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They still haven't made any progress on the issue with multiple monitors whereby the left panel goes in a shitty place depending upon which screen is your main monitor. Mark Shuttleworth weighed in and basically said fuck you we're not fixing it. Even though ~50% of multiple monitor configurations are affected by this.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/668415
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/742544

Try using Jupiter (http://www.jupiterapplet.org/). It's not there in the repos, but there is a ppa available for it: https://launchpad.net/~webupd8team/+archive/jupiter .

Next, plans to use Ubuntu, which this is perfect and right up Canonicals alley, so you would think! WRONG! WRONG! Canoncial (see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/848154 ) PULLED the plug on the ARM V6 support and only supports the OMAP, basically TI is paying them to support the Beagleboards, so anything else ARM based is hosed, and you will have to go to Debian, or others. Thats fine, BUT... your targeting this to be used to do things like oh, play MP3's.. well then you have just run a foul of the DFSG, and 99.9999% of the Debian stuff has NO MP3 support unless you RECOMPILE IT! So your not going to do apt-get install mediaplayersoftware as it has NO MP3 support. Its great that it supports Ogg, but I provide Ogg formatted streams, and NO ONE USES them, but me. No arch or fedora doesn't count, first RPM based, and thanks but I've had enough dealings with RPM's on CentOS to say NO THANK YOU! Versus on Debian based DEBS and apt, simple as apt-get install, done.

I'm using Debian Squeeze. A quick test shows:

• MPlayer plays MP3s
• Rhythmbox plays MP3s
• VLC plays MP3s
• Totem plays MP3s
• Audacity plays MP3s
• Iceweasel plays MP3s (using the Totem plugin)

I do not recall recompiling any of them. I do have APT sources for the non-free repositories though.

"Why the skepticism?"

Well for one... lets start with the ever changing form factor and abilities.

Started out as about the size of 2 USB sticks. With HDMI on one end, and then USB on the other. Now its to credit card size, 256MB. (Yes, I read their fora about the 512MB PoP memory issue. thanks)

Next, plans to use Ubuntu, which this is perfect and right up Canonicals alley, so you would think! WRONG! WRONG! Canoncial (see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/848154 ) PULLED the plug on the ARM V6 support and only supports the OMAP, basically TI is paying them to support the Beagleboards, so anything else ARM based is hosed, and you will have to go to Debian, or others. Thats fine, BUT... your targeting this to be used to do things like oh, play MP3's.. well then you have just run a foul of the DFSG, and 99.9999% of the Debian stuff has NO MP3 support unless you RECOMPILE IT! So your not going to do apt-get install mediaplayersoftware as it has NO MP3 support. Its great that it supports Ogg, but I provide Ogg formatted streams, and NO ONE USES them, but me. No arch or fedora doesn't count, first RPM based, and thanks but I've had enough dealings with RPM's on CentOS to say NO THANK YOU! Versus on Debian based DEBS and apt, simple as apt-get install, done.

Lets move on to connecing to see something..

HDMI? fail. Sure for the tech user side this not an issue. But if you aiming as stated by RPI that they want to see this in schools and developing areas, then HDMI is not a choice. Tons of old VGA monitors.

Oh..but we have compsite... Ok.. is that NTSC, PAL, or SECAM? And if its selectable how will I select it to start? If you need to keep costs under control your not going build 10K NTSC, 10K PAL, 1 SECAM, thats an inventory nightmare and cost issue right there.

Next, peripherals? Yes, the techies will walk over to their parts bin and pull out a USB hub, keyboard, mouse, no problem. Don't have it pick up some via ebay or if your lucky a decent local source. Again the techies aside, no problem. Back to that other target area, schools and developing areas. They are not likely to have spares of this available, and/or resources, namely $$$$, to fund purchase. And those touting get them from ebay etc... Ok... how is that going to work in the middle of the Africa for an area which may or may not have any data access, no ebay account, and no paypal account, let alone where its going to be shipped. Oh... groups/companies will donate those for projects. Great. You've got 100% commitments for 100% fulfment on these projects? Otherwise sourcing the various components for power supply, keyboard, mouse, hub etc. are not cheap, and easily will outpace the cost of the $25/35 board itself. And counter to what their spokeswoman on their fora thinks, this is not a "straw man" arguement. This IS an issue, and you need to have a plan on how your going to provide the WHOLE SYSTEM to users, and its not going to be $25 or $35, more like $75-99 with power supply, SD card with OS, keyboard, mouse, hub, HDMI cable, and/or VGA converter..... I love all those touting these $3 HDMI cables on ebay, and $7 s/h, again thats fine for the techie crowd who needs to pick up a few items, its not so good for some school in the middle of the Africa!

