Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" Is Out

Many readers are sending the news that Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon has been released. Download options include mirrors and torrents. Wired has a review based on the release candidate: "Gamers and hardcore media hounds may still feel left out... but we found playing music and watching movies in the new Ubuntu to be every bit as pleasant as it is under OS X or Windows... Wi-Fi, printing, my digital camera and even my iPod all worked immediately after installation — no drivers or other software required... I did have to install additional codecs to get MP3 and Windows Media Audio support."

What?

TFS: hardcore media hounds may still feel left out...

Amarok. There's nothing like it on any other platform.

Re:What?

You mean it would be nice if people would buy hardware media players that worked on the computer they used?

Last I checked Apple doesn't support Linux. If you bought an iPod, you knew it didn't support Linux, so why did you buy it?

This is akin to the people that buy houses next to airports then complain to the city about the noise.

Re:What?

Why would you buy an iPod and expect it to work with something else? Look at Apple's website, look at the box, google "iPod linux".

Tech specs on Apple's site:
Mac system requirements
* Mac OS X v10.4.8 or later
* iTunes 7.4 or later5

Windows s
* Windows Vista or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later
* iTunes 7.4 or later

I don't see a Linux option.
I don't see a "non iTunes" option.
And apple sells the whole package as they do with everything they sell.

Off topic----
Note: I am an Apple user. I have both a MacBookPro and a Debian server. I tried for the longest time to get stuff onto my iPod from the debian server since that's where my music resides. I couldn't find any command line programs to do it. I even had conceptualized a nice little bash script that after I plugged my iPod in, I'd run it and it'd sync everything. I gave up and just use iTunes over an NFS share over Wireless, sure it takes a while but I set it before I go to bed. (Initial sync was over ethernet).

Where are all the linux developers making nice stable non 'flair' programs? Why can't someone make a nice stable cli interface to the iPod and then write a GUI wrapper around that? I've been looking *forever* for CLI RSS torrent grabber. It doesn't even have to be a program, just a simple script will due. OS X has a nice program called TVShows.app, it's just a nice GUI wrapped around a ruby script that reads an XML file. I tried but the script doesn't run under Debian. Shiny programs are nice to keep up with the OSX/Vista crowd but what happened to the developers that make good dependable programs for the command line?

Re:What?

*** AND NOW FOR THE JOKES ***

"SCO".

ahahaha! hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...

Re:What?

What would you recomend as a replacement for the iPod?

Check out Cowon's iAudio line. I have an 60GB iAudio X5, and after a year and a half I am still absolutely thrilled with it. It beats the piss out of iPod for functionality (FLAC/OGG/WMA/MP3 compatibility, video, an interface that doesn't suck ass, text file reading, FM radio, audio in/out, recording from radio/audio in/internal mic, and on and on and on), and is substantially cheaper than an iPod of comparable size. I didn't see the X5 on their website, maybe they're phasing it out for the newer models, but check them out. Anecdote: I dropped it in a pile of melting snow one drunk night in my front yard and didn't find it until the next afternoon. Turned right on, no water under the screen or anything, good as new. True story.

the touch round scroller appears to me to be unmatched

I hate them. There is no tactile feedback, so I can't operate it without looking at it, which is a total dealbreaker for me. I bike a lot, I can't be pulling the thing out and trying to look at it in traffic. With my X5 (which has a mini-joystick), I can navigate the whole thing without looking at it.

Re:What?

> Where are all the linux developers making nice stable non 'flair' programs?

"apt-cache search ipod" returns a nice list of programs, some of which are marked as command line:

python-gpod - a library to read and write songs and artwork to an iPod
gnupod-tools - command-line tools for the iPod family of portable music players
libipod-cil - CLI library for accessing iPods

Where are all the linux users that do a basic search of the documentation before whining on slashdot?

Re:What?

Why not lots of tools that that do one thing instead of one tool that does lots of things? I thought this was the Unix/Linux way.

