I've just installed an Ubuntu box on an old PC (could do with an extra 256MB, but hopefully that will be sorted later today; thanks, Matt :) )
It strikes me that, unless I'm missing something, it's not quite as user friendly as I was led to believe;
o There's no obvious way to get out system information; Device Manager will tell me it's a PIII, but not the speed. System Monitor will at least tell me the installed RAM, but again not the CPU speed.
o "Power management" is a bit of a grandiose name, given that all it will do is turn off the PC or the monitor. No disk spin-down times, fan speed controls, etc.
o There are two package managers (Update Manager and Synaptic Package Manager). The former, at least, tells me when there are updates available. I don't know yet if it will include extra packages installed by the latter (e.g. Apache WWW Server). Why two in the first place?
o Disappointed that something as basic as NTP isn't installed by default. Even (spit) Windows has had this since NT4.
So, is Ubuntu not quite as ready for the mainstream as I thought, or have I missed something?
Greg
Hi Greg
On Monday 19 November 2007 18:58, Greg Thomas wrote:
I've just installed an Ubuntu box on an old PC (could do with an extra 256MB, but hopefully that will be sorted later today; thanks, Matt :)
Good on ya... I could never get the Live CD to boot on my regular test machine, and the last one I tried didn't want to know on *this box (AMD64 X2)
It strikes me that, unless I'm missing something, it's not quite as user friendly as I was led to believe;
Can't comment...
o There's no obvious way to get out system information; Device Manager will tell me it's a PIII, but not the speed. System Monitor will at least tell me the installed RAM, but again not the CPU speed.
`cat /proc/cpuinfo` should spit out a bunch more info, but then I'm kind of a command line junkie ;)
o "Power management" is a bit of a grandiose name, given that all it will do is turn off the PC or the monitor. No disk spin-down times, fan speed controls, etc.
Possibly the required kernel drivers are not loaded - But then I tend to disable most power management options as it interferes with the running of certain applications (not the sort of thing you'd want to run).
o There are two package managers (Update Manager and Synaptic Package Manager). The former, at least, tells me when there are updates available. I don't know yet if it will include extra packages installed by the latter (e.g. Apache WWW Server). Why two in the first place?
Never seen/used "Update Manager", but Synaptic tells me when updates & new stuff is available for Debian.
o Disappointed that something as basic as NTP isn't installed by default. Even (spit) Windows has had this since NT4.
Yup. NTP is pretty simple, doesn't take up much space, and is a handy utility to have - Installed here, and runs on each boot..
So, is Ubuntu not quite as ready for the mainstream as I thought, or have I missed something?
Well.... Ubuntu is based on a Debian testing snapshot, so bugs are to be expected. Bt to be fair to the Ubuntu guys, the do do a lot of testing and feed bug fixes back to Debian.
To end: At times, Linux is more of a religon/perversion/"way of life" than just another operating system.
Regards, Paul.
Greg Thomas wrote:
o There's no obvious way to get out system information; Device Manager will tell me it's a PIII, but not the speed. System Monitor will at least tell me the installed RAM, but again not the CPU speed.
The "System" tab in System Monitor tells me I have 487.9MB RAM and an Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.60GHz - so I guess it depends what CPU you have, maybe your CPU doesn't report it's speed correctly or something??
But I already knew both those facts, because I bought this laptop (albeit a couple of years back now.)
It also tells me what release of Ubuntu I'm running and that I only have 1.4GB remaining disk space.
o "Power management" is a bit of a grandiose name, given that all it will do is turn off the PC or the monitor. No disk spin-down times, fan speed controls, etc.
My power management preferences allow me to control when the computer/display are put to sleep from inactivity and what happens when the laptop lid is closed, on both AC power and Battery, among other things.
And who cares about disk spin-down times? All I need to be able to do is access my data from the disk.
o There are two package managers (Update Manager and Synaptic Package Manager). The former, at least, tells me when there are updates available. I don't know yet if it will include extra packages installed by the latter (e.g. Apache WWW Server). Why two in the first place?
They're sort of the same package manager, as in they manage the same packages. Update Manager is the one which comes up in your system tray telling you there are updates available. Synaptic is where you can go to install new packages (Applications -> Add/Remove, is another place). Update Manager will tell you if there are updates to things installed by Synaptic, they use the same database. It's just an issue of names I suppose..
o Disappointed that something as basic as NTP isn't installed by default. Even (spit) Windows has had this since NT4.
*shrug*
So, is Ubuntu not quite as ready for the mainstream as I thought, or have I missed something?
It is ready for the mainstream, but it seems to me that you're not as mainstream as you think are.
