The Ubuntu Feisty alpha-testing experience.

[reddragdiva]

• No B-Movie this Friday. Bugger!

I’ve been on Ubuntu since Hoary. And I don’t even like Linux — I far prefer FreeBSD, which is actually nice to run. Administering Linux (the kernel) gives me a raging headache. But the Ubuntu environment on top is so nice it’s worth it.

Kubuntu Feisty is an enjoyable system with the latest of everything to just get on with doing your stuff if you don't mind the fifty meg of updates a day and the occasional stupid breakage. (The latest version of x11-common has a broken script in the .deb. And no, I’m not going to open the .deb and fix it by hand … I run Ubuntu so I don’t have to be a sysadmin just because I can.)

The question is what Feisty’s major disaster will be. Edgy’s was that distupgrade from Dapper didn’t actually, uh, work. I think Feisty’s will be that network-manager is still, with one month to release, utterly broken. I have to run a little script for each possible network card to get wifi to behave.

I freely recommend Ubuntu to people who aren’t computer geeks, but are sick of Windows being flaky crap and want something that’ll at least be stable. The way it brings new life to old machines is pretty cool as well. (I eagerly await Beryl stabilising to the point of being a reasonable default window manager.) But you might want to start with Dapper (6.06), the stable version.

(I might add that one powerful force against Linux on the corporate desktop is that too many people remember the really bad old days and how Microsoft Windows everywhere is still a vast improvement on that. See this, in which hairyears talks about why Vista is not going anywhere near the financial districts for this year at least: "I’ve worked with Windows all my working life and, despite what you may hear, it has been a blessing to us all: without it we would still be running Wang word processors on Wang hardware that saved documents in a Wang file format that can only be read by other Wang applications and printed on Wang Printers. Or HP, Or IBM, or Toshiba: whatever. It took a Big Bad Corporation to build a big enough operating system that everyone uses it, and every other software vendor works with it rather than against it, each other, and the user population. I fully expect the Big Bad Corporation to make a handsome profit from their systems and I am certain that Microsoft have behaved far, far better than IBM would’ve done if their DOS and their visual interface had established the natural monopoly that emerges from a widely-used operating system.")

(Inspired by Eloquence.)

Comments

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

> I freely recommend Ubuntu to people who aren’t computer geeks,

I heartily second that!

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

[reddragdiva]

It works unless people realise you're getting it from XKCD ;-p

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

There's nowt wrong with XKCD! (I discovered it last night, fell in love with it, and have now read every singe one... [blush])

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

No, it still works then. A friend had (back when that was recent) posted to his blog a quote from some postmodern crack-trip he was reading; I commented to say I wasn't really into Pokemon; and then later he /msg'ed me on IRC to say “fuck you”.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

The Geek's been playing with it as a potential MPC platform. It's been kind of an adventure. The installer environment doesn't seem to know how to cope with odd monitor sizes (like 1280 x 720), and attempts reconfigure X *after* installation on another monitor with anything more helpful than editing xorg.conf by hand has been entirely failing to run, or if it runs, it fails to do anything. So, so far, we need to know how to configure X with a text editor, which is something even a lot of admin people aren't comfortable doing. It seems to have a lot of issue with the nvidia driver reading the resolution back over the DVI interface, even though the xorg log seems to have all the information. The machine's also got a Rage3D onboard VGA which gets close, but doesn't support the right resolution on the pins either. It can get the aspect ratio right but... see below

Complicating matters is that the movie player won't really play ... well, anything. (It won't do plain WMVs, quicktime mp4s, avi files encoded with mp3 audio, and handles those things usually by summarily closing the application. Sometimes it bothers to say what the problem is.) Playing DivX files with mp3 audio requires hooking up the package manager to everything instead of the regular stuff, installing mplayer to get the package structure, downloading the source for mplayer, and rebuilding WITHOUT the --disable-mp3 option that all the Ubuntu documentation shows as being there, building a debian package using the skeleton lying around from the previous mplayer install for your freshly-compiled mplayer and installing that.

So far, I spent about 15 hours on this over the weekend, and while it now PLAYS the videos in the most common format for my purpose, it still won't do it at the native resolution of the display, or any resolution that maintains the aspect ratio. On the Rage3d connection, the only -vo that are supported (understandably) is x11 and xv, which don't do full screen scaling.

