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There is also a interesting point regarding software repository support. I have a server running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server which is supposed to be supported till April 2011, however Wordpress is in the Universe repository and not updated since November 2008 and is vulnerable to a few attacks that delete content.

If these packages are not going to be updated should there not be at least a warning, or method to bar such packages from being installed after security issues have been raised?

Wordpress 2.3.3 in 8.04 LTS Universe repository.

That already exists and is centre-stage in a leading distribution:

YMP (Yast MetaPackage)

It's a nice idea, it's a bit better than floating rpms or debs but I don't know if I'm entirely sold on it. It's been around for a few years and I haven't seen any of the other distros picking it up, so that might say something about it. There is apturl but I know I've never used it or even had the opportunity.

http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/software-store

Given that Best Buy employees still have to pay a Sawbuck to M$ for the win7. Ubuntu can be downloaded for free. Word Processing, Spread Sheets, and Presentation software can be downloaded for free from openOffice. for Bitmap, and Vectored Art there is GIMP, Inkscape, and Blender3D. For software development there is Eclipse. The current major development war going on is "Flash verses SVG"; it's not that Flash products can do more, it's that SVG can be done in Notepad++.

It's fairly clear that the presentation gets a few things wrong, but so does the article itself. To give a few examples:

No iPod support? Really?

It depends on what you mean by "iPod". Ubuntu wiki says: "Ubuntu works very well with iPods, except the iPod Touch, iPhone, and any other future generation Apple portable devices that do not show up as a generic storage device." It also has a separate link for setting up a new Nano, which involves performing a cryptic incantation in the shell (well, that's how any casual user will treat it anyway), so "support" is a bit of a stretch there as well.

So it's not correct to say that Ubuntu does not support iPods at all - as presentation seems to imply - but there are certainly problems in that department. The reviewer then goes into a rant on Zune support on OS X, which is rather irrelevant to the subject at hand, which is Win7 vs Linux.

I've yet to see a printer that doesn't have a driver.

Didn't see a lot of printers, then. It's fairly easy to find one without a driver, usually of a kind where a lot of processing is offloaded to software (i.e. printer driver).

Video chat with Pidgin? Or Skype?

Presentation is a little bit more specific (and vague at the same time) there: it declares "video chat on all major IM networks". These days this would probably mean MSN/Live, too, at least in North America. I also wonder if they count Yahoo IM as well.

Doesn't look like it at the moment. It's a new feature in glibc 2.10, which isn't yet in Debian (not even unstable, though there's a version in experimental) or in the latest Ubuntu, though it looks like it's in the dev versions of the upcoming late-October Ubuntu release.

Doesn't look like it at the moment. It's a new feature in glibc 2.10, which isn't yet in Debian (not even unstable, though there's a version in experimental) or in the latest Ubuntu, though it looks like it's in the dev versions of the upcoming late-October Ubuntu release.

Still not sure what my hopes are for running Linux on an Intel Mac.

From what I've read Ubuntu runs pretty good on Macs. I have a MacBook Pro I've been researching how to install Ubuntu 9.04 on. To install Ubuntu or any other Linux distro you have to install Bootcamp and or rEFIt first. Here's more info on installing Ubuntu on MacTels.

Falcon

http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download-netbook

The UI is set up for small screens and it's quite fast.

But I still get better battery life from OS X and XP (on the same hardware). But I like Linux better. :)

A quick Google search shows that the basic kernel for all versions of Ubuntu has been tickless since 7.10.
http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-server710
I know my system (karmic) does. You can check with:
$ grep CONFIG_NO_HZ /boot/config-`uname -r`
CONFIG_NO_HZ=y

how about just
$ grep HZ /boot/config-`uname -r`
# CONFIG_HZ_1000 is not set
# CONFIG_HZ_300 is not set
CONFIG_MACHZ_WDT=m
CONFIG_NO_HZ=y
CONFIG_HZ=250
# CONFIG_HZ_100 is not set
CONFIG_HZ_250=y

now is it running tickless or at 250Hz? that's on 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-15-generic

Still, hardly an ideal solution:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport/Machines/Netbooks

They apparently work with the OEMs to make custom versions of the Ubuntu distribution for each machine. If your laptop isn't on the list (or even if it is) you may have problems. It also uses proprietary code which prevents them from distributing it to others.