Now. I think this a FANTASTIC IDEA.. And I am game for 10 of the $35 Model B's right now, ship them over. If I can get their version of Debian to work with my project then I've solved a huge problem. I am very interested in this project... but I have doubts about the ability of this project to be viable OUTSIDE THE TECH ARENA, ie: those using the Ardurinos and Beagleboards. I am clearly in the techie developer side of this. I've got a price point I need to meet and trying to use a $150+ beagleboard don't cut it..

Personally, its a great idea, but dump the schools and delvoping areas aspect of this, and focus on competing in the Ardurino/Beagleboard arena, where there are people willing to pay for thi

That will be ready any day now. Packages for Ubuntu are already available. Debian packages for pre-release versions of PostgreSQL 9.1 have been around for some time already.

There are gui version based on Duplicity for Windows and Linux
Duplicati http://code.google.com/p/duplicati/
And Deja Dup https://launchpad.net/deja-dup
Duplicati 2.0 will have a GUI that also works on Mac, currently it only works in the terminal.

they were the one major player unable to handle a necessary security task.

I don't know "unable" means in your world, but it my world, it means "not able to be done." Were they slower than others? Yes. Were they the last one? No. Depending on who you consider "a major player", they weren't the last. If you deal with servers, Redhat and Ubuntu also patched the same day. MS only patched 3 days before Apple.

• Ubuntu: September 9, 2011
• Apple OS X: September 9, 2011
• Redhat: September 9, 2011
• FreeBSD: September 6, 2011
• MS: September 6, 2011
• Google Chrome: September 5, 2011
• OpenBSD: August 31, 2011
• Mozilla: August 31, 2011
• Debian: August 31, 2011
• Android: no date
• iOS: no date
• WP7: no date
• BBM: no date

Here's your ppa:ui-edgers wish: https://launchpad.net/~gnome3-team/+archive/gnome3

I absolutely love Gnome 3 (which is not the same thing as Unity). You can even flip a switch and make Gnome 3 look just like Gnome 2.

I've found that the best way to manage Firefox updates on Linux now is using the Mozillateam stable release repo.

for Ubuntu:

https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/firefox-stable

for Debian:

http://mozilla.debian.net/

Yes, that's the only scaring thing about this continuous upgrade proposal: the new undesired features that replace the old ones that "just work".

The history of my upgrade from 10.10 to 11.04 so far is telling (I keep changes noted down in a wiki to be able to fix/rebuild the system just in case anything goes wrong). Login with the Gnome classic desktop, not Unity, reconfigured compiz, removed some icons from the panel (I have only one panel at the bottom), restored the scrollbars in Nautilus. Run into this compiz bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/803296 and reverted to old compiz. That seems to have completely killed Unity, not that I care, but it also fired up metacity as window manager, I googled a fix for that. The PDF printer was completely lost, that happens every time, I reinstalled it. The WiFi driver got lost in the upgrade, first time it happens, I googled how to add it back to the kernel. Lot of noise in Skype, it turned out that the mic boost went to 100%, had to put it back down close to 0%. Unison didn't change of version but didn't work any more, had to download the latest version and compile it from source on all my machines (must be the same version).

Actually, I had more eventful upgrades in the past. This one was almost smooth. As a nice side effect of googling the solutions for my problems I discovered the inotify tools and ionice which really help me in some of my daily activities. Maybe a continuous upgrade won't have killed my WiFi and my PDF printer but overall, being hit by all the other problems twice per year is bearable, every month would be a distro-switcher.

