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Ubuntu 9.04 released
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Comments (36)
16 earlier comments in the full thread.
Well the upgrade appears to have been successful. I'm now running Jaunty on my laptop.
The upgrade process was pretty uneventful, It took most of yesterday to download 1745 files, I carried on working while it happened. When the files were finally down, it began the install process, which took about 15 minutes (it probably would have been less but I was out of the room) to install the new files, and remove the old ones, I had to answer one question and enter my password once. There was exactly one reboot, to load the new kernel, and I was back in business.
I can contrast this with having installed a service pack on Windows, which took several hours - that's after the files had downloaded - and at least 6 reboots, and then I had to reinstall some software, to make it work properly.
I can contrast this with having installed a service pack on Windows, which took several hours - that's after the files had downloaded - and at least 6 reboots, and then I had to reinstall some software, to make it work properly.
Don't tell the Windows users, ta. They might get jealous.
@gus, they won't believe me. Everyone "knows" that it's supposed to take several hours to install, and that multiple reboots are the norm.
Quoting:Don't tell the Windows users, ta. They might get jealous.
Same goes for Gentoo users; for this part:
Quoting:to download 1745 files, I carried on working while it happened. When the files were finally down, it began the install process, which took about 15 minutes
100 files per minute... Sweet!
OK, I have to give an Ubuntu thumbs up (grumble, growl).
I upgraded my mythbuntu box to Jaunty this morning without incident. First time that's happened to me for any Ubuntu upgrade.
I even snuck the upgrade in while my wife was at work because she had reached the point of threatening my future existence if I subjected the family to a broken myth box again.
Hooray.
I upgraded my mythbuntu box to Jaunty this morning without incident. First time that's happened to me for any Ubuntu upgrade.
I even snuck the upgrade in while my wife was at work because she had reached the point of threatening my future existence if I subjected the family to a broken myth box again.
Hooray.
What happened Dean, not going with SuSE anymore?
Well, I must confess I'm inclined to start using Ubuntu too. A bit fed up with Gentoo (some alpha/beta stuff is not available for it and I'm lazy), and it is very convenient to use 'what everyone' uses. However, I am not used to those Gnome apps. I believe my choices are -Getting used to them; which also means migrating my current documents (mainly Kontact may be a problem, not sure). -Just plainly installing & configuring my own stuff in Ubuntu; but that would take away my cause to go for Ubuntu -Use Kubuntu; but I heard it hoovers; which also goes for Fedora with KDE.
Now, from TA I understood Mandriva with KDE4 is neither the way to go. Dean's using Ubuntu, TA is doing so, the chick is going for Kubuntu, even herzeleid above is using it and I believe he also used something else in the past. I really wouldn't have predicted all those people now using Ubuntu a year ago. So I really begin to doubt my probably outdated vision Gnome is nice - but not for me. I'm tired of Windowmaker anyway.
As a conclusion: probably I'll try out this new Ubuntu version just like my fellow LXer'res; and hope it can configure my existing LVM-volumes during installation.
Well, I must confess I'm inclined to start using Ubuntu too. A bit fed up with Gentoo (some alpha/beta stuff is not available for it and I'm lazy), and it is very convenient to use 'what everyone' uses. However, I am not used to those Gnome apps. I believe my choices are -Getting used to them; which also means migrating my current documents (mainly Kontact may be a problem, not sure). -Just plainly installing & configuring my own stuff in Ubuntu; but that would take away my cause to go for Ubuntu -Use Kubuntu; but I heard it hoovers; which also goes for Fedora with KDE.
Now, from TA I understood Mandriva with KDE4 is neither the way to go. Dean's using Ubuntu, TA is doing so, the chick is going for Kubuntu, even herzeleid above is using it and I believe he also used something else in the past. I really wouldn't have predicted all those people now using Ubuntu a year ago. So I really begin to doubt my probably outdated vision Gnome is nice - but not for me. I'm tired of Windowmaker anyway.
As a conclusion: probably I'll try out this new Ubuntu version just like my fellow LXer'res; and hope it can configure my existing LVM-volumes during installation.
@hans: You may want to give Debian a(nother) try. I don't think you'll like Ubuntu very much, coming from Gentoo. I played with Ubuntu a couple of days ago and parts of it are just so.... annoying. They did a decent job of making an idiot-proof Linux but I feel somewhat limited when using it.
Things like "bulletproof X.org" are incredibly annoying to me and get in my way. I change the X.org configuration which accidentally does not work and I get a commandline. So I start typing something like "vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf" and then halfway through typing that, X suddently restarts into "safe" mode (whatever that is... it's not safe anyway*) and tells me my X is broken. Cancel. Stop. Yeah whatever. Commandline. Ah, finally! I type, and again it restarts X to jump the same question at me. WTF?!
Same goes for the "helpful" popup when auto-mounting media. Just shut up and put the icon on my desktop please. Their "restricted driver" feature is another annoyance. Everytime I tried using it to install graphics drivers (mostly ATI) it breaks. And when you try to go around it by manually installing the package from the ATI website it starts complaining.
Don't get me wrong, all those features are nice for a lot of people, but for me they get in my way. I can only imagine that for you coming from something like Gentoo it's even more annoying.
*) Ubuntu thinks 800x600 on Vesa is safe, but it's not. Many modern large LCD monitors can't even display 800x600 anymore. When I try it, I just get a message from my monitor saying the input signal is incompatible. Imagine a poor new Linux user facing that with nu clue as to what's going on.
Things like "bulletproof X.org" are incredibly annoying to me and get in my way. I change the X.org configuration which accidentally does not work and I get a commandline. So I start typing something like "vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf" and then halfway through typing that, X suddently restarts into "safe" mode (whatever that is... it's not safe anyway*) and tells me my X is broken. Cancel. Stop. Yeah whatever. Commandline. Ah, finally! I type, and again it restarts X to jump the same question at me. WTF?!
Same goes for the "helpful" popup when auto-mounting media. Just shut up and put the icon on my desktop please. Their "restricted driver" feature is another annoyance. Everytime I tried using it to install graphics drivers (mostly ATI) it breaks. And when you try to go around it by manually installing the package from the ATI website it starts complaining.
Don't get me wrong, all those features are nice for a lot of people, but for me they get in my way. I can only imagine that for you coming from something like Gentoo it's even more annoying.
*) Ubuntu thinks 800x600 on Vesa is safe, but it's not. Many modern large LCD monitors can't even display 800x600 anymore. When I try it, I just get a message from my monitor saying the input signal is incompatible. Imagine a poor new Linux user facing that with nu clue as to what's going on.
Oh no, now even Sander started using Ubuntu... Where's this world heading?
At least I'll be glad to see a commandline, ahum.
I recently did in a virtualized environment, and I actually managed to update to a point where I really believe I was running 'experimental'. Sadly in Debian there is no simple command that will show you what version you are running, or I'm simply not aware of it (something equal to the "emerge --info && cat /etc/make.conf a Gentoo user always does when filing bugs to show the state & versions of their system).
You might ask "Why were you running experimental in first place?" Well, I believed I needed it because I tried running KOffice2 and it was told somewhere it needed experimental. The good news is: KOffice2 worked!
After that, I needed some new VESA-driver because the 800X600 pxl screen annoyed me; and the little info on the net about running Lenny inside KVM suggested using the latest VESA-drivers. Those were not by default in experimental I remember, I had to enable some extra experimental flags somewhere.
apt-get told something about 'not possible' and started giving alternatives accompanied with scores (some of them below zero) which didn't work as well, but I was stupid enough to choose such an alternative and it broke my whole system till a point of no repair; non matching libraries probably.
