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Horrible Ubuntu Experience!

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I decided to spend my Sunday morning giving Linux yet one more try. I do this every few months trying hard to keep an open mind.

I decided to install Ubuntu 10.0.4 otherwise known as Lucid Lynx. According to the official Ubuntu website, the minimum system requires are: P4 1Ghz processor, 64 MB of RAM (512MB recommended) and 5 GB of hard drive space.

My PC is a little older but not ancient by any stretch: AMD64 3200+ processor, 2 GB of RAM, 128 MB video card, 500 GB hard drive.

Here are my problems:

1) It failed to recognize my sound card
2) It failed to recognize one of my two printers
3) It failed to recognize my webcam

In addition, after a 26 minute install (not bad at all), the first reboot crashed complaining about I/O errors. So I rebooted again with no problems.

Feeling pretty good with a desktop up, OpenOffice installed, etc I started using the system. It was sluggish to say the least! So I installed all recommended updates and rebooted. Fast and easy.

Still quite sluggish (Firefox took 7 seconds to open Yahoo.com and 16 seconds to open TechRepublic.com), I opened the System Monitor to see what was going on.

With no programs running in the background my CPU was pegged at 100% CPU usage and I was sending and receiving about 300 Kbps over my NIC. I rebooted again just to make sure this wasn’t some freakish one time event.

Still sluggish.

Firefox, in addition to the above, browses Facebook very slow and won’t play Mafia Wars on Facebook at all. Any function such as recovering your health that requires a popup fails to load (Java script I believe).

OpenOffice 3.2 does open about as fast as I have ever seen. I’m very impressed with it, however, it runs almost as fast on Windows. OpenOffice has come a long way.

The music player works well, burning a CD not a problem, chat client is great. But with Firefox practically unusable, no audio, half my printers and no webcam I have to say this is yet one more failed Linux experiment.

This is not the year of Linux, it isn’t as easy to use as anyone thinks and I feel like I just wasted the last 3 hours (downloading the .iso, burning it, installing it, testing the new OS, etc).

It’s no wonder that Linux has always left such a horrible taste in my mouth. I know all the arguments people will throw at me, yet until Linux or Ubuntu or whoever has a system comparable to Windows (pop in the CD/DVD and follow the prompts or better yet nowadays a recovery partition) and everything just works, Linux is DOA.

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doesn’t suprise me

In reply to Horrible Ubuntu Experience!

first, ubuntu isn’t what their advertising clams, or there wouldn’t be millions of help posts for it all over the internet.

second, firefox just sucks, so that isn’t a surprise either.

as far as the webcam goes, make and model to the vendor asking for their [ non-existent most likely ] driver might solve that.

soundcard, should have worked, what make and chipset is it?

I re-installed Windows XP SP3 for a friend last week

In reply to Horrible Ubuntu Experience!

Before I went into it, though, I did my homework, identifying all installed and peripheral hardware, locating and downloading copies of the most current XP drivers, and burning them onto a CD. I left both the drivers CD and a slipstreamed install CD behind. My friend put them into the original Windows XP box with her license certificate and original CD.

That said, are your sound card, printer, and webcam listed as supported equipment at the Linux Hardware How-to? If not, you’ll need the OEM’s Linux drivers (if they exist).

edit: lost an ‘n’ somewhere. My friend was fried. :0

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