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Yes - give the removable disk's partition a name - if it's ext3, use something like "e2fslabel /dev/sdg1 DRIVENAME" where the DRIVENAME is the name you want to use. Then you should find that GNOME will auto-mount your drive under /media/DRIVENAME, and it will appear in the Nautilus file explorer as well.

For NTFS drives, use ntfslabel with same syntax, and for FAT32, use "mlabel drive:label" - you will of course need to replace the 'g' in sdg1 above with whatever your drive uses (dmesg | tail -22 just after connecting your drive should tell you).

See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RenameUSBDrive for a more complete HOWTO.

According to the Ubuntu Wiki, they're planning to do this. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MaverickReleaseSchedule Of course, we'll see how things actually turn out... but a 10.10.10 launch would be cool.

This works for me.

I think a more interesting thing here would be to share desktops in (hopefully) a one-click magical and revolutionary solution. Idea 105's time has come.

I see, you have never seen an actual Ubuntu installation.

"System" -> "About Ubuntu" menu on every installed Ubuntu system shows a pretty extensive explanation what Ubuntu is, and how it s related to Linux, Debian and GNU.

http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu page mentions the same, plus links to plenty of explanations, documentation and wiki that mention Debian and Linux.

I don't see how they could have made those things more straightforward.

I'm not going to address all the things you said, but the last one struck me.

Pointing a customer to already existing documentation on how to get their GLX setup properly would cost far more than any revenue you could bring in? You are crazy. I can prove it..

Gentoo, my distro of choice.. google says the docs are here: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/nvidia-guide.xml and here: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/ati-faq.xml

Or lets pick Ubuntu, google says here: https://help.ubuntu.com/6.06/ubuntu/desktopguide/C/hardware.html#graphics-cards

How much revenue was that? less than a minute of googling.

I would like to address some of your other points but i feel you really haven't taken the time to look into them yourself.

Will that also apply to someone bringing in a Linux install CD that may have some games on it ?

Fun and games at Oz airports!

Step Two: Install Ubuntu

This really isn't all that complicated.

Yeah, that'll make people look at the URLs and not just presume it's their banks' website...

Isn't the default webbrowser on Ubuntu Firefox anyway?

Step Two: Install Ubuntu

This really isn't all that complicated.

Show me ANY Linux where I can take a mix of totally random hardware thrown together and hand my 67 year old clueless dad the disc and have him install it PERFECTLY, without a SINGLE fuckup or hardware issue, and then we'll talk.

True story.

Not long back I tried the Ubuntu Windows Installer

The installer appeared to hang on an indecipherable hard drive error. It could not be closed or canceled short of killing the process in Task Manager.

The Ubuntu site and forums were no help - so on to Google.

A half hour or so later I found a solution. It seems that the installer treats any internal or external, occupied or unoccupied, flash card slot as a hard drive.

The work around is to click "Cancel" as often as necessary to get the job done.

65 clicks later I began to see daylight.

25 clicks later I had 32 bit Unbuntu dual-booting with 64 bit Windows 7.

It did not make a good first impression.

Recent Ubuntu's ship with an OpenOffice from go-oo - why do you think otherwise (perhaps there's a source I've overlooked)? If you dig into the Ubuntu Lucid source for OpenOffice.org you will see it claims the upstream is go-oo and contains many patches (SVG support, write support for DOCX etc) from go-oo. A quick web search shows the Ubuntu OpenOffice maintainer says Ubuntu's OOo is based off go-oo. This has probably been the case since at least Ubuntu 8.10 (possibly earlier).

Recent Ubuntu's ship with an OpenOffice from go-oo - why do you think otherwise (perhaps there's a source I've overlooked)? If you dig into the Ubuntu Lucid source for OpenOffice.org you will see it claims the upstream is go-oo and contains many patches (SVG support, write support for DOCX etc) from go-oo. A quick web search shows the Ubuntu OpenOffice maintainer says Ubuntu's OOo is based off go-oo. This has probably been the case since at least Ubuntu 8.10 (possibly earlier).

