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perhaps migration scripts would be a better approach than simply trusting each package upgrade to never fail...

That is what do-release-upgrade does. It downloads a migration tarball for the package that you are upgrading to. That tarball contains scripts that are supposed to fix any upgrade issues that can't be (or aren't) handled within the package itself. If you want to see how this works, have a look at the upgrade tarball for Precise

Actually Ubuntu LTS releases draw from testing[1], only non-LTS releases draw from unstable.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS

Try this as a thought experiment. Imagine your brain and your DNA scanned into a computer. This is used to generate a simulated you. This simulated you is placed in a simulated room in which all the known laws of physics are simulated to a high degree of precision.

Pfftt.... the precision of reality simulators is wayyyyy overrated. A simple timing attack like virt-what is sufficient to show whether you've been instanced in a standard reality or a virtual one. :O

From the linked page:

              If nothing is printed and the script exits with code 0 (no error), then
              it can mean either that the program is running on bare-metal or the
              program is running inside a type of virtual machine which we don't know
              about or cannot detect.

Try this as a thought experiment. Imagine your brain and your DNA scanned into a computer. This is used to generate a simulated you. This simulated you is placed in a simulated room in which all the known laws of physics are simulated to a high degree of precision.

Pfftt.... the precision of reality simulators is wayyyyy overrated. A simple timing attack like virt-what is sufficient to show whether you've been instanced in a standard reality or a virtual one. :O

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuHashes Did you check the md5 hash?

subscribe at http://www.ubuntu.com/

Click on the utter n00b button and follow the bouncing ball.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DerivativeTeam/Derivatives

Oh look, Mint is on that list. I'm not running a Ubuntu official distro either, but my browser agent shows as: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux i686; rv:11.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0.

Why? Because the distro I have installed, while it maintains its own repos for modern software, is based on Ubuntu LTS and doesn't bother building their own packages for anything that's actively maintained in the Ubu repos. There's nothing to be gained from duplicating work like that, and my distro of choice is in the top 20 on Distrowatch. I would lay odds that a fair number of other distributions do the same thing, which artificially inflates the numbers for Ubuntu.

If you want to help somebody choose a distro, ask them where they're coming from. I usually suggest either gnome or KDE as a first Linux UI, because it's familiar, though I personally prefer e17 by a very wide margin (and e17 can be made to look/behave like either gnome or KDE). Once you know where they're coming from (to help pick which DE), ask what they want to do with the system. With those two pieces of information it's fairly easy to find a distro that will work for them. Consult here, if you need suggestions: http://i.imgur.com/jy1BF.png :)

...left disappointed.

Where are the discussions about OpenStack, MAAS, AWSOME, KVM 1.0 support, the Juju Charm store, etc.?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PrecisePangolin/ReleaseNotes/UbuntuServer

You want Lubuntu. Here's the Release Notes.

Lubuntu is still new enough to be under-the-radar for most people, so here's the quick bio: It's a Canonical-supported distro based on the LXDE desktop manager. It is technically a 'lighweight' like Xubuntu, and while it does run well on older machines that's not the point at all.

What makes Lubuntu frigging awesome is here's your 'Ubuntu' with classic W95 toolbar GUI that Ubuntu itself has walked away from.

You'll have virtually zero downtime converting, because you already know how this works. Unlike other 'lighweights', you will spend NO time in CLI for configurations, just like old Ubuntu. And there are /always/ good dialogs where you need them, just like old Ubuntu.

I'm not against the other lightweights like Xubuntu etc at all. I like them. I like variety. People should check them out. But that's not the point here, the point is Lubuntu is the Ubuntu for Ubuntu people who don't want Unity/Gnome3.

You don't have to lose the simple interface you know and like, and you don't have to go to some community-fork that is trying valiantly to make Gnome2 keep working on Ubuntu. Lubuntu is already there for you, check it out.

I thought 9.10 was Dharmic Dropbear.

I did propose this for "phone support": http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/29001/

A possible advantage of that interface is it could also allow "advanced" users to do stuff more quickly, maybe even faster than with a conventional CLI.

Ubuntu has their LTS (Long Term Support) releases for that.

http://www.ubuntu.com/business/server/overview

That being said, for the desktop I've moved to Mint, because Ubuntu doesn't appear to listen to a large chunk of users like me who hate, hate, hate Unity.

Hairy Hard-on is so four years ago.

https://try.cloud.ubuntu.com/ Try Ubuntu for 1 hour for free on Amazon's EC2 Cloud

I'll just leave this here...
http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android

1. smartctl -AH
Get an initial baseline report.

2. mke2fs -c -c
Perform a read/write test on the drive.

3. smartctl -AH
Get a final report to compare to the initial report.

"mke2fs -c -c" is running badblocks -s -w for you.

