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If you didn't grab the Kubuntu installation media then this wiki page explains how to install KDE on Ubuntu.

The other posters are correct in changing the apt sources. There are a few post-install steps http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/ReleaseNotes504

My upgrade didn't include ubuntu-desktop, so I had to add it via apt manually (synaptic was acting weird). When I was done with that, I rebooted & nautilus wouldn't show me my homedir, and I lost all my icons (1 document) on the desktop. One more reboot and everything looks good.

If anyone wants to tell me that best python IDE in GNOME I'd be grateful.

Like last time, we're also sending out free pressed CDs in the mail (gratis CDs, gratis shipping). If you want them, you can sign up for them at http://shipit.ubuntulinux.org

See here for mirrors of archive.ubuntu.com - not slashdotted as of a moment ago...

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/HoaryUpgradeNotes

If this goes as easily as most of my past debian upgrades, I will be running Hoary in about 30 minutes :-)

Jan

Here you can sign up for free CD's.

Download the torrent

New stuff include

• Gnome 2.10.1, which makes the desktop a lot faster than before
• X.org
• Simplified update- and package management
• Much faster boot process
• Better laptop support (ie suspending, hibernating, processor frequency scaling)
• Kickstart support for automated largescale installations
• Live CD and Install CD both use the new debian installer infrastructure
• UTF-8 by default
• A program for collecting information about what hardware works and what doesn't
• Kubuntu - complete KDE 3.4 based version of Ubuntu

Stuff people are going to bitch about

• No graphical installer. The current installer is extremely simple and has been streamlined even further in this release. A graphical installer is planned for the next version (Breezy Badger).
• No menu editor installed. One can always edit the files by hand, or install kmenu or something similar for gnome. The official gnome menu editor just didn't finish in time.
• No DivX or MP3 support. These are simple to add though and anyone coming from debian will probably already know of the Marillat repositories. Just look at the instructions in the wiki or use Hoary After-Install helper or another script to do the dirty work for you.

OSDir has published a lot of screenshots of Ubuntu.

Oh and if you are interested to know if your laptop or other piece of hardware is supported, some info can be found in the wiki on the Hardware support-page

Primary mirrors

• United States
• United Kingdom
• Europe

Other mirrors

Australia Canada Croatia Czech Republic France Germany Germany Ireland Italy Lithuania Namibia Netherlands Norway Portugal Portugal South Africa Spain Switzerland United Kingdom United Kingdom United Kingdom United States United States United States

Download the torrent

New stuff include

• Gnome 2.10.1, which makes the desktop a lot faster than before
• X.org
• Simplified update- and package management
• Much faster boot process
• Better laptop support (ie suspending, hibernating, processor frequency scaling)
• Kickstart support for automated largescale installations
• Live CD and Install CD both use the new debian installer infrastructure
• UTF-8 by default
• A program for collecting information about what hardware works and what doesn't
• Kubuntu - complete KDE 3.4 based version of Ubuntu

Stuff people are going to bitch about

• No graphical installer. The current installer is extremely simple and has been streamlined even further in this release. A graphical installer is planned for the next version (Breezy Badger).
• No menu editor installed. One can always edit the files by hand, or install kmenu or something similar for gnome. The official gnome menu editor just didn't finish in time.
• No DivX or MP3 support. These are simple to add though and anyone coming from debian will probably already know of the Marillat repositories. Just look at the instructions in the wiki or use Hoary After-Install helper or another script to do the dirty work for you.

OSDir has published a lot of screenshots of Ubuntu.

Oh and if you are interested to know if your laptop or other piece of hardware is supported, some info can be found in the wiki on the Hardware support-page

Primary mirrors

• United States
• United Kingdom
• Europe

Other mirrors

Australia Canada Croatia Czech Republic France Germany Germany Ireland Italy Lithuania Namibia Netherlands Norway Portugal Portugal South Africa Spain Switzerland United Kingdom United Kingdom United Kingdom United States United States United States

I've become a recent fan of Martin Pool, and I've been keeping tabs on his work with Bazaar-NG, his next generation version of Bazaar, as a distributed free source code control system, for Ubuntu. It's early in development yet, but if there's one thing I've learned from Martin Pool, is he does great work! Keep tabs on him. :)

Sorry, that should be http://www.ubuntulinux.org/favicon.ico

It's misleading to use the Debian image for an Ubuntu story. Ubuntu is not Debian, even though there is a relationship between the two.

