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

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.

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.