Revisiting Linux Part 1: A Look at Ubuntu 8.04
by Ryan Smith on August 26, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Back in the early part of 2008 we decided that we wanted to take a fresh look at Linux on the desktop. To do so we would start with a “switcher” article, giving us the chance to start anew and talk about some important topics while gauging the usability of Linux.
That article was supposed to take a month. As I have been continuously reminded, it has been more than a month. So oft delayed but never forgotten, we have finally finished our look at Ubuntu 8.04, and we hope it has been worth the wait.
There are many places I could have started this article, but the best place to start is why this article exists at all. Obviously some consideration comes from the fact that this is my job, but I have been wanting to seriously try a Linux distribution for quite some time. The fact that so much time has transpired between the last desktop Linux article here at AnandTech and my desire to try Linux makes for an excellent opportunity to give it a shot and do something about our Linux coverage at the same time.
After I threw this idea at Anand, the immediate question was what distribution of Linux should we use. As Linux is just an operating system kernel, and more colloquially it is the combination of the Linux kernel and the GNU toolset (hence the less common name GNU/Linux), this leaves a wide variation of actual distributions out there. Each distribution is its own combination of GNU/Linux, applications, window managers, and more, to get a complete operating system.
Since our target was a desktop distribution with a focus on home usage (rather than being exclusively enterprise focused) the decision was Ubuntu, which has established a strong track record of being easy to install, easy to use, and well supported by its user community. The Linux community has a reputation of being hard to get into for new users, particularly when it comes to getting useful help that doesn’t involve being told to read some esoteric manual (the RTFA mindset), and this is something I wanted to avoid. Ubuntu also has a reputation for not relying on the CLI (Command-Line Interface) as much as some other distributions, which is another element I was shooting for – I may like the CLI, but only when it easily allows me to do a task faster. Otherwise I’d like to avoid the CLI when a GUI is a better way to go about things.
I should add that while we were fishing for suggestions for the first Linux distro to take a look at, we got a lot of suggestions for PCLinuxOS. On any given day I don’t get a lot of email, so I’m still not sure what that was about. Regardless, while the decision was to use Ubuntu, it wasn’t made in absence of considering any other distributions. Depending on the reception of this article, we may take a look at other distros.
But with that said, this article serves two purposes for us. It’s first and foremost a review of Ubuntu 8.04. And with 9.04 being out, I’m sure many of you are wondering why we’re reviewing anything other than the latest version of Ubuntu. The short answer is that Ubuntu subscribes to the “publish early, publish often” mantra of development, which means there are many versions, not all of which are necessarily big changes. 8.04 is a Long Term Support release; it’s the most comparable kind of release to a Windows or Mac OS X release. This doesn’t mean 9.04 is not important (which is why we’ll get to it in Part 2), but we wanted to start with a stable release, regardless of age. We’ll talk more about this when we discuss support.
The other purpose for this article is that it’s also our baseline “introduction to Linux” article. Many components of desktop distributions do not vary wildly for the most part, so much of what we talk about here is going to be applicable in future Linux articles. Linux isn’t Ubuntu, but matters of security, some of the applications, and certain performance elements are going to apply to more than just Ubuntu.
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LittleMic - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_linkWell, Windows 2000 had symbolic links for a long time :-p (only for directory until Vista though)
ekul - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
ntfs has symlinks but the windows shell can't create or manipulate them. Pretty pointless. MS can (and does) use them in vista/7 but you can't make your ownEeqmcsq - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
"hint: symlinks are your best friend. My home dir is littered with links to places on the filesystem I visit a lot to avoid a lot of clicking/typing"I use Gnome's bookmarks for that. Those bookmarks even include SMB shares on my other computers.
ekul - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
gnome bookmarks are very handy I just find symlinks to be more flexible since they work regardless of gnome vs kde, gtk vs qt and gui vs cli. Even wine can take advantage of themjigglywiggly - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
one more thing you should have covered is battery life on laptops. Linux in general is pretty awful at managing battery life. Just web browsing 4 hrs on Vista on my vostro 1310(not using 7) but with Ubuntu 2 1/2. It's a huge difference, but oh well.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Laptops are out of our domain, that would be Jarred. If this two-part series is successful, I'll see what I can do about talking him in to putting some Ubuntu (or any Linux for that matter) battery benchmarks in. But I'm told a complete workup takes a while.strikeback03 - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
On my Thinkpad T43, battery life is essentially equal between XP and Ubuntu. Ubuntu may even be slightly better, though I have never bothered with a formal test to put real numbers on both. Have you looked at whether the processor is throttling down properly or not while in Ubuntu?sprockkets - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
"Now we have yet to touch on hardware accelerated playback, which is something we’re going to hold off on until we take a look at Ubuntu 9.04. Linux does not have a common media framework like Windows and Mac OS X have DirectShow/DXVA and QuickTime respectively. Rather the desktop environment that Ubuntu is based off of (GNOME) includes a lesser framework called GStreamer, which is closer to a basic collection of codecs and an interface to them. As such hardware accelerated playback is not as easy to do under Ubuntu as it is under Windows and Mac OS X. We’ll take look at the APIs and the software for this in our look at Ubuntu 9.04."Well, not exactly. There is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VaAPI">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VaAPI, which is not exactly widespread yet. nVidia's VDPAU, which provides hardware acceleration for h.264 and if you have the latest version of PureVideo in your card, it does VC-1 as well. It can work with this or alone as well.
Also, while it is wacky that bin or binaries are in one spot, and lib or libraries are in another, and anything you install is in a /usr/lib/local, it does keep all related files in one spot. Keeping all your libraries registered as packages also makes it easy to repair.
Also, one click installs are possible on openSuSE as well, though it does involve a small gui process and adding a repository as well. But doesn't any program require this?
Also, I believe your problem with SMB shares is something I run into as well, but only on GNOME. On KDE, browsing shares is quite normal. Since I never bother mounting the share, I can't directly access it without KDE caching the file locally.
Isn't /home/$Your Name$ intuitive as to where your stuff would be? That is very nice, as I can keep my stuff separate from the OS, thus I can reformat the OS partition without having to touch my data. Imagine reinstalling Windows and finding all your apps working exactly as before with no work. Can OSX do that (not rhetorical)?
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
VDPAU is something we'll specifically be covering in the Part 2; in fact it's what I'm working on at this moment.GeorgeH - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
I'm sure the comment section will quickly be swamped with quibbles, so I just wanted to say that I found this article to be very informative, accurate (WRT my own Ubuntu experiences), and thorough. Kudos - now it's time to ask for a raise. :)