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and you can download it right here.

/me waves.

Yeah, terabyte media servers are cheaper and nicer every single day. And so easy to get, too. If you know where to look, a pair of 500GB IDE drives will run you about $200. Throw those in an older computer, make sure you've got plenty of cooling in the case, and top with a Linux distro of some kind. For best results with a Windows client PC, get DVD43 and the latest Handbrake to rip your collection. OSX just needs Handbrake, and Linux, I imagine, just needs dvd::rip.

Keep in mind these customers don't realize that something better is available for free. A fool and his money are soon parted...

I have one of those 'Universal Recovery Disks', it helps against spyware, virusses, malware or just plain broken hardware and you can still save your data:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

When anyone can download or order it for free.

When anyone can download or order it for free.

I read this with a twinge of curiosity. Vista Home Ultimate came on the new Dell system I received a couple months ago. While the novelty of Vista's graphical enhancements wore off quickly, my irritation at a litany of Vista bugs did not. They include:

  - Two year old Netgear 802.11g wireless card being virtually impossible to install
  - Crackling, popping audio in World of Warcraft (and other games) from the built in audio that defied repeated attempts to fix via driver upgrades
  --- Disabled said audio in BIOS, inserted Creative Sound Blaster 5.1 digital PCI card. Guess what? VISTA INCOMPATIBLE. Creative. THE standard. in.com.patible with Vista's DRM-heavy digital device list. Back to crackling, popping on board audio. So annoying I resorted to playing WoW with no sound.
  - ATI HDTv Wonder PCI card installation - wasted time. Windows Media Center could not tune ANYTHING with any degree of quality when the same card + antenna did brilliantly on my old Win XP box. Furthermore, exhaustive forum searching reveals that Media Center actually cripples the driver for the HD tuner, making it so that you can tune OTA content, OR CATV content, but NOT BOTH. You have to install a hacked up driver from some shady 3rd party website to use the full functionality of your TV card. Again, the ATI product does not appear on Microsoft's DRM-heavy "approved digital device" list.
  - On board gigabit ethernet adapter's network configuration would randomly disappear and have to be reconfigured when the computer was hard rebooted for any reason, including power outages, or video lockups, leading us to..
  - NVidia GForce 7300 PCI Express card included with machine worked flawlessly as delivered, BUT after Microsofts last "patch Tuesday" a few weeks ago, the video would not 'wake up' after the machine had been put to sleep. The "sleep mode" suspend worked great until the last security patch.. It makes no sense to me either. After the patch, the video would not wake with the rest of the system, forcing a hard poweroff/restart, causing the network setting to disappear.. HALF the time.
  -

  So, two nights ago, after backing up, I took my freshly burned Ubuntu 7.04 cd, took a deep breath, and installed. I can get around in Linux, but I am by no means an expert. My installation was smooth. In less than 90 minutes, using Automatix, I had every plugin, driver, and application I could ever want to make my system perform properly. Nvidia OpenGL driver automatically configured, all video/flash plugins for Firefox, DVD playback, the whole 9 yards. Additionally, using the step-by step copy and paste instructions from the ubuntu website, I had Wine installed, and had configured it properly to run World of Warcraft.

    So here I sit. World of Warcraft runs smoothly. Audio is CRYSTAL CLEAR, my Soundblaster Live 5.1 card is supported, no popping, clicking audio. I play the game at 1680x1050 with almost all detail settings turned on at a very smooth framerate. I visit CNN.com and view all embedded video seamlessly, no plugin errors or other irritants. When I need to type papers for college, I have OpenOffice. Ipod works flawlessly with podcast management program.

Why do I need Vista again?

------

Make World of Warcraft work flawlessy in Ubuntu with Wine:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WorldofWarcraft

PC World's noob-friendly "Seven Post-Install Tips for Unbuntu 7.04" :
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130923-page,1-c, linux/article.html

Why should the Ubuntu organization put any effort whatsoever into convincing irrational people to use their operating system? They're not selling anything. Advertising is for a company that wants to convince irrational people to buy their product so that they can make lots of money. Ubuntu doesn't want to make lots of money. Based on Ubuntu's actions, I'm guessing it's enough for them to make a great system and then let the people who are smart enough to appreciate it enjoy it.