If this goes though, then I think by far most people will stick with the LTS releases.

Goddamnit, how am I supposed to keep up with firefox that way? I don't want to miss out on the next major firefox version increase. The changelog says they've added a new feature nobody cares about!

Use the PPA. https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/firefox-stable There is a PPA for most of the big apps, like FireFox, LibreOffice, Nvidia, Transmission... OK, my repo list looks like a phone book, but that is still better then 11.04.

If you think your LTS starts getting stale, take a look at the various PPAs. For instance you could keep a current stable Firefox (v6 atm), by adding the firefox-stable ppa to your Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

I personally switched to Xubuntu (XFCE) because i don't like gnome3/unity/kde4, had no problems using 11.04.

Hi, the work is currently being done.
Check out the bumblebee project - we can always use more beta testers...

  https://launchpad.net/~mj-casalogic/+archive/bumblebee/

Was that designed with only NVIDIA chipsets in mind, or was it designed from the ground-up to work with any chipsets? Because to me it looks like it's chipset-dependant and thus does not solve the issue at hand.

That's why fixing this bug will help more for plausible deniability than Truecrypt's "feature": https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/148440

When "everyone" has an encrypted partition/file whether they use it or not, it's much easier to deny using it.

If you want to get more recent versions into your LTS system, Mozilla operates a PPA that you can add to your software sources that will bring the most recent stable version of Firefox and Thunderbird into your next system update.

I have written a few apps using Tornado... So far it is my favorite framework for developing rich web applications. I contributed code/patches that the Tornado devs used to add SSL support to the framework. Also, just the other day I completed a Kerberos/AD/SSO authentication module for Tornado (I'll be making it available soon I hope).

My favorite feature of Tornado is the built-in support for WebSockets. It should also be mentioned that it is one of (if not THE) fastest Python web frameworks.

I also want to mention that for one-off/quick development web applications that don't need to be super fast I almost always use CherryPy. It is much simpler/quicker to develop with CherryPy than Tornado. You lose out big time on speed but the development time of CherryPy apps is very impressive. I wrote a reporting tool for my job that would examine a passwd file and then check it against Active Directory for uid/gid/shell/homedir conflicts and report the results on a pretty page using jqGrid. Users could even click a button to export the grid to spreadsheet format. Total development time: 16 hours (and that includes lunch breaks and five or six hour long conference calls)! Needless to say my boss was ecstatic, my coworkers were amazed, and the people who ended up using the tool asked me how much it cost (as if we bought it).

To bridge the gap between CherryPy and Tornado I actually wrote a MethodDispatcher that lets you port a CherryPy app to Tornado with a trivial amount of effort. Of course, it also lets you write a Tornado app "the CherryPy way" which, while a bit strange sitting on top of Tornado, is much simpler and allows for faster development time.

As for the differences between some popular frameworks I wrote up a pretty good explanation over at Stackoverflow.

For reference, here's some apps I've developed using Tornado: Gate One (still developing it), PyCI (no longer maintaining it though--I hope to revisit it some day when I have time, sigh), Escape From The Web, and here's a writeup of mine on how to develop an application similar to my reporting tool using CherryPy and jqGrid in no time at all.

I'll give you a counter proposal: Ubuntu minimal. If you hit f4 and choose command line, you'll get a base install, afterwards you can simply apt-get install xfce4 or whatever.

Whats the point? PPAs, The single thing Debian is sorely missing. PPAs in a Debian distro are like addons in a Mozilla browser, simply addicting.

The minimal installer is just 22MiB, and will save you from downloading a large ISO and then updates, so you can do more in less time.

The idea of a sudoer instead of root + user is an (expert) option of the Debian Installer, say no when it asks you if you want a root account. You might hate it, but others find it useful.

There are no "Ubuntu's wizards", It is called Network Manager and can be installed in Debian as well, or uninstalled/ignored in Ubuntu. Network Manager will not manage any device you define in /etc/network/interfaces by default, so you can go back to ifup/ifdown or direct ifconfig. Network Manager is very good with 3g modems so i don't agree with you in getting rid of it. Some people prefer wicd for wifi, its an option as well.

