Hoary Hedgehog Ubuntu 5.04 Released

Simon (S2) writes "Ubuntu Linux 5.04, code name 'Hoary Hedgehog', is now available. It offers the following new features: Simple and fast Installation, live CD's for Intel x86, AMD64 and PPC, GNOME 2.10.1, Firefox 1.0.2, first class productivity software, and X.org 6.8.2. Read the announcement and the complete release notes. Quick download links for the i386 architecture: ubuntu-5.04-install-i386.iso.torrent (587MB) and ubuntu-5.04-live-i386.iso.torrent (625MB). Install CD and live CD images for AMD64 and PowerPC computers are also available." Kubuntu is out in a new release as well. Screenshots available of the Kubuntu release. Update: 04/08 14:21 GMT by Z : Made the direct ISO links torrents.

Comments

Torrents man

[ShepyNCL]

Put a link to the torrents as well.

Its only through lawful and fair use of the technology that its not going to be attacked as a p2p mechanism. It was created for distribution of Linux isos, sue it for that.

And it saves the Ubuntu team some bandwidth

Installs:
http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/5.04/ubuntu -5.04-install-amd64.iso.torrent
http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/5.04/ubuntu -5.04-install-i386.iso.torrent
http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/5.04/ubuntu -5.04-install-powerpc.iso.torrent

Live CD:
http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/5.04/ubuntu -5.04-live-amd64.iso.torrent
http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/5.04/ubuntu -5.04-live-i386.iso.torrent
http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/5.04/ubuntu -5.04-live-powerpc.iso.torrent

-Shepy

Re:Torrents man

[ShepyNCL]

Wait... No, dont sue it, use it instead, heh.

Re:Torrents man

[Slack3r78]

You beat me to it. Direct linking to *two* 600+ MB isos on the front page of Slashdot? That's asking for disaster.

That said, I've got the torrent for both i386 and PPC going, can't wait to finally get this installed. I've run the dev builds of this on and off at different points, and it had definitely been shaping up to be a great, useful distribution.

Re:Torrents man

[Hannes Eriksson]

Direct linking to *two* 600+ MB isos on the front page of Slashdot? That's asking for disaster.

Actually, it's a good stress test for our ftp server (also ftp.se.debian.org and ftp.gnome.org); we now know that it tops out at a sustained rate of 70MB/s given hundreds of users requesting several gigabyte of data (totally thrashing disk cache).

Re:Torrents man

[drinkypoo]

Well I'm glad SOMEONE has working links. The torrent links in the main story that were put there to replace the direct download links are broken, or at least the livecd one is. Another fine example of what passes for journalism on slashdot.

Re:Torrents man

[TheSurfer]

In case the us.releases webserver (which is also linked in the story) goes down: mininova torrents mirror.

Re:Torrents man

[Anonymous Coward]

Are there any repositories for stuff like libdvdcss?
I really want to switch to Ubuntu, it's clean, fast and easy, but I need to be able to watch my 150+ legally purchased DVD collection.

Re:Torrents man

[endlessvoid94]

this is probably a stupid question...but
since for some reason i cannot get the ubuntu page to load, or anything else on their servers, i need to know if this runs the 2.4 or 2.6 kernel
i'm trying to configure it to run under vmware...any tips? thanks

Ubuntu rocks

[koody]

Download the torrent

New stuff include

• Gnome 2.10.1, which makes the desktop a lot faster than before
• X.org
• Simplified update- and package management
• Much faster boot process
• Better laptop support (ie suspending, hibernating, processor frequency scaling)
• Kickstart support for automated largescale installations
• Live CD and Install CD both use the new debian installer infrastructure
• UTF-8 by default
• A program for collecting information about what hardware works and what doesn't
• Kubuntu - complete KDE 3.4 based version of Ubuntu

Stuff people are going to bitch about

• No graphical installer. The current installer is extremely simple and has been streamlined even further in this release. A graphical installer is planned for the next version (Breezy Badger).
• No menu editor installed. One can always edit the files by hand, or install kmenu or something similar for gnome. The official gnome menu editor just didn't finish in time.
• No DivX or MP3 support. These are simple to add though and anyone coming from debian will probably already know of the Marillat repositories. Just look at the instructions in the wiki or use Hoary After-Install helper or another script to do the dirty work for you.

OSDir has published a lot of screenshots of Ubuntu.

Oh and if you are interested to know if your laptop or other piece of hardware is supported, some info can be found in the wiki on the Hardware support-page

Primary mirrors

• United States
• United Kingdom
• Europe

Other mirrors

Australia Canada Croatia Czech Republic France Germany Germany Ireland Italy Lithuania Namibia Netherlands Norway Portugal Portugal South Africa Spain Switzerland United Kingdom United Kingdom United Kingdom United States United States United States

Re:Ubuntu rocks

[idn]

About the media support you can just get VLC from the Ubuntu repositories and that plays pretty much everything.

Graphical installer has been moved to the next release as has some other nice hci improvments like a boot splash

Re:Ubuntu rocks

[mr_sas]

A 3rd party Ubuntu menu-editor can be found here

Re:Ubuntu rocks

[Khashishi]

Much faster boot process
Sweet. Boot time is my biggest gripe with Linux. I know many of you just don't turn off your computers, but the OS should force me to leave my personal computer on all the time. That's such a waste of resources.

Re:Ubuntu rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you need to go fight in a war or something, because you are a waste of my air.

Re:Ubuntu rocks

[Teja]

Honestly I'd hate to see Ubuntu put time and efforts into a graphics installer. It just takes up a bit more room and honestly, that installer it has now is dead easy. I installed it with no problems and that's saying something considering that I consider myself a linux newbie.

Re:Ubuntu rocks

[tempest303]

Or you could use Totem and get all the media support without the fugly GUI. ;-)

Re:Ubuntu rocks

[srid]

Much faster boot process

I installed warty once, and upgraded to hoary. But I don't see any improvement in boot process now. Should I re-install ubuntu?

Yay torrents!

[MastaStealth]

Boy, torrents and Slashdot are like peanut butter and jelly...

Re:Yay torrents!

[blinkless]

...and crutons!!!

Whacked names

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hoary Hedgehog Ubuntu"

And people wonder why the corporate world is leery of linux.

Re:Whacked names

[Anonymous Coward]

Hoary Hedgehogs are common in South Africa and businesspeople relate very well to them. As well as the elephants and lions on the street corners and the aardvarks and jakkalse. Of course, if it was called Sprinkbok, life would be much better....

Re:Whacked names

[Reignking]

I've got to agree. I've got no idea what it is, and with a name like that, I'm not inclined to investigate.

OTOH, we were all making fun of Mandriva yesterday. It isn't easy to create a good, strong, sensible product or brand name.

Re:Whacked names

[makohill]

If you'd prefer, there's a version number as well. It's 5.04. They are important so other people can take us seriously.

Fun codes names are so that we don't take ourselves too seriously. Much more dangerous IMHO. ;)

Re:Whacked names

[snorklewacker]

> I've got to agree. I've got no idea what it is, and with a name like that, I'm not inclined to investigate.

Hey, I just grabbed a kernel off kernel.org and copied some packages off a redhat box. Got a few from the suse box as well, and I think the same libc works with both, might get a segfault or two. I'm still working on some manpages. I'm calling it "Global Enterprise Management Linux", GEM for short. Pretty slick, eh? That just exudes stable and corporate, no?

The name is whimsy. The distribution is solid. If you can't look past whimsy, you have no understanding of Linux, and should not be planning a Linux strategy.

Re:Whacked names

[Neologic]

Remember that Ubuntu is a South African distribution, thus Ubuntu and other African language based words are much more common. Also, naming a release after an animal isn't that unprofessional- think of OS X Tiger for example. I think the name Hoary Hedgehog sounds dodgy to Americans because they might see 'Horny Hedgehog'. I don't if there is actually a hoary hedgehog, but I do know that hoary is an adjective used in the common names of a fox and marmot.

Still, Hoary Hedgehog sounds whimsical, but does that necessarily mean it is unprofessional?

Re:Whacked names

[Thundertje]

Yes, because Longhorn is such a nice name?

Re:Whacked names

[radoni]

"Apple Macintosh"

"Microsoft Windows"

now, please tell me if you think those names somehow indicate that the respective products are desktop computer operating systems.

"Ubuntu hoary hedgehog" makes just as much sense as "Apple OSX Tiger" or even "Microsoft Windows Longhorn".

Acutally, I take the names to mean:

Tiger - endangered species in (some) parts of the world
Longhorn - the bull(y) of the market
Hedgehog - secure from predators and perhaps fond of cheese chili dogs and/or blue in colour

Re:Whacked names

[Arctic Dragon]

Longhorn is only a code name. XP was called "Whistler" during development.

Re:Whacked names

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu isn't a South African based distribution. It's an Isle of Man based distribution, which is just off the coast from mainly Great Britain and Ireland I believe.

Re:Whacked names

[Waffle Iron]

And people wonder why the corporate world is leery of linux.

That's right, they prefer to deal only with enterprise-class partners with names like Yahoo! and Google.

Re:Whacked names

[fishbot]

I think the name Hoary Hedgehog sounds dodgy to Americans because they might see 'Horny Hedgehog' ... or because they don't know how to spell 'whorey hedgehog' ?

Re:Whacked names

[10Ghz]

And, AFAIK, "Hoary Hedgehog" is also a codename. The name of the OS is Ubuntu Linux, this is version 5.04, further known as Hoary Hedgehog.

Re:Whacked names

[Reignking]

Actually, you're right. I have zero understanding of Linux. And obtuse names do not help people like me that are curious about Linux but can't differentiate between products.

Re:Whacked names

[Anonymous Coward]

"Whimsy, boss."

"What?"

"Uhmm...whimsy?"

Re:Whacked names

[corngrower]

but I do know that hoary is an adjective used in the common names of a fox and marmot.

I believe that 'hoary' is an adjective that describes the coat of the animal. I believe it means that the fur has light colored ends on a generally darker color fur.

Re:Whacked names

[Anonymous Coward]

If you'd prefer, there's a version number as well. It's 5.04. They are important so other people can take us seriously.
Fun codes names are so that we don't take ourselves too seriously. Much more dangerous IMHO. ;)


and naturally, the version 5.04 does absolutely NOTHING to convey that this is only the SECOND release of ubuntu... :)

Re:Whacked names

[jonadab]

> It isn't easy to create a good, strong, sensible product or brand name.

Indeed, bad names are much easier to create. I can come up with half a dozen of those in notime flat...

* Dependency Linux
* PainMonger Linux
* Lysergic Linux
* Tweeny Lweenux
* Linux Software Distro (JRB-LSD)
* kgildnuvrox

Re:Whacked names

[quixos]

when did americans lose their ability to spell?

Re:Whacked names

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude if you can't think around the concepts of names mabey you would be best to say with MS.

BTW every heard of MACs? Give em a try you will like it.

Re:Whacked names

[alnjmshntr]

wow, a comment that says there are elephants and lions on the street corners is modded informative?

Re:Whacked names

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can tell your boss you're using Ubuntu 5.04, pure and simple. The Hoary Hedgehog is just the nickname or mascot and those have always been playful in the Linux and Unix worlds. (Devils and Blowfish haven't hurt the popularity of BSD and neither has Tux hurt Linux).

Re:Whacked names

[CoderDevo]

Actually, you're right. I have zero understanding of Linux. And obtuse names do not help people like me that are curious about Linux but can't differentiate between products.

Ah, but obtuse names were created just for people like you.

Sarcasm aside, unique, or obtuse, names are indeed about branding. In this case, Ubuntu is taking friendly sounding names for its releases (hoary hedghog, how huggable) to repeat the message that is in their tagline "Linux for Human Beings".

The Ubuntu brand represents to me that the products that are easy to install and friendly to use for the average computer user. That the brand is an african word tells me where they are based. That the releases are named after african animals tells me that they are targeting regular consumers, not businesses. If they used a name like XTM Linux(tm), I would figure that the product is marketed for medium to large businesses, only to be installed by trained professionals.

"iPod" is obtuse in that it doesn't tell you at all what kind of product it is - but you all bought plenty of them.

Re:Whacked names

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people who tell me the corporate world is leery of Linux are the same said people who wonder why this is so.

I'm yet to meet someone in the corporate world who will dismiss a product out-of-hand based solely on the name. Having said that, I'm sure it won't be long before I have to take back this statement if someone releases a distro called Analinux.

Re:Whacked names

[JavaJoint]

Lose? You're assuming we could spell in the first place? :-)

Re:Whacked names

[LWATCDR]

Hey they bought PCs from Charlie Chaplin and the Dell Dude. A cute little Hedgehog is just fine.
Frankly Ubuntu does not look like it is targeted at corporations.

Re:Whacked names

[SlashDread]

Wildebeast! Wildebeast!

Re:Whacked names

[killjoe]

Good point. I would much rather have a company called micro soft offer me a long horn.

What would you rather have? A soft and furry hedgehog or a long and hard horn?

Re:Whacked names

[killjoe]

Are you are CIO? YOu sure sound like one.

Who else but a CIO would know nothing about linux, refuse to learn about it because they find the names funny, is inable to differentiate between products and is working on the linux strategy.

I would like to ask you a favor though. Could you please let me know the name of your company? I want to make sure I don't have stock in a company that hires people like you. Let's face it if the management of your company is willing to hire people like you who know what other boneheaded decisions they are making.

Re:Whacked names

[Toby_Tyke]

In fairness, I think he has a point. A lot of OSS applications do have confusing names.

Which of the following names makes it more obvious to an uninformed user what the app does, Power DVD or Xine? GIMP or Paint Shop Pro? Amarok or Music Match Jukebox?

A bit of straight forward naming might help people figuring their way around a Linux distro for the first time. Mind you, most distros rename apps in the menus anyway. For example, I have a link called "Audio Player" that points to XMMS.

Re:Whacked names

[Reignking]

Wow, way to jump to conclusions.

Did you ever figure that there are other people on Slashdot other than die-hard computer geeks? Or maybe people that can see beyond the computer and see the bigger picture?

I, for one, have not had the time nor money in the last few years to dabble in every technology; I was mainly a programmer for five years, with some networking thrown in. I am seeing this from the perspective of someone that hasn't used Linux at all. Imagine that -- there are people out there trying to learn things about Linux. And those people see these strange names and can't figure out what they mean.

Re:Whacked names

[yipyow]

Better question...when did (the majority of) Americans gain the ability to spell?

As an American and a spelling nazi I can vouch that Americans are not the hottest spellers. That's not to say that I'm perfect, but I see plenty of mistakes all the time...

Re:Whacked names

[Blackbrain]

But how can you have straight forward names when companies are allowed to copyright names by the hundreds? Look at the hassles that phoenix/firebird/firefox went through? Or the netsaint/nagios problems from a few years ago. You have got to give the Ubuntu folks props for coming up with names that are distinctive and memorable.

Now if they would only give a little back to the Debian project....

Re:Whacked names

[killjoe]

"Did you ever figure that there are other people on Slashdot other than die-hard computer geeks? "

He is not confused about the technology, he refuses to learn about the technology because he is confused about the names.

Of course there are lots of people who know nothing about technology. Unfortunately some of them end up as CIOs. All I want is the name of his company so I don't invest in it.

Re:Whacked names

[killjoe]

sony, nintendo, 2000, NT, XP, longhorn, b2000, rx7, allero, qtip, optiplex, itanium, xeon.

Need I go on? Brands are brands, they don't have anything to do with the product.

This is the thing you guys don't seem to get. You think that the name of something needs to describe the thing and that has never been true. Does access and excell describe what the product does? People who bitch about product names are dimwits who know nothing about marketing. If it was up to them ford would name every product "car with four wheels" and "minivan".

Re:Whacked names

[Anonymous Coward]

Ron Jeremy the Hedgehog sure is.

Re:Whacked names

[node 3]

And people wonder why the corporate world is leery of linux.

Huge swaths of the "corporate world" embrace Linux. Some parts may be leery of Linux, but that's not due to names, it's due to primarily to the ignorance of the implications of the GPL.

I personally like the Ubuntu names, such as "Ubuntu, the Hoary Hedgehog Release" and it doesn't really break my heart if some "VP of Something-or-other" or "Director of This-and-That" doesn't like it. There are plenty of unimaginatively named Linuxes for them to choose from (as well as a few BSDs, a Solaris and a Mac OS X, all of which are Unix and promote, to varying degrees, the use and acceptance of Linux and Open Source/Free Software).

Re:Whacked names

[jeffChuck]

Microsoft Windows certainly makes sense (well, the name, anyway). Microsoft is the company name, and Windows is a description of the product, their operating system containing a windowing system.

Re:Whacked names

[Bri3D]

Actually, Longhorn is the name of a location in Canada, just as other Microsoft products have been, such as Whistler, Avalon, and Whidby.

Re:Whacked names

[mikecron]

You mean "springbok."

Re:Whacked names

[Anonymous Coward]

Users don't mind if you say something like:

- Ubuntu 5.04 "Hoary Hedgehog"

but lots of places on the webpage refer to versions of Ubuntu only by their codenames, as in "The latest release of Beagle can not be run in Hoary". This does nothing but confuse us poor geeks who are trying to get things working. (Do I have Hoary? Is Hoary newer or older than Warty?)

Apple does this a lot too, and it's pissing me off. I have no clue what exotic cat is 10.2 or 10.3 or 10.4 any more. The order is completely arbitrary, and I have enough things to work on without having to memorize a (species -> version) mapping.

Please, if you're going to use "codenames" for fun, use them in addition to version numbers, not instead of version numbers. If you omit version numbers, fun turns into frustrating for the rest of us.

Re:Whacked names

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they've been world-class companies selling these products for over 10 years. Ubuntu hasn't.

Even when they were young, they realized that getting their name into people's brains was an issue. Apple didn't pay for a Superbowl ad (directed by Ridley Scott, no less!) just because they liked football.

If Ubuntu is as great as they say it is, then where are the ads? (Shuttleworth is rich, right?) Start doing Superbowl ads and New York Times full-page ads. Getting a bunch of geeks on slashdot excited will only drive your product so far.

(Yes, I know what Paul Graham said about advertising. A new search engine spreads like wildfire through word of mouth, because the cost to switch is incredibly low. Switching to a new OS isn't, and spreading by word-of-mouth happens much, much slower. So slowly, in fact, that anybody else's marketing machine will eat you up before somebody wants to buy a new computer, or change their OS.)

Re:Whacked names

[Anonymous Coward]

wut are yu tawking abowt? I kan speel gud and so kan teh rest uf us amarekans.

Re:Whacked names

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Gates goes to a prositute named Divine. He pays his money and gets his rocks off. Afterward he says to the stipper, "Gee, now I know why you call yourself Divine." She looks back and him and replies, "Yeah, and I know why you call your company Microsoft."

Re:Whacked names

[Anonymous Coward]

> Did you ever figure that there are other people on Slashdot other than die-hard computer geeks?

One imagines that one planning a corporate linux strategy should probably be a die-hard computer geek. Or at least have the knowledge level of one. And that's what the complaint and response to it was about.

Torrents

[Simon (S2)]

Here are the Torrents on the US mirror:

Install CD:
i386 torrent
amd64 torrent
powerpc torrent

Live CD:
i386 torrent
amd64 torrent
powerpc torrent

Yes, Mr. CEO, we're going with Hoary Hedgehog

[Anonymous Coward]

to base all your company's infrastructure on. Doesn't that just give you the warm fuzzies?

Re:Yes, Mr. CEO, we're going with Hoary Hedgehog

[Anonymous Coward]

All your company base are belong to Hoary Hedgehog

Re:Yes, Mr. CEO, we're going with Hoary Hedgehog

[Feztaa]

It's more re-assuring than betting the farm on small, flaccid panes of glass.

Re:Yes, Mr. CEO, we're going with Hoary Hedgehog

[aqk]

CEO: "Hoary Hedgehog? Get outa here! Last time you pulled this crap on me, you wanted to install something called 'Warp'! And where is THAT silly startrek thing today?"

They will even send you FREE CD's

[mathmatt]

Here you can sign up for free CD's.

Remember guys...

[_Hellfire_]

Leave your torrent clients open after you're finished.

Let's not reduce Canonical's servers to smoldering piles of silicon over the next few days :)

Re:Remember guys...

