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just brew it!
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Re: Is Ubuntu Really Robust?

Thu Jun 25, 2015 10:10 am

bthylafh wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
What would you say is better about Mint's KDE implemenetation vs. Ubuntu's?

Defaults, mostly. Probably nothing you can't make happen with Kubuntu and a little effort.

OK, maybe I should give Mint's KDE spin a look then.

OTOH I tend not to upgrade very often, sticking with an LTS release until the next LTS release has been out for several months. So I only need to deal with fixing the brain-dead defaults once every couple of years, or when I set up a new system (if it doesn't just get imaged from an existing one).
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cheesyking
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Re: Is Ubuntu Really Robust?

Thu Jun 25, 2015 10:56 am

ronch wrote:
notfred wrote:
USB shouldn't be an issue, it's all standard Host Controller Interface so no difference from one machine to another unless you get in to the extra charging power stuff that will be vendor specific.

How stable is the machine you are having issues booting on? Have you let memtest run overnight? CPU tests like prime95? This wouldn't be the first time that a machine that runs Windows fine fails to run Linux because Linux hits the hardware harder and in different patterns.


Not having any issues with the desktop. No hangs, no crashes. It's been a while since I ran Memtest, but I would do it if I've been having issues with the system.

Reason I think it COULD be the USB controller is because the keyboard and mouse don't have power when I manage to get to the welcome screen.


Sounds like the symptoms of this bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... ug/1244176

NB comment 51 (that last comment as I post this)
Note that while this particular bug, about missing ohci-pci in the initramfs, is fixed in Ubuntu 15.04 another similar bug, missing xhci-pci, is still present. The debian bug report about, and fix for, missing xhci-pci is here: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=773250

If you are experiencing these symptoms on Ubuntu 15.04 (USB keyboard working in installed and Live systems, but not debian-installer / early boot initramfs), you are probably hitting the xhci-pci bug.


So there's a know bug for the USB not working during install but it shouldn't be affecting you. Maybe a similar but unrelated bug or the original bug isn't as fixed as they think it is. It's very hard to read anything on that photo you took of the screen in attempt #2 but the final line looks like something about "usb usb7-port3: unable to enumerate ... ..." which also points in that direction.

The reason it does different things on different boots could (and I'm guessing here as I don't really know anything about systemd yet) be because systemd doesn't boot the system in a deterministic way (not sure if I've used the right term there but as I understand it things don't always happen in the same order when systemd initialises the OS, that right?).

Anyway it looks like a bug in 15.04 and to answer the thread title's question... The non LTS release really aren't robust.

Not saying there are never bugs and stupidity in the LTS releases too but they are a lot more robust than the non LTS ones. Really Ubuntu should just bite the bullet and call the LTS versions "Ubuntu" and the non LTS ones "Ubuntu Beta". The downloads page on their website recommends "most users" stick to whatever the current LTS is but actually admitting that the other versions are betas would make things a lot clearer.

Provided you still have any patience left I'd be interested to see what happens with 14.04.

EDIT:
Might also be worth choosing the "try before installing" option to see if the full live environment loads properly.
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notfred
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Re: Is Ubuntu Really Robust?

Thu Jun 25, 2015 11:43 am

XHCI is USB3.0, this was plugged in to USB2.0 ports so EHCI with either OHCI or UHCI under it for the USB1.x stuff. So I doubt it was that bug.
 
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Re: Is Ubuntu Really Robust?

Thu Jun 25, 2015 11:49 am

cheesyking wrote:
EDIT:
Might also be worth choosing the "try before installing" option to see if the full live environment loads properly.

That's what he was trying to do.
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.
 
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Re: Is Ubuntu Really Robust?

Thu Jun 25, 2015 12:05 pm

notfred wrote:
XHCI is USB3.0, this was plugged in to USB2.0 ports so EHCI with either OHCI or UHCI under it for the USB1.x stuff. So I doubt it was that bug.