From their About us: Ubuntu aims to be the most widely used Linux system.

If that's their aim, then convincing irrational people to use it seems a pretty important activity.

First, Whistler != XP, and Longhorn != Vista. Whistler and Longhorn were pre-release code names.
Second, Feisty Fawn *is* Ubuntu 7.04.

"In contrast, the Microsoft OSes contain no official mention of their codenames after public release"
Just go to http://www.msdn.com/ and search for "longhorn".

Wait, MSDN is part of the OS? Fine, then go to wiki.ubuntu.com and search for "feisty fawn".

Is this a ridiculous argument? Sure. I'm not against having silly names for Ubuntu releases, even more so because they're not given by a marketing team intending to boost sales or PR. Nor am I against any of the MS code names; I would've been happy as a clam if they had kept the Whistler name.

"The Ubuntu names are branded and visible in the OS after release,"

I challenge your assertion. Please go to http://www.ubuntu.com/ and tell where do you see the "feisty fauns and friends". All I can see is "Ubuntu Desktop Edition" and "Ubuntu Server Edition". The "Download Now!" button friendly explains me I'll go for "Ubuntu 7.04 The power of free software. On your laptop, desktop and server. Smart. Secure. Easy". They go further and explain me how long Ubuntu 7.04 and/or Ubuntu 6.06 LTS will be supported.

But then, they have a "search" box. If I explicitly intro "feisty" on it all references are about test releases or clearly indicate it as a nickname after the release number (just like you'll find Microsoft Windows XP "Whistler" or Microsoft Windows Vista "Longhorn").

On the other hand, I don't remember seing the codename neither on Ubuntu's installer nor on the default desktop.

"In contrast, the Microsoft OSes contain no official mention of their codenames after public release"

Just go to http://www.msdn.com/ and search for "longhorn".

The truth is that Ubuntu makes no more "official mention" to their distribution's codenames nor they are any more "intended to be used in any official capacity" than Microsoft's.

Try this: Go to http://www.ubuntu.com/ and find a reference to "Feisty Fawn" in the marketing material for the release version (rather than the old dev documents in the Wiki). There may be a slip or two, but I couldn't find one in a couple minutes of looking. Generally the development code names are only used for development.

Go ahead: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DevelopmentCodeNames

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DevelopmentCodeNames

The addition to xorg.conf doesn't work. Xorg.0.log even says it's ignored, right below the line that says my "UseEvents" is ignored.

I see these around line 245 in Xorg.0.log:
(II) Module extmod: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
        compiled for 7.2.0, module version = 1.0.0
        Module class: X.Org Server Extension
        ABI class: X.Org Server Extension, version 0.3 ...
(II) Loading extension XVideo
(II) Loading extension XVideo-MotionCompensation

But later in the same file I see this:
(WW) NV(0): Option "UseEvents" is not used
(WW) NV(0): Option "XvMCSurfaces" is not used
(==) RandR enabled
(II) Initializing built-in extension (a long list of extensions excluding the XVideo and XvMC extensions).

From:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV/Install/W hatNext/Fesity_D
It seems I need to replace the contents of /etc/X11/XvMCConfig with "libXvMCNVIDIA_dynamic.so.1". Let's try that.

Who still calls Vista "Longhorn"? Hardly anyone.

Who still refers to Ubuntu 7.04 as "Feisty Fawn"? Quite a few people. Like Ubuntu's ShipIt page. The download URLs for packages and ISOs say "Feisty". It's often referred to by users as "Feisty".
But I haven't ran into anyone that says they're using "Longhorn" when they are really using Vista or Windows Server 2008.

Wait for Gutsy and use clive...

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty main restricted

Already slashdotted. Editors, a better link to the text would have been this one on the Ubuntu mailing list.

"Hardy Heron"

This is one thing that drives me crazy about Ubuntu... these names are elitist and completely unintuitive. There is no obvious relationship between the version numbers and the names.

Somebody on the forums many mention a solution for "Feisty", but a new Ubuntu user may not understand that the solution will work on 7.0x, but WON'T WORK on Ubuntu 6.06. In order to know that "Feisty Fawn" is Ubuntu 7.0something, I have to know Ubuntu, dig around unmaintained Wikis, look it up on Wikipedia. I shouldn't need to waste this time-- I just need to get the damn thing working.

