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...when are you going to drop the zero and get with the hero? yip yip.

The only thing that would be better than being able to run CS3 or even CS4 in wine? Running it natively in a *nix.

I think Mitch here forgot to add that Linux has its own Terminal Server Project (LTSP) and it is very well supported and as with _most_ versions of Linux it is free! As of version 5 of LTSP it is insanely easy to install and manage, if you want to check for yourself download the Alternate image of any Ubuntu flavor and hit F4 on the install screen select LTSP and go for gold! The docs are great and the help on IRC is fantastic. Here is a great intro: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/LTSPQuickInstall This guy is a tool... '/obvious'

The current version of Ubuntu is 8.10.

No, the current version of Ubuntu is "Jaunty Jackalope Alpha 3", and it can be found in the "Test Releases" section of their webpages [...]

How can you call that their current version? The only version mentioned on their home page is 8.04 LTS, and that is in the link to a press release. On their downloads page they list 8.04 and 8.10, and call the latter "the latest version".

There is no way you can call Jaunty the current version if it is linked neither from their home page nor their downloads page.

The current version of Ubuntu is 8.10.

No, the current version of Ubuntu is "Jaunty Jackalope Alpha 3", and it can be found in the "Test Releases" section of their webpages under the URL http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/ surrounded by boldfaced warnings like "This is still an alpha release. Do not install it on production machines."

That's the right way to release snapshots of alpha software.

You can find a complete and total permanent fix here or here. There are other sources, but you get the picture. We're 23 years into this Microsoft Malware problem and it's only getting worse.

Any other answer you get to this question is completely bogus.

Go Here or if you have some money to spend go here for a more user-friendly solution to your problem.

I knew you could install a deb from the browser... What I was referring to the fact is that we have tutorials all over the place like http://fosswire.com/2007/05/29/installing-and-configuring-lamp-on-ubuntu-part-1/ and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ApacheMySQLPHP that instruct users to do drop to the terminal and install the packages using sudo apt-get. I wasn't certain you could trigger an apt-get from the browser, but, other replies have shown that you can. So, given that this is the case, why do we have tutorials like this?

Having users download and install random debs from all over the place isn't necessarily a good idea for fairly obvious reasons. But, if you can set up a system with standard trusted software repositories (which is already done), it should be fairly safe to have users click a link that will cause a package from their already stored repository settings to be installed.

Of course you can do all this from Add/Remove Programs or from Synaptic from the administration menu. But I would argue that both are a lot more cumbersome (maybe it is just me), and hard to wade through than just clicking a link in the browser and it happening. Maybe that is just me.

There is an ongoing discussion about the possibility of porting Gnome 3 to use the Qt toolkit over at Ubuntu Forums.

There also exists an Ubuntu Brainstorm Idea with several possible solutions, with Solution #4: Change Qt to render using the Gtk widgets my favorite.

"I may need features you don't, and rather than having to hunt for them online and download a virus posing as a function... "

Man, if only there was some way of handing out files from a central trusted repository and doing some sort of hashing to see that they're what they should be. We could call that system "apt".

Also, for linux, I could get Puppy linux, or even just the
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD

But for the most part, most people agree that they'd like the system pre-loaded with software, hence the base distribution for most distros comes with goodies like Open Office.

In case anyone cares

tpm_tools is available in the ubuntu (intrepid at least repositories

and this post
https://www.grounation.org/index.php?2008/07/04/8-how-to-use-a-tpm-with-linux

also see http://sourceforge.net/projects/trousers and http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hardy/man1/tpm_version.1.html

No promises or guarantees of anything working or damage being done

http://packages.ubuntu.com/

I don't know if you've ever used Ubuntu, but this seems a lot harder than the "Add/Remove..." frontend in the Applications menu. Or Synaptic, for that matter.

If you haven't experienced a modern desktop-oriented Linux distro, you should give it a try. I think you'd be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to install software from the repositories.

Perhaps the volumes of help most commonly viewed should be reproduced in offline form for users by paid/trusted editors at Canonical.

