Slashdot Mirror
Looking Forward, Ubuntu Linux 6.06
SilentBob4 writes to tell us that Mad Penguin has an interesting look at the upcoming version of Ubuntu. From the article: "All in all, Ubuntu 6.06 is gearing up to be quite an impressive release. Granted, I saw some bugs during my stay on the distribution, but can I really complain? It's not a full release, so it deserves some breathing room. Considering some of the horribly authored software I've looked at over the years, I feel that Ubuntu in pre-release form is more stable than other distros when they reach final release status. It's not quite in the league of Slackware and Red Hat/Fedora in that respect yet, but it's surely getting there in a hurry. As I said before, it smoked Fedora Core 5 performance-wise, so in that department it's solidly ahead."
digged and slashdotted on the same day.
Sure, you said it - but where are the benchmarks?
Alright, well the site is down within a few moments of posting up to Slashdot and Digg simultaneously. Coral Cache anyone?
Technology tips and tricks.
Features
* Linux kernel 2.6.15-18 PREEMPT
* X.org 7.0
* gcc 4.0.3/glibc 2.3.6
* GNOME 2.13.94
* Firefox 1.5.0.1 web browser
* Evolution 2.5.92 email/groupware client
* OpenOffice 2.0.2 productivity suite
* Gaim 1.5.0 instant messenger
* Gimp 2.2.10 image editor
I haven't been keeping up with the 4.0 branch of GCC, but is 4.0.3 really stable enough for the average home user?
It's Dapper Drake. (translation: Good-looking male duck.)
You do know that Ubuntu _does_ support other desktop enviroment like XFCE, KDE, windowmaker ect ect?
find / -iname life 2>
"I feel that Ubuntu in pre-release form is more stable than other distros when they reach final release status. It's not quite in the league of Slackware and Red Hat/Fedora in that respect yet, but it's surely getting there in a hurry."
Isn't FC intended as a test distro for new Red Hat stuff? I'm not a seasoned FC user but I've always thought FC releases were not first and foremost stable so much as innovative.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
It's a file server. Just put a serial console on it, and stop worrying about plugging anything into it. PS: this is my first ever self-diagnosed, deliberately obnoxious slashdot post. Enjoy....
OS X's skin reminds me of Fisher Prices "My First Computer"
find / -iname life 2>
Thanks (u|k|x|edu)buntu devs.
I just can't be bothered.
and the long delay is brought to you by /. flood control
YouStockIt - Education through Unorthodox Methods
Have they fixed that problem with the screensaver menu yet? When i scroll thru the screensaver menu (just for fun) the desktop goes hypercolour-screen-of-death.
I found this book helpful: Linux Desktop Pocket Guide
It covers Ubuntu, Fedora Core, Gentoo, SuSe, and Madriva. It should have enough information to get what you need done.
Have you tried searching the Ubuntu forums?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wher eis 6.06 download to be from? I can't see from the link given in the article which is 5.10
I am a developer on the Linux platform and have been using linux since 1999. About a week ago, I was ready to install a linux distro since my old HD bit the dust (on my new custom-built Asus SLI AMD64 box). After hearing all the press about Ubuntu, I burned a copy and tried it. I found the install slightly painful.
/etc/hosts file to include my hostname. After doing this, gnome allowed me to configure my network. (Why can't the installer do this?)
Installation:
On my first install, I tried partitioning a 300 GB Fat32 partition at the end of the drive for sharing cross-OS stuff (mp3s, etc. I'd tried a windows Ext2 driver previously, but it eventually corrupted the partition and I lost all my recent mp3s) and 2 GB swap and the rest for the OS. Ubuntu absolutely failed to format the one partition Fat32, gave me an error and choked. OK. How tbout ext2? Well, that choked too. Not caring about that partition, I decided to just bypass the step manually and have it copy the OS. I can always format the partition manually. It choked setting up apt (for reasons I don't understand). I decided that, despite manually partitioning every linux distro I've ever used, I'd let ubuntu choose for me. This seemed to "work".
Configuration:
The first thing any computer user wants to do is get on the internet. I've got a static IP where I live so I decided to set up the networking. Unfortunately, without a working hostname, there's literally no way to do this. On bootup, gnome suggested I manually edit my
On the positive side all of my devices (audio/video) were configured correctly but on the downside, there doesn't seem to be any good way of upgrading packages (Firefox to 1.5 or my NVidia drivers) when the current version isn't in the repository (I'm probably missing something).
I'm hoping with the new release, Ubuntu can fix some of these usability issues while keeping their slick package management.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
1) No iTunes clone. amaroK - yeeeeech...
You can always apt-get banshee. Banshee allows you to manage your ipod, and the daapd plugin (which is also in the apt repositories) allows you access iTunes music shares, as well as share your own library with iTunes clients.
What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa
To turn it around, I noticed growing trend of smug and arrogant attitudes towards Ubuntu and its user base..or rather its *perceived* user base.
No, all the REAL geeks have plenty of machines for several distros! Go Synergy2.sourceforge Ubuntu works better for my laptop, prefer gentoo for desktop. It's just a distro, no need for a holy war.
Actually in gentoos defense, I have far fewer dependency and break issues than with apt... portage is just really nice. The major benefits of gentoo are portage, documentation, and the forums. The compile time is the price, slightly offset by the optimization.
but what about rookies like me who NEED a dumbed down version? I see it as a good way to get into linux, now if only it would work with my soundcard...
"OS X's skin reminds me of Fisher Prices "My First Computer"'
Whoa, you just mad a fool of yourself on so many different levels all at once! WTG!
amaroK isn't that bad, but both desktops do need someone other than former/current Windows 98 programmers to bring both Linux desktops up to year 2006 standards. The only people who can stomach the current Linux desktops are people who ditched Windows back in 1999-2000 or so. The 'make it look and act like Win98 but with more features' 'strategy' for the Linux desktops was a silly design goal five years ago. It is an embarrassment in 2006.
Hopefully a large commercial company will pick up the slack and start funding competent UI engineers/artists and fix the mess that is the Linux desktop soon.
"treat like idiots" == don't assume you know how to use the command prompt and offer you help. Geeks get mad at anyone who doesn't treat them like a God by default.
How we know is more important than what we know.
File a bug report?
Ubuntu picked up my AC97 audio automatically, both version 5.04 and 5.10.
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Sounds like it's "Linux for the rest of us," actually.
'bout damn time, I say.
If I need to provide tech support to someone over IM it's way easier to tell them open a terminal and cut and paste the commands I give them.
As for the god part, I just dislike being looked down upon because I prefer a quick su over endless sudos.
I once actually got banned on freenode for advising a newbie to use su. Apperently it was a violation of the "ubuntu philosphy".
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Ubuntu needs to stay the course with Gnome. Let the whiners whine. Ubuntu needs to stay focused onto what it is, a highly polished Gnome desktop distribution.
If everybody that whines gets the attention they want, Ubuntu will become as bloated as any other general purpose distro.
"1) Canonical sponsors many more gnome developers than KDE developers -- just look how many more gnome-related commits appear in the Dapper commit log."
Duh. Ubuntu is a distro built around Gnome.
"2) Edubuntu, whose education-specific programs come almost exclusively from the KDE Education Suite, runs on gnome instead of KDE. Canonical has never sponsored a KDE Education Suite developer, even though Edubuntu simply wouldn't exist without their work."
And the KDE Education Suite developer would still be doing what they were doing if there were no Ubuntu. Sounds like they are starting to get a bit eager for some of the pie, even though they volunteer to do what they do.
"3) Canonical does not financially support the team that creates Kubuntu-LiveCDs, so they have to pay all the expenses from their own pockets."
Did Canonical say they would finacially support the team creating the Kubuntu-Live cds? If not, hey, it's a vounteer operation just like most other distros. Suck it up. You chose the job.
"4) Kubuntu doesn't accept community contributions (ie. contributions by anyone beside Jonathan Riddell and Andreas Mueller). A lot of volunteers wanted to contribute, but they can't because they have no access."
Don't know anything about this situation, so I'll give it a big "So what? The people that run Kubuntu can do whatever they want to do. It's their baby.".
"5) The name of the version featuring gnome is called Ubuntu, while the version featuring KDE has a K added to the front. This makes it sound like gnome is the default, standard, and KDE is some sort of offshoot. It would be more equitable to name them Ubuntu-KDE and Ubuntu-GNOME, or Kubuntu and Gubuntu.
"
Oh boo-fucking-hoo. Cry me a river. Maybe because Gnome *IS* the default standard for Ubuntu, and KDE is an offshoot?
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of SMART?
I've been using Ubuntu Dapper Drake (Ubuntu 6.06) Alpha 5 for about a month or so, and am very impressed with it. Of course, one can't expect the stability of a stabe release from an alpha, but ever since I installed it, I've been very surprised as to how stable it is for an alpha. This makes me look forward to the stable release even more -- if the alpha's like this... the stable release will be awesome! The best thing I like about Ubuntu (especially in Dapper) is its hardware support. I have hardware (such as a touchpad, etc.) that never worked correctly in other distros (it even had quirks in Windowze). Ubuntu had great drivers, but Dapper is awesome. Thanks, Ubuntu Devs!
I discussed that on a user forum, but really didn't have the time to file a bug-report. Had several errors/detection failures in boot-sequence, X didn't start, machine froze. I've used the same CD for VMWare boots several times, so it should not be a defective CD.
The Thinkpad should have fairly standard hardware, was a bit strange to see it crash that ugly as I never had any problems with any of the Ubuntu LiveCDs.
Most people are working on things that benefit all of Ubuntu, not just one desktop. And since Ubuntu started specifically as a polished Gnome desktop - and since that was a major reson for the early enthusiasm - it is hardly strange that most employees and contributors are Gnome users and developers as well.
Same with the name - Gnome is the first and default desktop, with Kubuntu a later addition. And if there is any workers missing, it would be someone dedicated to polishing Edubuntu, not adding people to projects that alreade have staff working on it.
