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A Review of Ubuntu Warty Release 183

Posted by CmdrTaco from the joe-don-danny-donny-jordan dept.
JL writes "Recent news about Ubuntu had peaked my interest. Debian based, good development team, the Ubuntu philosophy and an active community. I lurked about on Freenode's #ubuntu channel and got a feel for the community. I found them to be helpful and a valuable asset to Ubuntu. I decided to give it a go on my laptop. "
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A Review of Ubuntu Warty Release More

A Review of Ubuntu Warty Release

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  • Maybe not, but it was damn quick and there's no Google cache to be found.

  • Not peaked (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dylan2000 ( 592069 ) on Sunday October 03, 2004 @08:59AM (#10419399) Homepage
    It piqued [reference.com] your interest.

  • Article Text (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 03, 2004 @09:05AM (#10419424)
    A review of Ubuntu - Warty release.

    Lately I have been getting that itch to run a different distribution. I am an avid Slackware / Dropline Gnome user. I also have been running SuSE 9.1 Pro since it came out. Both of these perform wonderfully well for me on my desktops and laptop. Neither was hard to configure or use. Both serve well as a Linux Desktop OS. But I still had this itch to try out something new. Recent news about Ubuntu had peaked my interest. Debian based, good development team, the Ubuntu philosophy and an active community. I lurked about on Freenode's #ubuntu channel and got a feel for the community. I found them to be helpful and a valuable asset to Ubuntu. I decided to give it a go on my laptop after some minor arm-twisting by a good friend of mine (bah). It's an older IBM ThinkPad T22. This is the model that IBM sold with (SCO/Caldera) Linux preinstalled. Everything on this laptop is very well supported. I downloaded the current ISO image (codenamed warty) and burned it to CD. The download speeds from the US mirror were good. In excess of 150k. Next I swapped in my spare hard drive just in case I did not care for Ubuntu. Well... in the end I must say that Ubuntu will be staying on this laptop for quite some time.

    Installation was easy and the default install with updates weighs in at about 1.5GB. It doesn't feature the graphical installers most users are accustomed to. I am no stranger to the text/curses based installers and Ubuntu's installer is based on the new Debian installer. I can't comment on the comparison to the new Debian installer, as I have not used it yet. But compared to the Debian installers of old, it is a major improvement. I can only imagine the new Debian installer is quite similar. It is laid out well and easy to follow. The only thing I came across that sort of threw me for a loop was the manual partitioning portion. Setting up the partitions was easy. I could select the file system and mount points just fine. It was when I wanted to make a swap partition where I had to hunt around the menu and tell the installer it should be a Linux swap partition. I expected it to be a selection along with the other file system choices like reiser or ext3. Instead it was located on another sub-menu screen. Hopefully this is a minor change that the Ubuntu team can make in future releases just for usability's sake. Once I found it I was on my way again. There is no package selection in the installer. Ubuntu instead installs a nice choice of software. I was pleased to be asked which one of my network interfaces I wanted to use during installation. I have an orinoco wireless card which is what I use the most on the laptop. The built in network card is an intel e100. The wireless card was properly detected and automatically configured for DHCP. The installer let me know it was searching for an access point which it found with no problems. With the network up and running, I was able to update the OS before even booting into the new Gnome 2.8 desktop. This definitely contradicts the info I heard about Ubuntu's poor laptop/pcmcia support. Another nice note on the installer was its ability to properly configure X for me. 1024x768 resolution, my USB mouse with working scroll wheel and the ps/2 based ThinkPad pointer mouse were all properly configured. Sound worked too. Weird thing to me was I never noticed the installer asking me questions about it. It was all done automatically without any user intervention. Enough on the installer. Lets talk about usability of Ubuntu in my day-to-day tasks.

    Ubuntu Applications MenuFirst boot into the desktop revealed a rather plain, yet very eye pleasing desktop. The Gnome 2.8 desktop is quite nice. I was pleased to see that a couple of my staple panel applets were already loaded, the wireless link and battery charge monitor. Browsing through the menus showed some very sane choices of software that the Ubuntu team picked out. I was not overwhelmed by a hundred choices of programs like with some KDE installations. The Ubuntu desktop is similar to Dropli

    • Re:Article Text (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "Recent news about Ubuntu had peaked my interest. Debian based, good development team, the Ubuntu philosophy and an active community."

