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Ubuntu Linux

Ubuntu 11.04, Slackware 13.37 266

Posted by CmdrTaco from the if-it-ain't-broke-upgrade dept.
Approximately one billion Slashdot readers wrote in to tell us today that one of two distributions had releases: the new Ubuntu sports the Unity interface, marking a 'radical departure' from its UI of old. Now the more ancient and bearded amongst you might be interested in Patrick announcing the latest Slackware release which clearly has the most 1337 version number to date.
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Ubuntu 11.04, Slackware 13.37 More

Ubuntu 11.04, Slackware 13.37

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  • Both? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mescobal ( 1516701 ) on Thursday April 28, 2011 @10:24AM (#35962666) Homepage
    Doesn't both news deserve a separate note?

    • It's easier to condense them into one post than trying to weed out the best individual topic. Check the firehose, it's littered with submissions.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by higuita ( 129722 )

        No problem at all, both are clearly for totally different user targets, each side will mostly ignore the other... of course there will be always some black sheep's, but those will troll both storied, no matter if nested or isolated...
        and everyone knows that slackware is the best! ;)

        • good call. slackware has the friendliest community forum that i've used. and i assume, coz i've never really tried it, that ubuntu has a friendly community forum as well. i find the juxtaposition interesting. slackware tends to be stuck in the past (yeah, yeah, stability and stuff. i use slackware too. go away.) and ubuntu seems to go against accepted "practices"(remember wayland?).

          • I don't think there's any animosity between Slackware and Ubuntu users. Or even Gentoo or Arch for that matter.

            There's probably a rivalry between Ubuntu and Fedora users, though.

    • Re:Both? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Missing.Matter ( 1845576 ) on Thursday April 28, 2011 @10:37AM (#35962816)
      Then there would be no room on the homepage for important announcements like an iPhone color change!

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jo_ham ( 604554 )

        I'm amazed there was any space left on the front page after all those troll articles about the "tracking" "scandal", some even dupes from 2010 trying to pass off old information as new news. Anything to keep the FUD machine going.

      • Normally, I'd dog on the editors for this too, but I just noticed the, the "OMG wyte ifone" submission has almost twice the comments as this announcment...it'll be interesting to check back on the comment count in a few hours to see what /.'ers really care about these days!

    • Doesn't both news deserve a separate note?

      Gaahh! Ever more forking!

  • A radical departure? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday April 28, 2011 @10:27AM (#35962710) Homepage Journal

    Most of what it does is Compiz, it has a menu bar and a dock. You still log in through gdm and it still pops up on the wrong monitor when I have 'em both active.

    On the other hand, it is awfully more mac-like, what with Unity stealing menu bars left and right, but not always.

    Still the same theme from Maverick with the gadgets on the wrong side but now it makes sense because it makes sense for the gadgets to be on that side when they get snarfed into the top bar.

    I'm just glad that they managed to get the dock pop-up/click behavior ironed out before the release, I noticed they finally fixed this in the last day or two. And the Applications place seems to actually have stuff in it every time I click it now. For a few days there I had to type to see anything the first time I used it.

    All in all if you're not married to a particular interface it's not an unpleasant change, and it does look nice. Amusingly, to me it is reminiscent of the Zune Desktop Theme [cnet.com] for Windows XP. That's nice for me because I'm a dual-boot user again, and that's my XP theme of choice :)

  • Why upgrade? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Rik Sweeney ( 471717 ) on Thursday April 28, 2011 @10:29AM (#35962718) Homepage

    I find Kubuntu Lucid LTS stable enough for me these days and cannot really see any reason to upgrade to Natty. I think I'm going to stick to the LTS releases from now on since the new features just aren't compelling enough. Anyone else feel the same?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CFBMoo1 ( 157453 )
      Thats what VirtualBox is for, when you get that non-LTS itch. :)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tom17 ( 659054 )

        Yeah, except that "It appears your machine does not have the hardware needed to run unity." It just comes up with the classic gnome interface in my VirtualBox.

        That was a waste of time.

    • While the OS itself might not change, usually app versions get frozen to a particular level per release and only get updated in the repositories (aside from security and major bugfixes) on the change of the OS version. You can get around this by using PPA's, but IMHO those often cause some issues.