Developers could create 5 tiny applications:
ipod_mount
ipod_music_sync
ipod_video_sync
ipod_pictures_sync
ipod_unmount

Each would do what they're supposed to do *very* well. They could have some command line flags that would let you do about anything
ipod_mount
ipod_video_sync -device /mnt/ipod -folder /user/me/Videos/
ipod_music_sync -device /mnt/ipod -file LedZepplin.mp3
ipod_unmount.

Then you could write a nice pretty wrapper around that. In my opinion nothing would be very bloated because each program would do one thing and one thing very well. You also get the nice 'feature' of having command line tools available to anyone that wanted to use SSH or a Web interface or an Ncurses interface.

I'm a die hard OS X fan. It does everything I need to and I don't have to fight it. I also love the command line if there's a way to do it via command line I probably do. My debian server is headless I only have SSH access. I'd love to be able to plug my iPod into its cradle go back to my chair and do everything via ssh. Most new applications I find are KDE or GNOME only. I finally found someone who wrote a nice perl script to convert *.avi to iPod video files. I wrapped that in a shell script to create iPod videos.

to_ipod.sh Transformers.avi Pulp\ Fiction.avi

And in a few hours I have Transformers.mp4 and Pulp\ Fiction.mp4, but then I have to transfer them to my Mac to sync them via iTunes.

(See also off topic rant in same thread)

Re:What?

Cedega is getting more and more behind plain Wine lately. They used to have better D3D support, but Wine has it better for the last year at least. The fact that they stole the codebase originally and kept it locked, and now can't properly maintain it, shows.

Re:What?

A partial, eventual solution to this is to support Linux and independent gaming. For example the expansion to Dominions3 [shrapnelgames.com] came out today and is for sale at Gamer's Front [gamersfront.com]. Dominions is a fantastic strategy game, I can play it in Linux (or Mac & Windows), it's from a small independent game company, and it's for sale by Gamer's Front (who support independent games).

Win, win, win, win...

It's a bit pricey retail ($54), but comes with a 300 page manual, and the coupon "DOM3-STARDOCK" will get you 20% off until November 15th, making it quite reasonable..

I'm not affiliated with them, it's just pretty much the only game I bother to play these days.

Re:What?

You underestimate the progress Wine has been making. I too am currently playing Company of Heroes and Supreme Commander, and they run better on my Gentoo install than they do with many of my friends' XP systems. Admittedly, they've been in a playable state for only about two months now, but for example C&C 3 worked great the day it was released. Also, Wine has already started it's DX10 implementation, and as that progresses, it'll make linux "instantly" a superior platform for gaming when compared to XP. If you want to play games on linux, than try them with wine, see what doesn't work and post a bug report. Until linux gains enough market share to attract developers, that's the best thing you can do.

Gaming Falls to the Winner

I see many weakish answers to this post, but the simplest answer is that Linux simply isn't a gamer's OS right now. And that's fine.

It isn't something anyone developing Linux or working on Ubuntu can just fix. Gaming is always going to fall to the OS with the biggest installbase because of the money involved. All the Linux folks can do is keep polishing and pushing to make desktop Linux a better experience... so that one day they'll have a profitable userbase for the gaming companies to address.

Maybe it seems like Linux geeks are underestimating the importance of gaming, but I don't think that's the case. Projects like Wine and Cedega strive to hit a moving target in the dark, just in efforts to bring you folks over... But we'll only ever see mixed results from that.

From my point of view though, gamers may overestimate their own importance to the adoption of Linux at this time. Because gaming will fall to the biggest (desktop) installbase, how is it going to help an OS that is currently running third? All it can really do is solidify the lead of whoever is in first. Right?

And, contrary to the opinion of many gamers, there are throngs of people who never-ever game... or never-ever game on a computer. Judging from the folks I know, it'd be the vast majority. Most folks just use their computers to communicate, to budget, to work, and to just dink around on the web. Those are the folks Ubuntu is going after right now.