[Anonymous Coward]

But after I burn the iso's to a disc, how am i supposed to reboot and install ubuntu over windows?

Re:Remember guys...

[Professor_UNIX]

Leave your torrent clients open after you're finished.

What if your ISP prohibits you from acting as a server? Many ISPs have that in their terms of service. Using Bittorrent opens you up as a public server basically. Better be safe than sorry and just use HTTP or FTP to download the ISOs if your ISP has this in their TOS.

Re:Remember guys...

[Rude Turnip]

The "no server" rule is generally in there to cover the ISPs if you're serving up warez. Otherwise, if they make a stink, threaten to take your business elsewhere. IME, Comcast has never cared that I've been using torrents.

Re:Remember guys...

[b0bby]

I would say, if they give you grief about something as basic as this, that you should move ISPs. I know not everyone has a lot of choices, but those who do shouldn't put up with crap.

Re:Remember guys...

[Sebastian Jansson]

I don't think they mean the technincal aspect of server, but rather the public acess kind of server, to serve webpages, ftp or games.

If they meant server in the protcol way they could just as well block all incomming traffic.

Re:Remember guys...

[Orgazmus]

Intall ubuntu, and then make an iso and reconnect?

Re:Remember guys...

[Professor_UNIX]

I would say, if they give you grief about something as basic as this, that you should move ISPs. I know not everyone has a lot of choices, but those who do shouldn't put up with crap.

That's why I pay more for DSL service through Speakeasy rather than go through SBC directly or the local cable provider who both have these ridiculous terms in their terms of service. I was just throwing it out there as a point about bittorrent... has anyone been harassed by their ISP for using it for legitimate purposes and had that bit of their TOS cited as the reason they were in trouble?

Re:Remember guys...

[Anonymous Coward]

What if your ISP prohibits you from acting as a server?

Then your ISP is shit.

Re:Remember guys...

[Minna Kirai]

What if your ISP prohibits you from acting as a server?

Then you are not allowed to install Ubuntu at all.

By default, Ubuntu installs a program called an "X11 server" to start up automatically when the computer boots. This server cannot be removed or deactivated without making the computer almost totally unusable.

Re:Remember guys...

[Spoke]

Just limit your upstream bandwidth in your client after your download is complete to lay low. Something like 1/5 of your total upstream should be OK.

I will typically limit upstream to 10-20KB/s after the download is complete using Azureus.

Re:Remember guys...

[the way, what're you]

What if your ISP prohibits you from acting as a server?

Then you go back to washing dishes...

Re:Remember guys...

[Steinfiend]

I know that was a whimsical comment, made in a joking manner. However, I don't believe I am the only one here who spends the majority of their time at the command line. I don't think there is anything I want to do that I can't do in a text only mode.

Now admittedly command line geeks are not really the target market for Ubuntu, but the point is still valid.

Re:Remember guys...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just limit your upstream bandwidth in your client after your download is complete to lay low. Something like 1/5 of your total upstream should be OK.

I will typically limit upstream to 10-20KB/s after the download is complete using Azureus.

i let my torrent client go without any bandwidth limits for this one.. i ended up getting over a 2:1 share ratio BEFORE i had the complete file :)

Annonce de la sortie de Ubuntu en français

[millette]

With a few friends, I restarted Nattor, the little CD vendor. We're not ready ready yet, but I had to translate de Ubuntu announcement in french, so there you go :)

Re:Annonce de la sortie de Ubuntu en français

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that should be "translate ze Ubuntu announcement". Can't you speak French?

BTW, are there downloadable MP3s or samples on your band's site? I'm a reggae fan and would love to check them out, but can't find them.

Re:Annonce de la sortie de Ubuntu en français

[millette]

doh ! Can't believe I made de same mistake again ! As for the reggae band, you mean Kaliroots ? There are only a few samples available, and it's not my band. Only a friend asked if I could link to them, and so I did.

Please install!

[Alibloke]

Ubuntu Linux is the best distribution I have ever installed. The guy behind this (I forget his name) has invested a small fortune, and I am sure it will become one of the top distributions very soon.

I emplore all Slashdotters to at least have a brief look at Hoary. It really is the "Mutts nuts"!

Re:Please install!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I could - I've heard such great things about it. Unfortunately, it's Gnome only. I've tried to like Gnome. Really, I have. Every six months or so I go back to it (yes, an updated version) and try it out for a couple of days. And each time I go back to KDE. The last couple of times, with the dumbed-down interface, it's been unbearable. I can't even stand using GIMP these days with its brain dead file open/save dialogs.

I'm not trying to bash Gnome. I know lots of people seem to love it. I just can't use it. It's friggin horrible.

(No, I'm not a recent Windows or Mac convert. I've been using Linux since '95 or '96 - fvwm was my first window manager.

Re:Please install!

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like you might be interested in Kubuntu - it's Ubuntu, but using KDE instead of Gnome. Damn silly idea if you ask me, but it takes all sorts ;)

Re:Please install!

[tealtalon]

It's what got me to switch. This distro is amazing.

Re:Please install!

[angrykeyboarder]

Ditto here. Although I'm one of the crazies who actually like (and use) both GNOME and KDE. Ubuntu intrigued me from it's first release last fall, but since it was "GNOME only" I stuck with Fedora Core.

I've been playing with both the Ubuntu and Kubuntu Hoary live CDs for the past week and I'll be installing the Ubuntu release and then doing an apt-get kubuntu-desktop.

So long, Fedora. :-)

Re:Please install!

[Anonymous Coward]

Kubuntu doesn't require a separate distribution, it's more of a configuration item. You can take a plain Ubuntu Hoary installation, apt-get install kubuntu-desktop and presto, you're running Kubuntu. Some of Kubuntu still depends on gnome libs under the surface, but nothing that's visible to the user.

This may be important when deciding what torrent to join.

Re:Please install!

[rhennigan]

The guy behind this (I forget his name) has invested a small fortune

You're thinking of Mark Shuttleworth. Check him out on wikipedia or his own site.

Re:Please install!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Some of Kubuntu still depends on gnome libs under the surface

That's wrong. The Kubuntu CDs don't include GTK+ at all.

Re:Please install!

[Anonymous Coward]

I had been dual booting Mandrake 10.1 and Win98, but after I managed to fdisk my hard drive out of existance last week, I decided it was time to give Ubuntu a serious shot.

I grabbed the most current install version (just prior to this final release) and had a go at it. It chugged away and seemed to do well, until it hit the second stage install. There, it started failing, unable to actually install a number of critical packages (like X), with the error messages scrolling by way to fast for me to figure out what the problem was.

I was left with was a half-installed command-line only version of Ubuntu. I tried this three times before giving up. I finally ended up installing PCLinuxOS - unlike Ubuntu, you can install off their Live CD. It was an easy install (although I wish it had a "just figure it out" partition tool like Mandrake). Synaptic managed to hose itself, installing a package that was incompatible with itself, so it refused to run after some random update.

Fortunately, I remembered apt-get. Doing apt-get upgrade left me with a shiny new up to date PCLinuxOS.

All was well for a couple days, until I tried to reinstall Win98, and hosed the MBR. I spent hours trying to get the lilo back again, but none of the posted instructions helped. Running the Boot Loader tool from the Live CD was worthless, because it tried to update the partition in memory instead of my actual boot partition. I ended up reinstalling PCLinuxOS yet again. Fortunately, I managed to back up everything important onto a memory stick first.

Sorry, Ubuntu - you really look like you've got a nice desktop, but I just couldn't get it to work. Hopefully, the problems are ironed out. Who knows? At the rate I'm going, I may get another chance in a couple of days.

Re:Please install!

[for_usenet]

I believe you're talking about Mark Shuttleworth. See this link.

Re:Please install!

[Tolleman]

HINT: Ubuntu uses GRUB by default.

I wish debian was as cool as ubunto

[Anonymous Coward]

if only debian would use x.org's X11 server instead of this POS XFree86 :(

Re:I wish debian was as cool as ubunto

[dilinger]

Yea, once sarge is finally released...

Anyways, in the meantime, here's xorg compiled for sarge:

deb http://www.acm.rpi.edu/~dilinger/xorg/ ./

OSDir has Ubuntu 5.04 screenies too

[linuxbeta]

Kubuntu 5.04 | Ubuntu 5.04

How is...

[merpal]

Firefox 1.02 a feature? It takes me 10 seconds to download and about a minute to install.

Re:How is...

[xcfx]

Know you can save 10 seconds of bandwidth and one minute of your life installing it :)

Re:How is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it means total noobs don't have to figure out how to install it themselves. It makes life just a little bit easier for those who aren't as smart as you. The feature is that you get one of the best browsers in its current version with no work on your part.

Re:How is...

[dubious9]

Compare: go to mozilla.org, download files, fire up file browser to where you saved it, double click and go through the installation choices.

or

open terminal. apt-get install firefox

Having it in the repository makes life easier. Especially if you want to remove it or update it in the future.

Re:How is...

[DisKurzion]

It's damn near essential with the pre-compiled Live-CD version (which I'm DLing for my lappy).

Installing programs on live-cds is annoying, it's much easier when they're precompiled for Linux n00bs such as myself.

Re:How is...

[pyros]

Firefox 1.02 a feature? It takes me 10 seconds to download and about a minute to install.

The Mozilla.org installer doesn't include menu entires for gnome or kde. Any other system inegration features like icons and look/feel. But the menu icon is the biggest reason.

DVD Torrent Links

[calc]

There are also DVD torrent links that include all of Ubuntu main.

amd64 - http://torrent.ubuntu.com/dvd/20050407.3/hoary-dvd -amd64.iso.torrent
i386 - http://torrent.ubuntu.com/dvd/20050407.3/hoary-dvd -i386.iso.torrent

Re:DVD Torrent Links

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the naming they seem to be snapshot torrents and not tested release DVD torrents.

Re:DVD Torrent Links

[Anonymous Coward]

They apparently forgot to rename the last snapshot DVDs to the release version. The timestamps on the DVD isos are newer than even the release cd isos so they were created after the official cd images were.

KDE and Gnome

[gr8_phk]

I like that the distribution originally picked one desktop (gnome) rather than burden the install media with duplicate packages for both. It's nice that they also now support the other (KDE) with a different CD. Me? I'm a gnome fan and don't want all that extra stuff to download, but it's nice that they support the KDE folks the same way now.

Re:KDE and Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the people that don't like GNOME or KDE?

Re:KDE and Gnome

[Jagasian]

The problem with this is that it prevents BitTorrent from sharing server load between hosting Ubuntu ISOs and Kubuntu ISOs. However, since the differences are all due to a few key packages, the core of (K)Ubuntu can be shared, which is a good thing.

Re:KDE and Gnome

[digidave]

Or just download Ubuntu and 'apt-get install kubuntu-desktop' and you now have a system running KDE identical to the Kubuntu CD. Or install the Kubuntu CD and 'apt-get install ubuntu-desktop' and you get the same results.

the ubuntu and kubuntu packages are meta-packages that install whichever desktop you want.

Re:KDE and Gnome

[pyros]

There's no simple way to remove one or the other, though. I decided to check out kubuntu-desktop. And it's pretty neat, but I like gnome. So then I went to apt-get remove kubuntu-desktop. And it removed just that meta-package. So I had to use synaptic to show my every installed package related to KDE and hand pick each one to be removed. Ugh.

If you just want a couple of KDE apps, and want them to look decent, you can grab kubuntu-default-settings.

Re:KDE and Gnome

[MemoryDragon]

The trick is the same as in debian, uninstall one of the core libs and voila the desktop goes away as well. kde-libs for instance removes the entire kde desktop... same goes for lib-nautilus in gnome... or libgtk2 basically removes everything gnome and gtk2 related

Re:KDE and Gnome

[__aaitqo8496]

if you have one and install the other, will both options (kde & gnome) be available as sessions, or are they mutually exclusive [in the case of ubuntu]?

Re:KDE and Gnome

[soupdevil]

What do they ship it in?

Bags. Giant plastic bags.

Re:KDE and Gnome

[beattie]

Then why isnt there a "common" version where you can install, log in to the terminal, and then apt-get install whichever one you want from there?

Would make the basic install faster, right? And that way you only need one cd for both versions.

Re:KDE and Gnome

[pyros]

uninstall one of the core libs and voila the desktop goes away as well. kde-libs for instance

Yeah, but people not familiar with it won't know that. All they'll know, at first, is that the package they installed (kubuntu-desktop) can't be uninstalled except in name. I do understand why (both the -desktop packages depend on a lot of core packages that aren't specific to one or the other), but it's not quite intuitive to unexperienced users. You can't make the individual apps depend on kubuntu-desktop or you'd have to pull down the whole thing just to get3 a single app and that's no good. Maybe extend APT's remove logic to support a defined list of packages to remove when removing a virtual.

Re:KDE and Gnome

[pyros]

if you have one and install the other, will both options (kde & gnome) be available as sessions, or are they mutually exclusive [in the case of ubuntu]?

They're both available as sessions and mostly play well with each other.

Re:KDE and Gnome

[pyros]

Then why isnt there a "common" version where you can install, log in to the terminal, and then apt-get install whichever one you want from there?

Because that's a lot of stuff to download over dialup. They could maintain 3 ISO images: base; ubuntu-desktop; and kubuntu-desktop. But to include both might not fit neatly on one CD. So they split it out to keep it down to one disc.

Re:KDE and Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

The trick is to do it from aptitude, that way when you remove the package it will remove all the things it installed with it.

Re:KDE and Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

Try debfoster, available in universe.

Re:KDE and Gnome

[jessecurry]

He said "but it's nice that they support the KDE folks the same way now."

Re:KDE and Gnome

[Feztaa]

Yeah, that's my biggest complaint with FC3. If I try to uninstall qt, then it wants to basically uninstall half of gnome due to some weird bug in the dependencies.

Try it yourself:

# yum remove qt
[snip]
Dependencies Resolved
Transaction Listing:
Remove: qt.i386 1:3.3.4-0.fc3.0
Remove: arts.i386 8:1.3.1-1
Remove: gnome-applets.i386 1:2.8.0-5
Remove: gnome-media.i386 0:2.8.0-3.FC3.1
Remove: gnome-session.i386 0:2.8.0-4
Remove: gnome-volume-manager.i386 0:1.1.0-5
Remove: gstreamer-plugins.i386 0:0.8.5-1
Remove: mplayer.i386 0:1.0-0.15.pre6a.1.fc3.rf
Remove: nautilus-media.i386 0:0.8.1-3
Remove: oprofile.i386 0:0.8.1-11
Remove: rhythmbox.i386 0:0.8.8-2.1.fc3.rf
Remove: totem.i386 0:0.99.19-1
Total download size: 0
Is this ok [y/N]:

It'll be nice if ubuntu allows me to have a gnome desktop with only gtk2 and no qt. It's promising that there's only one ISO! FC3 of course has 4 but I've yet to actually use anything on the 4th CD during an install.

I tried out the release candidate of the hoary livecd a few weeks ago and I was very impressed, I'm downloading the install ISO now, hopefully I'll find time to install it soon. If it's as good as the livecd was, I'll definitely donate some money.

Re:KDE and Gnome

[MemoryDragon]

I agree for a non developer it is very unintuitive... The best option for user installs still is just to drop an icon into a folder and if you want to get rid of it delete the icon from the folder. Just like rox zeroinstall does it, and apple to a certain degree (although apple fails in a clean deinstall because some apps expand all over the machine and removing the archive icon only removes the archive and the subfolders in it.

Re:KDE and Gnome

[Macka]

Then pick another distribution, cos Ubuntu is not for you.

Gnome 2.10?

[Futaba-chan]

It's interesting that Ubuntu, a binary distro based on slow old Debian, has Gnome stable on 2.10.1, while we bleeding-edge Gentoo users are still on 2.8....

Re:Gnome 2.10?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, stable Gentoo users are on 2.8. "Bleeding edge" Gentoo users can install the packages that are still considered "unstable" before they're moved in, if they want, but they risk encountering problems that have yet to be found in the testing process.

Poor attempt at a troll, try a little harder next time.

Re:Gnome 2.10?

[Illissius]

If you don't have it then you are not, in fact, bleeding edge. It's in portage, just not yet marked as stable. (Last I checked it was hardmasked, don't know whether it's moved to plain ~unstable yet -- don't use it myself.)

Re:Gnome 2.10?

[grokster]

Gnome stable on 2.10.1

Which was released 2 days ago...

Rock!

Re:Gnome 2.10?

[Drooling Iguana]

It's harder to make sure that a package is stable when everyone's compiling it from source with different compiler settings.

Re:Gnome 2.10?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not yet marked as stable! Hah!
The exact same arguments against Debian having everything under testing/unstable and not "releasing"!

Re:Gnome 2.10?

[zborgerd]

As far as I can tell, GNOME 2.10.1 isn't supposed to be released until next week... And that's just a proposed date: http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointEleven It is true though that there are several "2.10.1" tarballs out there, as bugfix releases for next week.

Re:Gnome 2.10?

[iwbcman]

Not really. After all this was exactly the same case with the first release of Ubunutu. Some number of gnome developers are also ubuntu developers, which means Ubuntu is closely tied to the gnome-development cycle. The only way another distro is going to beat Ubuntu to the punch of delivering the latest gnome is if another group of gnome developers join some other gnome tailored distro....

The ebuilds for 2.10 are already in portage but are hard masked. I expect it won't take long for them to get unmasked either because the 2.8->2.10 gnome transition is the smoothest I have yet experienced....

Re:Gnome 2.10?

[Anonymous Coward]

There were several GNOME 2.10 releases that were out before Ubuntu's. Slackware has Freerock's GNOME, and Dropline GNOME (both of which are very stable). They are both "unofficial", but then again; Ubuntu is an "unofficial" version of Debian.

Re:Gnome 2.10?

[digitect]

The only way another distro is going to beat Ubuntu to the punch of delivering the latest gnome is if another group of gnome developers join some other gnome tailored distro....

Please. Let's not forget that a great number of critical GNOME components are written by Red Hat employees that can get backported into Fedora before they are even "released".

The point of Free Software/Open Source is that we're all working together and that nobody is trying to out l33t anyone else.

Re:Gnome 2.10?

[aCapitalist]

And I switched over from Hoary to Gentoo because everytime they would release a big Gnome/X update on Hoary everything would turn to molasses.

I'm running whatever pre-release version of Gnome that Gentoo has in the hard mask and it's running faster than Warty or Hoary ever did.

Epiphany seems to be faster than FireFox too for some reason.

Re:Gnome 2.10?

[Pionar]

Ubuntu is an "unofficial" version of Debian.

No. Ubuntu isn't a version of Debian, it's a fork.

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu/relationship/doc ument_view

It's based on Debian, but its development runs seperately.

Re:Gnome 2.10?

[Minna Kirai]

As far as I can tell, GNOME 2.10.1 isn't supposed to be released until

You could tell further if you learned the difference between "10.1" and "Eleven".

Re:Gnome 2.10?

[zborgerd]

I suppose that you didn't follow the link, and notice that it lists 2.10.1 as being proposed for a release next week? You likely didn't. But, of course, you likely have more conclusive data than the info on the link that I posted... So, why not share it? After all... 2.10.1 wasn't officially announced *anywhere* on GNOME's site or mailing list, so there must be some "insider information" somewhere about its release. ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/desktop/2.10/ ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/platform/2.10/ You're a bright person.... Where is 2.10.1? It certainly isn't on the FTP site.

Re:Gnome 2.10?

[godless dave]

It's interesting that Ubuntu, a binary distro based on slow old Debian, has Gnome stable on 2.10.1, while we bleeding-edge Gentoo users are still on 2.8....

Trust me, you're better off. Gnome 2.10 drove me to KDE.

Real question

[Frogbert]

How do I upgrade my current warty install?

Re:Real question

[Bleeblah]

1. Edit your /etc/apt/sources.list file and replace all instances of "warty" with "hoary". 2. sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Re:Real question

[pr0fess]

add the hoary repositories to /etc/sources http://ubuntuguide.org/4.10/index.html%23upgradewa rtytohoary

Re:Real question

[Anonymous Coward]

See
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=24233
ahref=http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=242 33http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=24233>
It explains all

Re:Real question

[_Hellfire_]

It's fairly straightforward:

1) Grab a root console (Applications->System Tools->Root Console) and type the password for the first unprivilidged account on your system.

