Uptime of Linux Desktop System

 

I have religiously avoided the temptation of checking new distributions like the Mandriva 2009 and Ubuntu 8.10. The reason is that I did not want to shut down my OpenSUSE 11 installation. I always just close the lid of my Laptop and resume the session on return. Many a times I have seen my KDE 4.X crash and I had to restart my XServer, but OpenSUSE never asked me to reboot. OpenSUSE testing repos have KDE 4.2 ( testing) and I keep myself updated. As I use a non-stable version of KDE so I have seen many crashes. Good thing is that even after three months of usage, the memory footprint was always very low.

Do let me know if anyone else has allowed there desktop Linux to run for three months or more. Please let me know the distribution you are using and the XServer crash/freeze seen ( if any).

Lets share in a format like

1) Distribution

2) uptime. For more information on uptime use " man uptime" on terminal.

Please Note that I am talking about home desktop machines and not Linux servers. I think in my office the Linux servers are running on RHEL 3 since more than 3 years.

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Prominent public figures in Open Source world

Open source has taken the world by storm. Numerous open source applications are being used by satisfied users. The most prominent and widely used open source products are Firefox, Linux Distributions,Sugar CRM, GIMP, Wordpress, emacs etc. The latest to join this ever increasing bandwagon is Google Chrome. Many people don't know what Open Source (OS) means but are still happily using these OS products.

The wikipedia defines OS as Open source is a development methodology,[1] which offers practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge). Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical strategic element of their operations. Before open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; the term open source gained popularity with the rise of the Internet, which provided access to diverse production models, communication paths, and interactive communities.

As OS software is influencing the lives of so many people, lets take a look at the commonly known people of OS ::

1. First and foremost the grand daddy of open source movement, Richard Matthew Stallman. He was a Harvard student, who abandoned his studies for his love of programming at MIT Artificial Intelligence lab. He is the developer of emacs, a tool which is a long time favourite of unix and linux programmers. However, his rise to fame started when he started the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation. The prominent software out of GNU include GCC ( collection of compilers) , GNOME and GNASH. Out of these GCC is of utmost importance as it forms the basic of almost every free software including Linux operating system. He also wrote the GPL which is fast becoming the most popular free software license.  
2. Eric Steven Raymond is a prominent unix programmer and had championed the Free Software Initiative.
3. Andrew Stuart "Andy" Tanenbaum is a professor of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Hes is a distinguished author of many computer programming books like Computer Networks and Operating System design and implementation. As part of his book Operating Systems he wrote a small Operating system called Minix. The design principles Tanenbaum applied to MINIX famously influenced the design decisions Linus Torvalds applied in the creation of the Linux kernel.  Sir I was a student of Computer Science and totally realize the importance of your teachings. I am sure that all Computer Engineering students hold you in high esteem.
4. Ok here comes the GOD of Linux- Linus Benedict Torvalds. He is the most prominent name in Open Source world. He is the man who has the guts to take on the Redmond Giant head on in their bead and butter product - Operating System. Apart from Linux kernel, Linus also developed the distributed revision control system GIT. He is an open supporter of KDE over GNOME.
5.   Coming to KDE, although KDE was founded by Matthias Ettrich, today the most common face of KDE is Aaron Seigo.  He is the man behind KDE e.V - the non-profit organization behind KDE.
6. He is undoubtedly the most recognized man in open source world - Mark Richard Shuttleworth. He is the man behind mighty Ubuntu. For most people Ubuntu IS Linux. Dell is shipping Desktops and Laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed. Dell computers running Ubuntu 8.04 include extra support for ATI Video Graphics, Dell Wireless, Fingerprint Readers, HDMI, Bluetooth and MP3/WMA/WMV. Ubuntu provides all the software required for normal working and is touted to become a viable alternative to Windows.

This effectively concludes my list of prominent public figures. However, a few more prominent ones includes Gael Duval of Mandirva fame, Danniel Robbins  of Gentoo Fame and the Legendary Texstar (Bill Reynolds) of PCLinuxOS fame. Texstar specially deserves praise for single handedly creating an distribution and an ecosystem which could take on mighty Ubuntu and be the favourite distribution for a large groups of users.

