Ubuntu 7.04 Released

[Moop]

Originally Posted by shaihulud

I really do not understand Ubuntu for not being up with the times when it comes to desktop resolution and refresh rate support. It is very modern in all other aspects, and I am pleased with this! However, it irritates me to no end, especially after installing a driver, to not have a greater range of support for resolutions and refresh rates (out of box). It is very asinine, IMO.

I'm using the nvidia driver and nvidia-settings shows my refresh rate as 75hz which is correct. System-Prefrences-Screen Resolution shows it as 50hz. Also I only have 3 choices in System-Prefrences-Screen Resolution, 50hz-53hz-68hz. None of those are really what they say they are. I can check the true resolution on the monitor.

I like Ubuntu and will stick with it for awhile. It wasn't that hard to get everything working. I did have a problem with Amarok freezing up when I tried playing a mp3. After a few attempts I got an error message that i was missing the codec and it downloaded and installed it and all works good now. I assume that Dell will get all that proprietary stuff working on their desktop version of Ubuntu.

[sandman55]

Originally Posted by Cactuar

Ubuntu recently has loosend up on that issue a little. Even though I agree with you in some respects, I think they more or less want to strike a balance between free and smooth out of box experience. Take into consideration some other more difficult "free as in beer" distributions, for instance gentoo. Imagine grandma trying to install that.

I also think drivers should be free and open source, or at least release the technical documentation for the hardware should be released by the vendor. You paid for the friggin hardware, why should you have to pay to use it, or why should actually using the thing be some "hardees boy mystery"? Anyone with a little know how ,should be able to sit down on a rainy afternoon, write code for what they bought, and have it work, considering they did things correctly. Thats not how things are, and so I don't blame people for boycotting closed source drivers and hardware that has 0 technical documentation backing them up. It honestly makes me happy that ubuntu with its philosophy has become as popular as it has, and I hope that trend continues, and maybe someday hardware vendors will learn that ripping the consumer off is not good business practice.

Thats why I wont be buying any Canon hardware :thumbsdown:

[Fraoch]

Originally Posted by sandman55

Thats why I wont be buying any Canon hardware

I have an ancient Canon FB630U scanner that works perfectly, but only because the SANE guys reverse-engineered it based on looking at the internal components. I also have a Canon A75 camera which works perfectly.

However I also have a Canon MF5770 printer/fax/scanner which is almost a $400 paperweight. Thank goodness I had the foresight to get the network 5770 and not the conventional 5750 otherwise it really would be useless. At least my Windows laptop can access it over wireless. Othwerwise I'd have to bring the laptop to the printer and plug it in using a USB cable - a total PITA if I wanted to print anything.

[Fraoch]

Overall everything's working in Ubuntu for me with the exception of minor niggles (samba and NFS networking, Automatix always thinks Synaptic is running, etc.)

Even my 64-bit system seems to have no problems except for file sharing/networking.

I have two medium-level problems:

- refresh rates. I'm using old, old ATI cards with the R100 and R200 drivers, but still, it'd be nicer to have refresh rates higher than 60 Hz. Ow, my eyes!

- flash card reader. I have an incompatible flash card reader which other people seem to have working effortlessly? See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=438998

[Gorganzola]

Integrated Development Environment

Originally Posted by wallijonn

Pointy,

IDE = Internet Developer Environment ?

[3 of 7]

Originally Posted by sandman55

Thats why I wont be buying any Canon hardware :thumbsdown:

I was quite unimpressed to see my new Canon printer needs a $48 3rd party driver.... It's like their saying to me...pleeeeze install Utorrent...

Gee Wiz

[Fraoch]

One other interesting thing about Canon: when I asked if there was a Linux driver for the $400 piece of hardware I bought from them, their response was about 6 words, simplistically translated as NO.

I knew there was no Linux driver. I figured I'd ask to poke at them a bit and remind them that there were people looking for it. But they weren't biting.

The Linux community has so many smart investigative-types that if they were to release the slightest bit of hardware information about the printer I'm sure a driver could be knocked together in a few months. And I'm not looking for anything fancy - just PRINTING would be nice. But NO.

So if you're looking for a multifunction printer that works in Linux - STAY AWAY FROM CANON! Canon won't support you - don't support them.

What's sad is that it's a really, really good printer. It'll make quite an impression down at the dump.