You need to use a proper Ubuntu image, for example http://www.ubuntulinux.org/favicon.gif

Mark, if you want Ubuntu to be an easy to use distribution, how come you are so against Autopackages?

I agree that there some justification to put this out, but do we *really* need yet another distro?

Yes. If you don't like the distro, don't use it. Distro proliferation only causes two problems: package compatablility and information overload for newbies. The first problem is a very small one if you're using an open, community based distribution. Normal users have all their needs met in the repositories for that distro, and users who need special software either ask someone to package it for them, use alien on a provided package, or compile it themselves. The second problem can be solved by simply asking someone for a distro recommendation. Most people recommend Ubuntu or Mandrake for newbies these days, so it's not really that big of a deal.

So what happens if you declare a moratorium on distribution proliferation? Well, if you did that six months ago, we wouldn't have Ubuntu, which is fairly popular after being out for a short period of time. New distributions bring different ideas to the table, and if it works well, people will use the distro, or other distros will assimlate the ideas. Who knew that you could take Debian unstable's wide array of packages, stabilize them for a month or so, and combine them with simple configuration tools and a community that is friendly by mandate, and end up with what many people were apparently waiting for?

There are many distros out there that build upon a good existing distro and try to make it better. Some try out new packaging systems. I disagree that eliminating all these would be better for Linux as a whole. The benefits from their existence far outweigh the pitfalls, if any.

Ubuntu has a nice april fool on their distribution. Instead of the normal login screen http://www.ubuntulinux.org/login.jpeg they set up a picture with 3 guys (plus one shoe of a guy taking the photo) thats like the loginscreen but with 3 geeks having a party (snacks in the background))

So if you run Ubuntu update today!

The problem that I at least have is that there are too many Debian-based distros to choose from

AFAIK, Ubuntu is the only major one that contributes heavily back into Debian proper and has a community development model. The others are either largely one man shows or commercial distributions with proprietary tools that they keep to themselves.

I'd love it if just one Debian derivative would come out way ahead of the others in terms of popularity, to the level of Fedora, Suse, Mandrake, or Gentoo; then I could feel confident that it will stick around and stay up to date for the long haul.

If you look at the last month on DistroWatch, one seems to be pulling far ahead of the others, even above the distros you mentioned.

I've had the best luck so far with Fedora, but I hate the fact that a full system upgrade is due twice a year.

With Ubuntu, there are two releases a year, but all you have to do is replace the name of the release in your repositories and "apt-get dist-upgrade".

As for Debian itself, well I used to use it (on a Sparc 10), but to have an up-to-date desktop I had to run "unstable", and occasionally things (like DNS - that was fun) would break for awhile.

Ubuntu also has an unofficial sparc port.

Nope. Its not a problem. Ubuntu relies on Sid, not Sarge so if Sarge never comes than Ubuntu will be fine. If Sid won't drive, the project has the cash to drive itself.

There's a rumour that Ubuntu's (technical) project leader Jeff Mallrow will jump on the Debian ship. Makes sense as Ubuntu is probably the best Debian distro.

MEPIS, Ubuntu, Xandros? All three are based on Debian and a bit easier to use.

Ubuntu provides a fine base for your server. I run http, ftp, and smb on Ubuntu at work.

Just select a server install on the initial boot screen of the install cd, then you'll only get the base system without any desktop, and you can apt-get your way from there.

Only problem is that a few packages commonly needed for some servers (for example, PHP's MySQL modules) are only available in universe (unsupported), but more packages are being moved to main with every release - check out the Ubuntu Server Team's page.

