Slashdot Mirror
A Review of Ubuntu Warty Release
JL writes "Recent news about Ubuntu had peaked my interest. Debian based, good development team, the Ubuntu philosophy and an active community. I lurked about on Freenode's #ubuntu channel and got a feel for the community. I found them to be helpful and a valuable asset to Ubuntu. I decided to give it a go on my laptop.
"
My only complaint about Ubuntu is that it is GNOME-based.
I believe KDE is a better deal, both technically and philosophically.
Anyway- go Ubuntu, go!
Windows users:
Internet Explorer is obsolete. Please upgrade to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
I am thinking of trying Ubuntu Linux - currently on Mandrake 10.
Can you use Debian packages with Ubuntu?
Don't make your problems my problems!
Maybe not, but it was damn quick and there's no Google cache to be found.
$ whatis themeaningoflife
themeaningoflife: not found
Any mirrors for the review? Sounds interesting
It piqued your interest.
Build your own website - full service homepage system your m
Lately I have been getting that itch to run a different distribution. I am an avid Slackware / Dropline Gnome user. I also have been running SuSE 9.1 Pro since it came out. Both of these perform wonderfully well for me on my desktops and laptop. Neither was hard to configure or use. Both serve well as a Linux Desktop OS. But I still had this itch to try out something new. Recent news about Ubuntu had peaked my interest. Debian based, good development team, the Ubuntu philosophy and an active community. I lurked about on Freenode's #ubuntu channel and got a feel for the community. I found them to be helpful and a valuable asset to Ubuntu. I decided to give it a go on my laptop after some minor arm-twisting by a good friend of mine (bah). It's an older IBM ThinkPad T22. This is the model that IBM sold with (SCO/Caldera) Linux preinstalled. Everything on this laptop is very well supported. I downloaded the current ISO image (codenamed warty) and burned it to CD. The download speeds from the US mirror were good. In excess of 150k. Next I swapped in my spare hard drive just in case I did not care for Ubuntu. Well... in the end I must say that Ubuntu will be staying on this laptop for quite some time.
Installation was easy and the default install with updates weighs in at about 1.5GB. It doesn't feature the graphical installers most users are accustomed to. I am no stranger to the text/curses based installers and Ubuntu's installer is based on the new Debian installer. I can't comment on the comparison to the new Debian installer, as I have not used it yet. But compared to the Debian installers of old, it is a major improvement. I can only imagine the new Debian installer is quite similar. It is laid out well and easy to follow. The only thing I came across that sort of threw me for a loop was the manual partitioning portion. Setting up the partitions was easy. I could select the file system and mount points just fine. It was when I wanted to make a swap partition where I had to hunt around the menu and tell the installer it should be a Linux swap partition. I expected it to be a selection along with the other file system choices like reiser or ext3. Instead it was located on another sub-menu screen. Hopefully this is a minor change that the Ubuntu team can make in future releases just for usability's sake. Once I found it I was on my way again. There is no package selection in the installer. Ubuntu instead installs a nice choice of software. I was pleased to be asked which one of my network interfaces I wanted to use during installation. I have an orinoco wireless card which is what I use the most on the laptop. The built in network card is an intel e100. The wireless card was properly detected and automatically configured for DHCP. The installer let me know it was searching for an access point which it found with no problems. With the network up and running, I was able to update the OS before even booting into the new Gnome 2.8 desktop. This definitely contradicts the info I heard about Ubuntu's poor laptop/pcmcia support. Another nice note on the installer was its ability to properly configure X for me. 1024x768 resolution, my USB mouse with working scroll wheel and the ps/2 based ThinkPad pointer mouse were all properly configured. Sound worked too. Weird thing to me was I never noticed the installer asking me questions about it. It was all done automatically without any user intervention. Enough on the installer. Lets talk about usability of Ubuntu in my day-to-day tasks.