[sandman55]

I got my old BJC-4200 working with the free Turbo Print if you select for the highest quality print you get a TurboPrint logo on your page or pay for it, so I select the next down quality and I find that is pretty good, give them a try 3 of 7
My CanoScan 3000f is a good scanner and I'm very happy with it but no drivers for Linux

[Cogar]

Originally Posted by Cactuar

Not to mention the NVidia ATI closed sourced graphics hell. They honestly expect me to load unaudited blobs of code into my kernel and expect me to forget about any security issues they've had in the past with their drivers. If there was a decent alternative to these two I'd be all over it like flies on stink.

Linux is more than ready for all this high tech hardware. These high tech hardware companies aren't ready to be honest with their customers though.

Although they are not available as open source, the situation is no worse than the one we are in when using Windows--and you have the option of using VESA drivers, which actually makes the situation a little better.

Let me add for the record that the NVIDIA drivers work very well with the various Linux distributions I have tried, but ATI drivers are in a little less fortunate situation. If you go to a Linux-oriented forum, chances are you will see twice as many posts requesting help installing ATI video drivers as NVIDIA video drivers. I understand that ATI has made improvements over the last year, but once bitten, twice shy.

[wallijonn]

Another much more important but equally deferred goal in Feisty is the so-called "bulletproof X" proposal, the need for which became clear after an Ubuntu driver update miscue last year that rendered some users' graphical interfaces unusable, and which required some command-line twiddling to repair. The idea behind bulletproof X is that in such a case, Ubuntu would step down to a failsafe graphics mode from which a user could visit the project's Web site and follow instructions to fix the issue.

We were happy to find that Ubuntu now offers up a graphical interface for configuring the distribution's Xorg 7.2 X server—every popular distribution ships with such a tool, and we've long lamented the absence of one in Ubuntu. (What's the name of this utility?)

Ubuntu's display settings auto-detection generally works well, but without a graphical configuration tool, making changes to supported resolutions or setting up multimonitor configurations has required config file editing. The new tool, called displayconfig-gtk, is only a few months old at this point, and is not installed by default, but the tool worked well for us in tests.

The State of Ubuntu 7.04 Is Strong: Running migration tool directly on Windows

[wallijonn]

A nice review: Ubuntu Linux Vs. Windows Vista: The Battle For Your Desktop - Personal Technology - Network Computing

It's where I learned of GIMPShop, ext3.cow and GStreamer plugins (although the latter is already installed with automatix.)

I already have The GIMP for Windows, so it's time to install GIMPShop...

[FearFactory]

I'm not a Gnome fan, but i installed Ubuntu this weekend because i'm looking for a new job and i see some companies asking for Ubuntu knowledge's. This way i have a few questions..

1- How do i login as root?

2- On Kde when i do a right click i have options like "open as root" and "open a terminal here". Also when you hit F4, it opens a terminal on the location you are. Can't this be done on Gnome? This options are very handy because if i want to edit a file as root, i don't need to write the full path on the terminal. I found it when i was trying to edit the menu.lst file, i had to write "sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst" on the terminal.

3- What media players you use on Gnome? I don't like Totem, i installed Kaffeine and VLC (to open .vob folders). For Mp3 i installed Amarok, very good on my opinon.

[Fraoch]

Originally Posted by FearFactory

1- How do i login as root?

You don't really with Ubuntu, at least not like other distros. You're always logged in as your local user, and if you want to do anything adminstrative, "sudo" (for one command), "su" (for several commands), "gksu" (for GUI tasks run as root).

Now, being a Linux newbie, I'm sure you CAN log in as root, but it's not as apparent or necessary as some of the other distros I used.

2- On Kde when i do a right click i have options like "open as root" and "open a terminal here". Also when you hit F4, it opens a terminal on the location you are. Can't this be done on Gnome? This options are very handy because if i want to edit a file as root, i don't need to write the full path on the terminal. I found it when i was trying to edit the menu.lst file, i had to write "sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst" on the terminal.

Yeah, haven't found my way around this one. I once saw a video where the guy dragged the path to the terminal and it automatically popped in but it doesn't do that for me.

3- What media players you use on Gnome? I don't like Totem, i installed Kaffeine and VLC (to open .vob folders). For Mp3 i installed Amarok, very good on my opinon.

xmms. Nice and simple, supporting a wide range of audio formats.

BTW you are aware of Kubuntu? Ubuntu running KDE.

[FearFactory]

Fraoch! Yeah, i tried Kubuntu but i had a few problems installing the Nvidia driver. I must get used to Gnome and Ubuntu because maybe i will need it on a future new job.

[FearFactory]

Trying to find a new theme and icons for Gnome because the default one's are very retro.. it seems i'm looking to win98 or something..