Ubuntu makes a fine server OS. What do you think www.ubuntulinux.org is running on? Remember that Ubuntu is basically a branch of Debian, which many people find okay to run on servers.

Securing it in a networked environment is also pretty easy -- the default install doesn't have any services listening on the network, so the only listening services will be the ones you install.

Oh, I thought "ubuntu" meant "nakedness in the default install."

For experienced users the one thing that really annoyed me was the complete lack of GCC in the default install.


This FAQ describes how to install development tools on Ubuntu, which any experienced user, particularly developers, should be able to accomplish. The absence of gcc and other dev programs was a design decision. I can't find the conversation, but it was on the forums or mailing list.

It's being worked on:

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/SELinux

-- Gary F.

That question is unfortunately both very pervasive and very nearly irrelevant.

I understand that software preferences are often a 'blocker' to accepting one distro over another, or even linux at all, but there are so many good choices out there... who cares?

Want KDE installed on a Debian base? Look here:
http://www.mepis.org
or http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/Kubuntu
or http://www.kubuntu.org.uk

Or any other of a half-dozen great GNU/Debian/KGX distros out there.

I've grown quite fond of the group of people working on integrating KDE with vanilla-Ubuntu. Not only can you add it to an already GNOME-based setup, they've released an entire branch with KDE as the default! They've still got some work ahead of them but the current release is very impressive!

If you want KDE on Ubuntu, apt-get it from the universe repository. Yes, I know, that's less than obvious... The Ubuntu people are working on making stuff like that easier. Heck... when Hoary is released in two weeks (or so) you can just apt-get kubuntu-desktop.

Me? I'm typing this from a freshly installed Kubuntu system. It's purrty. Mepis is nice as well but I've found it's kernel to be a little unstable on my laptop. Nothing a recompile didn't fix, but I've decided to back Ubuntu.

BTW... the wine packages from wine.sf.net/apt aren't stable. Your best bet is to apt-build roll your own. I might contrib mine once I get some font issues worked out.

That's not true. The thing that makes Ubuntu great as a desktop and Debian lame is all the work that has gone into the core OS part, not the packages. The Ubuntu universe is riddled with uninstallable software, and main ships with out of date software too (eg, Inkscape).

Ubuntu doesn't just take the "core OS" from Debian. It takes everything from Debian. Without Debian's packages, they'd have to do all the work themselves. I've only come across one broken package on Ubuntu, so I don't know where you're getting "riddled with uninstallable software" from. Ubuntu doesn't ship with out of date software. They take a snapshot of the latest software when their Upstream Version Freeze comes along. For Hoary, that was Janurary 3rd. The version of Inkscape that will be in Hoary is 0.40. This is how almost all distributions that actually put out releases work. There's no way to have a stable release unless you freeze the packages and have a bug fixing period.

What about all the commercial games out there? I guess they're not worthwhile packaging because they aren't free enough.

What I said was that they provide all the free software that's worthwhile to package. Why would Debian developers package commercial software? No free distribution does that. Companies can provide their own packages like Skype does.

What about up to date Wine packages?

From what I heard, the Debian maintainer for Wine hasn't been doing much lately, so one of the Wine developers is working on getting up to date packages for Ubuntu (which will of course trickle down to Debian).

Third party packages (not repositories) would be provided by upstream projects like on Windows or MacOS. Those packages would work for anybody, using a technology like autopackage.

Believe it or not, program installation and update management is better in Linux than it is in OS X or Windows, because you click a button and your entire system is up to date. I don't want to have to hunt around getting the latest versions of each piece of software on my computer. Ubuntu and Debian do that for me. Autopackage does play an important role though. Not every project can build packages for every distribution, or find someone within those distributions to make packages for them. For the distros that a developer can't support directly, they can provide an autopackage that will work for everyone else. However, that's not the way I'd want to install software by default, because I'd lose the ability to update. About a week or two ago, I changed all the "warty"s in my apt sources to "hoary"s and did a dist-upgrade. My whole system was updated. Windows and OS X users can only update the operating system and the programs that come bundled with it. It'd be nice if more developers of small projects would provide autopackages, since they often only post a package for one distro and a generic tarball.

