I'm currently running Ubuntu Breezy. It's fantastically simple to set up a desktop environment with, because they simply defined a virtual package "ubuntu-desktop" that pulls in a fair amount of tools you'd want. Of all the Debian based distros, I think this is one most likely to succeed in the long term, except perhaps Debian itself.
Theres a repo in Ubuntu called universe that you might be interested in. Universe is a repo for porting debian unstable packages by people other than ubuntu developers. There's a group called Masters of the Universe that manage it and keep it semi working. Its possible that you'll still run into apt-pin situations should you decide that the MotU is too slow, but I havent had the need to try to run around universe yet.
And since I you've asked about them, I'll also explain that multiverse is the set of packages typically found in debian's non-free, plus some they won't even distribute in there. Basically universe is the extras that nobody from ubuntu spent time porting and bringing into official "our support contracts require this be in main" repo. I don't believe security-updates affects main, although usually the motu try to keep on top of that. And multiverse is the closed source stuff like mplayer and acroreader etc that's useful but may not be legal or encouraged.
Ive gone through two upgrades of Ubuntu thus far, with minimal troubles. Yes, there was a root password leak that wasn't caught until lately. However, it didnt affect me because the problem was in one of the newer installers. I'd suggest waiting perhaps a day or a week before upgrading. That way the traffic on the mirrors dies down, and the "oh shit" bugs are found. I'm told newer versions of Ubuntu are going to include an improved synaptic with an "upgrade distro" button, so you can move from Breezy to Dapper, or Dapper to Dapper+1.
After the Sarge debacle, Ubuntu did a bang up job of pressuring Debian to make strides of improvement. Debian's always prided itself on being a jack of all trades and flexible -- Ubuntu stole a collection of Debian Developers and demonstrated that focusing on a single area (PC desktops) is just as valid and valuable.
Justin Dugger
On 4/3/06, Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO brian.kelsay@kcc.usda.gov wrote:
Who in our group is actually using these distros? I'm interested in the ease of updating and stability after doing so compared to Mepis, HDD installed Knoppix and regular Debian or any other Debian-based distro.
I've tried tons of LiveCDs, used Mepis quite a bit and never had success with plain old Debian installing as a desktop. I like Mepis out of the box, though like any distro you find little bits that don't work or you don't like. Mepis is switching to the Ubuntu repositories with the next release, in order to get more stable updates.
The point of this is, I still consider myself a Mepis user, but I'm concerned about the quality of the Ubuntu repos if I stick with it. Also, if I were to switch to Kubuntu, will I run into apt-pin problems when I try to add software not included on the distro disks? That has been a problem on Mepis with the Debian unstable repos. I tried the 64-bit Kubuntu last week and it looks great on my newish desktop PC, but I also wonder how it will do on a PIII-500 with lots of ram. An older Mepis was OK on it after I turned off the flashing and bouncing mouse-busy cursors. Haven't had the guts to try a newer Mepis or anything else on that PC. I need a Linux with the games working for my kids when they are over. _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
Just wanted to let you know that installing Ubuntu on the Dell Lattitude was a breeze! (no pun intended).
I had a sleepless night because I couldn't figure out how to get it to update via the package manager correctly but after reading the website (duh) I figured it out.
I've been able to play DVDs, CDs, PowerPoints (via Impress of course) and some web media (but not WMVs or ASFs). Since we don't have Internet access at the church, I'm not too worried about the latter.
The DVD playback is a little choppy so I need to investigate how much RAM was "donated" with the laptop. And that may not make a difference . . . may just be the age of the laptop or the norm for Totem Movie player.
All-in-All it was one of the easiest Linux installs I've ever done, and the first one on a laptop.
Thank you very much for suggesting Ubuntu. I may be converted from Fedora Core to Ubuntu/Debian. :)
Later,
Jon Moss
On Wed, 5 Apr 2006, Jon Moss wrote:
The DVD playback is a little choppy so I need to investigate how much RAM was "donated" with the laptop. And that may not make a difference . . . may just be the age of the laptop or the norm for Totem Movie player.
My money says that "# hdparm -d 1 /dev/hdc" will take care of the choppiness. All that does is allow DMA for the dvd drive. I'm assuming that /dev/hdc is the dvd, if not, then season to taste.
This can be allowed whenever a dvd is mounted by adding the following lines to /etc/default/hdparm :
harddisks="/dev/hdc" hdparm opts="-d1"
Regards,
-Don
Thanks a bunch! I'll definitely at that to hdparm.
On Wed, 5 Apr 2006, Jon Moss wrote:
The DVD playback is a little choppy so I need to investigate how much RAM was "donated" with the laptop. And that may not make a difference . . . may just be the age of the laptop or the norm for Totem Movie player.
My money says that "# hdparm -d 1 /dev/hdc" will take care of the choppiness. All that does is allow DMA for the dvd drive. I'm assuming that /dev/hdc is the dvd, if not, then season to taste.
This can be allowed whenever a dvd is mounted by adding the following lines to /etc/default/hdparm :
harddisks="/dev/hdc" hdparm opts="-d1"
Regards,
-Don
On Wed, 5 Apr 2006, Justin Dugger wrote:
Ive gone through two upgrades of Ubuntu thus far, with minimal troubles. Yes, there was a root password leak that wasn't caught until lately.
Well, it's not actually the root password, because ubuntu doesn't let you set a root password. It's the installer password, the installer user can sudo to do root things. Maybe this is a minor point.
But, if you wish to set a root password, here's how: $sudo vi /etc/shadow
Now remove the '*' from the top (root) line;
root:*:13234:99999:7::: ^ remove this
Save the file and IMMEDIATELY run
$ passwd root
This will let you set a root password.
I recently installed the AMD64 Ubuntu on an HP Turion 64 laptop. But I also set apt/sources to get sid and merillat packages, it was a was a little squirrelly with its dependencies, and after compiling an ATI driver for the 200M Radeon, hey, it works pretty well.
Much easier than any raw Debian laptop install I've ever done, once I figured out the nolapic, noapic, and vga=771 initial command line install arguments.
Regards,
-Don
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Don Erickson -
Jon Moss -
Justin Dugger