Talking abt the canonical-census package? It's 14 hours old, how can it be installed by default?

By being made a dependency for an updated version of a package installed by default, such as the , such as the Ubuntu software center package. This would enable it to be installed by default at the next software update.

Oh, and just in case you are wondering where this is stored here is the location.

Too bad they will never do it... For very obvious reasons.

Yeah, right. Troll.

Think he's talking abt repositories. I guess it'll take a little while, the package is only 14 hours old. When all's in sync you'll see something here: http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=census

Sounds great. I guess this'll be default in maverick and we'll see some interesting results. but how come they can't just extend Pop-con? http://popcon.ubuntu.com/ http://popcon.debian.org/

Sounds great. I guess this'll be default in maverick and we should see some interesting data? But why couldn't they just extend Pop-con? http://popcon.ubuntu.com/ http://popcon.debian.org/

Sounds great. I assume it'll be default in maverick and we'll see some interesting data? Why couldn't they just extend popularity contest? http://popcon.ubuntu.com/ http://popcon.ubuntu.com/

Sounds great. I assume it'll be default in maverick and we'll see some interesting data? Why couldn't they just extend popularity contest? http://popcon.ubuntu.com/ http://popcon.ubuntu.com/

I thought this was already done to some degree with the popularity contest.

I was thinking more along the lines of most students simply trying Linux.
Most probably won't have even thought about using it until they already have a laptop.
Those compatibility lists are more useful to those building up PCs from pieces.

It's little trouble or cost to just boot from a 32 or 64 bit Live CD and actually try Firefox with the wireless etc. Bringing one to the store when looking at machines is a good idea too. If sales staff are uncooperative, walk out. That'll help get some to change their tune.

Of course people can still browse the Ubuntu supported hardware lists or forums before buying. But there's no need to make it seem like some intimidating process. Yes, a few machines may have issues, some have Windows driver issues too (typically in 64 bit).

People that do have compatibility problems can likely still use Linux within the free Virtual Box virtual machine. Using the net only from Linux makes it much less likely that Windows will soil itself...

Between not having malware headaches and having free Open Office and other software preinstalled, Ubuntu is a great Windows alternative for students. Try it, it's free!
Nobody likes losing an important paper or project to malware.

Of course Macs are the simplest choice, but if one already has a PC, or gets one because of cost, they can have still have similar security and stability by using Linux.
Of course many that already are familiar with Linux find it worthy of premium hardware too.
Some find Linux useful on Macs too. Ubuntu in Virtual Box works great.

In my experience when Debian releases a "Stable", its usually 2 years behind. "Testing" is usually 1 year behind, and unstable much closer to update, but often breaks. Ubuntu is usually just 6 months behind, with much less breakage than "Unstable", albeit a bit higher than "Stable". Ubuntu is really a snapshop of unstable at a given point, but Canonical makes it stable enough for release in months.

Ubuntu server LTS has nothing to envy from Debian Stable for servers; and in fact you can have a more updated and more solid server with Ubuntu Server than Debian testing/unstable, which seems to be in a permanent moving platform. Of course, Debian takes much much more time to test stuff, and the results (in "stable") usually pays, but its not perfect either, Example case: With Debian Etch, there is a stupid bug where if a machine loses power, grub becomes stuffed with a "savedefault" option which prevents booting...

With Debian, you usually wait 3 years between updates, vs 2 for Ubuntu LTS or 6 months for regular Ubuntu. Also, all the odd architectures supported by Debian makes it perhaps one of the best options there.

Also, you might want to know that you can update from LTS to LTS now, at last starting with 8.04: Network Upgrade for Ubuntu Servers

Freebsd has a different system, when they do a major version upgrade (called current), is not really expected to be "stable", until .2 or so. But in the meantime, you can be very up to date via the ports system (and benefit from a custom compile); or stick to the supported binaries, which seem to be about 1 year behind. Your choice.