Gamers are important, sure. It's a userbase that is a bit more knowledgeable and a bit more experimental, which would make them a good fit for Desktop Linux early-adoption. We'd love to have them. But, unfortunately, they are going to be forever tied to whatever's most popular... and, further, they are not the end-all of computing.

We'll be happy to see all you gamers again once we hit... sayyy 25%-50% installed. See ya then. =)

Re:What?

I sympathize, and up until Feisty I had such a difficult time getting Linux up and running that I never got far enough to consider using it as a viable gaming platform, but over the past week I've had a total change of heart. I use my computer to check email, browse the web, write, store and play music and video (of multiple formats), stream video and music over a LAN, and play games. Lots of games. In fact, I'd say that games account for 80% of my usage time.

I'd been running Vista and it was a disaster. I have an Nvidia Geforce 7800 GTX, which doesn't support DX10, so even when I got Bioshock I never really benefitted from that aspect of Vista. Long story short, Vista turned me off so much that I now dual boot XP and Ubuntu, with the idea that I'd use Ubuntu as sort of a project to noodle around with, getting used to Linux in anticipation of XP's future abandonment.

Two weeks in I've been pleasantly surprised by how well Ubuntu works and how much I don't need XP. Everything non-game related works great, and I've even made inroads towards weaning my girlfriend off of iTunes. Wine runs EVE well after some mucking about with settings. I still need XP for Bioshock, but HL2 seems to work fine. I have yet to try BF2142 and I have some older games I'd like to try out but so far I'd characterize it as a net success.

So yeah, I agree wholeheartedly that games are important, but people who ask me for recommendations as to software tend to be friends/family that will subsequently ask me to install and maintain said software, and on that basis I'd much rather set them up with Ubuntu than XP or Vista. With my admittedly limited experience with Linux, I still like that when things go wrong in Linux they seem to go wrong for obvious reasons and be relatively straightforward to fix, where Windows does so much mysterious crap in the background it seems like problems just arise out of the ether. I get the impression that extended use is not intended use, unlike with Windows.

As it stands now, I no longer consider XP to be my main os. I basically consider Ubuntu my "serious" os, and the XP partition as essentially the same as my Wii: a console for a few specific games.

Re:What?

I still boot into windows everyday at home.

It's interesting how this has changed for me over time.

I do media production and have always used either Windows or OSX (or both) for my work, in applications such as Logic, Sonar, Premiere, Wavelab, etc. I had tried several times to offload some of this work to a Linux box, but it had never really worked out for me. Either I couldn't get Linux to work with my pro audio hardware, or the applications couldn't do what I needed them to do. I'd always end up back in Windows or OSX.

After an ugly experience with Vista, that came pre-installed on a high-end box that was to become my primary production system (once I upgraded back to XP Pro), I decided it was time for me to make a serious attempt to do my work in Linux again. I'd lost a lot of confidence in the major players (MS and Apple) to serve my needs over the next 10 years. Plus, I had some problems with the way those two companies do business. So, I took the system (the one that the Vista machine was to replace) and installed Ubuntu Studio (Feisty).

The first thing I noticed was that with only a few very easy tweaks (for DVD and codecs), everything was working. My dual-monitor video card and audio hardware worked "out of the box". The audio engine, Jack, was a little bit of a pain to get working, but mostly because of my own inability to read a how-to, but once it was working, the applications that came (for free) such as Ardour were more than just decent.

So finally, I had a secondary system on which I could do a host of pre- and post-production tasks. It gave new life to a system that would otherwise have gathered dust or have been given to a nephew on which to play games. Every day, I find new ways to make use of the Ubuntu Studio box, and I find myself sitting down at that system more and more often. Oh yeah, I didn't have to pay five grand to buy second licenses to the production applications I use because the ones that came with Ubuntu were free.