You mean like the official book?

and also this one..

Furthermore, let's talk about the issue with the girl in Wisconsin putting her ISP CD in and not understanding why it doesn't work. Maybe a simple dialogue explaining to her that windows installers won't work on Ubuntu (flag disabled if wine is present)-- perhaps something like Apple's windows-mac equivalence guide would be helpful. Imagine that your users have no idea what to expect from your system.

Perhaps you should read Scott Richie's ideas. That's exactly what they're working on.

This is why Ubuntu is not ready for the mainstream- because their "community support" ideal is a rat's nest of dipshits who are working out of religious passion.

No it's because the reporter was a dipshit troll who put the words "Woman blames Ubuntu for missing online classes" (Finally changed to Dell) and then went on to give out her full name in the article.

Then in a later post the very same reporter is laughing about all the attention he got on his site. Yeah, anything to make a quick buck while ruining Abbie's life.

The story made national headlines on small techie sites as well as USA Today and Newsweek.com. So, really, truly, from the bottom of our sales department's heart...THANK YOU!!!!

http://addins.wkowtv.com/blogs/behindthenews/archives/84

and the so called "Ubuntu community" which you are so sure are the attackers and your comparison to Microsoft is absolute nonsense.

Just because some freedom douche sent in an email or phoned the studio doesn't mean they use Ubuntu. The reporter felt it necessary to cast the Ubuntu community all in the same light (again) in his post titled "Just how mean can Ubuntu users be?" where he goes trolling and name calling. Yeah, real professional.

What I don't get about your post is how you associate Ubuntu user to be Ubuntu Community. If I use Windows to play some games does that make me part of the Windows Community? There are over 10 Million Ubuntu users of course there are going to be some assholes however when I read that news about the women some of the comments said they didn't even use Ubuntu but hated how much misconstruing of facts there were.

There's only one reason why that news story got so much negative feedback and that's because it was posted on Digg, Slashdot and Reddit. Assholes of the internet. This story was never posted in the Ubuntu news letter which is in my opinion the Ubuntu community. Not like all these little shits on digg who think they are leet because they have linux and are standing up to the man to fight for open source freedom.

Try:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam

I'm not sure how OP found that other page....

Canonical is the company that produces Ubuntu.

Just like:
Microsoft is the company that produces Windows.
Apple is the company that produces OS X.


Ubuntu is the most popular desktop version of Linux, probably because there's a large focus on being user friendly. One of their main slogans is: "Linux for human beings".

This tread is going round in circles. It isn't fair to require that Linux load GDM (rather than just display a login window onto the frame buffer with out loading X, kind of like a bootsplash), while allowing MacOS X to display anything that look like a login window. Now maybe Mac OS X is at an equivalent stage in the boot process when it reaches the login window as Linux is when it reaches GDM, but it is very hard to define an equivalent stage of the boot process between two entirely different OS's. FYI, I suggested replacing the bootsplash with a tiny program like a login screen: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/10735/

Of course market share is a measure of how successful products are, not how we would like them to be

I'm assuming you mention this in the context of Emacs? If you're on Windows, you can set some variables in .emacs, see here. If you're on Linux, the behaviour depends on your console and/or X11 keymap settings. In Ubuntu (for example), there's a simple GUI to select how the AltGr (compose key) should behave. See here. You should be able to keep the benefits of AltGr for inputting special characters in other apps while using it as a right Alt in Emacs.

You will have to update your machine right away after installation. As you can see from the file dates at the bottom of the download page, the images are not updated after the initial release: http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.10/. Hence, *always* perform security updates immediately after installation.

I'm running 8.10 on a Dell Latitude D620, and the default settings already have one of the workarounds implemented. The laptop-mode-tools package workaround mentioned at Ubuntu's wiki has already been implemented. Lower the FUD meters.

There is work on this already being discussed how to make this better.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OneToOneLiveSupport

It should be noted however that I believe Ubuntu comes with IRC chat already installed, and when the program is run it auto connects to freenode and joins the #ubuntu channel.

