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.

Comments

Painless Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Painless Upgrade

[shreevatsa]

The many (equivalent) ways to upgrade to Dapper ("Ubuntu 6.06") are detailed at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DapperUpgrades. This, of course, is assuming you're already running Breezy ("Ubuntu 5.10").

Re:Painless Upgrade

[HankB]

sudo bash
cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.just-to-be-safe
vi /etc/apt/sources.list
1,$s/breezy/dapper/g
<esc> wq
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
shutdown -r now

During the dist-upgrade step you will probably have to answer some questions about using new config files vs. existing modified ones.

You do need to reboot if you want the new kernel running. (2.6.15)

Afterwards you might have to tweak some things like the wireless drivers or display drivers. I had to download the synaptics driver because the new one has bugs that manifest for 64 bit systems.

But it really is that easy!

-hank

Re:Painless Upgrade

[misleb]

Not to take the wind out of the Ubuntu sails or anything, but such upgradability has been a feature of Debian for a long time now. Ubuntu just inheritted it. I have a Debian desktop that was once installed 8 years ago with Debian 1.2 or something like that and through the years it has been upgraded from one stable release to the next (and sometime unstable/testing). The HD was also moved into faster boxes.

-matthew

Me experiences

[QuietLagoon]

I just finished spending about 3 hours on a test install on my IBM Thinkpad notebook.

In a nutshell:

• install was flawless. Very clean, very fast. I like the LIve CD initial install, then the icon to do the full install.
• apps install were a good selection, not the usual Linux overwhelming "install all apps I can find". Organization of the apps on the menus was nice.
• I like the admin capability, instead of having to bounce to root when I want to do something. Much more thought out than Microsoft Vista's harassing UAC.
• wireless support was lacking. It saw my Atheros 802.11abg PC Card, but could not do anything with it. I could not connect to my wireless network, even when I cycled security down to 'no security', i.e., it could not connect to a wide open access point.
• I tried to send a test page to a network printer (a share on a Windows box) , and the whole notebook hung solid. Power-down required to get it moving again.

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.

Re:Me experiences

[Junta]

-Wireless support:
Funny thing there, install networkmanager (and probably the gnome applet to go with it) and a great deal of the complexity goes down. It's surprisingly easy. At least with my ipw chipset. It configured things for WPA or WEP or wide open. It lacks LEAP support and therefore I couldn't use just that and had to do more advanced things, but if you just need wide open, WEP, and WPA support it will make configuring the wireless Windows-easy.

-Remote print support:
I recently wrestled with printing to a windows desktop system with attached printer, but the bad side effect wasn't as you described. In my case, the target windows Box print queue would hang, requiring restart of the windows print spool service. The workaround was to disable bidirectional support under the ports tab of the printer tab on the windows box. At least in my case with an hp printer/hpijs, you can't do the bidirectional support on a windows server, but hplip would support it locally, but that won't help to access a windows printer.

So wireless support they left out the thing that makes it much easier by default (don't understand why), and with that it would have been very nearly perfect there.

Print support to a Windows shared printer was quite evil and obscure google searches were required to figure it out. It was nothing that Ubuntu itself could have done much about, since HPLIP doesn't support remote printing, and HPIJS supports remote printing, but not the bidirectional features. Add to that the only work around is a server-side print config change. However, I imagine this to be a fairly frequent for Ubuntu users and probably should be documented somewhere prominent.

Re:Desktop/Server/Alternate

[jmataya]

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.

MEPIS: (K)Ubuntu with codecs

[rbrander]

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.

Re:Pretty nice

[Council]

To both parent and GP, I figured out how to do this. It takes some work, like many things in Linux, but is doable.

http://www.ublug.org/ubuntu/twinview/twinview-howt o-breezy.html This may help.

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 /etc/fstab). From that point on, selling Ubuntu to him as easy-to-use was something of a losing battle.

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.

Re:Good, but...

[smash]

While it could be seen as a security "issue" - there's nothing to stop someone booting a knoppix CD, linux boot floppy or any other number of options to get root on a Linux machine they have physical access to.

If you're paranoid about your users getting root on the box, physically secure it for a start and deny them shutdown permission (to reboot to the boot menu) you'd be better off...

Good for desktops, bad for certain laptops.

[goofyheadedpunk]

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.

MP3 in Free Distros

[xenocide2]

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.