Ain't gonna happen.

Story: Ubuntu 12.04.1 out now, 10.04 users prompted to update Total Replies: 34
Author Content
jdixon

Aug 24, 2012
4:29 PM EDT
Sorry Mark, but when 10.04 goes away I'll be moving to another distro on my netbook. I won't be upgrading to 12.04.
caitlyn

Aug 25, 2012
1:09 AM EDT
Some of us gave up on Ubuntu after 8.04 went away and we aren't looking back.
herzeleid

Aug 25, 2012
4:02 PM EDT
Caitlyn, you've always been a redhat fan, when did you ever "give up on" ubuntu? Anyhoo, I switched to ubuntu at 8.04 and haven't looked back since. Very happily running kubuntu 12.04 today.
caitlyn

Aug 25, 2012
4:17 PM EDT
I wrote glowing reviews of Dapper and Edgy and more mixed reviews of Feisty and Gutsy for O'Reilly back in the day. I also praised the 8.04 implementation on my HP netbook when I bought it preloaded with Ubuntu. Red Hat and clones have been my business choice, never my personal choice on the desktop unless you go way back to 2003 or so. Slackware derivatives (first VectorLinux then SalixOS) were my choice until recently but before that it was definitely Xubuntu. Oh, and I did make a brief return to Ubuntu (actually Kubuntu Netbook Edition) with Karmic and Lucid, so I really didn't give up completely until 10.10.

Xubuntu Dapper review: http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2006/06/meet_the_newest...

That review was referenced on WikiPedia even: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xubuntu

Xubuntu Edgy review: http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2006/12/xubuntu_gets_ed...

Xubuntu Feisty review: http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2007/05/xubuntu_gets_fe...

Ubuntu Feisty 64-bit: http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2007/08/the_64bit_exper...

Ubuntu Gutsy 64-bit: http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2007/08/the_end_of_a_gu...

Kubuntu Netbook Edition, Karmic: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20091130
Steven_Rosenber

Aug 25, 2012
4:39 PM EDT
Gotta say, Xubuntu and Lubuntu 12.04 are both pretty nice.
herzeleid

Aug 26, 2012
3:11 PM EDT
I suppose it's all a matter of personal preference. My own preference is to seek the OS/distro that causes me the least amount of stress, and allows me to get my work done with the least amount of awkwardness. For me today that OS/distro is kubuntu, though I am certainly open to something better if it ever comes along.

Like you, I do RHEL (and SLES) for a living, but as for my own desktop use I started with SLS in 1993 and have since then used slackware, redhat, caldera, mandrake, fedora, suse, sled, ubuntu and debian. I've at a few of the one-man show type distros (e.g. mint, bodhi) but for me it's just as easy to start with a more mainline distro and customize it to suit.

CFWhitman

Aug 27, 2012
10:18 AM EDT
Well, I like several different distros. I have never really been a fan of Ubuntu proper, but several of the variations have seen a lot of time on my computers. On my laptop I like to have low latency processing for sound. That makes it so that the easiest thing to load and get that, as well as have all hardware working out of the box (with just a slight tweak to sound configuration, which seems to be necessary in every distro), at present is Ubuntu Studio (which has switched to Xfce for a desktop, which I tended to use anyway).

For a while I had Linux Mint Debian Edition with a Liquorix kernel on it for a low latency configuration. I decided to try Ubuntu Studio again after they went to Xfce. I still may return to LMDE since Debian based distributions tend to be a little quicker than Ubuntu based ones.

I also have Xubuntu around on a laptop which is the same model of laptop I gave my nephew with Xubuntu loaded. I guess the big reasons I used that distribution are the extensive repositories and the general availability of Ubuntu packages for any software not in the repositories. It also tends to be a bit more cutting edge than Debian proper, which is sometimes handy for desktop use.

I love Slackware, but I still tend not to use it on my regular desktop because installing and updating software tends to consume more time on Slackware (though if you have the time, everything ends up exactly as you want it). I always have Slackware on something though (it's on my home backup server right now).
jdixon

Aug 27, 2012
10:24 AM EDT
> I love Slackware, but I still tend not to use it on my regular desktop because installing and updating software tends to consume more time on Slackware...