For example, do you see the phrase "Feisty Fawn" or "Gutsy whatever" listed anywhere on the top level support sites at ubuntu.com? No. Why not?

https://help.ubuntu.com/
http://www.ubuntu.com/

Somewhere, deep in the document ion you may find a map of Names-to-versions. But if you need a map just to achieve step one, your documentation has failed.

"Hardy Heron"

This is one thing that drives me crazy about Ubuntu... these names are elitist and completely unintuitive. There is no obvious relationship between the version numbers and the names.

Somebody on the forums many mention a solution for "Feisty", but a new Ubuntu user may not understand that the solution will work on 7.0x, but WON'T WORK on Ubuntu 6.06. In order to know that "Feisty Fawn" is Ubuntu 7.0something, I have to know Ubuntu, dig around unmaintained Wikis, look it up on Wikipedia. I shouldn't need to waste this time-- I just need to get the damn thing working.

For example, do you see the phrase "Feisty Fawn" or "Gutsy whatever" listed anywhere on the top level support sites at ubuntu.com? No. Why not?

https://help.ubuntu.com/
http://www.ubuntu.com/

Somewhere, deep in the document ion you may find a map of Names-to-versions. But if you need a map just to achieve step one, your documentation has failed.

Linux runs pretty well on the Macbook Pro's: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook

I have mine setup to dual boot using boot camp. I'd like to eliminate OS X altogether though and I think people have found ways to use grub instead of boot camp. I gave up my 30in monitor before I had a chance to get Linux to work with it, but it should work on it fine using Xinerama. It'd take a bit of tweaking of the xorg.conf though, you won't be able to just plug it in and go with it yet.

Also check out the Apple Intel Ubuntu forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=211

You can do this right now with vanilla ubuntu, it's how I set up my last mythbox. Follow the guides here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV_Feisty.

You basically apt-get install mythtv-backend-master and/or ubuntu-mythtv-frontend.

Being a normal Ubuntu install it makes it very easy to install things like Xine or K3B or whatever else you decide you need at a later date.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

http://www.ubuntu.com/

No, it's not funny.

However, there is an easy fix for any issue you have with Windows Genuine (dis)Advantage. It's called Ubuntu. If you use Microsoft software, you deserve what you get.

Piracy, my rear. If you choose not to verse yourself sufficiently in Linux usage to find/run legal commercial/FOSS games like the rest of us, fine. No need to get pissy 'bout it.

Does Ubuntu install selinux and a policy in a default installation, or is it necessary to add it later?

I've had to reboot Ubuntu at least five times in the past five weeks.

will this help ?

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/20 07-August/001510.html

If you had bothered to read the originating mail ( https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/20 07-August/001510.html ), you would have seen that these servers were hacked through unpatched 3rd party web-applications running on these servers - namely:

art-web, gallery, drupal, phpmyadmin, wordpress, postnuke, phpbb,
smf, moodle, planet, aspseek, moin, taskfreak, cms made simple,
mediawiki, ...

Your argument is whiny and offtopic.

I wonder if these are the same servers that Ubuntu users get updates from.

They're not. The repository servers are controlled and maintained by Canonical. These were community-run servers for hosting Local Community Teams. You can take the tin foil hat off now.

Firstly these servers were not "Canonical Hosted" as the anonymous readers suggests. They were hosted in a DC which Canonical paid for, but the community maintained them. So Canonical system admins had very little to do with them.

My site - http://screencasts.ubuntu.com was one of them that was affected, so I was of course concerned that there might be some data loss. I only use SCP to copy files up to the site, and logon with my ssh key, so don't think that all Ubuntu community members are using FTP, weak passwords and really old software, it only takes _one_ though to naff it up for everyone else.

The Canonical system admins (on top of the work they already do) migrated the services from those servers to their own DC very quickly. My site went down on Tuesday and was back by Friday. For free hosting and oodles of bandwidth, I'm happy with that downtime - for a community site.

The article itself doesn't mention a lot more than the summary. What really puzzles me is this part: "and no upgrades past breezy due to problems with the network cards and later kernels."