No, Debian would just have to focus on writing a great OS instead of packaging as much stuff as possible. So that means things like, a graphical installer, slick integrated desktop, nice config tools etc etc.

That's not what Debian users what Debian to focus on. Debian users use Debian for the package repository. That is the selling point for Debian. If you take that away, it's just another distribution. You also take away Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, etc. because all of those are based on the fact that Debian has a huge repository of software for you to install. Faster release cycles, graphical installers and configuration tools are obviously much less important to users than the package repository. Whe else would people using Debian and Ubuntu? From what I understand, Fedora has configuration tools for tons of things. People still choose Debian based distros. Wh

Clearly, if they just ordered the Ubuntu disks, then they could get one for each citizen. Crap, please don't /. Ubuntu ordering free disks now.....

Ubuntu Linux or just go here: Ubuntu Shipit

Clearly, if they just ordered the Ubuntu disks, then they could get one for each citizen. Crap, please don't /. Ubuntu ordering free disks now.....

Ubuntu Linux or just go here: Ubuntu Shipit

Debian is a victim of its own success.

It's an absolutely massive project. There are about ten thousand packages, all including metadata for full automatic dependency checking and resolution. Each of these packages is available for each of a dozen architectures, and there is consistency across all platforms. Debian is Debian; whether it's running on an Intel, a PPC, a Sparc, an ARM or whatever. The user need not know what lies beneath the skin of the machine; the procedure for doing something should be absolutely the same whatever is inside.

For a project of that sheer size to work, it's pretty much got to be ruled over with an iron fist -- if not literally, then those involved have to act as though it were so.

Woody is out-of-date for desktops; I don't think there is any question of that. KDE 2.2? Hello? And it's not exactly up to the minute for servers, either: it's still pushing Apache 1.3, for crying out loud!

The real problem stems from the fact that before a package can be accepted into the Stable release, it has to be shown to be bug-free on each of twelve architectures. So if it segfaults on a steam-powered toaster, it can't be deemed fit to run on an 80386.

But that's just the ideal for the Stable distribution. There are two other Debian distributions, Testing and Unstable. Whenever someone creates a brand-new .deb package, it goes into Unstable. The rules are, if you run packages from Unstable, and they break, you don't bitch: you fix them, or you keep your trap shut, but you don't bitch. Once a package has been in Unstable for awhile, it can go to Testing. When the project leaders are satisfied that the current state of the Testing distribution satisfies all the criteria and is fit to call Stable, then a new Stable distribution is born.

Testing is actually the Debian distribution you probably really want to be running if you have an 80386-type machine. Yes, security updates get ported into Stable in good time; but Testing probably has newer versions of packages anyway which are likely to have the security patch in by default. It's safe to run on servers iff you read the news and you know how to apply a patch and compile a package from source. {And if you don't, then what the hell are you doing running a server?} But Unstable is actually quite reasonable. I've found it to be no worse than Fedora or Mandrake: any problems I've had with packages not installing or not co-operating turned out to be due to mis-specified dependencies, requiring cunning use of manual override and package searches. So no worse than any RPM distro there :) It's not the packages themselves that are unstable; rather, the versions are unstable, simply because the maintainers keep putting in new versions as soon as the .debs are put together. I wouldn't run it on a server; but on my laptop, which is behind a firewall, it works very well, and I'm also using it on my work desktop {an AMD64}. All that being said, I am tempted to try Kubuntu -- it's just like Ubuntu but with a KDE desktop {sorry, but despite my best efforts, I really can't get to grips with GNOME}.

It's also worth remembering that every Debian-derivative -- Ubuntu, Linspire and so forth -- started out as a copy of the Unstable tree.

I've been running debian servers for the last 5 years, but lately I have been seriously looking for an alternative that has a faster release cycle.