Like Linus, I also switched to XFCE. Sure it needs more polishing, but the more of us using it will make sure this happens. XFCE is actually better than gnome in some aspects: Window buttons to the right or left? You choose it with a drag and drop gui, not a cryptic gconf thing. How could gnome miss simple things like that?

Ewebuntu (Debian is too hard) temporarily decided to rename a Gnome app which they do not develop to the same name as a KDE app which Ewebuntu do not either user of maintain (Kubuntu ain't Canonical).. Upstream decided for them. Like Phoronix has ever got things right.

Dear fanboi retards (default XFCE isn't light, just as default KDE or Gnome isn't either) and Microsoft shills - it's nothing to do with either Gnome (which I dislike) or KDE (which I do like), hence my use of "Ewebuntu".

I used to go to Slashdot to see what's new, then I came to see what happened last week, now I come only to see what didn't really happen....

--

There's only two industries who call their clients - users. There's only one group of industry clients that call themselves "users" (I couldn't think of any appropriate Bill Hicks quotes)

More than that, I'm fairly sure Apple called it "System Settings" before KDE did, which makes this really hypocritical on the part of the KDE devs.

Perhaps you should consider reading the article before slinging accusations. The issue is who used the name first, but that the newly introduced name collision breaks the Unity interface.

xdg-open is the command you're looking for.

Unless you're trying to open a Web page's URL on Debian, in which case you're apparently supposed to use sensible-browser instead (and, if your software uses xdg-open on UN*Xes that don't have the string "Mac OS X" in their name, the Debian package for your software patches it to use sensible-browser). It appears that not all Debian derivatives follow that path, however.

I'd say RepRap. Not that it is "unknown", but strange it is not mentioned all that often when one thinks about from that first blogpost in -05 and what have happened since. Especially these days when you can get the plasticparts (clonedel), stepper motors on ebay and a small drillpress for cheaps. Not to mention tiny "one board", easy to solder through hole solutions like Sanguinololu.

Passwordmaker generates ditto for all my internets accounts, pinpadlocks etc. Runs on whatever you throw it at, as javascript, android, crapple, N900 (Thanks George (caco3)!), as CLI. Portable to say the least, mature and of course secure to the extent of what cards you got up your sleeve.

I use Zim to organize everything these days! It's stays out of your way and doesn't complicate things. It uses textfiles as database, which is really nice as you get access to your stuff quickly through a terminal for example. Ok, sure I long for the day that it gets say a Couchdb-plugin...

Redshift safes my eyes from getting cooked. I have yet to download that maemosandbox and compile it for my N900 though. There was a new release a few days ago btw, some new fine functions and not "just" bugfixes!

Then they ask you for your other truecrypt password. And it might start to feel like one of "those" countries.

AFAIK the problem with truecrypt's plausible deniability is you can't really use BOTH the hidden and outer volumes. You can only use one.

So if you've mounted stuff with atime or use NTFS without NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate set, it's very likely they can figure out you have a hidden volume when:
1) There's evidence that you've been using the drive a fair bit.
2) the files you "revealed" were all more than X years old and untouched since.

A better way for plausible deniability would be for a distro/OS to have crypto built-in AND at least one encrypted volume created by default.
e.g. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/148440

That way you could plausibly claim you have no idea what the passphrase is (or even what this "encrypted volume" and "passphrase" stuff is :) ), because most of the users don't... Or at least can successfully pretend to not know ;).

If you wish to just try it without seeing how they are integrating it into the OS, no. Duh

https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/thunderbird-stable

It may not be the hardware. Non-LTS Ubuntus are full of regressions. Affects some significant minority of users, but not enough to affect ship date.

The worst regressions are always fixed in the next release. They are rarely backported to non-LTS, a strategy which is designed to keep you constantly upgrading. Except that once one regression is fixed, more creep up. If you're lucky, your won't be affected. But there are ALWAYS regressions.

