Ubuntu reviews....

[exploder_91]

Do you ever get fed up with all the praises of Ubuntu in reviews? I have read two reviews about Ubuntu pushing to get into the enterprise market. Are they kidding? What sane IT Manager would roll out Ubuntu in their corporation? Karmic is a bug filled mess right now and would have to work it's way up to even be considered as an alpha right now.

How can reviewers write this fiction? Even when Ubuntu does manage to fix something they just end up breaking it by reintroducing the same bug in an update... Ubuntu put their notification system into Jaunty and managed to break it, now they seemed to have abandoned it. Gee, there sure was a lot of hype about that notification system yet no review mentions it's absence in Karmic.

I applauded DistroWatch for calling Jaunty a "half baked release" because of the Intel issue they just left unfixed. Ubuntu seems to create bug filled releases and abandons them to start on the next one.

For all of the praise Ubuntu receives in reviews and the so called push to the enterprise, I would expect to find quality in their releases.

Well, I will get down off my soapbox now. I just get sick of all of the hype over nothing. It takes quality to succeed in the enterprise not hype. When quality takes priority over the release schedule, Ubuntu might have a chance in the enterprise.

[john_hudson]

No because it is a well-known phenomenon in a lot of contexts; as Novell commented about their relationship with RedHat 'They may be Hertz but we're Avis - we try harder.' Same thing with Ubuntu and openSUSE.

[Confuseling]

Linux reviews generally are *terrible*. Terrible reviews of installation routines at that - obviously, that's the only important bit.

Problem with democratisation of the media - exactly the same as the problem with democratisation of anything: crowds may be good, as crowds, at making certain decisions, but if you focus in on any individual "decision making process" you may well be in for a nasty shock.

But bashing Jaunty over the Intel driver is something of a low blow isn't it? How is that their fault? Seems like SUSE just got lucky - 11.1 came out just before the debacle, and 11.2 just after it (we hope...)

I think they may even have left a legacy driver package in (though I'm not sure) for people who wanted to remain on EXA. But new technologies will take disruption - that isn't Canonical's, or even Intel's fault.

I suppose perhaps the point is that enterprise users shouldn't be using the latest release really (which does perhaps suggest that they shouldn't be using a distro built on Debian unstable, but hey...)

Maybe, if these reviews wanted to be more useful, they'd review the second oldest release of each distro for enterprise use. But then maybe they're not *really* aimed at enterprise users after all... Maybe they're just trying on a veneer of professionalism, like their dads' suits...

[Confuseling]

Correction - thinking about it Jaunty does use a driver that can run in EXA. But I still don't see how any of this is Ubuntu's fault...

[StormCrow629]

If I may. The Intel driver issue did appear in 11.1 and exists in 11.2. That issue forced me to abandon using openSuse, in order to use Ubuntu. Ubuntu did trouble shoot and provide a temporary work around for the issue, which I could not find for openSuse. In fact in the openSuse forums I only found a discussion saying that the issue would not be resolved until 11.3, when Intel would have sorted out their issue. While Canonical worked with Intel to find a permanent fix, which was implemented within 30 days to Juanty 9.04 release.

This highlights something. I want to return to openSuse, which is why I was browsing the forums today. But I need a distro that will actively maintain itself. If this was Suse not openSuse Novell would have done the same as Canonical, but it didn't. Hence, at least for now, I will probably stay with Ubuntu, after testing both 9.10 and 11.3's beta releases. But I haven't quite made my decision yet.

I guess my point is, the argument here that I have read sounds a lot like KDE or Gnome. Just one distro over another. It is true Novell contributes to linux development overall more than Canonical, which barley contributes anything to linux beyond its distro. But it does what I need it to do, while I am in school and depend on linux for my research.

How about we focus on what is broken and how to fix and improve it, not, how our imperfect distro is broken better than the other broken distro.

[StormCrow629]

Sorry, I had meant to say, the Intel driver issue appears in 11.0 and 11.1, and would be fixed in 11.2.

[Confuseling]

Originally Posted by StormCrow629

How about we focus on what is broken and how to fix and improve it, not, how our imperfect distro is broken better than the other broken distro.

Well said, and welcome to the forums. I got the impression that Jaunty had worse luck with the Intel drivers than either SUSE release, but then it's distinctly possible that that's just because there's generally more noise about Ubuntu, so it's more noticeable. Whether Ubuntu put more effort into making the driver work for them than SUSE did I doubt anyone can really say - it may just be that SUSE were more pessimistic (or frank, depending on your perspective) about the chances of getting it really working in a given time frame. It's also, as always, going to be hardware dependent, so you may have just got unlucky. But the general point certainly stands - arguments about the general merits of a distro have a place, but they are formed of patterns, not of specific failures on individual systems.

Originally Posted by StormCrow629

I guess my point is, the argument here that I have read sounds a lot like KDE or Gnome.

XFCE for the win!

[oldcpu]

I confess my interest in reviews of other distributions varies a bit from what I have read above in some of the posts.

I am on occasion curious as to see what another distribution has implemented, to see if it is a feature that we need to push our openSUSE developers/packagers to adopt. Since I am NOT a distro hopper, a lot of the time my initial information comes from such reviews, which I then try to independantly confirm IF it is of interest to me to push on openSUSE. Sad to say (about human nature) that often (but not always) the posts of other's on our forum about the feature of distibution-x fail to have an impact, as most of the time such comments are in the middle of a rant full of emotion, disinformation, a onesided frustrated view (often brought about by inadequate research) and only the occasion real fact. When users do post succinctly and politely, comments about the great feature of other distributions tend IMHO have a far far larger impact and are much more successful in bringing about needed change in openSUSE when delivered politely, than some obscure fact in the middle of an emotional rant.

I recently installed Sidux on a USB stick (where Sidux like Ubuntu is also a debian distribution) and while setting up and configuring the USB stick, it reminded me once again why I don't distro hop. While I am a Sidux fan (they have IMHO the best hardware detection in Linux), and I've been using their liveCDs since the distro first started, as a desktop system I subjectively (and note the word subjectively) find I donot like it in comparison to openSUSE. A lot of my dislike is due to my relative (to openSUSE) infamiliarity with debian and infamiliarity with Sidux specifics. Simple things on Sidux are often hard and require research. On openSUSE, because I've been using SuSE for 8 years, such things are quick.

Reference hardware compatibility problems, as noted above about Intel. Such problems rarely impact me. Why ? Because I always buy my hardware AFTER researching first for EASY compatiblity with Linux, and indeed if possible EASY compatibility with openSUSE. Note the emphasis on easy. That makes a big difference. Hardware is inexpensive now adays. Linux is inexpensive. But my time is not. Hence I find research PRIOR to purchasing the hardware pays signficant dividends when it comes to install my distribution of choice (in my case openSUSE).

Is this so strange an approach?

Well, for anyone in project management, this is a simple lesson of life and a simple lesson of project management. A bit of money (or time/effort) spent at the start of a project to "buy schedule" (where schedule is time), can save a massive amount of money/time if instead that were left to the end of the project to try and work around a schedule problem.

... of course one can always "slip" a schedule, but in openSUSE Linux terms, if the hardware is not supported, then one can not use openSUSE, and then I see a "slip" conceptually similar to having to wait for the next openSUSE release, or to be forced to waste extra time/effort on another distribution. ...

Ergo ? Spend the extra effort BEFORE to procure hardware that works EASILY with one's distribution of choice.

I have my own reasons why I don't use Ubuntu, but I don't particularly enjoy posting negative contributions to any distro bashing thread, and I'm sort of hoping this thread does not go that way.

I would rather read statements in this thread that say "Distro-X has this really neat feature - what can I do to help get this implemented in openSUSE ?? ", ... as opposed to "openSUSE is not ready for prime time because it is missing Distro-X's golden water-walking feature-y". The later has far less impact, because it irritates as opposed to inspires.

[Confuseling]

Originally Posted by oldcpu

...Reference hardware compatibility problems, as noted above about Intel. Such problems rarely impact me. Why ? Because I always buy my hardware AFTER researching first for EASY compatiblity with Linux, and indeed if possible EASY compatibility with openSUSE. Note the emphasis on easy. That makes a big difference. Hardware is inexpensive now adays. Linux is inexpensive. But my time is not. Hence I find research PRIOR to purchasing the hardware pays signficant dividends when it comes to install my distribution of choice (in my case openSUSE).
...

A laudable aim, in general, but in this specific instance I'm not sure it applies. Intel are committed to open source drivers, and the chips worked fine when a lot of people (myself included) bought them.

The problem has been a major overhaul in driver architecture, which one would have required insider knowledge (or an unreasonable degree of technical knowledge) to have foreseen.

That said, I agree substantively with your post.

I tried sidux, and it installed grub to the MBR without even telling me it was doing it, let alone asking for permission. I uninstalled it shortly afterwards, partly for other, better reasons, but partly just because I was annoyed - I don't care if a distro says "I'll install grub to the MBR if you want me to, if not, put it somewhere yourself manually", but it shouldn't in this day and age just go ahead and do it without permission.

Possible, of course, that I was just being an idiot and missed the option - but I don't think so.

Unfortunately, sidux have also now had a *major* falling out with the maintainer of the script (I forget its name - it's an acronym I think) which many users use to keep their system updated without breakage. Hopefully something can be resolved, because it sounds like it's causing a huge split in their community.

[pontke]

I think too much hype of any distribution (whether it's Ubuntu, openSUSE, or any other) is more of a disservice to that distro than a benefit. Look at what has happened to Microsoft recently. If there's too much hype, a distribution may not be able to live up to the hype (which is unfair to them) and the public looks at the distribution much more critically because of the hype than they would have otherwise. Sometimes it's just better to blend in.

In the case of Microsoft, they bring a lot of the problems onto themselves due to their business practices. I wouldn't want to see any Linux distro fall into the M$ trap.