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."

Comments

good work guys

[Anonymous Coward]

rock on

Re:good work guys

[randallpowell]

Oh yeah. I just hope that it can work with mini-PCI wireless cards for Dell notebooks (sure....) but it should be a great release. I used Ubuntu a couple weeks after it's release and it's great. I came from Red Hat/Fedora so not having weird lockups is an improvement.

Re:good work guys

[Stephen Samuel]

At first I thought he was talking about slashdotting a bittorrent server....

AMD65?

[El Cubano]

AMD65

Is this the competitor to Intel's VIIV?

Re:AMD65?

[vjmurphy]

That would be a VIV, I think.

Re:AMD65?

[OverlordQ]

Must be related to the AK-47 Mp3 Player

Re:AMD65?

[tibike77]

[joke mode enabled]
Even more impressive is the fact that they managed to fit a CD-drive on an assault rifle.
Kind of reminds you of the Beverly Hills Cop 3 gun... what was it called, "Annihilator 2000" ?

Re:AMD65?

[OverlordQ]

Whoaps, link dead, try here

Re:AMD65?

[Feztaa]

You might think that's a funny joke, but just imagine all the gun enthusiasts thinking "what do you mean it's an AMD sixty... four?"

I like the Knoppix CD

[Dancin_Santa]

I've used that on several network fileservers, but for my main machine, I rely primarily on WindowsXP because of its ease of use. I have loaded Knoppix on this guy a few times when I want to play Shisen-sho or Mahjongg, but I always have that fear in the back of my that something is going to break on my base Windows system.

What precautions do these LiveCDs take to prevent damage from occuring to the installed base system? I trust Knoppix because I've used it a few times, but Ubuntu has a funny name, so I'm a little more wary of it.

Re:I like the Knoppix CD

[lachlan76]

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.

Re:I like the Knoppix CD

[Anubis350]

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

Re:I like the Knoppix CD

[Anubis350]

yes there is, the latest knoppix releases carry a (I believe still beta version) of an NTFS writer util (captive knoppix). However, as disks are mounted read-only by default in knoppix there should be no problem.

Re:I like the Knoppix CD

[Anubis350]

I meant captive ntfs, damn distractions like tiredness :-P

Re:I like the Knoppix CD

[jovetoo]

Actually, there is RW NTFS support in the kernel. It is just not enabled because it is unreliable and almost guaranteed to break your system.

If you have ever read the reverse engineered NTFS filesystem specifications, you'd understand why.

Re:I like the Knoppix CD

[fimbulvetr]

LOL!

Is del even a linux command?

fim@localhost$ man del
No manual entry for del

???

Re:I like the Knoppix CD

[Sam Nitzberg]

I like removable primary drives, and slidable-drives on notebooks. They work great...

For example-

One notebook that I like to use for experimentation is an older (PIII, 700 MHZ) HP Omnibook 6000. I have one drive that I use for home and general work using installed programs that I semi-regularly use.

The drive and its caddy slide out (it's held in my two screws normally, but I removed them). I have another drive in a caddy that I slide in when I want to install an O/S to just experiment with.

On occassion, I will want to run network tools, and absolutely not risk corrupting my current environments. Then, I slide out the drive, and put in my Knoppix CD (I do plan to take a look at Ubunto). So, I am running Linux with no primary hard disk, and only the CD-ROM. If I want to move data, it can be done across a network, or I can plug in a USB-thumbdrive, or other removable storage.

Many modern notebook computers have drives that can slide right out, and you can slide another drive right in. Some don't. Some have a panel underneath the compouter that you have to open, and there may be a relatively weak cable connecting the drive. These configurations are less reliable if you will regularly slide drives in and out - they are really intended to be upgradable, but not subject to heavy changes in disk drive units.

You can also get removable drives on rails for your desktop systems.

Sam

Re:I like the Knoppix CD

[MBGMorden]

They don't even access the hard drive unless you mount the partitions yourself. I've ran Knoppix before on several systems that didn't even have a hard drive. I gave a disk to my brother once because his hard drive had failed and he was saving for something so he didn't want to buy a new hard drive at the time. He used it for 4 or 5 months before getting a new drive. All he did was browse the web and chat on AIM so there wasn't really a big problem with it.

Re:I like the Knoppix CD

[Zen Punk]

Why, it means "Knopper's Linux" of course. Where's my $1? USD, please.

Re:I like the Knoppix CD

[Stephen Samuel]

What precautions do these LiveCDs take to prevent damage from occuring to the installed base system?

As far as I can tell, the only thing that Knoppix will mount r/w by default is a Linux swap partition.

Things like NT filesystems are only mounted read-only unless you specifically ask for it to be re-mounted read-write.

When you get to the boot prompt, instead of hitting 'enter' (or waiting for it to timeout and boot), you can go
knoppix noswap
That will cause it to ignore any swap partitions and not write ANYTHING to the disk unless/until you say so (good for forensic work.)

So the short answer is: If you've got a Windows box, I can pretty much guarantee that your disk is safe unless you work at doing damage to it. ((If you want to damage the data on a drive, and you want to do it as root, then Linux will simply get out of your way. The gui normally runs as the user 'knoppix' which doesn't have direct access to the hardware. Some programs like 'parted' run with root permissions, since they're designed to play with the partition table.))

Re:I like the Knoppix CD

[kgbspy]

Captive RW ntfs. Absolutely brilliant. And, as long as you mount your ntfs partition first using your distribution of choice's read-only ntfs driver, installation is a snip.

Re:I like the Knoppix CD

[Lillesvin]

Uhm, Ubuntu doesn't necesarilly install over the entire harddrive.

I installed it alongside my Debian on my laptop with no problems. It's just that the default option is to install over the entire drive.

Re:I like the Knoppix CD

[DrSkwid]

one person's ease of use is another person's prison

Re:I like the Knoppix CD

[Dominatus]

A feature that barely works and breaks your system almost every time isn't a feature.

It's a well documented bug.

AMD65?

[shweazel]

It runs on an AMD-65? I'm impressed!

Re:AMD64 + 1

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD64++

Cool!

Always one better...

[Psychotext]

AMD 65, because 64 bit was so 2004.

Re:Always one better...

[redsilo]

Sorry, but I couldn't resist: I have just the car for you - already stripped down and covered with oil!!

Re:Always one better...

[Dorothy 86]

Well, it's no different than AMD's always done. It's a 64 bit processor, but it runs as well as Intel's 65 bit processor would, if it existed. ;-)

Re:Always one better...

[Anomalous Cowturd]

And I have just the woman for him. She's working tonight, so she's already stripped down and covered with oil.

Re:Always one better...

[Psychotext]

Get the two of them together and we'll see if we can come to some sort of a deal! :)

RMS's choice

[vandan]

Apparently Ubuntu is Richard Stallan's recommended distro. "Apparently" ... the place where I saw this made no mention of why, but I assume it has to do with licensing issues.

Anyone care to enlighten me?

Re:RMS's choice

[swv3752]

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.

Re:RMS's choice

[WMD_88]

He likes Debian, and Ubuntu = Debian + easier for inexperienced users. Probably the simplest explanation...

Re:RMS's choice

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:RMS's choice

[stm2]

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).

Re:RMS's choice

[randallpowell]

With Linux, BSDs, OpenSolaris, and Darwin, who would care about another Unix clone? Epecially when Hurd is a microkernel which may not work as planned and have bugs left and right.

Re:RMS's choice

[joeljkp]

I've tried it. It's based on Gentoo, and it's really rough, as well as imperfectly bi-lingual (with English as its second language). Try at your own risk.

Re:RMS's choice

[i_should_be_working]

Ubuntu also has those non-free repositories. But only non-free that's still legal and free as in beer. To get stuff like mp3 playing/encoding and dvd playing you have to go to some other repository or compile it yourself.

So RMS likes that a user has to make a real effort to get non-free stuff, and that they'll be aware what they're doing.

On Gentoo I installed non-free stuff frequently with no idea of their liscensing issues.

Re:RMS's choice

[trouser]

Perhaps you are thinking of UTOTO which RMS mentioned in this interview.

Re:RMS's choice

[jbolden]

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.

Re:RMS's choice

[jbolden]

I'm going to reply one more time. You ignored the entire legal part and went off again as if this was some personal issue of RMS's. It wasn't 100% of the lawyers agreed with Debian legal on their base analysis. There some question about whether the contradictory requirements were enforcable (i.e. whether you could ever actually lose the case if you simply redistributed KDE binaries due to issues of standing, good faith, etc...).