Granted, a media pc might be a bit of a specialized circumstance... But this experience so far is "You still need to be a leet geek to make it do what you want. Not ready for Mom."

[baljemmett.livejournal.com]

So, so far, we need to know how to configure X with a text editor, which is something even a lot of admin people aren't comfortable doing.

Heh. To quote one of Diva's crowning glories (http://www.uncyclopedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System):

The best theory anyone's come up with is that David Dawes finally lost it trying to fix his own broken modeline configuration.

[reddragdiva]

Starting from Ubuntu for this job is an exercise in masochism and says more about one's ability to choose the tool for the job than about Ubuntu; at least if you'd started from Slackware you'd have known what you were in for. If/when I set up a MythTV beast, I suspect I'll be starting from KnoppMyth or some other semi-prepackaged solution.

[brassratgirl.livejournal.com]

The Geek's been playing with it as a potential MPC platform. It's been kind of an adventure. The installer environment doesn't seem to know how to cope with odd monitor sizes (like 1280 x 720), and attempts reconfigure X *after* installation on another monitor with anything more helpful than editing xorg.conf by hand has been entirely failing to run, or if it runs, it fails to do anything. So, so far, we need to know how to configure X with a text editor, which is something even a lot of admin people aren't comfortable doing. It seems to have a lot of issue with the nvidia driver reading the resolution back over the DVI interface, even though the xorg log seems to have all the information.

I have this same trouble as I have a widescreen monitor. I didn't realize it would be a problem before I installed ubuntu... it's been quite the pain. Reading the forums, of course, it turns out everyone has this problem, but it's not widely documented otherwise. I did edit xorg.conf but still can't get it to work. Argh.

And I'm not trying to do anything fancy, mediawise; I just wanted my pretty screen.

Experiences like this lead me to think that Ubuntu's not ready for primetime in the way that evangelists think it is. I'm somewhere on the line between geek & non-geek -- I know more or less what needs to be done but I don't have much experience doing it in linux -- and as much as I love free software and am committed to running it, I'm finding it difficult to deal with.

[ajohnymous.livejournal.com]

It seems to have a lot of issue with the nvidia driver reading the resolution back over the DVI interface, even though the xorg log seems to have all the information.

I remember when playing with osX86 having to manually enter in an EDID into a kext -- because the info read over the DVI wasn't taking. A google for xorg.conf and EDID pulls up this:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Xorg_HDTV -- which describe a similar technique for ignoring/manually setting the EDID info.

Complicating matters is that the movie player won't really play

Hmm. I just had some ancient PII machine playing xvid/mp3 movies on CentOS running VLC. Easy as a 'yum install vlc' really.

Granted, a media pc might be a bit of a specialized circumstance... But this experience so far is "You still need to be a leet geek to make it do what you want.

I've tweaked a couple friend's MacBooks to be pretty nice MPC's -- DVI output into a HDTV with a HDMI port, optical Toslink cable into the sound system, a bluetooth mouse and keyboard for remote control, and a processor that can easily handle 720p avi/mkv files. If the Mac mini CPU could handle 720p (which it may for all I know), it'd might make a great MPC.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I just had some ancient PII machine playing xvid/mp3 movies on CentOS running VLC. Easy as a 'yum install vlc' really.

That's valid, but missing my point: The stock movie players on Ubuntu, without resorting to geek shenanigan like building from source or modifying config files for the package manager, cannot play video files with the most common of audio encoding, and the video players simply shut down without telling the user why they're not playing the video. No little box saying "Sorry, this player can't play movie files with mp3 audio tracks. See {url} for an explanation of why." It's a suboptimal mere user experience, and part of the whole "Not ready for the desktop" concept. It can't play WMV, Quicktime, or RealAudio files, and the vast majority of any collection of random video files is going to be one of WMV, Quicktime, RealAudio, or Divx with mp3. Why even *bother* maintaining the player in the base install if it can't play anything a user's likely to have or ever see?

[reddragdiva]

That would be a symptom of Totem being shit.

The deeper problem, as I said, is that Ubuntu isn't oriented to the task out the box.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

The deeper problem, as I said, is that Ubuntu isn't oriented to the task out the box.

Right, I get that, and even got a knopmyth iso kicking around for the copious free time.

