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1 • Ubuntu Lucid (by anthonye on 2010-05-03 08:53:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
I can put up with new stuff which I don't want (One, the let's do iTunes thing, etc); what I can't and won't put up with is the fact that this has to be about the slowest Ubuntu ever. Sure, you get to the log-in screen a little bit faster... but then you have to wait an age to get to a usable desktop. On my (reasonably fast) computer, 9.10 takes just 5 seconds for that last step: 10.04 takes almost 30 seconds. The first time I ran it, only the HD light flashing persuaded me that it hadn't stalled. I'll wait for 10.10, thanks.
2 • Ubuntu adoption (by patrick on 2010-05-03 10:23:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
"Ubuntu ... is currently the world's most popular desktop Linux distribution"
Anything to substantiate that claim (other than simply the word of Canonical's marketing goons)?
3 • Re 2: Ubuntu adoption (by Veritas on 2010-05-03 11:09:06 GMT from United States)
How about a quick survey of Distrowatch commenters? Let us know if you are using Ubuntu, another distro, or a version of Windows. I'm using Debian Lenny.
4 • OS usage (by Todd R. on 2010-05-03 11:20:22 GMT from United States)
Windows 7 on the same computer (swapping out hard drives) as Mint 8.
We put PCLinuxOS 2010 on it for about two hours the other day; slow, which surprised us as Mint is not exactly Puppy Linux. ;)
Sorry to have to mention Windows 7, but it's an improvement over Vista, as most know. It pales next to Linux in important ways, of course, but is needed for wireless printer functionality as well as many homegroup aspects (yes, we've set up the network on Mint as well, but it is just a bit slower than W7).
5 • Popularity (by Jesse on 2010-05-03 11:27:09 GMT from Canada)
You don't really need to take an informal survey to see how many people are using Ubuntu. You can check out DistroWatch's stats here:
http://distrowatch.com/awstats/awstats.DistroWatch.com.osdetail.html
It looks like Ubuntu makes up about 39% of the Linux-using visitors to this site.
6 • Ubuntu 10.04 - YAPBRP - Yet Another "Put the Buttons in the Right Place" (by Alessandro di Roma on 2010-05-03 11:28:32 GMT from Italy)
System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Theme -> Clearlooks -> Close
7 • RE: 5 Popularity (by ladislav on 2010-05-03 11:30:36 GMT from Taiwan)
And that statistic also shows, ladies and gentlemen, that for the first time in the history of DistroWatch, Linux-using visitors now outnumber Windows-using ones!
8 • Ubuntu 10.4 (by John on 2010-05-03 11:31:44 GMT from Australia)
I don't mind the new Ubuntu. I run it on a 64 bit quad.
1. It does indeed boot quickly but it takes about 30 seconds after the desktops appears for the CPUs to calm down. This may be a compiz issue because when I begin work before the CPUs calm down, my window manager doesn't load properly (Compiz with Emerald themes).
2. I don't like the standard top and bottom panels: I always change them to one at the bottom.
3. I don't care about the purple/brown thing: I alway schange them.
4. The techno connectedness of the social network stuff I'm sure is good for someone. But I don't use it.
In short, for my work, it is basically no different to the previous version; it does the job.
John
9 • New Ubuntu (by Nunes on 2010-05-03 11:46:27 GMT from Brazil)
I tried the new Ubuntu in my wife's Acer Travelmate 2350. It wouldn't boot, freezing after a "no wmi" message. Tried the alternate installer and did the instalallation, but got the same freezing problem. The system will just boot in safe mode. Ubuntu 09.10 works perfectly in the same machine. I did some research on the net, and I'm not the only one to have this problem. I expected more from a LTS edition.
10 • Statistics (by jean on 2010-05-03 11:53:29 GMT from France)
Interesting data, I am just wondering why Windows Seven doesn't appear in the stats and which distributions are hidden under the high number of "Unknown or unspecified distribution".
11 • RE: 10 Statistics (by ladislav on 2010-05-03 12:06:22 GMT from Taiwan)
The first one is easy - the DW server runs on Lenny which came out before Windows 7 - therefore the web logs analyser doesn't know anything about an OS called Windows 7.
The second part of your question is a bit trickier, but there are a few reasons. Firstly, a number of distributions, including Slackware, Gentoo and Arch (I believe) don't include any identifiers into their browser strings, so the web log analyser has no way of knowing which distro these visitors use. Another group of "unspecified" distributions comes from people who use Opera or who install a newer version of Firefox or another browser directly from the browser's web site - these won't have any identifier either. And thirdly, there is a large number of connections coming from all sorts of RSS feed readers, many of which provide the name of the RSS feed reader and (sometimes) the OS they are running on, but not the distribution name.