1) There was never any doubt that the KDE people had created a total legal mess.

2) RMS's legal opinions were in line with those of every single lawyer who looked at the situation. Where there were differences was on the strategic level
a) How serious was the problem
b) What to do about it

3) RMS was never part of Debian legal (since he is a programmer not a lawyer) and it was Debian legal that who raised this issue at first.

Finally RMS does not hold a grudge against KDE. He's worked hard within the FSF and Gnome to try and create a bridge to the KDE community. He is well aware that his actions created bad blood between KDE users and Debian, Gnome, FSF, etc... which he considers very harmful to the free software community. These things are slowly healing.

Imagine if the situation had continued and SCO had gone after KDE where every lawyer had agreed that there were huge problems in KDE's license, rather than the current situation where every lawyer concluded the SCO's theory of the law was nonsense. The whole feel of this thing would have been different.

Re:RMS's choice

[dbIII]

I'll get this in first - I think the words of RMS years ago have nothing to do with the presence or not of KDE in this distribution - they are mature enough to have their own reasons.

You ignored the entire legal part and went

It was a process that took time - however the comments RMS made indicated no compromised (fair enough) and limited communication (not fair enough). Any changes made came back with a response similar to "but it's not the GPL, we are not going to bother looking at it since it's not the GPL".

Finally RMS does not hold a grudge against KDE

In interviews years later he appeared to state the contrary view. Others also took up the grudge just like they took up his renaming suggestions, just because they look up to him. We still need to ask why, and not how high to jump.

SCO had gone after KDE

That would not have got enough press and not done enough to the share price. What does that scam have to do with linux licences anyway? They've alleged that they were carrying hundreds of kilograms of paper with source code printed on it about in a single briefcase; they said all kinds on nonsense.

Think of what will happen the first time the GPL is challenged in court - the challenger will say "this copyleft, is that a real word? Free is used in a way that will not be found in a dicitionary as well - this licence is worthless your honour!" We have let force of personality overwhelm reason with this licence, but luckily enough people have argued about it for years to translate it into a clearer form when the necessity arises. It is a very good licence in content - but the wording is silly and immature (just like the SCO people fortunately).

Re:RMS's choice

[cg0def]

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...

Re:RMS's choice

[salparadyse]

Because part of the Ubuntu philosophy is that Ubuntu is free and will always remain completely free. This coincides with Mr. Stallmans free software vision.

Re:RMS's choice

[thomasweber]

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.
Eh, no! First, Ubuntu is not RMS's favorite distro as pointed out by others. Second, Debian has a good history for not following RMS blindly (look at the debian-legal mailing list and the declaration of the GFDL as non-free). Third, Debian has a large contrib and a (not so large) non-free section, which includes stuff you won't find on a standard Redhat or Suse (reports about an unusable xine player on Suse come to my mind).

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
I thought Java is cross-platform - so why do I have to tweak the whole system for it (obviously, this comment is plain wrong - put blackdown.org in your sources.list, accept the License agreement and there you go).

Oh yeah there is also no mp3 support in Debian and Ubuntu but that's a whole other can of worms.
I just need to kick my computer for playing mp3s under Debian just fine - don't know how this stupid system ist able to play them - perhaps because apt-get install mpg321 just did it.

Now, for encoding you are well aware that there are patents on this, aren't you? Anyway, either use toolame (no patent problem, but only layer 2) or use Marillat's package.

Re:RMS's choice

[thomasweber]

Think of what will happen the first time the GPL is challenged in court

You are aware that there were already ' provisional injunctions' (I hope the translator got it right) in Germany based upon the GPL? http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/49377 (sorry, couldn't find it in English)

Re:RMS's choice

[thomasweber]

You don't see RMS going after ghostscript despite it not using the GPL.

No? Well, that's probably because GNU Ghostscript was released under GPL about 6 months after the Aladdin version - for years. http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/gnu/index.htm

Re:RMS's choice

[bolsh]

This mail from the GNOME Foundation mailing list is the end of an exchange between RMS and Jeff Waugh after the announcement of "Warty Warthog".

Quote: "I looked at the page you mentioned, which states Ubuntu's philosophy. It takes a strong stand in support of computer users' freedom; it
couldn't possibly be better. If the project followed this philosophy completely, I would say it was great. (Well, it ought to be called
Ubuntu GNU/Linux.)"

Dave.

Re:RMS's choice

[iwan-nl]

The reason I like Ubuntu is because of it's philosophical roots. Ubuntu is an ancient African ideology about seeing yourself in your social context ("My worth is defined by what I can do for others") instead of as a pure individual ("My worth is defined by what I can do for myself").

In the African tribes where Ubuntu originated from, giving your belongings away is/was considered more rewarding than actually owning them. In such a culture, sharing your meal with someone will give you more "social status" than having a nice house, car or bank account. Personal wealth doesn't make you "rich", humanity to others does.

In the F/OSS community, this way of thinking is widely adopted. Hackers gain status for what their work means to others, not by how financially successfull they are. After all, who do you like more, Torvalds or Gates?

However, the reason RMS likes Ubuntu Linux (Oops! Ubuntu GNU/Linux. Sorry man!) probably has more to do with licensing issues than with African ideology.

Re:RMS's choice

[millette]

I'm still hoping for the day RMS and Debian finally agree...

Re:RMS's choice

[meax]

> On Gentoo I installed non-free stuff frequently with no idea of their liscensing issues.

FYI: License support in Portage

Re:RMS's choice

[swv3752]

Actually, debian folks complained that the GNU document license was not free enough.

Re:RMS's choice

[joeljkp]

That's because the AFPL isn't an approved open source license.

You don't see the FSF releasing a GPL-licensed Mozilla, do you? The Mozilla license is an actual open-source license.

Re:RMS's choice

[DrSkwid]

The result is that distros like Debian and Ubunty come with no Java support out of the box and this is sumply ridiculous.

Are you trying to make no java sound like a bad thing ?

Re:RMS's choice

[sootman]

The e in Ututo stands for Desktop (in Spanish).

That should be:

"The e in Ututo stands for Desktop... in Japan!"

Re:RMS's choice

[mrroach]

Regarding Java on Debian: your post is pretty uninformed. It is Sun, not Debian, who prevents Debian from shipping Sun's Java. Even so, there are numerous packages in Debian main which require Java, and java-package will turn Sun's .bin linux installer into a Debian package.

You'll have to explain what "never designed to work with java" even means. It doesn't sound like a meaningful phrase at all.

(Sorry to get offtopic here)

Regarding publishing illegal, patent infringing software for MP3s, the tradeoff would be that Debian would lose all its mirrors, making Debian available from only those hosts who are either unaffected by, or unmindful of patent laws. Here's a note that people rarely make regarding MP3 en/decoders: **The GPL cannot usefully be applied to MP3 encoders/decoders** and if it is, then that software is effectively non-distributable.

From the GPL section 7:

If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all

LGPL'ed software falls under the same thing (section 11).

-Mark

Damn! I just upgraded!

[flamechocobo]

Now I have to get a 65 bit chip. Fuck you AMD, you stupid money mongers.

AMD 65?

[adam31]

The AMD VIV? Now I see what intel's thinking with the VIIV.

Or maybe it's supposed to be the AMD VI0V, and Intel decided to make it one more... you know, so people would be "Hey look, this one goes to II"

A contender for Ubuntu

[bogaboga]

That would be Viidalinux http://desktop.vidalinux.com/. It's packaging system (Portage)is wonderful, and I have also seen a review claiming that it's Gentoo done right! This is not meant to mean that Gentoo has any problem. I tend to agree with that claim after taking a test drive of the two.

Re:A contender for Ubuntu

[tetromino]

Gentoo with a friendly UI? That is ... wrong, obscene somehow. Like LFS with an XFCE-4.2 style graphical installer. A major selling point of Gentoo is that it breaks you, kicks you, and forces you to understand how a Linux distro is built - like a marine bootcamp for the OS-impaired.

I suppose that without the install process to filter out the weak, we will soon be having even more ricers filling the Gentoo forums...