Please feel free to add any names I might have missed.

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How to Perfectly Kill a Perfect Distribution

PCLinuxOS was the perfect distribution in 2007. It had all the bells and whistles to be an excellent Windows XP alternative. Here the the things I loved about PCLinuxOS

1. Good looking UI ( OK I admit that I love KDE ).
2. Almost mimicking XP look and Feel ( now many of Linux Purist might not like it, but this acts as an important point to help transition a new user from XP to PCLOS - keyword is less learning curve).
3. Almost everything working out of Box.
4. Very fast and responsive.
5. Ultra stable.
6. Works on almost every hardware.
7. Amongst the first to update the repository with updated software, ( Check my blog about GIMP 2.4 release).

When a distribution is able to configure my hardware, is ultra stable, highly updated and provide me with almost all the required software then I think that is the distribution I am looking for. PCLOS had all these abilities and more. That's the reason it was called the distro-hopper stopper. People loved it and it rose to the pinnacle of Distrowatch Page hit rankings. Not only reached; it stayed there for a good 6 months. If we consider that the distribution PCLOS dethroned was mighty Ubuntu, that makes PCLOS achievement even more impressive. On one hand Ubuntu had the backing of Canonical - they were sending free CDs, had tieup with the likes of Dell, had dozens ( maybe more ) developers working;  on other hand there was PCLOS which had a very small dev team and no corporate backing, no big computer assembler backing them.

Yet PCLOS rose to top on account of sheer merit. It had the novelty to generate interest and the quality to sustain it. Kudos to Textar and PCLOS 2007. It was almost perfect.

Alas! that was 2007, however, this is 2008 and almost end of 2008. A lot has changed since then. Specially for me life has taken an altogether new twist. I have changed my company, changed my job responsibilities and even changed my country of work.  And how much has PCLOS changed since 2007 ? I know its repositories are updated but question is how much ? Are they having the latest versions ? Or are they having the version which most of its peers have ? Does it still support almost all latest hardware ?

I had all these questions in my mind and tried PCLOS 2007 on my Sony Vaio. For reference:: Mandriva 2008.1 detected all the hardware except for Motion Eye webcam and the Fn+F7 does not work. Apart from this everything works perfectly. With OpenSUSE 11 and Ubuntu 8.04, additionally I had to download the drivers to get my Atheros wi-fi working. Of the three only Ubuntu failed to resume from hibernation; Mandriva and OpenSUSE have no trouble waking from up upto three continuous sleep. Coming back to my attempt with PCLOS 2007, here are my findings:

1. LiveCD download was fast.
2. The initial boot shows too many options which can be confusing for a new user. I like the Mandriva Spring approach which provides a single option or even the slick options of OpenSUSE.
3. Same old, but still good looking splash screen.
4. A huge number of clicks before I can reach the desktop. I actually counted the number of different screen to 18. God, I had to click the mouse at least 12 times before I reached the desktop. Compare this with class leading Ubuntu where the number of clicks is ZERO and the frustration increases. Lets see some of the clicks and the stupid reasons behind it
1. Configure Network: This gives the option to select Ethernet, DSL etc. Then starts a series of 6 clicks in the end when PCLOS says "Congrats the network is configured". However, the funny and frustrating part is that I still have to click OK for the LiveCD to proceed. My question is when the LiveCD discovered that I want to go for Auto-DHCP from my router, why does it still require user intervention ?
2. Select keyboard ( Oh yes, what happened to hardware auto detection ?)
3. Select Timezone. Comeon man this is just a LiveCD boot. We can do with these questions when I actually try to install it on my hard disk.
4. KDM. Why show KDM in a LiveCD. In a LiveCD all a normal user wants to do is to reach desktop and check the distribution and possibly install. Also the options are Root and Guest. Luckily they have provided the passwords for both users, but would have been handy to have both the user name and password populated when a user is selected. Either way password is displayed on the same page so security is not an issue- it just reduces problems to user.
5. On the desktop, I found the old customized KDE, which amazingly is still good to look at.
6. Next was the time to install on hard disk and again I counted 17 different screens even when I selected to use my entire hard disk. I just hope this is not a deliberate attempt to frustrate users.  
7. On reboot, I found myself quickly on the KDM, there is no option to auto login during install. OpenSUSE does a fantastic job in this respect. Now some people might cry security. Lets remind ourselves PCLOS is intended to be used by home users where there is hardly any risk posed by Auto-login.
8. OK if auto-login is a risk, then what is the option to login as root ? ? PCLOS gloriously provides the option to login as root.
9. I quickly came to the desktop and smiled at the familiar and pleasing KDE presented. However, there is not novelty. Nothing new.
10. Then I tried connecting to my wi-fi. Unfortunately like Ubuntu, PCLOS also failed where Mandriva worked perfectly. I know that PCLOS 2007 has an old kernel, old everything so an update might bring about some change. I connected to my wired ethernet connection and started the upgrade through Synaptic.
11. Synaptic told me that some 600 odd packages needs to be updated and 700 odd MB needs to be downloaded.  Wow! more than the 2007 iso. Still I was happy that I'll get a new and fresh system. Destiny had some other plans for my install. Towards the end of download, Synaptic gave me an error saying that some package could not be downloaded. I tried and then again tried and finally clicked skip. Same thing happened with three more packages and I clicked skip. After the download Synaptic started upgrading my system and all hell broke loose. All of a sudden my system rebooted and I was brought to a shell  saying that "no inittab file found". I know what this means. This clearly means that some error occurred during upgrade and now my system is screwed.

    I have taken a picture of that error as this was the first time the Ultra Stable PCLOS duped me.

12. I agree that I clicked skip on a few packages, but Synaptic should be intelligent enough to not upgrade packages whose dependencies are not met.

This was end of my date with PCLOS. Then I checked that PCLOS repositories are not updated to the latest version of software. For instance KDE 4.1 is still not the default KDE desktop. Yeah, yeah some might say that KDE 4.1 is not suitable for normal use. Unfortunately for those, the distribution managers  of major distributions like OpenSUSE, Mandriva and Kubuntu think otherwise. Guys if KDE 4.1 was really that bad, these high profile distributions would not include them as default desktop. Not just KDE 4.1, even the Linux kernel version in PCLOS repos is 2.6.22 where as the latest version is 2.6.26.

To summarize PCLOS lost on the exact points where it scored in 2007.

1. It does have a good looking UI, but there is nothing new in it. There is no novelty.
2. It is not Ultra Stable.
3. The repos does not have updated software.
4. The hardware detected is exactly same as Ubuntu.
5. Speed wise it pales in comparison to OpenSUSE and Mandriva.
6. It is not class leading in any respect. There is no compelling reason to use it.

I would anytime choose Mandriva over it. For someone who do mind pre-installed binary software OpenSUSE and Kubuntu are better choices.

I know that Tex ( the main person behind PCLOS ), was not well recently and could not devote time to PCLOS. However, isn't PCLOS supposed to be a community distribution ? PCLOS 2007 was released in May 2007, since then all major distributions including Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE and Mandriva have done at least two releases. However, PCLOS still prides itself on the successful 2007 release. The only OS I know can easily sustain a Looooong period between releases is Windows XP. Unfortunately PCLOS is not XP.

Guys PCLOS was the perfect distribution in 2007, but times have changes. 2007 is history, wake up now. Wake up before its too late.

EDIT:: I know very well that a PCLOS MiniMe is release, also we have a PCLOS Gnome edition. However, please do let me know in which respect are they class leading ? Why should I choose PCLOS say over Ubuntu ?