Normally in Gentoo I'd had been able to revert or repair such an issue, but in Debian it is believed to be hard to revert some broken experimental system back to "default experimental" or "testing". Certainly a Debian-noob doesn't know I guess. Also because it's a binary distribution it seems to be a bit harder to mix 'bleeding edge' packages in an 'old stable' environment, something a Gentoo user might try if it didn't mean compiling whole KDE4. Apart from that Gentoo does deem KDE4 'not stable'; which says enough. Conclusion of all of this is I should have made a backup of my Debian virtual machine before borking it (doh!).
But that's mainly the reason for me to use Ubuntu: Because most new 'experimental' / 'alpha' software is packaged for Ubuntu (sometimes Debian or rpm) to test out; and if you're not using .rpm or .deb and still want to test some new software like KOffice2 (to do a nice LXer review for example!) you're pretty much on your own. Also, most problems with that same new software are reported for Ubuntu; so most workaraounds are also for Ubuntu.
Sometimes someone has been nice and made an ebuild overlay for Gentoo. But the situation with Gentoo package management and overlays being accepted in the 'main tree' is a problem. Most of the times this is simply not happening meaning the overlays are not tested enough because nobody uses them; with the result being if they exist, they might not work or are outdated.
Phew, I think that sums up my problems and reason to try Ubuntu pretty well.
Quoting:I can only imagine that for you coming from something like Gentoo it's even more annoying.
At least I'll be glad to see a commandline, ahum.
Quoting:You may want to give Debian a(nother) try.
I recently did in a virtualized environment, and I actually managed to update to a point where I really believe I was running 'experimental'. Sadly in Debian there is no simple command that will show you what version you are running, or I'm simply not aware of it (something equal to the "emerge --info && cat /etc/make.conf a Gentoo user always does when filing bugs to show the state & versions of their system).
You might ask "Why were you running experimental in first place?" Well, I believed I needed it because I tried running KOffice2 and it was told somewhere it needed experimental. The good news is: KOffice2 worked!
After that, I needed some new VESA-driver because the 800X600 pxl screen annoyed me; and the little info on the net about running Lenny inside KVM suggested using the latest VESA-drivers. Those were not by default in experimental I remember, I had to enable some extra experimental flags somewhere.
apt-get told something about 'not possible' and started giving alternatives accompanied with scores (some of them below zero) which didn't work as well, but I was stupid enough to choose such an alternative and it broke my whole system till a point of no repair; non matching libraries probably.
Normally in Gentoo I'd had been able to revert or repair such an issue, but in Debian it is believed to be hard to revert some broken experimental system back to "default experimental" or "testing". Certainly a Debian-noob doesn't know I guess. Also because it's a binary distribution it seems to be a bit harder to mix 'bleeding edge' packages in an 'old stable' environment, something a Gentoo user might try if it didn't mean compiling whole KDE4. Apart from that Gentoo does deem KDE4 'not stable'; which says enough. Conclusion of all of this is I should have made a backup of my Debian virtual machine before borking it (doh!).
But that's mainly the reason for me to use Ubuntu: Because most new 'experimental' / 'alpha' software is packaged for Ubuntu (sometimes Debian or rpm) to test out; and if you're not using .rpm or .deb and still want to test some new software like KOffice2 (to do a nice LXer review for example!) you're pretty much on your own. Also, most problems with that same new software are reported for Ubuntu; so most workaraounds are also for Ubuntu.
Sometimes someone has been nice and made an ebuild overlay for Gentoo. But the situation with Gentoo package management and overlays being accepted in the 'main tree' is a problem. Most of the times this is simply not happening meaning the overlays are not tested enough because nobody uses them; with the result being if they exist, they might not work or are outdated.
Phew, I think that sums up my problems and reason to try Ubuntu pretty well.
Quoting:Oh no, now even Sander started using Ubuntu...
Not really. I have a VM running 8.10 but that's just because someone reported a bug in one of my FOSS applications who ran 8.10 and I could not reproduce it on Debian Lenny.
But when I convert people to Linux then I do usually install Ubuntu. I may dislike the features I described above but for the type of people that I convert (people who know little about computers) they work pretty well. So, I don't use it but I support it for other people.