Well, you are kind of right -- there is no laptop version.
There is, however, a netbook version.

It's incredibly hard to say because the summary doesn't provide enough detail in and of itself to diagnose the problem (e.g. which graphics card, which chipset, which drivers are being used, which version of Ubuntu and so on). The most likely explanation is that hardware is being left on in Linux that other OSes are powering down when on battery. Examples of this:

• Wired ethernet ports that are often put into some off state under Windows such that they will no longer work until the laptop is plugged into the mains but saving power while not in use while on the battery.
• Similarly if the poster is using a particular graphics drivers (free or closed - depends on the hardware) they may not be powering the hardware down as aggressively as the drivers on another operating system. I've seen Intel graphics cards on Windows that reduce display quality presumably to increase compression (you can visibly see the artifacts) when on battery to decrease power draw.
• Hard disks might not be spun down as often (or at all) under Linux.
• USB sockets may not be auto suspending depending on the version of the distro/hardware.
• The tickless kernel may not be working effectively (or at all depending on kernel version) - there might be a program that is preventing the kernel from idling for a long period of time because it is doing some unnecessary program (this may tie back into graphics drivers again).
• The SATA controller might not be powering down as it does on other OSes.
• The screen might not be as dim as it is on other OSes.
• The sound hardware might not be powering itself off properly/completely.
• The wifi might be be being put into a low power mode/being turned off on other OSes.
• There could be bugs in a driver under Linux.
• Other OSes might have a program monitoring temperature sensors and scaling hardware functions appropriately (e.g. slowing down fans if the machine is cool).
• And so on...

As you can a myriad of reasons and not nearly enough information to whittle down the cause. Further how do you know each OS is using the same defaults? It could be that Windows says you are running out of battery later than Linux does (I'd imagine that this sort of thing could only account for 10 minutes difference to actual empty battery though) or the display is defaulting to a different brightness - it could be that lots of little things are adding up to the major difference.

A few years ago I had access to a Thinkpad T60 and it would draw two watts less power under Windows XP than under Ubuntu Gutsy. That doesn't mean things don't change over time but nor does it mean that people aren't seeing real problems now. If you know how to constructively help, things can get progressively better on your system but it can take some time and you need to know how to track these things down. Tools like powertop help and developers have been putting together good power management practices for Linux guides. However in all honesty posting to Slashdot is unlikely to help you obtain a solution (and indeed there is no guarantee of a solution even over a long period of time).

A quick Google search shows that the basic kernel for all versions of Ubuntu has been tickless since 7.10.
http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-server710
I know my system (karmic) does. You can check with:
$ grep CONFIG_NO_HZ /boot/config-`uname -r`
CONFIG_NO_HZ=y

You can do the install yourself. I haven't tried 9.04 PPC, but 8.10 ran pretty fine (with the obvious limitations of the PPC platform) on my iBook G4. If configured properly, it even feels snappier than OS X.

Wouldn't it be great to have a 32-bit version of Ubuntu to run on these systems (sub-netbook, smartbook, whatever you call them)?

There already is. It's called Ubuntu Netbook Remix. The Ubuntu dsitro could be 64-bit only while the Ubuntu Netbook Remix distro could be 32-bit.

I hear what you're saying, but there's been some essential features in the firmware upgrades for SSDs. For example my Vertex didn't come with the TRIM command out of the box, it was added in a BIOS.

Also there's a lot of tuning that isn't done today but will be done in new OS releases, for example Ubuntu has this one:
SSD blueprint for Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic)

Basicly there's a lot to gain by changing some of the defaults, and it's being done but if you wanted it right now you'll have to use the forums. In a year it'll be much less necessary.

Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'Humanity to others', or 'I am what I am because of who we all are'. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu

What's wrong with getting the torrent from the distro website?

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors#bt
http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/
http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/
etc..

I'd be wary of downloading any software (especially something like an operating system) from a site like the Pirate Bay.

Off topic: For me downloading a torrent is actually slower than a direct download most of the time, thanks to my ISP throttling bittorrent. For example, I can download Ubuntu at 1.5MB/sec via http or ftp, but only 300KB/sec with bittorrent...

here :p

http://ubuntu.com/

Ubuntu does not, it distributes a script which allows the user to fetch the drivers directly from nVidia and install them.

