[GRLUG] My Ubuntu Trial

Tue May 16 08:28:47 EDT 2006

> Is enlightment light on resources?  It seems to pretty to be light 
> weight:)  If I need light weight I tend to use Fluxbox.

I used fluxbox for about a year when E was having some issues with redhat. 
It was nice, very fast, but only about 20% of the features that E16 has.

If you truly want/need speed and light weight, Flux is a great way to go. 
But if you have a reasonably tough box and simply don't want to use it all 
up on your DE, E rocks.

>
>
>
> On 5/15/06, Benjamin Flanders <flanderb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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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>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Ubber::Geek
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Share and Enjoy
>>
>
>
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Topher
Manager of Internet Services
Cornerstone University Radio

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