So, I still use Windows for the bulk of my work, but little by little, the Ubuntu Studio system is making inroads. I'm losing the uncomfortable feeling of being locked in to one of two companies for my operating system, and I'm less afraid that once Microsoft stops supporting XP, I'll be SOL. The impressive improvements that have occurred in the last 4 years and the great new programs that the OSS community has developed will continue, I assume. I keep hoping that one of the major music software developers will put out a native Linux version so I can make the divorce from Microsoft final.

Hell, I've even figured out how to play Eve-Online on the Ubuntu Studio machine.

IU Mirror

Indiana University's mirror is still going strong:
ftp://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/pub/linux/ubuntu-releases/7.10 [iu.edu]
- or -
http://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/linux/ubuntu-releases/ [iu.edu] (separate server)

Ubuntu release days are fun for mirror operators. It lets us test our hardware and bandwidth.

(Internet2 connected)

Re:IU Mirror

Indiana University's mirror is still going strong:

Not for long ...

release notes

Unfortunately the summary doesn't link to a good list of features.

The release notes for the beta version give a good overview of what you can expect:

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/gutsybeta [ubuntu.com]

With 3D desktop effects and NTFS write support enabled by default, and fast user switching and improved X configuration, this is one of the most significant Ubuntu releases in a while.

Re:IU Mirror

I thought they were for porn and warez?

New logo?

Hey!

I didn't know that Ubuntu's new logo was a red spiral!

Re:New logo?

Joke ->   *

You ->    O
         /|\
          /\

Re:New logo?

Cut that web2.0 crap out.

The summary contradicts itself

If you have to install additional software to get MP3 support, the music-playing experience is, almost by definition, not as pleasant as it is under OS X.

Re:The summary contradicts itself

Well, that is the price you pay for living in a country where software patents are allowed. MP3 is a patented format, so you can never truly listen to an MP3 for free. Part of the cost of Mac OS X is MP3 support, same for Windows Vista. A Linux distro can never distribute software that requires royalties, and so, technically, no Linux distro can legally distribute MP3 software in the US.

Lucky for you, there is Ogg Vorbis, which is technically superior to MP3 anyway, in terms of quality per byte.

Re:The summary contradicts itself

A Linux distro can never distribute software that requires royalties

Not true, there are a number of options:
1) Charge for the version of the distro that includes the software, pay the licence fee to the licensor, disallow redistribution of the licensed code
2) Give the distro away for free, pay the licence fee to the licensor, disallow redistribution of the licensed code
3) Reimplement the required code, distribute only in countries with a more enlightened attitude towards software patents (eg the EU)

Lucky for you, there is Ogg Vorbis, which is technically superior to MP3 anyway, in terms of quality per byte.

Superior or not, that doesn't help me with all the music I have in mp3 (and no, I'm not about to re-rip it).
The OP's point is valid - the experience is not as good out of the box as that of OS X or Windows, with regards to music playing.

Re:The summary contradicts itself

If you have to install additional software to get MP3 support, the music-playing experience is, almost by definition, not as pleasant as it is under OS X.

On Ubuntu it takes about 2-3 clicks the first time you try to play an MP3 (and no additional clicks afterwards). Might not be as 'pleasant' as no clicks, but completely negligible.

What still is an issue is DVD encryption. Sadly DeCSS can't be legally obtained in the US. Much as I am opposed to software patents, some practical solution needs to be given, while we continue to struggle to change the patent system. Paying a few bucks for legal DVD playback in the US seems the only feasible option at this point, and Ubuntu should facilitate this somehow, if only by providing links to third parties that provide this service (e.g. Fluendo I believe were working on this).

Ob: Bittorrent

As always people... Don't use the download link from the main page. spend the extra time to get a .torrent like [URL:http://ubuntu.gds.tuwien.ac.at/cdimage/releases/gutsy/ubuntu-7.10-desktop-i386.iso.torrent]

Currently: 1938 seeds, 4389 peers. and it's going *very* quickly.

