Ubuntu 8.04 Review

[Lead Head]

I'm doing a review of Ubuntu 8.04 for the main site. I'm doing things like base features, ease of use and install, etc..

Is there anything special someone may want me to include?

[worker201]

How much of it has to be downloaded after the preliminary installation?  I think the hallmark of a good distro is that you can do everything a Mac can right out of the box.  My experience with Ubuntu has been that they give you just enough stuff to start dialing into the apt repositories (or yum or whatever they use these days).  Most distros have things they don't include in the release, usually for licensing reasons, but Ubuntu has occasionally left things out for space and simplicity reasons, which I think is bad practice.  So a list of stuff that you have to download after the install to get a decent system going is a critical part of the review.

[Refalm]

Ubuntu 8.04 promised supporting GPRS. If you are in liberty to test that, I'll be glad.

Thanks you for writing the article in advance

[Lead Head]

I'm disappointed with the partition manager to say the least. I'll talk more about it in the actual review.

Something I think is really neat is that when you put in the CD it lets you boot right into ubuntu, so you can try it out. It seemed to have many things on the live CD. Firefox, E-Mail, Pidgin, Games, bit torrent client, and much more. But there was an install icon right on the desktop that starts up an installer that runs within the live-session.

Also what is GPRS?

[Refalm]

GPRS or EDGE is a system to get internet anywhere through your mobile phone operator.

Vodafone, O2, Orange and T-Mobile advertise with USB GPRS sticks so you can access internet anywhere with your laptop. Would be nice if it worked out-of-the-box on Linux.

[Lead Head]

While I don't have a phone capable of that, I can check if it is available.

So far I'm really liking it. Told me I had updates when I logged in for the first time. Automatically detected both my network and sound card. It also detected the ATI video card, and gave me the option to install the latest driver. It did not automatically install it because the ati drivers are not "free"

Out of the box it has a couple of photo, picture and sound editing programs. However no video editing program. OpenOffice is installed though.

ATI driver performance isn't that great however. About 8200 FPS in GLX Gears, according to what I've found, I should be getting double or more then that.

[piratePenguin]

How many OSes ship with video editing apps?
Ubuntu can't ship too much because it is committed to being just 1 CD. A major advantage to Ubuntu I think. The best of both words may be nice, and the Ubuntu development community might be open to your ideas.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases
It's 11 days to Ubuntu 8.10. http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/countdown

[davidnix71]

One cd is hardly enough for Open Office alone. It's sounds like they have done well.

Is the video editing app ffmpeg?

[Lead Head]

How many OSes ship with video editing apps?
Ubuntu can't ship too much because it is committed to being just 1 CD. A major advantage to Ubuntu I think. The best of both words may be nice, and the Ubuntu development community might be open to your ideas.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases
It's 11 days to Ubuntu 8.10. http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/countdown

XP and Vista both have crude video editing software, I'm pretty sure the latest iterations of OSX come with iMovie by default?

[davidnix71]

iMovie has been in OSX for a while. For $200 you can get Final Cut Express, which is more than enough for the average joe.

[Lead Head]

Scrapping the review, waiting for the newest version in a few days.

[worker201]

Would having a review of 2 consecutive versions be such a bad thing?

[Lead Head]

Would having a review of 2 consecutive versions be such a bad thing?

Possibly not, but it would seem a bit pointless this late.

[SiMuLaCrUm]

ATI driver performance isn't that great however. About 8200 FPS in GLX Gears, according to what I've found, I should be getting double or more then that.

Linux has never had very good support for ATI drivers. I have heard, however, that the Nvidia drivers are very good on Linux, but that is only because they actually release the drivers, whereas ATI's are not. They have no "free" version.

[Lead Head]

ATI driver performance isn't that great however. About 8200 FPS in GLX Gears, according to what I've found, I should be getting double or more then that.

Linux has never had very good support for ATI drivers. I have heard, however, that the Nvidia drivers are very good on Linux, but that is only because they actually release the drivers, whereas ATI's are not. They have no "free" version.

ATI has been continually updating their linux drivers now. They actually got the Catalyst Control Center over on *nix now. Also, afaik nVidia's drivers are proprietary as well? I know ATi released some 3D Specifications of their older cards for people to create their own drivers