2) vi /etc/apt/sources.list

3) Replace the lines that are marked thusly:

deb http://ubuntu.../ warty main

and type this instead:

deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted

deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted

(ignore Slashdot's anti-goatse domain display feature)

Note: this may be as simple as replacing every instance of warty with hoary - but I'm not sure.

3) Save the file (ie esc :wq [enter])

4) type apt-get update

5) type apt-get dist-upgrade

6) Wait for everything to download, cross your fingers nothing breaks and enjoy.

disclaimer: it's late at night. I may have missed something...

Re:Real question

[natrius]

Replace "au" in the source lines with your country code.

Re:Real question

[rhennigan]

Or if a CLI scares you a bit, it can be done with the synaptic package manager (you can find it in the menu). Look for repositories in the settings menu and change all instances of "warty" with "hoary". Reload the list, hit the mark all upgrades button, then apply and watch the latest Ubuntu roll in. It worked great for me with no problems. Imagine that! Doing something big with Linux and not even having to open xterm, though it's awesome to know that it's there if you want it. Ubuntu rocks!

Re:Real question

[drinkypoo]

7) you do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around.

because, you know, that's what it's all about.

Seriously though anyone else see the irony in a linux distribution known for its LiveCD requiring manual editing of config files for upgrades? Shit even on my gentoo box all I do is emerge sync, make a symlink to the new distribution, and do a couple emerges (you should upgrade portage first when there is a portage upgrade.) Of course then I sit on my hands and wait for it to compile everything, but my home machine gets updated during the week and my work machine gets updated on the weekend and it all works out fine.

Here's a shout out to all the Ubuntu developers out there - fix this problem if you want normal people to use your distribution.

Re:Real question

[pyros]

anyone else see the irony in a linux distribution known for its LiveCD requiring manual editing of config files for upgrades? ... all I do is emerge sync, make a symlink to the new distribution, and do a couple emerges

How is that any less manual? In Ubuntu it's edit sources list (making the new symlink), apt-get update (emerge sync, to sync package lists I assume), and apt-get dist-upgrade.

And no, I don't see the irony, Alanis. A LiveCD is a static copy. Why would you expect to be able to runtime upgrade it to a new release at all, much less without editing anything?

Re:Real question

[Bachus9000]

You make it sound worse than it really is, but evne so I think it'd be nifty to have the update-manager program periodically check if there's a new "stable" release (I've been using Hoary for a month or so and never had trouble) and ask if you'd like to upgrade to it. Then it could do the search/replace on sources.list for you and then apt-get dist-upgrade. That shouldn't be too hard to code, either. Maybe I'll brush up on my meager programming skills and do it myself...

Re:Real question

[drinkypoo]

We're talking about an install from a LiveCD, not a LiveCD. So I don't expect to runtime upgrade a LiveCD. If I were going to upgrade a LiveCD, I'd be downloading the new CD. (Which I am working on doing now, so I can try the new Ubuntu release, and see if it actually works on any of my hardware.)

Re:Real question

[_Hellfire_]

Seriously though anyone else see the irony in a linux distribution known for its LiveCD requiring manual editing of config files for upgrades?

Sorry, as I said, it was late at night.

You can do everything I just said graphically with Synaptic - I think someone already posted the instructions elsewhere in this thread.

No touching the command line, no editing of config files, no symlinking to a new distribution.

I'm not trying to get into a distro pissing contest, but I think normal people (ie people who do things like install software and run Windows Update all by themselves) could manage the upgrade.

Oh and just to head off "But normal people can't find the power switch omg lol!!!" trolls, yes I know grandma can't maintain her computer. She shouldn't be sorting through patches on her Windows box, and she shouldn't be upgrading from Warty to Hoary with no assistance. I mean your average white collar office worker who can stumble his way through an installation of MS Office could probably stumble his way through a Hoary upgrade after reading about it on the website.

Seriously, have you used Ubuntu, or are you just going on what I said?

Re:Real question

[pyros]

ah, that makes much more sense.

Re:Real question

[drinkypoo]

I Was just going on what you said. As I have said repeatedly in other comments, Ubuntu didn't run on any of my hardware. I'm downloading the new ISO now, so I can check it out.

Damn you!

[elasticwings]

Thanks alot whoever posted this article. Now the ubuntu website is being slashdotted. I'm now declaring you responsible for my apt-get update moving slow as molasses. Thanks alot buddy. I really appreciate it... NOT!

WTF?

[FreeLinux]

OK, I'm not trying to troll here but, can someone please explain to me what the sudden infatuation with Ubuntu is? I tried Ubuntu. It was OK. Nothing stupendous but OK. It wasn't so good as to make me want to switch from any other distro.

Why the hell is everyone so totally infatuated with Ubuntu. It seems to have eclipsed Gentoo, so far as fan boys and that just seems ridiculous.

Re:WTF?

[speel3k]

beacause it just works simple as that .. you plug in a thumb drive it mounts you put in a music cd it works yea i know this is probably easy to set up your self and also no more dependency hell lol and as i said again it just works

Re:WTF?

[Jagasian]

Fedora and (K)Ubuntu are two free community based desktop oriented distros that actually do a good job of being desktop operating systems. Everybody is all excited about (K)Ubuntu because it is based on Debian, yet includes very recent packages, which means that you get all of the Debian goodness along with cutting edge packages, an easy install, and a userfriendly desktop.

I have been on Fedora for a few years now, but I am planning on switching to Kubuntu... mainly because Gnome has been driving me crazy. It used to be slow and buggy, but now it is just plain buggy.

Re:WTF?

[dont_think_twice]

Actually, Ubuntu was actually a scheme by the Gentoo user community to get rid of the fanboys. We figured that if we could create a distro that had an even more obscure name than Gentoo, all of the fanboys would flock to it so that they could stay l33t. It seems to have worked perfectly.

Re:WTF?

[jrcamp]

Because it's taken the best base distribution (Debian unstable), stabalized the packages and made a stable release from it while putting its own polish on everything. Debian has the biggest package repository, which is my personal selling point. It's also completely free, in every sense of the word.

People wanted something simple yet functional where they don't have to go RPM hunting all the time. Ubuntu delivered.

Re:WTF?

[ChaosCube]

It's because it has such a cool-sounding name, you moron.

Ha ha.

Re:WTF?

[finkployd]

I figured it was all total hype until I started installing it to see what it was like. When I found that it kicked the collective asses of every other distribution I have ever tried (Redhat, Slackware, Debian, Mandrake, SuSE, Turbo, Storm, Gentoo, and others) in terms of hardware detection and configuration, I figured out what the fuss was about. Otherwise it is ok, nothing particularly special, but damn can it detect and correctly configure some obscure hardware.

For that reason alone, I recommend it to newbies.

Finkployd

Re:WTF?

[xcfx]

People just need the anual 'one' big hit. Slackware used to have that effect, later Debian, and then Gentoo... Now, it's an Ubuntu (and Kubuntu) fever. Stay tuned, next year you will be seing basically the same phenomenon within the Slashdot community. Now, IMHO, I think Ubuntu has been a success because it's an up2date distribution (considering Debian), it's pretty much Debian based (but better and up2date), it has been ported to most common architectures (X86, PPC, X86_64, etc) and above all, it has a really nice and strong community.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

so how is this different from Mandrake 10.1??

I do all those same things. Hell my Fiancee likes mandrake over windows XP now.

ubuntu does nothing that Mandrake already did. and if you actually BUY mandrake it does more like installing the nvidia binary drivers for you.

Re:WTF?

[MrP-(at work)]

i'm a windows user (dont hurt me), and ive tried tons of linux distros over the past 10 years. ubuntu is the ONLY one that "just works".. everything of mine worked, it felt fast and clean. No spending hours trying to get it to work with my display, or trying to navigate the thousands of directories with multiple versions of applications that all do the same thing. Every distro ive tried just seemed so bloated and confusing, there was so much stuff i could never find what I wanted. But Ubuntu loaded right up, everything worked, it was super fast (i always wondered how people could use linux, it always seemed slower than a bloated windows install..but not ubuntu), i also like how theres only 1 gui to choose from. It's just fast/clean, and i may eventually switch to it

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu comes with the binary nVidia drivers.

Re:WTF?

[j0217995]

Thats exactly why I have been using Ubuntu and working on the doc-team as well.

Two things for me that increase my love for Ubuntu.
1. It just works right out of the box, even on old hardware I can run Gnome. I have several old boxes and I can run Gnome on them w/o trying to figure out exactly what chipset my graphics card is and the refresh rate of the monitor and the.... it just works.
2. Community support is great. You don't have to be a developer to try and give back. I work w/ the doc-team and help out minor w/ the Wiki. Other distros I've always felt that I needed to be able to sling code or create packages or something like that, which I don't know how to do.

Re:WTF?

[Oliver Aaltonen]

If this was truly a ploy by the Gentoo user community got rid of all the fanboys, then who's left? ;)

Re:WTF?

[Mycroft_VIII]

Just works?!?!?!?
Maybe this new release works, but when I tried the previous one it:
a)toasted my mbr so I couldn't boot anything else, no warning, no option to do otherwise, just toast it. Never mind that I told it to install on my second harddrive and not touch the primary.
b) it insisted that over half of my iso files were actualy mp3 music files (not iso's of mp3 cd's, but actual mp3's themselves?!?!?) and had NO way to change this assumption.
In the attempt to fix both the above I discovered it had almost no USEFULL configuration ability.
It looks like it might be a nice distro one day. but it's going to be quite a while before I trust it NOT to trash my system again. Fourtunately I'd taken some precautions and was able to restore things.
To me ovewriteing a boot sector it wasn't told to touch on a drive it wasn't being installed to isn't 'just works' it's 'just wrecks', and not recognizing a very common file type, worse misrecognizing it as another type and having no way to manually correct it's mistake is not working.
I can handle it not having every package and the kitchen sink thrown in like some distro's do, I'm ambivalent about all those extras. But making two brain-damaged amature mistakes like that mark it not ready for primetime IMHO.
Though if this version is better in these respects I'd like to hear about it.

Mycroft

Re:WTF?

[sydneyfong]

Everybody (that bothers to post here) wants to look 1337. It's no different from the ever changing popular culture, where what's "in" today gets "old" tomorrow.

For me, I'm staying with good ol' Debian.

(Hint to mods: -1 Flamebait)

Re:WTF?

[natrius]

I think another thing that helped Ubuntu out in terms of popularity is that it came out right when Linux on the desktop was getting it's shit together. Ubuntu was the first distro I used back in September that had HAL and the Project Utopia stack, so when I plugged in a digital camera and it asked me if I wanted to import the pictures, it was pretty amazing.

Another good thing is Ubuntu's code of conduct, which basically ensures a friendly community. The Debian community was notoriously hostile, while people can ask questions on the Ubuntu IRC channels and mailing lists and not worry about being flamed.

Re:WTF?

[Mycroft_VIII]

Problem, most newbies are going to want to dual boot. From experience this is a no-go with ubuntu.
Also newbies are going to be a bit peeved when half thier files don't work right because ubuntu has missguesed what they are and there is no obvious way to fix it, nor non-obvious way since it's miss-detection of file type seemed non-consistant, it's not like it thought all .txt files were movies or all .iso's were mp3 music. It just picked some random number of files with a particular extension and miss-categorized them.

Mycroft

Re:WTF?

[rhennigan]

Because my grandmother has been using it for a few months now, and I haven't had a tech support call from her the whole time. It seriously just works. Not to mention it's both kinds of free.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that Ubuntu isn't for the l33t crowd at all. It's for those who want something that Just Works.

Gentoo is for people who want something that just doesn't work at all, but does it faster than the competition (excluded the days it takes to compile the motherfu*). That's fuckin' l33t.

Re:WTF?

[digidave]

Ubuntu dual boots fine. It drops your Windows (or other OS) boot option to the bottom of the list in grub.

I've not experienced the file type miss-detection problem you describe, but that's maybe because I don't deal with many media files. Mostly various types of text files for different languages. However, you can easily change the default app a file is opened with by choosing "Open with other application" from the right-click menu.

Re:WTF?

[djp928]

For me, I became an Ubuntu fanboy when I installed it on my laptop and everything "just worked". It detected my wireless card (something no other distro has been able to do successfully), activated it, and completed the install over my wireless connection. It installed slick as hell and the package repositories had everything I wanted/needed once I got the system up and running.

It doesn't make it "better" than all the other distros, but it sure helps me evangelize for the distro when I can just point to my laptop and say "I just popped in the CD, booted, told it to install, AND IT DID AND EVERYTHING WORKED!!" That one statement right there is enough for me.

-- Dave

Re:WTF?

[Felonious Ham]

For me, it was the first distro to automatically detect my wireless card. I didn't have to configure much beyond adding "Universe" repositories. I like Gnome, but I like the way Ubuntu has configured the desktop and menu even better. It was noticably faster on the desktop than the Fedora 3 install I had on my Dell Inspiron 1100 previously. There is a definite fit and finish to Ubuntu that I didn't find with the Fedora or straight Debian.

There are doubtless many distros that do all the above, but Ubuntu has a Debian repositories, commercial backing (definitely makes a for better product), and a huge community of friendly people.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for me. I cant get the Kunbuntu live cd to even work. I try to boot off the live CD and I constantly get a "casper-udeb not found" error. I have downloaded it MULTIPLE times and I can't ever boot past this point.

Any ideas?

Re:WTF?

[drinkypoo]

Ironically, Ubuntu doesn't install on any machines I have in my house, but gentoo works fine on all of them. My install took only a couple hours - I installed from binary packages. I was able to use the system while upgrading it from 2004.1 (the LiveCD I used) to 2005.0.

I like to talk shit as much as the next guy, but it helps to be right.

Re:WTF?

[drinkypoo]

no more dependency hell lol and as i said again it just works

LOL! ROFFLE! STFU noob, you don't know of what you speak. Ubuntu has problems on tons of hardware and doesn't work at all, let alone let you get in and fuck your system up.

As far as no more dependency hell, Ubuntu is debian. The moment you start installing stuff you're back in hell. If you want no more dependency hell, you're going to have to run gentoo or a BSD, so you can get a ports tree (or similar) and compile things. That is the only way to ensure dependencies will be built and linked properly. No worries about installed versions and the like.

Re:WTF?

[Zorilla]

So does Debian whenever I install a new kernel package or something (installing those packages runs a script that updates GRUB without any sanity checks to see if it was hand-edited). My solution is to cut and paste the commented-out example of a Windows boot entry in /boot/grub/menu.lst to the active list and change the name to "Windows XP Professional". There's a GUI editor in GNOME to do it if you hate hand-editing text files, but I don't know if it's listed in the menu in Ubuntu (I use Debian, it is in there)

Re:WTF?

[Slack3r78]

Yeah because apt doesn't resolve dependencies in the same manner as portage and the Debian software repositories are *clearly* so much smaller than Gentoo's. But I guess it doesn't count because it's binary and you don't waste time compiling, eh?

Gentoo was fun for about 3 months, and I did learn a lot from it. Portage is certainly neat, but it's nothing special. Fact is, 95%+ of any software I've wanted has been in the apt repositories, and just plain works. And I only have to wait for the package to download and untar, rather than however long it takes to compile.

So no, Ubuntu's not perfect, but essentially calling its package management crap while touting a very similar system with drawbacks of its own is just stupid.

Re:WTF?

[pyros]

Problem, most newbies are going to want to dual boot. From experience this is a no-go with ubuntu.

If I recall you previous comment correctly your foray was with Warty. Warty had a bunch of co-existence problems which were fixed.

I have no idea what the file type problem could be. I can tell you that I haven't come accross anyone with the same problem. I'm pretty certain it uses both file extension and MIME type, so maybe the ISO files that were treated as MP3s were written with a different tool than the rest and had something confusing in the header.

Re:WTF?

[Bachus9000]

The installer (hoary at least) asks if you want to install a boot loader. Just say no and your first problem is dealt with. I think if you do an "expert" install (type expert at the install disc's boot prompt) it gives you more configuration options for the boot loader, but I didn't pay enough attention the last time I tried it out and I don't really remember. :)

As for your second issue, that's probably a GNOME bug rather than a Ubuntu specific thing. Either way, it's definitely weird. Could you still load those iso files in a cd burning program and write them to disc? What exactly were the ill effects of this mislabeling? From the limited information you give it sound purely cosmetic, though. If that's the case then I'd say you're overreacting just a tad. :)

As for the lack of config utilities...I haven't really noticed anything missing, but then again I'd never used GNOME before trying Ubuntu. What exactly were you looking for?

Is Ubuntu perfect? Certainly not, but (at least in my opinion) it is far superior to the likes of Mandrake/iva, SuSE, Fedora, and even Debian and Gentoo, especially in the realm of "it just works." For me, no other distribution has been so painless to install nor has any other distribution (except Gentoo and maybe Debian) done such a good job of auto-configuring my hardware. The only thing I've had an issue with in Ubuntu has been my capture card, and that's a whole bunch of fun regardless of the distribution. Even Windows has issues with that card some times, although those have more to do with the included PVR software than anything else... On a side note, does anyone know why the simple tuner=2 fix mentioned in that link hasn't been done in the kernel yet? It seems like such a simple change, but then again I'm not a kernel developer (or any other kind of developer, for that matter), so maybe there's a good reason for leaving the default as is.

At any rate, don't give up on Ubuntu too quickly. I suggest trying the new livecd out. It should give you a fair indication of whether you second (and maybe third) issues have been dealt with, at any rate. If you decide to install Hoary, you also might be happier with the expert install, too. It has a few steps that seem kind of pointless, but it does also give you more control over some of the install options.

Re:WTF?

[jasondlee]

I'm sure you have other reasons, but KDE runs just fine on fedora. I've run it since FC1. Just add the repos to /etc/apt/source.list and voila!

Re:WTF?

[jonadab]

> can someone please explain to me what the sudden infatuation with Ubuntu is?

Yeah. It's like this, see: There are five major classes of distributions using the Linux kernel: Debian-based, rpm-based, tarball-based, source-based, and specialty distributions. Specialty distros, such as Coyote, are just aimed at a particular use, so they don't show up much on the desktop. The tarball-based distros and to some extent the rpm-based distros are what most people use, it seems, but they have some problems, especially in terms of dependency resolution. urpmi and similar tools help, but there are still some, err, issues. I've been using Mandrake as my primary desktop for some good while now, and I mostly like it, but there are issues. I experimented with Gentoo, but that was a little *too* bleeding-edge for me, and it works your hardware pretty hard if you update often.

One of the chief selling points for Debian-based distros has always been apt-get, which supposedly handles dependencies very nicely, but doesn't have the compilation overhead of Gentoo. However, installing Debian itself (the stable release, that is) is like stepping back in time to the late paleolithic. I tried Sid, but couldn't get it to install to an actual bootable state, much less get a desktop running. The stable realease I got bootable, but getting a desktop running promised a fair amount of old-school pain -- hand-tweaking mode lines in XF86Config and stuff. C'mon, RedHat conquered that in 6.0, during the late bronze age, when most of us still had ISA expansion slots and an ethernet card was considered an optional extra on many new PCs.

Please note, I'm not trying to say Debian is bad. A lot of people really like it, and I suspect I might too, if I could get it set up and working. It does have frustrations, though. One of the servers I have an account on has Debian Stable, and getting recent Perl modules installed off the CPAN is far more problematic than on newer systems, for instance. I suppose that's a minor quibble, but for somebody coming from Mandrake, which is a bit more on the cutting edge side of things (though not to the same extent as Gentoo), it's a little annoying to go through the entire OS install, with eight disks, and discover that after all that you don't even have GTK2 installed. Gah. Some of us find that frustrating in 2005. I think some parts of the installation routine (most notably dselect) are older than my graphics card, which is a Matrox Mystique that I got in January 1998. In 1998, using dselect felt like a reasonable option -- I mean, installing Windows95 was a real pain too, and I was accustomed to using DOS, which you usually installed by manually copying the files. (I think DOS 5 and 6 theoretically came with an INSTALL.EXE, but it was primitive enough that nobody used it. DOS 3 didn't come with one at all. But DOS is no longer a major contender for desktop systems in 2005, either.)

