There is a linux distro for everyone out there. Linux is about choice.

There is a distro for those who seek rest from viruses and worms, and want something that works out of the box (Mandrake, Ubuntu, Kubuntu).
There is a distro for those who seek to hack. They want something that lets them hack in peace, and works almost everywhere... (DamnSmallLinux, Slax...)
There is a distro for experiments, for learning, for education. They want something that lets them explore just how linux works (LFS, Gentoo).

For each of these, they may or may not care about proprietary modules, but for those who want to run them, we need to leave them the opportunity to do so without causing them trouble.

Personally, I love Ubuntu 6.06. It's the only distro I've tried, and I only switched from Windows two months ago. Dapper installed very quickly and painlessly on my system, and I've had no problems whatsoever. My PC now does everything I expect without crashes or fatal errors, and much faster than with Windows. As for the brown Gnome default - it is easily overcome. I'm using the Crux theme modified with a very impressive photo of the first shuttle launch after the Challenger accident for my background. (courtesy Webshots.com)

Hi i am work with Redhat Linux 8, 9, College Linux, Mandrake, Suse, Debian, Slackware, Vector Linux, Damnsmall, ubuntu 6.06 and winner is ubuntu. I can do anything i want in ubuntu.

Currently i am Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy with KDE 3.5
(Happy Ubuntu Linux User)

I keep reading things like 'this distro is great' and 'Ubuntu is the best' and I'm sure for the people saying it, it is.

But I must be doing something wrong then, cos I have nothing but trouble with it.

I've installed it on my computer (64bit) and 2 notebooks (32bit) and every one I've had issues with.

It goes from loosing the keyboard or touchpad, input (laptops), not mounting network drives, loss of network settings, completely loosing desktop, to name but a few problems.

Just little irritating things, that leave me with no confidence with it. I choose Ubuntu because its based on debian which I was told was Rock Solid, I'm afraid my expeirences do not concur with this.

I don't want to start a flame war or anything, just want to bring to light that's its not all sweetness and light that other make it out to be, its far from perfect.

Have you tried to resolve any of your issues on this forum or are you only here to complain? Problems with WiFi setup and webcams seem fairly common to Linux in general. Your issues seem out of the ordinary and If you provided more detail we could have determined the source of the problems. Frequently when problems do occur unstable beta packages are the cause. I've also seen DEB packages installed which weren't built for use on Ubuntu causing some unpredictable problems. More than one user has done harm to themselves by following command line advice on the various forums without researching the applicability to their particular configuration.

Hi there fragos

I'm not here to complain, or whine, but just to put a real life side to this thread, from someone who's trying to use this for every day tasks, with every day knowledge, Ubuntu is supposed to be for Humans not IT gurus.

I posted all my problems on the Ubuntu Forums site, thinking that was the best place, and although 'most' of my problems where resolved eventually it just knocked my confidence with the product.

I installed everything from the cd and only used the packages that where available, I don't try to 'compile' anything myself, generally cos I don't know how and don't know the impact / damage they could cause, so I don't mess about with the system like that.

To get the wifi working again I had to manually edit the interfaces file because the GUI interface is/was buggy and wouldn't set the new settings, that apparently is a known issue.

We never got to the bottom of the mounting net work drive issue, I have to run a script at startup to mount it cas FSTAB will not mount it, and yes we double and triple checked the code I was using.

I have about 10 outstanding problems with my system, I'd like to get resolved, I'm by no means a linux expert and its finding the time to research all the issues to try to find a fix for them.

Another was with Java chat rooms, after a LOT of research it turns out there is a Rogue font package that Ubuntu installs that Java doesn't like, remove this, sorted, but that took a month of investigations and googling to work out, some of us don't have that sort of time to dedicate to this sort of thing.

I'm not so concerned about having the latest or bleeding edge software or OS, what I would like is a Rock Solid, 100% reliable operating system that I can feel confident will Not let me down. This is the reason I switched away from Windows, let me down far too many times, and that was even harder to find fixes for I now only use M$ for VPN access for work (cos I can't get that working in Linux either, another story).

LeeHA,

I apologize if I was bit strong with you. You have indeed been doing the right things to solve your problems. There are far too many that don't take the efforts you have and complain when they've frequently "done it to themselves." Many of us are here to help you and each other. Problem resolution is as much about the process of identifying the symptoms as it is about implementing a solution. If you develop a good process and approach to examining problems you can still find solutions in areas you aren't familiar with.

lately i tried Debian and ZenWalk. I returned to Xubuntu because:
-Debian:
--poor xfce support
--maintainers stiffness
--etc (forget)
-ZenWalk:
--poor package management system (low control for deps, etc)
--poor repositories
--support for only x86 (i have only an x86 comp, but the idea of limiting me on it in the future sucks)
--etc (forget)
Ubuntu has the big community, has Mark, and other stuff i like :P the other 2 would be my second and third choices.