I basically treat non-LTS Ubuntus as betas for the LTS. I don't expect them to work. I expect many things to be broken. Many of the regressions are insidious---you don't discover them until later in the game. And, dirty secret is that once LTS is long in the tooth, only security updates get backported to LTS. Got a non-functioning file open dialog? Too bad, not going to backport the fix to LTS, you can rot in hell or upgrade. (read the final few comments, where the dev tells me I need to upgrade from LTS to non-LTS to get back a functioning file open dialog box.)

Bitter much? Yes I am, for a fan that's been with them for 7 years now.

Well, I don't know what problem spiffmastercow had, but this bug has been around since the launch of 11.04, and crashes my laptop on a regular basis.

Please show us exactly how Oracle is ensuring that MySQL "dies on the vine" like they "killed" Berkeley DB..

Thank you.

Now try doing it with a GeForce Go 420M. You'll find that Additional Drivers for some reason installs nvidia-current, when that card isn't covered by that driver. However, loading nvidia-96 (the correct driver) now fails for me, stating that it's a broken package. When I try to fix it, it tells me I can't fix that broken package because it's broken.

Incidentally, you could always go to http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/ubuntu-63/nvidia-96-series-drivers-for-ubuntu-11-04-a-879438/ and accuse me of copying that, or the actual bug at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-96/+bug/741930 but I only just found it after another half an hour or so of research. Apparently Ubuntu decided to move to a version of Xorg that doesn't work with my graphics card driver. So now, I get to regress back to an earlier version of Xubuntu/Ubuntu, switch distribution to one that works or just cut my losses and go back to Windows.

I think 10.10 is a better choice for a netbook at least until this issue gets resolved... https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/760131

This won't cause them any trouble, as when Firefox 3.6 reaches EOL, 4.x will be backported (or whatever will be current then), same as it happened with 3.6 when 3.5 went EOL.

Sigh. I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on 5/6 of my regular systems. I suppose I should just change distros so I'm not on the oldest currently acceptable version and likely to get phased out in another six months?

You don't need to upgrade your distro, there are official PPAs that provide backported functionality, such as Firefox Stable Channel or the LibreOffice PPA. Firefox in particular is also likely to make it to lucid-updates (not even -backports!), as this has happened once with the 3.5->3.6 switch.

For the record, PPA refers to "Personal Package Archive". It is on the Ubuntu build infrastructure on Launchpad. Anyone with a Launchpad account who has accepted the Code of Conduct can make one. Only source uploads are allowed, and packages are built the same way as official updates are. See the Packaging Guide for details.

Meaning: if you don't find what you're looking for in an official PPA, and don't feel on relying on the various strangers who happen to have one, you can easily make your own. :)

Here's a couple of others I use on Lucid: GStreamer PPA and MOTU Media for updated codecs, X Updates for stable video driver updates, and the Chromium Stable Channel.

Running LTS doesn't have to mean that your userland can't be updated, just that you prefer what's under the hood not to break. :)

Sigh. I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on 5/6 of my regular systems. I suppose I should just change distros so I'm not on the oldest currently acceptable version and likely to get phased out in another six months?

You don't need to upgrade your distro, there are official PPAs that provide backported functionality, such as Firefox Stable Channel or the LibreOffice PPA. Firefox in particular is also likely to make it to lucid-updates (not even -backports!), as this has happened once with the 3.5->3.6 switch.

For the record, PPA refers to "Personal Package Archive". It is on the Ubuntu build infrastructure on Launchpad. Anyone with a Launchpad account who has accepted the Code of Conduct can make one. Only source uploads are allowed, and packages are built the same way as official updates are. See the Packaging Guide for details.

Meaning: if you don't find what you're looking for in an official PPA, and don't feel on relying on the various strangers who happen to have one, you can easily make your own. :)

Here's a couple of others I use on Lucid: GStreamer PPA and MOTU Media for updated codecs, X Updates for stable video driver updates, and the Chromium Stable Channel.

Running LTS doesn't have to mean that your userland can't be updated, just that you prefer what's under the hood not to break. :)

Sigh. I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on 5/6 of my regular systems. I suppose I should just change distros so I'm not on the oldest currently acceptable version and likely to get phased out in another six months?