      If only online articles were edited.

      pique
      tr.v. piqued, piquing, piques 1. To cause to feel resentment or indignation.
      2. To provoke; arouse: The portrait piqued her curiosity.
      3. To pride (oneself): He piqued himself on his stylish attire.

      peak
      v. peaked, peaking, peaks
      v. tr.

      1. Nautical. To raise (a gaff) above the horizontal.

      2. To bring to a maxim

  • Amazing (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This guy gives one of the best speeches at this summer's conventions, and now he's put together his own Linux distro! He's got my vote in '08.

  • I've been using Ubuntu... (Score:5, Informative)

    by fmerenda ( 78242 ) on Sunday October 03, 2004 @09:11AM (#10419458) Homepage
    I've been using Ubuntu since it's first public preview release a few weeks ago. It's based on Debian unstable. If you are looking for a distribution based on Debian that's easy to install, solid, and Gnome based, check out Ubuntu. And yes, you can install K3B if you want to. You've got access to all the Debian unstable packages, but they are the Ubuntu repostories, which are a snapshot of the Debian repositories. You should not mix the main Debian repositories with the Ubuntu repositories.

    The company that sponsors it employs several Debian developers, which is a good thing. The distribution *just works*, and is a true pleasure to use.

    Yes, it's another Debian-based distribution. But this one is truly different than the others. I suggest that you check it out if you're at all curious about it.

    The mailing lists have been exceptionally helpful with all the problems that have been posted, and everyone on the lists are very friendly and courteous. I feel like this is going to be one of the best distributions out there.

    If you are sick of all the new distributions out there, that's fine, don't check out Ubuntu. But I'm telling you, from my experience, it may be your loss.

    You can find out more about Ubuntu at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
    • sorry about my sloppy .sig above! :)

      -Frank
    • Ill ask you the same question I want to ask everytime someone says how amazing another disto is. Where is the incentive to switch from my gentoo install? (not counting the 3 days it took to fully install and compile).
      • If you are asking for a reason, then you probably already have your own reason.

        Seriously though, there isn't really a reason, other than curiosity, or the desire to run a binary distro rather than a source distro.

        I can tell you that I've been running Gentoo for almost two years, and had my system completely optimized, or so I thought. I recently switched to ubuntu and have noticed no performance hit, positive or negative. I do miss some portage tools, but I won't be switching back to Gentoo. I 'm sold
      • There isn't one. If you're happy with what you've got, don't switch. But I wouldn't recommend Gentoo to someone looking to try out Linux; I'd recommend Ubuntu. It's easier to install and gives you a clean, functional desktop without three days of installing, compiling, and manual configuration.
      • what does it for me:
        gentoo > debian
        gentoo > typical easy distro
        debian + easy distro > gentoo

        like someone who posted above in response to your question, i also used gentoo and was perfectly happy with it. i thought i had everything configured correctly, but after trying ubuntu, i see i was wrong, since my ubuntu installation feels noticeably faster. now, i know that i *could* have done my gentoo configuration right, but i'm still a bit of a n00b with only about a year's worth of linux experie
    • I guess the first thing that springs to mind is:why Ubuntu over Debian or Fedora Core?

      Ubuntu is not nessecarily compatible with Debian, meaning mixing and matching is a gamble, and the package versions will quickly skew and generate conflicts. On the other hand, Fedora Core offers the same release schedule as Ubuntu, with a larger audience and group of developers.

      Ubuntu is nice, but for someone not directly on the Ubuntu team, what is so compelling that would entice me to switch from Debian or Fedora and

  • Mirror of the site (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 03, 2004 @09:14AM (#10419473)
    Here's a mirror [mirrordot.org].

  • Mirror and my opinion (Score:3, Insightful)

    by powerline22 ( 515356 ) <thecapitalizt AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday October 03, 2004 @09:18AM (#10419486) Homepage
    Mirror at http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/c8e667c8388471455 0446f30649107d6/index.html [mirrordot.com] Mirrordot.

    To be honest, I know that this is a great distro, but it doesn't need that much attention on slashdot. Seems like there have been 5 reviews already. If I wanted all of that info I would go to OS News [osnews.com].

  • I'm impressed (Score:3, Informative)

    by lennier ( 44736 ) on Sunday October 03, 2004 @09:24AM (#10419515) Homepage
    I downloaded the CD and I've been running it for a couple of days on an oldish Celeron 1Ghz box I use to play with new distros. I had one hitch which was due to my having overzealously turned off ACPI in the BIOS way back. Fedora Core 2 didn't mind, but Ubuntu got very sore. But after fixing that everything pretty much Just Worked.