Actually, you can build your Ubuntu install from the ground up if you so wish. There's a minimal install CD that provides the essentials and then lets you apt-get the rest. It's intended for computer that don't meet the requirements for the Live or Alternate CDs, but it works very well for this purpose as well.

Minimal CD

Disclaimer: I just made such an installation for an older computer. It flies and install size is just over a 1 gb with exactly what is needed and nothing more.

But if Microsoft had published this kind of data on users downloading habits, this would have been published under YRO.

Well, you do have to explicitly opt in in order to participate.

Clearly, then, the people that wrote the wipe manpage aren't working on an OS trying to establish its market credibility.

And that's their prerogative. I couldn't care less if they wrote a manpage that included ASCII-art pr0n.

People working for Red Hat and Novell are trying to establish the market credibility of Free Unix (or at least their brands of it). If Red Hat wants their manpages to sound professional, they should review and rewrite as necessary. It's (usually) allowed by the license. Same thing for Ubuntu if they want user-friendly manpages

Which is precisely my point. Ubuntu *is* trying to establish Linux's market credibility, and this paranoid delusion is included in the Ubuntu manpage for wipe.

Clearly, then, the people that wrote the wipe manpage aren't working on an OS trying to establish its market credibility.

And that's their prerogative. I couldn't care less if they wrote a manpage that included ASCII-art pr0n.

People working for Red Hat and Novell are trying to establish the market credibility of Free Unix (or at least their brands of it). If Red Hat wants their manpages to sound professional, they should review and rewrite as necessary. It's (usually) allowed by the license. Same thing for Ubuntu if they want user-friendly manpages

Which is precisely my point. Ubuntu *is* trying to establish Linux's market credibility, and this paranoid delusion is included in the Ubuntu manpage for wipe.

X is supposed to be bulletproof--it's supposed to at least get you to a working login screen no matter what. File a bug; the developers may not be aware of the situation. They'll likely ask for some more information and testing on your part, so please keep an eye on the report after you file it.

I know I'm asking you to do some work, but good bug reports are the primary means by which problems get fixed. The developers probably don't know that the system is broken on your hardware, because they don't have a copy of your hardware on which to test it. You're not just helping yourself out; you're helping everyone else who might run into the same problem in the future.

This post is TOTALLY offtopic. Really you need to split these up and file them as bug reports over on launchpad. I'll post a couple of comments answers but I'm not going to follow up on any of this (even if you answer any questions I ask).

- switching from dual display to presentation (clone) and back totally messes up x config, I have to uninstall and reinstall nvidea drivers

Talk to NVIDIA (Linux web forum) about this. It's their code you're running and they are probably the only ones who are willing to fix it.

- in dual screen mode, nautilus opens on the first display. I have to open terminal and run nautilus& to lunch it on the second display

You can't drag it? I don't quite understand...

- in dual screen mode, keyboard keeps focus in the previous screen. I have to minimize/maximize a windows on the "new" screen to move keyboard focus

Are you using desktop effects? (Do windows fade and slide etc?) If so this sounds like a bug in compiz...

- RDP client crashes X windows in some cases (it does not close the drop down list of used servers... and bang)

Hmm. I'm really curious now as to whether you are using compiz. Regardless your best bet with this one would be to be to see if you can capture a backtrace of the crash with debug symbols and to file a bug report against the RDP client (I'm guessing you're using tsclient) in launchpad.

- oh and NO it's not AN ERROR if I close the RDP window. If I want to reconnect, I will, don't hide under my active windows and bring RDP windows back in 30 seconds. That's just plain stupid.

I guess file an enhancement request on tsclient in launchpad.

- java and window decorations don't play well together (popups without buttons etc.)

I really would like to know whether you are using compiz. If you are I have a feeling this was a known "bug" in the Java bug database for a long time but the fix is not yet in Ubuntu.

- How about opening a connection to a new server in a new tab, not in a new nautilus window?