You don't need to upgrade your distro, there are official PPAs that provide backported functionality, such as Firefox Stable Channel or the LibreOffice PPA. Firefox in particular is also likely to make it to lucid-updates (not even -backports!), as this has happened once with the 3.5->3.6 switch.

For the record, PPA refers to "Personal Package Archive". It is on the Ubuntu build infrastructure on Launchpad. Anyone with a Launchpad account who has accepted the Code of Conduct can make one. Only source uploads are allowed, and packages are built the same way as official updates are. See the Packaging Guide for details.

Meaning: if you don't find what you're looking for in an official PPA, and don't feel on relying on the various strangers who happen to have one, you can easily make your own. :)

Here's a couple of others I use on Lucid: GStreamer PPA and MOTU Media for updated codecs, X Updates for stable video driver updates, and the Chromium Stable Channel.

Running LTS doesn't have to mean that your userland can't be updated, just that you prefer what's under the hood not to break. :)

Sigh. I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on 5/6 of my regular systems. I suppose I should just change distros so I'm not on the oldest currently acceptable version and likely to get phased out in another six months?

You don't need to upgrade your distro, there are official PPAs that provide backported functionality, such as Firefox Stable Channel or the LibreOffice PPA. Firefox in particular is also likely to make it to lucid-updates (not even -backports!), as this has happened once with the 3.5->3.6 switch.

For the record, PPA refers to "Personal Package Archive". It is on the Ubuntu build infrastructure on Launchpad. Anyone with a Launchpad account who has accepted the Code of Conduct can make one. Only source uploads are allowed, and packages are built the same way as official updates are. See the Packaging Guide for details.

Meaning: if you don't find what you're looking for in an official PPA, and don't feel on relying on the various strangers who happen to have one, you can easily make your own. :)

Here's a couple of others I use on Lucid: GStreamer PPA and MOTU Media for updated codecs, X Updates for stable video driver updates, and the Chromium Stable Channel.

Running LTS doesn't have to mean that your userland can't be updated, just that you prefer what's under the hood not to break. :)

Sigh. I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on 5/6 of my regular systems. I suppose I should just change distros so I'm not on the oldest currently acceptable version and likely to get phased out in another six months?

You don't need to upgrade your distro, there are official PPAs that provide backported functionality, such as Firefox Stable Channel or the LibreOffice PPA. Firefox in particular is also likely to make it to lucid-updates (not even -backports!), as this has happened once with the 3.5->3.6 switch.

For the record, PPA refers to "Personal Package Archive". It is on the Ubuntu build infrastructure on Launchpad. Anyone with a Launchpad account who has accepted the Code of Conduct can make one. Only source uploads are allowed, and packages are built the same way as official updates are. See the Packaging Guide for details.

Meaning: if you don't find what you're looking for in an official PPA, and don't feel on relying on the various strangers who happen to have one, you can easily make your own. :)

Here's a couple of others I use on Lucid: GStreamer PPA and MOTU Media for updated codecs, X Updates for stable video driver updates, and the Chromium Stable Channel.

Running LTS doesn't have to mean that your userland can't be updated, just that you prefer what's under the hood not to break. :)

Sigh. I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on 5/6 of my regular systems. I suppose I should just change distros so I'm not on the oldest currently acceptable version and likely to get phased out in another six months?

You don't need to upgrade your distro, there are official PPAs that provide backported functionality, such as Firefox Stable Channel or the LibreOffice PPA. Firefox in particular is also likely to make it to lucid-updates (not even -backports!), as this has happened once with the 3.5->3.6 switch.

For the record, PPA refers to "Personal Package Archive". It is on the Ubuntu build infrastructure on Launchpad. Anyone with a Launchpad account who has accepted the Code of Conduct can make one. Only source uploads are allowed, and packages are built the same way as official updates are. See the Packaging Guide for details.

Meaning: if you don't find what you're looking for in an official PPA, and don't feel on relying on the various strangers who happen to have one, you can easily make your own. :)

Here's a couple of others I use on Lucid: GStreamer PPA and MOTU Media for updated codecs, X Updates for stable video driver updates, and the Chromium Stable Channel.