Has support from Dell and Novell

I'm actually really excited about this. We've got a demo running here. We installed it on a two year old notebook and everything just worked. Pointed Evolution [gnome.org] to our Exchange server, and it just worked. Which IMHO is key, I love to hack things just as much as the next guy, but if I have to hack things just to get them to work the first time, its a major turn off.

It's got a slick UI and the package manager is well done.

Add in support from Dell [dell.com].

All that is missing now is a really awesome developer environment [microsoft.com].

Re:Has support from Dell and Novell

"All that is missing now is a really awesome developer environment."

I would just cite emacs, but since you seem to be interested in something more...graphical...I'll just list these three:

* Eclipse [eclipse.org]

* KDevelop [kdevelop.org]

* Netbeans [netbeans.org]

Re:Has support from Dell and Novell

Honestly, none of those hold a candle to VS 2005 for .NET development.

Re:Has support from Dell and Novell

On a more serious side, they're not on par with VS2005 C++ IDE, either. The only other editor that I know of which can properly parse moderately complicated C++ templates (i.e. Boost) is SlickEdit, but nothing in the Linux land comes close to VS2005 for C++ debugging.

Don't download the new Ubuntu...

THINK OF THE CHAIRS!

Re:Don't download the new Ubuntu...

THINK OF THE CHAIRS!

I work for a furniture company. Do download Ubuntu... Think of the 4th quarter profits!

Re:will it wipe my /home?

I'd recommend backing it up regardless of what people say. I've never heard someone complain about having a backup they didn't need, yet I've often heard people complain about not having a backup they needed.

Damn!

Damn, and I've only just finished compiling the last... wait. Wrong distro. Sorry.

Re:So what's next?

Hardy Heron [ubuntu.com].

Re:So what's next?

Check the list ;) or add your own...
Ubuntu Names Repository [tipotheday.com]

Re:So what's next?

Hungry Hippo. No wait, that is a Vista install. Sorry, wrong OS.

Seems very newbie friendly

We've just tried this one out as soon as it was released, and there was quite some differences in installation on our modern laptop hardware compared to 7.04 at least. Proprietary graphics driver installation couldn't really be much easier from what I can see -- besides by making it automatic, but I suppose there are reasons other than technological ones behind that.

After the few guided clicks to get that done, a reboot later and suddenly Compiz was also activated without any user actions needed. Hmm, so how do you configure those 3D effects then? No way we could find, but from reading an online computer magazine, we found out that the Compiz Config Settings Manager wasn't included. We installed that one, and it then integrated nicely into the Desktop Settings as a new "Custom effects" option. Why that one wasn't part of the distro by default is still unknown to us though. It seemed like an obvious choice to let the user customize the window effects?

Otherwise, I think Compiz didn't lag or anything even once when maximizing windows or rotating the desktop, etc, and this was on a laptop without a *that* hot graphics card. So we were impressed about how smooth the UI was. No interruptions from some service suddenly kicking in to work a bit like every user of Vista has no doubt grown used to take for granted by now with the SuperFetch, System Restore, Search Indexer etc services. They seem to kick in at the most inappropriate times -- not even when the computer is idle! Come on! Maybe Ubuntu's new desktop search indexer make it suffer too, but nothing we could see anyway.

After doing this, we unplugged the network card, and voila, it automatically discovered our WLAN. We didn't have to do anything, really.

So let's try open the (already mounted and ready) NTFS drive with Windows Vista on it? Oh, we can simply drag a file there now too -- cool! NTFS-3g apparently installed and ready.

We seemed to have to install Windows Media Audio support though and as we're still quite some Linux amateurs, we have still not got around that part as the work day is over. It's been fun experimenting though, and getting up to date with what a modern "desktop Linux" distro can offer. Looking at the feature list of Ubuntu 7.10 [ubuntu.com], and summing that one up with the new features of GNOME 2.20 [gnome.org] gives one a mighty impressive list of new features compared to just 6 months ago.