    Okay, there's some song-and-dance still needed to get a Palm Tungsten E to sync without crashing, but this is the simplest, most up-to-date and most fun desktop distro I've used. Synaptic and 'universe' is making me realise why Debian users are so weirdly happy.

    (Case in point: tinyfugue, my favourite MUD client. A real pain to install on Fedora Core 1, I had to manually hack a source RPM downloaded from a random website. On Ubuntu, it was point, click, go.)

    Also the default desktop and menu layout is very slick, much more intuitive than Fedora. I think I've found my new home distro.
    • Ah, but is Ubuntu as paranoid as Debian about switching to tf5 in unstable? I like being able to PgUp/PgDn through my history without using /recall every time I need to go backwards. Also, keeping the output from separate worlds separate is a nice feature.

      I've personally gone to Arch for my desktop use. It's pretty slick and almost painfully up-to-date. I don't like Gnome and KDE gets on my nerves, so I use XFCE4. The only problem I can articulate right now for desktop use is that Firefox and Thunde

  • 105 distributions based on Debian (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 03, 2004 @09:37AM (#10419563)
    According to Distrowatch, there are 105 distributions based on Debian: Distrowatch independence [distrowatch.com].
    What makes it so different from others to be quoted so often in Slashdot?

    • Re:105 distributions based on Debian (Score:4, Informative)

      by theantix ( 466036 ) on Sunday October 03, 2004 @10:18AM (#10419805) Journal
      Because unlike the other 104, Ubuntu has proper funding, contributes packages back upstream to Debian, employs a lot of prominent Debian and Gnome hackers, and is already a kick-ass distribution while in the preview phase of their first release. This the flavour de jour for a very good reason, it's suprisingly kick-ass.
    • I think its because who is involved with the project. Because of that alone it has already gained enormous street cred. If this turns out as planned and lives up to the hype it's going to be a very good thing for linux in general. An up to date version of Debian which actually focuses on ease of use but remains Free long term is something that's been needed for a long time. Plus based on who is involved this project actually does have a chance of being around in 2 years. This isn't just 2 users coming toget
  • The word is piqued! Not peaked! Arrrrrgh!!!

    Does Ubuntu come with any dictionary software?

  • Ubuntu on Older Systems (Celeron 333/128 MB RAM) (Score:5, Informative)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Sunday October 03, 2004 @09:43AM (#10419604) Homepage Journal
    I just want to report that Ubuntu runs quite well on less than bleeding edge machines, too. I have a Celeron 333 with 128 MB RAM here, which counts as low spec for some people. Aparently not for the GNOME people, as the system is very snappy.

    Stay away from OpenOffice.org, though. I started it up, just out of curiosity. The machine soon went completely unresponsive, and after 10 minutes (OOo was still not up), I power-cycled the machine. AbiWord works fine, though.

  • sudo .vs. root (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Macka ( 9388 ) on Sunday October 03, 2004 @09:57AM (#10419688)

    Something that caught my attention in the review was the statement that root is disabled by default, with all management tasks being performed by sudo, and graphical tools that make use of it. Sounds like they've taken a leaf out of Apple's books.

    Is this the first Linux distro to do this?

    My personal experience of using Mac OS X now for the last 2+ years is that this works really well. If I really need to do anything that needs the root UID for any length of time, then "sudo -s" sorts me out and off I go. I've never needed to enable the root account once.

    So is an active root account a thing of the past? I'm curious to know what you (the reader) think about that.

    • Amen. I'm still waiting for Fedora Core to do this. I think it's stupid to type in the root password for things like update when sudo would be so much better.

      Apparently as SELinux gets integrated into the kernel, even sudo will be unnecessary. Fedora Core is working on this integration. It will be interesting to see how it works out.
        1. Apparently as SELinux gets integrated into the kernel, even sudo will be unnecessary. Fedora Core is working on this integration. It will be interesting to see how it works out.

        seinux was an option for FC2, and is the default with FC3. The biggest problem to be tackled are the default policies.

        The good thing about selinux is that it eliminates the 'superuser' account; root still exists but is no longer all powerful. If the system is rooted, the whole system is not automatically compromised.

