oo-boon-too

So ubuntu seems to be the newest linux distro that is making waves. I switched to it mainly because I wanted some linux for my work and some free tool that would resize my XP partition rather than overwrite it (mainly so I could keep my personal documents which I have not backed up). When I searched online, gparted on a Linux Live CD came up as an option, and of the ones I checked out, ubuntu's website looked the most inviting.

It was a breeze to install; it seems extremely usable, thus far. They have graphical tools for updating packages; debian's apt-get/aptitude has really saved Linux from frustrated users.

A really thoughtful (or at least, well thought out) feature is the consistent use of sudo instead of the traditional root account.

I also like this neat feedback at the command line - it makes the default *nix "command not found" response sound positively neanderthal and redundant:

ns@wag-a-bond:~$ eclipse
The program 'eclipse' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install eclipse
Make sure you have the 'universe' component enabled
bash: eclipse: command not found

It is getting there, but there are still a few (not-so-major) rough edges in this distro as well.

1. Why not have media support (flash;audio&video codecs;dvd support) installed by default? If it is only because of licensing issues, rather than some underhand trick to save space on their live cd, they could prompt the user to install this on first start up (with all the legal warnings about how it is illegal in some countries to actually watch dvds on non-windows platforms).
2. Instead of using their graphical update tool, I did an aptitude update; aptitude upgrade. There were tons of updates, and a few did not get installed properly. After that, the whole OS crashed! Blue Screens in a linux avatar!
3. When I download ppt files from the net, it opens up in Open Office Impress. When I close the Impress window, Open Office crashes, apologizes, and opens up Open Office Writer! This is the sort of bug that should never have shipped in any release of any stable product - it happens on casual use, and so consistently; it should have been noticed and fixed.
   
4. When I install eclipse, it gets set up to use gcj instead of sun's java, even though I had already installed sun's java. On top of this, gcj is supposed to be inferior (very slow & incomplete support in some cases). The "FSF is best" attitude has been the bane of linux - what works best is best, despite Stallman's rants
   I believe this can be fixed by merely declaring the eclipse package depends on gcj OR sun-java. apt tools are powerful enough to handle precisely this kind of dependencies.
   
5. Support for things like sound is not complete - or at least it does not play well with XP dual boot - when I start up XP and play sound, and do a soft reboot, I can't hear audio in ubuntu and vice versa. I recall this problem existed (I think it is an alsa issue) even back in the 90s when I first started playing around with *nix distros. 10 years to fix an issue like this!?