From the Breezy Badger release notes: Linux 2.6.12.6

So how come there's a problem in getting that driver going under 2.6.22 (for example)?

Yes, the Linux kernel allows end users to do whatever they want. But what you can't do, is to take the linux kernel, add your own closed source, and distribute the end product. This is what VMware are doing.

You have seen the source then, I take it? No? Speculation, then.

And many kernel developers consider all closed source modules to be illegal

They can consider it whatever they want, but what about Ubuntu distributing with preinstalled (nVidia) closed-source drivers? Again, devs can whine and complain but I'm sure nVidia lawyers gave it a good thinking and Shuttleworth did too ...

Where is the software support, for one?

You guys keep waiting for MS to fuck up. Give me a reason to get rid of them first!

No matter what step Novell takes, till the deal with Microsoft is alive, I'll never touch or recommend this distro. Why AMD, IBM/Lenovo or others push openSUSE they doesn't like Debian's "Social Contract" or The Ubuntu Promise ?

Ubuntu doens't have any analogue to Red Hat's Kickstart or SuSE's YaST when it comes to creating standard workstation or server configurations for automatic installation.

"Which, assuming you want to support IE users, means no."

You can support IE users ... just inlcude links to the download pages for Opera, Firefox, Netscape, Safari, etc.

Better yet, give them full support - have them download a bootable linux distro to replace Vista Millennium.

Nobody cared.

Well, apart from Simply RISC, who used the design to build a single-core chip (S1) for embedded applications.

And Polaris Micro in China, who are doing the same.

And David Miller & friends, who made Linux run on it.

And Canonical who support Ubuntu running on it.

And the other Linux distros picking it up.

And... Oh, sorry, you were just trolling, right?

The Ubuntu text-mode nstaller does support Kickstart-based automated installs.

1. Manageability: all custom and homebrew solutions aside, I am unaware of a framework that allows corporate system administrators to change a setting on all of their Linux PC's at the same time (or, enforce a certain configuration). On Windows this is done through GPO's or third-party tools (SMS, Altiris, ...). A uniform desktop is important in any serious environment (or do you really want to overload your company's helpdesk with 200 different Linux configurations?).

2. Support: when things go wrong, you can point your finger at Microsoft and ask a $1500 dollar-per-day Microsoft consultant to come fix whatever is broken.

3. Windows administrators are abundant: managing a Linux server and desktop park might be a piece of cake for Slashdot-readers, but on the job market, a worthy knowledge of Linux (that goes beyond the GUI installation of SuSe or plainly using Ubuntu) is hard to find. On the other hand, Windows administrators come in thousands and are replaceable. This is important for IT managers who don't want to rely on 2 or 3 people with a very specific knowledge (from a job-market point of view).

Medibuntu is a much safer way to install codecs and some third-party apps than Automatix.

The 'illegal' part of this thing is nothing but a footnote.

The important thing is that it's a stupidly dangerous (to your system) piece of software, that most members of the Ubuntu community are trying to inform everyone about. A lot of community sites swear by it, and when anyone argues they give the 'it works fine for me' argument.

This is not the mentality we want to have as a linux community. The automatix team refuses to make their software better, and launced a few all-out assaults on the communities that warn against it. Even going as far as to say (on their website, up until a few months ago) if you go ask help for automatix in their IRC channel, and claim that the people in the ubuntu channel sent you there, they (automatix team) won't help you. Which is stupid in and of itself, but that's the mentality that the automatix people have exhibited time and time again.

Because of this, and in some random attempt to clear their piece of software (and argue about it's proper terminology whether 'package manager' or 'packaging script' or whatever), and to get their lead developer (arnieboy) unbanned from the ubuntu forums (for trolling, more or less), they went to the Forum Council and petitioned, the forum council rejected some stuff, and said that they shouldn't make a decision on the technical merits (since they're not technically qualified or whatever). I imagine this is the fruit of their lack-of-verdict, someone higher up (who was qualified to assess its technical merits) finally took a semi-official look.

I wish I had links for the meeting, here it is: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeetingLogs/ForumCouncil/2 007May18/Logs

Red Hat has a solid desktop as it is, much more stable than Ubuntu especially if you know how to configure it right. The majority of the installations I have done over the years have been a Red Hat project because of its stability.