Actually, it doesn't. The contents of nvidia-glx-* and nvidia-*-kernel-source (including the proprietary nv-kernel.o file) are packaged up inside the .deb files in the repository like other packages (albeit being in the restricted repository).

Proof here.

Ubuntu does not, it distributes a script which allows the user to fetch the drivers directly from nVidia and install them.

Actually, it doesn't. The contents of nvidia-glx-* and nvidia-*-kernel-source (including the proprietary nv-kernel.o file) are packaged up inside the .deb files in the repository like other packages (albeit being in the restricted repository).

Proof here.

I found upgrading the Dell Mini 9 to Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix cleared up #3, and probably fixes 1 & 2, too.

(Granted, 9.04 Netbook Remix has a different alternative desktop than the one that comes with the Dell version of 8.04.)

My understanding is that lib(dvd)css2 is in a legal limbo -- despite a quick search on Google, I can't find a single citation to show that it is expressly forbidden. However, there are warnings about using it and similar technologies all over the net.

So what? If "they" (whoever "they" may be) don't know you are using it, who cares? Well, for instance, what happens when you carry your laptop on an international flight, and as you return to the country, Customs asks to search your laptop?

I might just be paranoid, but it's something to keep in mind.

Upstream = X.org. Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) has 7.4, while Debian Lenny has 7.3.

I know MS had it, and it would have been a usability nightmare then, except it did not stick out among the many others and it was the 80ies/early 90ies and computing was not mainstream yet.

That's not the first time they do this. They already get some money from magnatune, see http://patches.ubuntu.com/r/rhythmbox/extracted/ , patch 3. And they didn't told to rhythmbox developers. Amarok did receive their part of the money : http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2008/04/giving-money-to.html . But just ask to people working on RB if they did, and if they know this was changed on ubuntu.

Your adamance makes it tempting to switch back to the OSE, but since VirtualBox themselves and the Ubuntu docs as of July 26th still proclaim it to only be in the closed source version I suspect you're full of shit, and have mistaken the PUEL edition for Open Source. What version did you install to get USB support?

Ubuntu sucks balls. Most of the packages are out of date by the time a new version comes out, you can't really do audio/video over the major IM networks properly, not all hardware is supported, many major software applications aren't supported, the GUI is as ugly has hell and there are no GUI standards. Using specialised hardware is quite often impossible. Also, like Windows there are a tonne of security issues: http://www.ubuntu.com/usn

You might want to try No Machine's NX instead of RDP. It works exceptionally well. There's a free version (FreeNX) which also has an Ubuntu PPA. There's Ubuntu documentation here.

There are Windows, Mac, and Linux clients and a Linux server. We use it to allow windows users to run Unix software.

Please don't confuse marketing and OEM site licencing deals with failure of Linux on technical merits.

Ubuntu on the Aspire One is great. Marketing played the major role in getting XP on all netbooks. Info on this work in progress is here.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne/

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ekiga#Encrypt%20your%20calls

Right.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ekiga#Register%20to%20a%20commercial%20VoIP%20provider%20(landline%20and%20mobile%20phones)

Yes.

What filesystem do you plan on using for your shared /home?

My OS X partition uses HFS+ Journaled, the home partition is HFS+, and when I install Ubuntu Studio I'll format it's partition then. I'd use HFS+ Journaled for the home partition but Ubuntu doesn't support it.

do you put your OS X /Applications on the primary partition?

With Disk Utilities I created three partitions on my HDD, the first 30GB, the last 30 GB as well, and the rest of the space taken by the partition in the middle. I installed Leopard on the first, then setup the second as the home partition. When I install it I'll install Ubuntu Studio on the third. For the OS X apps I installed them in the OS X Applications folder.

I want to do the same thing but couldn't find a filesystem that both supported well enough to hold my docs.

If you're going to install Linux on a Mac may I suggest you do your research and create a roadmap or strategy for installing Linux first? I spent months doing my research, however I had specific things I wanted to do. If you're using Ubuntu check out the Ubuntu on Macs page. Also check out the Ububtu forums. Be aware that how it's installed depends on the Mac model. As for your question about file systems check out how to create a shared home partition between Linux and OS X.

