Stay away from the Intrepid Ibex

Last Sunday, I decided to install Linux as a OS on my pc [ my mother board has onboard nvdia graphics].Earlier I have used redhat, fedora, mandrake and opensuse, but this time the flavour of choice had to be Ubuntu, two reasons compelled me to opt for Ubuntu,one,I did not need a linux server, two, I only needed an OS which would serve my basic computing needs,hence the huge repository of software that comes along with opensuse or fedora, was of no use.I decided to download Ubuntu 8.10 desktop edition.I have a slow dial up internet connection and it took me approximately 12 hours to download the .iso image using bittorrent.

So far so good, I could not wait to get Ubuntu up and running. I burnt the image on a CD, and started the installation.I knew that installing a 699 MB linux OS, would not take more than half an hour.I proceded with the normal installation, Soon an orange coloured appeared on my screen and was moving too and fro from left to right. I waited patiently, after 5 mins, the movement came to a half and the system hanged, did a hard reset, and this time I opted to perform the installation in safe graphics mode, the same sequence of events repeated itself.This time I decided to install Ubuntu inside Windows,the installation was smooth and I was prompted to reboot, which I did, up came the GRUB, and I selected Ubuntu,again the orange bar came up and started moving to and fro, I was relieved,thought I would be a matter of minutes, after which I will be able to use the linux for human beings.The orange bar stopped moving and up came a orangish screen with a brown collage of a ibex,I was delighted, there was a pop up which told me that the OS was calculating the partitions, after which I was told that the files were being copied, as soon as the progress bar reached 24 % the system again hanged and some black dots appeared all over the screen.I was perplexed.Rebooted in to windows, did some google search for a solution.Some one had advised removing the compiz, which I did, removed the compiz and compiz core, but again the system got hanged when 24% of the files had been copied.I was frustrated.I wondered how can Canonical ,which develops,distributes and promotes Ubuntu be so stupid to release an OS with such bugs.

If Ubuntu is a linux for human beings, each and every human who has a pc, should be able to install it, using the graphical installer in no less than 30 mins.It should not matter what graphics card the user is having. What I realise is that linux is still the OS for the geeks.One surely does not expect a lay man to know how to un-install compiz using linux commands, or modify the xorg.conf file. This is where Windows beats linux hands down. Windows is proprietary, you need to buy a licence, but all said and done, it is easy on the brain.If you visit the About Ubuntu section on the website http://www.ubuntu.com , this is what it says , “Ubuntu is a community developed, Linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. It contains all the applications you need – a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging and much more. ” I wonder how they can make such a claim, to be honest Ubuntu is still far from being perfect.