So this is where Ubuntu comes in: it's based on Debian, but it's modern. Other distros have come along before that were Debian-based but more modern and desktop-oriented. There was Lindo^H^Hspire, for instance, but Ubuntu is more open and closer to the Debian way of doing things, except for the fact that it's more modern than Debian stable. Yet, while it's not as stable (in the "hasn't changed since Grandpappy used it" sense), as Debian stable, it is nevertheless fairly stabilized in the sense of mostly working, not having so many bugs as to render it useless, and so on -- it's cutting edge, but it's not *bleeding*-edge like Gentoo can be at times. For some of us, that just feels like the right balance.

Right now, I'm still using Mandrake for my main system -- I don't like to migrate often or prematurely -- but I'm evaluating Ubuntu on the side, in VMWare, and may switch to it if it's good to me. It shows promise. It's got my attention. I'm interested.

I hope that explains why people are interested in Ubuntu. It's why *I* am interested in it, at any rate.

Re:WTF?

[gngulrajani]

well you need to remeber its still linux - and while the debian based installer might not be as bullet proof as redhat's or suse's,
I have had decent luck with it durning installs on dual boot machines.
I think the reasons Ubuntu has gained some much popularity are:

focus on making a small subset of packages work(gnome,core gnome apps,hal,xorg)

the ease of installing new packages

the ease of upgrading the distbution
-greg

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem, most newbies are going to want to dual boot. From experience this is a no-go with ubuntu.

i would suggest newbies use a second computer for their linux experimentation and learning.

dual booting is not a guarantee against screwing up their other os... using a separate computer is pretty much a safe bet.

Re:WTF?

[drinkypoo]

EVERY system has drawbacks. gentoo's is time. debian's is flexibility. It leads you to dependency hell. portage has issues, but dependency resolution ain't one of them.

Re:WTF?

[jejones]

Apologies for redundancy, but my experience is like that of others. It just works. I've been using Fedora Core on most of my computers, and first Mandrake and then Gentoo on another, but Ubuntu has worked out so well when I've tried it that I'm switching all but my wife's computer, and probably will do that too after the rest of them are switched.

Fedora is nice...but OTOH, RPM operations are insanely slow for some reason. apt-get/synaptic on Ubuntu (and probably on Debian-based distros in general, I would think) flies in comparison.

Re:WTF?

[Jagasian]

Well, I don't like how KDE is a second class citizen on Fedora. On Kubuntu it is treated like a first class citizen. I have the same gripe about apt on Fedora, which was there long before yum, yet for whatever reason they are trying to cram yum down my throat. With Kubuntu, I get first-class KDE and apt, by default.

Fedora is still pretty nice though. The boot process is nice and clean, things are pretty secure with a default install, and a sane list of apps are installed as opposed to a bunch of duplicate apps.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

The ones who're still waiting for Firefox to finish compiling so they can visit Ubuntu.org to see what all the fuss is about?

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget MEPIS. I my experience, MEPIS is a close second in terms of hardware detection.

Re:WTF?

[dont_think_twice]

The rest of us, who spent years on Redhat, and got incredibly sick of having to either (a) reinstall the operating system every year or (b) compile everything by hand to install new software.

Apparently, this is a problem that Ubuntu also solves. Really, I don't see how anyone can use any distro other than Debian/Ubuntu or Gentoo. Apparently yum is attempting to provide the same type of service for rpm based distros, but from what I hear, it doesn't work nearly as well.

Re:WTF?

[Mycroft_VIII]

I was thinking newbie in general. Fat chance getting them to buy a second computer just to try some os with a, to them, wierd name.
If it's not reasonably safe and easy to use on thier only computer the odds drop ALOT, and those aren't so good to begin with.

Mycroft

Re:WTF?

[Mycroft_VIII]

Well this is the first time I've had anything barf on them. And it choses the mime types itself and had no visible (even with a couple hours digging around) method to change them.
These were standard .iso files that every other cd burning program I've tried recognized and burned with just fine.

Mycroft

Re:WTF?

[Mycroft_VIII]

Well the disk they sent me ONLY had ubuntu as a boot option when grub showed up on boot. which is odd since I was booting from a drive I didn't install to, and never had it say ANYTHING about boot options or bootloaders or anything related during install.
Also YES you can change what the default app is for various file types, but you can't change what file type it thinks something is. And what it thinks something is apears to be random and doesn't apply to all files of an actual type. I had it miss-identify about half of the .iso files as .mp3 files and leave the other half alone, yet I have NO .iso's that are of cd's that have any music, let alone mp3's, on them in the folder I was working with. Nothing actually involving media files (in the usual sense of 'multi-media') that I noticed, but then after a day of trying to deal with it's unconfigureabilty and general brokeness I got rid of it and repaired the damage.
An example that would fit your case would be if it thought half of your .txt files were actually quicktime slideshows and you couldn't find any way to convince it otherwise.

Mycroft

Re:WTF?

[Mycroft_VIII]

Well I don't recall that option in warty (what I have here), I just told it to partition and formad my second hardrive and install there. I kept waiting for it to ask me about the bootloader to install and what disk to install to and what to make bootable. NOTHING it just toasted my other hd's boot sector so all I could do is boot ubuntu from grub, it even installed an smp kernal I have no use for running a single cpu on a single socket 939 board.
As far as getting it to burn iso's, well no seeing as how xxyyzz.iso is an mp3 as far as the system is concerned, when I finally did find a way to open a burning program it accepted unbuntu's claim that it was an mp3 file and said it couldn't burn it.
As far as being superior to the others, well when I can get madrake to install (before 8 no matter which comp or the three available to me I tried the installer died on a divide by zero error) everything works fine and I can even *GASP* change a setting other than background and choose a boot loader and how it behaves. Haven't had hardware issues in ages, last time was red hat 5 or 6 IIRC not recognizing an odball hand scanner I had. That and madrake 10.0's livecd don't like ATI AIW9600's.
I like ubuntu conceptually, and once they fix the problems with install and file type handling and a decent config and controll system it could be a nice system. But warty was just broken for me.

Mycroft

x.org vs XFree86

[Brummund]

How's the performance of X.org compared to XFree86?

I don't care much about eyecandy or 3D, but if X.org is faster on 2D, I might consider switching. (I use XFre86 with 1920x1200/24b res and on my P4 3.2Ghz with a 128MB card NVidia card, the windows still flicker when moved.)

Re:x.org vs XFree86

[Jagasian]

I have been using X.org on Fedora for what seems like half a year now. I haven't noticed any difference in performance. The only thing that i have noticed is that it is less buggy, has a few more features, and the names of various configuration files and directories are different, though the formats of these files and directories are the same.

Considering that it started out as a simple fork of XFree86, you shouldn't expect a big difference between the two.

Re:x.org vs XFree86

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest speed bump comes from jettisoning David Dawes, his revised license, and his stagnated development model.

Re:x.org vs XFree86

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read somewhere that recent gnome-terminal can have improved output speed using xorg...

Re:x.org vs XFree86

[dtfinch]

I doubt there's a big difference. I prefer X.org over XFree86 because it includes a bug fix which prevents it from crashing my system. The main thing is that if a distibution still uses XFree86, it's probably an old XFree86 from before the fork, with some fixes backported from X.org.

Re:x.org vs XFree86

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care much about eyecandy [...] the windows still flicker when moved

So which is it?

Re:x.org vs XFree86

[Anonymous Coward]

If you seriously mean non-flickering windows is eye candy, I'd say it is time to upgrade that 13" CRT and maybe explore resolutions higher than 640x480 and even install X!

Re:x.org vs XFree86

[Danuvius]

I prefer X.org over XFree86 because it includes a bug fix which prevents it from crashing my system.

But what is your real motivation?

A desktop candidate?

[bogaboga]

I wonder whether we could finally finally have a Linux desktop candidate in Ubuntu/Kubuntu. The reviews so far and the fact that folks at Distrowatch ahref=http://www.distrowatch.com/http://www.distro watch.com/> have Ubuntu at #1 says a lot about that potential fact. I also understand that it is quite fast.

I will be doing my eveluation too, but I will go with a somewhat biased mind I have to admit. If the Kubuntu folks have not trimmed down: for KDE - sane defaults and for GNOME - making it easier to do common desktop stuff, this will be just another distro.

I wonder whether they will be considering autopackage ahref=http://www.autopackage.org/http://www.autopa ckage.org/>. Anyone know about this?

Re:A desktop candidate?

[pizpot]

I installed Ubuntu (Hoary) on my main computer this weekend. It is my first attempt at linux in over a year. BTW, I was a HPUX sys admin for an engineering office for 5 years and so have lots of unix know how...

My PC was dual booting win98 2nd edition, and winxp sp2. I have two hardrives: a 30 GB with C: (fat32) and D: (fat32), and a 120 GB with G: (fat32), H: (fat32), and I: (60GB). Win98 was installed to C:, and winxp to D:, but I had xp's apps installed also to C: and I:.

I had installed xp, from within 98, and said not to upgrade, and allow me to specifiy where, so I had a boot menu saying 1) win98 or 2) winxp.

First, I went into xp control panel, admin utilities, computer stuff, hardrives and deleted the H: partition so that it became Free Space. (very important step, if you want xp to be happy, as opposed to just letting linux delete the partition)

Then I put the Ubuntu cd in, and rebooted to my bios and told it to boot from my cd drive. It did, and I went through the install routine. It saw my disks, and the free space, and I created my required linux partitions. (1GB logical swap space at end of the free space, and a primary linux ext2 filesystem with the rest of the free space). It then finished in about 15 mins and rebooted into Ubuntu.

Everything worked perfect. I was on the net, my Pentax camera icon appeared when I hot-plugged it into USB. I had a Hercules GF3 nvidia vid card, so of course it did not do 3D yet, but it was running 2D nicely. I had to run two commands and it configured itself to do 3D. I tested it with id Software's free huge game Wolfenstien Enemy Territory 2.60, and it was better than in Winxp. The frame rate seems higher, and my ping is way better. Next I tried the Gaim messenger program, that Ubuntu installed. I typed in my ICQ number and password, and *ding* there were my buddies both on and offline. Next I tried Evolution, nice but to slow to load, so: www.google.com-->"ubunto thunderbird" and then downloaded a .deb file and installed it from the command line, and its really nice.

For me, I am done. I was lucky to be in a state where my main game was available on linux, so I went for it, and boy am I happy. Sure my 5 year old will still boot to winxp for his 50 games, and my wife for her game, but if I happen to get wine running, then that will stop.

Overall, here are my ending thoughts:

- I love it - I used Symantic Package manager to auto upgrade everything and then wolf stopped working. - I gotta learn how to back it all up so I can experiment - I'm converted. - It rox - Gnome is nice. I'll try KDE too, but I did a year ago, and not see any reason to worry, its not like the debian packages aren't smart enough to install dependant stuff if required. ie) I installed a cd burn program, and it needed KDE resourses, and they were installed automatically. - I tried debian last week, and could not get it to gui no matter what install options I picked, but am glad that forced me into Ubuntu. - Mepis and Kubuntu sound cool too... - I think people who complain about GIMP are too used to Windows. It behaves like old Unix Motif/CDE programs.

GRIN! This is so ready for the desktop. I'm doing grampa, and gushing about it to my engineering, and gaming friends and they are all like: "oh good, show me how, I can't stand trying to run pirated windows these days"

:-)

Re:A desktop candidate?

[jrasmussen0]

Autopackage will break almost everything that Debian (Which is where I believe Ubuntu's strength lies), has been trying to accomplish through their quality control and bug reporting.

Anyone can create their own debian package repository (In fact Ubuntu does), but none have been better than Debian's.

Autopackage will only help out lazy proprietary companies that don't want to shift the way they think about packaging. They just use what worked in the 'Windows' world.

Re:A desktop candidate?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I used Symantic Package manager

I think you mean Synaptic. Unless Symantec has suddenly gotten into the Linux market.

Re:A desktop candidate?

[pizpot]

Here is more about my Ubuntu linux newbie experience

- I let it install SmartBootManager (SBM) to the master boot record. I then edited the config file, and ran the update program to edit the default choice and time. (for the 5 year old and wife)

- so now I have two manues coming up. First: linux/windows, and then win98/xp.

- I had put a icon to wolf3d on the panel. I accidently double-clicked it, and it ran twice, and locked up the computer. Then what do you do? The Win95 key on the keyboard does nothing. Ctrl-C, shift-ctrl-l, ctrl-alt-del, Esc do nothing. All I could do was reboot, and then wait for the fschk.

- getting rid of the brown theme was very important to me. And the flash of brown background too, while it logs in. That colour is set not in Themes, but in Login options.

- you have to check off "allow root gui login" and goto User/Groups and checkoff see all users, and then change roots password if you want to login as root. Why would you need that with the Ubuntu suso system? Because, I'll tell you why. My old 29" IBM monitor is too blurry in 1280, but clear in 1024. If I click Applications, Screen Resolution, and set it to 1024, then guess what, it keeps reverting to 1280 everytime I login. UNLESS I LOGIN AS ROOT TO GUI AND SET IT TO 1024. Then other account gets 1024 as default. Bug, yes, but that is why.

Oh yeah, even with the fsck wait if you reboot abruptly, you are still miles ahead of if you were using windows. Because you don't have the windows time killers that take its place.

Re:A desktop candidate?

[makohill]

There has been discussion on the list and the autopackage maintainer has come onto Ubuntu lists and explained that autopackage is perhaps not the Solution To All Problems that some people think it might be.

We'll certainly support autopackage but we're not going to base the distribution on it. It is, after all, not designed to do that anyway.

Re:A desktop candidate?

[aldoman]

What happened when your wolf broke is that you installed a new kernel which requries a new nvidia driver, compiled specifically for that kernel. Basically Ubuntu will handle this and all you have to do is type the two commands that install the NVidia binary again and it'll set it up again for you.

It would be nice if Ubuntu handled this automatically when upgrading kernels, though.

Re:A desktop candidate?

[pyros]

so: www.google.com-->"ubunto thunderbird" and then downloaded a .deb file and installed it from the command line, and its really nice.

You should always do `apt-get update && apt-cache search <keyword>` before looking for a .deb off google. I believe Thunderbird is in the main repository for hoary.

Re:A desktop candidate?

[pizpot]

Good point. My problem is knowing what the packages are called. I tried apt-get install mozilla-thunderbird and didn't think of just thunderbird. The ubuntu pages that show .deb files should maybe go away then perhaps.

I googled for "ubunto apt-get listing" etc till I was blue and nothing. :-)

Re:A desktop candidate?

[SoulOfMyShoe]

In the transcripts of one of the recent developer meetings, they discussed the possibility of implementing autopackage. It isn't in there yet, but they are giving it serious consideration.

Re:A desktop candidate?

[pizpot]

Yeah, thanks. I tried redoing what got nvidia 3d running and no go. Maybe I didn't use apt-get or something. It will be nice when I know how packages are tracked, and what ways are compatible with each other. Maybe a tutorial for windows converts should be included for packages. Like are Synaptic and apt-get the same thing? Got me. What about dbpk -i asdf.deb (command spelled wrong)?

Re:A desktop candidate?

[mattyrobinson69]

if you want a root console without setting up the root account do this:

sudo bash

if you want to change the resolution, one way of doing it (config file unfortunately) is this:

sudo xorgconfig #this is an easy enough console based wizard

and edit the resolution bit.

Another option for the res is to use krandrtray (but im not sure if that can set the res permanantly unless your root or not).

Re:A desktop candidate?

[pyros]

I tried apt-get install mozilla-thunderbird and didn't think of just thunderbird

That's what the `apt-cache search <keyword>` is for. ;) You can also search by keyword in synaptic, just click the search button in the lower left corner (Ubuntu Update Manger is not the same as Synaptic, same menu, different items).

Re:A desktop candidate?

[mattyrobinson69]

oops - i meant:

if you want to change the resolution, one way of doing it is this:

(i was going to suggest editing xorg.conf)

Re:A desktop candidate?

[Eradicator2k3]

"I'm doing grampa, and gushing about it to my engineering, and gaming friends and they are all like: "'oh good, show me how'"

This quote taken so far out of context as to make it unbelievable.

Re:A desktop candidate?

[Bachus9000]

- I had put a icon to wolf3d on the panel. I accidently double-clicked it, and it ran twice, and locked up the computer. Then what do you do? The Win95 key on the keyboard does nothing. Ctrl-C, shift-ctrl-l, ctrl-alt-del, Esc do nothing. All I could do was reboot, and then wait for the fschk.

Next time, try ctrl+alt+backspace. That should kill the X server and take you back to the login prompt. I think ctrl+alt+F1 (or something like that) will drop you to a text console where you could possibly type killall , but I'm still a bit of a Linux/UNIX n00b so don't quote my on that part. :) Ctrl+alt+backspace should save you, though.

- you have to check off "allow root gui login" and goto User/Groups and checkoff see all users, and then change roots password if you want to login as root. Why would you need that with the Ubuntu suso system? Because, I'll tell you why. My old 29" IBM monitor is too blurry in 1280, but clear in 1024. If I click Applications, Screen Resolution, and set it to 1024, then guess what, it keeps reverting to 1280 everytime I login. UNLESS I LOGIN AS ROOT TO GUI AND SET IT TO 1024. Then other account gets 1024 as default. Bug, yes, but that is why.

I personally solve this problem by editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf and removing every instance of 1280xwhatever, but that is just a bit more prone to error. :) You don't have to go through the mess of enabling root, though. IIRC, you could've done a simple 'sudo passwd root' (you might not need to add root at the end, but just to be safe..) and set the password and then it would be enabled for login, but now that I think of it I still haven't logged in as root so I'm not really sure. It does enable 'su' though. :D

Re:A desktop candidate?

[Bachus9000]

Whoops. The post above mine wasn't there a minute ago...This is what I get for leaving a discussion open for an hour and not refreshing before posting. At least it's only half-redundant. :)

Re:A desktop candidate?

[pizpot]

I honestly couldn't get apt-cache to work. Maybe because I was putting a * on the end of the search string. "apt-cache thunderbird" does nothing for me. I'll keep trying. Shoot, now I want to do a reinstall and only use apt-get. Grrr. Good thing its so quick, and I've not got anything to loose yet.

Re:A desktop candidate?

[Terrasque]

"apt-cache search "

you also got "apt-cache show " to see information (name, description, version and so on) about a specific package.

"man apt-cache" for more info
or, if you use kde, "man:/apt-cache" in konqueror.

Re:A desktop candidate?

[aldoman]

Yea, I agree on the Windows tutorial.

Synaptic and apt-get are just different interfaces to the same thing. Infact syanptic really just passes commands to apt-get for you.

What I did was searched for nvidia and right clicked on them, selected 'reinstall this package' and it seemed to work just fine. YMMV, though.

dpkg is a way of installing individual .deb files you download from the internet or from a CD. It's basically like MSI on Windows. It usually doesn't work very well though because of dependencies that can't get resolved, if you don't get a .deb specifically for your distribution.

I think apt-get uses dpkg to install it's package files. So basically dpkg is the 'core' and apt-get just makes it a lot lot easier to install right first time.

Re:A desktop candidate?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should really try kde.. it's AMAZING.... Try it!! The best way to install is in synaptic choosing kubuntu-desktop, I believe. Then, at the login prompt, change the session from gnome to kde, and BE AMAZED... Honest, your jaw will drop. IT allows for lots of costumization is faster for me than gnome, very very power-user friendly, yet really easy.
dan

Re:A desktop candidate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you use synaptic? It's very reliable, I stopped apt-get'ing a long time ago thanks to it :)

Distrowatch

[grokster]

I am sure it will become one of the top distributions very soon.

Seen the Distrowatch ranking?

Re:Distrowatch

[Slack3r78]

Not only that, but try changing the dataset to the past 3 months or past month, and you'll see that Ubuntu has been averaging nearly 30% more hits per day than the next closest distribution.

It'd make sense that the 6 month number would be a bit off as Ubuntu is on a twice-a-year release schedule, with the first release having been 6 months ago now. (The version numbering scheme is Ubuntu Year.Month, hence Ubuntu 5.04).

So while Distrowatch may not be the best indicator of a distribution's popularity, it certainly seems to indicate that Canonical and crew are onto to something here.