12 • Ubuntu Lucid (by DemonTek on 2010-05-03 12:06:52 GMT from United States)
Ok, I can not deal with Lucid at all. It is so slow, I just can't take it. Things seem to crash alot. I have a nice system, running a AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition with 8gigs of DDR2. There is NO reason it should take 30 seconds to get to the desktop.
I will be staying with 9.10 and when 10.10 comes out I truly HOPE they have fixed all this crap. If not, Good-Bye Ubuntu!
Things have gone from great to crap since Jane Silber took over and this taste of Mac? Not liking it either.
13 • Just say no to "the cloud", it's an accident waiting to happen ... (by jake on 2010-05-03 12:08:29 GMT from United States)
"While trouble-shooting Rhythmbox's MP3 support, I found that the Ubuntu One login and synchronisation services were running in the background, regularly using about 2% of my CPU, even though I didn't have an Ubuntu One account yet, nor was I making use of the One applications."
Lovely. So what you are saying is that it looks like *buntu regularly calls home, just like the rest of the corporate shovelware OSes. How "helpful".
" I like the idea of the service, but I'm wary of what it might be doing when it should be sleeping quietly in the background."
You like the idea of storing your personal data on a multi-billion dollar international datamining corporation's servers? Seriously, have you thought that thru'? The security admin in me is all kinds of queasy ...
14 • re: 11 (by jake on 2010-05-03 12:13:38 GMT from United States)
"Firstly, a number of distributions, including Slackware, Gentoo and Arch (I believe) don't include any identifiers into their browser strings"
And rightly so ... Why give anyone with nefarious intent a helpful hand? Distros that wave their hands in the air and yell "look at me, LOOK AT ME!" are only asking for trouble ...
No, I'm not paranoid. I'm experienced. There is a big difference.
15 • Ubuntu appreciation (by Arve Eriksson on 2010-05-03 12:19:07 GMT from Iceland)
I don't mean to belittle anyone's complaints about Lucid, but from testing the LiveCD (not installed here - sorta mission-critical laptop, used for school and paying my rent and things, running Mint 8) I'm left with nothing else to say than: My favourite Ubuntu LiveCD yet! The caveat with that is, of course, that I have no real estimation of how long it takes to load the desktop in the real world.
Once I get back to my Ubuntu/XP-desktop, though...! Bytes are gonna fly! (AND I need to get a new chassi...)
I agree with the reviewer's apprehensiveness about the experimental spree for this LTS-release, and a purple terminal?? (Well, at least even lowly I know how to sort THAT out.)
16 • Kubuntu 10.04 LTS vs. RHEL 6 beta KDE (by Niki Kovacs on 2010-05-03 12:30:21 GMT from France)
A few days ago, I made a little test and installed Kubuntu 10.04 and RHEL 6 beta with KDE on two identical PCs, two NEC Powermates (2.4 GHz, 40 GB disk, 512 MB RAM). Those two machines are used for (Linux) training purposes on a daily basis.
Kubuntu 10.04 : installer takes ages between every screen. For example, it asks you for the timezone (Europe/Paris) and then ponders this for about ten minutes. Then comes the keyboard layout, and then I have to wait another ten minutes, and so on. The whole install took about an hour and a half. After rebooting, KDE is very (!) slow to come up. One click on the menu, for example, and then the menu appears after a three second delay. Same thing is true for about everything. With no apps started, Kubuntu eats 398 MB RAM.
RHEL 6 beta : installer has a "hiccup" when asking for disk layout, but then goes on. Selecting a no-bullshit KDE desktop results in approximately 600 packages to be installed. Installation goes quite fast. After rebooting, system comes up fast, KDE too. The desktop is very responsive, no annoying delay or whatsoever. With no apps started, RHEL 6 beta eats 150 MB RAM.
Just to be sure, I repeated the experiment the other way around with switched PCs. Same result.
So I guess I'll stick with RHEL/CentOS.
17 • ubuntu 10.04 (by joe on 2010-05-03 12:45:10 GMT from United States)
10.04 first experiences...
My install was slow at first too, HDD grinding away... I disabled compiz, killed Ubuntu One and other unnecessary services (bluetooth, etc.). To do this easily, sudo apt-get install bum (short for boot-up manager) and then you can tweak your services. There used to be a 'services' app in the system-admin menu, but now it's gone so just install bum. I then uninstalled all the social media crapware (indicator-messages, indicator-me, etc.) and now the desktop flies!
The only thing I changed from default at install time was to make the root partition ext3 instead of ext4.
It was almost impossible for me to add apps via apt on release day - the mirrors got so slow it was downloading at sub-dialup speeds... but picked up the next day no problem.