If you want more to stare at, you can also add -v , or specify your own test patterns with (multiple) -t options. ( -t 0xCAFEBABE -t 0xDEADBEEF or whatever)

Badblocks does fill a full disk with the pattern, then read it all back confirming no changes.
This does miss flaky devices that, for example are writing over other parts of themselves. (Fake USB flash drives that misreport their size have been known to do this.)

Not sure what a good test would be... first thing that comes to mind is:

1. openssl enc -rc4 -nosalt -K 0 -iv 0 < /dev/zero > /dev/sdXX
2. openssl enc -d -rc4 -nosalt -K 0 -iv 0 < /dev/sdXX | tr -d '\0' | wc -c (should return '0' w/o errors)

Already here, and without the MS bullshit: http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android

One thing that really interests me for potential tightness of integration is the idea of the phone as a portable desktop - I think that for many people, a phone that you slap on a docking station on your desk to use like a desktop or even a tablet could well be all the computer they need.

Inevitably, some people will complain about the desktop experience there, but for browsing and email it should be just fine. Microsoft have made their fortune on "good enough" - well, this is easily good enough to serve the needs of the majority of people.

http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android What makes this different is that your phone automatically shifts between ubuntu and android versions of the same apps, based on whether or not your phone is docked. All your data is stored in the same place (on your phone and in the cloud). It's a great insight: the UI one develops for a small form-factor really needs to be different from a large form-factor. But that difference doesn't mean you have to use completely different apps, and it certainly doesn't mean your data should be in two different places.

I think you are thinking about Ubuntu on Android. Sure I also think that something like that is the future. But what is "the PC" really? For certain things you will still want a large screen and a keyboard and mouse... maybe augmented with touch... I think it is crucial that Microsoft does not forget this, if they want to stay alive. But the way things are going now, it appears not to be the case.

But no PPC support for later browsers will send it to the landfill before that.

--- Eventually we'll be unable to access websites that rely on features in recent versions of flash, java or html5.

You can always put Linux on it. Even the latest Ubuntu runs on PowerPC, which I expect includes an updated Firefox.

The disadvantage is no Flash, but you really shouldn't be running Flash on PowerPC anyway because the latest version has serious security unpatched vulnerabilities. And Flash is slowly disappearing anyway -- your iMac will probably be more useful a couple years from now when Flash is dead than it is now!

You mean this one?

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2012-March/000156.html

Hi, I'm the release driver for Beta 1.

Ubuntu Beta 1 is not released yet and will not be released until posted to ubuntu-announce. Until then we might pull the images if we find problems.

This slashdot story is also weirdly linking to the wrong server for Ubuntu, cdimage has only DVDs and other obscure images for Ubuntu, almost everyone will want the CDs. You can find the link to those on the release announcement when it is posted.

Or for free, if anyone's interested: http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud

I agree; the Transformer Prime is an interesting example here, though, since it does have a keyboard dock accessory with integrated trackpad, extra keyboard, and USB host port, which holds the tablet itself like the screen on a laptop (hence the name "Transformer" - it's a major feature of that tablet). The hardware has the potential to be something closer to an Android netbook, although the software isn't there yet. LibreOffice is supposed to be coming to tablets, but I don't see a port of Eclipse any time soon. What with Ubuntu for Android coming out, that kind of future might not be so far away though.

I'm thinking Ubuntu for Android would be pretty darn perfect for this. Run ICS on it when it's a phone or a tablet, and run full-on Ubuntu, with access to the Android files, when it's a laptop. Geek nirvana, if you ask me!

Here is the link to Ubuntu's custom install CD article: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallCDCustomization. Create your own custom installer, and use that to image all the laptops.

open accounts for them in the existing OSes

Sorry, I just saw that it has to be Ubuntu- how about wubi? It is a windows-based Ubuntu installer, it installs an Ubuntu system without partitioning that stands as a cluster of files in the host windows, it is not virtualised (both systems don't run at the same time) and if you carefully set up the boot loaders on the other machines, you only need to copy over one (huge) file -the "image"- into the other machines. In addition, you will have to remove the option of booting to Windows, and then go in via a bootable USB and fix it in the aftermath. Then you remove wubi and the computers are as they were.

I've not used it, but Ubuntu 11.10 software center now has a sync option to sync software between computers. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareCenter#Comparing_and_syncing_installed_software_between_computers

Better yet, the minimal install. CLI-only comes with the desktop kernel instead of the server one.

Consumers -- the people using the software -- are comparing desktops to desktops. It doesn't matter why your brakes failed.

That's my point: The fact that Windows Update works pretty well doesn't much matter if your computer gets infected with "XP Antivirus 2012" every other week.

