Ubuntu 9.04 as slick as Windows 7, Mac OS X

CNET ^ | April 24, 2009 6:22 AM PDT | by Renai LeMay

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I think it is the mentality of windows...and Mac I suppose...

You get a disk....you install it ....voila....that is it....what is all of this downloading stuff you talk about?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

How old is the card?...this seems to always be the problem area....

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

HULU???

....what is that?

[neb52]

You don’t know what hulu is?

http://www.hulu.com/

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Hmmm....thanks.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Secret No More: Revealing Windows XP Mode for Windows 7

[rabidralph]

One man's Ubuntu is another man's kumbya

[Chewbacca]

I tried installing Ubuntu.
It installed fine, but I couldn’t get my soundblaster x-fi sound card to work at all so I deleted it.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Agreed - but I thought that the guy writing the review knew better - maybe not.

[Goldsborough]

Seems like they're always saying,"it's caught up" to the proprietary systems, but that is never the reality of it. I play with ubuntu in a VM on my Mac, so that I can evaluate it for :"primetime readiness" and run it on my older x386 windoze machines.

First thing I have noticed is that in Firefox I cannot get the websites I visit to take logins in the correct cap/no cap formating without having to mess with my cap locks key.

So yeah, ubuntu keeps looking better and better, but these basic and annoying bugs are going to have my wife vetoing a move to linux on the older boxes we still have in our home network.

[martin_fierro]

It's fairly new -- under 2 years.

Intrepid (the prior Ubuntu release) worked just fine with it.

< |:(~

[FLAMING DEATH]

I'm running 9.04 on a HP DV6000 series laptop.

I have to say, having used Ubuntu since the 6.XX days, this is one sweet system.

Everything is polished and intuitive. Usually, in the past, tweaking a new distro to make it work was a multi hour job. On this one, everything just worked.

The only problem I noticed was that the WiFi driver included to run my Broadcom wireless was somewhat lacking in performance. Seemed to have a lot of lag. I installed ndisgtk, which installed everything necessary to run my wireless using my original Windows driver. Did the whole thing without touching the command line. Now, the wireless works perfectly.

It also boots quickly, usually less than 30 seconds. Plus, the desktop is gorgeous. This is what mine looks like right now...

[calex59]

How is it for finding drivers or do we still have to hunt for them?

[FLAMING DEATH]

It depends on what drivers you need.

Ubuntu had the drivers for my wifi and sound. The nVidia card driver wasn’t included, but if you go to System>Administration>Hardware Drivers, you’ll see a list of hardware that Ubuntu has detected, but not yet installed a driver for. Ubuntu will recommend a driver if there’s one available, and you just click it to install. Reboot your computer, and you have full 3D effects on your desktop.

It also automatically found my HP 1210 printer/scanner/copier, and installed not only the printer drivers, but the scanner drivers as well.

If you’re using some newer or more unusual equipment, you might have to look for a driver. I didn’t.

[calex59]

Thanks for the info!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Take a good look at Linux Mint....or Mint ...based on the latest Ubuntu plus they have some special stuff and include codec's...

The 32 bit version of Mint 7 based on Ubuntu 9.04 is out with RC1 and the checked out Rel 7 should be out very soon...then the 64 bit version will follow but not much has been said as to when.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Take a look at Mint also.

[Harold Shea]

I`ve really taken a liking to linux,switched to suse 11.1,
but have had problems getting wireless to work,heck about
to give up on that one.Love it otherwise

Think I`ll put Mint on one of these boxes sitting around here and give it a try tonight

Tried Debian,it`s over my head

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

getting wireless to work,...now that frequently seems to be a problem....across the distros...check the forums ....