Well for Ubuntu they're both numbered and named. The numbers are year.month (e.g. 9.10 is October 2009) and therefore go up in the expected manner. For the names, they're alphabetical (or at least have been for the last 5 years), so Intrepid came before Jaunty, which was followed by Karmic.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DevelopmentCodeNames

I switched from Debian to Ubuntu three years ago, but I'm very seriously considering switching back. My theory was that Ubuntu LTS releases were roughly equivalent to Debian stable, and that regular Ubuntu was somewhere between testing and unstable. The second half of that works out sort of okay, but using Ubuntu LTS as an alternative to Debian stable is a bad choice. The upgrade path from one LTS release to the next is horribly painful, because you have to upgrade to each intermediate release. And, in practice, I find the every-six-months big-bang upgrades more intrusive and problematic than the continual, incremental upgrades on Debian testing or unstable.

Not anymore, you can directly upgrade from LTS to LTS.

The upgrade path from one LTS release to the next is horribly painful, because you have to upgrade to each intermediate release.

That's only true for non-LTS releases. You can go from one LTS to the next and skip the intermediate releases.

You can get free recovery disks here

Luckily, numerous varieties of recovery disks are Freely Available on the internet, or you can build your own if you prefer.

Dude, WTF is that kind of a question? Isn't the answer obvious?

I don't think I understand your problem.
Compared to back in the day it's paradise today. We've got bizarely powered hardware that fits in you hands and costs less than a good stereo set. You can get in anywhere and have it up and running in no time. We've got the best publishers competing with each other in writing concise witty indepth books on any IT subject you can think of and we have a very solid open source eco system with all the pickings you like for free (beer & speech).

I suggest you get yourself a cheap laptop from dell our something, install ubuntu on it and start coding in one of the cool new programming languages. I personally recommend Python, because it really is the only PL I know that is used in every professional field I can think of while still being a neat new open source PL. For getting up to speed fast you want to check out the books available from O'Reilly and Pragmatic Programmers Bookshelf. Any subject they don't have a book on isn't worthwhile picking up. That's a good rule of thumb.

That aside, it really doesn't matter wether you're 18 or 80, just dive into it. I know good programmers aged between 17 and 60 and all of them learn new things every day and have no trouble doing so. Age issues are mostly hysteria. If you're interested and hooked, you'll pick up a subject fast, no matter how old you are.

Welcome back.

http://www.opensuse.com/ : redirects to http://en.opensuse.org/Main_Page : 1st sentence "Project: The openSUSE project is a worldwide effort that promotes the use of Linux everywhere

http://www.redat.com/ iGATE Powers Its Mission-Critical ManageMe Application on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (close call on that one ...)

http://www.mandriva.com/ 1st para : More than 3 million people in the world enjoy our Mandriva Linux platform on their computer.

http://http//fedoraproject.org/: Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software.

http:/// linuxmint.com/ : it's in their url, title, ect: Linux Mint 9 KDE Linux Mint 9 KDE is out!

http://www.debian.org/: Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating system), but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence the name GNU/Linux.

pclinuxos, puppy linux, etc ...

It's funny how Canonical wants to be seen as the "canonical linux distro", but it's all just marketing fluff and FUGLY color schemes.

Confirmed, Handbrake has come a long way in the last 9 months, and now offers every option (I believe) available from x264, the encoding lib it uses. It also has picked up speed a fair amount (though I think that's more from improvements in x264 than Handbrake).

I've found the nightly builds (in spite of the disclaimers to the contrary) to be very stable, and if you're on an *buntu (or can spin up an Ubuntu VM), you can install from the PPA quite easily.

Here for instructions on installing from PPA; here's some info from the Ubuntu wiki on using Handbrake to encode for Android.

A feature just now gaining support in the nightly builds, which I look forward to, is a "preview" mode, so you can check the effect of settings changes on the resulting video quality.

I'd be interested to see what 50% more money would do for performance - I'm thinking a low-end i3 system would be possible, given a cheap enough case... A suitable Intel MB can be had for $100, third-party MBs go for as little as $80. The i3-530 CPU can be had for another $100, figure $55 for 2 Gigs of DDR3 RAM and that leaves $45 for case/PS.