Secondly, Ubuntu's support is expensive even for Microsoft standards. RHEL has plans that range from 80 USD (Basic Desktop) to 2,500 USD (Premium Server). It's much more competitive than the Microsoft range of products especially for businesses. Commercial support for Ubuntu starts at 250 USD per year all the way up to 4,000 USD (pricing list). Even for basic 9x5 support, Red Hat is substantially better priced than Ubuntu.

To say to a business owner that they have to receive support from someone they will never see who will never give them a guarantee to make sure the product works is just stupid. "As Is" is a horrible business model especially for businesses that can't afford to take risks. Like another post said, businesses like accountability especially when something goes wrong. If the support in which they had paid for fixes the problem then there isn't a problem and there is less litigation overall. I'm glad that they are focusing on a competitive product especially in the form of a desktop distribution. It's good to hear that someone within the Linux community is starting to do something with legalizing certain video formats. For a community to depend on software from Microsoft in order to run various types of media is weird. For a community that tries to spend so much time trying to make alternative ways in doing the same thing as other operating systems it kind of makes me indifferent that they haven't done this already. All in all, it shows that someone is going in the right direction by taking an initiative to fix the problem.

Last but not least, Red Hat has been established long before Ubuntu ever gained popularity. Ubuntu gained popularity around the 5.10 release and even then it was buggy. Red Hat has been around for years and has always maintained a consistent amount of popularity throughout that time. They are a good business but if you like to have a system in which you can do what you what, experiment with the latest software, my suggestion would be to compile Linux from source. If you don't want to do that then Ubuntu would be a decent alternative especially for college students and other people who can't necessarily afford the money but can afford the time. All in all, there is the business perspective as opposed to the personal perspective and they are two very different things. You can't assume that you can make a product that covers both sides that makes everyone happy. As long as there are reasonable alternatives then it helps cover a variety of concerns for a varying range of people.

Red Hat has a solid desktop as it is, much more stable than Ubuntu especially if you know how to configure it right. The majority of the installations I have done over the years have been a Red Hat project because of its stability.

Secondly, Ubuntu's support is expensive even for Microsoft standards. RHEL has plans that range from 80 USD (Basic Desktop) to 2,500 USD (Premium Server). It's much more competitive than the Microsoft range of products especially for businesses. Commercial support for Ubuntu starts at 250 USD per year all the way up to 4,000 USD (pricing list). Even for basic 9x5 support, Red Hat is substantially better priced than Ubuntu.

To say to a business owner that they have to receive support from someone they will never see who will never give them a guarantee to make sure the product works is just stupid. "As Is" is a horrible business model especially for businesses that can't afford to take risks. Like another post said, businesses like accountability especially when something goes wrong. If the support in which they had paid for fixes the problem then there isn't a problem and there is less litigation overall. I'm glad that they are focusing on a competitive product especially in the form of a desktop distribution. It's good to hear that someone within the Linux community is starting to do something with legalizing certain video formats. For a community to depend on software from Microsoft in order to run various types of media is weird. For a community that tries to spend so much time trying to make alternative ways in doing the same thing as other operating systems it kind of makes me indifferent that they haven't done this already. All in all, it shows that someone is going in the right direction by taking an initiative to fix the problem.

Last but not least, Red Hat has been established long before Ubuntu ever gained popularity. Ubuntu gained popularity around the 5.10 release and even then it was buggy. Red Hat has been around for years and has always maintained a consistent amount of popularity throughout that time. They are a good business but if you like to have a system in which you can do what you what, experiment with the latest software, my suggestion would be to compile Linux from source. If you don't want to do that then Ubuntu would be a decent alternative especially for college students and other people who can't necessarily afford the money but can afford the time. All in all, there is the business perspective as opposed to the personal perspective and they are two very different things. You can't assume that you can make a product that covers both sides that makes everyone happy. As long as there are reasonable alternatives then it helps cover a variety of concerns for a varying range of people.

I've never heard of Linux Terminal Server, but Ubuntu definitely uses "LTS" to mean "Long Term Support." From their site, "The 'LTS' version of Ubuntu receives long-term support. 3 years for desktop versions and 5 years for server versions."

Linux is already running and certified for Niagara.