Hmm probably best to file an enhancement request over on the GNOME bugzilla.

- Flash stops working. I just see a gray square where flash is supposed to be.

64 bit Firefox using 32 bit Flash via nspluginwrapper I'm guessing. There is a 64bit Linux Flash plugin that is in very early beta that MAY work better for you (I've heard mixed things mind). Also make sure you're using Flash 10 whatever route you are taking.

- Firefox is not very stable.

Might be because of extensions or plugins or you may have found a problem page or your memory might be faulty or Firefox might be buggy or... You are going to have to sit down and capture the issue in Firefox this then file a bug report in launchpad.

- Windows would become gray and unresponsive when there's a lot of disk activity.

You're using compiz aren't you? The greying is compiz telling you that the window HAS become unresponsive! As to why this is happening on I/O it probably varies from program to program. Too little information to many possibilities to say more.

- I've seen ubuntu crash on my much more times than I've seen BSOD on the same HW.

Quite possible. I've seen Linux stable on some computers and fla

This post is TOTALLY offtopic. Really you need to split these up and file them as bug reports over on launchpad. I'll post a couple of comments answers but I'm not going to follow up on any of this (even if you answer any questions I ask).

- switching from dual display to presentation (clone) and back totally messes up x config, I have to uninstall and reinstall nvidea drivers

Talk to NVIDIA (Linux web forum) about this. It's their code you're running and they are probably the only ones who are willing to fix it.

- in dual screen mode, nautilus opens on the first display. I have to open terminal and run nautilus& to lunch it on the second display

You can't drag it? I don't quite understand...

- in dual screen mode, keyboard keeps focus in the previous screen. I have to minimize/maximize a windows on the "new" screen to move keyboard focus

Are you using desktop effects? (Do windows fade and slide etc?) If so this sounds like a bug in compiz...

- RDP client crashes X windows in some cases (it does not close the drop down list of used servers... and bang)

Hmm. I'm really curious now as to whether you are using compiz. Regardless your best bet with this one would be to be to see if you can capture a backtrace of the crash with debug symbols and to file a bug report against the RDP client (I'm guessing you're using tsclient) in launchpad.

- oh and NO it's not AN ERROR if I close the RDP window. If I want to reconnect, I will, don't hide under my active windows and bring RDP windows back in 30 seconds. That's just plain stupid.

I guess file an enhancement request on tsclient in launchpad.

- java and window decorations don't play well together (popups without buttons etc.)

I really would like to know whether you are using compiz. If you are I have a feeling this was a known "bug" in the Java bug database for a long time but the fix is not yet in Ubuntu.

- How about opening a connection to a new server in a new tab, not in a new nautilus window?

Hmm probably best to file an enhancement request over on the GNOME bugzilla.

- Flash stops working. I just see a gray square where flash is supposed to be.

64 bit Firefox using 32 bit Flash via nspluginwrapper I'm guessing. There is a 64bit Linux Flash plugin that is in very early beta that MAY work better for you (I've heard mixed things mind). Also make sure you're using Flash 10 whatever route you are taking.

- Firefox is not very stable.

Might be because of extensions or plugins or you may have found a problem page or your memory might be faulty or Firefox might be buggy or... You are going to have to sit down and capture the issue in Firefox this then file a bug report in launchpad.

- Windows would become gray and unresponsive when there's a lot of disk activity.

You're using compiz aren't you? The greying is compiz telling you that the window HAS become unresponsive! As to why this is happening on I/O it probably varies from program to program. Too little information to many possibilities to say more.

- I've seen ubuntu crash on my much more times than I've seen BSOD on the same HW.

Quite possible. I've seen Linux stable on some computers and fla

You may be able to mount ext3 as ext4, but you won't get the cool new features like extents. From Converting an ext3 filesystem to ext4, it is easy to enable these features without a reformat. You may want a plain ext3 /boot partition for compatibility with older versions of GRUB, but it looks like the GRUB for Jaunty will support ext4, so a separate /boot partition may not be necessary.