Re:A contender for Ubuntu

[misleb]

Gentoo with a friendly UI? That is ... wrong, obscene somehow. Like LFS with an XFCE-4.2 style graphical installer. A major selling point of Gentoo is that it breaks you, kicks you, and forces you to understand how a Linux distro is built - like a marine bootcamp for the OS-impaired.

Not to mention Gentoo being a lesson in patience! I got tired of waiting for stuff to complile every time I wanted some misc. utility or application or game (not to mention openoffice!) I'm pretty sure the 10% more total CPU I gained from -march=pentium4 optimizations was eaten up by gcc long before I even got up and running.

Also, I don't really buy the idea that Gentoo makes people understand how an OS works. Just because it is a PITA, doesn't mean someone is learning. Most new Gentoo users just follow the receipes for getting stuff done. What is to learn?

-matthew

Re:A contender for Ubuntu

[Harker]

Gentoo with a friendly UI? That is ... wrong, obscene somehow. Like LFS with an XFCE-4.2 style graphical installer. A major selling point of Gentoo is that it breaks you, kicks you, and forces you to understand how a Linux distro is built - like a marine bootcamp for the OS-impaired.

Personally, I've yet to get an actual working installation of Gentoo. Every time, it's something different. The last time, It would not let me copy the kernel to the proper place because there was no room, even though I made it using their recommended size. I suspect I missed something somewhere earlier, but I'll be damned if I could find it.

Maybe next weekend, I'll have time to try again...

At any rate, a Gentoo-like distro (using portage) would be cool, if it had a good installer. Building your own linux workstation is an accomplishment, if you can get it working, and actually like the thrill of trying to do so, but it does nothing for linux advocacy and trying to bring new people to Linux.

H.

Re:A contender for Ubuntu

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

Give Slackware a go, it's got all the standardized filesystem locations with non of the compile time and many fewer head-wall collisions.

Re:A contender for Ubuntu

[windex82]

Also, I don't really buy the idea that Gentoo makes people understand how an OS works. Just because it is a PITA, doesn't mean someone is learning. Most new Gentoo users just follow the receipes for getting stuff done. What is to learn?

No, it doesn't really teach you how an operating system works, but it goes a long way in teaching the basics of running a linux box. I honestly find it rather silly that people think you wouldn't actually pick up much more knowledge about configuration and what parts of the system do what then a next-next-next-finish installer.

Re:A contender for Ubuntu

[Elladan]

Not to mention Gentoo being a lesson in patience! I got tired of waiting for stuff to complile every time I wanted some misc. utility or application or game (not to mention openoffice!) I'm pretty sure the 10% more total CPU I gained from -march=pentium4 optimizations was eaten up by gcc long before I even got up and running.

Of course, besides the massive time wasted on building, it's highly unlikely you got 10% speedup from -march=pentium4, either. Generally those arch-specific optimizations are nearly in the noise, and sometimes even make things slower.

What's more, pretty much every distro ships an optimized kernel, and the performance-critical bits of code like video encoders etc. are generally multi-core and auto-detect, so they just load the right binary for your CPU at runtime.

The compiler switches Gentoo people go on about are really just placebos. They put on more options, so it must be faster, it must!

Re:A contender for Ubuntu

[Fred_A]

The amd64 optimizations are supposed to make a difference on my box though... At least according to tests I saw posted somewhere.

And I don't spend that much time on building really. OpenOffice would probably take a few hours if it did compile (versions 2.x) should, but even a full KDE is usually just 4-5 hours. Typical apps are quite fast.

That being said, there aren't really that many advantages to running Gentoo compared to another well maintained distribution. The portage system works fairly well, but so does apt, or urpmi for that matter.

I know I wouldn't have considered it if it hadn't been the only system that I could get to install on my box. Now that it's there, well, it works, I tweaked it to my liking... so I'm sticking with it for now.

Re:A contender for Ubuntu

[misleb]

Well, I've been running Linux almost exclusively for 8 years. I guess I'm probably beyond whatever Gentoo could show me. To me it was just a big pain the ass. Between the merging of etc-updates and compiling every damn piece of software I want to run. Also, Gentoo seemed to use an unusually large amount of disk space just for a regular install... even after making sure all the dist files were cleaned. And then there was building OpenOffice. I'll never do that again.

-matthew

Re:A contender for Ubuntu

[misleb]

Well, amd64 optimizations are not optimizations in the same sense as, say, P4 optimizations. It is more like a different architecture with backwards compatability. Other Linux distributions actually have versions specific for amd64. So running Gentoo to get optimizations should be unnecessary.

-matthew

Re:A contender for Ubuntu

[windex82]

Yeah, if you already know the ins and outs of configuring without the GUI tools then your not gonna learn much. However, if your in the "next-next-finish-yay-I've-installed-linux" group when the littlest thing goes wrong, like say needed to change something in fstab most GUI installers are like.. "what is that?". Where as a person who has successfully gotten through a gentoo installation is more like, "oh yeah, I remember that file from when I installed, I'm still not sure what EVERYTHING means, but I know it has to do with drive mounting and options for mounting".

Theres a reason users of other distros have come to our forums looking for help and end up getting their help from someone just completing their first linux installation ever. lol, Just because it's their Nth attempt and have finally gotten it right means nothing. ;)

To be honest if I ever have to re-install I'll probably move away from gentoo, I feel like I've learned enough to be able deal with most problems on fluffier distros. Before gentoo I tried various flavors of linux a couple of times, Red Hat most often and fell into the "something went wrong and I can't find a solution or even figure out where to start" trap. Now I at least know the various things to look for simply through the tedious installations steps.

Linux Website Points To AMD65

[ocip]

Slashdot has a scoop on the new AMD65. According to this article at slashdot, the website has not-so-hidden clues that suggest the coming of the AMD65 very soon.

Ubuntu Got Me Fired!

[Anonymous Coward]

Recently I was asked for my expert opinion (IT admin for 5 years) on the architecture for our new groupware solution for inter-office communications. My boss told me the current plan was Windows Server with Sharepoint and SQL Server.
Well, normally I would just go along with it and quietly get my paycheck, but this time I had been inspired by recent Slashdot postings about the power of open source. I had done some studying up on my own, too.

So when my boss put the question to me, I responded with "That could work, but I'm thinking Ubuntu Warty Warthog or Debian Woody, with Derby 0.9 database and of course X-Bitch client to keep in touch".

Well, now I'm unemployed just like you all and I'm looking for a job. All I know is, nobody ever got fired for buying Dell and Microsoft. Damn slashbots... a curse on you!

Re:Ubuntu Got Me Fired!

[jag164]

# tar zxf humor-0.01-beta.tgz
# cd humor-0.01-beta
# ./configure
# make
# sudo make install

Go ahead and try it out now...

Re:Ubuntu Got Me Fired!

[lachlan76]

If you have 'make install' in sudoers, you don't deserve a job ;)

Re:Ubuntu Got Me Fired!

[Paul d'Aoust]

naw, he's an Ubuntu user, so of course he has to 'sudo make install'! sudo can do evvvvvvverything in Ubuntu!

Re:Ubuntu Got Me Fired!

[kgbspy]

It's probably just as well you didn't tell him about the GIMP...

Re:Ubuntu Got Me Fired!

[Sebastian Jansson]

Or if you run Windows:
Goto win-humor.com, download and run the humor-01-beta.exe
</sublimal-linux-flaming>

Re:Ubuntu Got Me Fired!

[jeffChuck]

Why do you need 'sudo' if you're at a root prompt? :)

The future is almost here!

[Chalex]

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!

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#e pisode19

It's also funny when he mentions that he's "disgustingly rich".

Re:The future is almost here!

[Mitchell Mebane]

Right now, Ubuntu is as close as it gets to "Linux done right". I just wish it used KDE. :P

Still, with the new release, I might just be tempted enough to get used to GNOME. Right now, GNOME does seem to be a bit more polished than KDE.

Re:The future is almost here!

[bigredmed]

Tried Warty Warthog. They are not even CLOSE to being close to ready to take over the desktop. There is NO customer support other than the support you get from a listserv full of other people who can 't get help with their problems.
The attitude they have towards non-freeware programs like Java is annoying. They won't support it until it is free. Fine, but this is my PC. I use it for my work and other computer needs, and it will not be used for your political axe grinding (the founder is rich enough to buy his own PC to be used for that purpose). I need Java applets for several of my business sites. If I have to use Ubuntu, I can't use the sites. I guess the big U won't be making a reappearance on my machine.
Ubuntu: African for OVER-RATED!