Drop the requirement for a case/PS (say you're upgrading an older desktop), you can go to 4 Gig of RAM and still be under $300.

The system I'm imagining would be an Intel i3-530, Intel DH55TC w/ whatever 4 Gig DDR3 is on sale for $100 or less...

The Intel DH55TC appears to run fine under the latest Ubuntu - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Intel_DH55TC

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/lucid/release/
Under Desktop CD.

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/10.04/release/
Lucid as well.

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/jaunty/release/

I would think by now a Linux user would be used to ports from Windows being less reliable or capable than their Windows counterparts. (Or not existing at all.)

If every program out there isn't buggy to some extent, why do we keep getting all these annoying updates?

Clearly Linux is buggy: http://www.ubuntu.com/usn

It sounds like you need to sit down with your father and have "the talk." Fortunately, now days you are not alone, and there are plenty of useful web sites to help you through this difficult discussion. One such site can be found here. While it may be a little uncomfortable and possibly a bit embarrassing at first, you will find that he may keep an open mind and be willing to share some of his fears and views on this sensitive but important topic.

OSSEC HIDS supports status updates via twitter, so your IDS control server can gossip and bitch about the ailments of its clients like a senile small-town doctor:

http://www.ossec.net/dcid/?p=168

You could also use Twidge and your imagination to come up with some cron jobs that post server status updates.

[...] in some respects it is still in the mid 90s.

I may be missing what you consider to be stuck in the 90's, but by all means, if you see places for improvement... jump in and help. Or at the very least, make suggestions at somewhere like http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ and file bug reports.

I completely disagree with your statement "Both Windows and MacOS have made huge leaps forward in terms of usability, stability and security, and Linux has hardly moved," but regardless of its (in)validity, Linux doesn't progress magically, or even by the funding, direction, and marketing of a 220 billion dollar corporation. It moves forward thanks to a few small companies and strong community involvement. So again, feel free to jump in and help if you somehow don't think it has moved forward in the past 14 years.

I'm a pretty tech savvy user and even I had trouble with Linux when I converted one of my machines over to Ubuntu a while back (I finally just gave up)

True story:

I decided to try the Ubuntu Windows installer

"You, too, can download Ubuntu Desktop Edition and run it alongside your current Windows system."

The installer appeared to hang on a hard drive error. Opening a dialog box that could not be closed or canceled.

After killing the process in task manager, I searched the Ubuntu site for an answer. No help there.

On to Google where I spend the better part of an hour tracking down a solution. It seems that the installer treats every card slot and USB device on your system as a hard drive ---scanning and rescanning each port for what seems all eternity.

The work-around is to click "cancel" until you regain control.

60 clicks later I first saw daylight.

20 clicks later I could reboot into Ubuntu.

But the whole business left me in a sour and unforgiving mood.

the GUI is just awful because it doesn't allow for easy 'run as root'.

aptitude install nautilus-gksu

Want to edit smb.conf, you are SOL unless you go through CLI or create a custom link to your favorite editor. I have no problem going CLI only either, except that in Ubuntu 10 everything has been moved into a slew of *.d directories. As a newbie to 10, where the hell is anything you are looking for?

I use this thing called the Internet when I want to find out about things I don't know about. This company called "Google" came up with this great way of helping you find all sorts of information. Check it out sometime, http://google.com

Often my biggest issue in Ubuntu is not so much that I dont know what I want to do, but rather, I cant find what I want to do. I ahve pretty advanced knowledge of firewalls and routers but WTF do you do when you cannot find the conf file or force it to reload?

See above.

or at the least work on encouraging the community to be more active.

Just what exactly does this mean? There is a gigantic community built around Ubuntu. From the thousands of people that translate Ubuntu into their local language for free, or the ones who run the LoCo teams, or the people who spend their time testing new releases and reporting bugs, or the people who submit patches to bugs that do get reported, or the people who spend their time in the IRC channels helping out people having problems or the people who spend hours adding and refining the vast amount of information contained in the wiki. Really.. if you can't find the community around Ubuntu you aren't looking very hard.

the GUI is just awful because it doesn't allow for easy 'run as root'.

aptitude install nautilus-gksu

Want to edit smb.conf, you are SOL unless you go through CLI or create a custom link to your favorite editor. I have no problem going CLI only either, except that in Ubuntu 10 everything has been moved into a slew of *.d directories. As a newbie to 10, where the hell is anything you are looking for?