1. Minime and PCLOS 2007 share the same repos, Hence, stability wise Minime cannot be more stable. 
2. With Minime I have to download a hell lot of software to make a working system. I guess I'll have to download a lot less with Ubuntu. Also Ubuntu has the ability to tell which driver/software we are missing in order to get anything working. Like if I type "gcc" in the terminal, I get a message that gcc is not installaed and can be installed using "apt-get install gcc", similarly I I play a video, Totem tells me the required codecs and pops a UI to download and instal it. This is also there is Mandriva. I think that these makes life simpler. 
3. MiniMe is good, but does it has documentation to work on Vaio. Luckily Ubuntu has, though not official. A google search for "VCC6 Linux" ( the Vaio webcam), immidiately takes me to Ubuntu Forums. 
4. Ubuntu has more recent software in the repositories. The 8.10 version of Kubuntu will have KDE 4.1. 

OK Lets leave Ubuntu, Does PCLOS even compare to Mandriva? I find the latest Mandriva 2009 RC1 with KDE 4.1 to be very stable. I easily recognizes my wi-fi and is much faster than PCLOS. 

One thing in PCLOS favor is the rolling release, Hence it need not make a 6 monthly release like Mandriva/Ubuntu. A user fo 2007 release will still have all the updated software as a user of PCLOS 2008 will have ( if they release PCLOS 2008). However, my point is that the software version in repos is not the very latest, for instance Firefox 3.01 was released on  July 16, 2008 today is September 4 and PCLOS still has 3.0 ? All the three - Mandriva, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu will have it in their next release which is due in October/Nov. Another rolling release distribution "Arch Linux" has Firefox 3.01 in their Current repositories. Why is PCLOS slow in packaging it ? This is the same PCLOS which release Gimp 4.0 in no time. Its just that the quality is degrading. 

My simple question is why should I try PCLOS when there are much better distributions already available free. Please suggest me the reasons. Merely saying PCLOS rocks has no merrit.

NOTE :: I am not trying to degrade PCLOS, I just want the devs to take a note of the other distributions and do a catchup.

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Dell takes Ubuntu to the world

I simply admire Dell for being the pioneer in bringing Linux to an average users. Dell was the major manufacturer who introduced Ubuntu on Laptops and Desktops in US. It followed up with its success in few  European markets and now Dell is trying to further stretch its wings-- Dell is going to offer Ubuntu on its Latos and Desktops to 20 more countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.

That's like music to my ears. This means that more people will buy Linux desktops and Laptops; hence more hardware manufacturers will provide Linux drivers ( even if binary)  and this might result in a chain reaction which might bring Linux comparable to OSX in usage. The next step would be to dethrone Windows, but I think that is very far fetched.

OK coming back to Dell offerings; In India, Dell had introduces two laptops and two desktops. Quoting from Dell site

Today, we're offering two pre-configured laptops--the Vostro A840 and A860, and two pre-configured desktops—the Vostro A100 and A180. Both the affordable notebooks feature a sturdy compact design. The A840 weighs in at  right at 5 lbs while the A80 weighs just about 5.7 lbs.

Of these the details for A840 Laptop are displayed. Now this is not a very high end laptop, actually a ver low end one, but its a good start. Lets check the configurations

Intel® Celeron® M Processor 560   OR Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Processor T2390
Ubuntu® Linux
512MB 667Mhz DDR2 SDRAM    OR 1GB Dual-channel 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
14.1” Widescreen WXGA (1280x800) TFT Display with Anti-glare
80GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive    OR 120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
24X CD-RW/DVD Combination Drive    OR     8X max DVD+/-RW Drive with DVD+R double layer write capability
Integrated Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
Internal 10/100 Fast Ethernet

Now the lower configuration is expected to be priced at INR 22,000 ( USD 550). That is a great offer and can result in many people buying a laptop instead of a desktop and for a change most people will not require to install pirated version of Windows as the pre-installed Ubuntu will provide a fully working system.

I think this is a great effort by Dell and should be applauded. 

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Best among the rest

Now this is beyond doubt that Ubuntu is the most searched Linux distribution. Most websites/forums claim that Ubuntu is the most popular one. Okey, agreed that Ubuntu is the most popular; what about the rest ?

