When I started my last reply, his clarification was not yet posted, so yes at this point it could be said to be slightly pointless.

He arguably did in his other post, but as you said, it is pointless to argue about it with his clarification above in place.

To the original poster: If you are having trouble getting it to boot after installation, how about posting what specific hardware you are using. It would also be useful to know exactly what is happening when you start from a cold boot. It could be that someone here has a solution for your specific setup. You might save yourself the needless distro hopping you say you want to avoid.

[edit]
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So, there is no more confusion or need to refer to other posts, here is his other post.

IMHO, the reason for Ubuntu's popularity is marketing. They put out a new release every six months with a catchy name like "Karmic Koala." This makes for good press releases. Let's face it, "Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Released Into The Wild!" is a sexier headline than "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Still Works Okay Three Years After Release."

Thanks. I updated my other post with all the related information including hardware specs. However, I composed and posted the info in the other thread prior to rechecking this thread. I apologize if there is any confusion or any forum violations based on sequence of my forum posts. Instead of double posting the update here is a link to my other thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...0/#post3907926

@snowpine: Thanks for your insight...
Also Reed9 pegged it with: "I'm saying - he/she looked at what's happening in the linux world, saw Ubuntu was crazy popular, and is wondering why."

Reed9's comment is the point of my original post. No response from the Ubuntu forums. :-(

Agreed, about the marketing aspect of Ubuntu's campaign. "Lucid Lynx" (whatever that is) has a nicer ring to it than let's say, "Groggy Polecat" or similar.

However, I disagree about the clockwork release cycle necessarily being "good" by definition. It *could be* and *has been* a 'not-bad' thing for Ubuntu (at least, it hasn't been explicitly a *bad* thing historically) but of late, it seems to be shooting them in the foot a little bit.

I've mentioned this already, yes, and I'm not harping (deliberately), but if a person is inclined to follow the news stories that float around the net on the myriad news 'channels', it can be seen that "Ubuntu Inc." kinda dropped the ball with the last release or two, in more ways than one:

-- that broken wireless stuff wasn't helpful for users.
-- not fixing it for the next release was not helpful either, for the users.
-- the above two things, combined with a release of a competing MS product around the same time, was not helpful for Ubuntu Inc.

I have read on these very forums, of long-time *buntu users being quite irked by the last few releases. At the very very least, I would see what sort of reception the next official release gets, and how well it works, before making a decision on going that way, or another way.


Sasha

P.S. - I don't see any 'rules or forum violations' by the way/sequence you posted your posts. It's all good

it seems to me that really any distro can be a " desktop" or "server". Popular DOES breed more popular. and i think marketing has played a big role with ubuntu. the times i have tried it i thought it was over rated. i am in no way a linux guru. I am just learning my way around. however, in my first week i started to see how to get around at the prompt, use 3rd party repos, compile my own installs, etc..hehe i even star5ted paying attention to updates to see why something would stop working. ubuntu seems to try to BE MS Windows open sourced artsy fartsy counter part. debian...rock solid for the most part. moreover, 30 mins of sourting can have your multimedia stuff working and whaat not. i think what most people go in for is ease of use ( or rather implied ease of use) a system that automagicaly gets a missing codec for you for example.

Ubuntu has had one hell of a great branding manager behind it from what i can tell. perfect color combinations with a touch of the " one love" thing. I just dont think ubuntu would be my choice if i wanted to set up my own box MY way. not because it couldnt be done , but because it would take longer ( for me at least ) to cut through all the added extras and remove scripts and daemons that need not be on MY box. However, if I wanted to introduce my cousin to linux ( which i have ) i would use ubuntu as a crutch. if i wanted to remain FOSS compliant across a large range of machines in a production environment...i would go with something that has shown it self to be reliable in that role.

Why would i care about a new gui and backgrounds every 6 months with fixes to things that already worked in order to dumb it down just so distrowatch shows that i have a steady release cycle? debian lenny been stable version for awhile now. i have installed it on 5 machines which all worked from the gate. slackware 12.2 and 13 are also good examples that i have had personal hands on with. now i use fedora / redhat because i wanted sometihngn that had a base install conf of selinux so i could get to know it. when i tried ubuntu it was so i didnt have to mess with nonfree sstuff one week when i was in a hurry.
persoanlly, i think if pat had someone pimping out slackware with a really cool logo and some catch phrase that was the color of week then it would the latest and greatest until everyone found out that " o hey...what's a dependency?"

anyways, distros are like undewear...some like tighty whities, some like butt floss.....and yet others like boxers.
bad analogy huh..lol

A very IT-literate colleague wanted to try Linux, having had many performance and stability problems with Vista and Windows 7. Ubuntu is popular hereabouts and he asked if he should install it. Given that his primary objectives were stability and performance but his experience is with GUIs, I suggested Salix -- pure Slackware under GUI additions. Too early to report how he's getting on.

