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