Re:Distrowatch

[Alibloke]

I see, it may be the top of distrowatch but as to installed versions being used in the real world I'm sure it pails in comparison to the likes of Mandrake, SuSE, RH, etc. Cheers for the link tho, it's bookmarked.

Re:Distrowatch

[Dalroth]

Ubuntu has shot right past Debian to become my favorite Linux Distribution by far (and I've run them all at one point or another).

They definitely are onto something.

Bryan

Re:Distrowatch

[node 3]

They have the actual rankings on their popularity page.

Ubuntu on Distrowatch Hit List

[prairiedock]

For some time, Ubuntu has been number 1 on Distrowatch's hit list (a good, not perfect measure of popularity.) It seems to be growing exponentially: it now has twice as many page hits per day (2970) as the next most popular distro (Mandriva, aka Mandrake, with 1471). And Kubuntu has come out of nowhere in a short time to reach number 11. This situation is unprecedented in the time I've been watching Distrowatch.

Can someone explain this? Why Ubuntu rather than Fedora, or for that matter Mepis or Kanotix, both fine user-oriented Debian-based distros?

Re:Ubuntu on Distrowatch Hit List

[elasticwings]

I switched to Ubuntu from Fedora Core 3 a few weeks ago. To be honest, as a desktop, Ubuntu has Fedora beat hands down for me. It runs hella faster on newer hardware. It's setup to work with Apt/Synaptic by default. The Gnome desktop is much newer than the one they're using with Fedora Core 3. I know they have the new version of Gnome in FC4 Test 1, but it has lots of problems. Ubuntu works and works well. Oh and the apt servers are alot faster than the ones for Fedora. In general, I've had alot of good luck with this distro. As a matter of fact, I installed it on a newly aquired laptop last night. Once again, it works beautifully.

Re:Ubuntu on Distrowatch Hit List

[Illissius]

Multiple factors.
- One of the two main desktop environments, tweaked and customized to make it even better.
- Comes on a single CD.
- Sane package management.

All the other 'major, user friendly' distros flunk the second two, vary on the first (from what I've heard SuSE is quite good in that respect, dunno about Fedora and Mandrak^H^Hiva).
As for why it's better than MEPIS/Kanotix/etc., haven't looked into it enough to know, but I suspect up-to-dateness with the latest cool stuff may be one of the reasons.

Re:Ubuntu on Distrowatch Hit List

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed ubuntu but during install one of the prompts (that installs most of the apps including X) defaults to N (i.e no).

This may cause what another poster experienced, i.e being left with a console and no gui.

Can anyone advise how to install user mode linux on hoary because I couldnt get that to install, its not even in the repositories?

Re:Ubuntu on Distrowatch Hit List

[eviltypeguy]

Ubuntu would be great for me too...if I could run it more than a half hour without it hardlocking (32-bit or 64-bit), in contrast Fedora / RHEL / Solaris / Windows have never given me that problem. The devs have known about the problem for months but so far have been unable to indicate to me how to help debug this Ubuntu specific issue.

Re:Ubuntu on Distrowatch Hit List

[LnxAddct]

That isn't how many people are running it, it's how many people clicked the link or visited distrowatch's page describing ubuntu. This just means that people have been reading about ubuntu (which makes sense considering all the press it's been getting). According to Netcraft, the two fastest growing distros are Fedora and Gentoo. In the past 6 months Fedora has grown 122% from 182,421 to 405,682 servers and Gentoo has grown 45% from 43,525 to 63,160. Red Hat still has market lead with 1,610,427 servers and Debian is in 2nd with 791,086 (I believe that includes all debian based distros as well).
Regards,
Steve

Re:Ubuntu on Distrowatch Hit List

[Anonymous Coward]

> For some time, Ubuntu has been number 1 on Distrowatch's hit list [..] Can someone explain this?

The latest Distrowatch Weekly explains it with "Of course, there have been concerted efforts by several Ubuntu user communities around the world to drive their favourite distribution to the top as fast as possible, so take the new ranking with a grain of salt."

Re:Ubuntu on Distrowatch Hit List

[eviltypeguy]

Excuse me? Overrated for posting a completely legitimate claim? Dear , have the moderators gone insane?!?!

Re:Ubuntu on Distrowatch Hit List

[Anonymous Coward]

I have exactly the oposite problem... Ubuntu doesn't lock up where Fedora and CentOS do. I'd rather use CentOS but I won't live with crashes so it's ubuntu for me.

Re:Ubuntu on Distrowatch Hit List

[dalutong]

the default doesn't have universe and multiverse repositories set up. you can find out how to add them on the website wiki.

i think you can just get rid of the hash in the /etc/apt/sources.list next to the universe and multiverse lines and sudo apt-get update

i can't say whether he default to "no" is a mistake in the installer or by you -- i have been using hoary since shortly after warty came out. :)

but you can do this:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

it will download and install a tremendous # of packages and all will be happy.

Re:Ubuntu on Distrowatch Hit List

[MikeWin10]

Same here, download the RC for ubuntu and was immediatly impressed. Don't think I will look back at FC3. It works so much better. And even the KDE desktop looks sharper as well.

Kuntu torrents too!

[MastaStealth]

Hey, here are 2 Kubuntu torrents too... Kubuntu-i386 Install: http://releases.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/hoary/kubuntu-5 .04-install-i386.iso.torrent Kubuntu-Amd64 Install: http://releases.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/hoary/kubuntu-5 .04-install-amd64.iso.torrent

Re:Kuntu torrents too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing says stability and usability like a distro created out of spite.

Re:Kuntu torrents too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Kuntu torrents too!

Thank $diety they chose not to call it "Kuntu" ;-)

Hoary Hedgewhat Ubun-who?

[Quiet_Desperation]

I'm getting to old for all this. I can even grok the names anymore. What happened to the days of "Visi-Calc" (a visual calculator) or "Draw" or "Write" or... I'm sorry. I'm approaching 40. :(

Re:Hoary Hedgewhat Ubun-who?

[iGN97]

It's amazing that your post even ended up on slashdot.org and not website.com.

Re:Hoary Hedgewhat Ubun-who?

[Quiet_Desperation]

Hey, I'm old, not stupid. :-)

Re:Hoary Hedgewhat Ubun-who?

[CaptnMArk]

word.

Re:Hoary Hedgewhat Ubun-who?

[Coryoth]

I'm getting to old for all this. I can even grok the names anymore. What happened to the days of "Visi-Calc" (a visual calculator) or "Draw" or "Write" or...

They got trademarked, that's what happened. Obvious names that "give an idea of functionality" are remarkably hard to come by. Let's try renaming GIMP to something more obvious shall we ... just make sure to google the names first to make sure they're not already trademarked:

Image - taken
Paint - taken
PhotoShop - taken (obviously)
ImageShop - taken
PaintShop - taken
PhotoPaint - taken
PhotoStudio - taken
PaintStudio - taken
ImageStudio - taken
PhotoSuite - taken
PaintSuite - taken
ImageSuite - taken
PhotoBox - taken
PaintBox - taken
ImageBox - taken ...

The list goes on. Dream up any name you like that implies painting, photos manipulation, images etc. and you'll find it is trademarked already. The same goes for most everything else.

Jedidiah.

Re:My attempt

[Anonymous Coward]

This happened twice? :)

Does the LiveCD write anything to the hard disk ?

[yusufg]

According to this blog entry by Daniel Glazman of Nvu fame, the ubuntu LiveCD destroyed his MBR Can anybody confirm/deny such behaviour by Ubuntu's LiveCD or LiveCD's in general (don't they mount hard disks read-only)

The Reverend Cleo Says....

[mehaiku]

To create the best Linux brew
We must join the very top two
To prevent any illusion
Of brand name confusion
Call it MandrivaGNU/KUbuntu

Instructions to upgrade warty to hoary

[jhdevos]

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/HoaryUpgradeNotes

If this goes as easily as most of my past debian upgrades, I will be running Hoary in about 30 minutes :-)

Jan

Re:Instructions to upgrade warty to hoary

[RichDice]

Here's to hoping.

Last autumn, I wanted to give Ubuntu a try. So I bought myself an external USB hard drive on which to install it. (No sense in messing up a known working current install on my internal hard drive.)

The install wasn't difficult... until the time came to write the grub record. It asked me if I wanted to write a grub record, and I said yes. Being one of those "easy installer", it didn't bother asking me any more questions after that. It simply over-wrote my existing grub record on my internal hard drive. Umm... thanks, guys.

I haven't given Ubuntu another try since then. I don't have time to risk on this kind of funny business.

Cheers,
Richard

Re:Instructions to upgrade warty to hoary

[snorklewacker]

Well, where did you think grub was going to install its record?

Granted, they should warn a little more strongly. In fact the whole grub install process needs some polish. It didn't make a peep when I used one big XFS partition which then failed to boot, when it should have recognized it as unsupported. I had to go back and reinstall and make an ext2 /boot partition, but that's only from knowing how it works -- anyone else I know would have been completely flummoxed at that point.

Re:Instructions to upgrade warty to hoary

[iCEBaLM]

The funny thing is that the installer will complain about using grub on an xfs partition-I had to install LILO. However, booting up, installing grub using apt and installing it myself worked absolutely perfectly. Grub works with xfs, what's the big deal?

Re:Instructions to upgrade warty to hoary

[snorklewacker]

Possibly grub does not work with xfs on amd64? Or maybe the installer used an old grub. Just throwing out wild guesses.

Re:Instructions to upgrade warty to hoary

[iCEBaLM]

Hmm, don't use A64 however it might be an old grub.

Ubuntu Love

[ThomS]

I've been using Ubuntu for a couple of years now and it was the first distro that I'd tried (and I'd tried a fair few) that made me seriously consider deleting my windows partition. Far less bloated than most of it's competitors, easy yet not patronising install, fantastic stable repository and most of all, they really encompass the friendly, open spirit of Linux, as evident on the forums and mailing lists.

Re:Ubuntu Love

[Anonymous Coward]

>> I've been using Ubuntu for a couple of years now>>

Didn't it come out in the fall of 2004???

Re:Ubuntu Love

[Zemplar]

Last August, Ubuntu was THE reason I dumped my Windows partition and destroyed every CD I had with the word "Microsoft" on it. I'm much happier now.

Only one slight problem, in Hoary, DHCP is not working properly for me. I have to deactivate then reactivate my NIC, of which, only one NIC can work. Otherwise, it just ROCKS!

Re:Ubuntu Love

[Zemplar]

BTW, in all fairness I should have specified that the DHCP problem was with a Hoary RC from last week. I'll have to try the latest release and see if this minor problem is fixed.

Re:Ubuntu Love

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, Ubuntu first appeared just slightly over 6 months ago, think you're a little confused there.

Archive mirrors

[grokster]

See here for mirrors of archive.ubuntu.com - not slashdotted as of a moment ago...

the big deal is

[jbellis]

it's an open (as opposed to several commercial debian derivatives) debian-based distro that isn't 3 years out of date.

lots of people love debian but wish stable weren't so old and testing were more... stable. :)

Re:the big deal is

[Jugalator]

it's an open (as opposed to several commercial debian derivatives) debian-based distro that isn't 3 years out of date.

You mean like MEPIS, also very high on Distrowatch and overtaking e.g. SUSE, and now at 4th place?
I also have to say it's a bit strange...

Re:the big deal is

[Jagasian]

I think that MEPIS has a better installer because its Live CD and installer CD are one in the same. So you have a nice userfriendly graphical installer that walks you through the process, at the same exact time you can play a video game, chat, or browse the web with all of the apps on the Live CD. MEPIS is exactly how (K)Ubuntu should be doing their Live CD and installer CD. Ontop of that, they should also merge the Ubuntu and Kubuntu CDs into one. That way you would have one Live CD, that could change between Gnome or KDE and could also graphically install (K)Ubuntu.

In other words, unify the CDs!

Re:the big deal is

[Kazriko]

I believe that ideas to merge the install CD and the live CD are already in the works. I'm having a hard time finding the information in their wiki though due to the overwhelming run on their servers.

I believe they are trying to find a way to run the software from the compressed debs and still be able to install it from the same files before they unify the cd.

As far as Kubuntu/Ubuntu goes, I guess that depends on how much space they have on the disc.

Re:the big deal is

[Jagasian]

So the install from a booted live CD would be graphical?

The other interesting development on live CDs is to be able to run them on MS Windows without rebooting via a copy of the free QEMU PC emulator also on the CD and activated automatically via Windows CD automount. Add that and the ability to easily save desktop configuration data to hard disk or CD (yet another live CD development), along with a merged KDE/Gnome (K)Ubuntu ISO and it would be allot easier to get people to start using Linux.

I guess other interesting live CD features would be to scan an existing Windows install for configuration data, so that instant message and email clients could be automatically configured... and web browser bookmarks automatically imported. Going further, possibly have Wine setup to use the DLLs and apps on the Windows partition and automatically list Windows apps in the applications menu of the live CD. All to blur the boundary between where the user is now and where they will be once they completely convert to Linux.

I am personally writing this from the Live CD of Kubuntu 5.04, as I have Fedora Core 3 still installed on my hard disk. If I like it after a few weeks, then I will do a real install.

Ubuntu on X40

[pawal]

I installed it a couple of hours ago, without even realizing it was a new release. I have been playing around with both fedora core 3 and Debian unstable on this Thinkpad X40 just before, and I am deeply impressed with the work they have put into this Ubuntu-release.

The only things remaining is getting some sort of wifi roaming-stuff working, and the dualhead. The X40 link on the documentation wiki is broken.

Re:Ubuntu on X40

[Anonymous Coward]

And the SD card reader...

Re:Ubuntu on X40

[pawal]

Yes, but that will probably never work. I don't expect it to anyway.

Jackass Linux

[AtariAmarok]

"As well as the elephants and lions on the street corners and the aardvarks and jakkalse"

How is that last one pronounced?

Re:Jackass Linux

[chrisopherpace]

I think he meant jackals.

Re:Jackass Linux

[hplasm]

"Jackass Linux" should appeal to the business community quite well..

Re:Jackass Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, I think he was joking about the "elephants and lions on street corners". Although they do have (trained) elephants walking down the street in Thailand.

Re:Jackass Linux

[michael186]

"How is that last one pronounced?" "yuk-ul-sa" Afrikaans for jackels.

$699 plus fines

[tepples]

It was created for distribution of Linux isos, sue it for that.

Only SCO would sue it for that :-)

not to bitch but...

[spectrokid]

Is there a point in compiling desktop-aimed distros to 386? I mean, it's not like you can actually run KDE + OO on a 386? Wouldn't 586 or even 686 be a little more realistic?

Re:not to bitch but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, 386 is just the assembly compatibility, they are optimised for 686.

You can't optimise for 586 assembly because it runs terribly on any non-pentium computer and you can't optimise for 686 because it won't even run on some processors such as the Via ones.

Re:not to bitch but...

[cjwatson]

Although the architecture name is "i386", the packages are compiled with -mcpu=pentium4.

Re:not to bitch but...

[Terrasque]

and -march=486 IIRC.

So it will work on everything from a 486 and up, but are optimized for modern architecture.

Re:My attempt

[ChaosCube]

Generic PC...?

I downloaded the live cd a couple of weeks ago for ubuntu, and it was great. No problems here, and I have a "generic" pc. By that I mean custom made, and not a Dell or HPiece of junk. Yesterday, I downloaded the torrent for the release candidate and will install it tomorrow. It's wonderful!

Perhaps your "generic" pc skillz are not 1337?

Gratis Shipped CDs

[makohill]

Like last time, we're also sending out free pressed CDs in the mail (gratis CDs, gratis shipping). If you want them, you can sign up for them at http://shipit.ubuntulinux.org

Re:Gratis Shipped CDs

[Mycroft_VIII]

You say we. I take it you are somehow associated with ubuntu.
Can you tell me if the problem with ovewrighting the primary drive boot secotor without warning is fixed? and can you change the mime types Ubuntu seems to apply at random to common file types making them unusable been fixed?
I heard alot of good about Ubuntu and got some disks, but it was a disaster. I installed it to my secondary hard drive (I can easily choose wich hard drive to boot with two key presses as I post) and it nonetheless overwrote the boot on my primary hard-drive. Then when I tried to burn a cd .iso it had assigned the mime type such that it thought it was an mp3 music file!?!? not all my .iso were misslabled, just nearly half, yet all my .iso files (misslabled and not) where in ONE folder with nothing to distguish one from the other except name. And there was no way to fix this that I could find.
I've installed several varieties of red-hat and mandrake and slack once and have an ancient ver of caldera and debian around here I've toyed with among others. I've NEVER bought an off-the-shelf desktop except my first 286 I got used and converted to a 386 within weeks and actually make money helping people clean the spyware off thier xp systems and doing upgrades and such, so I doubt I did anything boneheaded (not impossible, but unlikely) and found ubuntu nearly unuseable because it made so many assumptions that I couldn't change with some serious deep digging into internalls I didn't want to screw with just to try a new distro.
I'm not trying to flame or complian, but I really don't see the version I got in the mail (about a month ago) as anywhere near ready for any but the linux geeks who would run just linux and like digging around in config files manually and issueing arcane commands with a dozen parameters discovered with yarrow sticks and a crystal ball.
The only significant fact that might contribute is I was using the amd64 version, so if it's just that version having birthing pains let me know.

Mycroft

Ubuntu == Support

[mathmatt]

To Do list for anyone who has tried linux unsuccesfully in the past

1. Install Hoary
2(a). Everything works fine.
2(b). Join the IRC support channel #ubuntu on irc.freenode.net
and ask questions.
3. ?
4. World domination!

Re:Ubuntu == Support

[superjohnyo]

does Ubuntu come with an IRC client? If not, what is one that is easy to install/use?

Re:Ubuntu == Support

[rolfpal]

My installation installed "Gaim" and "XChat" by default. They are in the "Internet" menu.

Re:Ubuntu == Support

[drinkypoo]

What about those who have tried ubuntu unsuccessfully in the past? Will this one work? I'm downloading the iso via torrent so I can try it out, but I'm skeptical.

my two cents

[outcast36]

The other posters are correct in changing the apt sources. There are a few post-install steps http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/ReleaseNotes504

My upgrade didn't include ubuntu-desktop, so I had to add it via apt manually (synaptic was acting weird). When I was done with that, I rebooted & nautilus wouldn't show me my homedir, and I lost all my icons (1 document) on the desktop. One more reboot and everything looks good.

If anyone wants to tell me that best python IDE in GNOME I'd be grateful.

Please Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone please answer this question. I've read and read all sort of webpages on Ubuntu and don't understand what the fuss is about. All I can see is it is some kind of New Age Debian.

Re:Does the LiveCD write anything to the hard disk

[calc]

That post was from back when Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty) was released. I have used the Wary LiveCD many times without any problems, and this is the first time I have heard of it eating partitions so it is not likely to be reproducible.

Re:My attempt

[Anonymous Coward]

it would seem that way.. never mind.. with a third attempt you may get it to work.. in which case you will score higher than -1 redundant!... better luck next time...

their codenames are the best!

[drunken dash]

Don't you just *love* Ubuntu's codenames?

Last release: Warty Warthog
This release: Hoary Hedgehog
Next release: Breezy Badger

hahaha, they're just so... different!

Re:their codenames are the best!

[The New Andy]

Always Avoid Aliteration.

Andy

Re:their codenames are the best!

[beattie]

How long until we get "Wascaly Wabbit"?

Re:their codenames are the best!

[Blakey Rat]

I like Apple's big mean cats naming scheme better, sorry.

Re:My attempt

[Anonymous Coward]

But that was a development version.

You should have filed bugs to try and sort the problem out. That way, others won't have the same expreience.

Make stuff better, don't just complain.

Re:My attempt

[Anonymous Coward]

it would seem that way.. never mind.. with a third attempt you may get it to work.. in which case you will score higher than -1 redundant!... better luck next time...

ooh the irony...

Ubuntu as a server platform?

[Gentoo Fan]

Looks like an interesting workstation distro, but how does it handle as a server?

Re:Ubuntu as a server platform?

[makohill]

Great and loads of people are using it that way.

There is a server installation option. It will not install any services in any default install. But then again, when I build a server, I want to start with a blank slate and install what I want anyway. :)

Re:Ubuntu as a server platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well enough. Having updates every 6 months, but security fixes for 18 months gives a bit of flexibility for timing upgrades.