Now Distrowatch reports the top 10 distributions as

1Ubuntu
2openSUSE
3Fedora
4Mint
5PCLinuxOS
6Debian
7Mandriva
8Dreamlinux
9Sabayon
10Damn Small

When I took a Google trend data, I found that apart from Ubuntu, only Debain, Fedora/Redhat and OpenSUSE/SUSE had the best search hits. Here is a link from Google trends depicting the comparative ratio of the five. Please note that I have checked the Google trends data for OpenSUSE and SUSE differently, same holds true for Fedora/Redhat. Interesting thing is that individually each five distribution scores much better than most other top 10 distributions I tried ( Well ! except for the mighty Ubuntu). Please note that each of these five are searched more than Kubuntu, Xubuntu and any other Buntu too.

Debian and Fedora certainly emerge as the clear winner, with SUSE a distant third. I am no expert to do any analysis on this data, maybe you guys can help.

opensuse suse redhat fedora debian

Fore more detailed data please visit Google trends.

Lets see how these stack against mighty Ubuntu

ubuntu suse redhat fedora debian

Again more details at Google trends site.

EDIT: Due to some extreme comments I am adding another google trends comparison. In the original article I had not included distributions which were too low on Google trends to mention. However, now that some guys really want it; I have added comparative searches of "Linux Mint", Mint and PCLinuxOS. Please Note that I have searched for "Linux Mint" as well as Mint. Now we cannot take all Mint to mean Linux Mint, Mint can also mean Mint that we love to eat. Note that Mint search graph has remained consistant since 2004 and earlier, when even Linux Mint's father Ubuntu was not born. So please don't mistake Mint to mean "Linux Mint" Just For Comparison I have added the most debated distribution Debian. Check that Debian is still more searched than Mint. Needless to say "Linux Mint" and PCLinuxOS are no where in comparison. Guys in real world people go by facts; no matter how much I love Linux Mint fact is that Debian is much more popular and this is going to remain so for next few months at least. Many hardcore server admins use Debian and simply would not use any other distro. Here I have not compared a "Desktop only" distribution and I am sure that hardly anyone will use Linux Mint on server.

ubuntu mint linux mint debian pclinuxos

 

Refer to Google Trends site.

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Downgrade to XP or Upgrade to Mandriva

My friend wanted a low cost Laptop and went for Dell 1525. Here in Singapore, it is really a value for money Notebook. For SGD 1099 we get a full featured Laptop with the following Configuration

Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Processor T2390
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic
2GB DDR2 SDRAM
15.4” WXGA Display with Integrated 2.0 mega pixel web cam
160GB* SATA Hard Drive
8X DVD Burner
Integrated Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
Dell™ Wireless 1395 802.11g Wi-Fi Mini-card
1-Year Limited Warranty (Next Business Day On-Site* Service)

Everything is OK with this Laptop, just one issue- It has Vista Basic. Now Vista Basic does not have the cool features of Home Premium, nor is it as snappy as Windows XP. Dell also installs a 30-days subscription of McAffee anti-virus, which although secures the system, but at the same time further makes Vista slower. To further accentuate the problem he uses Netbeans ( his company uses it )for his java development work and had to use OpenOffice ( he does not want to pay SGD 200 for a basic version of MS Office ). Now these two are resource hungry and make Vista crawl. We discussed his problem and came with two possible alternatives

1. Downgrade to XP SP3 ( which is blazingly fast compared to Vista). This was the most obvious option and a good one too as Dell is known to provide drivers for XP and  my friend would have an OS he is very comfortable with. However, there is one problem - MS allows downgrade only for Vista Ultimate and Business editions. That means that my friend has to BUY XP and this defeats the entire purpose of having a Low cost Notebook. Since my Friend had to do some of his official work on this Laptop, so a pirated copy of XP was ruled out. Also, as Dell provided only a 30-Days McAffee subscription, he had to mandatoryily buy a years subscription ( read spend more money). Though extremely tempting this option was ruled out.