I use this thing called the Internet when I want to find out about things I don't know about. This company called "Google" came up with this great way of helping you find all sorts of information. Check it out sometime, http://google.com

Often my biggest issue in Ubuntu is not so much that I dont know what I want to do, but rather, I cant find what I want to do. I ahve pretty advanced knowledge of firewalls and routers but WTF do you do when you cannot find the conf file or force it to reload?

See above.

or at the least work on encouraging the community to be more active.

Just what exactly does this mean? There is a gigantic community built around Ubuntu. From the thousands of people that translate Ubuntu into their local language for free, or the ones who run the LoCo teams, or the people who spend their time testing new releases and reporting bugs, or the people who submit patches to bugs that do get reported, or the people who spend their time in the IRC channels helping out people having problems or the people who spend hours adding and refining the vast amount of information contained in the wiki. Really.. if you can't find the community around Ubuntu you aren't looking very hard.

I'm guessing that most of the intelligent, technically knowledgeable people have left Microsoft. So now non-technical employees are pretending to run a technological company.

Filing for patents like this has absolutely nothing to do with technical people. What probably happened is something like:

1. Engineer designs cool interface with gestures and page animations
2. He shows his project manager neat interface
3. Project manager like it, sends it up the chain to see what higher ups think
4. VP over section likes the idea, sends it to legal (like everything else) to make sure it won't be a problem
5. Legal drone sees no prior patent filings for the interface idea. Sends idea to his boss.
6. Legal over-drone notes no existing patents and thus automatically files a patent for the interface idea.
7. ???
8. Profit!

The software patents filed by a company have little or no bearing on the quality of the engineers working there.

One indication that the smart people have left is when a company brings out a new version of software, and the big change is in the menus. Menu changes are something people who don't care about technology can do.

You don't say?.

(The Microsoft Vista operating system was, it is said, not a failure, but an intentional method of getting people to pay for two operating systems, by deliberately releasing an unfinished one.)

Said by somebody who almost certainly never even ran Vista. Vista's real problems were:

• Hardware companies didn't want to adopt the new driver model (which they had years to plan for). Instead they released half-assed drivers, in part to make Microsoft look bad (for creating work for them).
• The huge amount of third-party software available for Windows was filled with poorly-designed programs that required users to be administrators. Microsoft pushed UAC and limited-user rights to try and get this to start changing. There was absolutely no way to make this any easier on people than they did.
• Vista did have higher hardware requirements than XP, and people were installing it expecting it to run well on their 256MB of RAM and Pentium 3. The "designed for Vista" logo/sticker just made things worse (and honestly, I think this is the biggest place Microsoft screwed up Vista. They should have been much clearer with regards to hardware requirements).

The way software patents work right now is every company is trying to get as many as possible. It's basically the Cold War all over again, except instead of nuclear weapons it's software patents. Microsoft is doing it for the same reasons Google, Apple, Palm, etc are: Mutual Assured Destruction.

And drunken cheerleaders get date raped more than shut-in nerd chicks. Personally, I prefer nerd chicks, and you likely do too, but most people don't. Really, they don't, and there's no use telling them that their opinion is wrong.

Do people prefer Windows? After actually trying Linux? Not in my experience.

If you don't value your time.

Most stuff works out of the box. Some stuff does not work out of the box on Windows or Mac either.

Until of course you try and run a script written for fooshell on barshell, i.e. when a distro changes its shell.

Dash is supposed to compatible with Bash if you stuck to Debian policy of affected scripts (those than use #!/bin/sh - if you useed bash specific features you should have used #!/bin/bash . Any examples of stuff that breaks? BTW Bash is still the login shell.

Can be made to run on it, given enough time.

Most stuff non-geeks use is in the major distros repos and is easier to install than Windows apps.