Have you looked at sbopkg and slapt-src? I use sbopkg, but haven't looked at slapt-src yet.
flufferbeer

Aug 27, 2012
11:47 AM EDT
@herzelied

> I suppose it's all a matter of personal preference...

And it sure seems to a bunch of us that a WHOLE DARN LOT of people personally prefer Linux Mint more than the Baboontus of ANY stripes (or primate fur types?) DistroWatch continues to bear this fact out.

2c
caitlyn

Aug 27, 2012
10:16 PM EDT
Quoting:DistroWatch continues to bear this fact out.
Even Ladislav will tell you that the DistroWatch page hit ranking is pretty darned meaningless. I don't believe for a minute that Mint or Mageia are more popular than Ubuntu. I do believe that they just maybe might be more popular with the Linux hobbyists who frequent DistroWatch.
BernardSwiss

Aug 27, 2012
10:26 PM EDT
Well, one could argue that people go to DistroWatch to learn about those Distros that they're not currently using themselves -- which assumption leads in turn to the logical conclusion that a high ranking on DistroWatch indicates precisely that people aren't using that particular distro very much...

:-P

.
caitlyn

Aug 27, 2012
10:36 PM EDT
Quoting:Have you looked at sbopkg and slapt-src? I use sbopkg, but haven't looked at slapt-src yet.
slapt-src is a standard piece of SalixOS. They also have a really nice graphical front end for it in Sourcery. The problem, as always with Slackware-related stuff, is that if you are missing a dependency the compilation fails and you're back to square one. While slapt-src has the ability to resolve dependencies automatically most distros, including SalixOS, point at slackbuilds.org, which does not.
Quoting: I love Slackware, but I still tend not to use it on my regular desktop because installing and updating software tends to consume more time on Slackware...
I never will understand the Slackers who insist the lack of automated dependency resolution is somehow an advantage. I have had zero, as in none, as in no problems with "dependency h#ll" as claimed by Slackers in at least seven or eight years using, let's see, just about every other distro on the planet that resolves dependencies, including supposedly difficult ones like Arch Linux and Gentoo. Sure, there was an advantage back in the mid '90s. There hasn't been in a long time. The lack of dependency resolution is the biggest time waster in Slackware.
Steven_Rosenber

Aug 27, 2012
11:01 PM EDT
Aptitude or apt wanting to remove the entire GNOME desktop when you want to deep-six a single app like Evolution? That's a big of dependency h#ll that I've been through.
caitlyn

Aug 27, 2012
11:40 PM EDT
Quoting:Aptitude or apt wanting to remove the entire GNOME desktop when you want to deep-six a single app like Evolution? That's a big of dependency hell that I've been through.
As noted in another thread, lately I've avoided distros which use apt / Debian packaging. Perhpas that helps.

I have seen what appeared like over aggressive removals on GNOME stuff which, when you look at the source code, actually were justified. The GNOME Project is very big on lots of interlinking dependencies, some of which seem ridiculous to me.
BernardSwiss

Aug 27, 2012
11:42 PM EDT
Isn't that the fault of the Gnome devs (or maybe I mean the Ubuntu devs?), rather than Apt?
caitlyn

Aug 27, 2012
11:44 PM EDT
Quoting:sn't that the fault of the Gnome devs (or maybe I mean the Ubuntu devs?), rather than Apt?
If the problem carries over to distros using other package systems then the answer is yes, and I believe in some cases it may. If it is unique to how the Debian packaging system works then the answer is no.
Steven_Rosenber

Aug 27, 2012
11:48 PM EDT
Whoever's fault it is, it happens and it's annoying.
caitlyn

Aug 27, 2012
11:49 PM EDT
Also, @Steven-Rosenberg, as originally used what you describe is not "dependency h#ll". That term was coined when Red Hat upgraded rpm way back when and you got into a situation where packages within a distro repository were literally incompatible with one another, leaving you with no easy way to make things work. That was back in the '90s.

