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Ubuntu 6.06 Reviewed
Mark writes "This year has been a huge step forward for Desktop Linux users. First, Fedora Core 5 was released and featured the new Gnome 2.14. Then SUSE 10.1 showed us how well applications could be integrated to make a desktop look great. Now it was time for Ubuntu to release their latest version: 'Dapper Drake.'" Oh yeah, the inital review is good, too. Worth checking out for desktop Linux users.
Wow...I made a simple change to my sources.list file and ran sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and 15 minutes later I went from Breezy to Dapper. No reboot required. Bravo to the Ubuntu team!
-2 days :)
With a little work, yes.
If you're question was whether XGL is the default, the answer is of course no. XGL is unstable and it's future is uncertain as it's 'competitor' AIGLX is included in Xorg 7.1.
In a nutshell:
So overall, I'd say, "excellent" on the visuals, apps choices, functionality (so long as wireless networking or network printers are not needed).
IMO, desktop users will be happy. Notebook users will be less than happy.
From the Ubuntu website http://www.ubuntu.com/ />, alternate is for:
* creating pre-configured OEM systems;
* setting up automated deployments;
* upgrading from older installations without network access;
* LVM and/or RAID partitioning;
* installing GRUB to a location other than the Master Boot Record;
* installs on systems with less than about 192MB of RAM.
Sounds to me like something that could be invaluable to people not necessarily running the latest and greatest.
The desktop CD boots into a live session and lets you install from there, with very few options that can be changed.
The alternate CD boots into the old text based installer, and allows more options to be configured.
I don't much care for the desktop method of installing.. it didn't even ask if it was OK to install GRUB, just went ahead and did it.
While Ubuntu is, IMO, the best Linux distribution out there, it still has issues. For example, I noticed that, in that default installation, there is a boot option for "Recovery Console," which simply gives anyone who starts it root access to the computer without a password. While it can be disabled by editing a configuration file, something like that should never have been added in the first place.
Also, after installing Dapper on my computer in one location and then moving to another network, my ability to use DHCP suddenly disappeared! I'm sure I can get it back, by Mac OS X and XP didn't give me any trouble. (Though, to give credit where credit is due, XP died completely, because of a hardware upgrade, which, didn't affect Dapper at all.)
All in all, though, not to be overly negative, I recently set up Dapper on a school development computer and got Apache, PHP, PostgreSQL, and SSH working in a matter of minutes, so, to the developers of Ubuntu, kudos.
Probably the two biggest issues that many have with Ubuntu are that it takes extra work to install MP3 support - not to mention every other codec or player.
MEPIS has recently confirmed the fears of some that Ubuntu is turning into a platform, displacing Debian itself...MEPIS is/was a KDE desktop based on Debian. The founder's concern with the stability and reliability of the Debian base recently led him to base his distro on Ubuntu sources instead.
So now with MEPIS, you get Ubuntu, except that it's KDE default, and it comes with every player (Real, Quicktime) and codec plugin for Kaffeine that can be found. Plus, the general layout of menus and the installer have won good reviews all around.
They're currently a week into beta4 on the new version based on the Dapper base and will likely have an RC1 out by mid-June.
To both parent and GP, I figured out how to do this. It takes some work, like many things in Linux, but is doable.
t o-breezy.html This may help.
/etc/fstab). From that point on, selling Ubuntu to him as easy-to-use was something of a losing battle.
http://www.ublug.org/ubuntu/twinview/twinview-how
I had to put this in the Device section:
Identifier "NVIDIA Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x]"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "RenderAccel" "1"
Option "DigitalVibrance" "127" #Vary me
Option "backingstore" "true"
#twinview
Option "TwinView" "1"
Option "TwinViewOrientation" "RightOf"
Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "31.5-82.0"
Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "50-70"
Option "MetaModes" "1600x1200,1280x1024; 1280x1024,1280x1024; 1280x1024,NULL; 1024x768,NULL; 800x600,NULL; 640x480,NULL"
Ubuntu has been wonderful compared to other Linux distros. There are still headaches, and I think it's disingenuous to say that it is anywhere near as easy to use as Windows. I gave Dapper (beta 6) to my friend, claiming this. He was happy with the install and was delighted when the first thing he saw was that it had put icons on his desktop for his Windows drive. He clicked on them, and it said "you do not have permission to access this" (because the drives are mounted by root). There was no obvious recourse (the solution being editing
It just really bothers me that literally the first thing he saw on his nice, clean desktop was broken. I have had exactly the same situation in installs on other computers (which is why I knew how to fix it). I sincerely hope this is working in the current release.