Yeah, not exactly that bug but it looks like something similar is going wrong.

Captain Ned wrote:
That's what he was trying to do.

Sorry I wasn't clear enough. I meant the "try ubuntu" option in the somewhat hidden advanced install options thing you get to by pressing a key at this screen:

Image

Ronch is just letting the installer do its default thing but he might get a more revealing error with it trying to do a full boot rather than just display that welcome screen. TBH I don't think it will make a blind bit of difference but it's worth a try.
Last edited by cheesyking on Thu Jun 25, 2015 12:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Is Ubuntu Really Robust?

Thu Jun 25, 2015 12:10 pm

cheesyking wrote:
Sorry I wasn't clear enough. I meant the "try ubuntu" option in the somewhat hidden advanced install options thing you get to by pressing a key when the screen turns purple and the little icon of the keyboard and man in a circle appears at the bottom. Ronch is just letting the installer do its default thing but he might get a more revealing error with it trying to do a full boot rather than display that welcome screen. TBH I don't think it will make a blind bit of difference but it's worth a try.

And in that I agree, but the 2 lappy boxen running 14.04 LTS here are so old that even an LTS release has caught up to their hardware.
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Flatland_Spider
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Re: Is Ubuntu Really Robust?

Thu Jun 25, 2015 12:15 pm

I don't think anyone has ever claimed Ubuntu to be robust. RHEL and Debian sure, but not Ubuntu. The *buntus are especially bad since they don't get a lot of love.

I thought it might be something to do with the video card, but southern island cards look like they are supported well. (http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/)

Screenshot #2 suggests it's something USB related. Try unplugging everything except a mouse and keyboard. I'm suspicious of the TP-Link wifi adapter.

Try booting the desktop with Finnix (http://www.finnix.org/). It's a much more pared down Linux, it boots to a command line, compared to Ubuntu or anything that boots a GUI. It should give you a better idea where things are failing.

I would also suggest booting from a flash drive. A 1-2GB flash drive is more then enough space for Finnix, and the flash drive can be repurposed when you're done.

cheesyking wrote:
The reason it does different things on different boots could (and I'm guessing here as I don't really know anything about systemd yet) be because systemd doesn't boot the system in a deterministic way (not sure if I've used the right term there but as I understand it things don't always happen in the same order when systemd initialises the OS, that right?).


Systemd launches everything in parallel, and it satisfies service dependencies queue any communications between services. Service A may depend on service B, but service B may take a long time to load. Systemd tells service A service B is functional while it waits for service B to become operational. When service B finally comes online, systemd delivers the backlog of messages from service A. If this sounds like a recipe for random service errors, that's because it is.
 
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Re: Is Ubuntu Really Robust?

Thu Jun 25, 2015 6:19 pm

Duct Tape Dude wrote:
ronch wrote:
Wait, I just remembered that my desktop has a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe. Could it be that? No time to pull it out tonight though. Got work early tomorrow.

Every time I decide "hey let me try installing bare Linux" it ends after a week of troubleshooting drivers and imperfect behavior. You really have to have the most mainstream hardware and expect less from special devices (like GPUs, touchpads, brightness control, fancy keyboards/mice, and especially network adapters). I've still got so many Windows licenses from leftover from school that it ends up being worth it to just run Mint/Ubuntu/Debian off of Virtualbox on Windows and forget about drivers. The guest additions work fine and there's even multimonitor support.

But I'm on a laptop where fifty proprietary devices combine to make Linux angry, and things like power consumption matter. For better or worse, Windows just works better than Linux in these cases. Your desktop will probably fare better.

Ubuntu (probably the most recent LTS version given my habits) 64-bit works quite nicely on my old 6530b - but I think a lot of those are designed to support certain enterprise linux distros (HP seems to like SuSE). No doubt they don't care one bit with other machines.
 
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Re: Is Ubuntu Really Robust?