Running LTS doesn't have to mean that your userland can't be updated, just that you prefer what's under the hood not to break. :)

Sigh. I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on 5/6 of my regular systems. I suppose I should just change distros so I'm not on the oldest currently acceptable version and likely to get phased out in another six months?

You don't need to upgrade your distro, there are official PPAs that provide backported functionality, such as Firefox Stable Channel or the LibreOffice PPA. Firefox in particular is also likely to make it to lucid-updates (not even -backports!), as this has happened once with the 3.5->3.6 switch.

For the record, PPA refers to "Personal Package Archive". It is on the Ubuntu build infrastructure on Launchpad. Anyone with a Launchpad account who has accepted the Code of Conduct can make one. Only source uploads are allowed, and packages are built the same way as official updates are. See the Packaging Guide for details.

Meaning: if you don't find what you're looking for in an official PPA, and don't feel on relying on the various strangers who happen to have one, you can easily make your own. :)

Here's a couple of others I use on Lucid: GStreamer PPA and MOTU Media for updated codecs, X Updates for stable video driver updates, and the Chromium Stable Channel.

Running LTS doesn't have to mean that your userland can't be updated, just that you prefer what's under the hood not to break. :)

Sigh. I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on 5/6 of my regular systems. I suppose I should just change distros so I'm not on the oldest currently acceptable version and likely to get phased out in another six months?

You don't need to upgrade your distro, there are official PPAs that provide backported functionality, such as Firefox Stable Channel or the LibreOffice PPA. Firefox in particular is also likely to make it to lucid-updates (not even -backports!), as this has happened once with the 3.5->3.6 switch.

For the record, PPA refers to "Personal Package Archive". It is on the Ubuntu build infrastructure on Launchpad. Anyone with a Launchpad account who has accepted the Code of Conduct can make one. Only source uploads are allowed, and packages are built the same way as official updates are. See the Packaging Guide for details.

Meaning: if you don't find what you're looking for in an official PPA, and don't feel on relying on the various strangers who happen to have one, you can easily make your own. :)

Here's a couple of others I use on Lucid: GStreamer PPA and MOTU Media for updated codecs, X Updates for stable video driver updates, and the Chromium Stable Channel.

Running LTS doesn't have to mean that your userland can't be updated, just that you prefer what's under the hood not to break. :)

There's already a better paradigm on some phones. Basically the application declares upfront want sort of sandbox/permissions it needs to run. And if that is OK according to the system's settings, the OS will run the app while enforcing the sandbox.

Because the permissions are declared explicitly, it should be much easier for an "expert", or even someone with "common sense" to certify that the sandbox makes sense for the app, and maybe even digitally sign the app and its request.

So an organization (or "The Family Admin") can lock down a computer system so that only apps that request "safe sandbox templates" can run or install.

And the nerds like us, can set our systems up so that we can choose to run an app with a sandbox template of our choice (e.g. guest sandbox - looks like a new machine, no data about you available, no changes affect your "real system", once you're done with the program, it's gone).

I proposed something like this to Ubuntu and SuSE years ago: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=308760

That said, people are still going to type in their passwords and send them to the wrong places- the sandbox stuff won't prevent it. I'm not sure of a good way to prevent this. Maybe the OS/browser could keep hashes of the user's passwords and if something typed matches a known password hash but might be sent to an unexpected site/context it can warn the user (are you sure you want to send your "Bank" password to Elbonia?"). Problem is some bank sites use fancy schemes for users to enter their passwords involving onscreen keyboards with some rearranged keys etc.

I have had someone comment on my blog about this very subject, they had problems getting a second monitor to work on their machine, and I have heard other people say that when they did get a second monitor working, the windows were not decorated and they had to type metacity & in a terminal to get that to work. I thought it was pretty easy to get dual monitors working, but maybe not. Surely this is something that should be fixed.

