Some things to consider

[Jonathan R]

Ok. What a way to make an entrance, being my first post here and all. While I am somewhat new to Ubuntu, and certainly new to Ultimate Edition, I am not new to Linux. I have been with rpm distros for the past 9 years. Mandrake and SUSE, now called openSUSE. Of that time, I have spent the last 4-5 years with openSUSE. I am also the one who writes the documentation for smart package manager.

A couple things got me to try this. First off, I ordered a Dell with Ubuntu preinstalled (just waiting for it to arrive). Secondly, my hard drive on my current machine is failing, in fact it just crashed the other night. Third, I read an article about Ultimate Edition, which lead me here. I read the site and the forums. I noticed several pages are incomplete (which is ok, that just means your working on it. Mine is the same way).

Over all, I'm impressed with Ultimate. What I'm about to discuss is more of a matter of Ubuntu in general. Since this is about Ubuntu in general, it does affect Ultimate.

One things that I noticed right off (other than my disdain for GNOME) is the menu system. The basic menus are fine, but it's when you go to the sub-menu, to expand it, apps are just in there. There is no further organization. I had my screen at 1024 x 768 resolution, and a number of menus would fill up my entire screen.

This can be fixed by adding a line in the spec file.

The second matter is what really gets me. Now perhaps I missed it, but I haven't found it yet. There seems to be no one control center. I think I saw something like it in GNOME. It looked similar to what I saw in KDE 4. If this is what is going to be used, it should be made very prominent. Mandriva has MCC (Mandriva Control Center) and openSUSE has YaST, and Fedora has it's administration center as well.

Now please, accept these as constructive criticism. Being that these are really the only two things I'm complaining about, that's pretty good. I did hit some other bumps, one was my fault (you guys made a post warning about kernel 2.6.24.17), the others I can't be sure of because of my failing computer. It would be unfair and unreliable to file a bug report or to complain about something that may be the result of a failing computer.

[LeadFingers]

Welcome to Ultimate Edition

Over all, I'm impressed with Ultimate. What I'm about to discuss is more of a matter of Ubuntu in general. Since this is about Ubuntu in general, it does affect Ultimate.

One things that I noticed right off (other than my disdain for GNOME) is the menu system. The basic menus are fine, but it's when you go to the sub-menu, to expand it, apps are just in there. There is no further organization. I had my screen at 1024 x 768 resolution, and a number of menus would fill up my entire screen.

This can be fixed by adding a line in the spec file.

Every other release (odd numbers) is KDE and Gnome, so you can pick your desktop. There is even a KDE4 version of 1.7, if you would like to try the Beta for KDE4 (9 months or so till Stable)

The second matter is what really gets me. Now perhaps I missed it, but I haven't found it yet. There seems to be no one control center. I think I saw something like it in GNOME. It looked similar to what I saw in KDE 4. If this is what is going to be used, it should be made very prominent. Mandriva has MCC (Mandriva Control Center) and openSUSE has YaST, and Fedora has it's administration center as well.

Gnome-control-center (installed by default), The downside for KDE users is it's integrated so you won't find it all in one place. However System/Administration & System/Preferences will contain most of what you are looking for, some of which goes way beyond it's counterparts.
A description from Synaptic
utilities to configure the GNOME desktop
This package contains configuration applets for the GNOME desktop,
allowing to set accessibility configuration, desktop fonts, keyboard
and mouse properties, sound setup, desktop theme and background, user
interface properties, screen resolution, and other GNOME parameters.
It also contains a front end to these applets, which can also be
accessed with the GNOME panel or the Nautilus file manager.

Now please, accept these as constructive criticism. Being that these are really the only two things I'm complaining about, that's pretty good. I did hit some other bumps, one was my fault (you guys made a post warning about kernel 2.6.24.17), the others I can't be sure of because of my failing computer. It would be unfair and unreliable to file a bug report or to complain about something that may be the result of a failing computer.

So what were your other bumps?
Maybe we can help.

[Jonathan R]

Welcome to Ultimate Edition

Over all, I'm impressed with Ultimate. What I'm about to discuss is more of a matter of Ubuntu in general. Since this is about Ubuntu in general, it does affect Ultimate.

One things that I noticed right off (other than my disdain for GNOME) is the menu system. The basic menus are fine, but it's when you go to the sub-menu, to expand it, apps are just in there. There is no further organization. I had my screen at 1024 x 768 resolution, and a number of menus would fill up my entire screen.

This can be fixed by adding a line in the spec file.

Every other release (odd numbers) is KDE and Gnome, so you can pick your desktop. There is even a KDE4 version of 1.7, if you would like to try the Beta for KDE4 (9 months or so till Stable)

The second matter is what really gets me. Now perhaps I missed it, but I haven't found it yet. There seems to be no one control center. I think I saw something like it in GNOME. It looked similar to what I saw in KDE 4. If this is what is going to be used, it should be made very prominent. Mandriva has MCC (Mandriva Control Center) and openSUSE has YaST, and Fedora has it's administration center as well.