Ubuntu was among the first to "bring Debian to the typical ordinary desktop user." I have chatted with quite a few people who have tried to switch to Debian (because of something they didn't like in Ubuntu). Most of those who succeeded, credit Ubuntu with giving them the ability to learn about Debian "hands on," but with the Ubuntu safety net in place to rescue them if they messed up.

There is a lot not to like about Ubuntu as well (short release cycle, stuff rushed to meet a deadline before it's truly ready, Beta software by default (in a "newbie friendly" distro?!), the benevolent dictatorship of one man, etc), but Ubuntu's one-size-fits-all approach appeals to "the typical desktop user" better than the more specialized distros that cater to more specific users.

-Robin

1 members found this post helpful.

Any distro/marketing that brings people to Linux and away from Microsoft is a winner with me. Ubuntu and Canonical get my utmost respect for expanding the user base of Linux and long may it continue.

1 members found this post helpful.

That's the part I have most issue with and what I was alluding to in the post about recommending Salix instead of ubuntu. Many Windows users are interested in Linux because they are looking for stability rather than price or FOSS ideals. How many have tried ubuntu, found the grass less green and given up on Linux?

@grapefruti: HI!
@dixiedancer: "occupied CSA" hehe so true...but its from further south that we've been occupied.

@spampig> your right, its cool its increased the user base. but the whole beta by default is a good point. its like they are trying to do to much. which kinda wraps back around to " general" vs. " specialized" as dixiedancer stated.
anyways...this conversation is like beating a dead horse in the middle july. you just aint gonna come out ahead.

I get the 'beta by default' wrangle, but put it like this - Vista was BETA all the way :-)

Personal experience:

I spend all day at work compiling/supporting RHEL/CentOS/Fedora servers here at work along side with Sun (Oracle?) Solaris servers as well...when I get home...I want my desktop/laptop to "just work"...with LinuxMint (i.e. Ubuntu)...it does

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks guys I really appreciate your replies and insights. I did some additional reading of reviews decided it might be worth it to have a look at a several distros. I'm not looking to fix Unbuntu v9.1's issues right now and so I'm going to skip that release for the moment. I need to get better familiar with Linux before attempting to tackle the problems I encountered. I'm hoping that will be part of the fun and a better experience.

From what I've read much of Ubuntu's popularity is due to the success of the v9.04 Desktop edition. So I pulled down Ubuntu v9.04 to test it out. After Ubuntu v9.04 is up I'll probably try Mepis and Mandriva.

FYI, I've never installed Vista, never wanted to install Vista, and since it didn't offer me enough reasons to move from Win XP Pro I didn't. I'll be grabbing Windows 7 because I know I will encounter it in the business world. However, I'm betting more individuals, organizations and businesses will warm up to Linux and open source software because of economic reasons. I would like to be ready to pitch Linux solutions when the opportunity comes along again.

I grabbed another box to place my Linux learning curve on. Here are the specs:
- Asus P4PE motherboard
- 1 GB RAM
- Pentium-4 2.4ghz
- (2x) 200 GB IDE Harddrives
- Lite-On IDE DVDROM
- Plextor PlexWriter IDE CD Burner
- nVidia GeForce2 MX/MX 400 AGP video card (4x AGP I believe)
- standard 1.44MB floppy
- Standard 101/102 keyboard (with Windows key and Windows menu key)
- Microsoft Blue Optical Wheel mouse
- NEC Multisync FP955 monitor
- Asustek/Broadcom 440x on-board 10/100 NIC
- on-board: AC-97 Audio, Firewire ports, USB 2.0 ports, serial, parallel, PS/2 Keyboard, PS/2 mouse

On my other box P4 1.8ghz I might later try a GUI less linux install as a server.

Do you guys for see any pit-falls or potential issues with the P4PE box?

i have ran linux on a 1.7 p4 with great results. maybe the only thing I could think of hitting a bottle neck might be if you want try out compiz. Rather, you will end up playing with the nvidia driver thing. its not hard. you'll find tons of folks and older post that could help you out here.

the only other thing might be the integrated audio: not sure what chipset its based on. so you might have an issue. but then again you can work around that to (8u)
all the other stuff looks kinda straight forward.

the AC-97 audio chipset is by Sound Max... I'm heading over to their website now.