Linux desktop development (GNOME, KDE, desktop distros, ...) really seem to be picking up some pace lately. And we're just months away from KDE 4. This is exciting times to follow for sure, and for the first time I'm starting to become a believer in "Linux on the desktop".

I have some pretty high demands of novice usability though, which makes me hesitate still as for some distros. E.g. SUSE Linux 10.3 had a few quirks on my home stationary computer. Its NVIDIA driver install having me to use the command prompt and special "SUSE for NVIDIA" instructions is unacceptable for amateur usage IMHO, although I finally got it done. It also even failed to install the distro to the hard drive the first time around, because it couldn't mount the SATA drive it had just formatted (??). A reboot, and then it could do it like it was no problem at all. *shrug* That also gave an early feeling of "still aimed for geeks" that I'd so much like it to see it move away from.

But back to Ubuntu 7.10 -- so far no problems here, and I was left with an excitement to play with it more after the day. :-)

"Gutsy Gibbon" Is Out?

"Mom, Dad, I've got something to tell you..."

"What is it Gutsy?"

"...I'm tired of living a lie..."

Works great on my new laptop!

My new Dell laptop (Inspiron 6400) arrived just today. The perfect chance to install the latest Ubuntu.

I'm very impressed. Wireless networking worked out-of-the-box. Battery support works out-of-the-box (if I remove the power cable, Ubuntu will switch to power saving mode just like Vista would; battery meter is shown by default). I can plug and unplug USB mouses at will. Partitioning the system is painless because it supports non-destructive NTFS resizing out-of-the-box. I have absolutely no idea why so many people are complaining about Linux laptop support.

Re:Works great on my new laptop!

Worked fine for me. Although it didn't suspend when I close the laptop lid (I don't know whether it's supposed to; this is my first laptop), the Suspend button on the logout dialog worked fine. Resuming also worked fine. No apps crashed or freaked out. Internet connection restored as it is supposed to.

Ubuntu Server needs work.

While Ubuntu on the desktop is the bee's knees, server leaves me unimpressed. While I'm not expecting a "big-iron" capable monster with every service imaginable, what I would expect is the "Ubuntu touch"; The most useful, advanced and friendly services at the "administrator's" fingertips, easily managed, configured, etc. LAMP is a nice start, but how about a full sweet of ready to go "stuff". XMPP, SIP, VPN, Doc Mgt, etc. If Ubuntu could do for servers what they've done for desktops, well, that would be really good. ;) In the interim, I'll stick with CentOS (no, I'm not comparing CentOS to Ubuntu).

Bittorrent client

Everyone, please stop using Azerus. Deluge is a native gtk bittorrent client that supports encryption and is speed-comparable to uTorrent. It is in "Add/Remove Programs" in 7.10.

Sean

goatse

when i first read the release name goatse gibbon, i thought to my self great now i have to download the hole release

my girlfriend's opinion of me, in terminal-speak

sudo apt-get a-life

Jeezuz, People! It's FREE!

I think Mark Shuttleworth is one of the few people this world has today who can be looked upon as genuinely heroic.

The man put up his own millions, fought to bring computer technology to the third world, and will mail you a free copy of the Ubuntu CD if you ask.

Yeah, talk about shortcomings and areas where it doesn't work, etc., but for crying out loud! It might be wise to treat it in a tone of constructive criticism rather than bitter complaint. A little respect is due here. Heck, a lot of respect is due here!

And sheesh, I'm not even a regular Linux user. (Not until the Gimp does more than 8 bits and builds a better layout and includes CMYK. And changes its creepy name.)

-FL

Comments about the old 7.04

I've been on 7.04 for a while now. and there were a few things about it that I just love...
The one I like the best is when I went to the command line and typed 'sux' for the first time.
it told me sux was not installed but that I could install it by installing some package or another.
That was Nirvana for me with 7.04.
Other then that the sound continues to work when I switch users, the WiFi is now 100% instead of 75% and the new intel video drivers mean the OpenGL stuff actually works.

