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I was able to use it to bootstrap my Gentoo install until I could install a custom kernal with STAT-ATAPI enabled.

Thanks for the tips. I switched xorg.conf from the nvidia driver to the nv driver according to the advice of another page (lost in time), which didn't also specify changing NvAGP to agree with the OSS driver. I tried to change back to the (proprietary) nvidia driver, but "modprobe nvidia" doesn't find the driver. Also, the Ubuntu Nvidia HOWTO (revised 8/17/05) says 'Renderaccell has a bug. Memory leak and crashes. Disable it in xorg.conf in the section "Device".' (by setting its Option to "false").

Then I started from the instructions in another post in this thread, and successfully installed the nvidia driver module, and had some more luck. Those instructions also said to set RenderAccell to "true". I'm experimenting with the different states.

I've tried a number of different distros, and the two I like the best are Ubuntu and ELX. ELX is more Windows-like, it even has wine (windows emulator) already set up so you can run most windows programs, but it's not as popular, so if you run into problems, it'll be rather hard to find to find help for it. I use Ubuntu as my main OS. It's pretty simple to use, and there are some good websites to get you going on it.

As for games, it depends on what kind of games you like to play. If you like puzzle games, you'll find 8 gazillion of them for linux. If you like FPSs, UT2004 runs on linux. Many other games will also run under wine. I'm a gamer too, but I tend to stick to consoles so I haven't tried many games under linux.

Pretty much all files that work with windows will work in linux, as long as you have a program that reads them. MP3s are rather universal, and almost every linux distro comes with an MP3 player, usually XMMS, which is a lot like winamp. The default office program in most distros is Open Office, which also runs under windows and works with MS Office files. As for compression, well, I'm still a little bit of a n00b myself, so I'm not quite sure. I know in Ubuntu I can easily compress stuff to tar.gz format in the file manager, and I can open .rar and .zip files. I'm sure I could install a more elaborate compression program, but I haven't really found a need for that yet.

I'ld recommend you look around at other websites too, and find out more about linux in general. TuXfiles has some pretty good articles and guides, and I;m sure you can google around for more stuff. Or you can just email me. Good luck.

"LiveCD still doesn't give them storage ..."

You can write on an HFS+ partition in =>2.6.10 series Linux kernels. An Ubuntu Hoary Live CD/DVD would suit these kids well. Just sudo modprobe hfsplus and you're good to go.

You can also order nicely packed Ubuntu CD's for free. These kids should order these discs and give them to everyone in their school.

If I'm being exploited, then damn, being exploited is kind of nice. I'm being paid to work on a project for an organization that I want to see succeed. I get to work whatever hours I want instead of being forced into a 9 to 5 schedule. This allows me to take classes and do my Summer of Code project at the same time. I also get to do something that's meaningful to me, instead of IT gruntwork or whatever an normal company would have me doing. I use open source software myself, and I've been looking to get involved. Now I have my foot in the door. My project will be used by (at least) hundreds of thousands of people come October when the next Ubuntu release goes out. I think that's pretty nifty. To top it all off, I get paid to do this. The money Google is giving is more than many of the internships I looked at, so I don't know why you're saying it's very little money.

I know that saying bad things about Google is the in thing these days to make yourself look like a free-thinker, but there's absolutely no way you can twist their Summer of Code program into a bad thing.

I like Ubuntu alot. It's an easy-to use Debian-based distro.

Using the custom style sheet functionality

http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kubuntu-users/200 5-May/000831.html

This was an interesting machine, until I got to the video out port. Not only do they not include a VGA or DVI port on the back, but they make you buy a dongle if you want video out to a monitor! That is really the only bad thing I have to say about this, as it will run Ubuntu! http://ubuntu.com/

This is great news for Ubuntu. Up until now its fans knew it was in good hands (Mark has a lot of money) but we didn't know his level of commitment. Now we do. I think part of the reason the foundation was made was because of Ubuntu's success as a new distro (few have their name so known in such a short time) and because there will be a push in the future to get Ubuntu in places that demand stability in organization- businesses and schools. In particular, the next release Breezy will begin Edubuntu a goal of Mark to turn Ubuntu into an OS that can meet the needs of schools.