Contrary to popular belief, Ubuntu is suitable for server use as well. All the Debian packages are there, just with newer versions. There are two options with Ubuntu currently. You can use 4.10, which is the current version, and you won't have to update for a year, which is when the support (read: security updates and paid support from Canonical) for it ends. Everything in there has been in wide use for six months, so it's pretty solid. The other option is to wait until April 6, which is when version 5.4 will be released. You'll have a full 18 months of security updates, and everything you like about Debian is still there. Check out the FAQ page on server installs.

That sounds great. The reason I use the present tense is because it sounds almost word for word like the Ubuntu philosophy. Please, do check out Ubuntu. I think you'll like it.

If Debian released more often, I think third-party groups (or companies) could more easily support backporting security patches to the previous stable version of Debian than the current situation where third-party groups are "forward-porting" Debian's unstable development branch by including more recent packages and patches (and creating incompatibilities between those Debian-based distros).

That's true. My point is that with Debian's current structure, it can't do both. There is already a Debian with a short release cycle, and that's Ubuntu. If Debian does faster releases, it will only be duplicating effort. I'm not sure what time span people are aiming for in Debian, but let's say it's an annual release. To provide value over Ubuntu's current offering, Debian would have to provide security patches for longer. Ubuntu supports its releases for 18 months, so Debian would have to aim for 2-3 years, which is pretty much it's current length of support. An annual release with 3 years of support means supporting 3 stable releases at a time. I don't think that's practical. As I have said before, Debian's selling point is its long support. From what you've stated, it seems like you'd like Debian and Ubuntu to switch roles, with Debian providing timely releases, and third party groups (Ubuntu) providing security patches and support for older releases. Why switch things around when a working system is already in place?

The eventual argument that gets brought forward in Ubuntu vs Debian discussions is "What happens if Canonical goes under?" Well, what you're left with is Debian with a larger and stronger community than it had before. Many people have moved to Debian based distributions because Ubuntu came along. In addition, Ubuntu's policy regarding community development is much more relaxed than Debian's. After six months, Ubuntu has built up a team of community developers to help maintain packages. With each passing month, more and more names get added to the list. With the addition of a KDE based Ubuntu version, Kubuntu, that list will grow even more. Even without Canonical, Ubuntu will still have its community, and would bring its developers back to Debian proper. Ubuntu could still continue to exist as a branch of Debian.

With so many people using and developing Debian, directly or indirectly, I don't see where all the alarm is coming from.

Newer packages, a wiki full of documentation, a supportive community and nice package management programs (in the development version). Note that the only one of these that Debian can't have at this point is a stable set of up to date packages. Everything Ubuntu does is shared with Debian.

When comparing Ubuntu with other distributions than Debian, things are a bit different. One of the selling points for Ubuntu for me is that it's developed by a community and has a central package repository. It's been a while since I used a non-Debian distro, so I'm sure much of this has changed, but when I used Red Hat and Mandrake, there was either nothing that compared, or it wasn't visible enough. Assuming that other distros have that now, there's the deb vs. rpm issue depending on which one you prefer. The main issue is that you're never considered a second class citizen in Ubuntu. The other distros have commercial versions with special software and updates you don't have access to. With Ubuntu, everything is free, and they've made a commitment to always remain free.

IMVHO, ubuntu is Debian Done Right.

Check it out - I'm certain that they'd like the help of a high profile advocate like Bruce Perens.

Soko

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

But nobody wants to run a negro-OS on a server. People get the impression that it'll just sit around waiting for donated CPU-time, kill fellow Ubuntu boxen for no rational reason at all, or rape its child processes in the belief it'll protect against viruses.

"Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others".

WTF is an "African" word? Do I speak "European"? Is it something like those funny made-up names that American negroes choose to call themselves, because they think they sound "African"? "Condoleeza"? "Kwanzaa"?

But nobody wants to run a negro-OS on a server. People get the impression that it'll just sit around waiting for donated CPU-time, kill fellow Ubuntu boxen for no rational reason at all, or rape its child processes in the belief it'll protect against viruses.

"Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others".