I've literally never, not once, in my experience with my own machines, my co-workers' machines, or my friends' machines seen a Windows box be brought down by a video driver upgrade -- ATI, nVidia, whatever. But everyone I know who uses Linux (myself included) has found themselves doing "lynx google.com" after a video driver upgrade.

At this point we're just trading anecdotes, but I can tell you the exact scenario that causes the problem in Windows: Somebody has a newish machine and is trying to play a newish game, the game is running like crap or not running at all, and the solution proffered is to update the video driver. The video card being somewhat recent, the latest driver on the manufacturer's website has been available for a total of about 36 hours, and having installed it the next thing you see is a BSOD.

This is a more complex issue. See, I don't have to upgrade Windows to get newer versions of software. Modulo backporting trickery, that's not true of Ubuntu -- if I want a newer GCC or whatever I either a) build from source, destabilizing my packages or b) do a release upgrade, breaking my machine.

I don't know about that. Ever try installing IE9 on Windows XP? Or using any of that baleful Hollywood nonsense that requires the new-to-Vista DRM stack? Or DirectX 11?

Also, most software that you would want to upgrade outside of the standard release window will have a PPA available. For example, for gcc see here.

We suspect it was because of a regression with the new dm's compatibility with LDAP'd network shared home directories.

This is what I mean by a shared characteristic. Failures that all have the same cause aren't statistically independent. Your 70% number is meaningless if the issue only affects people who use LDAP with network shared home directories and the large majority of users don't do that.

Funny, the guys running Windows upstairs don't need a service history (to a rough approximation). Are you listening to yourself? You're seriously suggesting it's okay to have to document getting a consumer machine running. We document install procedures on supercluster nodes with exotic hardware. That shouldn't be necessary for desktops with commodity hardware.

And it isn't, by and large. You can pretty much take anything Dell has sold in the last decade and install Ubuntu 10.04 on it with no problems. You're the one claiming that some extravagant list of problems will be had in doing a clean install. That hasn't been my experience. What I'm saying is that if you're doing something exotic, or you run into some strange corner case that requires a non-obvious solution, it would be wise to document it -- if only so that when the machine gets hit by lightning you can get it back in working order. But once you've documented it, you don't have to worry about it again the next time you do a clean install, because you've now got the solution available should you need it.

The last 10% takes 50% or more of the work, and Canonical doesn't have anything like the funds to pay for that -- it's borderline dishonest to suggest otherwise.

I would agree with you if Canonical were the only ones doing the work, but they aren't. Linux is huge in the server space -- which means all of the problems with network drivers, file systems, multitasking, etc. get solved by those people, who are spending the same billions of dollars that Microsoft does. All Canonical has to do is take the fine work of those people and polish the UI.

Since everybody seems to concur that Kubuntu's KDE is pretty bad, which one's actually better? I'd welcome suggestions.

try lubuntu - finally something that feels human for a developer (boots and moves fast, easy to install/customize, good repos/updates - from Ubuntu. A desktop manager - LXDE - not maintained by Ubuntu)

I'm using the latest LTS version of Kubuntu, with OpenOffice.org 3.2.1, and I figured that I would have LibreOffice when it would be ready. It's not in the package manager.

Updates to applications in an Ubuntu LTS, such as the Lucid (10.04) that you use, primarily consist of backported security bug fixes. You need to enable a backports repository to get the sorts of newer versions of applications under LTS that you'd get in one of the six-month releases or a rolling release distribution. As of 11.10, the way the installer configures the backports repository in apt has been revamped, and it should become easier to add newer applications starting with 12.04.

Try this: KMenu > Muon Package Manager > Settings > Configure Software Sources > Updates and turn on "Unsupported updates".

"It is impossible to neutralize a botnet by taking control over the controller machines .. It is still possible to push an update tool on infected machines to neutralize the botnet" Securelist.com

How to neutralize the botnet, use Ubuntu on the desktop ...

Ubuntu has had the Ubuntu Software Center for quite a while now, in Internet years, and it's a front-end to apt-get, basically, but it's entirely graphical and laid out in a logical and straightforward fashion. I didn't say it was the best implementation of a repository-style app market environment, but it sets out what it accomplishes to do fairly well for users unfamiliar or uncomfortable with package management (which sounds scary if you're unfamiliar with the terminology).

