Ubuntu Woes

Well, I recently decided to splash out on a new box. Hardware specs aside I thought as an experiment I would go the linux route with this one - you know, install Ubuntu, MythTV and maybe try some Mono development on it.

Now, I hear that the linux desktop is approaching maturity, but I'm not sure I see it. After running, or attempting to run, Ubuntu for several weeks I thought I would post my thoughts (both positive and negative)..

1. PRO: Installation was relatively easy, I like the idea of the installation CD booting you into a live desktop before you start the installation process very handy especially for recovery.
2. CON: Installation was buggy. At one point you choose (it appears) which drives you would like available in the final install and where to mount them. It then proceeds to format the aforementioned drives that you have been filling with data for the last 4 years into NTFS and before you notice, oh well..
3. PRO: Once started, installation was very straightforward and quick, equalling Windows in it's simplicity.
   
4. CON: First restart after installing I was greeted with a flashing cursor on a black screen. Turns out Grub didn't like my 4-port SATA controller. Luckily my new motherboard has enough free SATA ports that I could cut the controller out of the equation (for now).
   
5. CON: The default ATI drivers are pretty shoddy, and after upgrading to what I though would be better performance drivers it totally broke all video playback through banshee, xine, mythtv etc. I'd play a movie and get unceremoniously dumped back to the login screen (the lack of blue screen would be, I suppose, a PRO though)
6. PRO: NTFS support is coming on in leaps and bounds, the NTFS-3g project is testament to this and runs excellantly.
   
7. CON: As part of the hardware upgrade I had decided to copy the data from my old RAID array (A Highpoint RocketRAID 133) to one of my shiny new SATA drives. Unfortunately the DIY linux drivers on the highpoint site don't seem to like 64-bit OSes - I could mount the drive and see the files on it, but on trying to copy the files the process would hang indefinitely with little to no sign of progress. After giving it some space (left it for 2 days with no noticable change, the rest of the system was stable) I gave in and decided to find another machine to grab my data.
   
8. PRO: I'm liking the Synaptic package manager and general apt-get commands, very useful.
9. CON: You're pretty much tied to the packages the community have added to Synaptic. If you want something that people haven't thought to add, or you want/need the latest version of something existing (I'm a bit of a cutting-edge whore as you will find out), then you pretty much need to compile from source (along with the other dependancies of the program). Whatever was wrong with installer programs, a-la Windows? Why should I need to "./configure", "make", "make install" every time I want to install something? If it's that easy then why don't they lump it all into one command?
   
10. CON: Something needs to be done about DVD playback. Once you get through all the legal issues and finally get libcss or whatever installed then it's still buggy - jumping video and pixelated picture even on my shiny new Core 2 Duo box.
    

Well I'm sure there's more, for the time being I've installed Vista RC1 (not without it's issues but that's another post entirely). I still need to get back into linux to sort a couple of things (foolishly re-formatted a drive in xfs or whatever), which means re-enabling grub after Windows overwrote the MBR, Ho Hum..