Last Saturday, I got a fully running Ubuntu 8.04.1 system on my Thinkpad T60. Everything is working out of the box including WiFi which was an issue with some other distros. Vu, a fellow Vietnamese Linux geek, got scim running so I can type Vietnamese fonts. I want to remaster Ubuntu with Vietnamese language support for some of my students and future staff.
What is nice about Ubuntu is that it is one of the few distros that contains precompiled software that others may not. For example, I can easily install Phatch, Twitux and Pencil with Ubuntu (and Linux Mint as well) that I could not with Arch unless I used a different repository. Yeah, I probably could compile these programs in both Arch and Gentoo but in this case, I wanted things to be done easier.
Yeah, I am trying to be more positive with Ubuntu being one of their more vocal critiques here in Vietnam. My personal belief is that Ubuntu users tend to take more then they give back to the Debian and open source community in general. Yet, I am having a good experience with Hardy Heron at the moment on my notebook (as I am with Arch Linux on my desktop).
I think Ubuntu will be a keeper on my Thinkpad. One reason why, I can watch my Japanese anime on my Thinkpad again 🙂
“My personal belief is that Ubuntu users tend to take more then they give back to the Debian and open source community in general.”
This all depends on how you define ‘giving back’. I agree that there’s not a lot of technical give and take with much of the Ubuntu community. I think, though, that this is because Ubuntu is aimed squarely at a completely different group–the non-geeks that want to give Linux a try.
If you define ‘give back’ as expanding the community, though, the Ubuntu folks do a hell of a job. The tutorials and forums that are run by community members are a wealth of information for novice Linux users. The Ubuntu community is working to bring all kinds of new faces into the Linux fold.
Finally, I think that Canonical’s contributions should be overlooked. It’s easy to write Ubuntu off as a simple re-packaging of Debian. But it’s much more than that, as you’ve pointed out. It’s a bringing together of best-of-breed applications into a much richer and easier environment, IMHO, than Debian itself.
Great work! Keep it up!
Chris
Hi Kevin,
I really like your website. Thank you.
I have installed Ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop one week ago.
It works fine. Then I have installed it on an external hard
disk, a little bit tricky at the next boot but it works.
The problem is to connect wifi. I have to manually enter
the commands for network scan and dhclient after booting.
Please let me know the procedure to get wifi.
Many thanks and best regards.
Dodo (an old Swiss women working at Saigon)
Hi Kevin,
I use Ubuntu 8.04.1
My wifi card is US Robotics (USR2210).
I did not install any drivers. I will do it soon.
Many thanks for your help.
Best regards,
Dodo