As much as I hate the closed nature of Apple's App Store and the sometimes-ridiculous approval process, I'm not a fan of the Android Market for this reason. Before I installed DroidWall on my rooted HTC Magic (aka the MyTouch 3G, the second Android device released in the US), I only installed apps that were recommended by a moderately reliable source, such as Lifehacker (not much of a fan of the rest of the Gawker network, but LH is okay) or ones where it looked particularly good and the permissions were sane. I'm a little more fearless with DroidWall when it comes to checking out an app that seems even a little sketchy, because DW's default is to block wifi/3G connections, so it only gets net access after I check it out and see if it's obviously crap or not. At any rate, if the market system worked like a collection of repositories and users were freely available (though the carriers would probably attempt to lock that down) to add trusted third-party repos to their market. Maybe not with Google Checkout payment support, perhaps, but it could be done. If Android Device X shipped without a wifi tethering app/option and the carrier's subset of the official Google Market doesn't list wifi tethering apps and yanks new ones as they're added, I'm sure someone would happily host and write if necessary a tethering app for free and slap it on a repository with a very good community reputation in next to no time, simply to fix that fascist omission.

1. We are more conservative in our package merge with Debian, auto-synching with Debian testing, instead of Debian unstable.
2. We start stabilizing the release early by significantly limiting the number of new features . We will choose which features we package into the LTS release, versus which ones we leave out and allow for users to optionally download and use from a separate archive.
3. Avoid structural changes as far as possible, such as changing the default set of applications, lots of library transitions, or system layer changes (example: introducing KMS or hal DeviceKit would not have been appropriate changes in a LTS).

Emphasis mine

I'll see your SFTP and raise you disabling password authentication entirely, and using SSH public key authentication only.

If your SSH server is visible over the Internet, you should use public key authentication instead of passwords if at all possible. If you don't think it's important, try logging all of the malicious login attempts you get for the next week.

-- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SSH/OpenSSH/Keys

I just want it to work. On OS X at home. On Windows at work. On Linux, BeOS, CP/M (well, I give that a pass) or whatever. The vendors all have an agenda which, so far, hasn't jibed well with mine.

Have a look at Ubuntu One. It still (yet) lacks OS X support, yes, but Canonical's agenda looks much better to me than Apple's or Google's.

From now on, It'll also be your fault for not having backups:

Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP
OS X (leopard, snow leopard, Lion*)
Linux
Linux
Linux...

(some of the linux methods will also work on OS X and Windows....)

*Lion doesn't even require a separate partition or disk. Of course, it will not protect you against disk failure in that case.

not to mention their moronic loud-mouthed userbase

Don't be too hard on them, they are using Starter Linux because they haven't learned enough to stop dual booting yet, and if they have they haven't got the confidence needed to try their second distro.

These are all potential geeks who aren't necessarily moronic; they may be uneducated. The fact that they are loud-mouthed means they are enthusiastic and willing.

I don't get this. Don't you guys have OpenJDK (in the form of IcedTea) over there? You know, the open-source replacement for the Oracle JDK endorsed by Oracle?

No, Ubuntu has the actual OpenJDK in its repositories, no IcedTea required.

Got my answer this morning on the mailing list:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LucidLynx/ReleaseNotes/FirefoxRapidReleaseMigration

'Starting on January 17, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Ubuntu 10.10 users will be migrated to the latest Firefox version...'

More info at Canocial blog and Ubuntu website (including a video).

Well, technically there is, but since it doesn't repair errors, it's not much good.

so that you don't have to write documentation like "first go to start bar and select control panel and then find the "network and file sharing center" item and double click that and then on the sidebar find "manage wireless networks" and highlight a network and right click and select properties and find Security/Settings/802.1x/blah//blah/bla

I proposed this:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/29001/
While it is supposed to be for phone support, it can also help "expert users":

The user can also type "tab" "B1" "space" to go item "B1".

If this was ever implemented, I'd probably use it to configure/control all sorts of stuff quickly.

If you're using a reasonable browser, or a reasonable operating system package, PDFs should load very quickly.

Canonical does usability testing constantly.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2011-April/032988.html

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/11/user-testing-of-unity-reveals-some-surprising-results/

Not quite. The browser plugin is being disabled immediately and at some point in the future they'll also be pushing out dummy packages to remove the Sun JDK from user's machines altogether. See the mailing list post.

For those who weren't aware, the KDE project is also working on a version of Kubuntu for mobiles.

IMO, we're approaching the point where mobile devices will be like PCs - you can install whatever OS you want on them. Right now the closest thing is people replacing Android with CyanogenMod; even though Cyanogen is effectively an Android derivative, the popularity of doing so demonstrates that alternative mobile OSs can be relatively successful even if not included by OEMs. The main problem right now is that each kernel must be specific to the device, since each one is wired differently and there aren't any standards (in use) for enumerating the various chips available (e.g. bluetooth, GPU, etc.).

I predict that this will be resolved sometime within the next 15 years (probably the next 5-10), as ARM becomes increasingly popular on the desktop/server.

Yeah, it does video fine for me. Try looking here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/FglrxInteferesWithRadeonDriver#Problem:%20%20Need%20to%20fully%20remove%20-fglrx%20and%20reinstall%20-ati%20from%20scratch