Hopefully this will once and for all establish Ubuntu as one of the big players in the Linux scene, and further legitimize its claim to the great Debian heritage.

I personally hope that some of this money will be spent on creating more bounties to create some of the GUI tools the distro currently lacks.For now this is a great thing.

Hip Hip Hoary and long live Ubuntu!

This is great news for Ubuntu. Up until now its fans knew it was in good hands (Mark has a lot of money) but we didn't know his level of commitment. Now we do. I think part of the reason the foundation was made was because of Ubuntu's success as a new distro (few have their name so known in such a short time) and because there will be a push in the future to get Ubuntu in places that demand stability in organization- businesses and schools. In particular, the next release Breezy will begin Edubuntu a goal of Mark to turn Ubuntu into an OS that can meet the needs of schools.

Hopefully this will once and for all establish Ubuntu as one of the big players in the Linux scene, and further legitimize its claim to the great Debian heritage.

I personally hope that some of this money will be spent on creating more bounties to create some of the GUI tools the distro currently lacks.For now this is a great thing.

Hip Hip Hoary and long live Ubuntu!

> The truth is that sound is autodetected and automatically set up by Ubuntu at install time for the vast majority of hardware.

"However, many third party applications not in Ubuntu *main* aren't designed to use esd to access the card." (emphasis done be me)
https://wiki.ubuntu.com//RestrictedFormats#head-5b b92da29c02203193ac2fa6d2cfb90064959bec

The part about no autodetecting of sound hardware in Windows is also wrong. If drivers are available, the sound hardware works (we can now discuss about driver availability on the Windows CD, but that's not the point).

> I don't know why you had to do that either. Because you don't. Choose Settings > Repositories from the menu. Are you making up lies on purpose?

"To install Hoary, you may edit your /etc/apt/sources.list configuration file to replace all instances of 'warty' with 'hoary.' You can then go aboutupdating and upgrading to Hoary with apt, aptitude or synaptic as you would normally."
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GuideToHoary

> The truth is that sound is autodetected and automatically set up by Ubuntu at install time for the vast majority of hardware.

"However, many third party applications not in Ubuntu *main* aren't designed to use esd to access the card." (emphasis done be me)
https://wiki.ubuntu.com//RestrictedFormats#head-5b b92da29c02203193ac2fa6d2cfb90064959bec

The part about no autodetecting of sound hardware in Windows is also wrong. If drivers are available, the sound hardware works (we can now discuss about driver availability on the Windows CD, but that's not the point).

> I don't know why you had to do that either. Because you don't. Choose Settings > Repositories from the menu. Are you making up lies on purpose?

"To install Hoary, you may edit your /etc/apt/sources.list configuration file to replace all instances of 'warty' with 'hoary.' You can then go aboutupdating and upgrading to Hoary with apt, aptitude or synaptic as you would normally."
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GuideToHoary

But isn't this a symptom of open source software, in that everybody is able to do it their way? With M$ and Apple, we get an operating system that works the way they want it to. With GNU/Linux, you get to choose a distribution which works the way you want it to. And if you can't find one that does that exactly, you have the opportunity to do it yourself.

Obviously in the real-world (!) we all just want something that works the way we want it to, without having to scratch around every distribution. Personally, I think that Ubuntu does it for me.

> never use Microsoft products, even on Windows machines, if you have an equivalent.

Hear hear ! That sir is the single best piece of advice you can give a Windows user.

Personally though I'd go one step further by simply recommending that you install Ubuntu Linux as a "one stop" solution.

This is THE LAW for the mates machines that I manage :)

Seriously... Ubuntu/Kubuntu are that good that, for the average computer "user" (i.e. surf web, listen to MP3s, make compilation CDs, manage & print pictures from Digicam, view pr0n, watches the odd DVD etc.) there's no longer any reason not to switch them. Hell, import thir bookmarks and mail, set up some desktop shortcuts and some of them hardly even notice the change.

People should really start asking themselves why they put up with spending 80% of the time on their computer trying to keep the damned thing free from spyware/adware/viruses ? Using Windows is like driving a car where you have to stop every 200 feet to check the oil, water, tire pressure, petrol etc. then go round the body work to tighten every single nut & bolt before you can drive off again (that's if the damned thing will start)

Still it's your time... Personally I'd rather spend the time DOING something with my PCs.