One thing about that page though is that there is an easier way to tell OS X, Leopard, where to put the home folder. In System Preferences open Accounts. If you have to click on the padlock in the lower left corner of the window and type in an admin name and password to unlock it. Once you are able to make changes [ctrl] click on your account and elect "Advanced Options". Where the window says "Home Directory" clink on "Choose" and navigate to where you want the home directory. Now you'll have to be logged into each account to make the changes for each user, I don't know why logging in as an admin can't do it but when I just tried it didn't allow me to make changes to other users. You may also have to manually move all of the user files from the old place to the new one.

And if you want to dual or multi-boot you can use the same browser and email profiles in each OS, if you're using Firefox, Thunderbird, and Pidgin you can use a single data store. When I said above that I took months of research because I wanted to do specific things, it was stuff like these. Now I still need to find out how I can run OS X as a guest in Ubuntu, it's no problem running Ubuntu as a guest in Leopard, there are a number of guest or virtual OS options.

Falcon

http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/bzr

So in other words, Launchpad developers are also Ubuntu developers. Imagine that.

Full disk encryption is what you want, http://www.truecrypt.org/ will do this for you. However, consider the overhead, and even as fast as TrueCrypt might be, Netbooks have only so many cycles to burn.

Consider switching to Linux so that you won't need additional (read: expensive) malware/antivirus/crapware eating up the remaining cycles :) Try https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UNR

Ahem

I installed it ages ago:

aptitude install firefox-3.5

http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?searchon=names&keywords=firefox-3.5

FF 3.5 Hasn't yet been compiled for any of the versions of Ubuntu yet http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=default&section=all&arch=any&searchon=names&keywords=FIREFOX

Release Vista, a relatively broken operating system, and try to ram it down peoples' throats. When the people gag enough pop out a 'new' OS that fixes the unpalatableness of the old OS and sell millions!

So you would have preferred Microsoft follow up an OS that was not received well publicly with another OS that wouldn't be received well publicly? I swear, the company can do nothing right for some people.

Why are you assuming that he wasn't being honest? Maybe he really thinks it *is* a great strategy (I do), but that doesn't mean he can't be snarky about it.

Of course for me, why yes, I would prefer it if Microsoft continued to churn out poorly received operating systems, whether that reputation is deserved or not. Their de facto monopoly on the desktop is hardly a good thing for consumers. One does not need look far into the past to see the results (or lack thereof) of Microsoft either being too comfortable in (IE6) or outright abusing their leadership position (OOXML).

Many people were going to buy 7 anyway; why not pre-order it and save half the cost (or more)? I didn't know common sense when it comes to discretionary income was news.

And how many of those people are aware that they may be in a situation in which they can spend their discretionary income elsewhere by choosing a free alternative? I'm pretty sure common sense says you don't spend money if you don't have to. It is no longer even remotely hard to try. With Ubuntu's shipit, you don't even have to know how to burn a CD anymore. No it doesn't make sense for everybody, and if you have a problem you can go right back to leasing your operating system. No harm, no foul.

This is diffs the dissembled version of the original against the update on the server, then does the opposite on the client. I couldn't help but think of this as similar to Gentoo's model ... download a compressed diff of the source and then recompile. Both have the same problem: too much client-side CPU usage (though Gentoo's is an extreme of this). Isn't Google Chrome OS primarily targeting netbooks? Can such things handle that level of extra client-side computation without leaving users frustrated?

I'd rather improve the distribution model. Since packages are all signed, SSL and friends aren't needed for the transfer, nor does it need to come from a trusted authority. Bittorrent comes to mind. I'm quite disappointed that the apt-torrent project never went anywhere. It's clearly the solution.

http://www.ubuntu.com/partners/sun

Thing 1:
I can see that you haven't used Ubuntu at any time in the past couple of years. Here's the -one time- process:

1) Click Applications->Add/Remove.
2) Type "Windows" in the search bar.
3) Click the check box next to the emulator that comes up.
4) Click the Apply button. Confirm your choices.
6) Right click on an exe, click properties
7) Click the rightmost tab, associate it with Wine.
8) Double-click .exe files from now on and be happy, as they will open in Wine forever and always.

Wine's configuration has improved a shitload. This means that you don't need to fuck around with special tweaks for most software... especially the old classics.

