Ubuntu 10 disappoints on older hardware... stick with Puppy

[benali72]

I've tried to install Ubuntu 10.04 on a selection of P-3's and P-4's. Results have not been good with pretty consistent video failure (and of course no more xorg.conf file to edit unless you specifically issue a command to create it).

Meanwhile Puppy continues to install just fine for me on all the same machines.

Conclusion -- Ubuntu is leaving older computers behind, apparently feeling no obligation to support them, while Puppy continues its outstanding support for mature hardware.

[benali72]

Remember when you could edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file to alter the Grub entries however you'd like?

Well here's the complexity Ubuntu has in store for you now -- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2

Just like the video issues... Ubuntu offers some good new advances, but unfortunately the product has lost some of the "beauty of simplicity" Linux is known for in the process.

What next? A Registry?

Sorry for the rant, and no offense meant to the Ubuntu team. But it's going in a direction I don't wish to go. Thank goodness for Puppy!

[DMcCunney]

My Puppy box is an old Fujitsu Lifebook with an 867mhz CPU, 256MB RAM, and a 40GB UDMA 4 HD. I multi-boot, with Win2K Pro, Puppy 4.31, Ubuntu 9.10 and FreeDOS 1.0 in the mix.

I tried Ubuntu 10.4, but reverted to 9.10. Installation was a simple and painless as 9.10, but I experienced similar problems with video. Ubuntu 9.10 and Puppy 4.31 both recognize the video and provide the native 1280x768 resolution of the old notebook I use for this. Ubuntu 10.4 would not do better than 1024x768.

Ubuntu really isn't intended for lower end kit. I originally installed Xubuntu, but it was painfully slow. Posters in the Ubuntu forums suggested that too much Gnome had crept in, Xubuntu was no longer a light-weight distro, and that Ubuntu had a steadily advancing idea of what "low-end" was. They suggested I install from the MinimalCD. That gave me a bare-bones command line Linux installation, but it saw my wired network connection and set itself up, so I could access the repository and use apt-get to install Xfce4 and my preferred applications. The result isn't as sprightly as Puppy, but is usable.

I'm booting via Grub 2, and it's been largely painless. It properly saw and configured all partitions and OSes. It took fiddling to get FreeDOS to boot, but that was a FreeDOS issue unrelated to Grub. The only oddity was creating two identical menu entries for Puppy. That was an easy enough fix: you can still manually edit the grub.cfg file, and I did so. The only problem is that your changes will be undone if you use Grub to rebuild your configuration. I stashed a backup copy against that eventuality.

Ubuntu is a mature and highly developed distro that does its best to figure out what it's running on, install, and Just Work with little or no intervention from the user. It does it quite well. It also has the best package management I've seen. The repository has a database of dependencies, and when you select a package, the package manager examines your system to determine what you already have. So you get the package and any missing dependencies, and things Just Work. When I did the install to give me a command line setup, the first package I added was Xfce4. Getting that automatically brought along the rest of X-Windows, and when installation was complete, I could log off, and log back into a GUI.

Ubuntu is fine for getting a stable, working Linux installation with little intervention and knowledge required by the user. But it's intended for decent hardware, and needs a relatively current machine to perform well. It's not what you look at if you have an old, slow machine you are trying to give a second life. I suspect it might not even run on some of the Puppy systems in use, and would be disappointing on others.
______
Dennis

[gerry]

I tried Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my AA1 netbook. Some things were impressive- wireless setup was automatic, it just asked me to enter the security code and that was it- online!

However... there was no opportunity to prevent it from overwriting the existing Grub, and subsequent efforts to edit the UNR grub menu to include Puppy did not work.

The package management system is of course the Debian one.

I installed 9.04. One day the update manager told me that I could upgrade to 9.10, so I clicked the button, and (a) some of the netbook adaptations that I liked disappeared, and (b) a number of NEW applications were installed (Gimp for instance).

It's gone now.

I have my doubts about Puppy though- current new directions like Quirky and Lupu won't run on my old desktop, it needs a retro kernel. I don't think Quirky can ever have a retro kernel, and wait to see what happens with Lupu. Depends on Woof, I suppose.

gerry

[MinHundHettePerro]

FYI/FWIW

I installed both ubuntu 10.04 and lubuntu 10.04 and during installation I chose not to install GRUB2. All I then had to do, to get them going was to add appropriate entries in my existing GRUB-0.97's menu.lst.

lubuntu 10.04 runs rather nicely on my PIII, 533 MHz, 704 MB RAM machine .

Cheers /
MHHP

[obxjerry]

I don't remember having any problems with Kubuntu as far as glitches. I tried it after seeing Ubuntu on my son's computer. My interest was short-lived. There's a lot there. I'm not sure what it is, but little that is of any use to me. Puppy does everything I need and it's fun. I don't feel the need to be overwhelmed with bloat.

[jemimah]

What next? A Registry?

Actually Gconf seems very much like a registry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gconf-editor

[benali72]

Thanks everyone for the feedback.

I think DMcCunney provided a good summary of the situation --

"But it's [Ubuntu's] intended for decent hardware, and needs a relatively current machine to perform well. It's not what you look at if you have an old, slow machine you are trying to give a second life."

[stu90]

Installed ubuntu 10.04 less than half an hour later it was deleted and i was back using Lupu puppy

[chris667]

Ubuntu is great, for no other reason than IME it's one of the first distros that non-computer people get enthusiastic about the first time they use it. So many things work out of the box! Far easier to set up than Windows. Ubuntu one is brilliant, too.

I think we ask too much from Linux sometimes. If you want to have a polished, flashy interface, you need a computer that can cope with the work that's required to provide it. It's just not fair to expect a Pentium 2 laptop to carry out the same multimedia tasks of a brand new one.

We are all Linux enthusiasts; the difference is if we were at a party, we would be drinking home brew and they would be drinking mass produced lager.

[benali72]

I just got done trying the UPDATE button on the UPDATE MANAGER (going either from 9.10 to 10.04, or from 9.04 to 9.10 to 10.04). Same bad result with the video. I thought maybe an upgrade would be different from a new install with 10.04., hoping it would keep existing working video settings. But no dice... the new XRANDR didn't take. IMHO Ubuntu 10.04 has left early P-IV's and older behind. Thank goodness for Puppy!

[WhoDo]

We are all Linux enthusiasts; the difference is if we were at a party, we would be drinking home brew and they would be drinking mass produced lager.

mmmm.... now you're talking my language!

[WhoDo]

Despite the warnings, and my perfectly happy experience with Ubuntu 9.04, I decided to try the Lucid Lynx CD I received in the post last week. Tch, tch, tch. Poor fool, me!

I couldn't get the CD to boot past a blank splash dialog on my ASUS Pentium T3400 with 2Gb RAM. Stubborn as ever, I decided to try to upgrade my perfectly good 9.04 installation! Oops!

Ok, I'm nothing if not adventurous and all I really needed was the full suite of Gnome games so I elected to clean out the partition and install OpenSUSE 11.2 Gnome edition instead! Install went very well, but now I remember why I never used my 11.1 install; NOTHING works unless it's FOSS. I ended up installing the original CD - 693Mb - followed by the optional stuff - 697Mb for flash, codecs, java, etc., - and in the end I STILL CAN'T PLAY mp3 music files!!!

That's it for now, after almost two full days of a long weekend blown. Back to Lucid Puppy 5.0 which does absolutely everything EXCEPT keep my scores in the Gnome games. When they said "ya live and learn" I think I was behind the door or suffering from elective deafness.