Slashdot Mirror
Ubuntu Linux Live CD Release
tola writes "The Ubuntu development team have reached their first milestone in the production of the Live CD version of the upcoming release of Ubuntu
codenamed 'Hoary Hedgehog.' This edition features a completely redesigned system for creating Live CDs. While some people have tried rough previews, this is the first proper milestone for the live CD version. Anyone, especially folks who are
using our previous release (4.10 'Warty Warthog'), are encouraged to try this out.
The Live CD runs completely off of the CD and will not touch any of the data on your hard drive so is a fantastic way to get a preview of new features in the upcoming Ubuntu release without upgrading your system. ISO images for i386, AMD64 and PowerPC can be downloaded from Ubuntu."
What precautions do these LiveCDs take to prevent damage from occuring to the installed base system?
Well, the fact there isn't a RW NTFS driver makes it safe enough (your partition is mounted read-only), as well as the fact that the root partition is on the cd. Unless you do it yourself, it won't touch the hard drive.
Assuming this is a legit ?...
they don't write anything to disk unless you want 'em too (usually intentionally not easy), only ram (they can use native swap if you have it though). They usually mount local disks "read only" to make sure this is true. Since they dont touch the disk and run off CD there should be little/no chance of your windows install (or anything else on the machine for that matter) being effected in the slightest
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Ubuntu is Debian with a better installer and only uses GNOME. History of licensing issues with Qt/KDE is that it was not always GPLed. GNOME was sponsored by the FSF as a "Free" replacement for KDE. Also the debian folks are sometimes a bit too radical even for RMS.
While I don't know specifics, but I imagine this is probably why.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Everyone's always saying how Linux will take over the desktop soon. Well, we're almost there. I've been following Ubuntu closely since recently. I think it really has a chance to provide a real, workable, usable alternative to OS X and WinXP. Even the Warty release is very impressive, and Hoary promises to be amazing!
e pisode19
What makes me think so? Remember that guy that has so much money that he paid the Russians to take him to space? Well, he's decided he wants to make a good Linux distro. He started Canonical, the guys behind Ubuntu.
Here's a very interesting radio interview with the man himself, Mark Shuttleworth, where he talks about the need for a "technically superior" distribution.
http://www.lugradio.org/guide.php#
It's also funny when he mentions that he's "disgustingly rich".
Considering that I am currently getting 1.5KB/s, I think you should -all- start downloading. :)
My Systems
Stallman doesn't like it how Debian has a large non-free repository of software. He would prefer if they only 'endorsed' completely free software.
Regarding KDE, I don't think he has any issues with it now that both KDE and QT are under the GPL. Earlier, KDE was GPL but QT was under a proprietary license, so under the terms of the GPL, noone was allowed to distribute KDE binaries linked against QT. Other distros deliberately overlooked this, but Debian, as always, were sticklers for copyright.
NO.
RMS recommended distro is Ututo-e, from ARGENTINA!. Look at this article (in Spanish, sorry). You could even find Ututo-e in FSF FTP server. The e in Ututo stands for Desktop (in Spanish).
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
It actually goes year then month where 2004 = 4
The numbers are based on the year and month of the relase. Hence 4.10 was released October 2004.
For the more advanced user thinking about trying it out...don't. I checked out array-3 of hoary a couple of days ago and quickly decided it wasn't for me.
My mini review:
The install is a two-phase process using text-based menus and is not difficult, however I remember thinking that the menus were layed out rather awkwardly and could have been streamlined. The second part of the install which actually performs application package installs failed mysteriously for me and gave me no option to restart it when I reran base-setup(yes, this is a pre-release cd). apt-getting the required packages manually worked fine.
Once installed, you are presented with a very clean and polished Gnome desktop with the standard amenities including Firefox 1.0, however there was little difference between it and other Gnome installations aside from a more pleasing tan theme consistently applied to everything.
After a few hours my athlon-xp 1600+ with 1GB ram slowed to a crawl. There were a few hundred megabytes of free memory and cpu usage was always well uner 5%, however even typing at the console was unbearably slow and loading the desktop took a couple of minutes. Never did figure that one out and killing allmost all running processes didn't help a bit. Doubt this was a kernel driver bug too, since I've run other late 2.6 based distros on this machine with no problems. This didn't occur again however...but I didn't have it installed many hours after that.
Boot times were atrocious, maybe worse than fedora due to innumerable services being started by default...many of them which I did not recognize. I seriously doubt postfix is a necessary service for the desktop audience they're targeting.
In summary, the desktop is great for new users, however the rest of the system leaves a lot to be desired. I would advise people to wait a while before adopting ubuntu so that they can have time to work out their issues. For now Mandrake, Suse, and the like perform better as desktop distros, and Gentoo/Slack/vanilla debian work great for the more experienced.
The only huge win over other distros that I see at this point is ubuntu's web community, which is comparable to what you would find in the gentoo forums for helpfulness.