WTF is an "African" word? Do I speak "European"? Is it something like those funny made-up names that American negroes choose to call themselves, because they think they sound "African"? "Condoleeza"? "Kwanzaa"?

Netcraft doesn't look at Ubuntu's stats. It's been rising like crazy over the past year, poking its head up to the top of DistroWatch's average hits/day list for the last 3 months and last month. As to the last 6 months (netcraft looks at this period), Mandrake seems to have the top seat.

Looking at percentage increase, Ubuntu probably beats the pants off of Fedora, rising from an average hits/day of 300 in 2004 to an average hits/day of 1916 in the past month; that's a 638% increase. Using the same math for Fedora, we see a LOSS of 8%.

Of course, this is just a measure of people's interest in DistroWatch's stats on distros ... far from complete. However, it shows that increase in Ubuntu is massive. Perhaps bigger than Fedora. Then again, both are very young and very successful; a massive percentage increase should be expected.

Try the "hoary" release of Ubuntu! It's a great improvement over "warty" even though it is not yet officially released. I've been running the hoary codebase for a few months and it's certainly stable enough, IMHO, for general desktop use.

http://cdimage.ubuntulinux.org/releases/hoary/curr ent/

Give it a try!

Update old Windows here.

(Ubuntu) Which is based on Debian. FYI.

Fedora Core 4 (FC4) will have it and be out by June 6 according to their schedule.

http://ubuntulinux.org/works a charm, up and running in about 40 minutes. everything works with the exception of the Airport sadly. excellent performance in 3D albeit.

I considered picking up a mini as well. My entire family uses OS X so I've had a chance to play with it. In my case there's just a ton of minor annoyances that, in the end, just drive me nuts. I ended up going to SUSE and then Ubuntu Linux. Despite the disturbing bald shirtless guy on the Ubuntu page I'm happy.

The bottom line is that these things are just tools. Use whatever works for you.

I just got my ubuntu CD's the other day: free shipping rules! I believe they'd ship to Asia . . .

April 4th?

Ubuntu is an excellent live CD that times their releases to be current with the latest versions of Gnome.

Microsoft has a new Update site for us to use.

Regarding the over all setup, take a look at the thin client linux setup at Riverdale High School in Oregon.

For distros I'd recommend debian or something debian based like skolelinux or ubuntu.

And then install Ubuntu :)

Plus the advice summary is bullshit:

Install anti-virus software
That's corrective action. How about prevenaitive action like pointing out secure products and warning the public to avoid defective ones? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Keep your anti-virus software up to date
You can't patch fast enough. That includes so called anti-virus software. Someone has to get hit first. AV companies have to then react and update the AV software profile. Then users have to add the updated profile, over a modem that can take time. MS-Slammer reached saturation in 8.5 minutes.

Install a personal firewall
Web pages and e-mail go right through that fire wall, they're supposed to, so do outgoing connections usually. Unfortunately most MS malware comes in via MSIE (the web) or MS-Outlook (mail), so how exactly is a firewall going to help? How about swapping out vulnerable applications and services instead?

Use Windows updates to patch security holes
There are other systems besides MS-Windows. Currently these do not even get viruses or worms. Some of these (e.g. Ubuntu) are easy to install and work on existing x86 hardware. Macintoshes are low maintenance and work out of the box. Unless you're a heavy gamer, you don't need MS-Windows.

Do not open e-mail messages that look suspicious
A virus is only harmless data, unless your system is designed to run it on sight. How about choosing an e-mail client that's not designed to spread viruses. Thunderbird, Mozilla, and Eudora are excellent choices.

Do not click on e-mail attachments you were not expecting
Use one of the above mail clients and/or switch to an operating system not designed to spread viruses.

I don't see a need for Fedora anymore, and I think Red Hat sees this. They are just now realizing that if they don't up their PR efforts to seem like a good citizen of the open source world... they will lose all the free coding and beta testing that they thought they could count on from Fedora users.

Linux users now have a truly free distribution, backed up by a real community, which is user-friendly and based on debian.