Ubuntu Applications MenuFirst boot into the desktop revealed a rather plain, yet very eye pleasing desktop. The Gnome 2.8 desktop is quite nice. I was pleased to see that a couple of my staple panel applets were already loaded, the wireless link and battery charge monitor. Browsing through the menus showed some very sane choices of software that the Ubuntu team picked out. I was not overwhelmed by a hundred choices of programs like with some KDE installations. The Ubuntu desktop is similar to Dropli
This guy gives one of the best speeches at this summer's conventions, and now he's put together his own Linux distro! He's got my vote in '08.
http://www.desktopos.com.nyud.net:8090/reviews.php ?op=showcontent&id=19
I decided to give it a "Go Away!" rant :)
I've been using Ubuntu since it's first public preview release a few weeks ago. It's based on Debian unstable. If you are looking for a distribution based on Debian that's easy to install, solid, and Gnome based, check out Ubuntu. And yes, you can install K3B if you want to. You've got access to all the Debian unstable packages, but they are the Ubuntu repostories, which are a snapshot of the Debian repositories. You should not mix the main Debian repositories with the Ubuntu repositories.
The company that sponsors it employs several Debian developers, which is a good thing. The distribution *just works*, and is a true pleasure to use.
Yes, it's another Debian-based distribution. But this one is truly different than the others. I suggest that you check it out if you're at all curious about it.
The mailing lists have been exceptionally helpful with all the problems that have been posted, and everyone on the lists are very friendly and courteous. I feel like this is going to be one of the best distributions out there.
If you are sick of all the new distributions out there, that's fine, don't check out Ubuntu. But I'm telling you, from my experience, it may be your loss.
You can find out more about Ubuntu at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
-- http://www.MindBlowingPhotos.com
Photography inspired by music, nature and life itself.
Here's a mirror.
sorry about my sloppy .sig above! :)
-Frank
-- http://www.MindBlowingPhotos.com
Photography inspired by music, nature and life itself.
Ubuntu sounds like african name. What's africa got to do with ubuntu??? Tell me more!
Mirror at http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/c8e667c8388471455 0446f30649107d6/index.html Mirrordot.
To be honest, I know that this is a great distro, but it doesn't need that much attention on slashdot. Seems like there have been 5 reviews already. If I wanted all of that info I would go to OS News.
Both of these distros appear to do the same thing... Has anyone compared/contrasted the two? I've played around a lot with Knoppix and feel it's time for the next step and set up a dual-boot.
I downloaded the CD and I've been running it for a couple of days on an oldish Celeron 1Ghz box I use to play with new distros. I had one hitch which was due to my having overzealously turned off ACPI in the BIOS way back. Fedora Core 2 didn't mind, but Ubuntu got very sore. But after fixing that everything pretty much Just Worked.
Okay, there's some song-and-dance still needed to get a Palm Tungsten E to sync without crashing, but this is the simplest, most up-to-date and most fun desktop distro I've used. Synaptic and 'universe' is making me realise why Debian users are so weirdly happy.
(Case in point: tinyfugue, my favourite MUD client. A real pain to install on Fedora Core 1, I had to manually hack a source RPM downloaded from a random website. On Ubuntu, it was point, click, go.)
Also the default desktop and menu layout is very slick, much more intuitive than Fedora. I think I've found my new home distro.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
It's "piqued" not "peaked", Mr.Editor
sorry about that link...
here....
-Frank
-- http://www.MindBlowingPhotos.com
Photography inspired by music, nature and life itself.
I think you have a good point. I have sampled both KDE and GNOME over time, and consistently found KDE the better integrated, more consistent, and more complete environment. IMO, GNOME is catching on (if only because it's hard for KDE to get much better), and 2.8 is really nice.
Also, I have had such bad experiences with RPM that I wouldn't recommend any distribution based on it. I am sure RPM has gotten better, but what made package management work for me was dpkg and apt-get.
So, what I have been recommending to people is Debian for a distro and KDE for a desktop environment (unless they are like me and would rather save the resources and do without a DE). However, these don't come nicely integrated as a single, easy to install package.
Now, there are various options. Libranet provides a KDE and Debian based distro, but the freely available version is quite outdated. Linspire and Xandros are Windows imitations, and if I'm going to recommend a Linux distro, it's not going to be a Windows clone.
Something like Ubuntu, but using KDE, would be ideal. I think it would not be too hard to roll such a distro (a matter of putting the right packages on a CD and tweaking the installer). However, I am not that much of a fan of Linux that I would actually maintain a distro, so I'll leave it up to someone else.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
some interesting ideas there. I like that it's gnome, and also that laptop and wireless and usb support seems to be important to these guys. Also like the offered bounty for developers, cash plus functionality seems a good inducement. And free Cds!! Not bad for those folks on dialup!
Anyway, can't seem to find minimum hardware requirements for trying it out. Anyone?
According to Distrowatch, there are 105 distributions based on Debian: Distrowatch independence.
What makes it so different from others to be quoted so often in Slashdot?
The word is piqued! Not peaked! Arrrrrgh!!!
Does Ubuntu come with any dictionary software?
I just want to report that Ubuntu runs quite well on less than bleeding edge machines, too. I have a Celeron 333 with 128 MB RAM here, which counts as low spec for some people. Aparently not for the GNOME people, as the system is very snappy.
Stay away from OpenOffice.org, though. I started it up, just out of curiosity. The machine soon went completely unresponsive, and after 10 minutes (OOo was still not up), I power-cycled the machine. AbiWord works fine, though.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
One could believe that goal not to be practically possible at the same time, and morally prefer to focus on having as much software as possible (free or otherwise) being based on free libraries and a free operating environment.
Spelled backwards, it's utnubu.
Must... resist... 'Noobian'... jokes.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Something that caught my attention in the review was the statement that root is disabled by default, with all management tasks being performed by sudo, and graphical tools that make use of it. Sounds like they've taken a leaf out of Apple's books.
Is this the first Linux distro to do this?
My personal experience of using Mac OS X now for the last 2+ years is that this works really well. If I really need to do anything that needs the root UID for any length of time, then "sudo -s" sorts me out and off I go. I've never needed to enable the root account once.
So is an active root account a thing of the past? I'm curious to know what you (the reader) think about that.
Tried to install this last week but failed at the 'updating' stage.. tried everything I could think of (I'm no expert so I couldn't think of much! ;) but no luck.. so I skipped the remaining updates and rebooted..
;)
The result was a system that only boots to the text prompt and the screen size was wrong.. tried running the updater again from the prompt but still no luck.. no fancy desktop environment for me!
Its a toshiba satellite 1800 254.. it also failed with knoppix hard disk install (works from the cd only) which refuses to boot at all after..
Oh well.. back to windows 98.. *sniff*
Its a sad reflection on the modern 'linux desktop' when it can't do what win98 can.. or maybe its just a sad reflection on my geek skills or lack thereof!
Why is it that we are still seeing site /.ed ? Coral P2P cache system seems to something quite effective and is easy enough to use.
Ubuntu Review using Coral Cache
So how about everyone stop trying to load the master link and use this one, then we all will get to see
DSLIP Web Design and Content Management Australia.
Please please please, in the future when posting articles that link to innocent users' blogs, personal sites, sites hosted on DSL connections, and so on... do not link to them directly! Use the Coral'ized link syntax as below:
http://www.desktopos.com.nyud.net:8090/reviews.p hp?op=showcontent&id=19
This link was purposely not left clickable, because the 'nyud.net' at the end, would cause Slashdot to add the [nyud.net] to the link text, which would stop people from clicking on it (thinking it was a pr0n site).
Here is some more information about the Coral Distribution Network.
Seriously, use it. It helps a LOT.
--
Have you Plucked the Web today?
Debian with 6 months release cycle, can it be better?
With a name like Ubuntu Warty, it must be good!
501 Not Implemented
Here's the How-To:m l
http://www.freenet.org.nz/misc/knoppix-install.ht
Next, if you so desire, you can dist-upgrade your Knoppix HD install to Sid or Sarge or even Woody if you're the conservative type. The author of this document:
http://members.rogers.com/ctmlinux/knoppix2debian. html
suggests that Sid is the best choice for a desktop machine because of the newness of the packages. The author also gives a how-to about removing Knoppix packages that are in there for completeness' sake but are not always necessary. However, the most important part of the upgrade to canonical Debian is these three steps:
1.) Edit /etc/apt/sources.list to include more standard Debian sources.