But I would not recommend them to a Joe Windows user, ever, since I don't want to be their Support Guy from now until there's a distro that actually Just Works.

My father, my wife, by seven year old daughter, her former pre-school principal, an accountant who used to work for me are all presumably geeks? They all prefer Linux.

I use a variety of POSIX operating systems 95% of the time, at work through necessity, and at home through choice. And because I use them, rather than despite it, I am compelled to respond.

Fewer viruses

And drunken cheerleaders get date raped more than shut-in nerd chicks. Personally, I prefer nerd chicks, and you likely do too, but most people don't. Really, they don't, and there's no use telling them that their opinion is wrong.

Lower cost of ownership

If you don't value your time. For the latest of many, many examples down the years, I 'invested' 3 hours this weekend trying to get WiFi with WPA working again after upgrading my wife's box from Ubuntu 9.10 to 10.04. Verdict: the rt73usb driver has (yet again) returned to a state of porkage, so it was (yet again) ndiswrapper and Windows drivers for the eventual win.

CLI/scripting system that actually works

Until of course you try and run a script written for fooshell on barshell, i.e. when a distro changes its shell.

Most open source software runs on it

Can be made to run on it, given enough time.

Drivers for just about any piece of hardware ever built

If you limit "ever" to "older than two years or so". But sure, many of the drivers give the appearance of working tolerably well, for a surprising amount of the time! And when they don't, well, there's ndiswrapper, or we'll-fix-it-in-the-next-release, or you've-got-the-source-compile-a-previous-version-yes-we-know-it-doesn't-build-against-your-kernel-headers-or-gcc-version-fix-it-yourself-you-filthy-M$-shill.

No blue screen of death

Ain't seen on one Windows for years.

Not nearly as resource hungry (unless of course you use Compiz :-)

Granted. Oh, unless you've got a driver bug, which you almost certainly do if your hardware was designed this millennium. Then see above.

Penguins way cooler than butterflies

By that measure, that would mean...

But the easiest way of making a windows user envious is to use a mac

...that.

This is not the year of Linux on the desktop (or the netbook). I thought we were there with Ubuntu 10.04, but it's actually a regression from 9.10. I'd just recommend 9.10, but that's effectively abandonware now, just like all previous versions of all Linux distros, "LTS" included.

Again: I'm writing this from Ubuntu 9.10. I've got RHEL5 in that VM over there, SUSE 11 yonder, Solaris in that shell, and even SUA on Windows (tastes a bit like POSIX). I'm happy with POSIX OSen. But I would not recommend them to a Joe Windows user, ever, since I don't want to be their Support Guy from now until there's a distro that actually Just Works.

1. Download a Ubuntu Live CD.
2. Open a terminal and type "sudo apt-get install aircrack-ng"
3. If aircrack-ng installs successfully (you may need to connect an ethernet cable to get an internet connection), type "sudo airmon-ng start wlan0".
4. Type in "sudo airodump-ng mon0" and you'll get a nice list of all the wireless access points in your area (even the hidden ones).
Aircrack-ng (and airodump-ng) documentation can be found here.

You can also try NetStumbler, which runs on Windows, but it much less powerful.

If you don't like Matroska, you can download the lower resolution AVI file (XVid codec) linked at the site. But I'm curious, what computer system of recent vintage can't play a Matroska file? I can play the 720p version (x264 codec) without any problems on my five-year-old AMD Sempron 3000 (1.8 GHz single core) system. This is using stock MPlayer under 64-bit Ubuntu with a mere 750 MB of DDR1 (!) RAM. For other systems, VLC can play most non-subbed and plain text-subbed video files you can download off the 'Net. (Some anime fans hate VLC for its "alleged" inability to play fancy "soft subs".)

Boobuntu?

Unlike M$ windoze an even better solution is here, and best of all it is free as in both beer and freedom. M$ is like a drug dealer, the first hit is free.

--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Friends do assist M$ addicted friends in committing suicide.

Some how I doubt they'll add the features and debug the problems I am talking about in less then the two months they have before the feature freeze.