All-in-all, everything is working nicely.
Joe
18 • Ubuntu 10.04 (by Carl Smuck on 2010-05-03 12:56:25 GMT from United States)
I found that the regular Ubuntu 10.04 worked very well on my Compaq cq60-206us laptop. Then I tried both the 32 and 64 bit versions of Ultimate Edition. When I was using Ubuntu it was the Release Candidate. Ultimate Edition 64 bit would not boot to the proper graphical environment after installing the proprietary nvidia driver. Ultimate Edition 32 bit works fine with the video but sometimes becomes unresponsive. Unlike the regular Ubuntu 10.04 in 32 bit Ultimate edition did not give me a pae kernal to take advantage of the 4 GB of ram I have. Ylmf OS based on ubuntu 9.10 had the decency to at least inlcude a PAE kernal since they do not have a 64 bit version.
19 • RE: 13 (by Jesse on 2010-05-03 13:06:03 GMT from Canada)
"Lovely. So what you are saying is that it looks like *buntu regularly calls home, just like the rest of the corporate shovelware OSes. How "helpful"."
No, I'm not saying that. What I said was the service is doing something in the background. It could be checking for folders to sync, it could be monitoring file system changes, it could be aggressively polling for status changes. Or, maybe it is contacting the One servers. What I was saying is it was doing something when I felt it should be idle. I'm not certain the One service was accessing the network, but it was churning on the CPU.
And, yes, I think the service is a good option. It may not be for everyone, but it's an opt-in service. For people that want it, it can be very useful. For people who don't want it, don't opt-in.
20 • rref @7 • RE: 5 Popularity (by ladislav on 2010-05-03 11:30:36 GMT from Taiwan) (by forlin on 2010-05-03 13:22:18 GMT from Portugal)
Ladislav; sure I understand your rejoice, as I rejoice too with your information. But I would not mind if the opposite was also true. The Linux visitors are converted. The Windows users seems to trend, later, to be converted, either.
21 • Lubuntu (by ozonehole on 2010-05-03 13:23:18 GMT from Taiwan)
Those who are finding Ubuntu too slow should give Lubuntu a try. You can download an Lubuntu live CD, but another option is to simply install Ubuntu on your hard drive and the install the package "lubuntu-desktop."
sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop
22 • ultimate edition (by jack on 2010-05-03 13:29:08 GMT from Canada)
I had a friend (with a fast connection) download and burn this.
The live cd loaded OK on his dual core intel with 2 gigs of ram.
On my old celeron 2 gig hertz with 512 rm there appeared in the center of the screen a smail window (about 10 cm by 5 cm) which had a picture of a "sherlock Holmes " hat and a magnifying glass.
Nothing I did would get rid of it.
I pulled the plug and re started my comp. Same thing but I proceeded to install to HDD (hoping that the window would be removable.)
It took about an hour from the time I restarted to get to "copying files 100%"
BUT it continued "copying files" to 136%
then another small window popped up behind the "hat" window ( the top bar of this new window was visible and it cold be dragged to one side) saying that there was an error on the HD.( an old 40 gig WD) which had a functioning XP )
Time to consider a new comp.!
23 • LTS (by Omari on 2010-05-03 13:41:04 GMT from United States)
I wonder if Canonical has ever done anything to give the impression that they won't test new technologies in the LTS release? Experience shows that they stick new things in the LTS. The last LTS got PulseAudio. (Now it's in its second LTS release and you're just calling it "beta" ready!) This doesn't seem wise to me but to be fair maybe Canonical never said they wouldn't test new stuff in an LTS.
24 • ubunto installer (by forlin on 2010-05-03 13:46:40 GMT from Portugal)
Only one thing to point at it. The iso cd has 2 options: try/install. Some distros have a 3rd option: start from hard drive. I downloaded and burnt ubuntu during night, and left the CD in the drive. Next day, I rebooted. I had forgot the cd was at the drive (my bios is set by me, to start from cd drive) and was presented with the installer. As I did not want to install at that moment, I though that closing the installer window, would direct my system into its boot loader. At first, it seems nothing was happening. After a few minutes, I was running "ubunto try" Not a big deal, but it would be easy to add an 3rd option in the installer, to start from the hard drive. Or other wise. eliminate the "close window" button.
25 • TinyCore (by Meanpt on 2010-05-03 14:17:33 GMT from Portugal)
Heading in the right way. Many congratulations to the developer's team and community. Despite some glitches, this distro is becoming a loyal friend and taking my computing for most serious things. Hope they quickly reach version 3. and quickly get rocking.
26 • @13: don't be so paranoid! (by Robert on 2010-05-03 14:19:12 GMT from United States)
The idea behind One isn't to store your census information and bank account pins. If you're that worried about it you can encrypt your files or God forbid use a flash drive. It's great for easy file sharing and holding documents, and quickly and easily (*gasp*- easy? We're too insecure and macho about our tech skills to use something *easy*) at that. If you're that worried then don't use it. But don't lament about security concerns that aren't in line with the intentions of the application.
27 • Pink Terminal? (by Barnabyh on 2010-05-03 14:24:39 GMT from South Africa)
Sure it's a minor point, but it's also the peak of bad taste. Could at least have made it black by default. My guess is it's just to be controversial.
28 • RE: 11 Statistics (by jean on 2010-05-03 14:25:09 GMT from France)
Thank you very much for these clarifications.
29 • RE:Ubuntu complaints. (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-05-03 14:42:42 GMT from United States)
Well here we have the same old same old. People coming out of the woodwork saying, "Ubuntu has put out another buggy release and it's worst than before." Of course that is just not true as far as I'm concerned because I've had none of those problems. Regardless of what problems other people seem to be having this version of Ubuntu is the fastest I've installed so far. It's not just for me it's also for quite a few other people on quite a few different systems. The crack about Ubuntu going the iTunes route, is one example of just incorrect thinking. iTunes has DRM in their music. For people who are scared to death of cloud computing simply don't use it. You can get by for a while but sooner or later you will have to adopt some form of cloud computing. People need to learn how to secure their systems and not be scared. And Patrick, you would have to have your head stuck in the sand to say that Ubuntu is not the most popular desktop Linux distro. You are not able to prove it's not the most popular and why does it even matter? It doesn't matter at all. Ubuntu is going for the general public and not just the Linux nuts that hang out here. That being said it goes without saying that Ubuntu would include the items that appeals to the general computer user. For instance the social networking items. I don't use them but the general public does. It seems to me that Ubuntu may not be the best fit for a lot of the people that frequent this site. But that's okay. There are a lot of good distros. I use Ubuntu as my main system because I have no problems with it. I also like SimplyMepis and Fedora. All this ill will makes me want to go back to the cp/m days. That was fun.
30 • Ubuntu 10.04 32 bit (by neil on 2010-05-03 14:44:22 GMT from United States)
1. Upon booting the live cd, my cursor pointer was a Square rather than the usual arrow. After installation, the mouse cursor was still Not an arrow. I installed Nividia 96, rebooted and the cursor is normal. I have posted this issue in ubuntuforums but have no answer. This problem was not oresent in 9.10.
2. Installation took a very long time, with little info about what is going on as it progresses. Lucid seems slower than 9.10 to me, also.
31 • Ubuntu 10.04 is a failure for me (by Dalfish on 2010-05-03 15:13:41 GMT from India)
i am sorry to say i am not a fan of ubuntu though i use it. Ubuntu lacks backward compatiblity. It is going the windows route. my USBmodem works flawlessly in ubuntu 9.04 It will not work in karmic nor in lucid. So ubuntu is not supporting all hardware that it supported before. im pretty disappointed with ubuntu. that was my only way to connect to the internet. ubuntu forums also does not provide with the answers required. simply creating a fourm and No user can answer nor the support people cannot solve it. i have put this problem again in ubuntu forums. disappointed with the outcome. i will wait for one week i have planned to shift to PCLOS which is better than ubuntu i will not recommed ubuntu
32 • Shuttleworth and things (by davemc on 2010-05-03 15:21:59 GMT from United States)
Just looking at the history of Ubuntu releases, the guy reminds me of the Ancient Greek King Pyrrhus - Amazing short term results but failing at everything in the end due to lack of follow-through, always chasing after the coolest new tech's but never quite able to close the stability deal (Italy, Sicily, Sparta), remembered AD (after death) as the "ADD (attention deficit disorder) King that ruined Epirus".
The last LTS release (8.04) was a complete and total train wreck at release. It took 3 major revisions and over one year to finally fix the laundry list of unfixed bugs and instability issues that plagued it. From a business viewpoint alone, how inefficient and cost burdensome is that? This is not the way to run a business and actually turn a dime in the process. LTS releases should only be "released when ready" as a matter of common sense, and should be independent of Canonicals regular 6-month release cycles. I think that is the only sensible way to handle them. Continue rolling out cutting edge stuff every 6 months - sure - but push out LTS releases as a side project with stable elements of the mainline releases, similar to how Red Hat handles RHEL and Fedora.
33 • Ubantu (by sly on 2010-05-03 15:35:25 GMT from United States)
I tried out the new release on an old Sony PCV RX550 1.8 MHZ and it worked great. No issues with install and it boots pretty fast. In summary, it worked. Of course I had to change the background. I prefer the earthy brown to purple.
