Amrein-Marie Christophe wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> I just tested Ubuntu and Kubuntu. There are so much articles about them on
> the net... Most of the task has to be done manualy. Exemple : add nvidia
> proprietary driver, [...

Yes, Ubuntu is based upon Debian, and Debian is quite adamant about wanting
to use Free (Libre) Software only.

> ...] change the Xorg.conf, configure the differents servers... And even
> more supprising, most of their tools have bugs:
>
> - Installing nvidia packages for exemple trashed the Xorg.conf and my
> french keyboard (back to english) and I had to do it by hand.

Considering that they are proprietary packages, you can hardly blame Ubuntu
over this. I suppose something must have gone wrong with the proprietary
driver installer.

> [...]
> - No way to see what happen when booting without changing the grub config
> file.

As I was told by someone who uses Ubuntu, you have to press /Alt+F4/ to go
to the verbose boot sequence. I can neither corroborate nor contradict
this by lack of personal experience with Ubuntu. ;-)

> [...]
> - No root password at start. You need to "sudo su root" to create one.

That's not a bug, that's a feature, and typical of all Ubuntu-derived
distributions. They simply disable the root account (by setting it up
without a password for the login shell) and give the firstly created user
account /sudo/ privileges instead.

While I personally feel that direct root logins are best disabled - both
via /ssh/ or on the local console - I also find that the use of /sudo/ has
some serious security implications. Using /su/ instead would be more
secure, as one would therefore need to know the root password as well as
the unprivileged user account password.

> - ...
>
> I stop here. I'm loosing my time with this. To much things to write. Even
> geeks should prefer Mandrivalinux, this is how I see it.

Real Geeks (TM) tend to favor other distros, like Linux From Scratch,
Gentoo, Slackware or Debian, in descending order of complexity. ;-)

> And Mandriva doesn't know how to grab attention to be appreciate. They
> just don't know how to talk about themselves. Stupid French !!! Even their
> enterprise support is invisible to the public.

Well, it is my experience that Mandriva as a company is suffering from a
severe degree of /corporatitis,/ with an equally severe inability to
communicate properly with their user base and even their paying customers.

Their communication so far seems highly limited to near-spamlike
newsletters.

Still, Mandriva as a distro is still a good choice. It's nicely balanced
between being on the cutting edge and reliability. ;-)

> Next distro Novell Suse Linux. They tell on the net that this is the best
> for the enterprise. Will see.

That's just because it has an enterprise nametag to it. Novell went in
league with The Evil Empire (TM), and many other even so clueless
distributors have tread into the same sewergrade alliance in Novell's
footsteps.

> All this press for Ubuntu... this is big mind manipulation.

Well, you have to see it another way. Ubuntu was an attempt at offering a
completely free - both in terms of Libre Software and in terms of gratis
software - distribution for the large masses, and in particular for desktop
and laptop computers.

All in all, I don't think they've done such a bad job at it, apart from that
Ubuntu is typically aimed at the beginner, while the fact that the default
set-up only allows GUI applications for one specific desktop environment -
making it hard to install The GIMP on Kubuntu, for instance - makes it
rather difficult for the beginner.

It starts out "less complicated" than other, more versatile distributions,
but the newbie will inadvertently get used to this set-up and become
confronted with difficulties later on trying to extend the distribution
beyond the rather limited default software offer.

So personally, I think the Ubuntu concept is okay, but for a more
experienced user. Not for newbies. ;-)

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

Aragorn wrote:

> Amrein-Marie Christophe wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi,
>> ...
>> ...] change the Xorg.conf, configure the differents servers... And even
>> more supprising, most of their tools have bugs:
>>
>> - Installing nvidia packages for exemple trashed the Xorg.conf and my
>> french keyboard (back to english) and I had to do it by hand.
>
> Considering that they are proprietary packages, you can hardly blame
> Ubuntu
> over this. I suppose something must have gone wrong with the proprietary
> driver installer.
>

Yes but why provide a buggy package?

>> [...]
>> - No way to see what happen when booting without changing the grub config
>> file.
>
> As I was told by someone who uses Ubuntu, you have to press /Alt+F4/ to go
> to the verbose boot sequence. I can neither corroborate nor contradict
> this by lack of personal experience with Ubuntu. ;-)
>

When doing this while in X11 for example, the PC just freeze. This is a know
bug too (already saw this on the net while searching for a fix).