2.) Go into a shell, su to root, and type in:
# apt-get update
# apt-get dist-upgrade
Then wait for each one of those commands to finish. Presto! You have a canonical Debian system.
The instructions in the second referenced document also work for getting rid of Linspire/Lindows-isms on a Linspire/Lindows preinstalled machine. Click'n'run? We don't need no stinkin' Click'n'run!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
"unless they are like me and would rather save the resources and do without a DE"
Is this really necessary anymore? I see this argument pop up all the time still. Last I checked, computers in general are getting so powerful that this hardly seems like a valid point.
Save the resources? It's been a few years since I've felt the need to stay away from a desktop environment for the sake of saving resources.
I think the poster meant to write that it piqued his interest, indicating that is provoked his interest, which increased. If it had peaked his interest, that would mean his interest in the distro was at a maximum when he heard about it and has declined since then, which doesn't seem to be the case.
The use of incorrect homonyms can be an especially Bad Thing when they completely reverse the meaning of what you say.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
> I installed Ubuntu and was pleasantly surprised with how simple the installation was. All my hardware was recognized and X was easily set up.
I would expect the same from the next Debian release as Ubuntu simply took their new installer.
I'm looking for a good Debian distro to start off with. I'm used to RedHat/Fedora but I'm getting really interested in Debian distros after reading /.
..after deciding to switch to GNOME and having problems with GNOME 2.6 in Mandrake 10.1. Sound was a problem, Firefox was crashing every 90 minutes (I'm suspecting an Extension, but in Ubuntu I started with a clean profile and haven't installed any extensions yet).
For everyone complaining that Ubuntu uses GNOME (and yes, I've been a KDE fan from day one), more good distros are based on KDE than GNOME -- go grab one of them.
Ubuntu wouldn't be appropriate for a newbie, but it's keeping my pretty happy right now. I got MP3 working in Rhytmbox somehow (not sure actually, just added an unstable repository and added a few libraries and all was good).
It won't autodetect your XFree86 settings. It's been so long that I've had to worry about this that I needed to boot up Gnoppix to get my monitors horizontal and vertical frequency details. I have to manually edit the config file for my wheel mouse. In that respect it feels so 2002.
The installer is text-based, but easy.
Fedora Core 2 had lots of problems for me on this hardware -- the RH based tools crashed too regularly. FC3T2 kernel panicked in the boot process, but I've yet to have one single crash of any kind in Ubuntu.
If Ubuntu fails to keep me happy, I'll probably switch to FreeBSD. For now, this is good stuff.
* A guy called 'jdub' who had operator......
Somehow this got cut by Slashdot CM System.
Having heard so many good things about Ubuntu, I decided to try out their release for AMD64. I hate to say it but I was very dissapointed.
Now, I'm not saying theres anything wrong with Ubuntu - I'd recommend it to any i386 user. My problem was that the 64bit repositories were incomplete. When the installer tried to grab stuff from said repositories there wasn't stuff there to grab, well I got a little worried.
I was left with an incomplete installation on my AMD64 that made me wonder if anyone at Ubuntu had ever even attempted an installation on a 64bit system. Don't get me wrong, I'm still looking forward to their next release, but for now don't bother unless you're i386.
...that their logo is similar to The Birmingham University Guild of Students logo, heh, whodathunkit.
I am NaN
The best option for KDE Lovers right now seems to be SimplyMEPIS 2004.03 -> www.mepis.org
;)
Knoppix is a great LiveCD never offered what one shoud expect from a Debian installation if installed to disk. (Might habe changed, but I think it has not:) Beeing based on a Mixture of Testing, Unstable and back in the day even stable it's been quite a mess to 'get right' in the end.
SimplyMEPIS right now is based on testing, but (as I aways do) is easily changed to unstable and runs like a charm with all the convienence stuff a desktop user could ask for: Java, Flash, even the Win4Lin Kernel Patch is included. Only thing missing is some kind of automount.