I can't wait to see the bells and whistles that Mint adds.
34 • Ubuntus - a journey of several steps (by Steve on 2010-05-03 16:07:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
A slightly longer posting detaining my journey.
Here in the UK I've been unemployed for a while and have become swept up in a Government reskilling scheme. So I decided to get to know LAMP.
I've been waiting for a major name to release - and Ubuntu LTS came out. I went for Kubuntu and U Server 10.04.
First install Kubuntu. I have 2 HD's on a 2008 PC, so wiped the 2nd HD and backed up the 1st. Kubuntu is going on the 2nd.
I set the BIOS to boot from the 2nd drive, partitioned it up correctly (using gparted on another live CD, just in case I was limited to partitioning options) popped in the K 10.04 CD and installed. All seemed fine - until reboot. Can't reboot.
What the installer has done is discover the 1st HD (though I never mentioned sda - only sdb) and it's fiddled with the MBR on sda :(. Further, it found Vista and the recovery partition.
Boot from 1st HD - and checked to see Vista was OK.
Up comes the Vista recovery suite (do I want to wipe the disk and do a clean reinstall?) and I nearly have a heart attack.... it was an overnight job to do the backups! Turns out 10.04 gets the Vista main partition and Recovery mixed up. Um, the main Windows area is the big one guys, not the couple of gigs for the reinstaller.
But it shouldn't have been on sda to start with!
KDE runs a bit odd (don't like 4 series at all) and the task-bar has a screen defect which seems permanent (1/2 on left started white, went black and stayed black). Widgets don't stay where I drag them.
It basically goes OK - and has Konqueror - good!
Hm, 6 / 10. It would be 7, but I don't like installers being creative.
Next up is Ubuntu Server.
On a separate partition on sdb, it installs cleanly with a full LAMP suite. Sweet.
Boot up, it just works giving a plain console prompt. apt-get xfce suite; startx and it works. Install webmin, seamonkey, OO all work 1st time.
Of course, the bootloader has fiddled with sda again and swapped over the Vista C : and recovery partitions (I'd reversed them in K's bootloader by now)
With Ubuntu server everything just works! Horray! And it was easy to set up! Made it fixed IP address, set up Samba and I have storage plus LAMP suite I can use across my network.
9.5 / 10, loosing the .5 as it did the MBR dirty again.
Must mention Turnkey LiveCD LAMP (not on Distrowatch). I found this surfing the web; a live CD (Dec '09) with a modern LAMP stack. Not booted it yet...
anyhow now I have several ways to play with LAMP and I can begin my self-training; 16 books to slog through....
35 • Ubuntu popularity (by Basilio Guzman on 2010-05-03 16:18:39 GMT from Puerto Rico)
Ubuntu is the most popular distro. I have seen the curve right here in DW for several years now. (I remember the time when Ubuntu was #5, among the Top 10 distros). By the time a debate arose about the data provided by the DW page, and the various methods they used to measure "popularity". By far, those methods were more scientific than the ones used by MTV, for the bands.
I think Ubuntu has reached summit doing several things right:
1. A distinctive name, barely associated with Linux.
2. A clear goal, and a clear mission. No one of them were "geek" centered, but USER centered.
3. Ship-It. Sending free, "officially" pressed copies is unbeatable!
4. Preinstalled on Dells (and other) machines.
5. The ever growing fan base.
No surprises here for me, despite the fact it is not the most avanced Linux, technically, "geekly" speaking.
36 • ubuntu 2.6.32 (by Anonymous on 2010-05-03 17:10:02 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu 10.04 may already be obsolete. 2.6.32 has limited support for the Intel I-series chips with turbo mode, and for TRIM that preserves SSD performance as the device fills up.
Unfortunately, there are conflicting reports about backporting and enabling. The actual state of affairs is murky for a non-technical user.
It appears that to gain competitive performance on this hardware - hardware that is no longer uncommon - Mepis, PCLOS, and Ubuntu/Mint users will have do some tweaking. Tweaking tends to generate the kind of issues that a mainstream desktop user hates, involving forum study and CLI sessions.
Some who may have gravitated towards Mint/Mepis/PCLOS, the stable user-friendly distros, who have recent IBM cpu or an SSD, might be better served by the upcoming Fedora/SUSE/Mandriva releases.
37 • Lucid Lynx (by Patrick on 2010-05-03 17:17:46 GMT from United States)
On my main machine I am still running 8.04, with a 9.10 I was getting ready to take over the day-to-day. Since I was too slow getting that done before the release of 10.04, I now ran an upgraded it to 10.04. The upgrade seemed to work fine. Runs smooth in 64-bit mode on a Athlon X2 system, and boots fast.