Gnome-control-center (installed by default), The downside for KDE users is it's integrated so you won't find it all in one place. However System/Administration & System/Preferences will contain most of what you are looking for, some of which goes way beyond it's counterparts.
A description from Synaptic
utilities to configure the GNOME desktop
This package contains configuration applets for the GNOME desktop,
allowing to set accessibility configuration, desktop fonts, keyboard
and mouse properties, sound setup, desktop theme and background, user
interface properties, screen resolution, and other GNOME parameters.
It also contains a front end to these applets, which can also be
accessed with the GNOME panel or the Nautilus file manager.

Now please, accept these as constructive criticism. Being that these are really the only two things I'm complaining about, that's pretty good. I did hit some other bumps, one was my fault (you guys made a post warning about kernel 2.6.24.17), the others I can't be sure of because of my failing computer. It would be unfair and unreliable to file a bug report or to complain about something that may be the result of a failing computer.

So what were your other bumps?
Maybe we can help.

The bumps I had were with the installer on the live DVD. It failed a few times creating the partitions. Now again, given that my drive is failing, I can't be sure it's Ultimate Edition. I had the installer freeze a couple times doing the partitioning.

I know about synaptic and used it, and have used it before. I am not unfamiliar with synaptic. Personally, I prefer smart, but then as the documenter of smart, what do you expect.

I did notice the various tools in KDE. This is what annoyed me. They are all over the place (in my opinion). But I guess I'm used to YaST and MCC and similar concepts.

I didn't know the odd numbers were KDE. Good to know. What I'd rather see though, is being able to choose which desktop from the media itself. KDE 4 is not what anyone calls stable yet. It's a development release. KDE 4.1 is coming along nicely though. Still not where it needs to be yet.

I did see the GNOME Control Center. Like I said, it reminded me of the KDE Control Center for KDE 4. This however, is not what I have in mind when talking about an administrative control center. These are standard with GNOME and KDE.

I also foobared sudo. My fault, I suppose. I went in and assigned root a password. Once I did, sudo doesn't recognize the user any more. So now I use su and sux.

This brings up an interesting question. Why aren't 2 users created on install? One for root, and one for the user.

[LeadFingers]

I know about synaptic and used it, and have used it before. I am not unfamiliar with synaptic. Personally, I prefer smart, but then as the documenter of smart, what do you expect.

apt is a pretty slick & quick tool once you get the basics. I guess I prefer Synaptic because I don't always know the name or spelling of what I want to install. (it doesn't hurt that it's pretty Idiot proof)

I also foobared sudo. My fault, I suppose. I went in and assigned root a password. Once I did, sudo doesn't recognize the user any more. So now I use su and sux.

The password you assign at install is the root password

This brings up an interesting question. Why aren't 2 users created on install? One for root, and one for the user.

99.9% of all users don't need to login as root, just do a couple of things as root or administrator and drop back to the standard desktop. I know I couldn't function without the Nautilus-gksu
function, which allows opening a directory as Administrator from the right click menu.
By only creating only a user account the OS is more secure from outside threats and the user.
If your little sister or 6 year old kid doesn't know the root password, they can't bork your system.
A pain in the posterior for some, but you get used to sudo and open as Administrator pretty quick.
After a while you may prefer it, I know I do.

[Jonathan R]

I know about synaptic and used it, and have used it before. I am not unfamiliar with synaptic. Personally, I prefer smart, but then as the documenter of smart, what do you expect.

apt is a pretty slick & quick tool once you get the basics. I guess I prefer Synaptic because I don't always know the name or spelling of what I want to install. (it doesn't hurt that it's pretty Idiot proof)

I also foobared sudo. My fault, I suppose. I went in and assigned root a password. Once I did, sudo doesn't recognize the user any more. So now I use su and sux.

The password you assign at install is the root password

This brings up an interesting question. Why aren't 2 users created on install? One for root, and one for the user.

99.9% of all users don't need to login as root, just do a couple of things as root or administrator and drop back to the standard desktop. I know I couldn't function without the Nautilus-gksu
function, which allows opening a directory as Administrator from the right click menu.
By only creating only a user account the OS is more secure from outside threats and the user.
If your little sister or 6 year old kid doesn't know the root password, they can't bork your system.
A pain in the posterior for some, but you get used to sudo and open as Administrator pretty quick.
After a while you may prefer it, I know I do.

apt/syanptic is ok.

I know that the password I created at install is the one for sudo. The thing is, I changed roots password, which seems to have affected sudo.

I agree. Infact users should never login as root. That's what sudo and su are for.

It's not that I am not used to sudo, I use, and have used it on rpm systems. I have even used apt/syaptic on both rpm and debian distros before.

Here is the book I am working on for the smart package manager. I cover a great deal many things in here. It's in odm format, so it would have to be downloaded. http://downloads.thecompletecomputerres ... rtbook.odm