Opinion on Ubuntu.

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Master of Master Baiters Joined: 27 Jan 2008 Posts: 589

My laptop is infected something called M$ windows, Laughing

I was thinking about giving Ubuntu a try. Whats your opinion on it.

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 1:59 am

I run Ubuntu on my laptop in a VMWare virtual machine under XP Home. It is sleek, clean, and customizable. I wasn't sold on other versions of Linux, but Ubuntu is really easy to like.

There is apparently a version that you can install on a bootable CD, which you can use to try it out. I just looked on the website and couldn't find it, but if someone else can tell you where to find it, you can try it without risk.

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 2:46 am

https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ lets you request a free Ubuntu live CD. I grabbed mine from here. Still playing around with it, so I don't really have an opinion about it just yet. But, hey, they don't charge to ship the CD to you, so you aren't out anything. Smile

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 3:47 am

Ubuntu Live - that's it. Here is the link:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 8:24 am

Try the Live CD! It'll test all your hardware and see if it'll play nicely with the OS.

I use Ubuntu exclusively and have done for about 3 years now. If you are not sure, or are a gamer, then I would suggest that you try dual-booting for a while.This will allow you to boot from Windows or Ubuntu. For further info on this option go here

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 9:34 am

I'm no geek, but I now use XP for my main desktop (on which I type this) and Ubuntu on my site-killing laptop (IBM T41) - I did this in case I come across any .exe-type nasties on the lad's sites.

Apart from an initial issue where I had to manually configure the screen resolution, which completely screwed the boot-up until fixed (I posted in the Ubuntu forums and had an answer within 2 days) I'm pretty impressed. Mouse, USB, wireless, touchpad, sound, suspend, power monitoring and battery management all work as if native. I haven't tried hibernate. The graphics driver for the IBM screen and card (1024 x 76whateveritis) seem a little clunky, but I've not really tried other drivers to try to improve this as it's OK for what I want.

Laptop can network with my desktop via Ethernet or wireless, so I can swap files. Updates get notified automatically when I'm on-line, and I have never had to reboot after installing. OpenOffice works well, as does Firefox (slightly different way of customising, but not so different to be an issue and plenty of help on the 'net). Very quick boot compared with XP, no need for a firewall or AV (I sit behind a NATS router), and it asks for a password if I or a program tries to do anything requiring admin privileges, so it's pretty secure.

Basically, I boot it, use it and shut it down when I'm finished.

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 10:28 am

Ubuntu's well worth a look. I use it under VMWare on OS X and it's fast and very stable. If you are a gamer them you'll need to dual boot with Windoze as Linux is not a gaming OS.

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

Smax rodus on the hand! Not a gaming platform indeed.

Linux is an open box - if you dont like one set of bits pull them out, and stick in a new set of bits, if you want to play windows games get the latest build of wine, copy the dll's from xp etc before to a CD, then splash em into linux wine build.

Oh and rockstar GTA IV is playable (without freezes on linux) with the xbox emulator.

You only need to find a distro of linux you like, to suddenly discover the real power of linux, total control, you can change every single bit of it - nothing is off limits, so once you begin with something you like a good course is to learn programming - usually c++ but many linux come with there own c engines anyway, so you can really get into the guts of the os - even recompile the kernel if you get memory errors etc and map over them Razz

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 7103 Location: Yes

I played with Kubuntu for a while (I just preferred its look and feel to straight Ubuntu).

Pros: clean, fast and it doesn't crash

Cons: takes a while to get used to; many hours spent installing the scripts to get it customized; no iTunes; limited gaming

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 12:39 pm

Actually Digital One you make a good point. I've been doing a lot of cider wraps for OS X and it works well so the WINE idea is a good one.

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 12:44 pm

Just a word of warning about the latest version of Ubuntu: If you have an Asus motherboard (especially in a laptop), you might run into problems with networking drivers. The previous version (Gutsy) doesnt have the same problems, and is still supported.

Other than that, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 12:47 pm

Having seen the Gadget show on channel 5 (UK) they are very excited about the product below - seems a good solution?

http://www.yoggie.com/gatekeeper-card-pro

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

amerdos - yoggie has a critical flaw, its a well known thing when people use one machine as a firewall and one clear pc - things undetected get in, and the device cant then get it back out again Sad

If yoggie was only a firewall then yup 5 G rating, but as an AV too - nope not powerful enough.

data -> scan [is detected?] -> access to pc

If at any point something brand new gets in yoggie would never know.

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 27 Jan 2008 Posts: 589

I just installed the live cd, very good o.s. Thumbs up

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

I had a word with a nice white hat i know, on his opinion of yoggie.