I hope 7.10 has some equally cool things hidden in it.
p.s. anybody know if 'ionice' is installed by default yet?
It would be a good idea cause Beagle indexes on startup and can really slow down DVD performance.

7.2Gbps via official torrents

I did some calculations from the torrent tracker statistics page [ubuntu.com]

Over the first 3 minute sample I took, I calculated total torrent pool bandwidth at 6.5Gbps (gigabits per second).

About 10 minutes later (as of right now) I completed a 5 minute sample and calculated the bandwidth usage to be 7.2Gbps.

The tracker is going up and down a fair bit under the load, but those statistics should be fairly indicative of the number of people downloading Gutsy Gibbon via the official torrents.

Re:7.2Gbps via official torrents

If you upgrade via the Update Manager does it use torrents to speed up downloading of the installer?

No, it downloads from your usual update site -- which is almost certainly melted into a pool of slag on the datacenter floor right now.

If you want to update today, or even in the next few days, I'd suggest using a torrent to download the CD. Burn the CD and put it in the drive, then go to "System->Administer->Software Sources", click on the "Third-Party Software" tab, click the "Add CD-ROM" button. This should add the CD as a package source for you. Then when you do the upgrade, it should pull packages from there rather than from the update site (except when the update site has newer packages than the CD, or when you're updating packages that aren't on the CD, of course).

I expect that getting the CD image with bittorrent and then upgrading will be a lot faster than just doing a straight upgrade.

Re:7.2Gbps via official torrents

If you want to update today, or even in the next few days, I'd suggest using a torrent to download the CD. Burn the CD and put it in the drive, then go to "System->Administer->Software Sources", click on the "Third-Party Software" tab, click the "Add CD-ROM" button.

When you stick the CD in the drive it will ask if you want to upgrade and run the script to upgrade from the CD. Why make things harder for your self?

Re:Just do (n00b question)....

Please bear with me -- I'm still on the Ubuntu learning curve... If I do as you suggest there, will that upgrade my "Feisty" to "Gutsy Gibbon" without losing my files, accounts, directory structure, etc? Will I need to reinstall video drivers and reconfigure my screen resolution settings again? (The latter was a real headache the first time around...) I can't find a straight-forward answer anywhere.

Re:Just do (n00b question)....

Please bear with me -- I'm still on the Ubuntu learning curve... If I do as you suggest there, will that upgrade my "Feisty" to "Gutsy Gibbon" without losing my files, accounts, directory structure, etc? Will I need to reinstall video drivers and reconfigure my screen resolution settings again? (The latter was a real headache the first time around...) I can't find a straight-forward answer anywhere.

OK, you know how you are prompted to install updates from time to time, right? Usually for security or bug fixes or whatever?

This is essentially the same thing, except you're installing newer versions of packages rather than just ones with fixes applied to them. You won't need to edit or format partitions or anything like that. It's just another package update, really, but a BIG one that will take a long time, and which will occasionally ask you "do you want to replace such-and-such configuration file, which appears to have been altered, with the new one", and unless you recognize the file you'll just want to say "yes, I want the new one" to all of those.

Video drivers: not sure, but Gutsy prompts you to install restricted drivers with a little icon up by the clock (in Gnome, don't know about KDE). So, if the upgrade breaks your restricted video drivers (I suspect that it will, as I doubt that the Ubuntu folks feel comfortable including non-free drivers in a mostly-automated major update) then it should just prompt you to re-install them the first time you log in, after a reboot.

