Time to wash my hands clean of Ubuntu!
By santuccie
@santuccie (3384)
United States
November 24, 2007 10:25pm CST
I don't know how fanboys can sit and talk about how unstable Windows is. I'll admit that antivirus and antispyware software have a tendency to slow things down, and even cause stability problems with Windows. But I've been able to free myself from this issue by forgoing antivirus and antispyware, and locking down the kernel instead. I've yet to have XP crash this way (knock on wood).
But Ubuntu seems to WANT to cause problems. Every once in awhile, the mouse will stop working. It seldom happens, and Firefox picks right back up if I have to reboot. And for the overall speed of the operating system, it was something I could overlook. However, Ubuntu's reckless handling of data is not.
There was something I needed to do in Windows, so I went to restart, and Ubuntu just sat there. I tried to click the "power" button again, and nothing happened, so I depressed and held the power button on the tower until the machine did a hard shutdown. I did what I needed to do in Windows, then restarted my machine (XP didn't have a problem).
Now, Ubuntu has two top panels; one blank, and the other with all my regular icons; but the system tray won't show up. And the bottom panel is just a solid orange; it never shows up at all. I can't do anything with this! I reboot several times, to no avail. The next time I go to Windows, it runs Checkdisk on Drive F: (my Seagate USB hard drive). It finds tens of corrupted files, and proceeds to restore what it can. Now, a bunch of my files are missing, thanks to Ubuntu.
This distro is garbage! I can't believe Dell started selling machines with this embryonic, bug-infested abomination of incoherent code. I'm considering trying a different distro, but would like some input on what distro that should be. I want something that's as object oriented (point 'n' click) as possible, has decent software/driver support, and is STABLE. Any thoughts?
2 people like this
2 responses
@Taskr36 (13963)
• United States
26 Nov 07
I feel your pain Santuccie. I felt exactly the same way when I used Ubuntu. My problems weren't with the mouse though, they were with the keyboard. Half the time when I would start the computer only 3, 7, g, h, and n would work from the keyboard. Since none of those characters were part of my login password I would have to restart the computer and hope the entire keyboard worked the next time. I eventually discovered a ritual of going into options, tools, and then back to the login screen to make the whole keyboard work, but I wanted nothing to do with an OS that couldn't even make drivers for a freaking keyboard. I could talk about my issues with the wireless, but I think you get the idea.
I personally like Mepis as a distro. Mandriva is nice too, but Mepis was just more pleasant for me. I think Ubuntu is just an overrated piece of garbage. Anti-Microsoft people have just latched onto it. I still see drivers as the biggest problem with Linux. I stopped using it on my old laptop because the display drivers didn't support 3D rendering so I couldn't even play old games on it. I'm sure that wouldn't be a problem if my laptop had ATI or NVidia graphics, but it had S3 graphics which only support 3D rendering in Windows XP and older versions of Windows (no Vista).
I personally didn't notice Linux being any faster than Windows XP. Maybe it was, but it wasn't significant. Either way, my vote is for Mepis if you want to try Linux in another flavor.
2 people like this
@Taskr36 (13963)
• United States
26 Nov 07
The only distros I've tried were Ubuntu, Mepis, and Mandriva. You mentioned the encrypted DVDs, and that was one of the many things that bugged me in Ubuntu, I had to download some supposedly illegal codec, that's free with Windows (because you pay for Windows). My judgements on speed may be a little off since all my linux testing has been done on my old Compaq laptop with a 1.1GHz AMD Duron proc and 512MB of PC133 RAM. I really despised using the terminal for so many task in Ubuntu. If I wanted that I would still be using DOS. Granted, I used DOS until around 1999 when I finally tried Windows 98 (I despised Windows 95).
I use MAC address filtering instead of WPA for my wireless. Mepis did recognize my wireless USB adapter right away which was part of why I liked it. It took three days of screwing around with drivers and compiling and ndiswrapper and crap to get Ubuntu to see it. Mandriva also recognized my wireless USB adapter immediately. I didn't use Mandriva for more than a few days because I liked the appearance of MEPIS better. I let my wife use my newer laptop for school now, so my old laptop has been upgraded from toy, to my school laptop once again. As a result It will be a while before I try other Linux OSes on it. Good luck.
1 person likes this
@santuccie (3384)
• United States
26 Nov 07
'If I wanted that I would still be using DOS.'
--You got that right! I used DOS until right around June of 1995. It was Windows from that point on, beginning with 3.1. I was only a kid then, and didn't know a whole heck of a lot of commands to begin with.
I use MAC filtering as well, and wireless admin is turned off. I even have Network Magic installed on the hard-wired machine, just in case someone pulls a rabbit out of their hat (more like three rabbits) and gets in. I'm just paranoid, that's all. :P Sandboxing isn't secure enough for me in Windows, which is why I wrote a whole blog, with pictorial, step-by-step instructions on a "quick and dirty" way to lock down the core: http://invincible-windows.blogspot.com/
The last time I tried Mandriva, I felt overwhelmed by it. I don't know why it was such a piece of cake this time. Either it matured considerably over the past six months or so, or I'm just "battle-hardened" from Ubuntu. :S
I think I'll give OpenSUSE a go before I check in, then I'll let HDD Regenerator run overnight. Thanks again for your help!
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
25 Nov 07
I have had very few problems with Ubuntu, although it was difficult to configure a wireless network with this system.
I would personally recommend mandriva as a good alternative. I cannot think of a single problem That mandriva has caused me and setting up a wireless network was very easy.
1 person likes this
@santuccie (3384)
• United States
25 Nov 07
Thank you for your suggestion. And wow! Mandriva's latest version is a light-year's advancement from the last version I tried. This one is all GUI, and I setup everything but encrypted DVD playback without ever opening a terminal! It also does something Ubuntu still won't do, and that's connect to my WPA without intervention from me. Gutsy is able to take DHCP configuration, but I'd always had to open the network manager and access the saved configuration file after every reboot. With Mandriva, I don't.
Mandriva also seems to be more "responsible" with data, but I'd just as soon not have found this out so quickly. Unfortunately, I've already had three or four mouse freezes and two failed reboots since installing it last night. I just about soiled my drawers! My hard drive was fine the last time I checked, but I think I'll scan it again before I try another Linux distro. Until I get around to it, at least I have a perfectly functional and stable XP partition. Salute!