I hated the speed of the Ubuntu system and I switched over to a KDE 4.6 / Gnome 2.32 Gentoo system. I have not looked back since. But yes, to reply to the parent comment above, yes there are issues with dual monitor support in Ubuntu 11.04, hopefully this can be resolved soon considering the popularity of dual monitors nowadays.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/661450 This is a link to the bug report concerning dual monitor support in Ubuntu. The comment I got was concerning zaphod mode, I am not sure what that is but it is something that needs fixing.

But hell, Windows 7 has the ability to dock the superbar on any side of the desktop, and Unity doesn't. How did they miss that feature?

They didn't miss that feature; according to Shuttleworth a configurable launcher does not fit in with their "broader design goals" and they have no plans to make it configurable in the future.

Source: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/668415/comments/2

" didn't realize that Ubuntu was using Pulse by default - I thought that was more of a KDE thing. But it's not like it's hard to remove Pulse itself (just don't touch libpulseaudio) and revert to ALSA."

KDE does NOT use pulse except kubutunu variants,your confusing PHONON and pulse different things.

One is trash, pulse. Phonon is now the back end with several different supporting servers from XINE to VLC to operate the sound etc...

As for ALSA... unless they fixed it Canonicial REMOVED the OSS ALSA emulation in the kernels they packaged which will break things that depend on them or require a recompiled kernel on the box to run these.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/579300?comments=all

And who's going to do all that free Ubuntu development and package management work for you on launchpad?

Power users already hate lauchpad and don't use it:

The day when working on Debian requires the use of a web interface will be the day that I hunt down and painfully kill the person responsible for doing it.
        -- Andrew Suffield, on debian-devel, discussing http://launchpad.net/

Then it defaults to Unity.

And freeze.

What's shocking to me, more so than the new Unity interface, is the fact that so many nvidia cards aren't working. I know that this isn't an LTS release, but it's still really bad that such a huge bug went into the release version of 11.04. The issue spans across several generations of NVIDIA cards, on both desktop and laptop systems, and is confirmed in Ubuntu and Kubuntu. Shoddy testing doesn't begin to describe it. Bottom line, stick to 10.10 for another month or two, or just wait for 11.10.

Many people think not: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntuone-client/+bug/387308

Am I only one who has no clue how to tell if excrement is from an armadillo or not? Much less whether a patch of dirt has a lot in it?

It doesn't matter. Just run this and you'll be fine:
sudo apt-get uninstall armadillo

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/armadillo/

Well, I don't quite have a list of cards that will or won't work, and they might have it fixed by now - I'm at work and the Ubuntu servers will be nuclear until Monday or so. BUT, here's what I dug out:

From Launchpad:

Package has broken dependencies that cannot be met.
xorg-video-abi-8.0
xserver-xorg-core (>= 2:1.8.99.905-1ubuntu3)
Steps to reproduce:
1. Install Natty beta & do sudo apt-get upgrade and dist-upgrade
2. Try sudo apt-get install nvidia-96 to get the error. (confirmed to still occur in beta 1).

There are a number of ways to encrypt files before uploading them anywhere, including Dropbox. However, I'd rather use a service with a standard interface, unobfuscated interface, such as IMAP or HTTP, which allows more flexibility.

For example, one can use GMail Filesystem over FUSE with eCryptfs to mount a file system that stores everything encrypted in a Gmail (and probably any IMAP) account.

Alternatively, one can use duplicity to make and restore encrypted backups using a wide variety of protocols, including IMAP, scp/ssh, ftp, rsync, HSI, WebDAV, Tahoe-LAFS, and Amazon S3.

Ubuntu is desktop-focused and does a server version; RHEL is server-focused and will also work on a desktop.

Ubuntu does things like One Hundred Paper Cuts to reduce the annoying little shit.

And Canonical has been around for a few years and is backed by a rogue billionaire who doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want. "I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year! You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year I'll have to close this place in sixty years."

Power consumption raised significantly in natty
this is the actual confirmed (4-13) bug report on the Launchpad at least a particular instance.

Personally I do not run the extra baggage of Ubuntu on my mobile linux device. (netbook)

When did they start putting unconfirmed or untested bug reports on Slashdot? Sure TFA says much to warrant further investigation... but not to have people like me get curious. (Just my opinion)