      All in all, for me it's worth upgrading just to get new versions of most of the applications. I might would stick to the LTS releases if I used my system for "real work", but in reality at work I'm stuck with Win

    • Yep.
      I stick to the LTS releases because I am too lazy to update (yes, even if it is just a click in the update manager, and a 10 minute wait). :-)

      My 10.4 has all the functionality I need, and I can wait for the next LTS which, if I am not mistaken, is the next 11.10 in October. I'll probably update by January or March 2012.

      I am one of those mainstream desktop users which comprise 90% of the desktop market, using only 10% of the functionality of the computer for 90% of the time.

      • My 10.4 has all the functionality I need, and I can wait for the next LTS which, if I am not mistaken, is the next 11.10 in October.

        Next LTS is 12.4 as per the 2 yearly sequence 8.4, 10.4, 12.4, 14.4 etc.

    • I find Kubuntu Lucid LTS stable enough for me these days and cannot really see any reason to upgrade to Natty. I think I'm going to stick to the LTS releases from now on since the new features just aren't compelling enough. Anyone else feel the same?

      For me, I'd rather wait for the almost certain hardware problems to be discovered and fixed by someone else before I make the switch. I've got an Nvidia card and a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse that always seem to break with each new Ubuntu. I've already dug through my closet enough times getting out an old keyboard and coping with VGA for a few weeks to have learned my lesson. And don't get me started on sound.

      Call me selfish, but I don't want to wade through support forums in 640x480 looking for just the right

  • Do either of these support installing to a GPT partition? I've been looking around for a Linux distro that actually allows me to install to a GPT disk without much fuss and haven't had any luck so far. It would be nice since my main reason for wanting GPT is Linux obsession with using up all my primary partitions.

    Now if only Win XP could be made to boot from a GPT partition without sacrificing all the extra partitions I could have with GPT.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by 0123456 ( 636235 )

      Do either of these support installing to a GPT partition?

      Yes, but you need a BIOS that will boot from it. I have my Ubuntu 10.04 MythTV server installed with a GPT partition table, but I have to boot it from the other disk which has a DOS partition table because the BIOS can't find the GPT boot partition.

    • Um. Debian has for... a while now. So has Ubuntu. I've not had any problem with either. Just remember to leave a 1MB chunk at the bottom and set the bios_grub flag so grub has somewhere to install to.

      • That's good to know, I've been googling this for a few days now, and finding out which Linux distros really support it and which ones can be made to support it by following a series of arcane and ill defined steps has proven to be quite challenging. I've found utilities that will do it, but in general not all of the distros include GTP fdisk on their installer and going manually like I had to for FreeBSD isn't possible for me at this stage without actual instructions which cover the entire process. At prese

    • I don't know anything about GPT, but every linux distro I've used will happily install to a single partition. IMHO there's no very strong reason to have separate swap and boot partitions and so on.

      • Re:GPT Support (Score:4, Informative)

        by 0123456 ( 636235 ) on Thursday April 28, 2011 @10:58AM (#35963018)

        IMHO there's no very strong reason to have separate swap and boot partitions and so on.

        There's at least one good reason to have separate / and /home partitions: Linux really, really hates bad blocks on the / partition, so if you use the entire disk for / then one bad block can stop you booting until you manually perform a long fsck to fix it.

        • Not to mention that, although it's not needed often, it's great when you can wipe out all the system partitions but leave /home intact during a reinstall.

          I learned a long time ago how helpful it could be to move My Documents on a Windows machine to a separate partition from the Windows and Program Files folders. Reinstalling is much easier without having to back up personal stuff first. Even though I use it a lot less in Linux old habits die hard and I always try to keep personal files separate from system

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cp.tar ( 871488 )

            However, one recent version of Kubuntu managed to mess up my father’s /home nonetheless. Separate partition, don’t touch anything, but most of his picture and document folders were simply gone. I managed to recover quite a bit, but the filenames and organization were lost.

            Still, it’s generally a good thing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nutria ( 679911 )

        IMHO there's no very strong reason to have separate swap and boot partitions and so on.

        And when you wipe that partition, or "something" accidentally wipes it, there goes /home (which should *always* go on it own partition).

        • Unless they accidentally wipe your home partition...

        • You need a backup of home regardless of partitioning strategy, so there's no advantage there.

          If anything, it's having to futz with partitions in the first place that leads to mistakes involving them. And there's less futzing if you keep it simple. (An example would be resizing partitions because you need more on /var and have empty space on /home).

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Nutria ( 679911 )

            You need a backup of home regardless of partitioning strategy, so there's no advantage there.