I'd just like to think that an operating system "for humans" would be able to do things humans want to do. The installer's wonderful, but what one can do after selecting all the reasonable defaults and clicking "Go" is ... limited .. in the area of what might be salvagable from a migration from Windows. Can't listen to music (mp3 is propriatary, and there's not even recoding tools), can't watch video files, not even on the web, because the included Flash plugin is from 1999 while almost everything out there wants at least Flash 8 and most want Flash 10 (which is four years old now). You can write letters to Grandmother, presuming she's got email because you're not printing anything unless you've got a printer that's at least five years old and built by HP or Epson, or is network-attached. It's trivially easy to add new software the standard installer, but the new software you can see won't play mp3s or videos either. That's all *fixable*, but it more or less requires someone with a few years of systems administration under their belt, ideally with Debian-flavored Linuxen. At the bare minumum, it requires a willingness to edit config files, the foresight to know which editors wrap lines by default and to avoid them when editing config files, and good research skills. This isn't the average yob with a computer, however. Fortunately, most of the helpful information isn't on sites that have Flash navigation either.

But I suppose "Ubuntu: Linux for ssytem administrators" wouldn't be as cute a hook.

[ajohnymous.livejournal.com]

That's valid, but missing my point: ... It's a suboptimal mere user experience, and part of the whole "Not ready for the desktop" concept. Why even *bother* maintaining the player in the base install if it can't play anything a user's likely to have or ever see?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to play Linux evangelist -- I just have this overwhelming compulsion to resist even the faintest whiff of kangaroo court and lynch mob mentality. And, basically, "Suboptimal", "not oriented to the task out the box", and (best of all) "... limited .." are pretty much lame accusations that could apply to ANY OS. Essentially that sort of 'blame' is only useful/meaningful when selectivly applied in order to pick on any one in particular.

NO stock players ANYWHERE make unlimited media playback readily accessible 'out of the box'. Windows Media Player doesn't even play DVDs; it requires/refers the purchase of a 3rd party codec. And, even if you have one, like provided with your Dell, when you try to play the DVD out the SVHS port on your Dell, the output is just blank (thanks to copy protection saving the world from VCR pirating of DVD's ). Of course, both of these problems are solved by the geek shenanigans/system administrations of firing up http://www.videolan.org in a browser, finding the right download link, downloading the install file, remembering/finding where the install file was saved, running the install executable, and then launching the non-out-of-the-box media player (all of which is more complex than opening a terminal and typing 'yum install vlan'). And, that's something COMMON like DVD's. Try to play divx/xvid/ac3 and at best you'll just see 'trying to download codec/codec not found' flash by in status bar before the player just fails. Last night, I had just that problem trying to play a H264/AC3 file in media player. It took a minute of head scratching and web surfing before I realized that I needed to update my AC3filter from 0.70 to a newer version.

Apple isn't much better. The 'out of the box' OS-X Quicktime player likewise requires manually adding non-Apple favored/controlled codecs -- like WM Components, Perian/Xiph, etc. -- and you also don't get much warning when a codec couldn't be automatically downloaded. And, even once all the codec loading geek shenanigans is done, you still get slapped with the 'suboptimal' problem of no damn full screen mode (until you buy a frigging Quicktime update). (I don't recall whether or not Quicktime will play protected DVD's out a TV out -- maybe not since Apple is as much the media companies' bitch as is Microsoft.) But at any rate, point being, the stock OS-X has playback '...limits...' that are likewise solved by grabbing VLC_x.x.x-x.dmg, mounting the image, and dragging/installing the application in Finder -- which again, may actually be more effort than 'yum install vlc'.

Every OS vendor/supplier has formats and/or application under their control that 'just works' -- and other 'suboptimal' stuff (things they don't own/control/have rights to/want to promote) that the user must jump through hoops to get working. These are industry problems -- intellectual property, licensing, even government regulation (in terms of no Microsoft DVD codec) -- that prevent an easy 'out of the box' multimedia experience.

In fact, I doubt you'll find anything 'ready for the desktop' like you are describing aside from a dedicated thin client running managed/served applications, which may work for productivty apps, but likely won't work for (decent) multimedia.