Remaining issues are upgrading my SheevaPlug MythTV backend to 0.23. Unfortunately debian-multimedia only has 0.22 available in testing, and 0.23 RC2 in unstable. I just have to wonder why Canonical thinks it is a good idea to put a software package that is still in RC in their supposed 'stable' LTS release???
The other thing is that my old serial Wacom tablet doesn't work. From the things I've found online, this may be mostly an upstream issue Canonical has no control over. It seems the X version they use has dropped support. I'll have to see it I can salvage it in any way, maybe by running an older Linux version in a virtual machine?
I don't get the mindless hatred people seem to have for PulseAudio. I agree Ubuntu started pushing it before it was ready, but Canonical was to blame for that, not PulseAudio. In my opinion, PulseAudio was the best thing to ever happen to sound in Linux. It finally added the much-needed layer of abstraction between the applications and the hardware so that multiple programs can seamlessly access sound without bumping into each other, and the sound level of each application can be set separately. Getting sound to work right used to be a constant frustration and has become a no-brainer since PulseAudio came along. The only problems I still have are always related to ALSA, not PulseAudio. PulseAudio talks to ALSA at the back end and something that regularly seems to happen is that some of the ALSA sound levels are all the way down, hence no sound. It usually takes running alsamixer to set the levels, then a 'alsactl store' to make the change permanent to get the levels right. Not really PulseAudio's problem, but I think it still gets the blame.
@jake regarding cloud storage... jumping on Jesse's mention of the Ubuntu One service CPU usage and immediately extrapolating that to it calling home really didn't help your credibility. Security is important but if you keep going overboard like that, people will dismiss you as the boy who cried wolf.
Maybe you have control over all your own mail servers etc, but for most of us, our mail already sits on someone else's server before it gets to us. Your mail too must sit on some other systems in the process of getting to where it needs to go. If you're paranoid about that, better make sure all your mail is encrypted. And if you're going to encrypt all your stuff anyway, you could just as well store your encrypted data in the cloud somewhere.
As for the music store, and some comparing it to iTunes... come on, there is no DRM involved here, nothing is being locked up. There is nothing wrong with providing your customers with an easy way to accomplish what they want to do, and making a buck in the process. The only thing I could possibly criticize is that the songs are in MP3 format and not Ogg Vorbis. But they have to start somewhere and work with the existing distribution channels that are available, so I understand that. And who knows, if it becomes successful enough to give them some cloud in the business, we might even see Ogg Vorbis downloads in the future.
38 • Laptop Upgrade Compaq R4000 Ubuntu 10.4 (by Ronald Gibson on 2010-05-03 17:28:16 GMT from United States)
It took 6.3 hours to download 2307 packages, combined was 1.2GB. It downloaded in bursts. The remaining time was another 4.5 hours to install, configure and clean up. It now supports my Aiptek HD 1080P camera. Have not tried my Sandisk MP3 player.
39 • @16 : KDE Memory usage (by Reuben on 2010-05-03 17:33:48 GMT from United States)
What architecture did you use for the 2 tests? Running the AMD64 version of KDE seems to take up substantially more RAM than the 686 distros. My Dell Mini 10v running Kubuntu 10.04 is using 207MB of ram with firefox, okular, and yakuake open.
40 • Page Hit Rankings Mean Nothing (by kilgoretrout on 2010-05-03 17:36:00 GMT from United States)
How many times does this have to be said? They are reported just for fun and no conclusions can be drawn from them. Distrowatch's past is littered with attempts to manipulate the page hit rankings, some successful, some discovered. No sane person takes them seriously.
As for the reader OS stats, I'm not surprised and it reveals little more than the characteristics of the Distrowatch readers were those relatively new to *nix are very overrepresented. I imagine over at fedora.org a very large percentage of those visiting that site are running fedora as well.
While linux desktop usage is intractably hard to measure, bests estimates range from 1% to 3%. Determining distro market share within that small percentage would require a well designed statistical survey which would be expensive and time consuming. That survey has never been done because those with resources to do it have no interest in measuring that variable. Arguing about linux distro market share is like arguing about who is the world's tallest midget.
41 • @40 (by fernbap on 2010-05-03 17:55:54 GMT from Portugal)
according to this, they are pretty accurate...
