Every *buntu beta screenshot tour? Why?

Story: Kubuntu 14.04 Beta 2 Screenshot TourTotal Replies: 17
Author Content
cmost

Mar 30, 2014
2:19 PM EDT
I'm sorry, but I don't see the point of posting screenshot tours of every single darned flavor of the Ubuntu beta. Do these people have no life?!? Let me save some folks some trouble. Unity hasn't changed much in the past few versions; Gnome is stock Gnome; XFCE is stock XFCE; KDE is stock KDE and LXDE is stock LXDE. Good grief!
gary_newell

Mar 30, 2014
3:18 PM EDT
And if you are new to Linux and haven't seen unity, gnome, KDE, lxde and xfce what is your reference point?
penguinist

Mar 30, 2014
3:28 PM EDT
Personally, I like these screenshot tours. I can flip through one of them in 60 seconds and get a cursory view of the distro flavor.

That sure beats the old way, when I used to download a new distro in order to check it out. These screenshots are a nice time-saver, and if you find one to be redundant then it's easy to just not spend the 60 seconds it takes for you to look at it.

Sure, if you want to dig into the depth of a new distro then you will still want to download and install, but I find myself looking at more distros this way than I used to back in the "old days".
tuxchick

Mar 30, 2014
3:35 PM EDT
I'd rather skim a screenshot tour than read yet another Register article about "fondleslabs".
penguinist

Mar 30, 2014
3:37 PM EDT
I'd rather decline a German adjective than a drink.
flufferbeer

Mar 30, 2014
6:13 PM EDT
@cmost

> I'm sorry, but I don't see the point of posting screenshot tours of every single darned flavor of the Ubuntu beta. Do these people have no life?!?

Seems to me that you're right on! Also, I notice that the above gary_newell -- an unabashed Baboontu user (maybe a fanboi?) -- has posted the past few dys talking about "distrohoppers and comparing the issue to the sudden emergence of 100s of television channels". No doubt he would prefer that as many n00bs and distrohoppers as possible take up various Baboontu colors, and the other non-B distros would hopefully die from attrition. Yeah right, like the old man Ford's saying people could have any color of Model T they wanted as long as it was black!! :rolling eyes:

With more screenshots and betas like this coming out, you just KNOW that the Baboon2 hype for the next double-letter release is ALREADY in high gear!

My 2c
Francy

Mar 30, 2014
8:40 PM EDT
@ flufferbeer

No matter how you look at it, you are totally out of line.

F
tuxchick

Mar 30, 2014
9:01 PM EDT
Quoting: @ flufferbeer

No matter how you look at it, you are totally out of line.


Agreed.
lqsh

Mar 30, 2014
9:12 PM EDT
"Gnome is stock Gnome; XFCE is stock XFCE; KDE is stock KDE and LXDE is stock LXDE."

Not true. Canonical makes their own slight adjustments of each.
Ridcully

Mar 30, 2014
9:12 PM EDT
@cmost......Any of these screen shot articles are extremely important for a newcomer to Linux.......and isn't that one of our aims as "FOSS disciples" ? To help others discover the freedom we all enjoy ? Too often the point of view is "me, me, me and what I want", when it should always be "what do others need ?". Don't read 'em if you don't like them. Gary.newell has just spelled out exactly the same reason.....good one !!

@flufferbeer.....what I just wrote for cmost also applies - in spades. . I may not like some distributions, but I do not deride them - or their users. I defend them and agree that each of us uses what he or she finds best for our purposes......

There's my 2c

:-)
jdixon

Mar 30, 2014
10:53 PM EDT
> Any of these screen shot articles are extremely important for a newcomer to Linux.

Of an Ubuntu release, maybe. Of a beta? Somehow I don't thing newcomers are going to be interested in trying out the Ubuntu beta releases.
flufferbeer

Mar 30, 2014
11:41 PM EDT
>> With more screenshots and betas like this coming out, you just KNOW that the Baboon2 hype for the next double-letter release is ALREADY in high gear!

I absolutely stand by that online, offline, inline or whatever-else-line.

@Ridcully,

> Don't read 'em if you don't like them

> I defend them and agree that each of us uses what he or she finds best for our purposes......

But I disagree with you in that few CAN AVOID readin 'em.... It's Much Too Predictable that the beta&release screenshots, features&status of both, and glowing reviews of both WILL be shoveled out in spadefuls in the next few wks one way or another, to the intended effect that baboon2 gets OVERWHELMINGLY FAVORED as the best color for "what he or she finds best for our purposes". And its checkered past history will get repeated. Go ahead and review this here comment over the next few weeks...you have now been forewarned(immunized!) :o

More $0.02
BernardSwiss

Mar 30, 2014
11:58 PM EDT
Endless screenshot "reviews" for the beta version(s) of (a) distro release(s) does seem rather excessive...