This is a truly disappointing news item. Instead of setting the bar higher and truly trying to reduce boot time, they have not done much more than shave seconds off the existing boot time.

I just checked, and it does seem that a fast boot time was one of the goals that Mark Shuttleworth set for Jaunty.

There are some specific goals that we need to meet in Jaunty. One of them is boot time. We want Ubuntu to boot as fast as possible - both in
the standard case, and especially when it is being tailored to a specific device. The Jackalope is known for being so fast that it's
extremely hard to catch, and breeds only when lightning flashes. Let's see if we can make booting or resuming Ubuntu blindingly quick.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2008-September/000481.html

Given that, I must confess that I'm also a bit disappointed that the boot time isn't closer to five seconds.

I love your work with the 5 second boot, and I look forward to that technology being implemented widely. On a modern super fast CPU with a solid-state hard drive, I should hope that a desktop computer could boot as fast as a netbook. (And I'd be willing to install Coreboot to get that speed.)

steveha

Here is a link to the download of the much improved operating system.

For example I will use OS X and Ubuntu with AWN. They both have a fancy dock. AWN has way more features then the Mac OS X Dock. However it isn't really that usable. Things such as if you run a new app. I want to right click the running application and say keep on dock. Or just being able to drag and drop an App into awn from your file system browser... And get the correct Icon. Being able to group all open windows of the same application together. I am not talking about eyecandy, (like the OS X animations when you zoom in) but actual usability that people tend to miss when trying to copy the idea.

You might want to check out Cairo Dock. I tried AWN for a while, but found it lacking; I think that Cairo Dock has most if not all the features you mention. If you're using Ubuntu, make sure to use the Cairo-Dock Repo, the version in the default repo is out of date and ridiculously buggy.

Incidentally, it's actually just as quick to type MS as it is M$, but only one of them is immature name-calling.

The other one is a painful, debilitating, incurable, chronic fatal disease.

But there is a cure.

Personally, my nomination would be still having to edit fstab as root to permanently mount a network share. Mapping a network drive is dead simple in Windows. It should be just as easy on Ubuntu.

You may want to suggest this improvement or report the behaviour as a bug.

Agree 100% with the parent. You should be using version control. In fact, its such a common issue that there's even a term for what the original poster is asking about:

VENDOR BRANCHES

Go google that now. You can find more information for your system here...

* In (a) CVS book
* In the SVN book
* One method of doing this in bzr

With git or mercurial, patch queue solutions are probably what you want - stgit or the newer TopGit for git, Mercurial Queues for mercurial. You want to use patch queues so that you have a clean idea of how to get from their code to your code - managing vendor code via merging branches means your code history is littered with merge info making your patches less clear to your maintainers.

(why would it ever make sense to launch the task manager minimized when the task bar becomes unresponsive at the drop of a hat when an app isn't responding?) that ultimately should have been found in testing and fixed before the product got out the door

*Walks up to the podium*

Whoa, whoa! Remember, they've only been working on Vista for the past 8ish years. You can't expect them to fix and implement *everything* in that short amount of time.

Let's look at some of the wonder features they've packed in over the past 8 years.

WinFS - Your filesystem is actually a database. Can you imagine how much time it takes to convert your operating systems IO API calls to get/set data from a SQL server? Dealing with full-text searching, writing conversion utilities to move from FAT32 or NTFS to WINFS, handling security, locking, etc... That's a lot of work.

Wha? They didn't? Oh.

Someone just told me that WinFS didn't actually make it into Vista. Sorry.

That's ok--we can always look at Enhanced IE - Ballmer said there would be a version of IE that's much better than IE 7 in Vista. It would have enhanced parental controls, better integration, and...what? Really? Shit. Uh, now I'm being told that they apparently just shipped Vista with IE7.

Well--what about palladium? It's supposed to be the "next generation" in secure computing and all that. I'm sure Microsoft devs spent years writing tons of code, while other devs spent years reviewing the security of it all to make sure your documen...What? You're kidd... *sigh* Ok--I guess palladium was nixed too.