After trying all the major distros, I've become a real fan of Ubuntu. It's the first distro that I think could have a real potential to become THE desktop Linux. It's Debian from the inside and something different from the outside. When installing Linux to my friends, I no longer have to pound Debian to become a decent desktop OS. Ubuntu is that out of the box. Still Ubuntu retains the configurability of Debian.
/etc/apt/sources.list. I also setup apt-pinning.
Yet Ubuntu needs some tweaking too. E.g. I hate spatial Nautilus, so I always change it to the browser view. Default apt repositories aren't enough, so I add Ubuntu Universe, Multiverse, Backports and Debian Marillat repos to
One can always argue that Suse, Mandrake and other KDE based distros might have some potential as THE desktop Linux, but I personally dislike KDE. It's too heavy and bloated for my taste.
To steal my idea you'd have to make me forget it. Otherwise you'd just be copying it.
You are absolutely 100% wrong. I suggest you read the debates on Debian legal. The problem was that the QT licenses prohibited things that the GPL allowed. The GPL specifically prohibits you from creating new obligations as part of the terms of distribution. Since the binaries were a derived work of both a QT and a GPLed product (QT and KDE respectively) it had both sets of requirements. Since any attempt to redistribute the product would obligate you to do contradictory things it was illegal to redistribute.
The QT license was not considered a free license under most definitions of free (unlike the X and BSD licenses which are). The QPL was considered a free license just a free license which was not GPL compabable so it didn't solve the problems that Debian had with KDE.
You probably have an older, pre- El-Torito setup, which means, basically, boot off floppies to install things.
My old P-166 Toshiba can't boot from CDs, it's not too hard to install from Floppies
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Um... you probably didn't allow the multiverse and universe repositories. i didn't need to get ANYTHING from debian. just got transcode type things (which aren't in debian either.)
it works beautifully. i love my machine. installed it the same day warty came out. haven't changed yet.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Funny - I got a bunch of Ubuntu CDs in the mail a couple of months ago.
Tried the live cd on both machines (P4 1.3 Desktop and P4 2.4 Lappy) and they both worked perfectly.
So much so that I'm using it as my main OS now on both machines. Desktop got a clean format and install, Laptop got a partition but hasn't been rebooted into Windows since.
Very very impressed with Ubuntu, the support forums are very helpful.
Finally found a distro that allowed me to say goodbye to Bill.
look in the boot/isolinux (i think that's the right dir), and look at the config file to find the kernel arguments, kernel file, etc, and then copy them on to the hard drive or floppy disk, put grub on the floppy disk, and make sure that the kernel gets passed a root=/dev/cdrom or whatever device node it is.
Since you have no hard drive, if the kernel/initrd doesn't fit on the floppy, you'll have to netboot (there is an option for that when you compile grub), you need a tftp server on another box.
I've done this with mandrake before, it's not big problem.
For some reason if you try and burn Ubuntu with Disk Utility it will crash. For those of you looking to try this out on ppc try using cdrecord.
cdrecord -v speed=24 dev=IODVDServices hoary-live-powerpc.iso
To get cdrecord try "port install cdrtools" or "fink install cdrecord". You can also try this binary if you do not have fink or darwin ports.
I'm not familiar with ubuntu but seeing as it is based on debian I have two guesses for you. One is that the kernel on the install disk is different from the one you choose to install, and that the particular kernel you installed doesn't contain the module for your particular card. Try an lsmod from the command line and see if you see your driver there. (I think typical drivers for the wireless cards would be named prism, orinoco, or hurcules). My second guess would be that hardware detection and auto probing of modules is not enabled by default. Try apt-get install discover and reboot, or check you /etc/modules file for the appropriate configs. Hope that helps ya.
You can browse the packages here.
Open Source Sushi
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you're considering getting legal advice on the web, get your head checked.
>However KDE would still be able to distribute directly themselves.
It's even broader than that: KDE was QGPL, not GPL, no matter how many times the authors claimed otherwise.
The clear intent of the authors *was* distribution. Their invitation to do so overrides any conflicting statements in boilerplate (in this case, the GPL). Even terms in that boilerplate saying they couldn't be overridden would be overridden.
The flip side of this is that if they incorporated actual GPL sofwtare into their Quasi-GPL product, they would be violating the license of that software. Not "violating the GPL," but violating the software of the other license, which happens to be GPL.
hawk, esq.
the difference is that the basic packages (in main) are much better maintained than the basic sid debian packages. that's because they are considered the stable packages. i can't remember which is which but i think universe in the next level of care by the ubuntu people. multiverse after that. the warty repos don't change much. they just get maintained for bugs, etc.
:)
debian focuses on the stable branch. so those are very stable. but they are also dated. ubuntu is like a snapshot of sid which has been given some special care so it is stable. they also put in a lot of gnome work in as well.
i ran sid for years. this is much more stable. if you want to have a sid type experience in ubuntu then run hoary. then run whatever's next when hoary comes out.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?