Further, it seems it's not actually the German Kubuntu people that are protesting, but some offshoot of the official group that (somewhat strangely) wants to both leave the commonality of Ubuntu behind and get paid for it by Canonical at the same time. They also seem to be asking for transfer of "officialdom" from that other KDE group. It looks more like some internal fight among the KDE people than anything else, with this offshoot angry that Gnome, not KDE, is the default desktop for Ubuntu.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Safety scissors, perhaps, but it's the first Linux distribution I'm willing to try right now. I'm a Mechanical Engineer by degree and profession, and while I built my own computer and maintain it, I don't have the computer capabilities that most Slashdotters have. I have a spare computer I've pieced together with extra parts from various places, so I figured I'd try Linux. I have an Ubuntu disc ready to go for tomorrow, the first time I'll ever have tried anything Linux on my own computer. To date, it's been all Windows boxes.
I'm not a programmer. I don't develop software, and I don't really write code. I'm just not hardcore in that regard. But I'm willing to try new stuff, and I'm going to go with the easy option right now. That's why Ubuntu appeals to me. From what I continually read on Slashdot, this is exactly the kind of thing that Linux and Open Source software needs to gain more widespread use... getting people with an interest to bridge the gap without a big effort.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
I applaud them for this and this is soemthing that's been needed. Look I want to work on my program, my server, my web server or some other thing. I don't want to have to dick with things like getting the frickin hardware to work. Ubuntu has made great strides in this arena. Also, they are absolutley correct in saying the IRC help channel should be absolutely helpful. Telling someone to RTFM or to just google it isn't a solution.
Gorkman
Your milage will vary, as always, but I've noticed that FC* is one of *the* slowest distros to be published. I'm used to Slackware mainly, and putting Ubuntu up to Slack is like a cheetah racing your grandmother. I do agree with the assertion that Ubuntu is faster than FC, though.
IMHO, Ubuntu and Fedora are both rather sluggish.
Now, now, children, before you flame me for an 'ancient' machine, I'm running a modest but modern 2200+ with 1GB of RAM. No, neither Ubuntu nor FC are unusable, it's just that they lack the kind of snappiness to the UI I've grown accustomed to.
Technology tips and tricks.
In that case, if it's that easy to do, you should be able to write me a step-by-step guide to get audio working perfectly on, say, a thinkpad 390. Go on. I'm waiting.
TFA reviews Flight5. Ubuntu is now testing Flight6. You can find the daily build here.
Remember, it's still alpha.
hate to tell you this, but wankers who sit on irc != "the people behind ubuntu".
How we know is more important than what we know.
This is exactly why Linux is a pile of fucking shit and everyone who uses it needs to have the goddamn dependencies manifested into physical form, then rammed up their anus till it bleeds.
Umm. If you had ever used Ubuntu (or Debian) you would know that there is no "Dependency Hell" in these distros. And I fail to see how a few people being hostile in online forums makes Linux a "pile of fucking shit". I could see how it would discourage new users, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the kernel.
Goddamn troll... why are you reading the Linux section anyway? WTF do you care about Ubuntu?
What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa
I use Kubuntu but I'd like to offer the protesting 'developers' a nice big cup of SHUT THE FUCK UP.
Ubuntu is a GNOME based distro. Kubuntu is an offshoot KDE version.
Ubuntu with its default Gnome interface is polished and very 'usable'. My son learned to navigate it at 3 years old. KDE is no where near as simple to navigate, its a whored up MS Windows start menu + pretty OS X-ified effects. And I use KDE.
Cheers.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
As a longtime BSD person, I find it kind of odd that it is even sensible to talk about the relative stablity of Linux distributions. It is just silly to talk about stability in the BSD world. For all intents and purposes the BSDs just don't crash unless the hardware is flakey or incompatable. It is pretty hard to say one is more stable than the other without an incident to use as data =). Years ago, I used Debian, and I don't recall any stability issues there either. Have things changed?
A question for keen Linux users 'in the know':
Has Linux *really* reached a point where stability is an issue, or is this a red herring misleading those that don't use it? If indeed it does have stability issues, how often does it crash? What are the chances of losing a filesystem?
Don't mod me down as flamebait right away.
Then don't go and Godwin yourself right off the bat by saying "the people on the freenode channels are complete nazis when it comes to "Politically correctness" and "being helpfull"."
The vast majority of Ubuntu people seem to really stick with that "Linux for Human Beings" thing they have plastered on their website. And good for them.
On a slightly different note: when did observing and calling someone out for rude or dumb behavior start getting derided for being bad?
Person A: "L0lz, I have this linux problem 'foo', where 'bar' doesn't work and that's teh ghey!"
Person B: "Hey, that calling that remark 'gay' wasn't necessary, and wasn't polite. Fix 'bar' by doing 'bleh', and 'foo' should work."
Person A:"OMG, STFU, political correctness!"
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
I'm eager to try out the new Ubuntu when it comes out. Will we be able to upgrade to 6, or will we need to do a complete reinstall? I used to have FC4 x86_64 on my system, and have since then put Ubuntu on it. I think I like Ubuntu more. I was dissapointed/annoyed that so much of the stuff built into FC were missing in Ubuntu, but I've pretty much added back everything I wanted (using synaptic, which is best package manager I've played with yet). The big thing I was missing was the stuff to compile stuff by hand, but it looks like after RTFA, that will be easy to fix (apt-get install build-essentials). I also wish the Ubuntu repository was a little more up to date, because I've had to install some stuff by hand. But the big pros have been the great package manager. Wine, Firefox, and whatnot work good in my chroot, better than I got them to work in FC4. X was leaking memory on my system in FC4, but with Ubuntu it doesn't. Overall, I liked both alot, but I think I like Ubuntu a little bit better.
I'm not a programmer. I don't develop software, and I don't really write code.
I _am_ a programmer. I _do_ develop software, and I write code all the time. And I love Ubuntu, for precisely the reason the OP seems to dislike it. If it's simple for the beginner, it mostly means it's simple for the experienced user as well.
I'm not interesting in using a desktop. My interest is in doing my job or pursuing my hobbies, and a desktop should just get out of the way and make it as easy and transparent as possible for me to do so. And of course, whenever I need a shell, it's still right there for me to use (and while I do use the shell a lot, it's still less than it used to be).
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Why is speed of a distro even an issue?? Turn off the crap you don't want if you want to go faster. You aren't going to get significant speed gains by switching distros. If you don't want to lose feature set, the MOST you can expect to gain by switching distros while retaining your current feature set is maybe 5%.
Compile your kernel.. you will get a bigger speed gain here by filtering out what you don't need and it's a WHOLE lot easier than switching distros. If you REALLY want the last 5-10% then compile and strip EVERYTHING yourself custom for YOUR processor. No distro is going to do that for you because they need to remain generic so that they run on "x86" instead of "Dual Proc Pentium 3 Coppermines only". If you want to do that, then get Gentoo, which exactly why Gentoo exists. Switching from one generic binary distro to another is just changing a few details about how certain peices of the OS fit together and what is on or off by default and has nothing to do with speed.
All you need to do is install gstreamer-mad from either the universe or multiverse repositories. The package name should vary slighty from that, but those are the two key words, and a search in synaptic for "gstreamer" will bring it up. Once you've done that, you should be able to play mp3's just fine.
I'm a *nix user (various flavours) for over 10 years now, and have been running Linux on the desktop both at home and in the office for the past two and a half years. I'm a professional *nix sysadmin, with experience ranging from embedded systems to supercomputers.
I don't feel like Ubuntu is dumbed down at all. I feel like it's easy to use, with sensible defaults. I love that it's a distro that works out of the box, and yet it still allows me all the power of a Debian box (without the politics and glacial pace of change).
Next time my Mum needs her WinXP box "fixed" again, I'll be using Ubuntu to fix it. And yet I'll still be using it myself - two unix users from about as far apart on the spectrum as you can get, with their needs both met by the same distro. I like that.
..and I'll form the head!!
What makes you think I haven't tried, on and off, for the past... what, twelve or so months?
You seemed to think it was so easy; surely if it was that easy it would have taken as long to write that response.
It's not a full release, so it deserves some breathing room.
;o)
Full release or not, there's never a call for giving MS a breathing space when they're releasing a product.
I know the guide is beginning to get a bit dated, but I still go back to Unofficial Ubuntu Guide now and then for some quick fixes. There's also the Ubuntu Wiki which has some more up-to-date information. I'm surprised that the sound didn't work out of the box.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
I've noticed this "dumbening" (is that how you spell it?) as well. I've been on Ubuntu since 4.10 and little by little, I realised things were creeping into it that made it fluffier, softer, and weaker. Along these lines, though I realise it happened before Warty, what the hell was wrong with cd's and flash drives mounting in 'mnt'?!?! Doesn't that make sense? You mount things in mount! Perfectly logical to me. But nope, now they go to media.
But back to it. Today I was checking out the screenshots of dapper - trying to decide exactly what to put on my new box due friday - and noticed something horrifying; something so terrifying I stopped dead. Screenshot #6 is particularly ominous. I'm not sure what will be going on this new box of mine, but in light of recent evidence, I'd say that Dapper is not the forgone conclusion it once was.
That seems pretty bad. Unless they politely said that su was a bad idea, and you tried insisting that it's not in front of the newbie. That just brings up confusion, and somebody needs to pull rank.
I'll explain to you why sudo is the way to go. With my school research, we were using some software that required linux, and I set up a few computers with it for some other students. They didn't know much of anything about linux at the time, and I explained to them how to work the basics. For installing software and for doing something else in particular, you needed root privileges, and I showed them how to use su. Now, you have to understand. These people come from a Windows environment. They don't like having to switch to an adminstrator account, they want to be the administrator. So, now that they knew the root password, it wasn't long before they were just logged on as root the entire time so as to not go through the bother of typing 'su' and a password. I know that's a bad idea, you know that's a bad idea, they didn't, regardless of how I explained to them. Regardless of the fact that the default wallpaper for the root user on KDE was a big red thing that said, "DON'T LOG IN AS ROOT." It's just much safer for newbies to use sudo, and not even be aware of a root account, and ubuntu is a distribution for newbies. That was always its purpose
The thing about ubuntu. It was made to be the safety scissors of linux. It's linux "for the rest of us." Linux for people who don't know a thing about computers, don't want to learn a thing about computers, but just want to use it for their day-to-day activities. It's the distribution I tell anyone new to linux to try out. If you want something more expert-like, you still have plenty of choices. What's wrong with Debian? It's essentially the same thing, and you can configure it the way you want.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
So this is a better looking version of Mandrake?