        Just as

    • Re:sudo .vs. root (Score:3, Interesting)

      by burns210 ( 572621 )
      I think it is a secure, and smart move for Linux(and Mac OS X, which I use more often). It has been a long standing mottoe "Don't login as root unless you absolutely need to, and even then, login just for the task at hand at then logout"... Well, why even have a root account then? sudo makes more sense, use sudo and run the command you need, and get rid of the logout - login as root - do task - logout.

      Isn't this also a feature of SELinux?
  • Why is it that we are still seeing site /.ed ? Coral P2P cache system seems to something quite effective and is easy enough to use.

    Ubuntu Review using Coral Cache [nyud.net]

    So how about everyone stop trying to load the master link and use this one, then we all will get to see

  • Coralize! Coralize! Coralize! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hacker ( 14635 ) <hacker@gnu-designs.com> on Sunday October 03, 2004 @10:08AM (#10419748)

    Please please please, in the future when posting articles that link to innocent users' blogs, personal sites, sites hosted on DSL connections, and so on... do not link to them directly! Use the Coral'ized link syntax as below:

    http://www.desktopos.com.nyud.net:8090/reviews.p hp?op=showcontent&id=19

    This link was purposely not left clickable, because the 'nyud.net' at the end, would cause Slashdot to add the [nyud.net] to the link text, which would stop people from clicking on it (thinking it was a pr0n site).

    Here is some more information about the Coral Distribution Network [nyu.edu].

    Seriously, use it. It helps a LOT.

    --
    Have you Plucked the Web today? [plkr.org]

    • This link was purposely not left clickable, because the 'nyud.net' at the end, would cause Slashdot to add the [nyud.net] to the link text, which would stop people from clicking on it.

      Lemme get this straight. In order to get the most people possible to click your link, you made it non-clickable?

  • I love this. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by pucko ( 68877 )
    Debian with 6 months release cycle, can it be better?

  • Another review (Score:4, Informative)

    by theantix ( 466036 ) on Sunday October 03, 2004 @10:21AM (#10419818) Journal
    Here is my review of Ubuntu [kuro5hin.org], if you haven't already read enough about this distro already.
    With a six-month release schedule, solid funding, and many prominent Debian and Gnome developers employed by Canonical to work on Ubuntu, the future looks bright for this project. For such a new distribution they have already come quite a long way. The mailing lists and IRC channel are full of people checking out the distribution, and has already moved into the top twenty distributions listed on DistroWatch, an impressive feat considering how young the project still is.


    As Ubuntu Warty is still in preview period, there are several quirks that are still being ironed out before the final release, but it is already a very stable and solid desktop system. I predict that this distribution will have the staying power that so many other Linux options seem to lack.

  • Knoppix knx-hdinstall: best option for KDE lovers. (Score:5, Informative)

    by MsGeek ( 162936 ) on Sunday October 03, 2004 @10:28AM (#10419885) Homepage Journal
    I like the philosophy behind Ubuntu, and I'm waiting for my CD copies. However, my choice for easy Debian installation is to boot Knoppix, then run the knx-hdinstall script from a root shell.

    Here's the How-To:
    http://www.freenet.org.nz/misc/knoppix-install.htm l [freenet.org.nz]

    Next, if you so desire, you can dist-upgrade your Knoppix HD install to Sid or Sarge or even Woody if you're the conservative type. The author of this document:

    http://members.rogers.com/ctmlinux/knoppix2debian. html [rogers.com]

    suggests that Sid is the best choice for a desktop machine because of the newness of the packages. The author also gives a how-to about removing Knoppix packages that are in there for completeness' sake but are not always necessary. However, the most important part of the upgrade to canonical Debian is these three steps:

    1.) Edit /etc/apt/sources.list to include more standard Debian sources.

    2.) Go into a shell, su to root, and type in:
    # apt-get update
    # apt-get dist-upgrade

    Then wait for each one of those commands to finish. Presto! You have a canonical Debian system.

    The instructions in the second referenced document also work for getting rid of Linspire/Lindows-isms on a Linspire/Lindows preinstalled machine. Click'n'run? We don't need no stinkin' Click'n'run!

    • The best option for KDE Lovers right now seems to be SimplyMEPIS 2004.03 -> www.mepis.org
      Knoppix is a great LiveCD never offered what one shoud expect from a Debian installation if installed to disk. (Might habe changed, but I think it has not:) Beeing based on a Mixture of Testing, Unstable and back in the day even stable it's been quite a mess to 'get right' in the end.

