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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.
"
Maybe not, but it was damn quick and there's no Google cache to be found.
$ whatis themeaningoflife
themeaningoflife: not found
It piqued your interest.
Build your own website - full service homepage system your m
Somewhat. I'm using a Debian system with the Ubuntu package lines added to my apt.conf. At the moment the Ubuntu packages mostly use the same names as Debian ones, so you can vaguely mix and match. I use Ubuntu to get more up-to-date things (some parts of Gnome 2.8 aren't packaged yet for Debian for example). However, I wouldn't recommend this for a Debian newbie, as the best way to do this is with apt-pinning.
Beware the psychokinetic mimes!
It is not GNOME-based. You can still add the following to /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu warty main restricted universe
This will include non-free/contrib-type packages as well as just about everything in Debian main, including KDE. You just won't necessarily get any security updates.
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.
If you're of the opinion that all software should be free (as in speech), KDE is the better alternative philosophically. The GPL lisence of Qt creates a strong incentive for developers to release their applications under the GPL. Sure, they can purchase a license from Trolltech, but that's sufficiently expensive that many are bound to consider going Free instead.
I believe this was what the grandparent was referring to when he said he prefers KDE for philosophical reasons.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
http://www.desktopos.com.nyud.net:8090/reviews.php ?op=showcontent&id=19
Not KDE. You are talking about the Qt libraries from Troll Tech.
If you develop free software, you can use these libs under a choice of free software licenses.
If you develop proprietary software which you will want to sell, then you have to pay for the libraries.
Pretty fair, is not it?
If you are so cheap that you do not want to pay Troll Tech for their wonderful libs, and you believe you should get them for free, why on Earth should I feel compelled to pay you for your app? Why should not I get it for free as well?
Windows users:
Internet Explorer is obsolete. Please upgrade to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
The fact that it comes with Gnome by default does not mean that you can't run KDE if you wish. On the FAQ for Ubuntu, there is instructions for how to get KDE to run. Basically, you just have to uncomment a line out of the /etc/apt/sources.list to add the "universe" apt source and then you have access to KDE and all sorts of other Debian goodies.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
:wq!
I'm not sure what the hell you mean here. GCC set to run with higher priority costs no more than ordinary GCC. Also - proprietary software costs money regardless of platform. A KDE version of Photoshop costs no more than a GNOME version.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
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.
Yes. The Ubuntu base is Debian, and you use apt-get (or aptitude, or synaptic) to get the new packages. The preset Ubuntu package sources are in some cases slightly different than the ones you would download from the normal Debian mirrors, but most of the programs are there in the "universe" area. Also, you can adjust your /etc/apt/sources.list to go to normal Debian mirrors if there is something that you can't find through the Ubuntu channels. That is unsupported according to the Ubuntu website, but in theory it should work- in fact, in theory, you should be able to fully convert your Ubuntu system to Debian Sarge this way.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
:wq!
Here's a mirror.
sorry about my sloppy .sig above! :)
-Frank
-- http://www.MindBlowingPhotos.com
Photography inspired by music, nature and life itself.
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.
Be prepared to get trolled down by the "GPL is viral" trolls.
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
They actually specifically answered that question here:
n /f aq/userlinux :)
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/documentatio
-Frank
-- http://www.MindBlowingPhotos.com
Photography inspired by music, nature and life itself.
sorry about that link...
here....
-Frank
-- http://www.MindBlowingPhotos.com
Photography inspired by music, nature and life itself.
No, gnome uses the LGPL (as does KDE by the way, it's only QT that's GPL - or QPL if you so desire)
Which allows you to distribute binaries that are dynamically linked to it without providing source.
QT's commercial license is cheap enough for anyone who's serious - maybe not your average shareware developer, but certainly any software company wouldn't blink at paying that much for quality development tools. - Just look at how many throw away money on junk like JBuilder (my company bought me an $AU6,000 JBuilder enterprise license even after I told them I was going to use Eclise + MyEclipseIDE instead).
Advanced users are users too!
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.
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.
Not real sure what the actual minimum requirements are, but I am running it on an ancient POS laptop- 400 mhz, 32 MB RAM, 4 GB hard drive. And everything is working for me- wireless NIC, DVD burner, etc. X is very slow, as you might guess by the sheer lack of RAM, but all the command line stuff works. I set up a samba server , SSH server, and FTP server with no problems at all.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
:wq!
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.
Many disagree with you. So, if you're complaining about it beeing Gnome based, go use one of the many KDE based distros.
Why the heck is this modded up anyway ?
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?