As for the resolution thing: if you manually edited any files (probably /etc/X11/xorg.conf, if you did) then you may want to make a backup copy of them (probably easiest from the command line, since you'll likely need superuser access. Use the cp command to make the copy; for example, to make a backup of xorg.conf: sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup ) before you upgrade, then go ahead and say YES to let the upgrade overwrite the configuration file when it prompts (assuming that it does), as you can always try out your backed up one if the new one screws things up. Consider asking for help on the Ubuntu forums or on an Ubuntu IRC channel (if you are familiar with IRC) before restoring the file, just in case.

If you did not manually edit a configuration file to get your resolution how you want it, then my advice is to either stick with what you have, or just give Gutsy a go and take the risk. It might mess it up, it might not. Probably not, in fact, but it's possible. In any case, the forums and IRC support will still be there if you need them, and should be able to help you get things back in order should the upgrade cause any breakage of any kind.

Re:Feisty Doesn't Know

I believe the command is "sudo update-manager -d" The -d will look to update the distro, and give you the button.

Not true.

The -d flag gives you the latest development release - which will be newly unstable 8.04 any minute now. You may be able to cheat with the -d flag (and get 7.10) for a couple more hours, but in general update manager will automatically show a new distro version when it's ready - probably tomorrow.

Re:Props to Shuttleworth

I already have all I need from XP, Ubuntu has a loOOoooooooong way to go to even reach that humble benchmark
You forgot to describe what that 'humble benchmark' is, but in any case it depends on what your needs are. What do you feel is lacking?

You may need Photoshop, DRM or games, so you use XP.

I need 100% legal software on a low budget; a rock solid, cross-platform programming environment; audio routing across almost any 2 audio applications. I don't want to wait for minutes and minutes when searching for a file- I want it NOW. XP just doesn't cut it for me.

Interesting enough, more and more software that started out as Open Source software for Linux only is becoming available for XP. Do you use Firefox? Thunderbird? Gaim? Gimp? Audacity? Open office? Free software is becoming an increasingly realistic alternative to closed software.

If you like that philosophy, you may want to order in a free live CD and take it for a spin. It won't cost you anything- you won't even have to install anything.

Re:Feisty Doesn't Know

My feisty's update manager shows that there's a new distro release and it provides a button to "upgrade" and it's upgrading as I type this.

Re:Props to Shuttleworth

You certainly have your troll hat on today! Some comparisons with XP:

* plug in a USB memory stick, make some changes, rady to take it out. In Ubuntu, "Safely remove" is one click away in the context menu, and does exactly what you would expect. XP pops up some unintelligble menu of USB root devices and it's 3 clicks until you get to remove it.
* plug in a USB printer. In Ubuntu 7.10, it appears in your printer list automatically. In XP, you have to find the drivers, install the drivers, finish the "new hardware wizard"...
* need more multimedia codecs? In ubuntu, it'll prompt you to install them, then do so. In XP, you have to search the web for them, install some third-party software, repeat until you find some that work.
* want to edit a .doc or a .ppt? In ubuntu, OpenOffice is installed by default. In XP, you have to go buy a retail box of Office 2003/2007/etc.
* install/update/remove thousands of third party applications. In ubuntu, it's all in the package manager, there's a "new updates notifier", and there's no reboot unless you upgrade to the newest version of the OS. In windows, you only get updates for Microsoft products, and those all require a reboot (and upgrading to the latest OS requires $400 and yet more CDs).
* 3d desktop effects - ubuntu 7.10 has 3d desktop effects enabled by default, where your virtual desktops are on a spinning cube, windows can be consumed by flames when you close them, and there's 3 or 4 alternatives to boring old alt-tab. Windows Vista can give you an orthographic view of your windows when you hit alt-tab and that's about it. XP doesn't have such effects(a small percentage of which improve productivity) and it never will.
* migration - Ubuntu can find and import many settings and files from your windows drive during install. XP just barely acknowledges that other OSes exist, and will blow away other partitions unless you've partitioned in a very particular way.

For all purposes other than games, Ubuntu has long since been surpass XP in usability and user friendliness. "Average users" are not doing those things that require XP; average users surf the net, send email, and write word documents.