Lets face Ubuntu 8.04

[Michael "TheZorch" Haney]

Qiuli Han wrote:
> Hi gang,
>
> Lets face it, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is not as great as its last LTS on the 
> desktop, which was 6.06. It is not even as great as 7.10!
Despite its quirks and obvious problems I found 8.04 to be faster than 7.10.
>
> I am running Ubuntu 8.04 64 bit on my desktop PC since its release 
> date, and I am still experiencing a few issues after latest updates.
I haven't had any issues except that I can't my wifi adapter to work 
even though the MadWifi drivers which Ubuntu comes with which are 
endorsed by the company that made the adapter don't seem to be working 
with it.
>
> 1. Flash player inside firefox does not work properly when more than 
> one flash player page is opened. the later opened one may not display 
> the flash content.
> 2. Flash play will play first 4 sec without sound then stop if there 
> is another application needs to use sound (mp3 player). It may not 
> only happens with flash, i think some other application is also having 
> this problem.
It might be a PulseAudio problem, but its more likely a Flash issue.  
Flash 9 isn't the best when it comes to performance.  Flash 10 is in 
Beta right now and is supposed to be faster and better on the system 
resources.  It should be in the repos not long after its finally 
released out of beta.
>
> 3. wine is not reading the fonts in ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts <-- 
> i know it might be more like wine's problem
> 4. not able to play back rmvb files by using mplayer. the codec seems 
> installed, but it is not doing the job
I never had a problem with Wine but I haven't tried it on Hardy yet.  As 
for Mplayer, I've had mixed issues with it in the past.
>
>
> I can go on and on...
>
> My point is, I was not experiencing any of these issue when i was use 
> 7.10. I know some of them may need some tweaks, but i was able to make 
> it work.
I noticed that some apps when installed through Add/Remove Programs 
don't show up in the main menu, and some which do don't start.
>
> when i first install 8.04, i was surprised it ships with FF3 beta. I 
> know FF3 will be released soon at that time, but it is not a good idea 
> to put it in a LTS even though you are going to update it later.
Well, at the time that is all there was.  Albeit the beta of FF3 was far 
more stable and faster than FF2 and on the Windows side it was WAY 
faster than IE ... ok everything is faster than IE.  Anyway, the Mozilla 
folks did a great job on FF3 and the stability and usable of the BETA shows.
>
> the new kernel, 2.6.24, is having a lot of compatible issue. For 
> example, VMware does not like that new kernel, some modules can not be 
> compiled.
Wasn't this new kernel supposed to now support processor virtualization 
just like Windows does?  You know the virtualization found in the latest 
Intel Core 2 Dual processors and Core 2 Quad processors.
>
>
> It might only be 64 bit's problem only, since i need it to see all my 
> ram without enable pae or hugemem. Or that is just my stupid 
> configuration or limited knowledge.
I use the 32bit Ubuntu on my desktop and 64bit Ubuntu on my laptop.  I 
didn't really see much a difference, though my laptop's performance is 
slightly better than my desktop since its a AMD Athlon 64x2 1.8GHz and 
my desktop is an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ 1.2GHz rig.

On some of the forums I heard that Gutsy 64bit had issues, so I don't 
know if some of those problems were inherited by Hardy or not.  I know 
one thing, at least the Linux community can built a descent 64bit OS as 
compared to Microsoft who still frack it up.
>
> I think, Ubuntu team should really re-consider using the newest 
> software package in the LTS release. The newest is not always the 
> "best" in linux.
Yeah, well I heard that Hardy was going have most all cutting edge 
stuff.  Problem with "cutting edge" is that inevitably you will draw 
blood that some point.  This is new technology and new technology often 
comes with bugs hand-in-hand.  Give it time and the community will iron 
them out.  This is why its important to install the updates as they come.
>
> I will re-install 8.04 64bit tonight to see if i can fix those issues 
> i listed. If not, i think i will go back to 7.10.
>
That's the same attitude many have concerning Vista.  When I gave that 
OS a go on my new laptop I said to myself "this crap is like betaware!"  
Turns out Vista may have been ALPHA code foisted on an unsuspecting 
world as finished code.  You should all know what I'm talking about.  
The guy in charge of Vista development was moving from MS to Amazon.com, 
but he had to finish his work on Vista before he could go to the new 
job.  Well, he had a deadline to meet or he'd miss out on a rather big 
sign on bonus with Amazon, so he rushed the development of Vista and 
pushed the developers into releasing the OS into Beta sooner than it 
should have been.  The end result, the PC world got an OS which isn't 
finshed by a long shot, has serious backward compatibility issues, and 
also has serious performance issues as well.  Not to mention that the 
system specs on the box are too low even for the RECOMMENDED specs in 
order to properly run the OS.  Here I go again ranting about Vista, look 
what you made me do!!!  :)

Anywho, give Hardy a try again, tough it out and things will improve 
over time as fixes become available on the repos.

-- 
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch at gmail.com
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