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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."
Just like Debian... without all the pesky precompiled applications. I tried Ubuntu once. I found that in order to get anything useful, I had to pull packages from Debian APT sources. After a while it just seemed like I would be better off running Debian. Half of my packages were from there anyway. And here I am. Debian -> Gentoo -> Ubuntu -> Debian. Yeah, so I am not bleeding edge. Sue me!
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Debian and more specifically Ubuntu are Stallman's favourite distro because Debian has the exact same fanatic ideas about the software word as Stalman does. Debian does not include almost any non-compleatelly-free ot software with dubious licencing that could be consider non OSS. The result is that distros like Debian and Ubunty come with no Java support out of the box and this is sumply ridiculous. Debian for example was never designed to work with java and you will have to accomodate a lot of things in order to run Java programs without problmes. Ubuntu seems to have made the use and instalation of java a little easier but it still does not come with the installation CD and you have to manually download and install a JRE or JDK. Having in mind how much of the web is using Java technologies and other non OSS web stuff it kinda makes you wonder what the Debian and the Ubuntu developers are thining. Also another problem with Ubuntu is that even though it is based on Debian you cannot use the Debian repository because the packages are not 100% compatible. So come to think about it I am not so sure that Stallman really uses Ubuntu.
It is really a good thing that they make a live CD so that you can try it and realize what you are about to get yourself into. Debian's package manager is great and deffinitelly better than rpm because of the integrated dependancy handling however the overall phylosophy of the development team is way out there.
Don't get me wrong I love OSS and develop OSS however there will be a transition period before the full addoption of OSS and any distro that wants to be successful has to accomodate the transition. Oh yeah there is also no mp3 support in Debian and Ubuntu but that's a whole other can of worms. It is easy to get mp3 support in Debian and a little bit harder in Ubuntu. Also Ubuntu has managed to break the awsome installation process of Debian. Too bad...
Hoary has the "Ubuntu Update Manager" in Apps -> System, which lets you point and click the repositories you want
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
You raise a good point about OSS project acceptance and naming. Basically, I (a highly literate user) find a lot of OSS project names to be rather off-putting. I'm not a hacker or programmer or OSS zealot, I don't get all the in-jokes and recursive acronyms. I can deal; after all, what's not to love about The Gimp*? However, a lot of techno-idiot bosses and laypeople are NOT going to accept software with a weird-sounding name. I know this sounds daft but it's true. Until naming is more user-oriented, OSS will probably have a very hard time in the wider world.
* yeah the GUI is very odd, but ultimately anyone who can use PS at a half-decent level can handle it
Freedom: "I won't!"