I use Ubuntu as my desktop OS, mainly because of Ion3. I love the strength and flexibility of Linux. But I no longer recommend it to those without serious computer experience. Ubuntu is trying very hard, but I think it's gonna take them a couple more years. I know this is the cliche in Linux, "ready for the desktop in five years", and I don't think it will necessarially be that long.
It's just that any OS designed for non-experts needs to do a lot more whole-system novice-user testing.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Nah, that's Slackware.
;)
j/k
(Also consider it just proof of concept; you might not want to do exactly the same things. For example, it's better (IMHO) to do things the right way than to use automated options like Automatix or EasyUbuntu.)
On May 29th, two days before release, an ATI bug was introduced via the xorg driver that makes Dapper unstable on certain ATI based systems. In my own case this means that my G4 is now unusable. Just as a reminder, if you think you might be affected, don't upgrade.
Just for reference, the forum post and the bug report.
What if the entire Universe were a chrooted environment with everything symlinked from the host?
The desktop installer can install just fine on existing partitions, I did that yesterday and it worked fine. It was in fact Kubuntu, but it would be strange for them to have so big functionality differences between the installers...
Actually, they can. Fluendo, the makers of GStreamer, paid for a license. Canonical could include the GStreamer plugin binary legally, but because of Canonical's ideology, they won't, because the license wouldn't apply if a user recompiled it from source ----- yet they still include nVidia and ATI binary drivers, where a user can't recompile them at all.
The fundamnetal problem is that MP3s are patented. As long as Ubuntu is dedicated to giving out free and liberated software, they'll be at odds with the patent holders who hold the right ensure that neither of those goals is possible. Recently there have been attempts to work within the patent holder's framework to provide something legal and acceptable, but the closest we have is Fluendo's licencing program, which explicitly doesn't allow for redistribution, one of the key things in the GPL's operation. For example, Ubuntu can mail you a 6.06 CD containing the mp3 plugin, but it's legally questionable for you to redistribute those CDs to your friends. And MEPIS would certainly be in trouble, unless they also secured such a contract. Ubuntu represents it's distro as a "people should be able to modify and share changes" aka a Free Software distro. This contract goes against this ideal, and if MEPIS isn't aware of this contract, and chooses to modify Ubuntu in other ways, then Ubuntu's exposed the people they told could modify the software, people like they guy behind MEPIS, to hidden legal liabilities.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
True, it should be easier but the concept of privileges will be new to many many MS Windows users but they'll have to get used to it or else wait til Microsoft forces it on them in a totally inconsistant way. MSFT let them slide with running as admin for far too long and the destruction from viral infections, spyware, etc shows how flawed this is. *nix systmes have a long long lead in this regard but it should surely be easier for the user to change permissions without making it a security risk.
I'm on a KDE desktop now so I can't check to see if there's a way to put gsudo(?) in front of the call to nautilus for that drive object instead of having to edit fstab as root.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
The odd thing is most of those were kde specific bugs.
:-(
I remember reading at the last minute that Ubuntu decided to add kde 3.5.1 and xorg7.1. Both are only a week or two old. Bad decision.
Ubuntu is much larger than kubuntu so they probably ignored the kde bugs as most of them used gnome.
I find it disturbing but sadly these days all the distro's have these bugs. I found the livecd less buggy then suse's or knoppix so far.
But I need XP for school this summer and I will wait until next fall to install Ubuntu with kde. By then it should be more baked with less bugs.
I have been lucky in seeing no bugs at all besides my touchpad being too sensitive. I am sure I can configure that in XOrg.conf when I eventual decide to install it later.
http://saveie6.com/
Xegl is a way to do it because AIGLX is just another similar way to do something like XGL - put an accelerated X windowing system in a full screen X window.
Lots of people complaining about X breaking, and I had the same problem (and a load of others) -- then I realised I ran "apt-get upgrade" instead of "apt-get dist-upgrade". Dist-upgrade worked, and fixed X (and several, but not all the other problems)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Yes it does, but there are problems. (The same problems that exist in SuSE. No DRI being the #1). However, AIGLX is fairly stable, and I've been running it on my laptop for about 2 months now. There are some problems with playing video, and 3D graphics have a tendency to flicker, but I don't do any gaming on my laptop, so it doesn't bother me. I just make sure that I have a 2D screensaver selected, and it's fine.
It sounds like for all of these regressions enabling the "ati" driver in xorg.conf will fix the major issues. Of course, the problem then is that you're running the ati driver, not the fglrx driver, which actually comes from ATI. (Confusing as hell, I know).
You should see something like this in
Until such time as ATI gets their damn fglrx drivers in line and fixes that regression, it seems like using the open source driver is the easiest alternative.
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* - Sorry if this is totally pedantic, but you can reverse the effects of any bad edits you make to xorg.conf by the following command: