They've outdone themselves again!

[bigtomrodney]

Here I am from my new Gutsy install, the latest Ubuntu.

They really out-do themselves with every release. I remember when I first installed Linux it could take two weeks to get up and running. With a little more understanding and experience I remember Mandriva LE 2005 taking about 3-4 days. I just installed and configured 7.10 in under 20 minutes. This is getting too easy so maybe I should just switch to Hurd

Every driver installed automatically, Compiz is running, all my apps except Amarok and K3b are installed. So I reckon give it another 90 seconds for a quick browse of Synaptic or apt-get.

When 4.10 landed I really dislike Ubuntu for a number of reasons. But as time goes by I see myself finding it harder to recommend other distros over it. So here it is...any of you guys trying Linux for the first time - save some time looking to configure something else and go straight for Gutsy. Can't give it higher praise than that.

[oz]

Okay, I fall for it on each new release and try Ubuntu again, but never wind up liking it. I'm going to pass on it this time, but am very glad to hear that it's working well for you, and that you like it.

[bigtomrodney]

You always did hate the eye candy Oz

I guess it's because back a few years ago SUSE was the super polished hardware king with all codecs available - last week I installed 10.3 and had dependency problems with the official repos and a day chasing packages and codecs. I enjoyed the chase a few years ago and still like to experiment - but I love having a system that just works.

[techieMoe]

I actually just installed Feisty on someone's Dell laptop last night, and I've downloaded Gutsy to play with this weekend. If I like it, that person is going to get an upgrade the next time I see them.

[oz]

You always did hate the eye candy Oz

Very true! It bothers me the way they hack into the Gnome and KDE control centers, too. I really prefer Gnome and KDE in their generic forms.

Oh well, change happens!

[Thrillhouse]

I like things to "just work" too but everybody has a different take on what should and what shouldn't "just work" and that's why I've never fallen in love with Ubuntu. I think they do a great job of providing a functional distribution that is especially good for new Linux users but for me, there are a lot of things I don't need or want and it takes me just as long to configure Ubuntu they way I want it than any other distribution so there's really no incentive for me to keep it. I think I would like plain old Debian more than Ubuntu but I've never tried it.

That's why Arch has been growing on me. You spend a lot of time configuring it and getting everything you need installed but once you do that, it "just works" again and it just works exactly how I want it to. And in my experience, Arch has been much faster than Ubuntu so it really does fit me well.

[techieMoe]

I like things to "just work" too but everybody has a different take on what should and what shouldn't "just work"...

I agree...

That's why Arch has been growing on me. You spend a lot of time configuring it and getting everything you need installed but once you do that, it "just works" ...

...and that's a perfect example. To me, if you have to spend a lot of time configuring it and getting things you need, that is the very opposite definition of "it just works."

I was talking to someone at work today who doesn't like Ubuntu because he can't tell it to install GRUB into the /boot partition instead of the MBR. To me that's never been an issue because I generally install Linux on a VM or a dedicated harddrive. Everyone has their own quirks.

[Thrillhouse]

You're right, Moe. I was a little unclear and contradictory in that ramble.

Arch doesn't "just work" out of the box. In fact, it has very limited functionality upon initial installation. No desktop environment, no internet access, etc. and it takes a big chunk of time to get those things going. Then on top of that, you have to add the various programs that you like. Maybe you also have to add a printer or another peripheral that you use on a daily basis. All of this takes time. Heck, hal isn't even included by default and this throws most users (including me) for a loop the first time around because you're left wondering why the thing's not even recognized when you plug it in.

But the beauty of all this work is that you know exactly what is going on at all times. You have exactly what you want and nothing that you don't. You never have any unnecessary daemons running because you've personally added them all to rc.conf and when you look at the output of top, you can account for every single process that is running. Then, at that point, it finally "just works how you want", but with nothing more than you need.

For me to strip Ubuntu down to how I like it, with nothing unnecessary present: the DE and artwork the way I want it (I can't stand Ubuntu's brown theme), the programs I want available, the processes I want running, the peripherals I need, would take nearly as much time as setting up Arch the same way. That's why, for me, there's no incentive to run Ubuntu when, after I finish all that, it still runs noticeably slower than Arch will.

Of course, none of that is reason to bother with a 2+ day Gentoo install.

[carlosponti]

i like the new release and i am installing in a vm now of course its slow because everyone is tagging the servers. but after the hooplah dies down there will be some issues cleaned up with the install and downloading it. i plan on upgrading all my machines at home as soon as i can with my schedule these days.

[tommytabib]

I tried the last beta release of Gutsy a little while back, but i will not be switching to it.

I do agree that (even when it was in beta) everything just worked for me. All my hardware was supported, it found my ATI video card and asked me if i want to use 'non-free' drivers or something else. And installing all the codecs couldn't be any easier, i clicked to play a song and it basically said "install this first" and i just clicked install and it was done. People new to linux wouldn't even need to know what a codec is and they could still set it up.

But on the other hand (and this is just my opinion) ubuntu is not the only distro to 'just work'. I've just installed mandriva 2008 and it works just as good and as easily as ubuntu, though i do not have wireless internet and any really new hardware so i cannot say if it 'just works' with that.

But thats all just my two cents.