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Ubuntu Linux 5.10 Colony 1 Released
linuxbeta writes "The first development release of Ubuntu Linux 5.10, code name "Breezy Badger", is now available for testing. Colony CD 1 is the first in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Breezy development cycle, as images that are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD-build or installer bugs, while representing very current snapshots of Breezy. Screenshots are available. If you're interested in following changes as we further develop Breezy, have a look at the breezy-changes list. Bug reports should go here." (This comes in, of course, as I'm installing Hoary on my iBook.)
it just depends where you want to be on the bleeding edge stable (debian definition) scale.
debian woody is at one end of the spectrum, and respected for being there. debian sid and experimental cover the other end.
ubuntu grumpy will cover bleeding edge end.
most distros find some sort of comprimise. the release versions of ubuntu are version number frozen, which is often a good thing. it is a stable release. it is resonably up to date, but stable.
there is also the ubuntu backports project that lets you easily drop in new versions of stuff if you so want. i think they have the latest firefox, gimp and gaim etc.
Nice timing on this - Over the weekend, I changed my apt sources.list to breezy instead of hoary, did an apt-get dist-upgrade, and things ran relatively smoothly for me. (I had to re-install the nvidia drivers, but no big deal). The whole purpose of this upgrade was to get transcode working on an AMD64 machine, so I could push the processing power of this machine a little more. ;)
My experience with Ubuntu on AMD64 has been excellent on the whole, but with a few caveats of what I wish I could do:
First, when I "apt-get install" Apache2, PHP, and Mysql, and then check out PHP, it says that PHP wasn't compiled with the mysql module. (see the thread here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=28241) Having to recompile that is a PITA.
Second, another favorite tool of mine, FreeNX, is available for 32-bit versions of Ubuntu, but not 64-bit.
But I guess the real killer of all the current 64-bit distrobutions right now is the multimedia support. Ubuntu is doing a lot of things right, and it was easy to install and start using, but it hasn't quite gotten all the way there for me (and probably many other users) yet.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
For those wondering what setting to change for this, it is "general.useragent.vendorSub". Change its value from "1.0.2" to "1.0.4", after you download the firefox update for Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog).
Ubuntu Backports backports packages from the unstable branch, and makes sure they're stable. I have the latest versions of firefox, gaim, and other software. Check it out: http://backports.ubuntuforums.org/
The kernel already supports 32 bit binaries, and in fact supports it by default. Debian however is not designed to maintain installations of 32 bit binaries within the same tree as 64 bit binaries, at least not in terms of managing the entire system this way. This results in a "cleaner" system, but presents difficulties when one simply wants to cherry-pick a few binaries like firefox and ghc.
Plainly you don't even run a 64 bit system, so what possessed you to lecture me about it?
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot