Tried Out Ubuntu -- Not a Knoppix Replacement

[sakiZ]

Ok, I tried Ubuntu 5.10. I had the disks shipped. This is zero cost, but you have to wait for several weeks for them.

Ubuntu will probably be great for some people. But I hit some snags. It does not work with my serial mouse. It's a special mouse designed for tilting the wrist to avoid carpal tunnel. I will not give it up. Ubuntu DOES work with a generic PS/2 mouse I have for testing purposes. It did find most of my other hardware, including my old Aureal vortex sound card! It did not find my zip drive. It did however, find my external Mad Dog USB DVD-RW drive and placed a "mounted icon" of the DVD on the desktop upon boot up. Good job!!!

But, I could not find any of my partitions on my hard drives however with it's file manager. That's a huge drawback. Newbie to Ubuntu issues? I don't know. Knoppix finds all my partitions. What good is a live CD if you can't find your own HD partitions with it. The file manager seemed rather rudimentary.

The live CD, -- unlike Knoppix, asks you to answer some hardware questions when it boots up. It is also slower on boot up.

Ubuntu while using a very clean attractive interface, is for me -- brought down with it's color -- basic brown. If you like brown, you'll love Ubuntu. I'll pass on brown. I suppose you could change this with a HD install. Is brown trendy now? Why did they pick THAT?

Ubuntu uses Gnome. It's OK. But I like KDE lots better. I like the "glass" features in KDE.

If you like games, Ubuntu comes with a LOT of games, more than the Knoppix Games CD.

There is NO developer stuff on Ubuntu that I could see. I could be wrong about that. This is an end user CD!

In short, I'll stick to my HD install of Knoppix 3.7. I've worked very hard at this install: running it with CrossOver Office 4.2, & thus Photoshop 7. I'm runnng the latest Thunderbird and Firefox (1.5) This OS works with ALL of my hardware now. I've even installed Real Player 10 which works just fine. Why switch?

sakiZ

[Erick90022]

Okay if you say so.

[Kowood]

By the time the cds are shipped, they've put out a new release.

[Harry Kuhman]

By the time the cds are shipped, they've put out a new release.

So what exactly is your complaint? That they are free and they even pay shipping? That they are doing frequent updates to try to improve it? That you could download it (also free) and get the newest release, but just don't want to? Or that they don't dispatch a courrior to rush it to your door and install it for you?

[sakiZ]

Kowood is not kidding or exagerating.

Had I known that my Ubuntu shipment was going to take 8+ weeks, I would have downloaded and burned it.

But since I had NO previous Ubuntu experience, and it was really only mild curiousity more than anything, after I ordered it, I kinda forgot about it. But then, one day a couple months later, 5 sets of CDs showed up in the mail. Five!

The price is certainly right. As in TOTALLY FREE! I don't know how they can continue doing that. They probably wait till the orders build up to a big amount then burn and and ship a big batch.

But if I had known the process was going to take longer than a couple of weeks, I would not have ordered them. I would have burned a Kubuntu cd instead, to be using it that night.

It is encouraging that Ubuntu is developing at a rapid pace. It's giving Linux a lot of exposure. So, it's a distro worth watching.

But folks in this forum should know that if they order it, they are in for a LONG wait. Just download and burn it.

sakiZ

[ptmmatssc]

I did both. I downloaded and burned a cd to try right away and ordered a set of 5 . I wanted the 5 to hand out to a few friends stuck on windows so they could at least try linux (also gave them knoppix and DSL) .

[bluekylin]

how can ubuntu live cd iso boot like knoppix from hard disk?

[sakiZ]

The Ubuntu CDs I received came in a set of 2:

1 Install CD and 1 Live CD

I haven't visited the download site in a while. I assume you have a choice which iso to download and burn.

sakiZ