Ubuntu 6.10 -> Edgy Eft

Ubuntu has pretty much been my primary OS since I really got into linux (and is the only OS on my new box). I figured (slightly belatedly) that I would put down some formal thoughts on what it does well and what it struggles with. Here goes:

The live CD has almost never worked for me. My old ATI card (x800) could never be recognized properly and Xorg never loaded. With nvidia this issue was gone, but since nvidia and ati split the market down the middle (with a few intel/via onboards thrown in there for good measure) thats a lot of people who can't use the live CD (or are at risk of not being able to use it). ATI card detection could be better, as all Xorg has to do is select "radeon" instead of "ati" and it works fine. Besides that, when the live CD works it is great. Sabayon one up's it with beryl running, but its good none the less.

The install is decent. I lament that there are no options, although we've improved from dapper and can at least choose where to install GRUB. I would like to be able to choose my packages like in Fedora, but no such luck. It is really easy, and that is the idea behind it, but an "expert mode" with individual package choice would be awesome. The live CD occasionally crashes while installing, so the alt CD is safer, but its still quite good.

Once installed, the system is trim by default (which is nice). The default brown theme is hideous, but will never change. Everyone uses blue for OS themes and they want to be different, ok, but brown? It's hideous. That said, gnome is so easy to theme its rediculous, so thats easily fixed. I love apt, its not quite portage and cannot handle various architectures, but its easy and quick and handles dependencies well. Synaptic is a pain, and add/remove is pointless. CLI is god when it comes to package management, GUI's are just to slow and clunky. The default apps are good, although I wish Evolution would be replaced by Thunderbird and Firefox is way too bloated. I use swiftfox mainly, though I find Opera to be a great browser too. If I was in Kubuntu I would use Konqueror, but not in Gnome.

Overall, Ubuntu is simple but unpolished. The CLI rules here, and I like that (although as commented in my Fedora review annoying at times). I would not recommend Ubuntu as a first timers distro over Opensuse due to the lack of GUI's, but I think once a person has used Suse and is comfortable with linux, if they are the type that likes to tinker they will move on, and Ubuntu is a good next step.

I give Ubuntu 8 1/2 penguins for a great product, but just that 1/2 step less refined than Fedora. I would wager that it will soon pass Fedora, however, due to the tremendous rate of development going on. Hopefully the next review will be Sabayon, but I will wait until 3.3 is out, so if thats a while there might be another in between.