Ubuntu picked up my AC97 audio automatically, both version 5.04 and 5.10.
Same here. Ditto for the Dapper Drake prerelease. Didn't have to "install" anything as far as drivers.
The matter of the UI toolkit is partly a matter of taste. There are certainly areas where gtk+ and Qt are inferior to other implementations, but I don't think it's as drastic as you make out, nor do I think that cloning the Apple UI is the correct solution. I actually find getting around the Mac UI somewhat painful at times, and I think you'll find that a large part of the problem you're encountering stems from familiarity and taste (especially WRT appearance).
If there are specific instances where behaviour changes would improve usability, please submit suggestions to the gtk+ team and to TrollTech. Suggesting a wholesale "research and rip off" of the Mac OS X GUI is neither helpful, nor likely to ever happen.
Thinkpads are especialy tricky to work with, but at least they generaly behave absolutely perfectly under linux once setup correctly. I had a 390 until recently, and I managed to get *all* the functions work as under windows (including apm suspend to disk, battery report, sound etc.). Mine had no internal modem, so I didn't try to setup this. Otherwise, it was just perfect. I changed for a HP/compaq NX9005, and I found the hard way that most functions are not usable by linux - it's working "good enough", though, but if I could I'd revert to a thinkpad anyday for linux use.
I recently tried to migrate my company's game development over to Ubuntu but we are back on our PPC Macs for the time being.
1) No iTunes clone
Waahh? Why the heck do your game devs need iTunes (or a clone thereof) at work? Tell those hippy iPodders to tweak their playlists at home! </tongueincheek>
This sig rocks the casbah.
The project treats it's users as if they were complete idiots
---
It's linux "for the rest of us." Linux for people who don't know a thing about computers
Thank you for proving my point.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
If you're looking for an environment that behaves exactly like OSX....
Might I suggest...
OSX?
Seriously, if your measure of acceptability is "closer to Apple standard" and your problem with a desktop is that it doesn't behave identically to OSX, why are you thinking of switching to anything? OSX is obviously already perfect.
On the other hand, I'm personally never likely to use any environment that's much like OSX very often. Just not my cup of tea. A lot of us think that OSX isn't the holy grail of desktop computing. Sorry about that.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
It's sort of too bad that Ubuntu ends up having to take this line, but it's not totally their fault. If you want to take the liability of distributing patent-encumbered software and just cross your fingers you don't get sued, be my guest.
Automatix can solve many of these problems anyway, but for 5.10 install gstreamer-mad, or 6.06 install gstreamer-ugly
"Doctor who?" --The Doctor
Here's the new link. :)
1. Why switch? It sounds like you were happy with your PPC Macs?
2. Why do you need iTunes to develop games?
3. If you really want to switch to a linux system, use a distro/set-up that most closely meets your needs, and if needed tailor to your desires, but see #1 above.
If they release it on the first Tuesday, the ISO will be hundreds of millions of binary numbers of the beast. With "Ubuntu" meaning "humanity", it will be the "number of a man", as crazy John the Revelator first announced the vaporware in the cold, damp Greek cave two millennia ago.
--
make install -not war
because you didn't found this ?
Well, you're in for a real treat. Enjoy! There are many really cool things about Ubuntu. But even more important, you are now embarking on your first Linux installation, and I suspect that within a year or less, you'll have installations of several different Linux distros under your belt. It's contagious, I tell you, trying out different distros. Anyway, like I said... Enjoy!
Why Vegan? No other food choice has a farther-reaching and more profoundly positive impact on all of life on Earth.
You should say you were banned from #ubuntu as freenode has no such policy. And come on over to #gentoo; we let people recommend su all the time. :)
Restore America: Dr. Ron Paul for President!
-1 Troll
As you even said in your post, it's an alpha verison. I couldn't even install X.org on my system at around flight 4. If you're not prepared for major things to potentially break, don't run versions that are intended for testing.
I'm just waiting for the Crazed Cock release, or maybe the Raving Rooster.
Would you mind writing a couple of sentances then? I've not noticed much difference :-/ Also some backing up of your statements generally would be a good idea -- a lot of moaning "it sucks!" with no specifics or suggestions make you look like just another troll
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
+1 informative. Hehehe....
-------
Incite and flee.
You may now proceed to mock my spelling and grammar in response. Nonetheless, I think that this article is a prime example of "juvenile journalism."
FC5 is very snappy indeed. It's the most responsive Gnome desktop I have used so far. Much better than Ubuntu 5.04. If the article is right, and the new Ubuntu really smokes FC5 with respect to speed, I will be impressed. This really looks good for Linux.
Usability is getting better and better for each new release of Gnome.
It is now at a state where it leaves Windows XP in the dust, and is seriously starting to get to the same levels of usability as MacOS-X.
Vista will need to be very good to beat this, or perhaps even more pollished Linux distros, using Gnome 2.16 that probably will be available by the time Vista hits the market.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Wrong, it is impossible to have a 7.00. The Ubuntu version numbers go as the following:
X.YY where x=current year-2000, any Y=month. so 5.10 was released October of '05, while 6.06 will be released in june of this year.
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
Before you run away let me easy some of your concerns.
I've been using Ubuntu since Hoary was first available. (Debian Sid before that) Up untill a week ago I was running Dapper too.
That screenshot was _VERY LIKELY_ caused by the "apt-get dist-upgrade" style command.
The only time I have ever seen a "please reboot now" was after a new kernel version was downloaded.
I am back on Hoary now, but only because I was having other problems.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Whatever you do don't clone the finder. Not that I think anybody is actually considering cloning the mac gui but if you take a lot of acid and try to do so please don't clone the finder.
Thank you.
evil is as evil does
Nice. I'll have to remember to use that in the future.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
I'll also suggest using /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist to prevent certain modules from loading, say for example your computer insists on loading the OHCI USB subsystem when it actually needs the UHCI subsystem. May not solve your sound problem, but could prevent a myriad of other headaches if you insist on using hardware autodetection and your computer insists on being a stubborn ass.
It's not exactly the music companies. I think it has more to deal with mp3 and the like being proprietary formats that are illegal to use in the US unless you've payed the licensing fee. The article actually talks about Easy Ubuntu, which supposedly (haven't used it) gives you access to these formats. There are also other reasons for not including these formats; like having a completely free system (as in freedom).
;)
As for the MPAA deal, I'm not quite sure where you were going with that. I told you about Easy Ubuntu, but if you had trouble using Synaptec, I don't think you'll make it that far.
XP isn't easier, it's different. I hope you'll change your mind and give learning Ubuntu another try
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
What are you talking about? When FC5 was officially released I installed it (the 64-bit version) on my main workstation (AMD 64 3200+, 4GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9200). It installed the kernel headers for me after I selected it. Even with the stock kernel, I had OpenGL (I bought the 9200 specifically for the open source accellerated drives), and even VMWware Workstation's drivers compiled successfully after using the vmwware-any-any updates. yum update works flawlessly.
Since them I've done about a dozen test installs in VMWare and have deployed it to over two hundred computers, including PII's, PIII's, P4's, K6-2's, Athlons, Athlon XP's, and Athlon 64s with various ATI and nVidia cards (which are now accellerated). I have not had any problems like you describe.
Are you mixing incompatible repositores? Like RPMForge and Livna? I use these:
Dries
FreshRPMS
KDE-Redhat
Didier (Enlightenment)
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
I installed the Dapper version of Kubuntu on my lappy yesterday. The install was quick and it automagically detected almost all my hardware. The only issue was with the wireless network. It would not work during the install, but it did detect my card and I was able to manually start the network after installation with a few commands. I still prefer KDE to Gnome, but I think I'll give Gnome another try once Dapper comes out. Like an idiot I failed to create a /home partition on my current install, so when Dapper is released, I'll just do a fresh install and try out Gnome.
I use Kubuntu as my every day desktop. Windows partition was deleted yesterday. :)
Smeghead every day of the week.
I went from 5.10 to Flight 6 tonight and everything seems ok, just need to get those media codecs installed so I can get back to listening to my pirated MP3's and watching my porn collection... ;)
i am a newly converted fan of Ubuntu. i've been using red hat (now fedora) since Red Hat 4.2. after using an ibook and growing to dislike OS X i finally decided to take Kubuntu for ppc out for a drive...and wound up LOVING it!
;-)
but what i find interesting is that the author created a flash file to view the installation process but flash isn't supported on the ppc version of ubuntu. odd that. of course i have to wonder why flash isn't supported.
regardless - i find ubuntu a complete success. i totally get why it's becoming so popular. ease of installment (even though it's all text based) and zippy performance.
but dang it - get flash to work!
nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
Hey, I was in the same boat for a while. I never had the solid block of time to learn all of Linux, so I weaned myself in rather successfully by doing the following:
1) start by using win32 versions of some popular OSS for your daily or occasional tasks. You probably already use Firefox, but OpenOffice and the GIMP are good ones to put on a windows machine. Perhaps the best lessons for me at this stage were installing Apache, MySQL, and PHP, but go with whatever you use.
2) use them. Go through an upgrade or reconfiguration, and use them for your day-to-day tasks. Linux becomes a really quick thing to pick up if you're already comfortable with all the apps you'll be using. Seriously, if you have experience with all your apps, then it's just a matter of getting stuff installed and set up, and you're at near 100% productivity instead of having to learn how to format paragraphs in your word processor.
