I have been running Ubuntu for quite some time now, and I must say, I like it. Running feisty, currently, with KDE desktop (kubuntu). However, there are a few quirks that i find quite annoying. So, here's the rant:
General
Updating with apt usually goes very nice. Two this however don't:
- When updating XOrg, it keeps reverting from the non-free nvidia driver (nv) to the free one (nvidia). Last time, this cause the X-Server to no longer start. Took me a while to figure that out.
- When upgrading the kernel, it insist on using *-386, even though i use *-generic. With *-386, onle one of the two cores is used, and the fan gets very loud (not sure if the fan controll is odd, or if using only one core causes more heat).
- Settign up WPA WLAN is non-obvious. Even though my network card is supported nicely (WEP worked out of the box), I had to manually fiddle with wpa_supplicant to make things work. knetworkmanager was no help at all. Documentation about this seems to be hard to get by.
- DST switching got really confusing - it didn't switch, and after i corrected the clock using ntpdate, it kept changing back to the wrong time after every suspend/resume cycle, or reboot. It was probably related to the UTC setting in /etc/default/rcS, but again, there does not appear to be a GUI for this, nor any documentation, if you don't know exactly what you are looking for.
- User switching seems unstable - for example, if i hit Ctrl-F7 while switching is in progress, it often gets confuzzeled and locks up everything. Other times, it doesn't quite finish switching, and i have to hit Ctrl-F7 to get to my previous session.
Hardware/Drivers
I have an ASUS Z53J / F3Jc, and I must say, the hardware is not supported very well.
- I waited forever for ALSA to work with my sound chip (ALC861 / ICH7). It still doesn't work 100% (built in speakers don't work), and I have to manually restart it after waking up from suspend. Which doesn't work if some Firefox plugin (don't know which) has a hold on it (oddly enough, this is not reported by lsmod, or any other way I found to find processes locking a kernel module.
- ACPI is generally flacky. battery status works "sometimes", same goes for other sensors.
- As I mentioned, I finally got WLAN to work. But when I used it, and then plug into ethernet again, it often doesn't work. For tsome reason, the card driver chokes and needs to be reloaded manually. Took me a looong time to figure that out.
-
Hibernation doesn't work (leads to a "normal" reboot). Suspending works mostly, using the Power Manager applet (mostly because sometimes the screen stays black). However, i recently tried to suspend it using echo mem > /sys/power/state... it suspended, and then wouldn't reboot. Bower button did nothing. Had to remove the battery and wait for it to forget everything, then reboot. Scared the shit out of me. Thanks for reminding me to make backups.Got hibernation and suspend to work, by manually hacking s2disk resp s2ram into the configuration. Fun.
Installing 8.04
Installing Hardy Heron (8.04) did not go smoothly: see <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/237051>. I managed to get it to work using the "alternate" installer CD.
[talk page]Talk:Ubuntu
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[edit] Ubuntu/SE-linux
Wie man ja inzwischen feststellen konnte, entfernt sich Ubuntu immer mehr von der ursprünglichen Grundlage Debian und nähert sich immer mehr SE-Linux an. Und das hat, oh Wunder oh Wunder, die NSA* entwickelt. Vielleicht versteht man jetzt endlich warum die Ubuntuscheiben so massenhaft verteilt werden, wie früher die CDs mit AOL-Zugangssoftware. Nicht um die Community auszubeuten, sondern viel mehr vielleicht um die Community (Linux-User gelten als (Konsum)kritische Denker) auszuhorchen?
Hugo Waldem
*US-amerikanische Agentur für elektronische Spionage
[edit] Paranoia?
Hugo Waldem, dir stellt sich nicht die Frage ob du paranoid bist, sondern ob du paranoid genug bist ?!?