First off, let me thank everyone for the feedback and apologize for not jumping in sooner (xmas errands). I'll attempt to address everyone who had an issue with my methods or my conclusions in one large post in order to catch up in the discussion. But let me start by explaining that I could have released this review a week out from launch. But I did not; I decided to give the OS the benefit of the doubt and wrapped it up one month out instead. I ran the benches three weeks out, but the experiences I had in week one still count because they still happened.
To you guys/gals questioning the four days figure: This includes backing up all of my data (files, bookmarks, passwords, feeds, chat logs, VMs, compiling a list of apps, and plugins, etc). In other words, a FULL transferable backup - the kind of thing that people do when completely switching OSes. Also keep in mind that this was on two systems. Another situation that led to the extended period of time was the time needed to download the ISOs due to their servers being overloaded by downloaders. I also downloaded several ISOs just to be sure that my issues weren't caused by bad ISO files, as well as burned several copies to rule out bad discs. This is were the four day figure comes from.
To the guy who said that my crashes were actually the screensaver kicking in: C'mon man, give me SOME credit. LOL
To the guy who said that the kernel error was due to memory failure: That is a good, solid, and valid possibility for such an error. So I went ahead and ran memtest once more this morning just to be sure nothing had happened in-between installs. It again came back with no errors.
For those saying that my review of Ubuntu 9.10 will hurt Ubuntu adoption: Ubuntu 9.10 will hurt Ubuntu adoption. I wanted that to be crystal clear in my conclusion. Also, I'm a tech reviewer, not Canonical PR. Though I believe in FOSS as a necessary check and balance to proprietary monopolies, I'm not in anyone's pocket. In fact, when it comes to OSes, I'm the ultimate turncoat. The fact that Ubuntu got a review at a mainstream HARDWARE site shows that they've made it into the big leagues. We reviewed Ubuntu, and not Gentoo, and not Slax, and not Puppy. Why not? Because noone cares about them. The spotlight is on Ubuntu, not every Linux distro. Criticism comes with being in the limelight. Shuttleworth and co. are all big boys, I'm sure they can take it.
To the guys/gals who say that Xubuntu works just fine: IDK, but I'll take your word for it. I haven't had issues with Kubuntu either, TBH I just might switch to Kubuntu 9.10 AMD64 til 10.04 LTS comes out. The Ubuntu Netbook Edition seems to be fine as well. This review was just for the flagship branch - Ubuntu.
To those who say that I'm unlucky due to my hardware configuration: Granted- I'm terribly unlucky
But I can't test luck. Waht I can tell you is that 7.10, 8.04 LTS, and 9.04 all worked flawlessly on the same systems. Even my beef with 8.10 (twiggy graphical glitches and generally slower performance than 8.04) are seriously minor in comparison to my experience with 9.10. Not to mention the lack of issues with Kubuntu 9.10, Mandriva 2010, and even... yes, Windows 7 RC (gasp). If I were to throw out any comparable products, then any product review would be positive - unless of course it explodes and causes severe burns to the hands and face
To those saying that it's not Ubuntu's fault, that it's the kernel, or the GUI, or the hardware drivers: A distribution is the sum of it's parts. The distribution maintainer is responsible for making it all work together. I compared Canonical's final 'product' to the previous version of their final 'product'. If there was an issue with a part of Ubuntu 9.10, which wasn't an issue with a previous version, they didn't have to include it. Think of it this way: If you had to roll back the kernel in Windows, would we EVER hear the end of it?
To anyone saying that regressions go with the territory: Malware goes with the territory for Windows. Should I neglect to slam MS (or praise Linux) because all that bad stuff 'goes with the territory' in Windows? An absurd pricetag comes with Apple hardware which you need to run OS X (legally). Should I not take cost into account when looking at their products? All OSes have their pros and cons. If you want a double standard for Linux, then I'm afraid that the current estimated market share of 1% may be the peak - Late nineties all over again.
To prathameshdotinfo: First, see all of the above. Second, I don't review live CDs and the installed OS does not have GParted. If you try to run it from the terminal, this is what you'll get:
The program 'gparted' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install gparted
gparted: command not found
I verified that GParted IS on the live CD, and that's pretty telling. Why not Palimpsest by itself? When installed, why not use GParted instead? Sounds like someone had big reservations about Palimpsest's capabilities to prep a system for installation, but they went ahead with it anyway. Again, fueling my point that they played too fast and loose with new features on this release. Third, I did not have issues with ext4 in Karmic, though I did in Jaunty. But why is it slower? Also, what 'technical information' would you like to see? In the introduction we asked for ways to further flesh out our cross-platform benchmarks.
Finally, I'd like to point out that for every comment that disagrees with my review, there is another that completely agrees. This is a very bad ratio for success. I'm honestly glad that I was in the 'unlucky' crowd, I think that if I had been 'lucky' and published a positive review when half of you are reporting a bad experience it would have reflected much worse on me, Tom's Hardware, and Ubuntu. Even if you had a great experience many, many others had a nightmare. I can understand this from most other distros, but don't expect it from Ubuntu - not anymore. By re-enforcing that Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope" is STILL the Tom's Hardware pick of ALL 'alternative' operating systems, hopefully many users will give that release a spin and walk away with a better perception of the entire OS. I'm harder on Ubuntu than I would be to a distro like Gentoo or even Debian because of how far it has already come. But let's not kid ourselves by ignoring how much further it still has to go. Simply being more secure than XP and outperforming Vista isn't going to cut it anymore. It would have a few months ago, but not anymore. Take it or leave it, Windows 7 is gonna be a hit (for now). Whether you want to admit it or not, Redmond flipped the script. It's time for any aspiring open source OS to bring their A game, and I KNOW that Canonical can do better than this - much, much better.
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