Common problems with Ubuntu

[Steve G.]

I have been using Ubuntu for 2-3 years or longer and find them very suitable
for the desktop (and as good as any on the server).

The programs for most part work as expected, updates are provided regularly
and mostly do not break anything. Granted, I do not use all 1134 installed
applications, but the ones that I do use work just fine.

You will have problems if you do one of the following:

1. Use the latest hardware. Support for the latest video card, sound card,
etc. may not be as stable as support for older technologies.

2. Use a 64 bit version on 64x processors. Some applications and drivers -
mostly third party vendors - are not available for Linux. I can't remember
what drove me to switch to 32 bit Ubuntu on my 64x Intel, but there was
something. It think it had to do with some video formats embedded in firefox
but I am not sure any more.

3. Some annoying glitches affect me - network manager is semi-functioning
and I had to manually edit the configuration file to give my box a static
address (but there are alternatives), the power saving feature which idles
the monitor has a mind of its own, etc.

4. It is possible in all varieties of Linux to seriously mess things up by
editing configuration files without full understanding. Often, there is no
easy way to roll back the problems. I am pretty sure I caused that to my
network manager during an upgrade, etc.

That said, these problems are nothing compared to my experience with Windows
installations - 2000, XP - and what others experienced with Vista. I have
programs that crashed the computer as soon as they were run, programs that
disabled or crippled other programs, stability problems, virus problems, you
name it.

Good luck!

Zvi.


On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 9:03 AM, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2010/5/10 Elazar Leibovich <elazarl at gmail.com>:
> > I remeber a few times where users of this mailing list were arguing that
> > ubuntu is a very problematic distribution.
> > I'm evaluating a distribution for developer desktop.
> > Ubuntu seems fitting mainly due to the hardware detection and the ease of
> > configuration. Also, it has up to date versions of many desktop packages.
> > I'll be happy to know which problems did you have with the Ubuntu
> > distribution.
> > Googling with Ubuntu problems etc, did not help me find any informative
> list
> > of problems.
> > (Obviously, this is not ment to be a discussion (or even worse, a flame
> war)
> > about which distribution is better, but a listing of common problems
> typical
> > to Ubuntu, and how are they solved with other distributions)
>
> I use and recommend Ubuntu. This is my current deal breaker bug, though:
>
> Video problem: External monitor wavy, unreadable. ati radeon
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/537640
>
>
>
> --
> Dotan Cohen
>
> http://bido.com
> http://what-is-what.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Linux-il mailing list
> Linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il
> http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
>



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