that I need are installed. Ubuntu requires more attention
> > > and knowledge to know what packages to install - but, then, anyone doing
> > > the install should be able to figure that out.
> > >
> > > Another issue is that many things that I consider "necessary" aren't
> > > installed by default and there is no appearant way to install them. One
> > > was MP3 support. It simply didn't work "out of the box" like Mandriva.
> > > Now, once online, you can find very simple instructions on how to
> > > install MP3 support, but still it doesn't "just work" like Mandriva.
> > >
> > > Partitioning was also different. In Mandriva, the standard partitions
> > > are /, swap and /home. This works very nice because the vast majority of
> > > stuff that you want to save between installations will be on /home. So
> > > you can safely wipe / and install a new version. Ubuntu only did a / and
> > > swap, making it more difficult to load a new version without having to
> > > backup/restore the /home directories.
> > >
> > > Hardware support:
> > > A plus for Ubuntu was that it supported my Palm via USB upon install.
> > > Mandriva still doesn't do that - even with the latest version. However,
> > > a minus was that Ubuntu didn't support the onboard sound on Akane while
> > > Mandriva did. This was minor since I just installed the old Sound
> > > Blaster card and everything worked.
> > >
> > > Security:
> > > Ubuntu does security a little differently.
> > >
> > > With Mandriva, on install, I am prompted for the root password. Then a
> > > regular user is created. This regular user is not privileged in any way.
> > >
> > > With Ubuntu, the root account is not active - you can't sign in. Only a
> > > single "regular" user account is created. This first account gets sudo
> > > anything access. So effectively, this "normal" account is priviledged -
> > > with only the user's password for the security.
> > >
> > > This is out of the ordinary and really doesn't offer any extra
> > > protection. On Ubuntu you would need to create another normal user that
> > > is non-prilileged to get what I would consider to be a secure system.
> > >
> > > Not to say that sudo is bad. But as a replacement for root/su, it just
> > > doesn't cut it.
> > >
> > > Applications:
> > > Everything that I needed worked (or at least someone showed that they
> > > worked). Some applications (like the latest Firefox and Thunderbird)
> > > required special libraries to be loaded - but worked out of the box with
> > > Mandriva.
> > >
> > >
> > > Bottom line:
> > > I cannot recommend Ubuntu, but neither can I tell someone to avoid it.
> > > It offers no noticeable advantage over Mandriva, but neither does it
> > > have any significant drawbacks.
> > >
> > > For schools, Ubuntu is probably a good choice. For "normal users" Ubuntu
> > > would also be a good choice - but only if an expert is setting up the
> > > system.
> > > For power users, normal users without an expert and businesses, Mandriva
> > > is probably a better choice.
> > >
> > > The Mom Factor (i.e. if I were to build a system for my Mom):
> > > I would choose Mandriva over Ubuntu - for 2 main reasons:
> > > 1. (the biggest) it's the one that I am most familiar with and, so, I
> > > would find long distance support to be easier.
> > > 2. Mandriva is closer to the "it just works" ideal than Ubuntu.
> > >
> > > For reference, I am compairing Mandriva 2006 Power Pack with Ubuntu 5.10.
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
>
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