Re:The future is almost here!

[digidave]

So, paste the Debian repository URLs into Synaptic and double-click on 'Java'. Man, that's hard. Firefox will even install Java for you if you double-click on an unloaded applet.

Re:The future is almost here!

[natrius]

If they distribute Sun's version of Java, then they're not allowed to distribute any other versions like gcj. That's why Debian doesn't distribute it. Blame Sun for their licensing. Check out the Java page on the wiki for installation instructions.

There is NO customer support other than the support you get from a listserv full of other people who can 't get help with their problems.

The developers are on the list and respond to many of the questions people have. Instead of having someone walk you through a flowchart of possible problems, you get real people who have dealt with the problems before. Anything new gets added to the wiki, which is pretty easy to search. Try it out before you say it's overrated. It's the best distro I've used.

Re:The future is almost here!

[Paul d'Aoust]

that's great for people like us who are comfortable doing that, but I think that the point your parent (my grandparent) was trying to make is that Ubuntu's requirement to install your own non-free packages makes it not quite ready for widespread use yet. I agree... but after using it as my primary (well, actually, only) desktop environment for a couple months now, I'm thinking that everything in the distro *besides* non-free packages is pretty much ready... I find it easier than Windows. (then again, maybe it's because I've been away from Windows for too long.)

My three fave parts of the distro are (1) the layout of the Applications and Computer menu (2) its reliance on apt and therefore Synaptic (through its Debian heritage) (3) the Project Utopia automounting/autoconfiguring wunder-stack 'Just Works'. These three things alone are enough to make it competitive with Windows (and having a package management system makes it better than Windows, in my opinion -- I think package management is a 'killer app' for people coming from the world of Windows).

Re:The future is almost here!

[pere]

I have tried using Linux on my desktop for the last five years (running Linux on my servers for longer). I have tried tried all Redhat/Fedora distributions since 5.0, most Mandrake distributions, losts of SUSE-versions.

I always ended up with dual booting into Windows. Always too hard (at least for others using the computer) to open Word-documents on a floppy, burn CDs, download images from the camera etc.

My Ubuntu now has an uptime of more than three months! Everything just works! Im not even sure if I bother to upgrade from Warty to Hoary.

The only thing I found a bit confusing, was the way you had to add the universe/multiverse repositiories to get the non standard programs. This is probably no problem for people that are used to apt-get, but will probably cause problem for the average user.

Re:The future is almost here!

[Jugalator]

Yes, I'm happy to see those "next generation" distros aimed not to offer everything to the user on CD's and major customizability in the installer, to confuse newbies with hundreds of packages. I find these to be distros like Suse or Mandrake and think they to a large group of newbies are going in entirely the wrong direction. They simply just keep growing. To the point it's not even longer about bloat, but about confusion of package redundancy as well.

These new ones often aim for a 1 CD size, and there's not only Ubuntu for Gnome fans, but MEPIS for KDE fans, Yoper for a CPU optimized distro that's still easy to use. The effect of these are that they're less confusing, more stable (simply since less things can go wrong), and streamlined for new users.

I've always wanted Linux distros with a focus on ease of use while maintaining the greatness of, for example, being a full fledged Debian-based OS, and instead of focusing on giving the user an installer on 6 CD's or whatever, have it on one, and instead ensure the install/uninstall system is good, and focus on getting the stuff that's in right. Luckily I'm starting to see exactly those arrive now, and it has made me switch from Windows to dual booting with MEPIS Linux, throwing out my old buggy Mandrake 10 install that constantly kept producing crash dumps in my home directory silently for some reason, all since the fresh install of it.

Re:The future is almost here!

[Knuckles]

Hoary has the "Ubuntu Update Manager" in Apps -> System, which lets you point and click the repositories you want

Re:The future is almost here!

[Knuckles]

There is NO customer support other than the support you get from a listserv full of other people who can 't get help with their problems.

See Ubuntu Paid Technical Support for a list of options

Re:AMD64 + 1

[stanleypane]

The AMD development team have reached their 65th milestone in the production of the Live CD version of 'Hoary Hedgehog' of the marketing team that came up with VIIV of great fame from just two articles ago of great popularity amongst many fans of the Roman numeral system. Or just a typo. I'm still weighing the various factors in my head.

*hog

[Kell Bengal]

I'm just waiting for releases 'roady roadhog', 'grimey groundhog', and "boundy hog-tied-hog".

Re:*hog

[Stephen Samuel]

I'm guessing that their first production release is going to be 'horny toad'.

Re:*hog

[darkfox42]

Ah - I think you'll find that it's 'grumpy groundhog' actually. No, really.
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu/releases/documen t_view/

Re:*hog

[jrutley]

I know that you're joking, but the release after Hoary Hedgehog is actually Grumpy Groundhog.

BitTorrent Links

[Roguelazer]

• AMD64
• x86
• PowerPC

Considering that I am currently getting 1.5KB/s, I think you should -all- start downloading. :)

Re:BitTorrent Links

[Gamefreak99]

Don't you mean AMD65?

Re:BitTorrent Links

[paulius_g]

Got my bigpipe connection hooked on the x86 download. Have fun with my 10mbps connection!

Re:BitTorrent Links

[Roguelazer]

Hurrah! I finally broke the 80KB/s barrier! I'd like to thank all the mods, editors, and readers. And the Academy of Monkeys with Typewriters who write the articles, of course.

Re:BitTorrent Links

[Quila467]

Or you could just subscribe to Slashdot and download it before the leechers get to it. My average d/l rate was around 350 KB/s and it's been done for a while now. My u/l rate right now is 92 KB/s, which is about the max rate my ISP allows.

Re:BitTorrent Links

[keeleysam]

The torrents have been slashdotted

Re:BitTorrent Links

[Yaztromo]

Considering that I am currently getting 1.5KB/s, I think you should -all- start downloading. :)

And when you're done, leave your trackers running. And start downloading the PowerPC version too -- currently there is only one peer, from which I'm getting only ~15KB/s from, with an estimated 9.5 hours to go :P.

Yaz.

Re:BitTorrent Links

[bulletman]

Is anyone seeing any seeders now? I'm getting "Problem connecting to tracker - timeout exceeded" errors with btdownloadheadless.py.

Stephen

Re:BitTorrent Links

[burns210]

I haven't been able to connect at all for the last couple hours, is Ubuntu's tracker down? I am trying both x86 and PowerPC.

"connecting to peers - 0 peers" just stares at me. In this time, I downloaded via BT another linux distro mentioned in this thread, so I know my conenction isn't the issue. It is either no peers, or the tracker is swamped/down.

Re:BitTorrent Links

[millette]

Try these Coral links, the torrent tracker is busted:

• i386
• PowerPC
• amd64

Note: these urls use the Coral Distribution Network to easy the pain on the servers a bit.

monumentous 0.02 version upgrade!

[LuxFX]

I've seen how these open source version numbers grow. If the last big release was 4.10, and this is an amazing, monumental, complete redesign, this is probably 4.12, right?

Re:monumentous 0.02 version upgrade!

[gstamp]

It actually goes year then month where 2004 = 4

Re:monumentous 0.02 version upgrade!

[randallpowell]

The numbers are based on the year and month of the relase. Hence 4.10 was released October 2004.

Re:monumentous 0.02 version upgrade!

[rnd227]

4 stands for 2004, 10 for october. The next one, scheduled for april 2005 will be 5.04.

Re:monumentous 0.02 version upgrade!

[LuxFX]

Ok, now that makes sense, at least for software that was started in 2000. Does a lot of software use this method, or is that just the way this one works?

Re:monumentous 0.02 version upgrade!

[GeneticFreek]

Now I get it! I always wondered how the first release could be 4.10.

Re:Typo!

[hubie]

Ah yes, that brings back good memories of breadboards and controlable leds.

you mean

[commodoresloat]

GNU/Ubuntu?

Re:you mean

[DA-MAN]

GNU/Ubuntu?

It's spelled Gnubuntu

Isn't this what Gnoppix is now?

[didjit]

Gnoppix is now based on Ubuntu. How is the Ubuntu live cd different from Gnoppix?

and to think...

[mschoolbus]

how bad the grammar was in all my stories that got rejected... and this one got through!!!

Oh Jeebus

[Sykil]

Can we fix the typo before someone else makes a lame joke about AMD65?