There's alot more work to be done, though. Take a look at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/ServerTeam if you want to see where it's going.

Re:Ubuntu as a server platform?

[mborland]

I second that. It's slim (one disc) and yet has all the Debian niceness that (some) people admire. I've been testing its server capabilities and so far I like it. Haven't done a lot with Ubuntu on funky hardware, so obviously you'd want to experiment relative to your server environment.

Re:Ubuntu as a server platform?

[ceswiedler]

I'm going to upgrade my Sarge server to Hoary this weekend. I love Debian but testing breaks too much and stable is too old. The basic idea of Ubuntu is that they support the most popular / important packages from Debian, but still let you install almost all of the other Debian packages (via universe). For me, the packages I needed from universe were stuff like Gallery and SpamAssassin which I don't consider critical for security updates.

The advantage is that the software is recent but reasonably well-tested, will have security updates for the core (non-universe) packages, and can be upgraded in six months to the next version. It solves the Debian problem of choosing between old stable or broken testing / unstable. It's also completely free and has a good social contract along the lines of Debian. The development process seems reasonably open and the community is pretty strong, especially considering the young age of the distro.

Re:Ubuntu as a server platform?

[ubernostrum]

It's nice. I installed a Hoary prerelease on my local testing server to play with, and I like it a lot; there's a 'server' option in the installer which sets up a basic system (under 500MB total install size), and then you can install and configure whatever services you want.

Re:Ubuntu as a server platform?

[Gord]

"stuff like Gallery and SpamAssassin which I don't consider critical for security updates."

Um. Perhaps you should.

Any internet facing aplication should be conisdered critical when it comes to security updates.

Where is the Dijjer?

[GlobalEcho]

Life could have been easier if they had supplied some Dijjer P2P links as well!

Especially for those of us at work stuck with no control of the NAT firewall.

Re:Does the LiveCD write anything to the hard disk

[MrP-(at work)]

A few months ago my psu went out.. it caused my hard drives to keep shutting off.. and for a few days i needed an OS to use while i waited for my new psu to ship. I used Ubuntu Live.. what a life saver, best distro ive ever used

But anyway, my drives were disconnected and it didnt give any errors so i assume it doesnt write anything

I also tried like hell to crash it since it was all in memory, i tried loading everything i could think of, did tons of complex tasks, etc, i couldnt crash the damn thing! =P

Minimum requirements?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm looking for a Linux distro that will run Firefox on a 166mhz PC with 32MB ram. Can Ubuntu handle this? Is there a better Linux distro for this purpose?

Re:Minimum requirements?

[ssj_195]

I don't think I've ever seen Firefox grab less than 32MB of RAM, even with a blank tab :p

I've heard that VectorLinux is good for older hardare, and DamnSmallLinux (which fits on one of those miniature "business card" CDs) comes with Firefox now - might want to give those a try :)

Re:Minimum requirements?

[jrasmussen0]

Ubuntu can do this but you should use XFCE desktop or another stripped down desktop for that little memory.

If you install Ubuntu (Hoary or Warthog), then hit 'Esc' after the reboot to choose to start up in 'safe mode' (no gnome startup). Then log in as user and run 'aptitude'. When it asks you to run as root just type in the user password, there is no root password. Type '/' and search for 'xfce' and press '+' to select, then 'g' to go and download and install. The quit aptitude and 'sudo reboot' (which may ask for the user password).

At the graphical login screen. Click on the 'Session' option and choose XFCE.

Re:Minimum requirements?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can install as a server, and it should avoid having gnome started by default if I remember correctly.

Re:Minimum requirements?

[hplasm]

Damnsmall Linux - ahref=http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/http://www.dam nsmalllinux.org/>[damnsmalllinux.org] will fit, and has a Firefox download available

Re:Minimum requirements?

[mattnuzum]

On my P133MHz with 32MB of RAM, the Ubuntu live CD didn't work at all (it says it needs 128). The installer also failed to work. I tried out Damn Small Linux and the live cd worked perfectly. I then followed the instructions to install it to the hard drive and everything went exactly as you would hope. The complete, running system (DSL) takes up 200MB not counting the swap partition, and the OS is very fast and responsive. For everything P2 128MB Ram and better I suggest Ubuntu - it runs great.

Re:Minimum requirements?

[dmouritsendk]

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/system-req uirements

Re:Minimum requirements?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then log in as user and run 'aptitude'. When it asks you to run as root just type in the user password, there is no root password. Type '/' and search for 'xfce' and press '+' to select, then 'g' to go and download and install.

I thought that Debian had improved thier installer? Is 'aptitude' it (god I hope not), or is there an easier installer?

Re:Minimum requirements?

[wrecked]

The XFCE developers keep their own Debian package repository for the latest version (4.2). Instructions for XFCE and Debian on their website.

Re:Minimum requirements?

[Bachus9000]

4.2.1 is available in Ubuntu's repository (maybe in universe or multiverse, but I'm pretty sure it's in main).

Re:Minimum requirements?

[dtfinch]

You might get close with Vector Linux or Peanut Linux.

Re:Minimum requirements?

[Anonymous Coward]

I run the latest Slackware release on a 486 with 12 MB of RAM. It can be done. However, I have never attempted to run X on it...

Like the sibling posts say, you will probably have to go with something lightweight like XFCE and maybe a web browser with a smaller footprint than firefox.

Good luck!

Re:Minimum requirements?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use aptitude and I like it. But Ubuntu installs and recommends Synaptic, a GUI package manager.

I find I prefer crusing around in aptitude, but if you prefer GUI, give Synaptic a go.

Kubuntu Torrents?

[Anonymous Coward]

And where are the Kubuntu links?

Re:Kubuntu Torrents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try 'apt-get install kubuntu-desktop' from an ubuntu root terminal

Re:Kubuntu Torrents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why shall I pull and install all those GNOME bits which I will never use?

I may switch from Gentoo

[Billly Gates]

I still prefer FreeBSD but unfortunately 5.x shows it is not the great distro it used to be.

Gentoo is much better than it was back in 2002 when I tried it but its too easy to break and not quite as stable as I would want it.

I may try these debian based distro's. How stable are they? Are they relatively bugfree?

Re:I may switch from Gentoo

[KingBahamut]

Ive had no relative problem. I find unbuntu to be refreshing, stable, and without alot of problem.

Re:I may switch from Gentoo

[makohill]

I may try these debian based distro's. How stable are they? Are they relatively bugfree?

I think you'll be pleasently surprised. If you find bugs (especially if you use a development snapshot), we've got a bug tracking system as well.

Re:I may switch from Gentoo

[drinkypoo]

If you went from FreeBSD to Gentoo I'm guessing what you liked was ports. Ubuntu is debian and uses apt. You'll be right back in dependency hell. Stick with gentoo, unless you're specifically looking for a binary distribution.

Re:I may switch from Gentoo

[Billly Gates]

Problem is ports are not easy to make stable due to a large number of different compiler settings and libraries. A CVSUP can screw up most FreeBSD systems for that reason. :-)

I like the fact that everything is tested with the same compiler settings and dependancies with binary distributions like Debian. if there is a conflict I assume the dependency is updated.

Sigh

Oddly this same argument is why I prefered source based operating sytems. Everyone has different packages installed. I take it instability can happen either way when taken to extremes. :-(

Why does Unix still have this problem? Its 2005. Windows has smart dll management today and dependancies are always including in install apps on MacOSX and Windows. Maybe Unix should include both local (to apps) and global dependancies and .so's instead of throwing everything in /usr/lib. But the dlls are linked to each program runned in Windows2000 and WindowsXP.

I have heard stories of apt-get breaking apps but its not very common since it deals with dependancies.

Re:I may switch from Gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

I went from freebsd 5.3 to hoary livecd on my laptop - ibm thinkpad t30. I can attest to some stuff that ubuntu does for me that freebsd left me cold on.

Wine works - I dont mean it is tagged in ports as working, I mean it works. setup couldnt be much easier. crossover is an option (that works) if you want itunes.

suspend to nvram works, never could get that working with freebsd - on resume I would have dead video.. or dead wireless.. or dead mouse. Some days it would be fine.

Significantly faster release cycle for binary package support. apt-get install is very similiar to pkg_add -R. pkg_add using last months code. There are more packages than the entire ports tree. - no need to cvsup your ports, no need to recompile everything. (although you can if you wanted).

I have not had any stability issues at all over the last 2 weeks... but I didnt really have stability issues in freebsd either.

I really like the freebsd approach of /usr/local/ and /usr/local/etc. This is about the only thing I can say I miss, and for a desktop it's not that big of a deal.

None of the attitude / politics from the core team.

I still use freebsd for servers, and will continue .. but ubuntu is worth checking out.

Re:I may switch from Gentoo

[Terrasque]

Dependency hell? apt? Are you drunk?

Well, you know that portage downloads and compile all the apps that you need?

You know what, apt downloads and installs binary packages in mostly the same way. You don't have USE flags, but it's FAR from that and the "dependency hell" problem you mention.

Re:I may switch from Gentoo

[JerkBoB]

Ubuntu is debian and uses apt. You'll be right back in dependency hell.

... Guh?

I'm flabbergasted. You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Look, I'm not going to argue about source-based vs. binary-based distros or Ubuntu vs. MEPIS or whatever. I have no idea what you are talking about, man!

Maybe you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how Debian-based distros works. They have this cool concept of "Package Management." It's been around for a while, you should ask Google about it (or maybe you prefer AltaVista or Hotspot). The general idea is that you ask the package manager to get a package, and the package manager gets the package and all its dependencies! WOW!

Maybe you tried a Debian-based distro once, and hadn't taken time to understand how to use it. You were in the pre-apt RPM mindset of looking around for a .rpm, downloading it, and finding that you had to go find that RPM's dependencies by hand. I dunno... I'm trying to give you some credit here for not being a total idiot/troll.

You want to argue about source-based vs. package-based, or crazy optimizer flags for SUP3R-1337 FAST binaries (that load .10ms faster), fine. But saying that using Ubuntu will put you in dependency hell is just silly and stupid.

Re:I may switch from Gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

What if a dependency of the app you are trying to install conflicts with a dependency of a currently installed app? I guess you haven't tried to install transcode via apt-get on Warty. I tried Ubuntu Warty for a week and that was my dealbreaker. Dependency hell plain and simple.

I guess you haven't used Gentoo.

Gentoo allows multiple versions of apps and especially libraries to be installed simultaneously. The fact that one app depends on a library that conflicts with a library. If you "emerge favorite-app" it is going to work. That is THE reason I switched from Debian.

Re:I may switch from Gentoo

[JerkBoB]

What if a dependency of the app you are trying to install conflicts with a dependency of a currently installed app?

... Well, if you had bothered to learn how to use the tools provided by the OS, you would have figured out that you had plenty of options to resolve the issue. For the record, I have not tried to install transcode on Warty. For the record, I just tried installing transcode on Hoary, and it wanted to install dependencies, but there were no conflicts. Had there been conflicts, I would have applied some forebrain to the issue and figured out what the problem was.

Y'see... Those dependencies and conflicts are created by the packager, who happens to be human. And humans can be fallible, but they also tend to be able to see problems that a simple program can't. So maybe there was a damned good reason for the conflict (e.g. incompatible libraries). I don't know, because you don't give enough detail. What I do know is that if you'd really tried to figure it out, you would have been able to reach a suitable resolution.

I guess you haven't used Gentoo.

No, I haven't. My job is systems administration, and I have better things to do than figuring out which 1337 optimizer flags to apply so that I get m4d sp33dz out of my binaries. I suppose Gentoo is kewl and all when you have a machine in your basement, but when you've got >50 machines, compiling tarballs gets old. "But you can compile one package and transfer it to other machines!" Uhh... Why not just use a packaged-based distro in the first place, where someone else has done the work of QA and compilation?

I use Debian on my servers (sure it gets long in the tooth, but it's Stable, damn it!), and Ubuntu on my personal computers (workstations and laptop). I like Ubuntu because things just work. I have paid my dues (started with Slack) and nowadays I just can't be bothered to track down lib.x.y.z and ./configure --blah --blah && make -DFUNROLL_LOOPZ_OMG_I_MA_TEH_1337

For the record, I recompile packages which don't meet my needs (happens every once in a while), and for the record, I'm drunk at the moment.

Re:I may switch from Gentoo

[Billly Gates]

Yep parent poster is correct.

Unless apt-get improved since 2000 when a co-worker had this happen. Also I remember the debian team in linuxworld 99 in NewYork had the problem on some sparcs.

Maybe there are some settings now which can dig and find potential problems that could cause a problem with an existing library.

Many apps will work with older libraries but break with newer ones. The switch from libc to glib caused many problems with debian users and rpm users alot at the turn of the century if I remember.

This is why I went to FreeBSD with the ports. However similiar problems can happen there too.

But apt-get is a big improvement over rpm.

Re:I may switch from Gentoo

[JerkBoB]

Unless apt-get improved since 2000 when a co-worker had this happen. Also I remember the debian team in linuxworld 99 in NewYork had the problem on some sparcs.

You neglect to provide details, so I don't know what happened or what the solution might have been.

Whatever. You're entitled to your opinion about which flavor of *nix you want to run. I don't care, frankly. I have used FreeBSD (in production), and it was OK, but I found it tedious. That doesn't make you wrong, and it doesn't make me right.

Anyhow, do you really think it's fair to make judgements based on your experiences with technology from 1999??!?! Again, I don't know what the problem was, but I'm fairly confident that whatever bug cropped up (on Sparc... who uses Debian on Sparc?? (/me braces for the 4 Debian-Sparc users to flame him)) has been resolved in the 6 years since you saw it.

Re:I may switch from Gentoo

[listen]

I used Gentoo for a year after debian, and have now switched to Ubuntu.

I got bored. I could no longer be bothered to keep recompiling. It is just too much effort. And the worst thing is keeping up if you just wait a few things from ~x86. ( constantly messing with adding deps to /etc/portage/package.keywords )

sudo emerge sync
sudo emerge --update --deep --verbose --ask world
sudo emerge --verbose --ask depclean
sudo revdep-rebuild --verbose --ask
sudo /usr/sbin/dispatch-conf

Does get fucking nightmarish after a while. Sorry.
I hope things have progressed since then.

Also, AFAIK, you can only install multiple library versions if the ebuild is designed for that (slots and all that). The vast majority aren't. Guess what, you can do the same with debian - you just include the version number in the name of the package. eg see libdb in ubuntu or debian which has multiple versions.

I will grant you that making an ebuild is easier than making a deb. But the average quality *is* lower - don't try telling me you've never been faced with an utterly broken ebuild in x86.

And no, the issue you have is not "dependency hell "- this was common parlance for having to go round manually picking up rpms. I'd call it apt breakage - where the archive is in an inconstent state. This does happen with Gentoo as well - please don't pretend that emerge update has worked flawlessly for you every single time. And to be honest, I expect you were using an external apt-source.

Re:I may switch from Gentoo

[internic]

Ubuntu is debian and uses apt. You'll be right back in dependency hell. Stick with gentoo, unless you're specifically looking for a binary distribution.

You know, I've used Ubuntu, Debian, and even Mandrake, which are all binary distros. Now and again, I hear people say something about "dependancy hell" (usually in an argument over package management systems). I get the idea (missing or conflicting dependancies), but I have to say that I've never encountered a significant problem in this area. I assume that most of this comes from people who remember the bad old days when package management was still immature. Perhaps times have changed, or perhaps it's only something you run into if you do a lot of developement work. Whatever the case, from my experience I'd guess it's a problem that doesn't apply to a majority of users anymore.

As for Gentoo: It's an interesting idea, but I doubt if I'll try it anytime soon. I was a little interested for a while, but overhearing (or reading) discussions between gentoo users frequently discussing many, seemingly complex problems with the latest emerge they've done on their system abated my interest. Talking to people about possibly installing gentoo and being told, "Oh well, you should configure settings X, Y, and Z manually, and if you don't know the ins and outs of it then you really should learn anyway" helped seal the deal. Gentoo seems like it could be really cool if you really want to dig into the internals of your system, but if you just want your computer to be a useful tool that doesn't absorb too much of your time...well, I'll stick with Ubuntu.

Re:I may switch from Gentoo

[drinkypoo]

You're probably mostly running pretty well-maintained packages. If you get into some scary stuff that you can't find in any well-controlled repository, you'll have problems on any distribution.

I agree that gentoo is not for people who don't want to learn what's under the hood. Frankly I tell most of those people to buy a mac. I just gave a computer back to someone, am about to give another computer back to someone else, and am picking up another computer, all to work on, because they are spyware-infested. One of them is a Windows ME system and it's really annoying because I can't tell when the OS is breaking and when it's spyware-related :)

I will never say everyone should use gentoo, but I would never say everyone should use any particular distribution. Hell I don't even say everyone should use Linux. On the other hand, I think anyone with Unix experience who ordinarily tinkers should use gentoo if they are going to use any kind of Linux. You can use other packaging systems on top of the base gentoo distribution if you want to, so you CAN get binary packages for just about anything. You just have the option of doing it "right" (IMO, natch.)

Kubuntu Torrents?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Kubuntu torrents?

Torrent mirror

[ElVirolo]

Here's a (small) mirror for the Ubuntu & Kubuntu ISO torrents (i386) just in case :

Ubuntu Hoary install disc for i386
Kubuntu Hoary install disc for i386

PPC

[flibble-san]

I recently tried the RC release on my blue & whie G3 and ran into a lot of problems.

1) Booting into X, the colours are wrong (lots of red and pink). Switching into a vterm then back into X fixes this but why is it doing it in the first place?
2) HAL errors. No sound in Gnome. KDE has limited sound but playing anything intensive like MP3 causes the machine to hang.
3) Shutdown hangs. No idea why.

I appreciate the Ubuntu developers working on the PPC port but they really should try the distro out on other machine apart from G5 and G4's. There is nothing special about my G3, it's standard spec. But it doesn't work.

Re:PPC

[i_should_be_working]

Works fine on my beige G3 which isn't even officially supported. Have you tried ppc Ubuntu forums?

Re:PPC

[Anonymous Coward]

Hoary RC 5.04 has been working perfectly on my old 400MHz G4 for several days now. It even works after I upgraded to kubuntu-desktop.

Re:PPC

[gg3po]

I have a purple and white iMac. It works perfectly. No sound or X problems like you describe.

InstallingKDE

[twener]

If you didn't grab the Kubuntu installation media then this wiki page explains how to install KDE on Ubuntu.

I'm with WTF..

[Sfing_ter]

While there have been many LiveCD distros over the past 2 years spring to life Ubuntu is ok, and it does work, but then so does slax, Knoppix, MDK Move and on and on. My personal fave is Mepis but nobody here talks about it. It works, always has, gives you the run-from-cd option along with a gui based install (hint hint ubuntu). I prefer KDE over gnome, it stems from a problem with DeadRat 5, gnome crashed way too often. I have a long memory... :)
Cobind is nice too and is DeadRat/Fedora based.

Re:I'm with WTF..

[cdcarter]

Ubuntu is no-longer a LiveCD distro anymore. It is mainly desktop. It still runs liveCD but most install it. It is big because it just works. I installed it on my machine in 30minutes and it detected all of my hardware, except for my sound card that even windows failed to detect. Also first non-BSD to get my vid card info on the first try. Try the new version.

Re:Does the LiveCD write anything to the hard disk

[makohill]

Does the LiveCD write anything to the hard disk ?

No, it does not. I suspect he had a problem with our first prerelease install CD, not with the Live CD that was seperate from his Live CD issues. In any case, the Live CD code is all new now and no, it will not write anything to disk or torch your MBR.

Hoary Hedgehog Ubuntu Released...

[IdJit]

RUN FOR YOUR LIIIIIVES!!!!

Any word...

[fanblade]

on a i686 build?

Re:Any word...

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't installed Hoary yet, but with Warty the i686 kernel could be installed via apt-get/Synaptic Package Manager. The default install only contains i386.

Re:Any word...

[fanblade]

Yeah, I did that with Warty too. It was really easy to install with apt-get; it automatically put the i686 kernel in the boot menu along with the i386 one. I'd like a way to install i686 from CD, though.

Re:hoary hedgehog: not cute, not clever. just stup

[Adelbert]

fucking dumb name.

I love how this was modded as "Insightful".