3) make your first install on a computer other than your main computer. If absolutely necessary, dual-boot your main computer, but getting set up on a secondary computer is useful for two reasons-- if something's not working correctly or you're in the middle figuring something out, it doesn't stop your day-to-day computing. Also, while you're working on one, you can be browsing the web for guides and tips on the other.
4) don't try to install every package you might possibly need at once. start with a basic setup, then add and configure apps as you have a need for them. all the big distributions have strong app-adding capabilities, so don't worry about not being able to add X after you get the box up and running.
5) three tools you should make sure you have and get familiar with-- google, man, and a text editor.
hope this helps
My boss spent two months getting a set of robotics cameras to work with Mandrake 10, recompiling a bunch of custom kernels, getting various gurus in, working every day from january through march, just to get the camera data read properly by the libraries and the libraries working properly with the system.
We were talking about distros, and I mentioned that he might want to check out Ubuntu.
An hour or two later I get this incredibly emotional call from him. He had installed Ubuntu on the robot, one-click-built the camera packages, compiled the vision libraries, and it worked. 30 minutes of system install plus literally 10 minutes of compiling and he had just done what took him two months on another distro. He is still in shock over this.
That having been said, I'm running Dapper as of yesterday, and I had to do crazy tricks to get it to actually print to my standard, detected printer.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
I just put FC5 on a system of mine this past weekend. I've got Ubuntu on a few boxes, and it was also on the FC5 box. I can't really replicate his "smoking" results, because he doesn't go into any detail on how arrived at this conclusion. I haven't put a heavy strain on the comp yet, but I also haven't noticed any slow downs. Definately nothing different between the two with just normal everyday use. Hate to say it, but it sounds like he's talking out of his ass on that one.
It's a little weird how he also compared it to Slackware after that too... Hmmm, old old old distro versus bleeding edge distro, it just sounds like he was playing favorites. Pretty unprofessional, like this quote "Much more so than the latest Fedora Core, which to me looks like it would be right at home in a three ring circus... center ring of course." I mean, was that neccessary? WTH does that mean?
The author just seemed a little full of himself, like when he complains that he got some "canned" reply from Ubuntu. I think they have better things to do than play kiss ass with random dude that wrote some review on the internet. Everyone that goes to Mad Pengiun knows about Ubuntu, he didn't do shit for them. His reaction was rediculous.
Beyond that, the article was pretty good, but I wouldn't go reading into any of his comments... You know, like they were actually based on something tangible.
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
Below is the reason why Ubuntu lacks media support for closed codecs "out of the box."
A single example will be used- MP3's.
The group that holds the patent on MP3's demands that for each player with MP3 support a 75 cent fee must be paid:
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/index.html
It might not seem like a lot, but when the distro is free then even such a small fee is too much. The only other option is to pay a large one time fee that could otherwise pay a developer to work on Ubuntu for a whole year! So it costs money to distribute software that pays MP3s.
If Ubuntu ignored this, it could be sued in nations like the U.S. where this patent is valid. Either Ubuntu would have to pay up or the developers could never set foot in a country with such patent laws ever again (not reasonable). So because it costs money, Ubuntu has no MP3 support.
Now take this situation, and multiply it times every type of restricted software out there (that isn't a free like OGG) and you see what the situation is. So in order to spend money on developers, not laywers, Ubuntu has to avoid touching these codecs. Even an easier way to install them such as "click here to install" would make Ubuntu an accessory to a crime in many nations.
This is why its important to support open codecs and standards. But Ubuntu can't provide restricted software, or make it any easier because of the law.
Or if you DO clone the finder, clone the Mac OS 9 finder! That was a good finder!
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
I bought an emachine specifically for Ubuntu to play around with and get to know the OS. I couldn't get the Breezy 5.10 or the 6.X beta to recognize the onboard NIC, video or onboard audio. I want to get to know the OS. I don't want to have to know how to install or create a driver at this point. Maybe after I get my feet wet with the OS. I returned the emachine and put Ubuntu on the back burner. From what I was told, there just aren't any drivers written for alot of onboard components yet. =(
Do you even have an iPod? The iTunes organization and syncing system is one of the few things that set the iPod apart from its competitors. And if you think you can write an app that does as many low-level things as iTunes does in pure Java, you're in for a surprise.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Dapper just makes them look pertier.
This is certainly nothing new.
I've been running Dapper since about a week before the release of Flight 6 and so far I've been very impressed. The upgrade was very easy from breezy to dapper, only changing the relative entries in my sources.list and running apt-get dist-upgrade. The only problems I didn't forsee was the entries that automatix put in there were not compatible, such as a Breezy backport for KDE 3.5 (Dapper comes with KDE 3.5), so that had to be taken out. (Note to self: If ubuntu-desktop is not installed, X may not start on the next boot, due too a missing font server (my interpretation), so if you get headaches after your dist-upgrade, check that first). Other issues I had were a borked /etc/network/interfaces, the auto $IFACE entry was either nuked or duplicated, resulting in the interface not coming up on the next boot.
Other than those issues, my experience with Dapper has been great. I was using KDE 3.5 for the longest time, but ended up going back too Gnome 2.14. Can't tell you why really, KDE 3.5 was really sluggish on my TNT2 but now that I got the Radeon 7500 (shush!) working, maybe it should be snappier.
Adjusting the screen resolution is one problem I've consistently seen with Ubuntu GNU/Linux.
This review is too kind on the matter for the audience I talk to; suggesting that novices use "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" and answer questions about their hardware is not something I'd recommend to novices. While other parts of Ubuntu GNU/Linux shine for the novice, this is not one of them. Fedora Core GNU/Linux has always been better at letting me use the GNOME screen resolution adjuster (and setting the default to the highest screen resolution at the highest refresh rate so I don't often have to adjust the screen resolution at all) and getting the desired results.
I hope Ubuntu's chosen resolution picks the native resolution for LCD screens. I mostly work with users who have older computers and CRTs but are planning to switch to LCDs real soon now.
Digital Citizen
Has Linux *really* reached a point where stability is an issue, or is this a red herring misleading those that don't use it? If indeed it does have stability issues, how often does it crash? What are the chances of losing a filesystem?
You know, all this talk about Linux stability is really more related to the advancement of bloated desktop environments and poorly tested features and new versions.
Every distro is constantly rebuilding the latest KDE and GNOME with $NEW_FEATURE and sometimes it doesn't work well or isn't well tested.
I believe that you could disable X (or run twm) and run just about any Linux distro as a rock-solid server.
But... as time goes on, Linux users evolve (or should I say devolve?) and more people consider Linux-the-desktop-experience to be Linux. If you run a bleeding edge Linux distro and try Beagle, it might well crash. Does that make Linux unstable? Depends on your audience...
Site is ./'ed, use the coral cache
http://madpenguin.org.nyud.net:8080/cms/index.php/ ?m=show&id=6699&page=1
Well, as long as your prefered method of playing music on a computer is patented, you'll be subjected to the wiles of a patent holder lording over who can distribute programs and how much it will cost them. I can't help it the pirate scene saw an interesting opportunity and jumped in head first, and the tech scene followed them into muddy waters. Nor can Ubuntu, as long as they intend to disitribute Ubuntu at NO COST to its users then they'll be at odds with people who insist their ideas must cost people.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
upgraded from breezy to dapper on my xubuntu laptop on weekend. lost all my xfce settings, dammit. oh well. now is all reconfigured and happy, fast and shiny:
Nothing - well thats something.
Except it's not just for novices. I've been on linux since 97 and migrated from debian to ubuntu last year. It's a god send. Just because I know how to recompile the kernel and setup runlevels by hand doesn't mean I want to. Ubuntu makes typical things easy. I can customize beyond that to suit my needs, but I never have to just to make things work. It's a much better use of my time.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
It's time to change that absolutely ghastly default colour scheme.
Otherwise Ubuntu is beautiful.
Well, the mount thing is actually pretty nice. The /media directory has the distinction of containing removable media, on behalf of users via pmount and hal. The benefits are twofold: you can't accidently kill off another predefined mount in /mnt, and if you're looking to create a list of available media sort of like My Computer, you've got an directory containing em. I suppose it can be confusing for people most comfortable with the command line, but I always liked puzzles ;)
Screenshot 6 is just another member of the "lets ditch the 70s terminal concept where possible" parade. I'm sure you know that reboots are required to get a new kernel running. This is all that is. It's been around since at least breezy, and its as equally as non threatening as the reminders in the console to "run lilo before you reboot, and by the way, reboot soon!"
Personally, I'm much more scared of the Orangification. I better remember to save the current theme in case the new one is too painful!
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Your comment ommits the fact that some people don't want to invest allot of time to see performance benefits. Yes you can compile everything, but most people don't want to sit around for that. Don't get me wrong, I like gentoo as much as the next ricer, but I will admit the strengths of ubuntu/debian. And you as a gentoor (new word?) should appreciate not having to disable extra stuff, but rather enable the bloatware.
Even better -- install it into VMWare Player and try it out running on top of Windows. You can download ready-to-go images of Ubuntu and a bunch of other distros at VMWare and try them out without messing around with installation procedures, partitioning, or anything else.
Heck, if you install Xming or Cygwin/X, you can even run Linux apps inside your Windows environment until you're ready to cut over for good.
Has Linux *really* reached a point where stability is an issue, or is this a red herring misleading those that don't use it? If indeed it does have stability issues, how often does it crash? What are the chances of losing a filesystem?
Stability is only an issue at the desktop level (Gnome, KDE, OOffice, Firefox and so on), and xBSD are running the same stuff as Linux at that level, and they're overall equally crash-prone no matter what platform.
On the kernel level, I haven't seen a crash for years - and that was when I was fiddling with a device driver, making it my own fault. I know the closed-source Nvidia drivers can apparently take down a machine, but then again, you'd have the same situation on BSD if you have the drivers.