      SimplyMEPIS right now is based on testing, but (as I aways do) is easily changed to unstable and runs like a charm with all the convie
  • Recent news about Ubuntu had peaked my interest.

    I think the poster meant to write that it piqued his interest, indicating that is provoked his interest, which increased. If it had peaked his interest, that would mean his interest in the distro was at a maximum when he heard about it and has declined since then, which doesn't seem to be the case.

    The use of incorrect homonyms can be an especially Bad Thing when they completely reverse the meaning of what you say.

    • The use of incorrect homonyms can be an especially Bad Thing when they completely reverse the meaning of what you say.

      Don't you mean homophones?

      homophone [reference.com]
      homonym [reference.com]

      • Yes, homophone would probably be a better word choice. But your cited definitions of homonym do not rule out different spellings (i.e. "often the same spelling", only "the same sound", "pronounced or spelled the same way"), and homonym was the standard textbook term when I went to school. So if you're trying to argue that my word choice was incorrect, I - and your references - disagree.
  • I'm looking for a good Debian distro to start off with. I'm used to RedHat/Fedora but I'm getting really interested in Debian distros after reading /.
    • Try SimplyMEPIS 2004.03 - it's Debian based and has what most newbies might ask for already integrated and does not follow any strict free vs. non-free ideas as Debian itself does. Here's its DistroWatch site: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mepi s

  • AMD64 (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Having heard so many good things about Ubuntu, I decided to try out their release for AMD64. I hate to say it but I was very dissapointed.

    Now, I'm not saying theres anything wrong with Ubuntu - I'd recommend it to any i386 user. My problem was that the 64bit repositories were incomplete. When the installer tried to grab stuff from said repositories there wasn't stuff there to grab, well I got a little worried.

    I was left with an incomplete installation on my AMD64 that made me wonder if anyone at Ubuntu
  • ...that their logo is similar to The Birmingham University Guild of Students [bham.ac.uk] logo, heh, whodathunkit.
  • Let's just say that I'm a relative newbie and I want to a good, simple distro for my older laptop. I dislike Mandrake because I can't stand eight million applications installed by default. I want Gnome 2.8 (KDE is not my cup of tea), a good perl and c++ programming environment, and a decent office suite (and Firefox and Thunderbird). I also want an easy update method. Fedora and Ubuntu both seem to fit this bill. I'm leaning toward Ubuntu because it comes on just one cd, versus four for Fedora. Can an
    • Even though I happen to be a very happy Mandrake user, I know lots of people dislike it because it's no small package. I don't think you'll like Fedora for the same reason you dislike Mandrake, they're both "heavy" distros, lots of apps and services installed by default. Ubuntu would probably suit you in this case, it's based on Debian which has a lighter default install; the CD is even a live CD so you can try it before installing it like Knoppix.

    • Re:Compare Ubuntu to Fedora Core 3 (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I have switched from Fedora to Ubuntu. I ran FC3 Test 2 for a while but found it to be quite frustrating. Specifically, much breakage and system update (yum) problems. Many Selinux errors. The Fedora developers (redhat) run the show, community involvelment is limited.

      I like the fact that Fedora is free, and that they do push the envelope with things like X.org, selinux, however I found it hard to live with. I could see keeping Fedora on another partition and playing with it from time to time, but that

  • Recent news about Ubuntu had peaked my interest (my emphasis)

    It's piqued, idiot. When is Slashdot going to employ literate editors?

  • piqued (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 )
    Should "of" typed "piqued" [reference.com].

  • NKOTB (Score:2, Funny)

    by FrankDrebin ( 238464 )

    from the joe-don-danny-donny-jordan dept.

    Man do I feel lame for getting that. This feels worse than a caffiene-withdrawal headache. Does anyone know of an equivalent to mouthwash for the brain? Thanks a lot, Taco.

  • It's "piqued," not "peaked." GET IT RIGHT FOR ONCE!
  • I've been waiting for an updated version of Debian to come out for a while now... This looks like the answers to my prayers!
  • ..I read, "A Review of the Ubuntu Warty Disease" and somehow also associated "highly virulent" in there somewhere.

    Then I read it again.

    Well, it does sound like some exotic African virus doesn't it?! Doesn't it?

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