Stick to Vista Basic and save the money required to buy XP. Invest some money in McAffee and some more in RAM and get everything working. This sounds great but unfortunately Dell decides to sell a 1GB RAM for SGD 153 and 2GB for SGD 183.   Another very expensive option.

My friend had almost given up and was about to just buy McAffee 1-year subscription and bear the slow Vista. He said that he will upgrade to more RAM after a month or two of saving. It was then that I pitched in and suggested him to give Mandriva 2008 Spring a try. Now he is not afraid of Linux and said that if all the peripherals worked good and the speed is better than Vista, he will consider Ubuntu. His rationale was based on tha fact that Dell officially ships the same Laptop "Inspiron 1525" with Ubuntu pre-installed in US so Ubuntu should have no problem on this one too.  I reminded myself that Ubuntu is the most dominant Distro, but the trouble was that I had to download the Ubuntu LiveCD, whereas I had Mandriva 2008 Spring One on a CD. So we decided to download Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS on my Laptop and in the meanwhile try Mandriva on his Dell.

Good thing for me is that Mandriva One is an excellent flavor of Linux. It comes with almost all the necessary drivers and application. We booted with the LiveCD and in no time we had a beautiful desktop.

I forgot to mention that during boot we had enabled Compiz Fusion, which works beautifully with Intel X3100. Not sure what Mandriva guys have done but the default fonts look beautiful, almost as good as they look on XP. Our next task was to check if all the peripherals work well ?

USB Drive   -- YES

DVD Writer -- YES

8-in-1 Card Reader. We inserted a Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo and Bingo Mandriva detected it and gave  KDE pop-up asking what to do with the new device.

Monitor -- Default resolution was 1200 X 800 ( which is the actual resolution of Dell LCD)

Wireless -- This was a sweet surprise as Mandriva auto-detected the Wireless connection and when we entered the Password, it connected to the WPA-2 Password protected router. In no time we were browsing.

Touchpad -- Works perfectly, though a little extra sensitive.

In-built-webcam -- Works like a charm.

With all the peripherals working out of the box, the next check was for provided software. This is another area where Mandriva One shines. Apart from the beautiful KDE; it has

• OpenOffice,
• Firefox ( as default browser against most KDE based distros which have Konqueror ) ,
• many media codecs,
• GIMP,
• DigiKam,
• Amarok and other media players.
• Support for Windows Mobile Phone, which we could use to sync the new Samsung Omnia.
• Excellent Control Center for any configurations ( if required).

Now these are enough for normal working of an average user. However, he wanted  Netbeans which was an easy download and install from Netbeans website. To our amazement, Mandriva Live CD was easily able to takeup OpenOffice, Firefox and Netbeans all at the same time. Please Note that LiveCD also takes up good amount of RAM.

Here we had Mandriva running from RAM and still faster than INSTALLED Vista Basic on the same hardware. All the hardware was properly detected and working out-of-box; most of the software that he would use on Vista was also on Mandriva ( OpenOffice, Firefox and Netbeans) and the best part is that for Mandriva he does not have to buy any anti-virus.

Needless to say that he instantly installed Mandriva on the hard disk, dual booting with Vista. Finally he got the speed he required and saved money on anti-virus. This all was not done by "Downgrading to XP", but instead by "Upgrading to Mandriva".

P.S: After a while we did try Ubuntu on the same Laptop, but he felt that Mandriva LiveCD was faster and decided to stick to Mandriva.

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IS Ubuntu Hardy really THAT buggy ?