On the file system level, the standard file systems seem very, very stable. I have never heard of disk corruption that wasn't hardware related. The more experimental stuff, like ReiserFS, seem anecdotally less stable; but then, they aren't used by default either. As usual, if you want to live on the bleeding edge, expect to cut yourself from time to time.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Ubuntu 5.10 made a change to (I think) the hotplug system or something and ditched or moved to something called "udev" (iirc)
It totally broke ipw2200 WPA support and the ability to monitor packets (war driving with kismet)
Why do they need to cock about with this kind of stuff without maintaining some kind of backwards compatibility or way of ensuring it works "out of the box"
The ipw2200 chipset is quite old now as is my Dell 8600 laptop (18 month old tech, maybe more)
Disapointing.
I wasn't recommending compiling everything. Like I said, you can get maybe get another 5-10% that way and it's not worth it for most people. However, compiling a kernel (which is where any real distro differences in speed are going to be) is orders of magnitude simpler than reinstalling the entire OS.
The strengths of the OS's lie not in their speed differences, as Linux is going to run about as fast as Linux runs, and KDE/Gnome is also, no matter what distro you are on. The strengths of the distros lie in their package management, their ease of patching and upgrading, their helper utilities, the community and documentation, corporate support, etc.
Ricing is not choosing Gentoo over Fedora Core. Ricing is willing to switch your OS distribution because you heard that Fedora Core screams compared to Ubuntu, but maybe Slackware will kick it's ass and make it go even faster... when really the only difference in speed is probably in your KDE display settings.
I switched to Ubuntu from Mandrake v10.0o because I couldn't upgrade piecewise. Could someone tell me if I will encounter the same problem with Ubuntu?
I found that, often I would use SomeApplication v1.1, let's say, but then to upgrade to SomeApplication v1.2, I would need to upgrade SomeLibrary. This should automatically be done by the handy "urpmi" utility, Mandrake's answer to "yum", "apt" and "yast". But then it would spit out some error message. Turns out that upgrading the library from SomeLibrary v1.1.1.1 to v1.1.1.2 would break the rest of the applications.
And so, the only way to get the newer version of SomeApplication would be to install a newer version of Mandrake (now Mandriva). This was thrilling for the first three reinstalls (8.1 -> 9.0 -> 9.1 -> 10.0), but after while, I just wanted to get my work done and quit having to wipe partitions and reinstall. (Don't even get me started on the upgrading-from-install-CD farce.) So now my one computer is still using the ancient Mandrake 10.0, while my other runs (k)Ubuntu 5.10.
I'm hoping that Ubuntu won't be the same. In particular, I'm hoping that I can install Warty Warthog, which runs XFree86, and then upgrade everything except the X server (I have a ATI Rage Fury Pro card which doesn't work with Xorg). Is this going to work?
If not, then I would very well say that I, for one, will end up needing to compile from source.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
1) No iTunes clone. amaroK - yeeeeech...
On the contrary, the general reception amaroK gets in my experience, even (and especially) when compared to iTunes, is that amaroK is a vastly superior audio player. Now, I don't own an ipod (I own an iaudio X5, which uses simple a simple vfat mount point), so perhaps amaroK's ipod integration isn't as good as iTunes.
iTunes is fine for simple audio needs, but it just seemed too limited compared to the features I adore in amaroK. Of course, iTunes isn't really much of a contender in that I play FLAC and OGG files, and for quite some time the main iTunes OGG decoder crashed on OSX 10.4. Still, my wife reports that things like the track number don't work. I haven't tried to get any sort of FLAC support working in iTunes, but I seem to recall that it didn't exist in any convenient form.
Beyond that, amaroK has a bunch of features that iTunes either doesn't have, or requires some kind of add-on. For example, I use its wikipedia lookup on occasion. A big deal? Not really, but I probably wouldn't bother to find out what wp has to say on an artist if it weren't a simple tab.
iTunes has decent browsing by id3 tag, but amaroK's implementation makes much better use of the window real estate [note: those screenshots are getting old. amaroK development moves amazingly fast.]
amaroK's file browser is also very useful for media that's not in my established library. iTunes has no built-in equivalent (though you can use Finder/Explorer if iTunes is the default app for that media type). I could go on with other neat amaroK features I use with varying frequency.
I have encountered one area in which iTunes exceeds amaroK: podcast support. amaroK has the basics, but the interface is pretty simplistic and not as polished as that of iTunes. Of course, there is no music store/video store/etc, but not owning an ipod, I have little interest in those features.
So I end up listening to almost all of my music through amaroK in FC4, and listening to podcasts from my Mac Mini. It's the best of both apps, but if I had to choose one or the other, it would be amaroK hands down.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I don't buy it. Sure, some code will run 10 times faster when compiled with things like MMX or SSE. Sure, passing a bunch of flags to GCC will make code that's more suited to your system. But where are the numbers?
2) Amateur/hideous UI toolkit for both major Linux desktops. My own game editor's have better/closer to Apple standard GUI elements.
I agree the two default frameworks aren't that terrific but there's also wxWidgets (http://www.wxwidgets.org/) which even contains a MacOSX port and wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) tells you how to use it efficiently. But what do I tell you, if you really care for moving to Ubuntu you most probably would have known already.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
I think you're over-reacting to the use of /media... it is there in compliance with the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. And as for screenshot #6 - "Restart Required" - maybe rebooting after a kernel upgrade isn't the end of the world ;)
My advice?
Forget about getting a perfectly working desktop system, and just concentrate on learning Linux. Don't treat the project as a plug and play Windows or Mac replacement so much as a side project learning a new (and very different) system. Linux is a rewarding and fun system with the right expectations, and the willingness to take your time learning stuff.
If you are new to *nix altogether - I would even say forget about the GUI altogether and learn Linux from the ground up with the command line (on an old surplus PC) and maybe some stuff like Apache etc. IMO learning Linux is easier from the bottom up rather than the top down. Starting with a nearly fully configured desktop is just too much complexity to take in at first.
Installing non detected drivers requires a level of skill that is much higher than that needed to just use Linux. You will struggle if you decide to tackle that as your first lesson. Start with simpler goals and you will soon find that over time you can tackle trickier problems much easier as the info you find on the web starts making more and more sense.
Learn Linux because you want to learn Linux, not so you can just replace something else.
Ubuntu was a good choice - I'd recommend just forgetting about trying to get the sound working for now. If Ubuntu doesn't autodetect it, it will probably be a 'hard' problem for you at this stage. Just start learning and playing with the stuff that does work, and worry about the sound drivers much later on.
...I just wonder if this one will finally auto-detect the POS onboard video card in the old Gateway tower that now acts as the in house file server.
Still stuck in 640 x 480 when I actually have to plug around on it directly.
Instead of Ask Slashdot, download the live CD and try it risk free.
Most of my past Linux experiance has been silent because it had a hard time finding the various embeded on the motherboard sound cards. I tried the Live CD on several old machines I had and it found everything except the win-modem. I was impressed. It even runs on some of my old laptops and set the LCD for the proper resolution. I was on the net with no troble at all.
Even the fn key worked for switching monitors, hibernating, and setting contrast & brightness.
The truth shall set you free!
It wouldn't happen to be a Lexmark Z51, would it by any chance? I've always had problem with CUPS and the Z51, on a couple of Distros...
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
The whole reason processor specific instructions exist is because they are faster than the stock x86 instructions. The difference will be miniscule however (5-10% is unnoticable for human interaction stuff, and hardly noticible in heavy server apps). In addition, different procs pipeline their instructions differently, and a stock x86 compile is hardly going to take pipelinine into account. There is no -fomgfast gcc compiler flag :) but you can expect a small (5-10%) gain overall for compiling for your proc. Remember that stock x86 builds are using ONLY the instructions from the 386 processor. Most distros are probably compiled with a 586 instruction set, but there are alot of advancements in instructions and pipelining between 586 and todays P4 and Athlons.
I highly doubt you will EVER get 10x (1000%) speed increases from compiling with mmx and friends... you realize that using a quake benchmark that would mean going from 10 FPS to 100 FPS just from a recompile... that's not going to happen. *MAYBE* 50% increase in speed on apps dealing expressly with graphics code, and even then probably not unless you give it permission with -ffast-math.
It's not worth it unless you either really need it (you are doing hardcore scientific work where 10% faster means days or weeks saved), you are doing it anyway for other reasons, so might as well add the optimizations (you use Gentoo and love portage) or you are just a ricer (You wish Gentoo would add support for the -fomgfast flag)
If you want faster, go buy a faster proc.
The only caveat is in the kernal. SMP and timer interupt settings can make a big difference in system performance or responsiveness (if you run a dual core chip and have SMP turned off for instance... that's just silly).
You can't run a new kernel on any Linux distribution without booting the kernel again. The same goes for pretty much every operating system.
if only it would work with my soundcard...
Did you try it with your sound card? Try the live CD. Ubuntu is one that has worked with my sound card when other's would not.
The truth shall set you free!
MP3's are a propritory format. A royalty needs to be paid for each decoder. This is built into commercial applications. It is a pain in the *** for open source. To remain legal, most open source does not play MP3's out of the box. Get used to problems of software patents. It is a part of life. It keeps the developers out of hot water by not including it by default. It wasn't forgotten, it was left out for a reason. They didn't want to pay a fee for each copy they passed out for free.
The truth shall set you free!
If you're doing something like hardcore video rendering, it might be plausible...
sudo alsaconf
Most likely with your kernel-header issue, you must have skipped the kernel header install at Kernel Develop section of the package group installation. But for the most part, it's nothing serious enough to complain about. It's simple as `rpm -i /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/kernel-devel-2.6.*.rpm` or `yum --disablerepo=\* --enablerepo=base install kernel-devel`
:)
/usr/lib/libpisock.so /usr/lib/libpisock.a" /usr/lib/libpisock.so` /usr/lib/libpisock.so.9.0.0 (the .so and .9 is just symlinks). Take note that I take this route to remove the package without checking dependancies and install old version because pilot-link package doesn't seem to have any dependant packages that I care about.