.torrents

[Junior J. Junior III]

Slashdot the torrents and help me get my .iso faster

i386

AMD64

PowerPC

Re:.torrents

[Junior J. Junior III]

D'oh, should've previewed before posting:

PowerPC

AMD64

Re:AMD65

[Junior J. Junior III]

AMD65, code name Spinal Tap. "Ours goes to 65."

Mmmmm Ubuntu...

[misleb]

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

Re:Mmmmm Ubuntu...

[dmaxwell]

If the powerpc livecd is any good, I basically intend to do an Ubuntu -> Debian -> seriously rearrange the userland. I've been wanting a powerpc livecd that will let do the things x86 livecds have been helping me do for years now. I've been remastering my own Knoppix cds for awhile. I'm hoping it won't be too hard to base a powerpc livecd development system off of this.

Re:Mmmmm Ubuntu...

[viniosity]

It's odd you say that. I tried Ubuntu and find that almost all of the packages I find useful are already there. Anything off the beaten path, however, and you're right. Still, even some of those (like FreeNX) have been brought over to some of the extra warty repositories.

Re:Mmmmm Ubuntu...

[natrius]

The universe repository is basically Debian sid. You should be able to find almost anything if you add it to your sources in Synaptic.

Re:Mmmmm Ubuntu...

[dalutong]

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.

Re:Mmmmm Ubuntu...

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Don't dare people to sue you if you're running Linux.

Some big Utah corporation might actaully do it. :)

Re:Mmmmm Ubuntu...

[misleb]

So why run Ubuntu instead of Debian then? Is it just a more "stable" version of Debian sid with a better installer?

Re:Mmmmm Ubuntu...

[dalutong]

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. :)

I thought it said

[Raleel]

Horny Hedgehog..

Re:I thought it said

[Donny Smith]

> Horny Hedgehog..

And I thought it was Hairy Hedgehog.

Re:AMD65?!

[kernel_dan]

Technically speaking, AMD's 64-bit processors don't use longer instructions,
but the register size is 64 bits so it can address 2^64 bits of memory (with one register.)
Further reading

Site short on details

[sploo22]

The Ubuntu site seems to be missing a bunch of important details about the distro. Specifically, is there any way to see a list of their package repositories without actually installing Ubuntu?

Re:Site short on details

[TangLiSha]

I was digging through their site last week looking for this information, and they said that it would be set up when they let out the next release - that would be this release.

I've been running Ubuntu for almost a month, and I have installed a few packages from Debian repositories, which they do not recommend doing, but I haven't had any problems. I had installed Apache 2.0 and PHP from Debian. Since then, I've uninstalled them and tried the Ubuntu packages, and didn't notice any difference.

Guess I just like installing stuff meant for one thing on another - I also installed Adblock on Netscape.

Re:Site short on details

[crimsun]

The question is not whether installing packages from "any old" repository will work, because (obviously) well-versioned and checked packages will install and work fine if their exact dependencies are available, but rather if the upgrade path from one stable Ubuntu release to another is not made more difficult by installing packages from external repositories. This issue is definitely the most constraining regarding http://ubuntu-bp.sourceforge.net/ . Even my own Warty backported packages, while I await 'universe' upload privileges, need to be reversioned correctly such that a user who uses my Warty mplayer backports will dist-upgrade smoothly to Hoary.

Re:Site short on details

[poofyhairguy82]

You can browse the packages here.

Not for everyone

[Elote]

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.

Re:Not for everyone

[Elote]

As for the web community, it's not as good as you think. Sure, it's nice and friendly, and I'm a part of it (and fulltime ubuntu user on my desktop) but anything remotely complicated and you get zero replies, this is mostly because it's a very new community, and needs some time to mature, but it certainly isn't all that helpful if you have a question beyond "how do i change my desktop wallpaper?".
Yeah, they _definately_ are not at the technical level of the gentoo guys but they do have lots of nice intermediate howtos and tips in the wikis and forums.

Re:Not for everyone

[misleb]

I agree. Ubuntu doesn't have many applications outside of the standard gnome applications. I found myself pulling many packages from the Debian respositories. Soon enough I had a full blown hybrid on my hands. So I scrapped it and went back to full Debian sarge.

-matthew

Re:Not for everyone

[randallpowell]

Has anyone tried universe and multiverse repsoitories? I got non-GNOME apps there like Fluxbox and KDE. Those respositories really open up the breadth of apps.

Re:Not for everyone

[Pierre]

wow i've had quite a different experience.

ubuntu has replaced core as my primary os. it's been rock solid without any ofthe issues you mentioned.

added universe and multiverse to sources and i feel like i'm back on a debian box with all the software choices. synaptic on ubuntu is a real treat.

installed from warty - upgraded to hoary without incident.

guess ubuntu didn't like your box very much.

i found most of ubuntu to be pretty stock gnome 2.8 (blecky yuck yuck) 'cept for the human theme but as usual easy to tweak to one's liking.

Re:Not for everyone

[dalutong]

yes. they work very well. "perfectly" i'd say.

Re:Not for everyone

[tooth]

yeah, works fine for me too... only deal breaker at the moment is evolution crashes when connection to out msexchange2000 server, and only when looking at certain folders.

Re:Not for everyone

[Lord Ender]

Matthew: I think you should post this comment a few more times! Maybe the mods won't notice! Oops. I tipped them off. Welcome to the land of -1 redundant.

Re:Not for everyone

[tooth]

at our work we changed the machine name from msexchange1 to msx001 as some stupid filtering software was having problems with the "sex" in msexchange :-)

Re:Not for everyone

[bungley]

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.

Firstly, note that this is not done in an insecure manner -- none of the services are listening on anything other than lo by default. But more to the point -- I think it's really handy having a functional mail install by default. The user's attention is immediately grabbed on creation of a broken cron job, or on raid problems.

Re:Not for everyone

[eldacan]

If I understand correctly, you advise the more advanced user NOT to try ubuntu because (apart from your experience at install time, I think those users are interested in the installed product) :

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.

A mysterious one-time problem. Then:

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.

Long boot time. Bad indeed (how long exactly? Since I upgraded to hoary I think the boot time has much decreased.
As for postfix: what do Suse or Mandrake use as mail transport agent? Or isn't there any? (!)

These are very weak reasons to discourage people to "try out"!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Vida Linux really is great

[ShatteredDream]

I have been using it for about two weeks now and it really is off to a great start. It still needs some improvements, but my experience with Ubuntu is that it is not as solid under pressure as Vida/Gentoo.

Re:AMD65?!

[mbrewthx]

Why don't you use the AMD64?
because this one goes to 65, it's one more

mplayer or xine

[minus_273]

I was putting ubuntu on my sisters machine and soon discovered that there is no easy way to put xine or mplayer on ubuntu. I can't believe it is so bad especially because on my debian box it is trivial.

Re:mplayer or xine

[minus_273]

actually you coundn't be more wrong. That is why there are documents like this Ubuntu Multimedia HOWTO . Seriously, this is ok for a person like me who know how to build software, but why is there a multimedia how to doc for a distro that should be user friendly. Why so you need to build Mplayer from source?

Re:mplayer or xine

[808140]

AFAIK, you also need to build mplayer from source on debian. It has something to do with its use of non-free codecs, or something... not to mention that the mplayer guys think that, for performance reasons, you should always compile your own copy.

Process could (should?) be automated, though.

(I haven't installed mplayer on my debian system in a long time, though, so I might be totally wrong.)

Re:mplayer or xine

[Pierre]

if you're running hoary add multiverse to your sources.list

then you're just an apt-get away from having mplayer

Re:mplayer or xine

[Knuckles]

But that doesn't include the win32 codecs, so out of luck for p2p movies. Try Christian Marillat's repository

Re:mplayer or xine

[Pierre]

apt is similar to yum (if you used that) or up2date.

in /etc/apt/sources.list there is list of software repositories.

in /etc/apt/sources.list one can choose your version of the OS as well as which packages that you'd like to choose from

i just said hoary because that's the version of ubuntu that i'm using - first version was warty - hoary was the unstable version.

Re:mplayer or xine

[gimpimp]

huh? it's as easy as it is on debian. as the other poster said, on hoary add the multiverse repo(in synaptic or your sources.list) and apt-get it.
on warty, just add the universe repo, and apt-get install xine-ui(or whatever you want).