Thu Jun 25, 2015 8:03 pm

I've got an Ubuntu server (14.04 LTS) that runs an internal website for application processing. Aside from the /boot partition running out of room with updated kernels, it's been really solid.

I have Debian 8 on an old iMac and a newer Dell running KDE, and I can say it's the best distro I've ever used. Everything works on it, even the audio. I won't pretend that I understand the new systemd, but the old iMac boots very fast.
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Re: Is Ubuntu Really Robust?

Fri Jun 26, 2015 9:26 am

I've been running Ubuntu as my main operating system since 2008. I fortunately started with 8.04, an LTS release, and that worked well right out of the box (no driver problems at all), and it gave me a very good impression of the operating system. I tried a non-LTS release of Ubuntu somewhere in the intervening years, and that solidity wasn't there - if I recall, there were annoying bugs with wireless and sound, and maybe even a few hard locks. Not cool at all. So I went back to the previous LTS, and I've only run LTS releases since. Those, for me, have proven to be very stable and robust.

For reference, I run Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 64-bit on a Thinkpad with a Sandy Bridge i5 and Intel graphics, and on a desktop with an AMD 8300 in an Asus M5A97 motherboard (970 chipset), with a Geforce 660 Ti for graphics. Both are rock-solid, and have been running Ubuntu for years now.

If you're still game, try the 14.04 LTS release. Ask any questions you might want, I'm sure people here can help.
 
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Re: Is Ubuntu Really Robust?

Fri Jun 26, 2015 9:44 am

Chuckaluphagus wrote:
I've been running Ubuntu as my main operating system since 2008. I fortunately started with 8.04, an LTS release, and that worked well right out of the box (no driver problems at all), and it gave me a very good impression of the operating system. I tried a non-LTS release of Ubuntu somewhere in the intervening years, and that solidity wasn't there - if I recall, there were annoying bugs with wireless and sound, and maybe even a few hard locks. Not cool at all. So I went back to the previous LTS, and I've only run LTS releases since. Those, for me, have proven to be very stable and robust.

Yeah, sound was somewhat problematic around the 2009-2010 timeframe as the ecosystem was still adjusting to the broad rollout of Pulseaudio. I'm still not entirely happy with Pulseaudio, but I can live with it as long as it can peacefully co-exist with JACK.

Chuckaluphagus wrote:
For reference, I run Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 64-bit on a Thinkpad with a Sandy Bridge i5 and Intel graphics, and on a desktop with an AMD 8300 in an Asus M5A97 motherboard (970 chipset), with a Geforce 660 Ti for graphics. Both are rock-solid, and have been running Ubuntu for years now.

The M5A97 is a real workhorse. After using it in a Linux desktop at my previous job a few years back and being impressed with it, I bought one (well actually the R2.0 variant) for home as well. It is still my primary desktop. 10.04 LTS had some device driver issues with it (sound and system health monitoring took a little work to get them going), but with 12.04 all of the onboard devices worked perfectly from the get-go.
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ronch
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Re: Is Ubuntu Really Robust?

Mon Aug 24, 2015 1:03 pm

Just a little update, folks.

Tried 14.04 the other day. Same issue. KB and mousie show no signs of life.
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Re: Is Ubuntu Really Robust?

Mon Aug 24, 2015 1:49 pm

just brew it! wrote:
bthylafh wrote:
Try Ubuntu LTS as has already been suggested, or Mint (which is now based on Ubuntu LTS).

I think I've given Mint a fair shake (been using it in a VM at work for several months), but the Cinnamon desktop has some annoying quirks and instabilities which I haven't been able to get sorted. I stand by my KDE recommendation.


I've been using Mint for a few years now, and while I started out with Cinnamon I've since given up on it. I've been running MATE on my work machine, and so far have been happy with it.

I tried KDE a while back but the only real difference I could see was all of the apps get funny names... :D

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