Luminocity Howto

Honestly the only thing I got out of Luminocity is disappointment- its just a toy and I wanted a replacement for Metacity. It just a tech demo....I wish I wouldn't have seen it because now I believe it will take years (or 3-4 releases) to get Gnome to do that. Its not usable as a Window Manager...its just to show Window's fans and say "look what Linux can do."

As far as eye candy in the near future goes, the best thing we have in Linux is xcompmgr. I bought a cheap Nvidia card just to try it out...and it is awesome (well..the fading is..drop shadows are overrated to me). For those that complain that xcompmgr is slow..well you don't have an Nvidia card do you? This program was finally the straw that broke my back and convinced me to toss my ATI card. The $30 bucks spent on a 5200 fx was well worth it....

To bad xcompmgr is only a little more stable that Windows ME or I would use it full time. So personally I care less about Luminocity in the Universe and more about a new Xorg with a more stable (PLEASE!!!) xcompmgr....

http://udu.wiki.ubuntu.com/XEyeCandy?highlight=(Di stroSpec)

Yellow Dog is the version that I last knew that would run on it. You can also install many linux apps directly within OSX. (No clue how... I am strictly a "PC" user.

Ubuntu (Gnome), and KUbuntu also have Mac versions. Hope this helps. :)

http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/5.04/

Look for the Live CD for PPC.

HTH

"They fail to deliver useful drivers for *nix. X.Org developers should be able to implement all what they want, and for that they need better-documented hardware. Only then will we have a real eyecandy, hardware-accelerated desktop à la Quartz Extreme."

No, only when you realize that NVIDIA's Linux drivers already support XRender acceleration and turn on the feature in xorg.conf will you have a real eyecandy, hardware-acceleated desktop à la Quartz Extreme.

Seriously. Ubuntu even has a Wiki page:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DropShadows

(They mention the open-source ATI drivers that support Radeon 9000, but the NVIDIA drivers work as well)

Suppose you want to download Ubuntu linux and try installing it. It's rapidly becoming one of the most popular linux distributions, and you want to see what it's all about.

So, you visit that page. Hmm... you can download the single CD installer OR a single live CS. They also have a single DVD installer, which functions as both, and also includes all the packages which aren't on either CD.

How do you download that DVD image? Bittorrent. Don't just take my word for it. Go ahead, click on that link and see for yourself. Bittorrent is the ONLY way to obtain the larger DVD version.

Personally, I've resisted trying out bitottent until now. But a friend of mine, who's going back to school (and only has dialup), is taking a linux class and wants to try out some of the major distros. The DVD is looking like a much better option than the single CD, where he'll have to apt-get stuff using very slow dialup (and they live in a rural area with low quality lines, so disconnections are common).

So there you have it. Not only a bonafide legal use of bittorrent, but bittorrent is the ONLY WAY to obtain that DVD image for my friend.

Glad to see it worked out for you. You may be aware of these but these are good Ubuntu resources. Maybe they can help with your problem:

Ubuntu Wiki
Ubuntu Beginner Guide
Ubuntu Discussion Forums

Cheers!

A lot of work has been done on the sound.

In case you hadn't heard, AMD64 distros have been abailable for a while now. Want something Debian-based? Try Ubuntu Hoary, which has been out for several months now.

ISO for AMD64

In case you hadn't heard, AMD64 distros have been abailable for a while now. Want something Debian-based? Try Ubuntu Hoary, which has been out for several months now.

ISO for AMD64

I have a laptop running Red Hat 9 because Fedora 1, Fedora 2, Fedora 3 and SuSE 9.x all have so many major problems with their basic installation that the machine is unusable. My next laptop will be an Apple machine.

Obviously, you're free to do whatever you want and I don't know if there's any particular reason for you to keep using Red Hat-based distros. But if you just want to use Linux in your laptop I seriously recommend Ubuntu. For what I've seen, it's the best distro for laptops and actually, one of their next release (Oct. 2005) main priorities is to support every single laptop in the market made by Dell, HP, Toshiba and IBM (I don't know what you are using). You can get more details here.

