Comments on: Its beauty is in its potential

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 15:52:48 +0000

Stripping down Ubuntu is difficult. Obviously Compiz enabled by default is a slug on systems. If you want those resources back, you disable it. I tried to remove it and it broke X. The thing with all these enhancements to GNOME and Ubuntu is that you don’t really know what you’re peeling away. If you build up a lightweight distro, it’s yours. You built it, you know what’s what, and you chose what to have and what not to have (to more an extent that Ubuntu anyway).

I don’t understand how computers P4@3ghz, 1.5gb ram, 6600GT lag on Xubuntu, or its Gnome counter part. Isn’t Xfce supposed to be lighter than WinXP? With the aforementioned specs, i’ve ran worse and XP was always responsive and fast for me just by using common sense: msconfig clear out, performance setting, standard system approved tweaks sometimes done by default.

I’m not a software engineer but it’s starting to seem like it’s not software like Gnome or Xfce that are the problem with performance but the implementation of them in Ubuntu and friends.

By: It works, but it’s not what I use « Motho ke motho ka botho

It works, but it’s not what I use « Motho ke motho ka botho — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 13:56:17 +0000

[...] with something much more useful. And I suppose, like I said a long time ago, the beauty of it is in its potential to do something — anything — vastly different. Have fun [...]

By: Links 25/3/2010: Free Software Award Winners, Red Hat’s Results Analysed | Boycott Novell

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:13:57 +0000

[...] Its beauty is in its potential I spent most of this week in various shades of the new Ubuntu, with everything from pure command-line installations to full-blown Gnome desktops, and just about anything in between. I don’t pretend to know all the ins and outs, but it was nice to get back to the system that started me out, so to speak. [...]

By: Adrian

Adrian — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:29:54 +0000

My thoughts exactly. I recently took the plunge to pure linux again. No dualbooting, no windows anywhere. I was a bit rusty on my “linux skills” and didn’t have a lot of time so i picked Xubuntu. Damn is it slow. Browsing, going trough folders, playing music, .. It all takes up at least 30% to 40% of CPU-power.

Granted, my computer -P4 3.0ghz with 1,5GB RAM and a 6600GT graphics card- isn’t near lightening fast, but it could’ve done much better.

Looking forward to a barebone installation of Arch Linux this weekend. At the least, I’ll be able to decide what I want on my system, down to the very basics.

By: KenP

KenP — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:02:06 +0000

If Ubuntu really wanted to attract the Windows crowd, they should have avoided GNOME altogether … it copies too much from OSX and continues to do so!

Usability is a matter of opinion, really. We still have almost 95% Windows users out there and making something that looks like Mac OS has not worked very well so far. Otherwise, Linux share should have been at least 5-10% by now — at least the way Ubuntu crowd raves about each new release!

Take a moment, consider Ubuntu going with KDE as default and customizing it (just like they did with GNOME) and you will realise that it could have been a much wiser choice. Of course, its all water under the bridge and GNOME is well and truly entrenched as the default desktop of Ubuntu. What is worse is that other desktop environments get a step-sister treatment. This is unique to Ubuntu, btw. All other distros give equal weightage to all DE’s. OpenSUSE and Mandriva being the prime example here.

By: Nils Kunnas

Nils Kunnas — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:02:36 +0000

Nice entry. Thank you for having such an interesting blog.

By: koleoptero

koleoptero — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 21:02:49 +0000

I said that as a reply to the above comment. Whether it’s good or bad is debatable.

By: Ubuntu4life

Ubuntu4life — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:18:41 +0000

Nice and honest blog.

But Ubuntu is for new people to Linux. Those people are used to an old vista installation an ancient XP installation. For them Linux is blazingly fast !
Ubuntu is slow for a Linux distro, but its still pritty darn fast.

But working a bit more towards speed and stability wouldnt hurt Ubuntu.

Its hard… They need to compete with M$ with adding more and more new and flashy features but when they dont change their theme fast enough other people start crying. At the same time they need to be the fastest distro and after all it needs to be as stable as a truck…
Its hard to do it all at the same time.

My suggestion; Gain as many people as possible with new features, usability and looks and after some years just focus more on speed and stability.

By: patrick

patrick — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 07:43:06 +0000

I’m still at a loss to explain what on earth all of the Canonical staff actually do. Although not freely admitted, depending upon reports there are 200 to 300 of them. When I compare the brown/purple monster to some of the ‘one man’ distros, there isn’t a vast difference in functionality…

By: steve

steve — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 01:45:22 +0000

“Unforunately then, crunchbang will from now on use debian testing”

That’s a *good* thing. Ubuntu is buggy and stable as a termite hill. I’m biased because 8.04 ate most of my precious data.