>> [...]
>> - No root password at start. You need to "sudo su root" to create one.
>
> That's not a bug, that's a feature, and typical of all Ubuntu-derived
> distributions. They simply disable the root account (by setting it up
> without a password for the login shell) and give the firstly created user
> account /sudo/ privileges instead.

Yes, I know. But without documentation, a new user will need to get its
Internet connection working to be able to see how to work around. I used
Mandriva for years but I already used Debian so I have no issue finding the
solution but I'm thinking about new users. The newcomers...

>
> While I personally feel that direct root logins are best disabled - both
> via /ssh/ or on the local console - I also find that the use of /sudo/ has
> some serious security implications. Using /su/ instead would be more
> secure, as one would therefore need to know the root password as well as
> the unprivileged user account password.
>

I completely agree.

>> And Mandriva doesn't know how to grab attention to be appreciate. They
>> just don't know how to talk about themselves. Stupid French !!! Even
>> their enterprise support is invisible to the public.
>
> Well, it is my experience that Mandriva as a company is suffering from a
> severe degree of /corporatitis,/ with an equally severe inability to
> communicate properly with their user base and even their paying customers.
>
> Their communication so far seems highly limited to near-spamlike
> newsletters.
>
> Still, Mandriva as a distro is still a good choice. It's nicely balanced
> between being on the cutting edge and reliability. ;-)
>

I completely agree. I saw on cooker mailing list better developers
communication but they still lake better users communication.
Be the best is not enough. Even if you are not, a good communication will
force other to think you ARE the best and this is enough.


>> ...
> So personally, I think the Ubuntu concept is okay, but for a more
> experienced user. Not for newbies. ;-)
>


Better than Debian because designed more for the community. Not better (not
easier and polished) than Mandriva, Suse, Fedora. Sure.

I want *any* distro which supports my outdated hardware, and Gimp. No
more, no less. Since i get desperated with mandriva (and get no
support) i try Ubuntu (again)

As OP, i had the experience that the X11 config file can get screwed
up.

Installer corrupted my whole partition table and i would have been
lost without a smart software called test disk, a must have...

iso-scan is buggy, etc.


L

Amrein-Marie Christophe wrote:

> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> Considering that they are proprietary packages, you can hardly blame
>> Ubuntu over this. I suppose something must have gone wrong with the
>> proprietary driver installer.
>
> Yes but why provide a buggy package?

Ahhh, but that's just one of the things that are wrong about proprietary
software and why Free & Open Source Software is The Right Way (TM). :-)
>
>>> [...]
>>> - No way to see what happen when booting without changing the grub
>>> config file.
>>
>> As I was told by someone who uses Ubuntu, you have to press /Alt+F4/ to
>> go to the verbose boot sequence. I can neither corroborate nor
>> contradict this by lack of personal experience with Ubuntu. ;-)
>
> When doing this while in X11 for example, the PC just freeze. This is a
> know bug too (already saw this on the net while searching for a fix).

Oh, you are talking about switching to a different virtual console? Well,
it's possible that this is a bug - I couldn't tell as I've never even used
Ubuntu myself - but I was making a comment with regard to switching virtual
terminals during the System V /init,/ at boot time. ;-)

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

Aragorn wrote:

> Amrein-Marie Christophe wrote:
>
>> Aragorn wrote:
>>
>>> Considering that they are proprietary packages, you can hardly blame
>>> Ubuntu over this. I suppose something must have gone wrong with the
>>> proprietary driver installer.
>>
>> Yes but why provide a buggy package?
>
> Ahhh, but that's just one of the things that are wrong about proprietary
> software and why Free & Open Source Software is The Right Way (TM). :-)
>>

Yes but no, those .deb packages are not built by NVidia but by/for Ubuntu.
In Mandriva, the NVidia "src.rpm" package also uses the binary driver. It's
extracted to get the binary part and the source part (source to be able to
glue the binary to the current kernel). A few changes are done in the
source before the rpm builder output the relevant i586.rpm packages. And
those rpms just work. Ubuntu .deb packages are buggy. That's it.

And yes, I would love to see Renouveau or NV drivers completely replace the
NVidia closed source driver. If I was a hardware hacker...