Re:Ahhh scary naked people

[Anonymous Coward]

The scary naked people are meant to be all happy and welcoming, i think. But they just look scary. The lass in the orange top's got nice tits, though.

named after Ron Jeremy???

[Anonymous Coward]

'Hoary Hedgehog.'

Re:Ahhh scary naked people

[Jessta]

Apparently it's an orgy distro.
Everyones in it together. :D

SCSI CD... booting from a floppy?

[My Iron Lung]

I'd love to run this off of an old harddriveless laptop I've got.. but the CD-ROM can't be booted to. Anyone know how I can get this Live CD to boot from a floppy that will then let me boot from the CD?

Re:SCSI CD... booting from a floppy?

[agent dero]

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

Re:SCSI CD... booting from a floppy?

[lachlan76]

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.

Re:SCSI CD... booting from a floppy?

[Anime_Fan]

Try Smart Boot Manager...
I know it can boot from ATAPI CD-ROM's, but I've never tried it with SCSI ones.

Give it a try
http://btmgr.webframe.org/

Re:AMD 65?

[damiam]

65 would be LXV, not VIV.

QT + GPL:

[jbolden]

so under the terms of the GPL, noone was allowed to distribute KDE binaries linked against QT

Small nit-pick for accuracy of readers. Depending on your view of KDE's rights over KDE software it may be the case that:

so under the terms of the GPL, noone was allowed to redistribute KDE binaries linked against QT. However KDE would still be able to distribute directly themselves.

Debian legal was divide on that issue they did however determine that Debian not have the rights under the mixed QT/GPL

Re:QT + GPL:

[hawk]

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.

Ubuntu made me love linux

[MightyPez]

Just a little preface. I am a Windows user. I probably always will be a Windows user. I like using it and am proficient in it's workings.

For years I've tried several distrobutions. Redhat (starting with 5), Fedora, Mandrake, Debian, Suse, and I even managed a stage 1 Gentoo install once (with limited results). The problem is I would be able to "use" the systems I set these up on, but never as well as my Windows setups. I just had trouble learning how to walk again.

Four days ago, I started installing Ubuntu on a recommendation from someone. I had enough spare parts to whip up a competent PC (Athlon XP 2500+, 512mb RAM, 18gb 10,000 rpm scsi drive, Geforce 2 GTS).

I installed Ubuntu, and was absolutely shocked. This was a distro that a dumb lifelong Windows user could run, and have it do everything I wanted. Granted, any other distro could do the same, but this one made it simple for someone like me. I've had no trouble keeping my software installed an up to date, thanks to the use of apt-get and not having to worry about dependencies (always a big roadblock for me). I've been able to get all my hardware working (even my digital camera, amazing for me), play some of my Windows only games with Cedega, and even get proper video playback with my media player.

Being that this is Slashdot, many of the linux aficionados may say "So? all that is pretty trivial." The thing is, it was always a struggle for someone like me. Ubuntu has made me love linux, and even make it contend for my attention away from Windows.

And what seems like a little pinch of fate, my main Athlon 64 box just died (lousy MSI motherboard issues). Now I am "forced" to use my linux box as a primary computer. And now I'm even considering putting Ubuntu on my laptop!

Re:Ubuntu made me love linux

[MightyPez]

Nowehere in my posts did I say "crappy MSI". I said "lousy MSI issues". Issues with the K8N Neo 2 Platinum that are well documented and abundant. Issues involving the board not powering on, but running all devices.

Desktop Linux

[jlo]

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.

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 /etc/apt/sources.list. I also setup apt-pinning.

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.

All in the name (Re:Ubuntu Got Me Fired!)

[Stephen Samuel]

Well, now I'm unemployed just like you all and I'm looking for a job.

You should never tell your boss to get a woody.-- at least, not unless you're sleeping with him (and, even then, not in front of workmates)

Re:AMD65?!

[MoFoQ]

that's a good one...amazed it's from an AC

I am typing this from Ubunto Live CD

[grolschie]

Weird! I got the DHCP failed message at initial blue console DHCP detection booting screen. Then it sent sigkill and sigterm to all processes (another weird thing like it was shutting down) prior to loading modules and then Gnome. At the Gnome desktop, DHCP now works and I can access the web. Perhaps there was some initial h/w detection happening before than main system loaded?

But anyways, I was greeted by nice music on my SoundBlaster Live PCI sound as Gnome loaded and my ATI Radeon is working, although using the open source drivers of course.

Damn...

[Black Acid]

...my Warty CDs just arrived in the mail from Switzerland, and they come out with a new release already! But I'm glad the LiveCD is available for amd64. The Warthy 4.10 CD sets (I ordered all 3 -- ppc, x86, amd64) only included an x86 LiveCD. This is great news for AMD64 users--particularly laptop owners. You can try out Ubuntu today.

Re:AMD 65?

[Uncle Jimmy]

The AMD VIV?

Ahh, so that's what the banner saying "BRING BACK VIV" meant at the cricket the other day!

Re:AMD65?!

[MoFoQ]

That's categorically false.

It's true that the "64" in AMD64 signifies 64bit registers, it means that a portion in the machine code has to also signify 64bit registers in addition to 32bit and 16bit registers, thus making the instructions a tad "longer."

Of course!

[vlad_petric]

The 65th bit is the evil one.

Ubuntu's Past CD's Duds?

[wezzul]

I ordered a bunch of free Ubuntu cds. What came was a two pack, one live cd, one install. Neither ever worked. Both of them would error out at some point during boot. I'd like to try this as well, but would like to hear if anyone has had any success with it first...

(the CDs were testing on multuple machines, with no luck on any of them)

Re:Ubuntu's Past CD's Duds?

[Arghdee]

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.

Re:Ubuntu's Past CD's Duds?

[g-to-the-o-to-the-g]

Ubuntu's cds seem to be sensitive to crappy CDROM drives. I had this problem once, but I popped in a newer LiteOn cdrom drive and all was good! Hopefully the devs will either fix this, or people will upgrade their cdrom drives.

Re:Ubuntu's Past CD's Duds?

[j.blechert]

I ordered 20, they came about 2 months after I ordered them but, hey, they're free!
and for me they worked quite well, on my geforce 2 system I had some problems with the screen resolution at first, however changing the standart resolution (on the boot promt through the menu) from 1280x960 to 1024x768 solved the problem.

Re:Ubuntu's Past CD's Duds?

[theblueprint]

My best friend and I tried a Ubuntu install on both of our machines a few days ago. I tried the live cd on my notebook to no avail, (admittedly, it could be the crappy CDROM drive) and my friend tried to put a clean install on his AMD64 desktop. The install seemed to go ok, but it would start up the first time, and die before the desktop was finsihed loading. We thought that perhaps it didn't like one of his periphials(not his CDROM-Sony DRU14A), so we connected a standard keyboard and mouse. It still hung up. More than anything, I was really disappionted. It did look great, but it would be a lot cooler if it worked out of the package.

Re:Ubuntu's Past CD's Duds?

[smoker2]

I tried the Ubunto Live cds on my sony Vaio laptop and they wouldn't boot. The cd drive just thrashed for a bit then xp started as normal. I posted a bug about it, and tried various other distros.

Knoppix works fine, and strangely, so does Gnoppix. Apparently it was down to Ubunto using grub as a boot loader, but if Gnoppix worked using it, then what was the problem with Ubunto.

Also, to prove a point, I dloaded and burnt my own copies of Ubunto, and they booted fine on the vaio laptop. I posted that in the bugzilla, but it was ignored apparently !?

So they make their own deb pkgs?

[Sark666]

At first I thought it used deb unstable. But I've read they make their own. They can't certainly have the near the amount pkgs deb provides?

If they don't have a pkg, do they gel well with sid? Never really liked mixing sources in deb.

Re:So they make their own deb pkgs?

[Paul d'Aoust]

Most Ubuntu packages are brought in from the Sid repository, then brought up to the point where they could be considered 'stable' by most people's assessments (which isn't too hard with Debian, seeing as Debian unstable is like Gentoo stable ^_^). I haven't personally brought the Sid repository into my repository list, but from what I've heard, it plays well with Ubuntu. You could always stick with the Ubuntu universe and multiverse repositories, though, which contain a snapshot of the Sid repository (if I'm not mistaken).

