Ubuntu 8.10 Review
Submitted by jalbrigh on Tue, 12/23/2008 - 16:38
Ubuntu 8.10 (released 10/30/08) is the latest Ubuntu released by Canonical. Ubuntu strives to be a distro released that has the stability of Debian, meshed with more timely updates, and allows for proprietary solutions when necessary. The latest Ubuntu release improves on that tradition, however there are still a few hangups along the way.
I truly like the idea of Ubuntu. However, I personally don't like Gnome as much as KDE, and as such I use OpenSuSE which is a KDE based distro primarily. However, since being introduced to Ubuntu (at version 5.10) I've really liked some of the things they done to enhance the usability of Linux. Diversity is a good thing, and as such, I have several boxes that I use daily that are now Ubuntu. Naturally, when 8.10 was released, I rushed to download. Now having used it for a few weeks, this is what I think.
For testing, I installed Ubuntu on a Lenovo T61 Laptop with 4G RAM, a VMware Server Virtual Machine with 512M RAM, and upgraded an HP NC6000 Laptop with 512M RAM.
Installation Note that I used the LiveCD-based installation
The preffered method for installing Ubuntu has always been via LiveCD, so that is the method I used. The LiveCD takes a little while to load, as it sets up the operating environment. Once up though, you have a fully operation system, which is nice to preview any changes that have been made with the latest Ubuntu release. You also have full autonomy to do any disk partitioning you might want to do ahead of the installation process, which makes it a handy rescue disk as well, for both Windows and Linux hosts.
Once you're ready to install, just double click the install icon on the desktop. I believe it is also under the application menu as well. Then it's a very simple 7 step process to install. The one thing I really want to highlight about the installation process is the *slick* new partition manager graphics. Do the nice shaded gradients increase usability? Frankly, no. But it gives a definite immediate professional look of polish. From a usability stand point, if you are installing onto a machine that has an existing OS, it will prepare a suggested partition layout for you. But more importantly, it has a draggable bar, which allows you to resize how much space you want to give the Ubuntu disk with a graphical layout. This was one of my major gripes with Fedora 9, and OpenSuSE wasn't much better to be honest. This one screen makes a *huge* difference.
The rest of the installation process is easy to understand and fairly painless. The one thing I don't like is the inability to choose which packages/patterns you want to install. You get Ubuntu's "base" system, and can only customize after the installation has been completed. However, I believe you can choose packages if you install using the installation-only CD.
I also attempted an Upgrade from 8.04 on an NC6000 laptop. There has yet to be one instance where that upgrade happens without issue (beginning with 7.04 I believe). I had manually installed the ATI binary drivers, because for some reason the Ubuntu one-click install doesn't detect the onboard ATI video card. Every time I've upgraded it's caused issues. This time, I got a black screen with the option to reconfigure Xorg. However, no matter how I graphically tried to reconfigure, it would bring me back to the same window. Only if I chose to proceed in "Degraded Graphics Mode" was I able to get X running. Even after I installed the latest ATI drivers I still have issues (aticonfig --initial results in a seg fault, along with glxgears). I don't have enough time to figure out exactly what's happening, but I'll probably end up reinstalling cleanly as I've done in the past on the same box, and I'm sure that will resolve my issues. I just with the upgrade process worked as well as everything else in Ubuntu does.
Finally, I also like the new "Create a USB Startup Disk" option under System->Administration. While I don't have many machines that support booting from a USB device, it is a very quick way to have a clean *writable* live environment.
Package Management
Package Management on Ubuntu uses debian's deb-based packages. As such, the primary tool is Debian's apt-get, however, aptitude is also available (a ncurses-bases frontend to apt-get). Most people however, will probably use Synaptic, which is a GUI frontend to apt-get. Synaptic has a polished interface. The first feature that I used even before I noticed I was doing it, was the new "Quick Search" bar at the top. The old search functionality is still there, if you liked using it. However, if you were like me and hated it, the new feature is appreciated.
Dependency resolution is taken care of automatically when a new package is selected for installation. Similar to OpenSuSE's patterns, there are meta-packages which can be used to install a suite of packages. For example, build-essential installs all the packages that are likely to be needed to building programs from source. Also unlike Fedora's PackageKit, you can select multiple items at once.
The best feature though, is the ability to enable an incredible amount of extra packages through the Universe and Multiverse repositories. With a few clicks in Software Sources (available through a menu in Synaptic) you have access to install the largest number of available packages for any Linux distribution that I know of. SuSE's community repositories are nice, but have nowhere near the depth of what Ubuntu has available.