Good luck.

I have a laptop running Red Hat 9 because Fedora 1, Fedora 2, Fedora 3 and SuSE 9.x all have so many major problems with their basic installation that the machine is unusable. My next laptop will be an Apple machine.

Obviously, you're free to do whatever you want and I don't know if there's any particular reason for you to keep using Red Hat-based distros. But if you just want to use Linux in your laptop I seriously recommend Ubuntu. For what I've seen, it's the best distro for laptops and actually, one of their next release (Oct. 2005) main priorities is to support every single laptop in the market made by Dell, HP, Toshiba and IBM (I don't know what you are using). You can get more details here.

Good luck.

You can ever try out Kino if you wish. Whatever. The best thing about Linux is that you can take it with you to almost any platform you touch.

You can ever try out Kino if you wish. Whatever. The best thing about Linux is that you can take it with you to almost any platform you touch.

Whatever happened here? Remember a little over ten years ago there was a new exciting operating system out there? It was called Linux. Where is that now? It was an idea, something cool, something...

Redhat tried to make money and in the end all they are doing is what Sun still offers except they got the labor for free. Now they have a successful business model and their own programmers and their own corporate jets.... They are trying to profit on a base of sharing, goodwill and knowledge.

The GNU License today? A legal document that tries to be fair but is being picked apart by greed.

Now everyone wants a piece, Hell even Slashdot and Sourceforge are bought so is the name Linux.com (by the same company by the way) Note the Dot COM = commercial.

Linus himself is raking in millions

Want a "commercial" solution? Get rid of ALL these distributions. It is insane and idiotic. You want to make a commercial product? Make a new one. How about commercial Linux? Be up front. Say this is what we are going to do and this is how we are going to pay for things, this percentage goes back to the projects (Apache MySql etc. ) in these amount AND it is going to be bullet proof for your business, we will back you. Red Hat's mistake? They come off, as being number one back ten years ago, then we support them then as the years go by they pull away the support or charge for it. They come up with "new products" confusion about what is free what's the difference with this one, lets make Gnome and KDE look the same the list goes on but in the end the community that made them is not welcome unless you can pay. Sure burns me. I can't be the only one.

Whatever happened to United Linux? It is a rhetorical question but you can't unite many distributions. That too is stupid.

Now for a distro solution? There is none. Why should there be? Let people make stuff and let it rock.

Why is Ubuntu doing so well? Maybe it is newest version that hasn't been bent by greed and money yet. They come off as sharing and for the world. I tried to find the site at http://ubuntu.org/ but my mistake it is actually at http://ubuntu.com/

If you're only going to watch one, watch Jeff Waugh's presentation about "GNOME 3.0" and his ballsy 10x10 goal (10% market share by 2010). If you're looking for something to hack on, check out the presentation on PiTiVi, which is a nonlinear video editor that sounds like it has potential if the planned features that were laid out in the presentation are seen to fruition. And if you've heard about Canonical/Ubuntu's Launchpad services but never really knew they were all about, watch Mark Shuttleworth's keynote.

kontact

Cause Ubuntu costs just way too much and I much prefer copying than having to pay... oh wait!

Things you might consider:

Kubuntu Live CD (Info at Kubuntu.org)
Games Knoppix (Although the 0.2 release is accidentally missing a file manager. Also, the 0.2 version is not a "upgrade" of 0.1 - it has a different list of games, though they do overlap.)
Linux Live Game Project

All three of these are based on KDE, and so should be relatively familiar-looking for a Windows user. If you are comfortable enough with "Mac-like" theme, you can also try:

Ubuntu Live CD (Info at Ubuntulinux.org)

All of these are live CDs, which means that you can boot into them and try them out to your heart's content, without harming your existing windows installations. Those 5 CDs (Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Games-Knoppix 0.1 and 0.2 and LLGP) are what I give out to people to try out linux... Because there are games, they don't feel like it's so scary...

In order to get used to the command line (if that is one of your goals) the following may be useful:

The Command Line - The Best Newbie Interface? (an alternative perspective on the "scary" command line)
and
The CLI Series at Linux.com (Start at the last one on the last page "alias cat and pipe meet grep" and work your way up at your leisure.)