            Of course there is: "safety backup" is a hell of a lot faster than "mandatory backup + restore".

            (An example would be resizing partitions because you need more on /var and have empty space on /home).

            I know I don't run a server, but it's been a decade since /var caused me any real problems.

          • Keeping it simple means making use of LVM and leaving a bit of extra space on the drive rather then reserving it all during the initial install.

            One of the file systems needs more space? Unmount the file system, resize the logical volume, resize the file system (a separate tool like resize2fs), then remount the file system and you magically have more space without having to do a huge backup/restore.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rysc ( 136391 ) *

        I'm so glad you don't have exactly the same needs, wants and desires as everyone else in the universe. It's more fun when life is diverse. Can you accept that someone, such as the OP, probably has some good reason why he wants GPT and can't be convinced that "You don't need it because I can live without it" is an acceptable alternative?

        • He already said why he wanted GPT: "It would be nice since my main reason for wanting GPT is Linux obsession with using up all my primary partitions."

          So, it seems obvious to point out that Linux doesn't need to use up all those partitions if that's not how he wants it.

      • I don't know anything about GPT, but every linux distro I've used will happily install to a single partition. IMHO there's no very strong reason to have separate swap and boot partitions and so on.

        One of the key strengths of Linux/Unix is that you can put any part of the tree onto a partition with a file system that makes sense for that part of the directory tree. Or where you need the system to not barf completely if one file system encounters severe errors or runs out of space. Even better, the proce

        • This is precisely why I do that. Filesystems like /boot and /root which don't change very often but are critical shouldn't be affected by filesystems like /var and /tmp which change frequently and are relatively unimportant or easily recreated, and I definitely don't want to lose the information in /home because of one of the other filesystems barfing.

          Plus, wanting to dual boot with at least 2 other OSes, I would prefer not to have to mount my entire install just in case something goes wrong during the proc

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Hatta ( 162192 )

        You can't boot from an encrypted partition, so there's a good reason to have a boot partition. A swap file can get fragmented, so there's a good reason to have a swap partition. As for "and so on..."

        Filling up root can cause all sorts of undesired behavior, so it's best to keep the subdirectories that are most likely to grow on their own partition. That tends to be /usr, /var, and /home. You want to keep /home on another partition anyway, in case you need to reinstall the system without touching /home.

      • I've tried that in the past, and my only saving grace was that the partitions didn't last long enough for me to create my own files. Literally for a while I was reinstalling the OS every single time I needed to reboot because of filesystem corruption. Granted that was a while ago, and IIRC ext3fs, but still, it's not a good practice to be in.

  • I'm waiting for the overly keen to discover the pain for me and report it faithfully to /.

    Just getting to old to beat my head into the keyboard any more. Well in this case touch screen.

    • (Inserting from elsewhere AC said: I'll keep my work desktop on 10.10. It's pretty stable right now, and my last two upgrade experiences with this machine have gone poorly. I'll probably upgrade my home machines sometime this weekend.)

      You said "I'm waiting for the overly keen to discover the pain for me and report it faithfully to /.

      Just getting to old to beat my head into the keyboard any more. Well in this case touch screen."

      See, this is what troubles me. What should be the absolute heart of slashdot,

    • Nobody is forcing you to use Unity. Sure it's the default, but the "classic" Gnome 2 desktop is still there.

  • Xubuntu for me (Score:3, Interesting)

    by danbuter ( 2019760 ) on Thursday April 28, 2011 @10:45AM (#35962890)
    I really don't care for either Gnome Shell or Unity, so I'm going to give xfce a whirl for the next 6 months.

    • I was playing with it myself about a week ago. I can honestly say that though it takes a bit of configuring, you can get XFCE looking much like the Gnome2 UI. My only show stopper issue for the time being was the XFCE's compositor just wasn't as good as Compiz (it caused some issues playing videos), and my dock-bar of choice (Docky) won't work without one. I can enable Compiz naturally, but it was trying to take over control of the desktop icons and such.

      It's probably something that could be worked aroun

  • Unity vs. Gnome-Shell (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fishthegeek ( 943099 ) on Thursday April 28, 2011 @10:54AM (#35962980) Journal
    I tried using Unity while Natty was in beta and it caused me to jump to Fedora 15. Unity has always struck me as a train wreck of usability. Global menus that are always present... unless they're not, because it depends on the application. A dock that is always there on the left, unless it isn't in order to get out of the way. It's a little too busy, a little to buggy, and a little too inconsistent with itself. I know I'm in a minority right now but I think Gnome-Shell is a better approach. I'm not starting a flame war here, I know GS isn't readily configurable, has issues with network manager, and has countless other things that need to mature. I can't help but think Canonicals reach has exceeded their grasp.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0123456 ( 636235 )

      I've found both of them rather crappy, to be honest. Hopefully by the time Ubuntu stop supporting Gnome 2 one or the other will actually be usable or I'll have to switch to Redhat.

      • Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

        Why go to Fedora when you go to Debian?

        I've gotten rather used to the Debian way of doing things, not to mention the repositories are much better.

        The latest Debian has the same easy installer as Ubuntu.

    • Since you're using Fedora 15 maybe you could explain something to me that I don't quite get about Gnome 3.

      I played around with a Gnome 3 live CD based on suse, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to put items on desktop. It seemed like there was no right clicking on the desktop to create a file. Putting files in ~/Desktop didn't show up where I thought they should. Is the Gnome 3 desktop just for displaying wallpaper now? Or is there some new paradigm I'm completely missing?

      I mean, I can kind o

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by GauteL ( 29207 )

        " Is the Gnome 3 desktop just for displaying wallpaper now?"

        Bingo. The new paradigm is that windows will always obstruct the wallpaper and so icons on the desktop are pointless. I personally agree with that notion, but it may not suit everyone.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cp.tar ( 871488 )

          So, Gnome is rediscovering Enlightenment?

        • Supposedly, they're making all these changes to make it easier for noobs who have never touch a computer before.

          But, ironically, the easiest thing you can do for noobs is to put their programs on the desktop. 10x10 matrix, 100 programs. They like stuff all right in front instead of in menus, regardless of whether they're called Applications or "Activities".

          Not to mention the utter stupidity of having newbs search for programs that they don't even know exist instead of a nice menu organized by category.

      • You can't actually put anything on the desktop by default. You can install the "gnome-tweak-tool" and have Nautilus draw your desktop. After selecting that you can then put icons on the desktop.

        http://osdir.com/ml/general/2011-03/msg20339.html

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )
      I assume the global menu require the cooperation of the application's widget set, i.e. when the app launches, the menu widget sees the global menu proxy and coordinates to show its menus through that instead of rendering it's own. Of course apps which fake a menu or use some weird widget set may not behave as they are meant to behave.

      What I find particularly annoying about the single menu there is no way to change the behaviour in the UI. I appreciate that in a small netbook with a touchpad that a single

  • I do have a beard, dammit. Stop stereotyping me!

  • The release looks very much like the desktop on the Ubuntu Netbook Remix distribution.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pmontra ( 738736 )
      Yes, and UNR is very good on small screens. I've got a derivative distro (eeebuntu NBR) installed on my 9" netbook and it's great. However it looks very silly on my 15" notebook. I won't use it there.

  • ... I hope 13.37 is better than 13.1. I upgraded to the latter from 13.0 on my laptop and stuff just stopped working properly so I had to revert back to 13.0.

    Fingers crossed for 13.37 and kudos to Pat and the guys for still doing Slackware in the face of all the corporate competition (no I don't mean MS or Apple, I mean Novell, RedHat AND Canonical).

  • Unity (Score:3)

    by Arancaytar ( 966377 ) <arancaytar.ilyaran@gmail.com> on Thursday April 28, 2011 @11:39AM (#35963614) Homepage

    Almost makes me want to give Slackware a go.

  • Just as a heads up, if you are running an NVidia card that is not handled by either Nouveau or the nvidia-current, do not upgrade. There is a major bug where the wrong dependancies are called. I imagine now that Natty is out it will get fixed fairly quickly but just an FYI.

  • > Approximately one billion Slashdot readers wrote in to tell us today that one of two distributions had releases:

    You have a million million or 10^12 readers ?

  • a little bit like. . . OpenStep? eh?

  • The best way to install Ubuntu for advanced users: mini.iso [ubuntu.com]. A 22 MB netinstall CD image that installs nothing but the bare minimum. After install, just run "apt-get install ubuntu-desktop" if you want the standard desktop, "apt-get install xubuntu-desktop" if you want xubuntu, etc. If you don't want a desktop that's fine too.
  • Sounds like Slackware wins by 2.33.

  • I was a Slackware user from the very low single digit versions until I decided I really wanted 64bit then never got back.
    The 1337 version number is a clear sign. I am tempted to give it a go.

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