And how's the BSD license any better in that regard? How does the BSD license promote professional-quality software any more than the GPL does? Everyone is always like "GPL is viral! BSD is freeer! GPL is EVIL!!! lolololololol!!!"
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.
Woah!
GTK is LGPL. GNOME was started in part because Qt wasn't Free enough. It was, until very recently, considered _the_ Free Desktop.
I must be getting old.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
"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/
thanks for the reply! I figured it was probably closer to most of the newer full gui distros in requirements. Nowadays seems like you need two sticks of 128 ram for most of them to be decent. On my all antique machines, linux runs better on the 200 with 224 ram than a 333 or 400 with 64 or 128 ram. Go figger.... RAM seems to be where it's at more than CPU speed.
"Doesn't KDE have onerous limitations like you can't use prioritary software on it unless you pay major $$$$?"
Nope. A company can't make proprietary programs which use Qt for KDE unless they fork over a fairly small amount of money. You can use whatever is out there just fine.
It's swahili for "humanity"
Who would have thought knowing Swahili would come in handy on slashdot?
All's true that is mistrusted
> 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 /.
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
With copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL, you at least have a defence against software hoarding. Non-copyleft licenses will do nothing as to being 'very rare that professional-quality software can be [...] distributed for free', and indeed less, as dual-licensing strategies won't work.
But you are thinking about price, not freedom. Because of the possibility of dual-licensing, it is more probable that one gets paid to do copyleft than non-copyleft. As for building something for free has nothing to do with freedom in software, only with gratuity of programming services.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
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?
So you're saying that you are willing to create a 10 million line professional-quality software package and release it under the BSD license, because others can take your software and relicense it under a proprietary license?
Yet it is not free software unless you are on a free platform. Granted, whomever wants to develop on a proprietary platform should be prepared to shell out money; however it might be blocking for a small or individual developer, or perhaps someone from a poor country, who wants to go cross-platform.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
So you can with the GNU GPL, it only has to stay free.
And this benefits everyone, as opposed to the software hoarding enabled by the BSD license.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Right.... because two languages, particularly two very closely related languages like Kiswahili and Zulu, don't share loanwords and cognates. So speaking Zulu means you can say for certain whether or not a given Zulu word is shared in Kiswahili.
All's true that is mistrusted
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.
Personally I think KDE sucks. It's ugly, it's cluttered, it's convoluted, it's messy, it looks and feels like a complete hack. KDE users argue that it's more configurable. Whatever. Having 800 useless options that 95% of the population doesn't care about doesn't make it more configurable, it just makes it more of a hack. Especially when those options are strewn about randomly without any thought put into. Gnome has the right idea with this.
Besides, if you like KDE (more power to you), there are plenty of KDE centric distros for you to choose from.
Check out Mepis Linux. Debian/testing based, run from CD or easy install, and built for desktop use. Current version is quite solid - It installed beautifully on my AthlonXP desktop and IBM Thinkpad.
-- "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." - R.A.H.
QT apps are not free to run for the majority of people (who run windows), therefore I believe in GTK for philosophical reasons.
Pique comes from French. And there *is* a match between pronunciation and spelling; remember that pique is a French word and observe that it should be pronounced as 'peek'. Now the 'ough' laws are illogical...
All I know about Swahili (or kiswahili, if you will, to distinguish the language from waswahili, its speakers) is what I read about it around thirty-something years ago in a book by Mario Pei (and what I learned from Afro Sheen commercials watching Soul Train :), but OTOH the Kamusi Project online English-Swahili dictionary gives "huruma" for humanity. Looking for possible alternatives like "community" didn't turn up anything looking like "ubuntu."
OTOH, if I remember rightly, Swahili is a Bantu lingua franca with borrowings from Arabic. Since Nbdele and Zulu are Bantu languages, there may well be a cognate in Swahili that I don't know how to find in the online dictionary, or that might not be in it yet.
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
Well done ali.
I posted non anonymously so that you could work out who it was.
It's "piqued," not "peaked." GET IT RIGHT FOR ONCE!
I agree with you. KDE is nice, it has lots of great gizmos...but its not for me. Too many superfluous features, imo. Gnome gets the same job done, but its far more minimal, which is how I've always liked my desktops.
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!
Snapshot of Debian Sarge, or Sid? I think it will be snapshot of Sid, not Sarge. Gnome 2.8 for example is not even in Sid now, it is in experimental.
..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.
Mate, I feel your pain. Nobody around here can speel.
Qt is available under the GPL for OS X. OS X is certainly not a free platform.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.