Revisiting Linux Part 1: A Look at Ubuntu 8.04
by Ryan Smith on August 26, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Things That Went Terribly, Terribly Wrong
One concern I’ve had for some time when writing this article is that it runs the risk of coming off as too negative. I don’t want to knock Ubuntu just for being different, but at the same time I’m not going to temper my expectations much as far as usability, stability, and security are concerned. If something went wrong, then I intend to mention it, as these are things that can hopefully be resolved in a future version of Ubuntu.
This section is reserved for those things that went terribly, terribly wrong. Things so wrong that it made me give up on using Ubuntu for the rest of the day and go back to Windows. This isn’t intended to be a list of all the problems (or even just the big problems) I encountered using Ubuntu, but rather the most severe.
We’ll start with mounting file servers. I have a Windows Home Server box that I use to store my common files, along with hosting backups of my Macs and PCs. I needed to be able to access the SMB shares on that server, which immediately puts Linux at a bit of a disadvantage since it’s yet another non-native Microsoft protocol that Linux has to deal with, with protocol details that were largely reverse engineered. My Macs have no issue with this, so I was not expecting any real problems here, other than that the network throughput would likely be lower than from Windows.
For whatever reason, Ubuntu cannot see the shares on my WHS box, which is not a big deal since neither do my Macs. What went wrong however is that manually mounting these shares is far harder than it needs to be. Again using the Mac as a comparison, mounting shares is as easy as telling Finder to connect to a SMB server, and supplying credentials, at which point it gives you a list of shares to mount.
Ubuntu, as it turns out, is not capable of mounting a share based on just the server name and credentials. It requires the share name along with the above information , at which point it will mount that share. Browsing shares based on just a user name and password is right out. Worse yet, if you don’t know this and attempt to do it Mac-style, you’ll get one of the most cryptic error messages I have ever seen: “Can't display location "smb://<removed>/", No application is registered as handling this file.” This tells you nothing about what the problem actually is. It’s poor design from a usability standpoint, and even worse error handling.
Unfortunately the story doesn’t end here. Ideally all applications would work as well with files on a network share as they would a local drive, but that’s not always the case – often the problem is that it’s harder to browse for a network shared file than a local file from inside an application. For this reason I have all of my common shares mapped as drives on Windows (this also saves effort on logging in) and Mac OS X takes this even further and immediately maps all mounted shares as drives. So I wanted to do the same for Ubuntu, and have my common shares automount as drives.
Nautilus, which transparently accesses SMB shares, is of no help here, because by transparently accessing SMB shares it doesn’t mount them in a standard way. The mount point it uses is inside of a hidden directory (.gvfs) that some applications will ignore. The ramifications of this being that most applications that are not a GTK application cannot see shares mounted by Nautilus, because they can’t see the mounted share that GTK tells its applications about, nor can they see the hidden mount point. The chief concern in my case was anything running under Wine, along with VLC.
The solution is not for the faint of heart. Highlights include additional software installations, manually backing up files, and a boatload of archaic terminal commands – and that’s just if everything goes right the first time. I love the terminal but this is ridiculous. Once it’s finished and set up correctly it gets the job done, but it’s an unjust amount of effort for something that can be accomplished in a matter of seconds on Windows or Mac OS X. This was easily the lowest point I reached while using Ubuntu.
The other thing I am going to throw in this category is mounting ISO images. I keep ISOs of all of my software for easy access. Interestingly enough, Ubuntu has the file system driver necessary to mount ISOs, but not a GUI application to do this. While it would be nice to have all of that built-in (ala Mac OS X) that’s not the flaw here – I’m perfectly content downloading a utility like I do for Windows (Daemon Tools). The flaw here was the Ubuntu GUI application for this, Gmount-ISO, can’t mount ISOs off of a SMB share. Worse yet, it doesn’t tell you this either.
The first time around, the only solution I was able to find was an another archaic CLI command that involved running the mount command by hand, in the style of “mount file.iso /cdrom -t iso9660 -o loop”. This was a terrible solution.
It wasn’t until some time later that I finally found a better solution. An application that wasn’t in the Ubuntu repository, AcetoneISO, can properly mount files off of SMB shares. Better yet it’s a bit closer to Daemon Tools functionality, since it can mount BIN/CUE, NRG (Nero Image), and MDF images.
I throw this in “terribly, terribly wrong” column because the solution was completely non-obvious. If you search for “Ubuntu Hardy mount iso” or something similar, AcetoneISO is nowhere near the top of the results, and the Ubuntu package repository is of no help. What’s in the repository is the aforementioned useless Gmount-ISO, and what’s at the top of Google’s results are Gmount-ISO and instructions to mount the image via CLI. It’s a success story in the end, but it was uncomfortably painful getting there.
If there’s any consolation in these matters, it’s that these were the only two issues that made me outright stop using Ubuntu, and go back to Windows for the day. Any other problems I had were significantly less severe than this.
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Eeqmcsq - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
for your time spent on writing this article. I've made the jump to from Windows to Ubuntu (and Xubuntu for my older computers) back around 7.10 and 8.04 and I went through some of the headaches in adjusting to Ubuntu, but I eventually solved all of them and I'm quite settled in now.One comment about finding help in the form of command line instructions, rather than GUI instructions. GUI instructions for Ubuntu would not be useful for Kubuntu or Xubuntu, since they use different window managers. The command line solutions usually work for all three.