Yoggie - as a firewall os its good, but it is based on linux, hard to attack but not impossible - but as you normally have 2 usb's why not make it almost impossible for the top end hackers.

www.neuraliq.com (if used with yoggie - AND a top av product your machine would be inpenetrable for the forseeable future.)

apparently hackers dont like neuraliq on any system, it makes intrusion one hell of a difficult task - now nothing is impossible, its only a matter of time before a hacker can get round this new tech, but when the rules change as he tries it sure makes that time a long one - for now yoggie and neuraliq are listed as "impenatratable at this time" both do indeed have exploits, both have flaws and bugs and bits that are weak but when combined thats when the weakness of one is shielded by the strength of the other making it one hell of a tough nut.

On a downside my friendly white hat also said hackers would quickly work out the system, and take it as a personal challenge just to get inside, so whilst you might be fort knox of security - your also elevated as a "definate target"

his opinion, running yoggie and av is fine, just keep the thing updated all the time, as its a very juicy thing for hackers to target. atm, and if you want total security use neuraliq as well, but make sure you understand the logs it will generate.

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 8:46 pm

I am a long time Linux user ( Very Happy

from '98, and heard about it in '95-'96). Tried a lot of distributions, and although I'm not a Linux guru, at least I'm a savvy user.
Ubuntu and its variations are some of the friendliest desktop distro's I tried.
Very good start for beginners. Personally recommend Kubuntu, but this is my biased opinion since KDE was love at first sight.
For more advanced Linux users is not the best choice.

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 9:37 pm

I use Ubuntu at home and at work. I'm not even particularly geeky, i can do a bit of fairly confident command line stuff but that's as far as it goes.

Open-source apps designed for Linux often port poorly to Windows and suffer from all sorts of gripes. Ubuntu, on the other hand, is very secure, stable, good looking and well worth the effort.

Office: openoffice.org
publishing/datasheets/propaganda: Scribus
Photo editing: GIMP
Web: Firefox
Email: Thunderbird
chat: Pidgin
drawing: QCAD
Media; VLC/Mencoder
etc. All free to grab and use.

Don't use much more apart from these. I occasionally boot to windows for a couple of legacy M$ apps but grudgingly, and not very often.

There's even a CNC machine controller written into a variant of Ubuntu 6... Nice work Smile

It gets my vote anyway. Go Ubuntu.

Edit: Another very useful linux distro is Knoppix. It's intended for liveCD operation only and can read and write to NTFS partitions. an application calles Shred is built into it which overwrites hard drives with randomness as many times as you specify. It takes days but does a very good job of erasing sensitive stuff. There are other diagnostic/repair tools too which make it a great bet for sorting out a partially ruined hard drive.

And for the conspiracy theorists - Tinfoil Hat Linux. really.

Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 4:37 am

Ubuntu is good for the transition from windoz. It looks much like it, very popular. (I have tried it but don't like it). They also have taken many of the noob temptations to hurt the system away, like direct root access. I definitely recommend Kubuntu. It is much more of a all-in-one desktop than Ubuntu with Gnome. But in my opinion it is limited if you want to use Linux with all the power it is capable of.

System V types are the best trade off between power (geekiness) and user friendly. Redhat and Mandriva I can think at the moment.

Knoppix is very good. If you want hacker tools you should try the Knoppix STD disk. Every hacker program you could want on one disk. You do need to know the command line for that.

Suse and Debian are full power user oriented. I believe that Ubuntu is based off of Debian but I'm not sure.

10 point bonus question: Where did the name "Debian" come from?

Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 6:28 am

Please Sir, may i have a gold star?

Quote:

It comes from the names of the creator of Debian, Ian Murdock, and his wife, Debra

And you are quite right Sir, Ubuntu is indeed based on Debian.

Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 4:37 pm

DrWho wrote:

Suse

^^ My daily ride and very, very happy about it!

Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 5:10 pm

I have tinkered with Red Hat, Fedora Core, Mandrake, Debian, Slackware and Suse/openSuse. Right now I have openSuse in a dual boot configuration with Win XP. I think I might go back to Slackware, since it is a PITA to install the drivers for my ATI video card. Worked flawlessly wit the onboard GeForce 7050 video, gave me only headaches since I bought my ASUS HD3650 TOP.

Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 1:39 am

@Music Man
If you didn't google for it, I will add 10 to your points total we keep on everyone.

Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 6:34 am

Better take the 10 points off me now Embarassed

Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 12:20 am

I have gone back to Slackware, and everything went well, including the drivers for my ATI graphic card.