If that's not 'good enough' eithere let's wait for Debian Desktop Distribution and the Kalyxo CD of it... this should be _the_ KDE Debian Installation around
www.debiandesktop.org
www.kalyxo.org
Let's just say that I'm a relative newbie and I want to a good, simple distro for my older laptop. I dislike Mandrake because I can't stand eight million applications installed by default. I want Gnome 2.8 (KDE is not my cup of tea), a good perl and c++ programming environment, and a decent office suite (and Firefox and Thunderbird). I also want an easy update method. Fedora and Ubuntu both seem to fit this bill. I'm leaning toward Ubuntu because it comes on just one cd, versus four for Fedora. Can anyone weigh in on the relative merits of each distro? Which would you recommend over the other, and why?
abiword has never 'worked fine' and never will
* Slightly suspicious grammatical stylings...check
* Unsubstantiated attacks on someone who is on oGo's hate list...check
* Similar substance and language from other oGo rants...check
All we need for this to go to a condition red full scale confirmed oGALAXYo sighting is for this same claim to be repeated every time there's an Ubuntu story posted to any news site.
But maybe oGo has too much to do working on his gnome fork to post things like this.
Yeeargh! It's piqued , not "peaked"!
For example, Ubuntu does not have libboost* while
debian unstable (main) does.
I am playing with Ubuntu and had to add the true
debian repository in order to use it as a dev box.
No problem, that is the point of apt/dpkg, I'm just
pointing out that the Ubuntu repository is not
a superset of a mirror.
Recent news about Ubuntu had peaked my interest (my emphasis)
It's piqued, idiot. When is Slashdot going to employ literate editors?
* Arvind Narayanan detected...check
Wrong!
I win...
* Someone replying within the hour with information only oGo could find relevant...check.
We are now raising this to a Confirmed oGALAXYo sighting.
* Iain Holmes detected...check
Software! And here I though some new plague was cast upon us. What a horrible thought to be inflicted with Ubuntu Warty Release... those dratted Wow chips.
QT apps are not free to run for the majority of people (who run windows), therefore I believe in GTK for philosophical reasons.
Like someone else already posted, Mepis is a better KDE Debian distro than a Knoppix hd install. Knoppix really is good but its an utter mess trying to update once installed on a hard drive.
Just for an FYI to the thread, I'm using Ubuntu as I write this now and Ubuntu is certainly my distro of choice now. Try it, you'll like it.
Should "of" typed "piqued".
--
make install -not war
from the joe-don-danny-donny-jordan dept.
Man do I feel lame for getting that. This feels worse than a caffiene-withdrawal headache. Does anyone know of an equivalent to mouthwash for the brain? Thanks a lot, Taco.
Anybody want a peanut?
"U" is the class prefix for abstract nouns (eg. uganda, uhura, ujima). "buntu" is a southern form of the stem meaning "human".
My first critic was right in the sense that Kiswahili borrowed this form from either Xhosa or Zulu (I forget which), but the languages are so closely related that it's hard to say where one stops and another starts.
Incidentally, the name of the language family, "Bantu", is yet another form of that same stem (it seems every group of people calls their own language "what people speak" at some point).
All's true that is mistrusted
"u" is pronounced like "oo" in "zoo" so Ubuntu is pronounced almost as "oob-oo-nt-oo".
Well done ali.
I posted non anonymously so that you could work out who it was.
You are somehow obsessed with the idea that I am who you think I should be. But that said, you are wrong and now stop suspecting other people.
It's "piqued," not "peaked." GET IT RIGHT FOR ONCE!
He's supposed to suspect himself?
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
I've been waiting for an updated version of Debian to come out for a while now... This looks like the answers to my prayers!
-----
Make Love not [Browser] War!
..I read, "A Review of the Ubuntu Warty Disease" and somehow also associated "highly virulent" in there somewhere.
Then I read it again.
Well, it does sound like some exotic African virus doesn't it?! Doesn't it?
from the review:
"Everything was smooth as silk with one exception. The paper size defaulted to A4 instead of US Letter."
Finally, an operating system that realises what the rest of the world has known all along! A4 rocks, letter sucks! LC LOAD LETTER? WTF?
And yet...you wont stop posting anonymously, and the only person who has anything to gain from continueing this is oGALAXYo...and your grammar and language still supports my suspicions.