Is brand name Ubuntu over hyped ?

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution which is famed for its ease of use and has built up an image of being a newbie friendly Linux distribution. Ubuntu has arguably the largest community following compared to all other Linux distributions. And it has enhanced its cause many times by following the policy of shipping free CDs of Ubuntu to anyone willing to try this Linux distribution.

Nowadays if you visit any tech blog or site, you seldom fail to notice at least one article espousing the cause of Ubuntu Linux. In fact, even the media pundits have jumped on to the bandwagon and have started tomtoming the virtues of this very popular Linux distribution (see here, here and many other places).

But recently when I reverentially downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn), burned it to a CD and booted into it, guess what? it failed to load.

Fig: Error encountered while booting Feisty Fawn LiveCD

The picture of my monitor above gives an idea of what I was faced with while booting Ubuntu 7.04 from the CD. It was showing an error on the lines that the ata2 port on my machine failed to respond. And I was put into an initramfs built-in shell.

The machine I tried to boot Ubuntu is a moderately recent Pentium 4 machine with 631 MB memory - more than twice the recommended minimum memory needed to load Ubuntu. The machine doesn't have any extra features like bluetooth, WiFi or out of the ordinary peripheral devices. And Debian Etch has been running quite flawlessly on this machine.

I am not an Ubuntu critic. Not even by a long short. In fact, if you search this blog, you will find numerous articles related to Ubuntu where I have talked favorably about it. I was really impressed with Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) and its 6 step install method.

But a regular reader of this blog will find that I have been unusually quiet about the next release version which is Ubuntu Edgy Eft (6.10). It is not because I hadn't downloaded and installed it. But I did not find anything worth talking about that particular version. In all fairness to Edgy Eft, it at least booted to a complete desktop on my machine. But the latest version of Ubuntu 7.04 - Feasty Fawn, refuses to even boot and gives me the message as seen in the picture above. In all certainty it is a problem related to the Linux kernel bundled with Fiesty Fawn. Then the question arises as to why the Ubuntu team decided to use that particular version of the kernel. Perhaps that is a price you pay when you adopt experimental features without proper testing. I would really like the Ubuntu team to bring out succeeding versions at par with ver 6.06 in terms of quality.

Considering my experience with Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn against the eulogies in the media, I am forced to ask if the brand name Ubuntu is over hyped - most probably the residual effect of an over-zealous community behind it. No Linux distribution is perfect. Each has its pros and cons. I for one would like to see a balanced discussion about the pros and cons of a distribution without delving into unnecessary fanboy-ism.

Update (22 May 2007): It seems this problem is the result of a bug in Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn. Two days back, I received the CD I ordered through shipit. And even this CD refused to boot properly on my machine. A bug report has been filed at launchpad.net which you can read here. And Bheesh has provided a work around to this problem on his site, which I concede I haven't tried out yet as I do not have the patience to go through the whole ruckus just to boot into a Desktop. So as long as Ubuntu team sleeps over this undecided bug, it is sayonara from me to Ubuntu.