For your evolution issue;
for i in `rpm -qa | grep -e evolu* -e bonobo -e libgnome`; do rpm -q --requires $i; echo; done
Now you see why it farts with errors because of "dependancies"? If you aren't aware of which package is required to be installed for evolution to work, it's probably the most safest bet to install every Gnome packages under the sun. And by you mean, default installation, you should be using evolution packaged for the FC{ver} you have installed, not any other test or FC{some_other_ver} by hacking around undesirable yum repos.
Don't get me wrong. This isn't Gnome specific. This also can be seen with KDE base as well. If you are well aware of all those dependancies, it's only natural to simply "yum --disablerepo=\* --enablerepo=base --enablerepo=updates-released upgrade evolution" your distro in order to save time and fraustration.
(Although I'm using FC4+test, this should be close to your FC5 issue.)
Now this may return error with "Error: Missing Dependency: libpisock.so.8 is needed by package evolution" at the end saying the file is missing or the package providing the file is not installed. If that is the case, we troubleshoot.
`whereis libpisock`
This should return something like this;
"libpisock:
Now we want to find out what package provides this with this command;
`rpm -qf
"pilot-link-0.12.0-0.pre4.0.fc4.2"
Ha! So there, the dependancy is now bit more clear. In my case, the pilot-link package has been updated so this is natural since I have more recent package than what is required (evolution seeking libpisock.so.8 when I have libpisock.so.9, you do the math). Simplest way for "MY" case is to backport and face the grim reality of trying to resolve even more dependancies (in this case `rpm -q --whatrequires pilot-link` results in "gnome-pilot-2.0.13-2" having dependancy and the rabbit holes goes deeper when `rpm -q --whatrequires gnome-pilot` returns "evolution"!). Now I can just install (not update!) previous version of pilot-link package that provides libpisock.so.8 AFTER removing pilot-link-0.12.0-0.pre4.0.fc4.2 package with `rpm --nodeps -e pilot-link pilot-link-devel` to rid of the dependancy of file
rpm --test -e pilot-link pilot-link-devel
error: Failed dependencies:
libpisock.so.9 is needed by (installed) gnome-pilot-2.0.13-2.i386 (doesn't matter)
libpisock.so.9 is needed by (installed) evolution-2.2.3-2.fc4.i386 (doesn't matter)
libpisock.so.9 is needed by (installed) kdepim-3.5.1-0.1.fc4.i386 (doesn't matter)
libpisync.so.0 is needed by (installed) gnome-pilot-2.0.13-2.i386 (file from pilot-link package)
libpisync.so.0 is needed by (installed) evolution-2.2.3-2.fc4.i386 (file from pilot-link package)
pilot-link >= 1:0.11.4 is needed by (installed) gnome-pilot-2.0.13-2.i386 (another word, 0.12.0.0.pre2.0 old version is safe with th
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
If it wasn't a FUD or flame intended, I don't know what is.
With that type of strong statement, I would like to see the version to version, gcc build to gcc build, distro to distro, packages to packages, side by side comparison on what the hell was so "smoking" about the performance. Otherwise, that kind of statement just makes no sense. Until some solid benchmark and proof, this statement would be more fitting; "warm fuzzy feeling that things just magically pops up much faster on Ubuntu 6.06 than on FC5."
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Ubuntu was great: stable, fast, polished. No hassle whatsoever--and don't confuse ease with limitation; power and flexibility also abound, and nothing is held back from power users and administrators.
Moving to Fedora was a little awkward at first because it did certainly seem slower--the install process and updates took longer, and the system seemed to need a little bit of time to settle into its groove. After that, no appreciable speed difference. Linux is linux, I decided.
As for FC vs. Ubuntu. Well, they're just different. Debian vs. Red Hat? We're talking two fundamental pillars of the linux world--the vast majority of distros alive are based off of one or the other. Naysayers aside, both have withstood the test of time, let alone all the other tests.
I think package systems contribute to the perceived speed of distros. Honestly, I think dpkg is just plain faster in every way. RPM seems just as much stable and robust, but slightly more painful to work with and much more taxing on the system. Oh yeah, and I like yum. A lot. Sure, it's not aptitude, but it does more than you think.
I've used Ubuntu 5.04, liked it, but now I'm thinking about trying out Fedora Core 5. However, if the review is right and Ubuntu "smokes" FC5, it sounds like I should just wait until Dapper comes out.
I found myself in your shoes. I'm quite glad I gave Fedora a shot, and there's nothing to hold you back from switching. If I'm not totally comfy with Fedora, I'll just switch to Dapper when it's released! Have your cake and eat it too.
Other sibling posts in this thread have mentioned the unofficial Ubuntu Guide, but you should probably look at the official documentation since the unofficial guide has been known to do harmful things to your computer. All of the official documentation, including a sanitized version of the unofficial guide, can be found at help.ubuntu.com.
As far as AC97 support goes, AC97 is the codec the sound chipset uses, not the chipset itself, there are various chipsets using the AC97, though I believe the Realtek 8*0 are the most common, the majority of motherboards I looked at when I last upgraded had the 850, though one or two had the 870, which is generally regarded as giving better sound quality. Therefore while many chipsets utilizing AC97 may have kernel support in the default kernel that comes with Ubuntu/Knoppix, others may not.
I'm a reasonably technical guy, but I'm more of a high-level business-orientated developer than a hardcore hacker. It took me a few hours last week to install a dual-boot of 5.10 and have it receiving podcasts and browsing the web. I've still got a few more things to try, but I'm not expecting them to be too tricky.
by every fix-it place. Here's a shop that won't.
Who's your user, program?
Since BootCamp came out, Linux on MacIntels should have become much easier.
Anybody knows if (K)Ubuntu runs out of the box on these machines?
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
up until now the message you refer to goes something like this:
User interaction required.
This whole reboot message only indicates, that you have to reboot to get the benefits of the upgraded kernel.
"Nae Kin! Nae Quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna be fooled again!"
The project treats its users as if they were complete idiots
---
It's linux "for the rest of us." Linux for people who don't know a thing about computers
Thank you for proving my point.
Well...you just proved why there's a need for a distribution like that. People like you think that because someone doesn't know and doesn't want to know anything more about computers than what they need to accomplish their daily tasks are "idiots." So Linux has always been "too hard" for the average user to migrate to because people like you expect everyone else to just put up with it and learn. Well, they don't want to.
And why should they have to? My mother doesn't want to learn how to configure networking. She just wants to browse, send e-mail, organize her pictures in some sort of photo software. I've set her up with Ubuntu, and she's happy with it. What do you want me to do? Have her pay for a windows license? Pirate windows? Tell her that she can't use the computer unless she learns how to do certain basic things that have nothing to do with what she wants to do with it?
Oh wait...people like you might answer 'yes' to that last one. If you do, I'll classify you as the idiot. If not, then you should understand my point.
Seriously, people who want more freedom and less of a safety net have plenty of choices in the linux world. Why are you so against having some choices available for the people who will be more comfortable with the safety net?
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
When I rewrote a some image effects in KDE (blending, convert to B&W etc) using MMX/SSE a while back, the SIMD version was around 4x faster on an Athlon and 10x on a P4. Of course, that's only for one very small part of KDE and the overall performance increase was probably less than 1%.
I can do that at home, but what about the internet cafe project I am working on? If I load it up with software for viewing media am I creating a legal liability for myself?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
My boss spent two months getting a set of robotics cameras to work with Mandrake 10, recompiling a bunch of custom kernels, getting various gurus in, working every day from january through march, just to get the camera data read properly by the libraries and the libraries working properly with the system
So now it works on Linux, OK.
We were talking about distros, and I mentioned that he might want to check out Ubuntu.
An hour or two later I get this incredibly emotional call from him. He had installed Ubuntu on the robot, one-click-built the camera packages, compiled the vision libraries, and it worked. 30 minutes of system install plus literally 10 minutes of compiling and he had just done what took him two months on another distro. He is still in shock over this.
He was still in shock because the library that worked on an at least 2 years older distro of Linux, worked on one of the lateste breed of Linux ?
Welcome to the world of FOSS and it's great compatibility. This would have been no shock to me.
Mandriva 10, despite being 2 years old, was already Linux 2.6, so it had big chances of working, especially if you have the source.
While Ubuntu is a great distro, it's installation is really intimidating and geekish especially for beginners. I don't see any major change on its installer. It still has a text-based interface. Mandrake's installer is light years away in terms of usability and design and it was implemented years ago.
What do Google and Novell have to do with Microsoft? As far as I can tell, Microsoft wants to fucking kill Google and Google is not evil. And Novell is quite a strong supporter of Linux. Don't they also fund KDE? So, if your "Novell -> Microsoft" link is true, KDE goes to Microsoft much more quickly. Oh wait, you were spreading FUD. Nevermind.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
While I agree with most of the comments posted about Ubuntu being a kind of shrink wrapped Debian, I've found some issues with it.
.printer alert. Because I'm dual booting with OS X, as a last resort I copied all the snort rules and snort.conf from my Ubuntu partition and tried running the same snort scan of the pcap file, and lo and behold it triggered the alert I'd been trying to reproduce for days at the first attempt. This was using the same conf, same rules, same version of snort and everything, and yet Ubuntu couldn't find it, despite the IIS .printer rule being enabled and the ethereal output showing the content in the form that should have triggered it.
./configure errors, no make errors, and all seems well, but try running fsstat on a linux_partition.dd and it wont give any output, and just keeps spitting out usage info. No libary errors, no segmentation faults, nothing. The very same version on OS X works perfectly.
First of all I should say I'm using 5.10 powerpc, so maybe these issues only apply to the powerpc version.
For the last few days I've been trying to recreate an analysis of a pcap file from the Real Digital Forensics DVD using snort. I've been mucking about with snort.conf trying all sorts of configurations to trigger a IIS
And it doesn't stop with snort. Take sleuthkit for instance. It builts fine, no
The very reason I was dual booting linux was to take advantage of the plethora of linux-only forensics and network analysis tools which haven't been ported to OS X yet. And I rather liked Ubuntu's more responsive UI to OS X's bloat.