I think the biggest headache you'll experience when using foreign repositories is that Ubuntu is moving over from fam to gamin for file monitoring, and this causes things to break ever so slight. Not a big issue; my computer is still working fine, but it can get confusing.

I like it!

[suezz]

I like ubuntu - I tried it and now I put on all my computers - I am also going to put on my daughters Imac when I get time. To me it has the best hardware detection out there. And I only have to install it once - Put it on my laptop and it recognized everything perfectly - amazing! And I love apt-get. And I only have to install it once.

Re:No PowerPC Users?

[Yaztromo]

Welcome to the club. I actually downloaded the first ~150MB from the web site directly as I was getting about 3x the speed.

Always wanting to be a good net citizen, however, and seeing as how I'm about to go to bed anyhow, I decided to switch over to BitTorrent, and share that 150MB downloaded thus far with the rest of the world. Right now I only see 2 peers, but at least I'm getting about 15KB/s (and serving out ~20KB/s).

Yaz.

Re:another distribution

[randallpowell]

It is. However, competition is good. Only the best continue. My biz is about dead from competition since I'm one of dozens of freelance PC repair guys. I am upset, somewhat. But it does mean the better guys are making money and if they expand, others that tried and failed might get a job. Sounds weird but maybe a biz failed since a PC guy doesn't know biz well enough and doesn't know the basics but knows PCs well enough.

Make it boot from a NTFS drive (possible)

[siveys]

In the Knoppix community there has been some effort to make Knoppix boot using WINGRUB initiated from the XP bootloader.

Inserting one line in your boot.ini can make the XP bootloader execute WINGRUB from your factory preinstalled NTFS partition and with WINGRUB you can load a Linux kernel and a miniroot package from the same NTFS partition.

So far this all works with a recent stock Knoppix (which I suppose Ubuntu live CD is also based on) and stock WINGRUB (grub4dos.sf.net) but the problem is that the stock miniroot does not feature the read-only NTFS-kernel module so you can not load Knoppix direcly from an .iso file residing on your NTFS partition.

Tested patches to miniroot DO exist for this to work and they are acquirable from knoppix.net forums, but they have not yet been added to the official Knoppix distribution.

It should be fairly easy to incorporate these changes to a custom live CD like the one of Ubuntu's and this would make it possible to offer a Windows installer which setups WINGRUB, Linux kernel and the modified miniroot, searches (or just asks) for the location of your downloaded Ubuntu Live CD and after that just lets the user choose to boot into a HD based Live CD residing on a .iso-file.

For some people who just want to test a live CD the burning process might be too much of a step to take. This approach would be a no-cost, no-partitioning, no-bootrecord-touching way for these people to hop into the wonderful world of Linux live CD's :)

Re:Make it boot from a NTFS drive (possible)

[bfree]

Kanotix already includes this since it's BHX release and is essentially a debian-sid liveCD with some residual vague semblence to Knoppix. All you have to do is either put the iso image under KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX.ISO on any partition or drive and use the cheatcode fromiso, or you can use fromiso=somedir/K*FIX2.iso or even fromhd=/dev/hda1 fromiso=somedir/K*.iso and of course Knoppix uses grub to boot from cd anyway so it is much easier to construct your own grub menu for it.

Re:Thanks to Bush

[dabigpaybackski]

Exactly. And, most importantly, AK's are fun to shoot old appliances with.

Re:AMD65

[grolschie]

The AMD65 is one faster.

Burning Ubuntu in OS X

[paz5]

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.

Re:Burning Ubuntu in OS X

[RustNeverSleeps]

Thanks! That did the trick. I'm posting this using Ubuntu on my Powerbook. However, for some reason the only screen resolution it will let me use is 640x480 which is annoying.

Re:Burning Ubuntu in OS X

[c0bw3b]

ahh, so it wasn't just me. I ended up using Toast. Started up fine, but at 640x480 resolution, much like the above commenter. Didn't poke around too much, but until Broadcom opens up the drivers for Airport Extreme this really won't be all that useful for me.

A Linux rifle is not inconceivable

[Mostly a lurker]

Operating systems in rifles may come sooner than we think. When I was a kid, the idea of the telephone handset running a Unix like system was not exactly intuitive.

Too bad it's based on cloop

[ploppy]

According to the Ubuntu liveCD wiki the liveCD still uses the cloop (compressed loopback) system to compress the filesystem on the CDROM. This is a pity because most new liveCDs are now using SquashFS which is faster and compresses better.

This is disapointing for me because I both use Ubuntu and I'm the author of Squashfs :-)

Re:Too bad it's based on cloop

[poofyhairguy82]

This is disapointing for me because I both use Ubuntu and I'm the author of Squashfs :-)

File a bug report. The Ubuntu devs are pretty accessable.

Re:Too bad it's based on cloop

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure all five people who give a shit about this are just outraged.

Re:Too bad it's based on cloop

[ploppy]

Cloop is a *read/write* FS, SquashFS is read only.

Err, sorry, but Cloop is read-only. Even if it was read/write (which is isn't) being stored on a CDROM would make it read-only :-)

All liveCDs irrespective of the underlying read-only fs (cloop/squashfs), need to make some part of the root filesystem writable in someway. There are many techniques to do that - symbolic links which point into tmpfs ramdisks, tmpfs ramdisks which are the root with symbolic links that point back into the read-only filesystem, or more recently through the use of unionfs or mini-fo. These techniques apply equally well to cloop or squashfs.

The point I was making is Squashfs is a faster filesystem which compresses better than Cloop. This makes the Linux system run faster. Google for performance results comparing Squashfs against Cloop, they're publically available...

Incidently the wiki page which you refer to is the wiki page I mentioned. Knowing a fair bit about liveCD design I can't see anything terribly novel or 'much more rocking' about the Ubuntu liveCD.

Re:Too bad it's based on cloop

[ploppy]

I'm sure all five people who give a sh*t about this are just outraged.

Moderators should mod the parent up because in an ironic way it is unintentionally quite funny.

It's funny because the post illustrates a fact that becomes obvious to anyone reguarly reading the 'technical' reviews devoted to liveCDs. The reviews never mention anything about the underlying techniques that the liveCD uses, as if such things were totally unimportant, and yet go into excruciating detail about every little package and widget on the Gnome/KDE desktop as if that was really important.

The fact is the speed of application launching and general 'user experience' of using the liveCD is very much determined by the filesystem used, the file placing strategy (if any), and other general lowlevel things which never get a mention. Try it sometime by reading a LiveCD review, they may tell you what packages are on the CDROM but they never ever tell you how the liveCD was built and what it was built out of!

Re:Too bad it's based on cloop

[olau]

Maybe you could give them a hand? :-)

Re:Too bad it's based on cloop

[smurfi]

cloop is read-only, true -- as long as you're not mounting it with LVM and create a read-write snapshot.

Which is exactly what the Ubuntu people plan for their Live CD. Instead of taking over your hard disk, it will over your CD-ROM drive plus your USB stick. ;-)

Can't do that with squashfs.

Re:Initial Hardware Detection

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Hoary Hedgehog - great, but I'll wait a while

[Anonymous Cowherd X]

This release is probably nice, but I think I'll wait until the Giddy Groundhog release to give Ubuntu a try.

Does it detect my hardware?

[samael]

In a bid to try Linux out, I downloaded a few Live CDs. Not one of them recognised my ATI graphics card.

If they can't even manage to recognise my, extremely common, graphics card then I don't think I fancy wasting much time trying to get everything else working.

Re:Does it detect my hardware?

[Maffy]

It would be useful to know what your graphics card is if you expect to get any response on this.

It would also be useful to know what you mean by "not recognise". Do you mean that it said "Generic SVGA" or similar? Do you mean that it said "Generic ATI" (bearing in mind that often a single driver works for several types of cards)? Did your display actually work?

Matt

Re:Does it detect my hardware?

[samael]

Can't remember the details I'm afraid. I'm fairly sure it defaulted to generic SVGA, as I had it working, just not at my TFT's default resolution, which meant everything looked a tad odd (and a bit oversized).

Re:Does it detect my hardware?

[gimpimp]

The first release of ubuntu live cd used xfree, which lacked support for a few ati chipsets.
that, and the fact that the binary drivers dont come on the cd could be the reason.

the newer ubuntu uses xorg, which supports more cards.

i couldn't get the first release to use my video properly, but hoary works fine with the xorg driver, and the ati binary one.

