Slashdot Mirror
Dapper Drake Hits Ubuntu Servers
linuxbeta writes "Ubuntu 6.04 (Dapper Drake) daily builds have hit the Ubuntu servers. Dapper's goals: Substantial polish and integration, software discovery and installation, make network-wide enterprise updates easy to manage, consider LSB and related certification standards and support for deployment of Dapper on mission-critical servers. Screenshots have already surfaced."
Well having done over 400 Debian installs and 1 Ubuntu install (Breezy Badger), I feel comfortable saying that the installs are different. Sure you have the comfortable and simple Debian CUI, but you do not have to answer any questions! I think the entire installation asked me about 4 questions. It is easier than a Redhat install, but you get the advantage of the Debian package pool and the Debian package system. One oft overlooked feature of Debian is the sheer number of quality tested packages available. The installer works as well as Redhat's but you end up with a better system that has much more software easily available through apt. Ubuntu has a long way to go before it can come close to Debian's track record, but I think it's off to a good start.
The microsoft web fonts are available on any debian-derived distribution in the "msttcorefonts" package. The list is: Andale, Arial, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet, Verdana, and Webdings. Unfortunately, Tahoma has not been authorized by microsoft for redistribution, so you'll need to manually move it from a Windows installation if you want to use it. It would probably be better to use one of the excellent free fonts included in Ubuntu, because then you can redistribute the font you're using if you want to. The Bitsteam Vera family are my personal favorites.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
At first it seemed this was the case to me as well, but I have found that many (all?) of the items in "multiverse" - including Mplayer, dvd libraries, etc - don't show up in the basic/default package installer. If I search there, either nothing appears or it shows up grayed out. If I switch to the "advanced" mode and search, everything shows up (with multiple versions even) and I can get it all installed. The only thing not available in the repository was libdvdcss (think that's the name) due to legal issues but libdvdread spit out some instructions when I ran mplayer on how to install that with a supplied shell script.
I was quite pleased - I have a 1GHz desktop leftover from work that I installed 5.10 on, and once I found the above got Mplayer working easily. In far less time (not to mention frustration) than I've ever spent before I was watching and ripping DVDs. Very nice. This machine is now probably destined to replace my "TV computer" out in the living room.
I haven't used it enough yet to comment on anything else, it seemed quite speedy enough to me considering the computer. I'm just about willing to install it on the laptop - that'll be the real test for me.