Ultimate Edition Linux 2.5
Some Linux distros sell themselves by being minimalistic. They only come with a limited range of apps and everything is geared toward keeping the file size and hardware requirements absolutely minimal. Then there’s Ultimate Edition 2.5. Ultimate Edition leans the other way and throws in everything including the kitchen sink.
Ultimate Edition 2.5 is based on Ubuntu 9.10 and it weighs in at a chunky 3.1GB. Clearly this is a distro you won’t be able to fit onto a CD. But that’s fine as long as you have a DVD and DVD burner available. This larger size is due to the fact that it comes with a lot of software (more on that in the software section).
Ultimate Edition 2.5 includes GNOME, KDE 4.3.2 and XFCE. You can choose which desktop environment you want to work in when you login.
What’s New In This Release
One of the things I hate about reviewing certain distros is when the folks who make the distro don’t have a “What’s New” page on their site or a file in the distro itself. It makes it hard for reviewers to know which new features are included in the distribution. I have to go running around trying to figure out what the significant new features are so I can include them in the review.
Despite checking the Ultimate Edition site and also looking in the forum, I was not able to find a complete list of what’s new in this release. Since it’s based on Ubuntu 9.10, Ultimate Edition 2.5 should have all of the new features of the generic Ubuntu release.
Nor was I able to find an email address to contact the developer to ask for more information and the forum link posted on the front page of the UE site led to a “topic does not exist” message.
I encourage the Ultimate Edition developers to include a brief summary of new features in future releases. It makes it a heck of a lot easier for reviewers to note them in the review.
After googling around, I finally tracked down what appears to be a list of some new features but it’s on the Softpedia site and not on the actual Ultimate Edition 2.5 site. Hmmm. Not exactly a good way of announcing what’s new to reviewers and users.
“Ultimate Edition 2.5 was built off Ultimate Edition 2.4 (Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 based) all upgrades pre-installed as of current. It has KDE, XFCE, and GNOME user selectable at login, 3 new themes and tons of apps. This release is huge obviously bigger then UE 2.4 ;) I am not going to spend my time writing a webpage, but just a post. Even though it is a very worthy release and deserves a webpage. I have alot on my plate in programming and other activities & I do mean alot. It has been out about a week, forum users have been grabbing it left and right.”
The Ultimate Edition 2.5 desktop using the UE 2.5 Gold theme.
(10 votes, average: 2.80 out of 5)
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Another week, another ubuntu review.
My first linux is with ultimate 1.7. Ultimate teach me what is basero, kde, gnome, k3b many linux app with strange name. So no need download and try one-by-one.
Mr TheeMan have a lot time to make ultimate distro. I wish he will make ultimate 3 base on Debian itself.
The reviewer apparently hasn’t read up what Gnome-Do can do. It is IMHO one of the most useful utilities ever made. And if you don’t want it, you can set it not to start on boot-up. If you don’t know how, then you have no business doing a review.
Prokokok, I’ll try to give Gnome-Do a second chance. I think it just irritated me more than anything else. However, I appreciate the feedback and I’ll give it another look.
Gnome-Do is gods gift. Absolute Perfection.
“Perhaps it’s time for the Ubuntu developers to update their site to incorporate more accurate system requirements? I don’t know what it is with Linux developers and poor documentation about basic information such as What’s New and Hardware Requirements. Ugh.”
Sorry, but we are programmers. Documentation is a different department.
In all seriousness, Ultimate system requirements are bit steeper than standard Ubuntu. At least if you turn all the included eye candy on which is one of the main points of this distro. I noted this when trying to run it on my Sempron desktop with integrated Nvidia video. Plain Ubuntu ran fine, but Ultimate slowed to a crawl. Still, if you have the hardware, it is way slicker than straight Ubuntu for those into such things.
The large selection of software is a good deal for those wanting to experiment, yet do not want to download everything separately.
really really thanks for reviewing ultimate 2.5. really really thanks for listing the moajor apps. i wish you had reviewed it a bit early.
i would have appreciated a bit more detail review though.
but keep up the good work.
Thanks for the review. I think this one is about what one would expect; a lot of software, pretty good collection of stuff that works, but little attention to value added documentation above and beyond the bzse system, relying instead on Ubuntu documentstion, not all of it relevant to this particular system.
To compare, Linux Mint is quite easy to install and use and a pretty full featured implementation of the GNOME desktop. Mint probably has more complete documentation of what it offers. Ultimate offers more desktop environments, but no additional documentation.
Worthwhile for a distro and desktop junkie; probably not much incremental value for anyone else and probably not a good idea for a first time user.
Nice review. What I’d like to see is a direct comparison with UE and other “DVD size” distros like Sabayon and Super OS. These tend to be way overkill for me, but I would be interested in seeing how they compare to one another.
UE is an awesome distro. I have an overbuilt win7 machine and the bigger the better. Someday I’ll be in that mode where Im trying to make the distro as small as possible, but that day is not today. Viva la 3GB+ distro!
I did not test this software, and chances are I will not test this software. I base my comments based on the years of software testing that I have done and the thousands of times that I have installed at least a couple of hundred distinct Linux distributions.
This is a mega distribution. Benefits: access to a lot of alternatives. Useful when you are trying to decide what you want to use and also useful when you want to evaluate and test a lot of desktops and a lot of applications.
The cost of such a mega distribution is level of complexity: arguably too much stuff. This makes it a confusing choice for beginners – too many choices to understand, and it also makes the software heavy and cumbersome, leading to slower than average installation and the likelihood of many unnecessary services being automatically turned on, so unless you manage it carefully and pare it down, it will be slow.
Nothing wrong with it; probably a GREAT distro for evaluations. I’ve done plenty of evaluations, so this time I will pass.