-Simon
On Mon, 2007-11-19 at 18:58 +0000, Greg Thomas wrote:
I've just installed an Ubuntu box on an old PC (could do with an extra 256MB, but hopefully that will be sorted later today; thanks, Matt :) )
It strikes me that, unless I'm missing something, it's not quite as user friendly as I was led to believe;
Are you comparing Ubuntu to other distributions or is this your first direct experience of Linux ?
o There's no obvious way to get out system information; Device Manager will tell me it's a PIII, but not the speed. System Monitor will at least tell me the installed RAM, but again not the CPU speed.
I am sure there must be a gui tool somewhere that does this...people who have used linux for a while tend to just type cat /proc/cpuinfo and cat /proc/meminfo but I appreciate that to a newcomer this is less than obvious.
As others have pointed out System Monitor will hint at the correct processor type but not always the clock speed.
o "Power management" is a bit of a grandiose name, given that all it will do is turn off the PC or the monitor. No disk spin-down times, fan speed controls, etc.
Power Management is generally very dependant on the hardware you have..not all ACPI implementations are equal and many are not even close to spec. Without the luxury of the 3rd party chipset drivers Windows has getting the full feature set that your hardware supports can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. You probably need to do a quick search of the Ubuntu forums to find details specific to your hardware or chipset. Hard drive spin times I am again afraid I only know how to do with hdparm and this is a tool that should be used with caution. man hdparm will tell you all you need to know but I would stress that this is something best played with later rather than sooner if you are new to Linux.
Oh and be careful with aggressive spindown times for Desktop hard drives. It is often the case that they are not rated for as many start stop cycles as laptop drives and aggressive settings could cause an early failure. The head-platter gap is maintained by an aerodynamic artifact of the platter spinning and there is actually contact with the platter at rest..so spin up and spin down do account for some wear.
o There are two package managers (Update Manager and Synaptic Package Manager). The former, at least, tells me when there are updates available. I don't know yet if it will include extra packages installed by the latter (e.g. Apache WWW Server). Why two in the first place?
They both look at the same database but are intended for different purposes... Anything you add via Synaptic will be updated by update manager as long as the package repository stays added so it knows where to look for updates. You might want to review what repositories are selected in Synaptic by the way (settings, repositories)
o Disappointed that something as basic as NTP isn't installed by default. Even (spit) Windows has had this since NT4.
No it is not installed by default but does that really matter ?.Right click clock, adjust date and time, change from manual to internet time and you get a popup telling you it needs to install NTP support once more click on the yes button and you are done (unless you are intending to sync to a local time server)
I can't recall NT4 having NTP available in the default installation :)
On 20/11/2007, Wayne Stallwood ALUGlist@digimatic.co.uk wrote:
On Mon, 2007-11-19 at 18:58 +0000, Greg Thomas wrote:
I've just installed an Ubuntu box on an old PC (could do with an extra 256MB, but hopefully that will be sorted later today; thanks, Matt :) )
It strikes me that, unless I'm missing something, it's not quite as user friendly as I was led to believe;
Are you comparing Ubuntu to other distributions or is this your first direct experience of Linux ?
No; the last distro I installed was Gentoo. Never really trusted these modern GUI things ...
o There's no obvious way to get out system information; Device Manager will tell me it's a PIII, but not the speed. System Monitor will at least tell me the installed RAM, but again not the CPU speed.
I am sure there must be a gui tool somewhere that does this...people who have used linux for a while tend to just type cat /proc/cpuinfo and cat /proc/meminfo
Indeed. And as that is clearly stating cpu Mhz: 996.828 I was surprised that System Monitor wasn't displaying it.
Power Management is generally very dependant on the hardware you have..not all ACPI implementations are equal and many are not even close to spec.
I was hoping that with a relatively new acpi version of 20070126 ("cat /proc/acpi/info") things would be OK, but I guess not.
Hard drive spin times I am again afraid I only know how to do with hdparm and this is a tool that should be used with caution.
Indeed. Hence a nice easy to use tool (cf. MS Windows) would have been handy. Especially if I'm going to leave it running 24x7. Perhaps I should just dig out an old laptop ;)
No it is not installed by default but does that really matter ?
I've actually subsequently spotted the Ubuntu Desktop at least has ntpdate installed by default which given it's a desktop OS makes sense (my assumption is that Ubuntu Derver would have ntp proper).
I can't recall NT4 having NTP available in the default installation :)
Hmm, on reflection maybe it was part of the resource kit, back then!
Greg
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Greg Thomas -
Paul -
Simon Elliott -
Wayne Stallwood