And, even that scenario won't be 'ready for mom' -- at least not my mom, who still often needs to be reminded that internet addresses can be email addresses or web addresses and you can't email someone by typing their email address into your browser address window, nor get to their web page by typing their http address into the To: field of an email. And, you know what, when Mom makes that mistake, not a single 'out of the box' OS offers her a little box saying "Sorry, this application can't process the type of internet address you entered. The address looks like an address for this X application. Click this for an explanation of why." How 'suboptimal'!

[poggs.livejournal.com]

Wang Printers.

[axy-666.livejournal.com]

I'm actually running Fiesty server on DARKnet, my home VE atm.. I'm in the midst of setting up a testbed LAMP server.. I've not had a problem with it tbh. Mind you I only use shell as I have no gui installed.

I also have horny my FreeBSD VE I'm still getting used to it.. although I have installed bash as I'm a Linux bod... yeah I know, but it's what you're used to.

[reddragdiva]

Oh, love the GNU tools and environment. It's the Leengux kernel itself that shits me up the wall. I wouldn't be using it at all without its protean hardware support.

[axy-666.livejournal.com]

lol know what you mean..

[ajohnymous.livejournal.com]

Oh, love the GNU tools and environment. It's the Leengux kernel itself that shits me up the wall.

What are you talking about? I mean seriously. It's been my experience that mucking around in the kernel is a rare event these days. The last time I had to even mess with the kernel was trying to run an old machine with a isapnp sound card, a functionality which (reasonably) had been disabled -- and that was using convervative RedHat stuff -- the isapnp sound card detectd fine under a KNOPPIX boot disk, and I imagine would have with Ubuntu too.

I first used Linux with RedHat 7 and it was some deal of work back then. Now Linux is mostly all automatic installs, apt-get/yum-ing packages, and playing. Sure, I wouldn't look to Linux for GPS software, or movie editing, and I wish it had Bluetooth A2DP support. I'm not sure what I should be mad at over the kernel, however.

[reddragdiva]

I do rarely have to kick it these days, it's true. When I do I almost always go "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU GEEKS THINKING." I need to use current FreeBSD a bit more to see how the pain levels compare these days (what it's like to kick vs. how much you have to).

[ajohnymous.livejournal.com]

No really, what are you talking about? I mean that literally, not rhetorically. What kind of problem can a kernel cause you? I've had to rebuild Linux kernels (like to add device support here and there, but that wasn't any more of a 'problem' than whatever hoops were required on other OS's to add various hardware support.) I've never used FreeBSD so I don't know what sort of kernel nirvana I'm missing. What's up?

[reddragdiva]

I'm probably remembering pre-2002 Linux. It's a subjective thing. I always felt like I was doing things by recipes that didn't make no damn sense. Mind you, that was on a Red Hat 7.3 system at work in 2001. FreeBSD felt like the feeling of stopping banging my head against a wall.

Mind you, FreeBSD userland and ports is an exercise in pain all too often. I feel like grabbing them by the collective shoulders, shoving their nose at Synaptic on Ubuntu and shouting "LEARN!!"

Have you fooled around with Beryl yet? I have, but the experience wasn't as satisfying as I hoped.

[ajohnymous.livejournal.com]

(I eagerly await Beryl stabilising to the point of being a reasonable default window manager.)

Have you actually gotten Beryl or CompWiz to run on anything? If so, any thoughts?

I have a machine with a ATI x1600 dual DVI card. I was underwhelmed when I tried Vista Ultimate "3D" desktop on it. In comparison, the YouTube videos of Beryl in action look awesome -- man, it would be cool to have a spinning cube with different faces for applications, VMWare machines, RDP/VNC/SSH sessions, etc.

However, I ran the script to add Beryl to Ubuntu v6.06, but anytime I try to load the 3D desktop, it crashes back to regular Gnome. I think maybe it's more foolproof with older ATI cards -- unfortunately, this one is the only card I could find that does 1600x1200 DVI under OSX86, so I need to keep it.

I might try Red Hat 5 this weekend and see if I can get compwiz going there.

Re: Have you fooled around with Beryl yet? I have, but the experience wasn't as satisfying as I hop

[reddragdiva]

Nah, haven't tried it yet. I don't have one of the l33t supported 3D cards and I don't really want to run it under OpenGL emulation ... I'll wait until it vaguely resembles stable.