Hans --
Still using openSuse for my workstation, but have mythbuntu for my myth box and (still) kubuntu on wife's box.
New Dell Mini 9 came with Ubuntu, so will have to decide to keep it or ditch it. Don't like GNOME. Grumble. Pissed off at KDE. XFCE is OK on the myth box, but I don't want to live there. Grumble more.
Still using openSuse for my workstation, but have mythbuntu for my myth box and (still) kubuntu on wife's box.
New Dell Mini 9 came with Ubuntu, so will have to decide to keep it or ditch it. Don't like GNOME. Grumble. Pissed off at KDE. XFCE is OK on the myth box, but I don't want to live there. Grumble more.
Dino, how are you liking that mini9? I'v been looking really hard at one.
Interesting thing about Ubuntu, I use the command line considerably more than I did with Mandriva. Mandriva really spoils you, pretty much everything can be done via a GUI, while with Ubuntu, in spite of compalints to the contrary, I'm doing a lot more at the CLI.
I don't know, TA. I can't help but think that the feeling of "spoiled" you refer to means "familiar" in the MS Windows sense. I feel more spoiled being able to access everything from one terminal session in essentially one directory than I do trying to navigate the rat's maze of menu systems and GUI utilities that were the whims of a mix of different developers. I can have my system updated and new packages installed before Synaptic even get's itself fired up.
@Hans
You might wish to try Arch if you have not already done so. It's very popular among former Gentoo users who got tired of compiling.
The situation you describe is precisely why many users like Arch. It's a rolling release, like Gentoo, not a development release - you have the latest packages, but instability is unacceptable. There's very little FOSS for which you are unable to find a package. That's true in particular for something like koffice2 that has not yet been released. If there's no official package available, there is likely to be something in the AUR from another user.
Like Sander, I don't see any way that a Gentoo user can possibly be happy running Ubuntu (not to say it is impossible, I just don't see it).
You might wish to try Arch if you have not already done so. It's very popular among former Gentoo users who got tired of compiling.
The situation you describe is precisely why many users like Arch. It's a rolling release, like Gentoo, not a development release - you have the latest packages, but instability is unacceptable. There's very little FOSS for which you are unable to find a package. That's true in particular for something like koffice2 that has not yet been released. If there's no official package available, there is likely to be something in the AUR from another user.
Like Sander, I don't see any way that a Gentoo user can possibly be happy running Ubuntu (not to say it is impossible, I just don't see it).
Quoting:I don't know, TA. I can't help but think that the feeling of "spoiled" you refer to means "familiar" in the MS Windows sense.
No, I mean, makes you reliant on the mouse and a GUI.
Yeah Ubuntu is just Debian updated more often and with a few rough edges removed as well as a glitzy theme and good forum. It doesn't have a lot of its own config guis like Mandriva. To me that is a good thing because it makes new Linux users more flexible should they choose to switch distros. Too much spoon feeding via guis limits flexibility and self-reliance in the end.
Actually, I find that Ubuntu is Debian with lots of rough edges added. See: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090427 My experience with Xubuntu parallels Chris' poor results. It's buggy, less than stable, and a very poor performer compared with other Xfce based desktop distros on the same hardware.
Also see Ladislav Bodnar's article (second one down the page) at: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090420 My netbook has an Intel Express Graphics 945 chipset which is affected by the bug he reports. Yes, there is a workaround. No, this really isn't acceptable.
Rocks? To me it's more like sucks rocks this time around. For introducing newcomers to Linux I'm with Tracyanne: Mandriva is a much better choice.
Also see Ladislav Bodnar's article (second one down the page) at: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090420 My netbook has an Intel Express Graphics 945 chipset which is affected by the bug he reports. Yes, there is a workaround. No, this really isn't acceptable.
