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.
"
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
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
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'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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
It's swahili for "humanity"
Who would have thought knowing Swahili would come in handy on slashdot?
All's true that is mistrusted