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/what-your-favorite-linux-distribution-desktop
42 • OpenSolaris 10.03 (by Solaris on 2010-05-03 18:00:52 GMT from Netherlands)
Not the date:
But some more info:
http://cr.opensolaris.org/~gman/opensolaris-whats-new-2010-03/
43 • Re: 19 & Re: 26 (by jake on 2010-05-03 18:04:45 GMT from United States)
Jesse, how can it be "opt-in" if it's running by default? By definition, that's opt-out ... And you seriously don't have issues with WAN-related processes running on your generic user's system that they have no control over, nor understanding of? Can you understand how that's a potential security headache? Remember, *buntu is designed for my techno-phobic Mom, not me ...
Robert, regarding paranoia, see my reply in 14 ... As for "easy" file sharing, my family has had a private FTP server since around 1982; it ain't exactly rocket science. Remember, Canonical Ltd. exists to pay their shareholders (and purchase the owner US$45,000,000 private jets, and vacations in orbit), not help you. If they can leverage the data held in One, they will. It's what corporations do. The path to hell is paved with good intentions.
44 • One CLoud service (by Jesse on 2010-05-03 18:39:57 GMT from Canada)
RE: 43
Jake, the One service is opt-in because, while the service (program) is started by default, you need to sign-up for an account for it to remotely store your files. The One storage services doesn't sync your data until you
1. sign-up for the account and
2. login to the service.
How is that not opt-in? And what do you mean "processes running on your generic user's system that they have no control over"? The user can choose to turn off the One service if they want to. They don't even need sudo access to do it. It's something each user can turn on/off on their own.
So, no, I don't see it as a security headache. If you want to keep your data private, don't create an account for One and login to the service.
45 • RE:43, What are you talking about? (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-05-03 18:44:47 GMT from United States)
Jake, Jake, Jake, that is the most ridiculous stuff I've every heard in my life. Canonical Ltd. is going to steal your data so they can buy private jets, vacations in orbit, and pay shareholders. So you think all corporations are evil and the only distos to use are the so called small or one man distros. You are filled with paranoia up to the eye balls. What do you have that they could want or is there something dark about you that you don't want people to know about. Sometimes corporations do bad things but not because they are corporations. Not all corporations are evil. They have a right to be in business. Redhat is a corporation. Are they evil? I'm sure in some ways they are. Are you really that PARANOID or are you just shooting us a line or playing with our minds?
46 • Re:41 (by kilgoretrout on 2010-05-03 19:02:23 GMT from United States)
You have confused a self reporting web survey with a properly designed statistical survey.
47 • @3 (by LAZA on 2010-05-03 19:03:39 GMT from Germany)
I had at the weekend the fun of installing:
Windows 7
Fedora 12 (waiting for 13)
openSUSE 11.2
Ubuntu 10.04
Only of the distros found my home-Partition over 2 HDDs with lvm2 - guess how?
Not SUSE, it destroyed the lvm by adding it at the installtion process so I got a lot of work to do on saturday evening...
But most of the people are right and I agree: It isn't the same (Ubuntu = fun)-thing from same years ago!
- CPU governor works not out-of-the-box and this is REALLY annoying
- sensors-detect identifies my Phenom II not correct
- memtest simply doesn't work!
- ...
So there is a lot of work to do (look at launchpad, most of my posted bugs are from 9.10 and nstatus now 'new!) and in my opinion Canonical has to do it fast and right and THEN finally bring an LTS on the market. So it is just a long six months till Maverick - or I change to one of the other installed.... - and I'm surely not the first and last!
48 • Jake's View, people are missing a bigger picture.... (by Landor on 2010-05-03 19:05:57 GMT from Canada)
This service is running. If a service is running it's either just gathering data (in some form, it has to be, since it's running) or it's gathering data and possibly sending it. I believe that's Jake's point here and I agree with him totally. There's no paranoia.
Has anyone looked at the app's code that controls The One storage? Can they definitively say it's not transmitting any data? Can they also say that it's not storing any data which it could possibly transfer to The One at a later date?
Jesse, we've had the debate about end-users a few times and you've always took the stance that they won't know or won't care, in regard to various things. Jake's point was clear and one you've made yourself, how will they even know this service is running and to shut it down?
To the point of it not being a security headache. You know a service running is an instant security hole. more so for a service running that "supposedly" isn't connected to anything but its just "mining" away in the background. That's extremely odd to say the least.
A good descriptive of this is: If it's not doing anything at all, why's it running? :)
Eddie, some of Ubuntu/Canonical's revenue comes from ads, similar to Mozilla's. What better way for a company to profit than to monitor every user's activities and pass that information onto other data mining corporations or to use it yourself to target the user's actions for the appropriate ad scheme.
Anyone ever read The One's EULA or TOS? Know anything about it? Is the source code even available for the app?