Rocks? To me it's more like sucks rocks this time around. For introducing newcomers to Linux I'm with Tracyanne: Mandriva is a much better choice.
azer -
Haven't used it heavily yet, but, so far, seems like a sweet little box.
Dell did one thing that I haven't yet decided good or bad, but am leaning to good:
Instead of having actual function keys, you reach function keys by A-L. That means no f11 and f12 keys, btw, a bit of a problem for a mythfrontend if you don't remap volume control. It also makes alt-f2 less convenient than I would like, but....
The payback is a small keyboard with big, easy to type on keys. For a fumble-fingered klutz like me, that ain't bad.
The little box seems pretty solidly built, but I guess that's easier to do when you're only spanning half the distance in any one direction of a large notebook.
I don't have a hard drive -- just the 15 GB flash, which is how I want it. The whole purpose of a netbook instead of a notebook is small, portable, and not to worry about it. Precision machinery doesn't fit that definition.
That might explain some of the limitations in the Ubuntu repository as set up out of the box. For example, the thing comes with OO 2.4 instead of OO 3.0, but 15 gb of flash, 1 gb of memory, and the little atom all seem plenty powerful enough to run the latest and greatest.
All told, a nice little machine. Right now, however, I think you can actually get it with XPee on you for less.
Haven't used it heavily yet, but, so far, seems like a sweet little box.
Dell did one thing that I haven't yet decided good or bad, but am leaning to good:
Instead of having actual function keys, you reach function keys by A-L. That means no f11 and f12 keys, btw, a bit of a problem for a mythfrontend if you don't remap volume control. It also makes alt-f2 less convenient than I would like, but....
The payback is a small keyboard with big, easy to type on keys. For a fumble-fingered klutz like me, that ain't bad.
The little box seems pretty solidly built, but I guess that's easier to do when you're only spanning half the distance in any one direction of a large notebook.
I don't have a hard drive -- just the 15 GB flash, which is how I want it. The whole purpose of a netbook instead of a notebook is small, portable, and not to worry about it. Precision machinery doesn't fit that definition.
That might explain some of the limitations in the Ubuntu repository as set up out of the box. For example, the thing comes with OO 2.4 instead of OO 3.0, but 15 gb of flash, 1 gb of memory, and the little atom all seem plenty powerful enough to run the latest and greatest.
All told, a nice little machine. Right now, however, I think you can actually get it with XPee on you for less.
> The payback is a small keyboard with big, easy to type on keys. For a fumble-fingered klutz like me, that ain't bad.
I'm liking the keyboard on mine also. Finding the various non-alphanumeric keys can be a bit of a challenge, but other than that it's very nice.
> I don't have a hard drive -- just the 15 GB flash
Mine only has the 8GB drive, so space is a bit more limited, but seems adequate. I think I'm only using about 40% of the drive. Of course, non-OS related stuff gets moved to external storage very quickly.
> Right now, however, I think you can actually get it with XPee on you for less.
I've seen that on occasion when they have sales, but not normally. Normally the Ubuntu version is slightly cheaper. I wouldn't try to run XP on an 8GB drive though; I think you would need the 16GB drive to run it properly. Mine (which included the added cost of the web camera) cost $225, plus tax and shipping. They seem to have upped the prices by around $80 since I bought it though.
I'm liking the keyboard on mine also. Finding the various non-alphanumeric keys can be a bit of a challenge, but other than that it's very nice.
> I don't have a hard drive -- just the 15 GB flash
Mine only has the 8GB drive, so space is a bit more limited, but seems adequate. I think I'm only using about 40% of the drive. Of course, non-OS related stuff gets moved to external storage very quickly.
> Right now, however, I think you can actually get it with XPee on you for less.
I've seen that on occasion when they have sales, but not normally. Normally the Ubuntu version is slightly cheaper. I wouldn't try to run XP on an 8GB drive though; I think you would need the 16GB drive to run it properly. Mine (which included the added cost of the web camera) cost $225, plus tax and shipping. They seem to have upped the prices by around $80 since I bought it though.
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