Which brings me to Ubuntu's strengths. The synaptic package manager is great for tracking down stray lib-devs when you don't know the exact name to put into apt-get install. And for ninety percent of my requirements it works fine. I like the fact it comes with a default install that is eminently usable without too much tweaking. And it looks good.
But if they are already pushing Dapper when even Breezy hasn't ironed out these issues yet, granted only when it comes to the kind of software that most Ubuntu users wont find strictly necessary, people should be aware of the limitations of the distro.
From memory I didn't find these same problems with Debian Powerpc, so I doubt its anything to do with powerpc kernel support within sleuthkit or snort. Still I'd recomend Ubuntu for anyone who doesn't require too much specialised software. But for anyone else I'd be careful. The troubling aspect of the snort problem was that it was triggering other alerts fine, so it took me a while to begin to suspect it might have something to do with the distro. I'm sure it could be fixed with a little bit of hammering, but then again, the whole point of installing Ubuntu in avoid that kind of hair-pulling?
I'm now using Dapper for a month or so. It is already very stable.But there are still some things to be fixed. For example madwifi-ng that worked perfectly on my AMD64 Brezy, is not working on my netgear card any more. Then there are standard isues with plugins for firefox to make it fully functional as desktop on AMD64.And since Ubuntu is mostly desktop distribution there SHOULD be a way to make this goodies work! Otherwise why bother sending AMD64 install/live CD-s over shipit ?? People that need linux for servers download their CD anyway. At least what you could do is to make a script to install 32bit firefox and other 32bit programs. It took a long time for me to get all those forums and make it work on Brezzy.And I don't feel like doing all that again.Just too time consuming.
> Duh. Ubuntu is a distro built around Gnome.
This is a problem. Gnome is ugly in our eyes. But despite that it is our second choice. KDE offers a real innovative community desktop and in fact Linux on the desktop means KDE. In nations where Gnome rules Linux made no inroads on the desktop.
Unfortunately RedHat made the decision in favour of Gnome which was a huge mistake. Then they gave up their Desktop strategy. SuSE was a succesful KDE distribution and strong on the desktop in Europe. Mandrake chose KDE. Now we see Ximian "Novell" guys perverting SuSe into a Gnome desktop while we as users never wanted anything but KDE.
> Oh boo-fucking-hoo. Cry me a river. Maybe because Gnome *IS* the default standard for Ubuntu, and KDE is an offshoot?
KDE based environments get under pressure from Gnome embracement strategies which intend to move us away from KDE which is the desktop of our choice. I am in favour of letting the users decide.
I can accept Kubuntu but this is only an embracement strategy. I predict Gnome will be no success on the Desktop because I as a user do not want it. And I cannot stand the Gnome imperialism.
I really don't know how your boss did it, but debian-based distros really make it easy to add new modules to the current kernel!
* There are source packages for these extra modules
* The source packages point to their build dependencies (apt-get build-dep)
* A minimum build system is an apt-get install build-essentials away from you
* Nicely packaged kernel and kernel-header packages
AND, there is also module-assistant, a script that will make the whole process automatic to you! It checks if your system is ready to build modules, downloads and install the required packages, presents you an updated list of avaliable modules, downloads, compile, install and loads them for you!
I'll never touch a RPM based distro again! APT and DKPG really make my life easier =D
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
I've been a long time Linux user (Debian) and it still is my favourite OS on custom built PCs. But what still bugs me about it - especially after using OS X for almost two years now - is that you need to be a computer expert to get it running. I know you have to be the same when installing Windows from scratch, but I've stopped taking Windows as the bar like 6 years ago.
I recently did an update on my debian box and again the german keyboard is gone and I've got wrong (english) characters everywhere. There goes half and hour of research and fixing again. When I go about and reinstall it (or Ubuntu or something else) I better be fully aware of all my hardware and it's chipsets or else I will have serious trouble getting Linux to work. When you run Linux you usually know your HW inside out but it's been nearly 3 years ago since I last did some larger setup and config. I write my HW specs on small stickers that I put everywhere on my cards and MB but thats quite a prospect - opening your box so you can prep for a fresh Linux install that will take 20hrs.+ before everything is where it was before.
Obviously I'm getting old and gotta get real work done rather than fiddling with crummy x86 architectures, but admit it, I've got a point, no? Remember the C64? Unpack, plugin, works. That's how modern computers should work.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Ubuntu needs to stay the course with Gnome. Let the whiners whine. Ubuntu needs to stay focused onto what it is, a highly polished Gnome desktop distribution.
I normally don't say things like this, but I think that Kubuntu should merge with Mepis. I've been using Mepis 3.4, and it's really a better Kubuntu than Kubuntu. Now that Mepis is changing to be based off Ubuntu, I'm not sure if there's a purpose left for Kubuntu. I agree with you that Ubuntu should stick to making a great Gnome distribution, but I think Ubuntu's KDE people would probably be better off making Mepis a great KDE distro.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
I just installed Dapper Drake last night, and damn am I impressed now that I finally got xgl and compiz to work thanks to www.debians.org's howto.. I highly recommend it to anyone.. i think this is really going to take off.. they oughta work on implementing xgl with the release of 6.06.. make it standard.. everyone needs to be using this.. and man, it makes your friends who use Windows, want to cry..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
People instantly can tell the amount of work and detail that have gone into OS X when they sit down and use it even for the first time. It is time Linux desktop programmers go their shit together.
Neg. The Gnome UI teams for one have been shamelessly parrotting OSX for quite some time. Even going so far as to add the ridiculous extra panel at the top of the screen. The end result is a disaster as innovation is stifleed and an incompatable UI is bolted onto what was a very stable and usable interface.
Very little new UI has come out of Linux since OSX became "chique". I really wish people would wake up to this.
May the Maths Be with you!
I'm curious to know your reasoning. No-one's talking about adding KDE packages to Ubuntu by default, so I'm afraid I can't understand why you think that developing KDE as an alternative to Gnome would add bloat to the distro.
Whilst I agree with you in principle, it's worth remembering that a lot of Ubuntu is desktop independant. The top layer (ubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-desktop, xubuntu-desktop, etc.) is modular and easily changed.
Because Ubuntu is so modular, there's little reason not to bring different desktops under the Ubuntu umbrella, assuming that one can find the volunteers to do so.
The fuss over Kubuntu is making a mountain out of a molehill, but it does have some valid roots. Late last year, Mark Shuttleworth announced that he wanted Kubuntu to become a first class distribution the equal of Ubuntu. Given this statement, a few developers are voicing complaints about the lack of attention Kubuntu's getting. These sorts of complaints are usual in any open source project, though, so it's nothing to get worked up about.
Like it or not, Ubuntu is branching out from Gnome. Apparently, Shuttleworth already uses Kubuntu as his desktop of choice.
I may have been a little upset when I wrote that. The tone of that notification window sounded so much like MS "You need to restart your computer for the updates to take effect" window which harrasses you, popping up ontop of whatever you're doing every five minutes because maybe, just maybe, you want to finish a letter before restarting to complete the install of the latest outlook express update patch. It had happened to me that day and hit particularly close to the nerve. I'm sure I'll only see it on kernel upgrades, maybe nvidia drivers (but you have to kill x anyway) and dist-upgrade. Thanks for the clarification guys. I'm probably going to give dapper a whirl, but I'm still going to look at a few others first.
You're missing the friggin' point.
Ubuntu *is* a Gnome distro.
This is a problem. Gnome is ugly in our eyes.
Your problem, not mine. If you don't want Gnome, don't use ubuntu. It's that simple.
because I as a user do not want it.
But there are plenty out there who do. Your personal opinion is not going to decide if Gnome is successful on the desktop or not.
And I cannot stand the Gnome imperialism.
And I cannot stand the KDE imperialism.
There are two types of people in the world: 1) those that can extrapolate from incomplete data.
Considering gnome's releases are about every 6 months apart we will probably see 2.16 and 2.18 before we see vista ship (Vista, according to microsoft, being scheduled for late 2006/early 2007, taking into account minimal slippage).
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
FC5 is the finest distro I've ever used, and as many reviews have noted, it has restored my faith in desktop linux. I've tried Ubuntu and I just don't like it, anything about it. For a few years I was nothing but a Debian user, later switched to Fedora, and after handling Fedora for a while I gave Ubuntu a shot, and personally it just doesn't compare. Fedora's integration and funtionality just blindingly surpasses it. Sure Fedora is a couple of CDs, but its a one time thing and I have no problem with that. Out of the many distros I've used for extended periods of time, I have yet to see one that compares to Fedora. This isn't a troll, just use it for a little bit and you'll see. It certainly has some issues, its not perfect, but damn it's close.
Regards,
Steve
In my opinion, and probably yours since you like Ubuntu, that's a Good Thing (TM).
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Switching from one generic binary distro to another is just changing a few details about how certain peices of the OS fit together and what is on or off by default and has nothing to do with speed.
This simply isn't true. If you switch from a binary distro using the hotplug init. scripts for hardware autodetection to another binary distro using udev (or other methods) for that task, you can generally expect the hardware autodetection stage of the boot process to be shortened by something in the region of 10s or so (well that was my value, anyway, certainly significant speedups can be expected).
That's just one example, I'm sure there are more.
Other than ease of installation, is there an advantage to using Ubuntu over straight-up Debian?
There are two things I really like about Debian. One is, what I consider, the best package management in the business.
The other is that I can download a 100mb package, and then set it up exactly as I want. I can have old and stable, or bleeding edge. I can use whatever WM/DE I want - or don't use any WM/DE or even x-window. I don't have to download, install, then uninstall a lot of apps, or other stuff, that I don't want.
Debian doesn't have the slickest installation. But, once it's installed, all you have to do is upgrade that installation as you go. You don't have to go out and buy the next version, or anything.
Still, if the performance is significally better, or something. I might consider switching.
I'm curious to know your reasoning. No-one's talking about adding KDE packages to Ubuntu by default, so I'm afraid I can't understand why you think that developing KDE as an alternative to Gnome would add bloat to the distro.