I persoanally think Hoary Hedgehog is a good name. One of the problems Linux faces in getting Joe Public to start using it is that the public needs to really engage with the product. Distos with constantly incrimenting version numbers must come across as cold and "tech-oriented". Hoary Hedgehog, however, shows Linux's more familiar side.

Roll on the Breezy Badger!

DVD Install Images

[EAVY]

Ubuntu 5.04 now provides images for installation from DVD. The DVD install image includes all supported packages, including those Not installed by default.

Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog) Install/live DVD

The combined install/live DVD allows you either to install Ubuntu permanently on a computer, or (by entering 'live' at the boot prompt) to try Ubuntu without changing your computer at all. There are three images available, each for a different type of computer:

Install/live DVD for AMD64 computers (BitTorrent download)

Install/live DVD for Intel x86 computers (BitTorrent download)

Install/live DVD for PowerPC computers (BitTorrent download)

Re:hoary hedgehog: not cute, not clever. just stup

[Anonymous Coward]

ive no idea how my post was modded +1, but still, despite the profanity its a *really* stupid name.

its things like this that make companies NOT take linux seriously.

also, when you say it, it sounds like "whorey hedgehog". Just try getting your female and/or christian I.T manager to agree to distributing that

im waiting for the next release though: cuntu ubuntu :-)

Unwittingly

[HeliumHigh]

I downloaded this two days ago. I beat slashdot!

I know its not much of an accomplishment, but it makes me feel special :D

IPv6 ISO mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

if you want to do more than traceroute6/ping6 with your IPv6 connection

ftp://mirror.teleport-iabg.de/mirror/releases.ubun tu.com/

kubuntu is still syncing, the gnome part (ubuntu) should be okay.

Re:Does the LiveCD write anything to the hard disk

[Mycroft_VIII]

My experience with the live cd was that it didn't do that the couple of times I booted it, however the install disk does this no matter what. Note this isn't the hoary version but previous version.
Given that the version I have on disk does wreck the boot sector so only it can boot, even the boot sector on disks it's NOT installed to, I wouldn't be suprised if he found a system the live cd would trash.

Mycroft

O'Reilly books

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess you don't like those lame O'Reilly books either, eh?

I think I'll try the torrent first

[drinkypoo]

I ordered ten knoppix CD sets the first time around. Tried it on three machines that knoppix works fine on, and it failed on all three of them. In fact the openstep livecd boots on more machines I've tried it on than knoppix has. I had to throw out the CD sets because as the local computer nerd, if I give them to people, they will come and ask me why their computer isn't working, and I don't want to get stuck supporting some Linux I can't even run! It didn't even run in a vmware virtual machine, how hard is that?

Re:I think I'll try the torrent first

[__aaclcg7560]

It didn't even run in a vmware virtual machine, how hard is that?

Have you tried changing the vmware virtual disk from SCSI to IDE? Ubuntu installer didn't recognized the virtual SCSI drive but had no problem with the virtual IDE drive. Heck, the eval copy of Windows 2003 Server doesn't recognize the virtual SCSI drive.

Re:I think I'll try the torrent first

[drinkypoo]

Yes, I tried it both ways. It didn't actually boot either way. I'm not sure if I have updated to the latest vmware, but it's not very old if not.

I installed Ubuntu

[bitswapper]

Man was it nice....

What about upgrading?

[gosand]

It's fairly straightforward:

That is straightforward in step-by-step instructions, but what I have found difficult about updating via apt-get is figuring out what site to put in the source.list file. That can be extremely frustrating.

My experience was that I wanted an updated package, and whatever I had it my sources.list didn't have it yet. Later on that same machine, I went to update KDE. After all, one of the strengths of Debian was supposed to be that you don't have to reinstall, you just have to "apt-get update" everything. Something went wrong with the whole process, some files not found or something, and my machine was rendered without KDE. I tried to repair it, reinstall it from scratch, all to no avail. I ended up having to reinstall the machine.

One of my big pet peeves with Linux is the inability to upgrade effectively. I know that this is not a trivial technical issue, but it is still somewhat annoying. I have been bitten by the "upgrade" install before, and they have always resulted in wiping the machine and starting over. (And Windows is no better in this regard)

It seems like once I get on a version of a distro, I am on it until I really need something and can't get it to install. I was on Redhat 7.3 for many years, and finally reinstalled the machine with Mandrake 10.0. Due to some recent partition corruptions I may have to reinstall, and would love to find a distro that makes upgrading possible.

woo

[mattyrobinson69]

thank god i downloaded this a few days ago. bad slashdot-effect, bad.

Re:woo

[apt-get dist-upgrade]

Seems like the slashdot effect might even be affecting the apt repositories. I can't "apt-get install" any packages right now and get a big fat "connection refused" in response to that. :(

I installed the RC last night

[focitrixilous P]

I installed the Release Canidate last night (Should've waited, but no matter) and Ubuntu 5.04 RC 1 is the most impressive desktop distros I've ever seen. I put it on my old laptop, and it auto detected the video, audio, network, built in microphone, right on par with Windows. It had one bug where it would stick at 640x480 until you updated some of the Xorg packages, but I assume that has been fixed. The fact audio worked out of box suprised me, I've tried a few other distros and none of them could get the audio to work, even after messing with configs.

Plus, the name is even more 1337 than Gentoo!

My only gripe so far? It doesn't come with nethack installed. I'd give it a try.

Re:hoary hedgehog: not cute, not clever. just stup

[Adelbert]

If you're worried about "whorey hedgehog", just call it Ubuntu 5.04 . Far more professional, and, strictly speaking, its correct name.

Why is ubuntu so popular?

[Hackeron]

I tried it, it's not bleeding edge like gentoo or sourcemage, its not easy to configure like mandrake, its not stable like debian, its not easy to install like ark, its not mainstream like suse or fedora, its not barebone like arch/lfs or slack, its not windows like like lycoris or xandros, its not your top bootable solution like knoppix and its not portable like netbsd (ok, so netbsd isnt linux, but still).

It seems its pretty much a vanilla gnome with a different background and a stripped down debian installer. What does it do better than any other distribution?

Re:Why is ubuntu so popular?

[toganet]

It's not that it's trying to do anything "better" -- it does everything well, and doesn't screw anything up. It "just works", and because it's debian under the hood, it's easy to add or change anything to be the way you want it.

If you're looking for something cutting-edge, whiz-bang -- something you'll have fun playing with and then install something over in a month or two, look elsewhere.

If you need a stable desktop that you can transition smoothly, Ubuntu is for you.

Re:Why is ubuntu so popular?

[Hackeron]

>>If you need a stable desktop that you can transition smoothly, Ubuntu is for you.

What other desktop oriented distributions have you tried? -- I tried Mandrake, Ark, Mepis, Xandros, Lycoris, SuSE, Fedora, Libranet and about 3-4 or so others and I have to say while I would rank Ubuntu higher than Fedora as a distribution that "just works", I would rank it lower than all the ones mentioned above.

As for it being easy to add or change anything, deb offers no real advantages to rpm ever since apt4rpm and there are more than a few debian based distributions I prefer to Ubuntu, like Mepis, Libranet or Xandros.

My favorite at the moment is ArkLinux - it is several light years ahead of Ubuntu if you're looking for something that "just works".

Re:Why is ubuntu so popular?

[Anonymous Coward]

Humanity

Questions

[danharan]

I tried Ubuntu's last release some 6 months ago on my aging Dell Inspiron 8200. It didn't install cleanly. Anyone know if it will now?

Other issues I had as a linux noob (I've used it at work, just never installed it) included annoyances like lack of support for mp3's and java.

Excuse me, but if you want a distro to become mainstream and you ship it with a music player, it shouldn't just vomit out "mp3 is not a recognized format" - it should tell you exactly how to make it work and where to find out the background on why it doesn't work out of the box.

Making mp3s was simple compared to getting java and Eclipse installed, but I'd rather buy a Mac than have to go through that again.

I still have that partition free though...

Re:Questions

[omnipotens]

I don't have an aging inspiron 8200, but I can say from my experience that Ubuntu has become a lot better: about 2 months ago I tried warty while moving from Mandrake. There were some install problems, etc.

I gave Kubuntu RC a try recently and was amazed at the improvements to the install process (at least since I'd had some big trouble with warty).

Re:Questions

[Felonious Ham]

Very OT, but...

Making mp3s was simple compared to getting java and Eclipse installed, but I'd rather buy a Mac than have to go through that again.

Not that it matters much, but installing eclipse and java on linux is no more effort than:

1. download linux version of java
2. chmod 755 installer.bin (or whatever it's called), run it
3. move the untarred jdk to wherever you want it, make links to java in your /usr/local/bin

That's java. Eclipse is:

1. download Eclipse
2. untar it to where you want it to go
3. ** tricky part ** Create a script that 'cd $ECLIPSE_HOME' (wherever you installed Eclipse) and './eclipse'

That's all there is to it. I don't know about the Free versions (GCJ compiled, or running it on kaffe or the like), but with Sun Java, it's really not any harder than installing any non-apt program.

Re:Questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey take it easy, Ubuntu is just a few months old. Apple has DECADES in business. Ubuntu is 100% free as in beer and as in speech, that's why we love it. You can do whatever you want with it. You can install it or modify it in a PC, in a Mac, in a AMD64, etc. Try that with a mac, you'll be locked forever under a single vendor for most (if not all) your hardware and software needs. And better not mess with their software because they will take you to court. See the difference? Ubuntu is getting there. It's a community driven distro. All the info you were looking for is in the website, but it takes time to bring it down to the user. Give us some time.

Re:Questions

[nystagmus]

Or... you could install them both by using apt.

Re:Questions

[jrutley]

Try the LiveCD first. If that runs, then the install will work.

Re:Questions

[danharan]

Tried that theory the last time, but it did not work.

Re:Questions

[vhogemann]

To get MP3, and other formats working simply open Synaptic and enable the "RESTRICTED" repository. Then install "gstreamer0.8-plugins", and "mplayer" packages.

Java is a bit more tricky... You can download the official tarball (not the RPM!!) from Sun's site, and then install "java-package" and "fakeroot" packages to create a DEB package. Ubuntu will only accept up to JRE1.4.

After downloading the packages invoke the command: "fakeroot make-jpkg .bin". It will create a DEB file that you can install with: "sudo dpkg -i .deb". This will add the "java" command to your path, and install the mozilla/firefox plugin. The JRE HOME will be " /usr/lib/j2re1.4-sun/".

Or, if you want to be 100% opensource you can install the "java-gcj-compat" and "gcjwebplugin" packages. This will install a java environment based on the GNU gcj compiler and the gij bytecode interpreter. I have no idea if this is a reliable setup, I use myself the Sun JRE.

I hope that the Ubuntu guys manage to include a better way to install java support.

Re:Questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Try that with a mac, you'll be locked forever under a single vendor...

I think it's funny when people say stuff like this. Do you make the same argument when you buy a car?

Re:Questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose you buy a car, and for that car you have to buy your gas from a certain gas station only, have to have your repairs done by the company that sold it to you or one of their authorized representatives, and then you decide that you want to change the way the car looks and you find out the car maker went to some lengths to keep you from doing so. That's more of the analogy.

Macs are better now than they ever have been before. They are not as overpriced, and you get more for your money, and they run a real UNIX so you can run real software if you want to. But make no mistake, a Mac is a very proprietary thing.

If you want a computer you can just use, and that won't get spyware/viruses/worms/etc., a Mac is probably worth it. And if you get addicted to Mac, you can always get newer faster ones from Apple; they aren't going anywhere.

Me, I'm running Ubuntu on various AMD boxes I built myself. I like messing about with the computers, and once I have the thing set up the way I want it, I just update with APT and I'm happy.

Re:Questions

[MonkeySpank]

I installed Ubu 5.04 on my Dell Inspiron 8000 about a month ago from a bootable DVD that came with a magazine. Aside from the X setup (WTF does every distro other than Mandrake f*ck this up so badly?? Luckily I had kept my previous xorg.conf file) it went completely smoothly. It even detected the touchpad and a WiFi card that I usually have to hack in from an unofficial source rebuild.

My partitions:
4GB '/'
5GB '/home'
swap is 256MB

The installation left plenty of room to spare.

I've had Mandrake 8.0 thru 10.1 on that laptop, and RH 8, but Ubuntu utterly rocks. It's a little slower (read: sluggish) than Mandrake 10.1 for some reason, but I don't really care.

OT: why was Mandrake 9.2 waaaay faster on my machine than the then-current Gentoo built-from-source distro??

The Ubu non-graphical installer is pretty sad though, in this day and age, but it worked okay.

And I managed to install Java, Eclipse, an MP3 encoder, blah blah all without ever having SEEN a Debian distro or used apt before. It's a piece of cake. Kubuntu is just as polished.

Ubuntu is as close as I've ever seen to a ready-to-go desktop Linux distro (Lycoris-alikes notwithstanding). All the usuable apps on the menus; anti-aliased fonts lookin' good out of the box; Ubuntu (and Kubuntu) desktop theme lookin' polished... Some accomplishment.

It's a breath of fresh air. Enjoy

--

FYI, my 5-year-old Dell:
Inspiron 8000, dual booting WindowsXP
384MB RAM
ATI Rage 128
15" - 1400x1050
DVD-R + CD/RW
Synaptics Trackpad

Live CD Don't Work For Me -- HELP! :)

[Blahbooboo3]

Well, I continue to try to use the Live CD versions, and they all fail on multiple computers. I get the following error during the startup process:

CASPER-UDEB Not Found.

I have downloaded the live CD many times, and re-burned several times. Any ideas?

Re:hoary hedgehog: not cute, not clever. just stup

[mattyrobinson69]

iirc mandrake 9.0 was called dolphin, which my GF liked.

Re:hoary hedgehog: not cute, not clever. just stup

[jeanjean83]

It's just a name.

Just a name?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether you like it or not, names are crucial in marketing anything.

I know most OSS people think marketing is of no import, but that is OSS's biggest problem IMHO.

Upgrading from Sid

[SavvyPlayer]

A few weeks ago I "upgraded" to Hoary from Debian Sid. I simply added

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hoary main restricted universe
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hoary main restricted universe

to /etc/apt/sources.list, performed and apt-get upgrade and everything went smoothly.

Question: Is there any reason I should rebuild my system with the Hoary installer? I am running a 2.2GHz system with kernel 2.6.11-1-686.

Re:Please install! - It's great!

[poopie]

I've run nearly every version of Redhat Linux since 4.0. I've run every version of Redhat Enterprise Linux. I've run every version of Solaris on SPARC.

I've used UNIX as a desktop since early CDE/VUE days.

I have to say that Ubuntu has done a great job of integration and taking 'best of breed' opensource, making some hard choices about standards (namely GNOME desktop), filled in a lot of missing pieces, and come up with something free that is amazingly good out of the box.

Honestly, Ubuntu has much of the appeal that MAC OSX has -- it's 'different', not a resource hog, doesn't require you to PAY FOR PATCHES AND SECURITY UPDATES (ahem... Redhat!), and it just works.

Best of all, it's CURRENT! You know how us slashdotters like our fresh code... well Ubuntu has been so current that I hardly have time to go to freshmeat and find new stuff to compile.

If you've never used anything but an RPM distro, carefully read 'man dpkg' and you'll be okay. Then enable the metaverse and universe repositories and run synaptic.

Posting this from my Toshiba Tecra 8200 running Ubuntu 5.04 - with suspend to RAM working just fine, thank you! :)

Re:Ubuntu on the rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

one can also complain that the live cd
and the install cd are on two diffrent media.
requiring seperate downloads and reboots.
unlike knoppix suse kanotix *pix ...
does anyone know why ???

What kind of problem was it?

[misfit13b]

I had a problem on my Inspiron 7500 where the install CD wouldn't find the CD during the very beginning of the install. (I know, it sounds insane, isn't the install running from the CD?)

On a screen early in the install (language selection, for instance) I switched to the console using Alt-F2 and modprobed ide_cd, ide_generic and isofs before going back to the install (Alt-F1) and continuing. Worked like a charm.

If it's not that, I'd try the Ubuntu forums, but since it worked on my older Dell, I thought it might help you too.

Dual booting with Windows XP

[phusg]

How does the Hoary one behave with a pre-existing Windows XP partition? I just did a bit of Googling and came across some people who were left with unbootable Windows partitions after installing previous versions of Ubuntu.

Re:Dual booting with Windows XP

[Anonymous Coward]

yep, but it doesn't deal with partitioning, if you want to install I'd recommned hitting Alt-F1 when it comes to the partition screen and running parted

Re:Dual booting with Windows XP

[Anonymous Coward]

I've not had any problems but perhaps you should learn how to make an image of your disc so if there are any problems...

Problems with Ubuntu

[katz]

I've been using Ubuntu/x86_64 with the Kubuntu KDE distribution for the past four weeks. It's nice to have a decent installer and a system that works almost out of the box (past configuring the system for small personal preferences).
As much as I like this, there are other things that make it difficult for me to use it:

1. Wacom is not supported out of the box, and the Wacom driver module packages are incomplete (the build rules don't copy anything but wacom.ko). It'd be great to be able to install Ubuntu or Kubuntu and have the Wacom tablet work as advertised on the Linux-Wacom Driver Project page.

2. I got errors booting Grub with / and /boot on a raid1 device. On every bootup. Perhaps Ubuntu could support grub+raid1+root+boot in the future; see here for details. I was unsuccessful at getting LILO to boot, too. Maybe it's a hardware thing [1].

3. On Ubuntu/x86-64 win32 video codecs run only under a chroot'd 32-bit environment. Ubuntu could make this task easier/more seamless (for example, I want to see videos with Kaffeine or Xine, but AIUI they have to be run in a chroot environment.. that's not very seamless..)

4. It'd be great to have the installer automatically install the commercial NVidia drivers. They're currently an optional package.

5. Also great would be the inclusion of Jeff Garzik's SATA thermal sensor patches for libATA, available here.
With this patch, hddtemp works on SATA drives.

6. Ubuntu doesn't seem to have installation-time setup of the "sensors" package (i.e., run sensors-detect and install the modules as needed automatically).

7. Missing packages. Kubuntu was missing (last I checked a few days ago) the Python bindings for KDE. For that matter, there are packages that don't exist for x86_64 systems, like Psyco, Flash and the Adobe Reader.

I've since switched to Alioth's Debian/x86_64, but would happily switch back when Kubuntu-x86_64 matures, as Alioth does not seem to have 64-bit KDE 3.4.0 packages (could be wrong though).

references:

1. My motherboard is a MSI NEO K8T FIS2R with an Athlon64/3200+.

- Roey

Re:Problems with Ubuntu

[RdsArts]

https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/

They can't fix 'em if you don't tell 'em. :)

droool

[Anonymous Coward]

"Screenshots available of the Kubuntu release"

get the tissues out boys, this one is going to be messy.

Re:My attempt

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean custom made, and not a Dell or HPiece of junk.

It's not a piece of junk? I thought you said it was custom made! Please make up your mind.

Is this really helping Debian?

[phusg]

Isn't it just a matter of time before Ubuntu gets too far ahead of Debian and severes the link?

I worry.

Re:Is this really helping Debian?

[KingBahamut]

Actually what would be realistic here is for Debian to decide to develop just a base, and let the other debian Reduxes -- Ubuntu included , build their own dists. This would aid Debian in releasing qualified and speedy releases.

UTF-8: Why, oh why?

[Bihtori]

This is a sad day for scandinavian Ubuntu users. It seems I once again have to go through hell to get ssh connections working.

My first comment on Kubuntu....

[crivens]

My first comment on Kubuntu is that they should reverse the text in the menu items, so that the description is first (e.g. Web Browser) and the application name is in brackets (e.g. Konqueror). I don't recognise most of the names in the menu, so I have to scan along to the description.

Of course, this works well if there is only one of each type of app - e.g. one text editor, one IRC client, one IM app etc...

Re:My first comment on Kubuntu....

[Anonymous Coward]

> Of course, this works well if there is only one of each type of app

It still works as long the different entries have different icons starting the menu entry.