Anyway. I also have no religious objection to Windows. My employer is a Windows programming shop. I use Windows Server 2k3 for fancy games, as the OSS video card drivers for my hardware don't have shader support. (So, no TF2 or L4D... at least until the Gallium3D project matures.)

Thing 2:
Follow this train of documentation:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community
to
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwitchingToUbuntu/FromWindows
to
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoftwareFromOtherOperatingSystems

Maybe you'll say "Oh, but one has to *read* to make that work." *shrug* How does one learn to use a computer in the first place?

Thing 1:
I can see that you haven't used Ubuntu at any time in the past couple of years. Here's the -one time- process:

1) Click Applications->Add/Remove.
2) Type "Windows" in the search bar.
3) Click the check box next to the emulator that comes up.
4) Click the Apply button. Confirm your choices.
6) Right click on an exe, click properties
7) Click the rightmost tab, associate it with Wine.
8) Double-click .exe files from now on and be happy, as they will open in Wine forever and always.

Wine's configuration has improved a shitload. This means that you don't need to fuck around with special tweaks for most software... especially the old classics.

Anyway. I also have no religious objection to Windows. My employer is a Windows programming shop. I use Windows Server 2k3 for fancy games, as the OSS video card drivers for my hardware don't have shader support. (So, no TF2 or L4D... at least until the Gallium3D project matures.)

Thing 2:
Follow this train of documentation:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community
to
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwitchingToUbuntu/FromWindows
to
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoftwareFromOtherOperatingSystems

Maybe you'll say "Oh, but one has to *read* to make that work." *shrug* How does one learn to use a computer in the first place?

Thing 1:
I can see that you haven't used Ubuntu at any time in the past couple of years. Here's the -one time- process:

1) Click Applications->Add/Remove.
2) Type "Windows" in the search bar.
3) Click the check box next to the emulator that comes up.
4) Click the Apply button. Confirm your choices.
6) Right click on an exe, click properties
7) Click the rightmost tab, associate it with Wine.
8) Double-click .exe files from now on and be happy, as they will open in Wine forever and always.

Wine's configuration has improved a shitload. This means that you don't need to fuck around with special tweaks for most software... especially the old classics.

Anyway. I also have no religious objection to Windows. My employer is a Windows programming shop. I use Windows Server 2k3 for fancy games, as the OSS video card drivers for my hardware don't have shader support. (So, no TF2 or L4D... at least until the Gallium3D project matures.)

Thing 2:
Follow this train of documentation:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community
to
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwitchingToUbuntu/FromWindows
to
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoftwareFromOtherOperatingSystems

Maybe you'll say "Oh, but one has to *read* to make that work." *shrug* How does one learn to use a computer in the first place?

Challenge accepted.

Here's links to an Ubuntu CD.
http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download

I put my password in a plaintext file in my home directory.

Go

Sorry, I meant to say Jaunty included Eclipse 3.2.2. For that matter, Karmic is set to include Eclipse 3.2.2 as well.

I believe Fedora ships with the latest Eclipse in their repositories. But clearly debian and ubuntu don't.

Uh, Ubuntu absolutely includes Eclipse in it's repository (at least it's present in 9.04). I installed it just the other day, as a matter of fact.

Skipped a word there, didn't you?

Ubuntu Intrepid includes Eclipse 3.2.2. The latest version of Eclipse is Eclipse 3.5. Eclipse 3.3 was released just over two years ago, so no, 3.2.2 is nowhere near latest.

What - precisely - are the problems you see with IE 8?

It only runs on Windows. Running an operating system where security isn't an afterthought makes anti-virus almost unnecessary. If someone is looking for free anti-virus software that works, I'd point people to http://www.ubuntu.com/. All Linux and BSD variants (including OS X) have a better track record than Windows with any anti-virus software.

I think you fundamentally misunderstand what an OS does

And you're deliberately misunderstanding the parent. The term "OS" is commonly used to refer to not just the core OS, but the shell too. Probably more commonly than just the kernel and even user libraries.

For instance, from Ubuntu's home page: "Ubuntu is a community developed [sic], Linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers." Note that it does not say "Ubuntu is a community developed, Linux-based operating system, desktop environment, and set of applications..."