Um.
It is developed as an alternative. It's called Kubuntu. I think you mentioned it earlier. You can even just apt-get install kubuntu-desktop.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
Thanks for the answer. Bear with me if this is starting to wander from the OP topic, but this is something I have long been trying to figure out.
As you mention, it would make sense for a Linux distro to have more than one version of a particular library. If OldButReliableApp v1.0 depended on SomeLibrary v1.0, but NewAndFancyApp v2.5 depended on SomeLibrary v3.5, then I'd want the two versions of the library to coexist.
For some reason, this wouldn't work on Mandrake 10.0o: the newer library displaced the old, at least when I managed it with the "urpmi" tool. I've never understood this. It seems that the name of the library is hardcoded into the application binary, so if OldButReliableApp needs "/usr/lib/SomeLibrary", heaven help you if you try to rename it to "/usr/lib/SomeLibrary_Old"! If the package manager installs NewAndFancyApp, which demands a newer version of "/usr/lib/SomeLibrary", then the old version gets wiped. Isn't this DLL Hell all over again? Why can't we do all this with symlinks instead? Or does Ubuntu allow multiple library versions?
In my case, I'm referring to XFree86 supporting the Video Out on my ATI Rage Fury Pro, whereas X.org is the newest and bestest. You ask, "Why not upgrade the hardware?" --which I could, although a good video card with TV out is a bit more than "practically free" --but I wanted Linux partly to escape the "upgrade trap" and run stuff on older hardware. If I have to stop using old hardware which had been working fine, such as my video card, just to run a new version of the software, I would be back in Windows hell where Microsoft dictates the demand for hardware.
I apologize for the somewhat tangential topic, but I imagine that I'm not the only one who might want this answered. Perhaps people in developing countries with less availability of hardware might be wondering the same thing.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
/clap
Finally someone speaks some sense instead of the annoying fanboi canned FUD.
Speed doesn't change drastically simply by changing distros. Any administrator could tell you this.
The fact that slackware or debian simply has less turned on by default merely reflects a different mindset. I as a developer would *rather* have everything turned on and installed so that I can go back and turn things off as opposed to finding everything I want, installing it, and turning it on. Neither mindset is incorrect, it's merely preference.
Also, the speed difference between FC4 and FC5 is quite drastic as well, which I believe is due to the improvements the gnome team have made. FC5 is quick and snappy as hell now. I'm loving it.
And for the love of GOD. Please stop calling software/features that *you* don't like bloat. Just because you don't need/want it, doesn't make it bloat. Turn it off, uninstall it, and shut up already.
It's a growing problem with many Linux software packages these days: they depend on having a valid hostname in order to function.
:)
The GNOME desktop is especially notorious for this.
I'm sad to see the Ubuntu installer also having this flaw.
Many people are in situations like yours, where they don't have access to valid hostnames, but a perfectly good IP address to use.
It's gotten so bad in some situations that I've taken to setting up a "hostname wall", similar to a DNS wall: basically a huge table of dummy hostnames like ip-10-1-1-1 and ip-192-168-1-1, resolving to exactly what you'd expect. I'm seriously thinking of writing my own glibc libnss plugin to do this automatically. Has anybody else done this already? It would save me the trouble
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
That was my point. Since Kubuntu is developed as an alternative, it's not going to add bloat to vanilla Ubuntu, as the grandparent post originall asserted.
There is no newer Firefox in backports anyway, keep in mind.
Snap! I just wanted to let you know you made me laugh. Hard.
I agree with your solution proposal (compile kernel), but the costumized boot scripts and some other problems make it difficult to have a stable and fully-functional (own compile) kernel in Ubuntu. Hence, for Linux newbies (Ubuntu's audience), to get speed means to try to switch to another distro.
not to mention the not-so-much known problem that Ubuntu -Breezy- starts slowing down (yes, like Windows) with time.
Other people have had the same problem. This distribution:
http://gobolinux.org/index.php?page=faq
Is an attempt to address your concerns, although it is not particularly newbie friendly. I haven't tried it in a few years, so I can't give a review. But it may be the answer you want.
That's rewriting the algorithm to take advantage of the MMX. You aren't going to get that from adding --mmx -ffast-math to the gcc command line :)
I'm sorry, but you're absolutely wrong in this respect. I have upgraded to the next distribution at last twice that I can recall, using Yum.
See HERE for the "secret recipe."
It was relatively painless.
As you can see from the site, it has been possible to upgrade distributions using Yum since FC1--so I'm not sure where you got your information.
I used to use APT with Fedora, until FC4 when Yum became facile enough to use on an ongoing basis. Since then, I've abandoned APT entirely. The fact that the Fedora project officially supports Yum, and that they have improved it dramatically over the past year, seals the deal for me.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Maybe I should switch to Redhat.. a Jersey speaking computer would be so cool :)
Install the w32codecs package, in the Universe repositories. Two clicks, done. If that's too much for you, then you are lazy and just like to bitch, and XP is the OS for you.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Yes, you can have multiple versions of the same library at the same time.
In Linux the libs are in the format of libname.so.number.
Basically it's a problem of packagin, because the package libfoo.1.1.1 will always replace libfoo.1.2.1. The solution that the distros use is change the name of the package, for example in ubuntu you have glade and glade-2, so you can have both versions installed, the same goes with gstreamer, in my ubuntu machine i have installed gstreamer 0.8 and 0.10. This is used when the library brokes compability, so you can stay with your old version.
So, your problem may be a bad package in Mandrake (obviusly i'm not sure).
Greets
I noticed with FC5 that if you turn off SELinux completely the performance goes up by 20-35%
I have to agree with the above poster. I've been running debian stable servers for years now but I've yet to do a successful dist-upgrade.
The last one I tried didn't take into account the raid 1 configuration I had going. Couldn't boot either drive after that.
Reinstall is the way to go still.
Let me guess; neither you nor the gp have ever used Kubuntu or read the docs.
From TF FAQ:
------------
* What is Kubuntu?
Kubuntu is the first Ubuntu derived distribution. Our Kubuntu CDs are made up of Ubuntu's base plus KDE. You can get exactly the same effect by installing Ubuntu and adding the KDE packages (and removing the Gnome packages) from the Ubuntu archives.
* Is this a fork of Ubuntu?
No, it is an official part of Ubuntu. All our packages are in the same archives.
----------
So of *course* most commits will be in ubuntu, as the *only* difference between kubuntu and ubuntu is the existence of the kubuntu-desktop package. Of *course* there are fewer kubuntu commits; the vast majority of the distro doesn't care what desktop you are using.
You hit the nail on the head. Mandrake was always really strict when it came to versioning, and it always bit people in the ass. KDE depended on nearly everything you installed; you couldn't remove kde-artwork without removing XFree! Mandrake created their own little dll hell by doing things this way. It still pains me to remember what I couldn't remove or upgrade on my old Mandrake system just because the dependencies were so far-reaching for every package.
Are there some defined comparisons about performance with Ubuntu, versus other common distros? Identification of where and why, etc. Would be interesting reading.
i skip live-CDs and go straight to install, it's really not ubuntus fault though, i had to bugger through five hours of trials to get the dang card to work with windows (a windows patch/auto restart short circuited my embedded chip, bought the card, installed, didn't work, go into bios, force embedded sound, and then it uses the soundcard... effin geniuses at compaq.)
I was under the impression that Gentoo existed to be flexible and allow you to do things the way you wanted to without the distro tools getting in the way.
Compiling everything and your uncle is not what helps you do what you want with your computer.
I don't think you'll get a 10% speed increase from compiling everything instead of using generic binaries.
Well, "main reason for existing" might be a little broad and open to interpretation. I don't know what other distro offers full controlled builds of your entire system other than Gentoo though, so that's a Gentoo advantage (or disadvantage, since portage is sorely lacking in binary packages.. depends on how you look at it).
:) On a good note, you aren't ever going to see a decrease in performance with the righ arch specified.
I wouldn't be surprised with a 10% increase or more in something like ssh or libgmp using march=pentium4 over mcpu=i686, but those are rather specific cases. You're pulling in the proper timing tables AND opening up the newer processor specific instruction sets which are mostly targetted toward math functions. If your playing in KDE all day and surfing the web, you aren't going to see any difference at all because you are user-bound anyway.
I've seen benchmarks where there was as much as a 50% difference over generic libs... the problem though is that they were contrived benchmarks
The big advantage *I* see to gentoo is portage. It's slower to install new packages then apt-get, but when something goes awry, I have complete access to the build tree of the entire system. USE flags are very convienient ways to eliminate entire feature sets of some packages, and I have run into many cases where feature sets conflict. Another advantage is in upgrades. Notice that Gentoo doesn't version their distro... that's because any install that is maintained is always the latest version because of the way portage works. The fact that by using Gentoo I get proc specific binaries instead of generic ones is, IMHO a side benefit and not nearly as important.
I have had Gentoo distro tools get in my way though. I'd say, if you want a raw distro without tools getting in your way, Slackware is a better choice. Gentoo DEFINATELY has a philosophy of how a system should fit together and the tools do enforce that.
I do the live CD to see if there is any major hang-ups with hardware detection. If there are none, then I go ahead and install. One nice feature with the Ubuntu and Edubuntu live CD's is they are also an install cd. After boot, one of the desktop icons is there to start an install.
The truth shall set you free!
I've been running Ubuntu Flight 6, and it really is pretty sweet. Unlike almost every other Linux distro I've tried, it automatically detected all the important stuff on my new laptop (Toshiba Satellite M55-S139). I don't have 3d acceleration, but it detected my ATi card, the correct resolution to use with my widescreen lcd monitor, my Wireless G wifi card, etc. It's freaking amazing.
Ok, so I've coming off running Debian stable + IceWM on a 450MHz pIII laptop, but still.
I haven't thought that I'd be able to say this until Vista came out, but this latest release of Ubuntu will raise the bar. Linux is not only ready for the desktop, it's actually easier to use then Windows. Out of the box.
I have nothing to say.
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.