DMA issues

[FictionPimp]

I wonder if they fixed the issues I was having with the preview release. (I can't check because the web page is down) Anyone know if DMA is turned on by defualt now? On the preview release dma was off on my dvd burner and I had to add piix and ide-core to my modules list, and for some reason, doing this would prevent the nvidia driver from working forcing me to use nv. Its the reason why I'm still using debian even though I really like the direction Ubuntu is taking (more current releases and xorg)

Re:DMA issues

[FictionPimp]

I should say that I use SATA hard drives and my motherboard is a intel i875perl.

Re:Ubuntu on the rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

*by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08, @11:28AM *(#12176424)
*one can also complain that the live cd
*and the install cd are on two diffrent media.
*requiring seperate downloads and reboots.
*unlike knoppix suse kanotix *pix ...
*does anyone know why ???

Or you can just say thank you and be happy with what you got for what you paid......

Disappointing Power Management

[FU_Fish]

I switched to Ubuntu in their last release because it was the first Linux distribution to ever run smoothly out of the box on my laptop. I had previously been running Gentoo because I could install it without an installer freeze-up (due to their being no real installer yet). I've been thrilled with Ubuntu (converted many friends, as a matter of fact) and decided to update to Hoary so that I could run Gnome 2.10. One of the features they're boasting better Laptop support, but that's not been my experience. Under Warty, I had power management and cpu scaling, under Hoary I don't. I'm very disappointed.

Re:My attempt

[ChaosCube]

I see you left your brain on the nightstand again.

MEPIS vs Ubuntu?

[metamatic]

As a MEPIS user, I'm wondering if anyone has any factual reasons why I should look at Ubuntu?

It seems to me that MEPIS has all the same advantages as Ubuntu--bootable live CD, ten minute install, Debian based, stuff just works, up to date.

The main reason I like MEPIS is that everything from vanilla debian-unstable just works, because MEPIS is really debian-unstable with a custom kernel and better hardware detection. I've read that Ubuntu isn't quite the same--it's further from Debian, hence you can't just add the Debian repositories and expect everything to work. True/False?

Re:MEPIS vs Ubuntu?

[Cnik70]

I was wondering the same thing. All my boxes now run Mepis, and I'm curious now to see how much different Ubuntu is.

Re:MEPIS vs Ubuntu?

[KingBahamut]

The only disctinction that I can find is that MEPIS runs KDE by default, something that Ubuntu doesnt (good ole Gnome). Of course Kubuntu tried to correct this oversight in an attempt to appeal to KDE userbase.

The only other real insight into switching, is that the package base might be a little more stable than MEPIS, but not being a MEPIS user, I cannot avow to that entirely.

Re:MEPIS vs Ubuntu?

[darnok]

I've got 3 boxes on Mepis and 2 on Ubuntu. I've been running Mepis since it first came out, and Ubuntu for several months.

Pluses for Mepis:
- the live CD is the install CD. For Ubuntu, they are separate CDs
- I prefer KDE
- better menus; if I apt-get install in Ubuntu, sometimes the apps don't wind up in the Gnome menu (not sure why). I haven't seen this problem with Mepis

Pluses for Ubuntu:
- the packages seem to be more stable, probably because Ubuntu is employing several people now to do package migration. Mepis relies on Debian's testing/unstable packages, which can be a mixed bag at times
- has a "server install", which gives you a bare bones system but with Ubuntu's nice hardware detection
- regular 6 month release cycles. Not a big deal for home use, but it's nice to have a known release cycle for business use
- hype. Like it or not, there's lots of work being done on Ubuntu now as a direct result of the hype

Pluses for both distributions:
- community support is great
- Debian-based
- ease of use
- very reliable

I see them as being broadly equivalent; no reason to switch from one to the other if you're already satisfied with what you have now.

Re:MEPIS vs Ubuntu?

[Tigen]

Ubuntu appears to have a wider community, and the web site etc. "feels" less commercial. I can't easily find a free download for mepis for example...

Geographic monopoly

[tepples]

Otherwise, if they make a stink, threaten to take your business elsewhere.

In the world of residential high-speed Internet access, taking a family's business to another provider often means moving house. Moving is far too expensive for most residential users and may discourage residential users from downloading Ubuntu Linux through BitTorrent.

Re:Geographic monopoly

[ameoba]

With cable, you're correct. With DSL, it's generally split between the line itself and the ISP. The telco cares not what you do with the line - in their eyes, you only talk to the ISP with it. It's the ISP that may or may not have an AUP that involves being a server. AFAIK, almost every market has competition for DSL ISPs and switching ISPs, while a minor hassle, is not too complex of a process.

Beyond that, you could argue the semantics of calling a BT client a 'server'. It is no more a server than an IM client that handles file transfers. While it does accept incoming connections, all connections are being managed by the tracker. If it's really an issue, BT clients can work just fine when firewalled & unable to accept incomming connects (if at a potentially reduced speed).

Re:choosing between ubuntu & kubuntu

[jessecurry]

I don't have a great deal of experience with either, but from what I have seen I like the KDE environment a little better. Not only does it look like KDE has a little more eye candy, but the interface seems a little more intuitive.
As I said, I don't have a great deal of experience with either, but I have been considering setting up a dedicated linux box and have been using LiveCD's to see what I like.
The only thing that bothers me about KDE is that all of the application names begin with a "K", this really isn't a big problem at all, but the k just doesn't seem as aesthetically pleasing. But overall it seems like KDE has a slightly more polished interface.

Strongly agree

[Ars-Fartsica]

Having migrated from FC3 to Ubuntu, I can tell you there is still value add in distros that try to differentiate themselves. The distro has a great feel to it and "just works".

Ubunto sponsored by Ron Jeremy

[Anonymous Coward]

otherwise why would they name it 'horny Hedgehog'

Re:choosing between ubuntu & kubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

> The only thing that bothers me about KDE is that all of the application names begin with a "K

Switch the menu format to "Description (Name)" and you almost not see the k-names anymore.

Re:Please install! - It's great!

[forlornhope]

Good stuff, but some nit picks.

First, don't man dpkg, use aptitude. Its much better and all graphical like. Also don't enable "metaverse" its called "multiverse" and packages in multiverse and universe are unsupported so if you want an extremely stable desktop only use main, though universe is maintained by the Masters of the Universe group on the outskirts of Ubuntu, so its pretty safe.

Other than that, Ubuntu is great, Ive been using it since preview warty and I'm changing my sources.list to point to breezy today.

Re:Thanks for nothing!

[yasth]

You are right I only pulled 1400k/s I am so disappointed.

For those of us withour CD burners

[jcwinnie]

Could someone recommend a source for Hoary Hedgehog Live CDs hot of the press?

Re:For those of us withour CD burners

[Anonymous Coward]

Real hackers don't use CDs:

ahref=http://marc.herbert.free.fr/linux/win2linsta ll.htmlhttp://marc.herbert.free.fr/linux/win2linst all.html>

Any beginner friendly distros with newer kernels?

[ChrisK077]

I recently upgraded my hardware to a MSI RS480 M2 with ATI's RS480 chipset (with Athlon 64 Winchester CPU), and a SATA harddrive.

I already downloaded a preview version of the new Ubuntu distro in March, but it, like others I've tried, doesn't seem to recognize the SATA hdd.

Googling for the problem, I have read somewhere, that this hw configuration should be supported from Linux kernel version 2.6.11 on. Being a Linux newbie, are there any distributions I could try to get working with my SATA drive at this point?

Ubuntu still has its problems

[aikon29]

I'm running Hoary RC2 right now, finally got it all installed and working properly last night. Unlike what some people have said, it doesn't properly configure and install everything first boot EVERY time. The audigy drivers were installed correctly, yet no sound was coming out of my speakers. It took some hunting, but I later found out that my Analog/Digital out jack was turned off in alsamixer. Turning that on fixed the problem. Secondly, while the nvidia drivers are available, at least with my GeForce 6800, they aren't loaded and configured properly on initial boot. You only find out when you try to log into Gnome only to find your system freezes up. Nothing an apt-get install nvidia-glx wouldn't fix, though. Ohter thank those two problems Ubuntu seems to be a fairly stable distro. I came over to it from Fedora and must say that I like it a lot more. Using synaptic to manage packages beats downloading rpms and solving dependency problems with Fedora. Though, yum wasn't too bad.

Re:Any beginner friendly distros with newer kernel

[psgalbraith]

Wait for knoppix to appear on mirrors. I have wondering what kernel this Ubuntu release uses for the same reason (although I have 2.6.11 up and running and my Dell 4700's SATA drive now fly at >50MB/sec read rates).

Peter

vlc is the media answer - not

[cinnamon colbert]

at least on windows2000, there are many files vlc shd play but does not, not to mention the hangs and freezes adn need for reinstalls (actually, sadly, like most programs, vlc has gotten worse with time)

Re:vlc is the media answer - not

[idn]

But if you get it from the apt reinstall should never be a problem. I havent found a player better than VLC, it plays half downloaded movie files where other players would fall over.

Would be better if you could choose which codecs to install for it, might make it easier for people to improve existing codecs as well as making whole re-installs un-nessessary.

Re:vlc is the media answer - not

[Anonymous Coward]

"actually, sadly, like most programs, vlc has gotten worse with time"

Yes... like your spellchecker, for instance.

Re:They will even send you FREE CD's

[bcrowell]

And here you can donate to help offset the cost of shipping you the free CD's.

Re:choosing between ubuntu & kubuntu

[mp3phish]

Agreed. The Kubuntu distribution is definately more polished. The desktop just feels right.

I am a big fan of GNOME but the more revisions of Kubuntu I go through the better KDE looks every day for me. I have a Fedora box and GNOME dominates on it. But I just can't stop thinking about how nice fedora would look with a polished KDE on it similar to Kubuntu's release. Imagine the power of KDE with the simplicity of GNOME? That is what I think about when I use Kubuntu.

Great Job ubuntu+KDE Team!

Package listings?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do i go to see package listings for Ubuntu? Say to check out which versions of Subversion, Postgres, Ruby or whatever it's running?

And how about Java support? Just the 'open' stuff like Debian? Or is it easier to get the Sun JVM up and running? How about Tomcat/JBoss?

Re:Package listings?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://packages.ubuntu.com/

Re:They will even send you FREE CD's

[the way, what're you]

You can get both the install and live cds here as well.

GO HERE to get Ubuntu working how you want it..

[wernst]

The VERY FIRST THING you should do as an Ubuntu user is go to The Unofficial Ubuntu Starter Guide at http://ubuntuguide.org/

Ubuntu, in an attempt to be totally free, can't do things like play DVDs right "out of the box," or isn't configured to list or mount Windows partitions in Gnome. Even if you are a total beginner, spending half an hour at the Unofficial Ubuntu Startup Guiide will get you up and running and totally happy with your new distro.

The Unoffical Startup Guide should be required reading for any Ubuntu user. Heck, EVERY Distro should have a site just like it -- the Linux world would be a better place for it. And no, I have nothing to do with it other than being a grateful reader...

Re:GO HERE to get Ubuntu working how you want it..

[advocate_one]

you do realise that ms-windows is just as handicapped out of the box. It too, can't play DVDs or see Linux partitions... (to play DVDs in ms-windows, you have to have a licensed codec. That normally comes on the driver disk with your dvd drive if they've bundled a DVD player such as power dvd with it, or else has been pre-installed as part of the OEM bundle. Out of the box, as supplied by Microsoft, ms-windows cannot play DVDs)

Nice!

[eskwayrd]

I've just finished downloading the live torrent to a WinXP box, and burned it to a CD. What's really cool is the autoplay code which asks you to reboot to try Ubuntu, or to install Windows versions of several open source apps, like OOo, Firefox, Thunderbird, Abiword, Gimp, and Audacity, and a link to The OpenCD for more FLOSS apps.

That's a great way to get people to try Linux, and if they aren't prepare to make the switch, at least let them experience open source apps.

Now, to start playing...

Installer monkeys

[PenGun]

I guess it had to happen. Now we have /. flooded with installer monkeys discussing the shortcomings of the install as it affects them.

Learn about the OS .... oh why do I bother, it's inevitable I might as well just get used to it ;).

PenGun
Do What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

Still no support for Ralink based cards?

[Masa]

One thing that bothers me with newer Linux distributions is that most of them seem to ingore the Ralink chip-set based cards completely. The driver for the rt2400/2500 chip-sets (11b/11g) is available under GPL directly from the manufacturer and also from the Sourceforge, but still for example Ubuntu just lists these wireless cards as non-supported even though they are providing a link directly to the GPL'ed drivers. I just don't get it. Because of this lack of support, I can't install or use Ubuntu.

Fortunately everything is not lost. Mandrake provides a pre-packaged driver and enables me to use Linux on my laptop.

And no, I'm not willing to compile and install the driver myself. Nowadays I demand these kind of things pre-packaged.

Re:Please install! - the man

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark Shuttleworth is the man who is behind Ubuntu. Famous for founding thawte in .za then sold it to verisign for big bucks. He then paid $$$ for a flight in space with the Russkies and has now setup a number of not for profit organisations - e.g. Ubuntu.

Version is date

[fforw]

and naturally, the version 5.04 does absolutely NOTHING to convey that this is only the SECOND release of ubuntu... :)

Ubuntu uses a time based release schedule and use dates for versioning.

So 5.04 means something like "April 2005"

Why live and seperate install cds?

[Sark666]

I always thought it was one cd a la knoppix. What is the hurdle of not being able to have both on the same cd?

And I checked the cd's they mail to you are the install cds. I thought the bonus of handing these out would be to be able to tell people 'don't worry, won't install anything, just try it out!' And then if they wanted to do so there would be an install option after checking it out.

Any plans to unify the live and install cd?

Re:Why live and seperate install cds?

[ravee]

It could happen if it is burned in a DVD. But for installing, I personally favour both the live cd and the install cd to be seperate.

I have had bad experiences in trying to install livecd distro into the harddisk in the past (gnopix).

Any way I like ubuntu a lot. And they are doing a great service for increasing the popularity of linux by shipping it free of cost.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone else find it queer that the National Science Foundation funded this joker to write this app ($100,000), and now he gets to reap the profits from the work?

Shouldn't the profits, or some portion thereof, go back to the National Science Foundation? Don't tell me that's what taxes are for, because we both know that he can setup a corporate structure to minimize the tax burden of the income.

I used to think that the US gov't only helped enrich large business at the expense of the citizenry. If I understand this correctly, it helps the elite maintain their position in the social order. Heh, and they call Chomsky crazy.

Brazil does a lot of things wrong, but forcing all national grant receivers to open-source their work is one of those things they definitely get right.

Re:They will even send you FREE CD's

[Anonymous Coward]

Were can you sign up for Kubuntu CD's? Same site?

Re:Does the LiveCD write anything to the hard disk

[Sark666]

I install various distros from time to time so I like to update the mbr from familar territory, my main deb install. So can I tell the unbuntu install to not write to the mbr and let me do it manually from my other install where I will add it so I can keep my various os's in the list? Also, if I let it write to the mbr, does it make any attempt to see other's os (like win 98/xp) and maybe other distros? Or does it just blindly add it own?

CLI

[lullabud]

The whole reason I chose Debian in the first place was its CLI strength with things like apt-get vs redhat-install-packages gui alternative. It might just be me, but I sense that it's not; Debian just doesn't seem like a strong desktop distro in itself, but is more of a general use or server distro. Ubuntu, on the other hand, builds on Debian to make a strong Desktop distro. The arrangement works out rather nicely and I hope that it breathes new life into this otherwise useless clamshell iBook I have here.

"hdiutil burn" problem with PPC LiveCD

[lullabud]

Also related to the PPC version, `hdiutil burn` won't burn the PPC LiveCD properly, but it will burn the i386 version. Disk Utility also crashes when trying to burn this. However, the .iso mounts fine in the Finder. I verified the md5 sums for the cd's against http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/5.04/MD5SUM S and submitted the bug to Apple.

Is anybody else experiencing this? I've burned hundreds of ISO's on these computers and never seen this problem. It happened on my G3 iBook 900 and my G4 12" pb 866.

hdiutil output:

Aravis:~/Desktop/stuff lull$ hdiutil burn -noverifyburn ubuntu-5.04-live-powerpc.iso
*** malloc[7781]: error for object 0x1808400: Incorrect checksum for freed object - object was probably modified after being freed; break at szone_error
Bus error

hdiutil crash in syslog:

Apr 8 15:27:33 Aravis crashdump: Unable to determine CPSProcessSerNum pid: 7754 name: hdiutil

Re:"hdiutil burn" problem with PPC LiveCD

[KaeloDest]

Yup seen it before the simple answer is to boot to nine and burn it using the built in burner in nine. I Used toast, Then it worked fine. I am on the 'live' - iso, and you just hold C on boot. I may install it permanantly, but I really enjoy having OS X as the one and only OS

Re:choosing between ubuntu & kubuntu

[ErikZ]

I like the naming scheme. It quickly tells me if the app is designed for KDE.

again Mod as insightful: Zap PRAM

[KaeloDest]

PPC Linuxes rely on Open Firmware settings: You Could
a.> Power down and hold Apple + Option + 'P' + 'R' until the unit maketh the 'bong' sound thrice
b.> Power down and hold Apple + Option + 'O' + 'F' and incant
#reset-nvram
#set-defaults
#reset-all
c .> Verify if the 'live' image has the same issue

It runs beautifully on my 'Pismo' G3 powerbook. One caveat I set the Airport to filter by MAC address instead of WEP key so that I am in on the same HW however I choose to boot.

Those stats don't look like they're worth much

[jesterzog]

Seen the Distrowatch ranking?

I only saw this site for the first time when you pointed it out -- it looks as if they generate the stats from unique-within-a-day visitors recorded in their own server logs (and mirrors).

Are stats from a single website worth much, particularly when its focus is providing news on distros and ranking Linux their popularity? It does seem likely to be somewhat biased to me.

Ubantu sounds like a great distro from what I've heard of it, but these stats could be equally consistent with Ubantu users simply spending a lot more time visiting this site. Being a relatively new distribution that has a significant following, Ubantu's high rating on DistroWatch shouldn't really be surprising.

Perhaps DistroWatch or the DistroWatch ranking itself is publicised more on the mailing lists and websites that Ubantu users visit, for all I know. It could be the same people visiting day after day, either to see how far their distribution has risen up the ranks, or to read other new things on DistroWatch.

The rankings would be more representative if stats were collated from a variety of sources whose visitors aren't likely to be as biased given the website content. Hopefully it's also a reasonable assumption that a choice of distro won't hugely affect someone's web usage in general.

restoring nautilus sanity on Hoary

[Anonymous Coward]

If you get confused by the new hacked up halfway browser, halfway spatial Nautilus on Hoary, set

/apps/nautilus/preferences/no_ubuntu_spatial

with gconf-edit to restore the normal spatial behaviour; this probably isn't documented anywhere except the changelogs. Browser mode users aren't affected.

Re:They will even send you FREE CD's

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no offer/sponsor to send you Kubuntu CDs currently.

Torrents...

[torrents]

Kubuntu torrents

Ubuntu torrents

More Linux torrents...

Re:Does the LiveCD write anything to the hard disk

[Mycroft_VIII]

From my experience with warty, you have NO communication concerning boot. It just sets grub up on your primary hard-drive with just ubuntu kernals to boot to.
Admittedly it MIGHT be there well hidden, or as an obscure parameter when you start install. But after running into to many other broken things I didn't really fiddle with the install more than the two instals I did, though the second install was an attempt to restore my other boot options or see what I'd missed (nothing I could find) durring install that could have prevented it from trashing the boot sector on a disk other than where I installed it.

Mycroft

Re: Debian on Sparc

[Anonymous Coward]

• I don't know what the problem was, but I'm fairly confident that whatever bug cropped up (on Sparc... who uses Debian on Sparc?? (/me braces for the 4 Debian-Sparc users to flame him)) has been resolved in the 6 years since you saw it.

I maintain a Debian Sparc machine at work. I use Sarge packages, even though this is a production machine which runs software some clients depend on. I go and do an apt-get update/upgrade evey week or so. It's been working flawlessly, for the last year and a half.

I'm guessing that the Debian team have ironed out whatever issues they had in '99. The distribution works rock solid on Sparc, even with Sarge.

Trashed my WinXP installation

[Greg01851]

The DVD started the install, found the empty partition I had made available, then was unable to 'see the CD' in order to install. In the process it trashed my partition tables, among other things. Luckily it was all recoverable. Guess I wont be installing this any time soon.