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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.)
if you avoid doing dist-upgrade every other night, sid is actually pretty stable. With the introduction of "experimental" as the bleeding-edge branch, packages landed in sid are pretty much safe for everyday use. Heck, I even run KDE 3.4 from the experimental packages, and only the Kaffeine multimedia player (a 0.6 application, still very young) is crashing every once in a while. I only upgrade applications for security reasons (e.g. Firefox 1.0.4, already in Sid), don't usually do mass-upgrades ,and I'm absolutely fine :)
-- Let's go Viridian.
As of this morning, breezy still appears to be totally broken for KDE users. Previously there were some problems with DBUS versions, which may still be in effect, but I haven't seen them crop up recently, because I'm struggling with a new problem: aptitude seems inclined to want to remove all of KDE because of a couple unmet dependencies. Namely some silly stuff, like depending on an exact version of Kate for example, with an upgrade to Kate causing the parent package to break and want to take KDE with it. One needs to pin packages, which then tends to have the opposite effect of locking down everything that depends on it. It's apt's special version of RPM hell. That's life on the edge, and it's easy to fall off and lose a lot of packages if you don't look closely at what you're doing.
Given that I also want side-by-side 32 bit support on my amd64 distro, and that Ubuntu's 32-bit support amounts to running a chroot, I'm looking pretty hard at Fedora. I don't think Ubuntu's a bad distribution at all, in fact its amd64 support is first-rate, but I just don't care as much for the chroot solution. I still recommend Ubuntu for a desktop Linux; one should just be aware that Ubuntu's Unstable (currently breezy) is more like Debian's Experimental at start and only slowly converges to the relative stability of Sid, until release (currently hoary) at which time it becomes stable as Debian Stable. Stick to Hoary unless you like occasional mass-breakage.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
> as Debian derivatives go, Knoppix and its "children" (Kanotix, etc) are much better. Better HW recognition, better multimedia support, better package management (straight from Sid) etc.
Knoppix I think is something of a bait-and-switch. If you install Knoppix as Knoppix, you'll find that none of your core packages are compatible anymore, there are no Knoppix-specific repositories that will support you, and at some point, Sid will go out of sync and you'll be stuck. If you install it as vanilla Debian, you have debian, not Knoppix.
Ubuntu actually supports its own packages, and it also supports AMD64 as a first-tier distribution. These were the factors that led me to Ubuntu. The only real gripe I have is the lag with new packages I've needed or wanted (ghc 6.4, needed; postgresql 8, wanted; firefox 1.03, wanted) that Ubuntu has been slow to supply. I'd call these pretty minor things however, which will probably be addressed when breezy next updates from sid.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
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/
I have to aggree. Knoppix and its derivations tend to be rife with installation problems. I honestly think Mepis is the only Knoppix Clone that comes close to Ubuntu, and many Ubuntu users that I know that dont use Kubuntu, use Mepis instead.
Alternately , Knoppix depends largely on debian's repositories. Id take Ubuntu over that in a heartbeat, Canaonical and Ubuntu support their own packages specifically compiled for Ubuntu itself. While the lag in packages could be annoying to some, it doesnt bother me a whole lot.
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
That's one thing that bugs me. I went from Knoppix in April or so (long story; my router was broken and I didn't want to run my Win2K machine on a naked cable connection) to a point where I decided I wanted a HD install.
Everywhere I looked I saw Mepis recommended. Installed Mepis, *loved* it until I found out I couldn't get KDE 3.4 without some tricky repository stuff. Tried that, worked okay, but I realised this would happen again next time KDE updated... so I installed Kubuntu.
Now Kubuntu's version of FF 1.0.4 is incompatible with update.mozilla.org, and a few random apt packages and other programs seem to show a Gnome bias, and Debian packages are spotty at best on Ubuntu. Both seem to have their packages they're behind on.
Is there some distro out there as easy to upgrade as Debian/Ubuntu but actually has updated stuff all around with no shady repository adding?
... that the "Badger, badger, badger" song is compiled into the kernel this time.