You may want to read and/or contibute to GrokDoc:
GrokDoc

Things you might consider:

Kubuntu Live CD (Info at Kubuntu.org)
Games Knoppix (Although the 0.2 release is accidentally missing a file manager. Also, the 0.2 version is not a "upgrade" of 0.1 - it has a different list of games, though they do overlap.)
Linux Live Game Project

All three of these are based on KDE, and so should be relatively familiar-looking for a Windows user. If you are comfortable enough with "Mac-like" theme, you can also try:

Ubuntu Live CD (Info at Ubuntulinux.org)

All of these are live CDs, which means that you can boot into them and try them out to your heart's content, without harming your existing windows installations. Those 5 CDs (Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Games-Knoppix 0.1 and 0.2 and LLGP) are what I give out to people to try out linux... Because there are games, they don't feel like it's so scary...

In order to get used to the command line (if that is one of your goals) the following may be useful:

The Command Line - The Best Newbie Interface? (an alternative perspective on the "scary" command line)
and
The CLI Series at Linux.com (Start at the last one on the last page "alias cat and pipe meet grep" and work your way up at your leisure.)

You may want to read and/or contibute to GrokDoc:
GrokDoc

If the guy just gave us the links to the news articles without his blog bullshit then he'd be a great poster. I don't need more crappy summaries thanks.

In this case, the blog bullshit consists of quotes from and a link to New Scientist, ditto for the LOFAR website itself along with a diagram of the LOFAR-STELLA interaction, a link to and a quote from a Reuters article, and a link to a news release in Dutch. The length of the article wouldn't fit given slashdot's typical summary size, not to mention that slashdot doesn't post images except in really rare circumstances (eg: Penny Arcade's book images).

Do you hold other sites to the same standard? What about when an article links to CNet, ZDNet, Wired, MSN, etc? A blog is really just an informal news site. Many news sites give you the crappy summaries with links to the full meal deal. The latest story on Canonical's version tracking tool links to this zdnet article which is nothing but a crappy summary for describing the actual Launchpad project. The bulk of all online news sites simply rehash the original stories -- why do you hold Roland to a different standard? Is it because it looks like he submits them himself, so you'd find a Wired posting just as distasteful if it started with "Wired's editor writes: ..."?

I thik you'll find there's already such a Linux distro available. It's called Ubuntu and it just works (tm).

Best desktop Linux so far bar none.

Plug in a camera - it works.
Plug in a USB key - it works.
Plug in a printer - it works.
Plug in a scanner - it works.

Can you see the picture that's emerging here ?

Normally, you can use the "sync" mount option to enable synchronous writes. Unfortunately, this is currently broken in the Linux vfat driver.

It already was removed in the default install of Ubuntu Linux. They recommend using "sudo" for root tasks and don't allow direct "root" logins, by default, without it.

I'm loosing my moderation in this thread because of this. But I dug up a bugreport from ubuntu which discusses it. Apparently Mark Shuttleworth himself decided on keeping this "feature" in because he disagreed with the way gnome does it right now. Personally, I think that if they think spatial is so bad, they should have made the non-spatial the default, and spatial an option.

On a personal note, I actually like spatial. It takes some getting used to and it is unlikely that you will ever use it without using shortcuts (eg. alt+l for location, and the alt+arrows combinations). I think that is what most people's problems is, wanting to do everything with the mouse. That and desktop clutter off course (which is a valid point, but IMHO the reason we have multiple desktops)

My install got into a endless loop at the "Add users" part of the install. It kept coming back to the "Full Name," username, password dialogs no matter how I entered the info.

After rebooting, it complained that I didn't set up a non privileged user and prompted me to enter a root password.

When I tried running the adduser from the admin menus it did the same. Running adduser from the command line I saw it was giving an error when trying to chown and chgrp the user's new home directory.

I had made /home a vfat (fat32) file system because I wanted it to be a common area to share files with Windows. Permissions and ownership don't exist on fat. I unmounted /home and remounted the fat partition on a different mount point under a different name and all was well....after I spent another significant amount of time figuring put visudo and sudousers.

Yes, I will report the bug once I get a round tuit....I just went to report it and see it has already been reported as Bug 5374 for debian-installer, which is good, because I was convinced these kinds of problems only happen to me.

...is the "Ubuntu spatial" mode hacked into Nautilus (and turned on by default) just a few days before 5.04 went gold, which makes Ubuntu's file and folder management different from every other Gnome implementation out there. Why was this done? Seems Mark Shuttleworth decided by fiat that this new way is better. People are not amused.

http://packages.ubuntu.com/

https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/

They can't fix 'em if you don't tell 'em. :)

A few weeks ago I "upgraded" to Hoary from Debian Sid. I simply added

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hoary main restricted universe
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hoary main restricted universe

to /etc/apt/sources.list, performed and apt-get upgrade and everything went smoothly.

Question: Is there any reason I should rebuild my system with the Hoary installer? I am running a 2.2GHz system with kernel 2.6.11-1-686.

A few weeks ago I "upgraded" to Hoary from Debian Sid. I simply added

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hoary main restricted universe
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hoary main restricted universe

to /etc/apt/sources.list, performed and apt-get upgrade and everything went smoothly.

Question: Is there any reason I should rebuild my system with the Hoary installer? I am running a 2.2GHz system with kernel 2.6.11-1-686.

I may try these debian based distro's. How stable are they? Are they relatively bugfree?

I think you'll be pleasently surprised. If you find bugs (especially if you use a development snapshot), we've got a bug tracking system as well.

It's fairly straightforward:

1) Grab a root console (Applications->System Tools->Root Console) and type the password for the first unprivilidged account on your system.

2) vi /etc/apt/sources.list

3) Replace the lines that are marked thusly:

deb http://ubuntu.../ warty main

and type this instead:

deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted

deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted

(ignore Slashdot's anti-goatse domain display feature)

Note: this may be as simple as replacing every instance of warty with hoary - but I'm not sure.

3) Save the file (ie esc :wq [enter])

4) type apt-get update

5) type apt-get dist-upgrade

6) Wait for everything to download, cross your fingers nothing breaks and enjoy.

disclaimer: it's late at night. I may have missed something...

It's fairly straightforward:

1) Grab a root console (Applications->System Tools->Root Console) and type the password for the first unprivilidged account on your system.

2) vi /etc/apt/sources.list

3) Replace the lines that are marked thusly:

deb http://ubuntu.../ warty main

and type this instead:

deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted

deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted

(ignore Slashdot's anti-goatse domain display feature)

Note: this may be as simple as replacing every instance of warty with hoary - but I'm not sure.

3) Save the file (ie esc :wq [enter])

4) type apt-get update

5) type apt-get dist-upgrade

6) Wait for everything to download, cross your fingers nothing breaks and enjoy.

disclaimer: it's late at night. I may have missed something...

It's fairly straightforward:

1) Grab a root console (Applications->System Tools->Root Console) and type the password for the first unprivilidged account on your system.

2) vi /etc/apt/sources.list

3) Replace the lines that are marked thusly:

deb http://ubuntu.../ warty main

and type this instead:

deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted

deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted

(ignore Slashdot's anti-goatse domain display feature)

Note: this may be as simple as replacing every instance of warty with hoary - but I'm not sure.

3) Save the file (ie esc :wq [enter])

4) type apt-get update

5) type apt-get dist-upgrade

6) Wait for everything to download, cross your fingers nothing breaks and enjoy.

disclaimer: it's late at night. I may have missed something...

It's fairly straightforward:

1) Grab a root console (Applications->System Tools->Root Console) and type the password for the first unprivilidged account on your system.

2) vi /etc/apt/sources.list

3) Replace the lines that are marked thusly:

deb http://ubuntu.../ warty main

and type this instead:

deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted

deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted

(ignore Slashdot's anti-goatse domain display feature)

Note: this may be as simple as replacing every instance of warty with hoary - but I'm not sure.

3) Save the file (ie esc :wq [enter])

4) type apt-get update

5) type apt-get dist-upgrade

6) Wait for everything to download, cross your fingers nothing breaks and enjoy.

disclaimer: it's late at night. I may have missed something...