Well, they certainly spent a lot of time making the interface look 'flashy' and shuffling a bunch of stuff around so you spend weeks re-learning where things are after the upgrade.

Oh--and they spent a lot of time taking stuff out too. Old code like HyperTerminal, the Messenger service, the 'Luna' theme, device profiles, IP over firewire, and IPX/SPX support.

Hell, no one ever uses terminal programs anymore. And the messenger service was only used by admins to send snarky popups to users from remote.

So quit your Vista bashin'. It took 8 years to rewrite the graphics system to support a 'flashy' interface that you spend weeks re-learning, and to remove some useful code. I'd like to see anyone else do better.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Click here to download a real replacement to previous versions of Windows.

Hi... I'm the asshole who posted the comment about the four horsemen.

Let me give you an example of why I think patents are not necessary for innovation in software:

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

When it comes to software, ideas are cheap and abundant. Patents make sense when they represent something that is difficult to come up with (a diesel engine for example) and that may involve years of R&D.

But if you read that list, you'll see that ideas (even good ones) cost almost nothing, and have no value on its own. People is willing to give the ideas for free for many reasons: Because they can benefit by having the idea implemented, because of personal pride, because of a sense of community.

So for example, a patent troll (person A) would patent a good but almost obvious idea like "Autoname screenshots to have date and time for hour, instead of just 'screenshot'". And then if he is successful he would sit on the patent and wait until person B comes up with the same idea in a context were person B can actually implement it. And then sue. That's holding back innovation, not encouraging.

On the other hand, you have that the idea is so simple and cheap that people is willing to give it for free: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/16850/

Hi... I'm the asshole who posted the comment about the four horsemen.

Let me give you an example of why I think patents are not necessary for innovation in software:

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

When it comes to software, ideas are cheap and abundant. Patents make sense when they represent something that is difficult to come up with (a diesel engine for example) and that may involve years of R&D.

But if you read that list, you'll see that ideas (even good ones) cost almost nothing, and have no value on its own. People is willing to give the ideas for free for many reasons: Because they can benefit by having the idea implemented, because of personal pride, because of a sense of community.

So for example, a patent troll (person A) would patent a good but almost obvious idea like "Autoname screenshots to have date and time for hour, instead of just 'screenshot'". And then if he is successful he would sit on the patent and wait until person B comes up with the same idea in a context were person B can actually implement it. And then sue. That's holding back innovation, not encouraging.

On the other hand, you have that the idea is so simple and cheap that people is willing to give it for free: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/16850/

I often see this kind of comment which either implies or explicitly states that linux has no problems with malware and needs no firewall.

How can this be? Are we to believe that the developers of linux had some magical insight unavailable to the windows developers which means that once software is installed it is prevented from doing anything which the user wouldn't want it to? Are we to believe that a linux machine doesn't respond to ping or doesn't have open ports or bugs in software which can cause it to be made to do unexpected things?

Really, this is not a troll.. Yah, I know, it kinda sounds like one.. It's just me wondering if all this apparent fanboyism is really just ppl who close their eyes and pretend to not see problems or if there really are no problems.

I would like to know. I'm thinking of switching over but feel uneasy without fifteen layers of firewall/antivirus/anti-spyware protection...

Since you sound sincere, I'll respond. Linux is generally more secure due to better default settings, no integrated browser in the os, better policing of code, more frequent updates, smaller marketshare, and system variation.

Ubuntu, for example installs with no open ports and gives you a user account that requires you to type in your password to do anything major (Vista now has these features). With a smaller marketshare, it's not as attractive to write a virus or malware since Windows is a much larger and easier target. With no 'patch day', there isn't a window of opportunity that an exploit can be planned for (say right after patch day... then you have a whole month available). Without an integrated browser in the OS- drive-by (simply visiting a page) infections aren't possible. Viruses and malware can't rely on the same apps to always be there (IE, Outlook/Outlook Express, MS Office). This page has a good write-up on some of the issues: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/security

That is not to say that Linux doesn't have security problems, it just has less of them.

