Before I begin, let me quell the Richard Stallmans out there.
I have NOTHING against GNU/Linux, or any other sort of open source platforms.
So, I largely use Ubuntu (inb4 lol noob, I like ready-to-use operating systems, so fuck you Gentoo.) and today is the launch day of Ubuntu 9.10. Needless to say, I've been extremely excited about it for over a month. I was actually more excited about Karmic Koala than I was about Windows 7 being released. Release day (today) rolls around, and of course the first thing I do when I get to work is download it.
Once I get home, I burn the .iso to a CD and install.
And here's where my bitchery begins.
Things that piss me off about Ubuntu 9.10, in order of discovery:
- Grub 2 (1.9.7 beta 4 or whatever actually, not 2.0 at all.) is SLOW. Not just a tiny jolt slow, oh no, it sits for about 7 seconds before it shows me the new uglyass menu. Whatever, wait time has never been a huge issue to me.
- The splash screen still seems to be in 4:3 for some reason. Personally, I don't know a single person (outside of my work environment) that uses a 4:3 screen, they're all 16:9 or 16:10.
- The next thing I noticed when the GDM screen had loaded, was that my keyboard failed to function, but the mouse plugged in through the USB port on it worked fine. Odd. *try to figure out where the hell the onscreen keyboard option is* Login, reboot, ok, keyboard works.
- I get logged in, after restarting, and being the customization whore that I am, I immediately go look through the display properties. I notice that the GDM theme now has a hands-off policy, for a reason I'm sure abso-fucking-lutely no one knows. Also, there appears to be stacks of wallpaper in the "Wallpaper" menu, which makes me assume they work similar to the way they would in Windows 7. I'm assuming however, that this isn't the case, or my 2 minutes of dicking around wasn't enough to figure out how they work.
- Ubuntu Software Center. Oh my God. ALL ABOARD THE FAILBOAT. I should just be able to say it sucks, but that wouldn't prove anything to you. As stated in one of my favorite videos "Why Desktop Linux Sucks and What We can Do About It" (http://video.linux-foundation.org/video/1375 a very good watch, I highly recommend it), Linux needs something /similar/ to Ubuntu Software Center, but this is a horrible implementation of it. Why, you ask? Well, I'm gonna tell you, so shut it. First, it's slow. Slow at finding shit, slow at installing shit, slow at navigating, slow at removing shit. And none of this instant queue shit, just keep tally and ask me at the end. Furthermore, the layout is extremely counter-intuitive. Instead of it being arranged like it was, with categories on the left (that made sense btw.) it's now a god damned web browser, like I need any more web browsing in my life.
- Due to the lovely Software Center, I had to re-install too. As I installed the restricted extras pack (oh noes!!! not open source!! *shit pants*) I left my computer to go visit my girlfriend (yes, some of us have better things to do) and when I returned, I found my computer in sleep mode. "Oh," I said, "it must have finished installing/uninstalling my packages, and went into sleep mode." Oh yes, finished installing my packages. *laughingelfman.jpg* FUCKING DEAD WRONG. It wouldn't come back from sleep. Restart revealed it wouldn't boot with some error code I don't give a shit about.
- RE-INSTALL. Oh hai inoperable keyboard! *on-screen keyboard one more time* Aaaaand, hang. Hard reset. Successful login. Restricted extras -> java has >9000 errors.
- Cue mucking around in terminal, and that's where I am now.
So, the long and short of it is basically FUCK UBUNTU 9.10. CANONICAL, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.
More updates as relevant.
Couple other things, if you know anything about designing these damned blogs, shoot me a line, I want a border for my text against this background Q.Q
Also,
http://mediaprodweb.madison.k12.wi.us/node/282 Watch that, best PSA ever.
EDIT: Something that *already* made me lol pretty god damned hard. When I try to open the sound prefs, all I get is a little box that says "Waiting for system sound to respond." Jesus balls.
UPDATE: Apparently I'm not the only one having problems.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/03/karmic_koala_frustration/However, I installed KK on my laptop, and the only issue I had was with installing java.
Kinda weird that it goes so flawlessly there.