Re:Might be worth your trying SimplyMepis

[Jugalator]

Hehe, I was just going to post that "Oh, I felt pretty much like you, but I'm on SimplyMEPIS instead". ;-)

I have no doubt Ubuntu is similar (haven't tried it) and it's to a large extent mostly about what window manager you choose. Anyway, with those kind of simple distros it's quite amazing it has never been done before. Just that they're focusing on one window manager is a brilliant move to me. I mean; choose a different distro if you don't like it. In the process of removing alternative stuff and focusing on a slick application setup they remove a ton of junk.

ftp link

[usheletz]

seems the torrent doesn't work that well in this case. couldn't get any peers/seeds to even start dling.

here's the ftp link.

ftp://cdimage.ubuntu.com/cdimage/releases/hoary/ar ray-3.5-live/

Nullmailer

[Daniel Serodio]

Why not use nullmailer? If it's just for local mail, it's much slicker than Postfix.

Funny but...

[No Such Agency]

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

Re:Funny but...

[swv3752]

Like Longhorn is any better. Developer release names have a long tradition of being silly. Checkout some of the MacOS internal names.

What other project besides the Gimp has a bad name?

Apache, Mozilla, Samba, Linux

While some of the KDE sub projects are a bit silly with the K names, nothing offensive. Same thing with GNOME.

Re:Funny but...

[No Such Agency]

I recognize that "internal" names are not really intended for general consumption. Longhorn is the first non-OSS one I thought of as well (as well as other MS ones like "Klamath" which I had to look in an atlas for). And I know that most of the OSS projects with truly baffling names are targeted at a very technical user base. I just wanted to make a semi-serious reply to the humorous parent.

Please post reviews

[horza]

I have a number of friends that want to use Linux instead of Windows, but I'm not sure what to install that will give them the most functionality but me the least headaches. Must be able to connect to adsl out-of-the-box.

So far my option list appears to be: Ubuntu, Knoppix, Mepis. Now Vidalinux.

Off the list: Red Hat, Mandrake (same rpm hell), Gentoo (this is what I use but is too slow to install and configure for others).

Can ppl that have used the above list please post comparative reviews?

Ta,

Phillip.

Install from LiveCD ala Knoppix?

[hecubus2121]

can you?

Would disagree

[Synn]

I'd consider myself an "advanced" user, been using Linux since 1993 or so and am a full time Linux admin. Ubuntu is a very nice distribution because it just works and is very stable. It takes the best aspects of Debian and creates a stable up-to-date desktop distribution based on GNOME.

Gentoo, FC3, and Debian unstable are great but you also spend a lot of your time updating and tweaking the operating system. And even advanced users get tired of constantly managing their OS at some point :)

As for speed, Ubuntu has fewer services starting than Fedora does. It's more locked down by default(for example, no sshd). No idea why your system was so slow. I've run FC3 and Gentoo on my current box and Ubuntu performs the same. If it was slower, I'd notice it as I've run performance comparisons on World of Warcraft running under both FC3 and Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is not a newbie distribution. It's the best GNOME based dist out if you just want something that runs and doesn't need constant managing. That may make it good for newbies, but it doesn't make mean more advanced users wouldn't like it.

What?

[FunOne]

If they distribute Sun's version of Java, then they're not allowed to distribute any other versions like gcj.


Then how does SuSE get away with it?

Yeah, but . . .

[hawk]

. . . I never quite did get those LED's to tell me when the tube filament got warm enough. Maybe a microcontroller . . . :)

hawk

Re:Might be worth your trying SimplyMepis

[_randy_64]

I'm running SimplyMepis on my laptop now, and I just tried the live version of Ubuntu last night.

Both Mepis and Ubuntu detect my Centrino wireless, but only Mepis makes it work. Ubuntu gives some error at boot and then doesn't even show it as a device once the system is up. Both detect my Synaptics touchpad, but only Mepis has all its functionality working "out of the box". And Mepis provides most useful (though not Free) plugins for Mozilla/Firefox already installed and configured.

YMMV, but if you try Ubuntu and have problems with it, you definitely should take a look at Mepis.

Finally, a rescue CD for an AMD64 system

[Anonymous Coward]

Typos in the original article not withstanding, I am very happy to see an AMD64 live CD that I can use as a rescue disk the next time I hose LILO (or MS does it for me). Sure the Debian AMD64 install disk could be made to work, but it doesn't automagically detect my SATA drives and has very few of the utilities I would need should I hose my system a little more than just mucking up LILO. This is a very welcome discovery.

I'm using it right now.

[c0bw3b]

Just booted up my 12" Powerbook with the Live CD. It started up at 640x480, and I can't seem to change the resolution through the Gnome tools, so that's a bit of a problem. Also the Airport Extreme card is, I assume, non-functional. Anyway, it will be a handy tool in case an OS X install goes horribly awry or something.

Re:Might be worth your trying SimplyMepis

[Yankel]

I'm very torn between SimplyMepis and Ubuntu:

For Ubuntu:

1. I prefer Gnome's interface to KDE's.
   
2. Ubuntu is very well supported and has great repositories.
   
3. Best hardware support outside of Knoppix (the SimplyMEPIS live CD has some mouse-problems on my T40).
   
4. It's already there (if it ain't broke..) and my wife would flip if I change the OS again.

For SimplyMEPIS

1. SimplyMEPIShas more toys working out of the box which Ubuntu leaves out for philisophical reasons (e.g. flash, ability to play MP3s and other closed source video types).
   
2. SimplyMEPIS has a very neat (read easy to use) networking tool which I've already used in an emergency (much easier to use than Knoppix).
   
3. Two words: Tux Racer.

first working PPC live distro for my PowerBook

[weinford]

Hi all, this is really great news for me! I was planning to try Linux on my PowerBook for quite some time now. I was a Linux (Mandrake, SuSE) and gaming Windows user for ten years and got myself a PowerBook last year. I really like Mac OSX, but I was missing many of my beloved Linux apps. I tried to install Debian quite some times, but it wasn't more than a hassle. There are some approaches for Knoppix clones for PPC, but they didn't get me further than a console, which didn't give me anything but a bash. Well, I have a bash in OSX too.

Now I found Ubuntu, and was already about to install Warty, but didn't dare to crash my machine in the middle of writing down my thesis. So I waited further until today, I really needed to try Ubuntu live. And it works! I have a 15" Alu PowerBook, and Ubuntu live gives me a working X in correct resolution, DHCP networking (ethernet only, no WLAN / Airport support :(), sound, and a good bunch of Gnome applications plus OpenOffice and Firefox. I am writing this in Ubuntus Firefox, actually.

Still, what I really loved in SuSE was KDE with Kile, Kate and KMail. Now I have Gnome... well, maybe I'll try it out here and then. But for my main work I'll stick to Mac OSX, which is not too bad, either.

Hey, by the way, Ubuntu just reminded me that my battery is running low, even that works! All out of the box! But wait! Where is the AT sign on this crappy keyboard layout? I don't HAVE AltGr...

BeatrIX Linux ROCKS!

[SparklingClearWit]

Based on Ubuntu, I strongly recommend you check it out - at about a 200MB ISO, it will fit on a flash drive. The LiveCD is great, and it works with all the Ubuntu repositories if you install it to the HDD.

http://www.watsky.net

I *love* BeatrIX. It runs great on old hardware, has the right set of starter apps for Mom, and can be tweaked to your liking as you wish.

Disappointing

[startling]

Seeing all the fuss about Ubuntu I tried the Live CD on one of my PCs.
Of the Live CDs I have tried (Mandrake, Suse, Knoppix, Mepis) on this machine, Ubuntu was by far the worst. When the desktop finally came up (it seemed to load much, much slower than all the other live CDs I tried) the mouse wasn't working at all. Also, judging by the error messages at bootup, it didn't find my network card nor sound card. It's an old machine (K62, 256Mb RAM,) but with fairly standard hardware. By comparison, Knoppix found everything except my Adaptec SCSI card and Creative SoundBlaster 16 card. (I have yet to find ANY Linux distro that finds that pesky sound card. I know Creative sometimes use kludges to get their crap working, so maybe I should just bin that card and be done with it.)
Shame, I was looking forward to trying a brown desktop for a change.

Re:Neoconservative wackos...

[EvilJoker]

Read what else the founding fathers wrote on the subject, you'll be rather amazed.
check it out.