Finally, there is also the ability to add programs through the main menu "Applications" called Add/Remove programs. Much like its namesake in Windows, you can search for programs here. While this might be more user friendly, I personally find I use synaptic much more. However, Add/Remove programs has more descriptive categories to find programs through, if you find you browse new applications that way. The advantage there is that it is easier to find an application that performs a specific task, but you might not have known the name.
Operating Environment
As a personal preference and disclaimer, I don't like Gnome quite as much as KDE, thus some of my problems with Ubuntu are really Gnome problems, and I'll leave them out of this discussion (or at least attempt to).
One of the things I always notice first about Ubuntu is that the logout screen they take great pride in having refactored to make it more intuitive. There was another large departure here from previous releases. Now, when you use the System->Shut Down option, it presents a list of 4 items (Shut Down, Restart, Suspend, and Hibernate) along with a short description of each. This really presents a more professional polish and is much more helpful to the user than the previous iteration, in my opinion. Also, now the "Fast User Switcher" taskbar applet also has those four options listed directly. I think this option is fantastic, and it's now two much quicker clicks to shut down or reboot the machine.
Also excellent to see is NetworkManager 0.7.0, which supports my AT&T Wireless AirCard out of the box. Although not quite as nice as the beta releases of 0.7 which came with Fedora 9 and OpenSuSE 11.0, it does actually require some configuration, which I've documented through the screenshots to the right. Basically, you need to choose either AT&T or T-mobile, and type of device it is. However, after this, it is the same one-click activation which is much faster than using the Windows software provided by AT&T.
On my T61 Laptop, AIGLX works flawlessly out of the box as well (which is not surprising, since it has Intel Integrated Graphics). Something I just noticed in this release, but I noticed also exists in at least 8.04, is an updated Screen Resolution application, which, in theory, allows for easy configuration of dual-head display setups. Unfortunately, I found it to be extremely buggy. It detected my external display (on my running laptop after just plugging in the video cable, I was rather excited at this point, as that is a first for me in Linux). However, when I attempted to set the resolution lower on that monitor than my primary, it accepted it and told me to logout and back in. I did, and then was trapped in the geometry of the smaller window on my primary display (but the menus, etc, were on the secondary display). I realize this sounds confusing, but I can't find a better way to describe it. I was able to kill X and restore the old configuration. I then tried it again, using the same resolution for each display (which I'd imagine would then use twinview) and that worked. Then I was able to actually place the secondary display OVER the primary display, resulting in more odd behavior. I think it will be a great feature eventually, but isn't really ready for primetime. The other thing I don't like (although this is a gnome-ism, for lack of a better word, which pervades all things gnome), is that you cannot specify a resolution manually. I have a 1680x1050 monitor, yet it will only let me set it to 1600x1200 or other close, but wrong, resolutions. Older versions would only allow me to go to 1024x768, if it felt that was the best my monitor could do, regardless of the truth. I personally think SaX2 from SuSE is a much more polished product and has never failed to configure even the most complicated X configurations rather painlessly, and unsurprisingly even got my 3840x1200 dual-24inch monitors to work in about 2 minutes.
Overall
Ubuntu always has a very polished product, and 8.10 is no exception. While not an LTS (Long Term Support) release, it continues in the tradition of solid user-friendly Linux built on the stable backbone of Debian. I personally use it on my Laptops and don't have any complaints that aren't really gnome complaints first. Although I'm well aware Kubuntu exists, every time I've used it, it doesn't seem to work very well. And I think that has to do with Ubuntu's philosophy of user-friendliness over configurability meshes well with Gnomes philosophy. SuSE seems to have more of a KDE configuration-is-king type approach, and hence why I use that on my desktops (so by the same token, I think SuSE makes a complete mess of everything that makes Gnome even slightly sane).
The only other thing I would mention is that while Debian is a great product, and very stable, vendors have not yet begun to really support Ubuntu. For example, go to HP's support site, and look at the Operating Systems supported. You'll find SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) and RHEL (Red-Hat Enterprise Linux) but as of yet no Ubuntu server. The goals of Ubuntu being more user friendly and more up to date at the expense of some stability lends to this resistance. You'll also notice that Debian most of the time is not officially supported either. Hopefully at some point in the future this will change. This is really tangential to this entire discussion, as I reviewed the Desktop edition of Ubuntu. But something to note none-the-less.