If you want to do a test run, burn or order a free copy of an Ubuntu CD http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu (or another Linux distro with a Live CD option) and try it out (boot off the disk). It will run slower off of the CD but you can try it out without making any permanent changes to your PC. Or if you want to install, you could also make a dual boot setup. Try it for a while. If for some reason you have a problem, switch back.

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/16458

What? You mean you haven't checked www.HowToBuildYourOlderParentAComputerNotLivingInTheSameHousehold.com ???? Gosh.

I'd like to amend to my earlier statement. Since you already own the hardware, just download a copy of Ubuntu or plain vanilla Debian and install that. Get all the updates and relax. But if you plan on getting a new machine, an iMac is the way to go. http://www.ubuntu.com/ http://www.debian.org/

I think what SABDFL said is just about perfect. While I can appreciate being able to click a notification to go to the instant message I receive, I'll be far more likely to alt-tab to it instead.

I would like themes, though. I'm spoiled on Growl, check out my brainstorm idea... http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/15447/

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/15447/

The VirtualBox GUI is written with Qt, not GTK.

I'm using VirtualBox to run 32 bit Windows XP on a 64-bit Linux machine. VirtualBox 2.0 runs really well for me. I'm glad I can use an open-source package for this.

If you wanted your VM to have an IP and appear as if it is a real machine on the network many people used to have to follow the 100 odd lines of documentation here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VirtualBox#Networking

Now they can just start it and it works out of the box.

I'm willing to consider Debian Proper in exchange for a wee less Newbie-fying if that's what it takes to get a more coherent rolling experience.

Actually, I would recommend Testing. It is a little more up-to-date than Stable, and it is a better rolling release (make sure you remove the "lenny" and "lenny/security" entries from your /etc/apt/sources.list and replace them with "testing", because anything with a "lenny" label will eventually become stable.)

The interesting question becomes uBuntu vs. Debian proper. I'll have to do my research on that whole Proprietary-but-easy vs. Ultra-Free thing. But at least I'm hearing that the problems I am running into are not a mirage either.

Debian has non-free repositories. Here's a sample from my sources.list:
deb ftp://debian.osuosl.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
The part that says "unstable" is where you would insert "testing", and you add "contrib" and "non-free" to the end of the entry to enable those repositories. (and /. has made a link out of my URL, ignore the TLD in square brackets)

Your other note had the crucial remark that the next version of uBuntu is the one with OO3. To me, THAT is THE killer App I need, so I will plan my entire strategy around that. I think I'm slowly evolving into the decision to use that as a trial run, and then get the NEXT LTS release (whatever animal that comes out to) as my Park distro that I camp out on and "just do work".

I don't know if they have got OOo 3 into it at this time (it isn't yet in Debian Unstable, so probably not), but Jaunty had it's second Alpha release yesterday (hmm... not downloadable yet...maybe they need a few more hours to build the disc image?)

Installing Ubuntu or whatever on it seems like more of a performance hit than a properly optimized "off the shelf" NAS box, since they most likely don't run Dbus, GNOME, Hald, bluetooth or any other desktop software atop the basic kernel and networking services.

Just install the Server Edition instead of the Desktop Edition.

It is already mentioned on their homepage. Server is a minimal (headless) installation...

Linux has had a full-featured 64-bit Java plugin that even includes LiveConnect support for at least months via IcedTea, a special build by Red Hat of the official OpenJDK source tree. For example Ubuntu 8.10 ships this 64-bit plugin as the icedtea6-plugin package, which I have been using for the past 2 months. And, no, I am not talking about the GCJ or Blackdown Java implementations which are significantly more buggy or incomplete (lacks LiveConnect support).

What is new today is that Sun just released a development build of Java 6u12, build b02, which includes the 64-bit plugin. However technically we still have to wait for a couple months before 6u12 is officially released. But again you can already get a 64-bit plugin based on essentially the same source tree via IcedTea.