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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.

50 of 474 comments (clear)

  1. Torrents man by ShepyNCL · · Score: 5, Informative
    1. Re:Torrents man by Slack3r78 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

  2. Ubuntu rocks by koody · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

    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

    1. Re:Ubuntu rocks by idn · · Score: 4, Informative

      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

  3. Whacked names by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "Hoary Hedgehog Ubuntu"

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

    1. Re:Whacked names by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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....

    2. Re:Whacked names by makohill · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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. ;)

    3. Re:Whacked names by snorklewacker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > 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.

      --
      I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
    4. Re:Whacked names by radoni · · Score: 5, Funny

      "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

      --
      SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
  4. Torrents by Simon+(S2) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here are the Torrents on the US mirror:

    Install CD:
    i386 torrent
    amd64 torrent
    powerpc torrent

    Live CD:
    i386 torrent
    amd64 torrent
    powerpc torrent

    --
    I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
  5. Yes, Mr. CEO, we're going with Hoary Hedgehog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  6. They will even send you FREE CD's by mathmatt · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here you can sign up for free CD's.

  7. Remember guys... by _Hellfire_ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 :)

    --
    "And then I visited Wikipedia ...and the next 8 hours are a blur..."
    1. Re:Remember guys... by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

  8. Annonce de la sortie de Ubuntu en français by millette · · Score: 3, Informative

    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 :)

  9. Please install! by Alibloke · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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"!

  10. DVD Torrent Links by calc · · Score: 4, Informative
  11. KDE and Gnome by gr8_phk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:KDE and Gnome by digidave · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
  12. Gnome 2.10? by Futaba-chan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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....

    1. Re:Gnome 2.10? by Drooling+Iguana · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

      --
      ... I'm addicted to placebos
  13. Distrowatch by grokster · · Score: 5, Informative
    I am sure it will become one of the top distributions very soon.

    Seen the Distrowatch ranking?

    1. Re:Distrowatch by Slack3r78 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  14. The Reverend Cleo Says.... by mehaiku · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

  15. Instructions to upgrade warty to hoary by jhdevos · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  16. Re:WTF? by speel3k · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

    --
    Life is like a bag of chips you never know whats next
    Speel
  17. the big deal is by jbellis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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. :)

  18. Re:WTF? by dont_think_twice · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  19. Re:Ubuntu on Distrowatch Hit List by elasticwings · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  20. Gratis Shipped CDs by makohill · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  21. Re:WTF? by finkployd · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  22. Re:Hoary Hedgewhat Ubun-who? by iGN97 · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  23. Re:Real question by _Hellfire_ · · Score: 4, Informative

    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...

    --
    "And then I visited Wikipedia ...and the next 8 hours are a blur..."
  24. Re:WTF? by MrP-(at+work) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    --
    [an error occurred while processing this directive]
  25. Re:A desktop candidate? by pizpot · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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"

    :-)

  26. Re:WTF? by Oliver+Aaltonen · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  27. Re:Does the LiveCD write anything to the hard disk by makohill · · Score: 3, Informative
    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.

  28. Re:Minimum requirements? by jrasmussen0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  29. Re:their codenames are the best! by beattie · · Score: 4, Funny

    How long until we get "Wascaly Wabbit"?

  30. DVD Install Images by EAVY · · Score: 4, Informative

    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)

    --
    -- Eavy (: Linux Is Not UniX :)
  31. Re:Real question by rhennigan · · Score: 3, Informative

    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!

  32. Re:I wish debian was as cool as ubunto by dilinger · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yea, once sarge is finally released...

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

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

  33. Questions by danharan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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...

    --
    Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
    1. Re:Questions by vhogemann · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      ---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
  34. Problems with Ubuntu by katz · · Score: 3, Informative

    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

  35. Re:WTF? by jonadab · · Score: 3, Informative

    > 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.

    --
    Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
  36. Ubuntu still has its problems by aikon29 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  37. Re:I may switch from Gentoo by JerkBoB · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.

    --
    A host is a host from coast to coast...
    Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
  38. Re:They will even send you FREE CD's by bcrowell · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

  39. Re:Ubuntu as a server platform? by ceswiedler · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.