And I sincerely doubt that many newbies will be perusing them (or, for that matter, well-served by doing so).
gary_newell

Mar 31, 2014
5:10 AM EDT
"Also, I notice that the above gary_newell -- an unabashed Baboontu user (maybe a fanboi?) "

The Ubuntu fanboi currently running openSUSE 13.1.

Having said that I'm not ashamed to admit that I think Ubuntu is a great distro. Easy to install, easy to use, rarely crashes, very good software repositories, great support.
Ridcully

Mar 31, 2014
6:27 AM EDT
Beta or not, someone will get some use out of it. Good.......now that is all sorted out....a serious question.....

Gary_newell........how do you find openSUSE 13.1 ? As much info as you care to pass on please.

IS there a US 2Cent coin still ? Ours no longer exist.......they were lovely bronze ones with a frill necked lizard on them and the wretched government pinched them out of circulation in 1992.

Sigh.....we still have the next "silver coloured coin" though.........so.........

This is just my 5c worth.........not the same is it ? :-)

PS......BernardSwiss......I hadn't realised there were lots and lots of reviews of beta Kubuntu ? I only get a serious shot at LXer every morning and I hadn't noticed any on LXer.....probably blind as a bat..
gary_newell

Mar 31, 2014
8:36 AM EDT
"Gary_newell........how do you find openSUSE 13.1 ? As much info as you care to pass on please."

I reviewed openSUSE 13.1 on my site a few weeks ago. It is ok.

The installer is fine, a bit fiddly around the partitioning section but for somebody who has done multiple installations in the past it is fine. Not as bad as the Fedora one.

I went for the KDE live edition and installed from there rather than getting the full DVD. There is a basic set of software, usual suspects including LibreOffice. Fairly standard set of KDE tools.

Amarok is included which is great. One of the best audio players there is.

Flash and multimedia codecs had to be installed separately. I didn't follow the openSUSE documentation for doing this. I followed the unofficial guide (opensuse-guide.org). Far more civilised.

The YAST package manager is as easy to use as something like Synaptic. One annoyance is the default setting which means that if your system isn't up to date then the first time you try and install any package it will try and update every outdated package.

I prefer to update when I want to update rather than have it thrust upon me when I try and install an application that is 88kb in size. 88kb becomes 2.1 gb!!!

Not much software available in the default repositories but there are some good repositories for installing non-free software.

If you prefer command line installs then there is Zypper (command line). I prefer to use that over Yast.

It is very stable. Not a single crash or error report in the few weeks that I have been running it.

KDE is excellent now. It is heavily customisable if you are inclined to do that sort of thing with lots of widgets, activities and themes etc. If you don't like customising the desktop then it works perfectly fine as it is.

Some people have mentioned that they have network issues sometimes when trying to get online. I experienced this once and KWallet was a complete pain whilst resolving this but the problem hasn't re-occurred.

I don't really do things like video editing often so can't comment on performance for heavier tasks and I don't really use the computer for gaming.

I do use the computer to connect to the Raspberry PI and ssh and vncviewer were both installed by default.

Steam works perfectly fine for me but other people have reported various issues such as no sound.

All in all I probably prefer Kubuntu but openSUSE is more than satisfactory. Perhaps not as easy for beginners to get to grips with. (More akin to people used to using Debian/Fedora etc)







notbob

Mar 31, 2014
9:37 AM EDT
I think the entire thread is pretty hilarious, but that's jes me, a person who sees absolutely zero point in distro screenshots.

What does a distro screenshot reveal? How many gazillion ways a user can tile their windows? What a distro's wallpaper defaults to behind the cliched transparent xterm? Please! I rarely see my desktop and I almost never tile anything. I can understand showing a screenshots for a software's gui, what its user interface looks like, but a distro's WM/DE screenshot? Everyone's is different and they probably change the wallpaper, too. And what's so majorly different about Unity, other than it being a scrolling menu on the side instead of static menu on the bottom. Thanks for nothing, Canonical.

But, what do I know. I only recently caved to tabs in browsers. ;)

BTW, the "full story" link doesn't even load on my noscript seamonkey.
Ridcully

Mar 31, 2014
5:05 PM EDT
Thanks Gary_newell. Much appreciated. I'd agree with your last sentence re beginners, but if you've used SuSE since day 1, you're in your comfort zone. I didn't know about your article and have just found it.. My congratulations on a very nice bit of work and I have bookmarked it already for some careful reading.....you should have just put a link to it, so thankyou even more for going to the trouble when you didn't have to. I note you have found KWallet just as demanding as I did - you cannot just log onto the internet, KWallet has to be given the password every single time. You are more tolerant than I am - I disabled the wretched thing.

Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]

Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!