The closest thing I've seen to that in recent years is the circular dependency problem in Gentoo, but there is an easy workaround for that one, which amounts to using portage to install a binary package of the offending library and gcc version first, as binaries, with no dependencies. The Gentoo developers were smart enough not to insist everything be built from source in their packaging system precisely because changes in the compiler and/or toolset could cause a problem when doing a large number of upgrades.

I also saw what could be considered a mini version of dependency h#ll because of some poor repository management in one of the very early Fedora Core releases but that got fixed awfully quickly.
caitlyn

Aug 27, 2012
11:52 PM EDT
Quoting:Whoever's fault it is, it happens and it's annoying.
Granted, but eliminating dependency resolution and letting you break GNOME entirely, as a Slackware + GNOME system lets you do, is not any less annoying. It still doesn't provide an example of where not having automated dependency resolution is an advantage.

I suggest you look at how much of GNOME has dependencies on Evolution libraries. You're in for quite a shock. I suspect the package manager actually worked correctly in your example. If so, BernardSwiss is right: the fault is either with the GNOME devs or the packagers for the distro. I'd bet it lies with the GNOME devs.
jdixon

Aug 28, 2012
6:52 AM EDT
> I have had zero, as in none, as in no problems with "dependency hell" as claimed by Slackers in at least seven or eight years...

Slackware is older than seven or eight years, Caitlyn. It's possible that you are correct and that dependency resolution is now a "solved problem", but that wasn't the case for a long time. I'd actually be willing to place a small wager that it's not the case even now, but I doubt we could reach an agreement on the terms.

Patrick may revisit the decision some day, who knows. It's not like he hasn't changed his mind before.
CFWhitman

Aug 28, 2012
9:24 AM EDT
It's been a while, but I've had issues compiling software on a dependency managed distribution before. One thing about Slackware is that if you're willing to put the work in, you can always get it to do exactly what you want. That doesn't always seem to be true of other distributions. I agree that problems that require Slackware's lack of dependency tracking are rare these days, though.
Jeff91

Aug 28, 2012
5:33 PM EDT
I'd just like to comment on Bodhi being called a "one man show" project - we have a good deal of people that work on our releases -> http://www.bodhilinux.com/about_team.php

~Jeff
caitlyn

Aug 29, 2012
2:19 AM EDT
Quoting: It's possible that you are correct and that dependency resolution is now a "solved problem", but that wasn't the case for a long time.


@jdixon: I don't disagree with you, but I think that was solved quite some years back. Ditto the issues with early iterations of PAM, which is still not included in Slackware. I chuckle when people recommend Slackware as a server distro since it doesn't support multiple methods of authentication without PAM and doesn't enable SELinux. From a security standpoint Slackware is nowhere near enterprise or even small business server ready. It was once. It isn't now.

Quoting: One thing about Slackware is that if you're willing to put the work in, you can always get it to do exactly what you want. That doesn't always seem to be true of other distributions.
Now here is a statement I completely disagree with. I have yet to find a general purpose distro where I can't do what I want how I want from the command line. Not a one. Since I used to write reviews for DistroWatch and O'Reilly I've tried way too many distros. Under the hood it's all Linux and anything I can do in Slackware I can do in any other distro.

BTW, regarding dependency checking, I can turn that off in most distros as well if I had a reason to do it. The only time I do is when installing proprietary software (i.e.: HP's Lightscribe software) which will fail on dependencies when it isn't built against the same distro. Generally the deps are present but packaging differences between distros causes issues. If you stay within what is packaged for your favorite distro I'd say problems are pretty well non-existent nowadays.
dinotrac

Aug 29, 2012
8:43 AM EDT
Hmmmm......@Jeff91

I've got a couple of mythbuntu boxes I wouldn't mind migrating away. They're at 11.10 now, and that's bad enough.