Blogsphere and forums are full of post saying that hardy is much more buggy than Gutsy or any other previous release. Come on this is a LTS release, how can this be so buggy ? Lets take a look at some of the posts

We begin with the comments section on LWN. Lwn reported the release of Ubuntu 8.04 and starting from first comment its all bug reports. The first comment reports three major bugs

1. The ubuntu kernel should use CONFIG_FAIR_CGROUP_SCHED, same as Completely fair scheduler; instead of CONFIG_FAIR_GROUP_SCHED/CONFIG_FAIR_USER_SCHED.  This bug is now fix both in Hardy as well as coming Intrepid.
2. Default ALSA device must use PulseAudio, otherwise ALSA applications may fail. This bug is fixed in Hardy.
3. Manually Configuring Network Causes Massive, Unreversable, Failure. This bug is comfirmed, but not yet fixed.

Its heartening to see that Ubuntu developers are taking the pain to fix the bugs, but I think that such serious bugs should not be part of a LTS release.

Also there is a very nice thread on Mint Forums about Hardy bugs. Some users comment like

Ubuntu is not the least buggy distro available, quite the contrary... e.g you can find bugs reports never fixed, never resolved, although marked for certain importance: "high", "critical" and "confirmed"...
Probably the developers are not interested in fixing bugs, they prefer without doubt add new 'features' which themselves come with other bugs...

There are several threads going on on the Ubuntu forums right now about Hardy being too buggy. It is very buggy. Ubuntu has gotten progressively worse since Feisty. I was hoping Hardy would stabilize this trend, but it has just gotten worse.

Interesting haan.. This made me think how can a distribution that is on the most popular list of almst every Linux site, that has tie-ups with the likes of Dell and is the primary distribution responsible to take Linux to desktop; be so buggy. A distribution like Ubuntu, which is fast becoming the default face of Linux for average computer users, need to be extra cautious about its releases and doubly more when the release is a LTS.

I tried doing a reality check and personally asked my colleagues and friends about how they felt about Linux. Now I am a C++/Unix dev, so is most of my friend circle. I believe that most of us are above average Linux users due to our default familiarity with command line Unix. However, to my astonishment, most of people I asked have never used Linux at home. A few (around 50) , specially from US and India have taken the plunge and became the target of my questionnaire. Here are the most common replies.

1. I ordered a free Linux CD ( read Ubuntu) and am happy using it as LiveCD with no danger of Linux corrupting ( Corrupting Uh!) my hard disk.
2. I shifted to 8.04 only after 8.04.1 was released.
3. I use Ubuntu to showoff the cool Fire effect (compiz) to my friends.
4. I dual boot Ubuntu and XP ( For games only) as Ubutnu is much more safer.
5. I like Ubuntu as it detects all my hardware and puts a popup for installing drivers ( for Nvidia cards) or other software ( media codecs). It detects the correct software and installs it. In effect Ubuntu does all the work for me.
6. I like Ubuntu as for most of the problems, there are already posts in the Support Forum. Even if I ask a question, I get many relevant instant replies and mostly the problem is sorted out.
7. I love Synaptic, it has never failed me.
8. I think it is slow than PCLOS and OpenSUSE.
9. Ubuntu is a parasite on Debian.

Few of my friends work at Novell and are hardcore OpenSUSE fans; can't blame them OpenSUSE is a really good and polished distribution. Some others hate Novell for their pact with MS and are Mandriva/PCLOS converts. OK Coming back to replies regarding Ubuntu, hardly anyone replied in negative. Small problems like   speed and theme were common.

I came to the conclusion that Ubuntu supports all common hardware, presents a very nice Package management, Ships a free CD, has excellent Forums and above all is used by majority of the people I asked. No one reported problems with ASLA, Kernel configuration or the likes. Is this just because all the people I asked are techies ? They all can search for bugs and its resolution ? They can easily apply workarounds ? and if required, they can easily patch and compile a newer version of software?

Not sure what is the reason, but from this small exercise I came to conclusion that Ubuntu is good for people who do not mind a little effort to setup their system and more importantly believe in not jumping to the latest release. Most software product have a little bugs when released, they all take some time to mature. A bleeding edge software is not necessarily better than the previous version. For instance, KDE 4.1 is great but still not as user friendly as KDE 3.5X is. Its better to wait for KDE 4.2 than cry about bugs in KDE 4.1. As they say, bugs needs to be ironed out :)

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