Also, boot times were noticeably improved in 9.04. Perhaps you can run a quick retest on it.
And you CAN install stuff when using the live CD. I've installed a couple of temperature monitoring utilities when I was stress testing my motherboard.
Finally, thanks again for writing such a thorough look into your Ubuntu experiences. It was a great read in seeing how far Ubuntu has come and what it still lacks.
fepple - Thursday, August 27, 2009 - link
Yeah, you can set the APT sources to use a CD. There is an option for it 'system' > 'administor' > 'software source', or you can edit the /etc/apt/sources.list fileclarkn0va - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
[quote]since SMB is the predominant protocol for consumer file server gear, it’s a fair test of such use.[/quote]While this comment is not false, it presents a lazy approach to comparison; it's a one-sided contest, and Linux, pitted against Windows on home turf, doesn't stand much of a chance.
You as much as acknowledge this in the article, so why not provide some counterpoint? For example, consumer file server gear, even if it supports SMB almost ubiquitously, is usually *nix-based. So instead of just showing Windows and Linux clients interacting with Windows servers, show them interacting with *nix servers as well. Do some NFS transfers as well; NFS is well supported in consumer NAS these days.
You also really missed the boat on the video drivers. 8.04 was not the first Ubuntu release to include the Restricted Drivers Manager (known simply as "Hardware Drivers" in later releases). This handy app will identify hardware, such as AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, that can take advantage of proprietary drivers, and will offer to to install the same via synaptic (APT) with just a click of the mouse. No CLI, no headaches.
Still, a thorough review, and generally well-researched. I'm looking forward to the 9.04 follow-up.
Since you mentioned hardware HD decoding, I recommend taking a look at smplayer from the testing ppa (https://launchpad.net/~rvm/+archive/testing)">https://launchpad.net/~rvm/+archive/testing). Unfortunately vdpau doesn't work with the nvidia blobs in the default Ubuntu repos, but I believe there's a PPA providing vdpau-compatible blobs for anybody not wanting to do CLI installs.
db
VaultDweller - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
[quote]While this comment is not false, it presents a lazy approach to comparison; it's a one-sided contest, and Linux, pitted against Windows on home turf, doesn't stand much of a chance. [/quote]This isn't Linux pitted against Windows on home turf, it's Linux pitted against Windows in the real world.
clarkn0va - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Well, no doubt SMB is the dominant method of sharing files for consumers in general. Obviously comparing Linux to Windows makes sense in a world where Windows is the incumbent, but it's not the whole story.I hope Part 2 will address some of the objective benefits of Ubuntu, and not fall into the trap of "worse because it's not the same as Windows".
VaultDweller - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
I agree in principle, but there has to be a distinction between "Worse because it's not compatible with Windows," "Worse because it's not as easy as Windows," and "Worse because it's not the same as Windows." Die-hard *nix advocates tend to dismiss the first two as if they were the latter, and this tends to undermine their argument.Also, in some cases "Worse because it's not the same as Windows" can be a valid point, because the public has been trained to the point that the Windows way is the "intuitive" way. Of course, this isn't truly intuitive, as people who learned Linux first would find Linux methodologies more intuitive - but that's largely a moot point, as that's not the reality we live in today. You could say the same thing about the color red - in the western world, when we see red we can intuitively guess that it means Stop, or Warning, or Error, etc. The fact that this is not an understanding we're born with but rather a socially acquired intuition does not mean it would be any easier to suddenly change the color of traffic lights and expect people to adjust without problems.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
All of the NAS gear I can get my hands on is either SMB only, or is a Time Capsule which is SMB + AFP. I don't have anything that does NFS, which isn't so much a comment on testing (I could always set up another box) as it is usefulness. NFS just isn't common on consumer gear; SMB is a more important metric if you're looking at file transfer performance, because that's what most people are going to be working with. This doesn't preclude doing NFS at a later time though.And the Restricted Drivers Manager is limited to the drivers in the Hardy repository, which means they're a year+ out of date.
amrs - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Interestingly, if one checks the SmallNetBuilder NAS charts, it looks like out of 87 NAS devices, 49 have NFS. 56% in other words. And you say NFS isn't common? Really now? Seems a little biased to me.ekul - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
While a lot of your issues have complicated solutions or lengthy technical backstories I can solve your complaint of smb shares mounted in nautilus not being useful in non-gtk applications in one simple command (or as you seem to hate commands the gui can do it too).theory: make a symlink to the directory nautilus mounts to so it can be easily accessed. Symlinks to directories or files are transparently (to users and applications) identical to the location they refer to. Windows doesn't have symlinks (only useless shortcuts) so it isn't surprising you were not aware to do it.
howto: gvfs uses the directory /home/$USER/.gvfs as a mount point so link to it:
ln -s ~/.gvfs ~/linkname
howto gui: in nautilus go to your home folder then choose view -> show hidden files. Right click on .gvfs and choose make link. Then you can rename the link to whatever you want and hide hidden files again.
hint: symlinks are your best friend. My home dir is littered with links to places on the filesystem I visit a lot to avoid a lot of clicking/typing
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
I suddenly feel very humiliated...The symlink is a very elegant solution, I'm embarrassed I didn't think of that myself. It's a bit of a lousy solution in that there even needs to be a solution, but as far as things go that's a very insightful suggestion.