Does bodhi offer anything for somebody running mythtv?
CFWhitman

Aug 29, 2012
2:44 PM EDT
Quoting:Under the hood it's all Linux and anything I can do in Slackware I can do in any other distro.


I think you're taking the statement too literally. Of course you can take whatever distribution you want and dismantle what makes it that distribution and reshape it however you like. However, you may have to break package management or dependency management to do so, or do something else that involves a lot of headache. In some odd situations, the extra work you might do with Slackware ends up being less work than you would do with another distribution, and leaves the original system intact. At least, I have found this to be true at times in the past.
caitlyn

Aug 29, 2012
9:43 PM EDT
@CFWhitman: I still strongly disagree with you. I mainly work (professionally) with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and there is no need to dismantle anything. Slackware is ALWAYS more work than.... just about anything else.
Fettoosh

Aug 30, 2012
9:44 AM EDT
Quoting: Isn't that the fault of the Gnome devs (or maybe I mean the Ubuntu devs?), rather than Apt?


Just read this article and has this snippet about why Google uses Ubuntu for its internal desktop.

Quoting:That said, Bushnell was asked why Ubuntu instead of say Fedora or openSUSE? He replied, “We chose Debian because packages and apt [Debian's basic software package programs] are light-years of RPM (Red Had and SUSE's default package management system.]” And, why Ubuntu over the other Debian-based Linux distributions? “Because it's release cadence is awesome and Canonical [Ubuntu's parent company] offers good support.”


Edited: Added next paragraph
Quoting:When asked about Unity use, Bushnell said, “Unity? Haters going hate. Our desktop users are all over the map when it comes to their interfaces. Some use GNOME, some use KDE, some use X-Window and X-Terms. Some want Unity because it reminds them of the Mac. We see Mac lovers moving to Unity.” There is no default Goobuntu interface


Exactly what I have said in a different thread why I myself use Kubuntu, but coming from Google, it must carry some weight.

Just noting.

Quoting: http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/33759/

That is one reason why I don't favor other good distros like Suse, Fedora, etc... which are non-Apt.

Among the Debian based derivatives, I find Kubuntu to be best overall KDE based distro.
gus3

Aug 30, 2012
3:49 PM EDT
@caitlyn,
Quoting:Gentoo is ALWAYS more work than.... just about anything else.
FTFY. ;-)
caitlyn

Aug 31, 2012
12:38 AM EDT
@gus3: Fair comment.
flufferbeer

Aug 31, 2012
1:29 AM EDT
I'd disagree w/ that. More like PNFY than FTFY.

2c
Jeff91

Aug 31, 2012
8:18 AM EDT
@dinotrac Not really. But anything possible to setup on a 12.04 core is possible on Bodhi

~Jeff
caitlyn

Aug 31, 2012
7:10 PM EDT
Like I said in the other thread, I read the "light years ahead" comment and it has no specifics. It's personal preference at Google not supported by any facts. Earlier in this thread I mentioned delta rpms. There is no equivalent AFAICT in Debian. I can't name on feature of Debian packaging missing from Red Hat packaging. So, the fact that the comment comes from Google, the company that wants to mine and sell my personal data, really carries no weight at all for me. The only way to make a comment like that compelling, let alone believable, is to back it up with specifics.
Steven_Rosenber

Aug 31, 2012
9:21 PM EDT
Caitlyn, I agree. The package formats themselves (.deb and .rpm) are one thing, but the tools that handle them (apt and yum) are another. From my use of RHEL-based distros and Fedora, I've found yum to be an excellent tool. I'm not unhappy with apt and Aptitude, but I have nothing but good things to say about yum.
CFWhitman

Sep 04, 2012
10:27 AM EDT
I think that apt support for pdiff updates is equivalent to delta rpm, although I don't think it is supported so far in Ubuntu (it is in Debian, apparently even in the most recent stable release).

Edited for out of date information.
Steven_Rosenber

Sep 04, 2012
6:22 PM EDT
I've noticed the pdiff lines when I update. I had no idea it was for this kind of thing.

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