Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx First Impressions

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Brad Heap

Sometime in the next 24 hours Beta 1 of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx will be released to the world. This version of Ubuntu is different from the previous few versions for two key reasons the first is that it is a long term support release and as such will be [hopefully] more stable and more complete than other versions over the past year. The second change is in the user interface with a step away from the established brown “human” theme to a new theme that looks very Mac OS like.

For the last two days I have been running the daily build of the AMD64 release candidate for 10.04 Beta 1. So far I am very impressed with it. For the past year I have been running 9.04 as the 9.10 release in October of last year broke support for my laptop’s wireless drivers and would cause frequent lock ups. I am pleased to report that those crashes are a thing of the past in 10.04.

The Good:

Fast boot. 9.04 was a massive improvement in boot time over 8.10 and I am surprised to see even more of an improvement in 10.04, from BIOS to logged in would be around 20 seconds.
Stable. Sometimes Beta and Test Releases of software are so buggy that they are not even able to be fully tested. So far I have hit a few minor problems but by far I am very impressed.
Smooth. The x64 version is very smooth at booting, opening and closing windows, applications, etc. The entire operating system runs quietly and quickly.

The Bad:

Crash errors that are almost as cryptic as Windows BSOD and illegal operations. I have had two programs crash and both times the crash errors are just strings of numbers or error codes with no meanings or descriptions. It is very hard to even supply information on a bug report when you have no idea what went wrong, one minute it was working the next it isn’t.

The Ugly:

Video Drivers. I am running an ATI Raedon HD Video card and there are no free or propriety video card drivers at the moment. This means that any 2d or 3d video rendering is done through MESA software rendering and is very ugly. I hope this will be sorted out in the final release (and the current bug where if you try to install the old fglrx library aptitude will try to remove ubuntu desktop).
Software Install. If you want to install Ubuntu (and community) released software this is a breeze through the Ubuntu Software Manager but the instant you want to install any other piece of software you will need to go through the whole process of getting the source code, resolving dependences, compiling through the terminal sorting out linking errors and a whole lot of other nasty mess.
User Experience. Despite the new version of Ubuntu looking very pretty and running very fast it still fails badly in terms of user experience for your average user. Ubuntu is meant to be linux for human beings but I am still finding it linux for those people who want linux to work and have some computing knowledge for how to fix things when they go wrong and also have a linux geek to really fix things when they completely corrupt. Until vendors start releasing fully stable and supported drivers for Linux and there is a software install process for third party applications that works nicely through a simple GUI and not old fashion command windows Ubuntu and Linux in general will continue to only attract nerds, geeks and people who like to break things. I like Ubuntu for its speed and ease of use in a office/development environment. But when I am at home on the weekend I live in Windows. Things just work in Windows – fonts render correctly, most software now plugs and plays correctly, most music and dvds will just play, software is simple to install etc. Now I do not want to start a paid vs free software argument but just because it is free should not mean you need a whole lot of computing knowledge to get your email every morning.

Hello World from Google Chrome OS – First Thoughts

Posted on November 21, 2009 by Brad Heap

Hello World!

I am now running Google Chrome OS off a 4GB flash drive in my laptop.

So far it is not as spectacular as first thought, and it is very clear that this is a development build however I can see much potential in Chrome OS in the future.

Some brief thoughts:

Boot times. From a cold start 26 seconds to login screen. From post BIOS to login screen 13 seconds. Not the 7 seconds advertised but still quick.
WIFI does not work on my laptop. This had me hunting for a network cable to get online. WIFI has always been an issue under linux so this could be a major roadblock for Google in making Chrome OS widespread.
Typing is slow and delayed. There seems to be some major problem with lag when typing.
System stability. So far I have had weird lock ups on my laptop after a few minutes of use. In particular I can still move the mouse but cannot click or type and have to press the power button to shut off the system. However, this may be a bug in the latest linux kernel as Ubuntu does the same thing on my laptop. I will test on my desktop and report back.
Android is much more of a complete OS.

This last point is interesting. Android is designed for smart phones which typically have less powerful components than a netbook or laptop. However, Android allows the user to add apps and other software and has much more of an OS feel to it. Chrome OS consisting of only a web browser turns the end device into nothing more than a very dumb dumb terminal. Surely there needs to be a middle ground. I would not use Chrome OS if I wanted to download images off a digital camera for instance as there is nowhere local to save and edit them.

Overall Chrome OS has potential has a very fast way to boot into a web browser if that is all you want to do. However, as it currently is, systems in the future with Chrome OS running will also need to provide a second much larger and more complete OS for those more complex but equally common tasks.

Wubi

Posted on April 3, 2009 by Brad Heap

Okay, now there is no excuse for any geek or anyone with a keen interest in computers to not try out linux.

For the past year and a bit I have been playing around with Virtualbox and virtualization, the major problem here however is the speed of booting, and drivers etc as it is in an emulated/simulated environment.

Enter WUBI. Wubi is an installer that allows you to install Ubuntu and Linux Mint on an NTFS partiation and use the windows boot loader so it does absolute nothing to windows at all. And to make matters better you can access your windows files straight out of the box.

I have now had a WUBI Ubunutu set up for the past week and it is brilliant.

I am now trying a new distro called Linux Mint which is aimed at end users.

If you want some help getting it installed or just want to try it out just contact me, it is brilliant just really awesome.