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
49 • @43,48 (by Patrick on 2010-05-03 19:30:42 GMT from United States)
I suggest that those who are paranoid about Ubuntu One investigate what it does. They obviously think they have the skills to determine if anything nasty is going on behind the user's back (even without any data to support it, imagine that!). Such individuals should be extremely familiar with the network tools required to investigate what is going on.
This would be significantly more useful to the community than paranoid accusations based on no data whatsoever. It would also require significantly more work and skill, so I'm not going to hold my breath. After all, it is much easier to pose as a security expect by just rejecting anything not generally known by everyone to be secure, than to be a real security expert who actually knows what's going on.
50 • Ubuntu 10.04 (by Roger B on 2010-05-03 19:36:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
Although working fine on my HP laptop and loving the new look after I moved the buttons back to the right~ no wireless connection on my eee PC 901 (also from the netbook remix!) is a killer, I have re- installed 9.10 and all is well. I sent this from a cabled netbook... waiting for a fix, nothing in the updates today though.
Roger
51 • @ 48 by Landor on 2010-05-03 19:05:57 GMT from Canada) (by forlin on 2010-05-03 19:40:12 GMT from Portugal)
Landor, I did only read your 2 first paragraphs, so this is about it . I do not use Ubunto, but I try all distros (except Suse) that I think it's worth a try, including Ubuntu, of course. I was curious about the "one thing" and I did register. Next reboot, I was asked to allow something to be run, witch was regarding he previous "one" registration. I answered NO, I'm still being asked the same question, and giving the same answer, every time I boot Ubunto. I mean, it's annoying, but at least, they give me the chance to choice, because they keep asking in advance. This is a positive point. I understand this is not exactly what you did mean at your post. But in the present days, and in the days to come, who can be totally sure that nothing is being taken in/out when we browse the net, without any kind of "previous" notice?
52 • re: misc. (by jake on 2010-05-03 19:59:32 GMT from United States)
Just to add to Landor's commentary ... Apparently at least a portion of this "one" thing runs in user-space. What happens when the technically uninclined "clicks on a link in email", or downloads & runs a sh (perl, whatever) script, or visits a dodgy web site, or gets served a malicious banner ad? Can the "one" thing be subverted to send data to a third party, with or without the user opting in to the official "one" service? And indeed, without the user even knowing "one" exists?
Eddie, you have curtains on your windows, and there is a door to your bathroom, right? And I'm willing to bet your shower doesn't have a plate glass exterior wall. What are you hiding? Is there something dark about you that you don't want people to know about?
Again, I'm not paranoid. I'm an old, jaded security administrator. OK, maybe in my field a healthy dose of paranoia is a good idea ;-)
53 • #48 Jakes View (by Glenn on 2010-05-03 20:22:53 GMT from Canada)
Hiya Landor
Yes, I lean toward Jakes view also but then I admit I am paranoid when it comes to securing my system and what it sends out.
One reason I run firewalls is not to stop intrusions as much as it is to stop things from getting out that I do not want to go out.
I know the arguments about servers, emails, etc having copies of your data come up but that is a separate issue. If you use public services (or clouds) you are wide open to the public!.
When I got involved with communications in the 1960's I learned then that broadcasting with any form of media (phone, whatever) is the same as being on Global TV with an open mike no matter what you do. Sure you can encrypt, and I do, but some bright guy out there can figure out a decrypt somehow if he thinks it is worth his time.
I deal with security issues on very large systems so my paranoia is well fed. :-) Because of the nature of my job I take more elaborate precautions than would be the norm I realize.
Yeah, I have the skills to lock things down but 90% of the users don't, and as was pointed out, probably don't realize or don't care or both. Too bad! I see identify theft is a growing business as well as other types of internet crime.
If I see , as Jesse pointed out, processes running that I do not want or see the need for, I stop/disable. them.
All this to say, I am careful who I let into my network but that stuff I can handle.
I am much more careful of what goes out because that is now out of my control. (School spy laptops anyone?)
Oh well, My opinion
Flames go here (________________________________)
Glenn
54 • @52 • re: misc. (by jake on 2010-05-03 19:59:32 GMT from United States) (by forlin on 2010-05-03 20:32:44 GMT from Portugal)
I would not classify any of this issue as paranoid. People have it's house. Who wants to come in, knocks at the door and I may open and invite to enter, or not.
Not because I'm hiding whatever. It's because it's MY house. The net/pc/etc, should not bee too different..
55 • Ubuntu One (by Jesse on 2010-05-03 20:42:02 GMT from Canada)
"how will they even know this service is running and to shut it down?"
The notification, perhaps, as another poster mentioned. Or the icon on the menu bar. Either of those would be a good indication.
"Can the "one" thing be subverted to send data to a third party, with or without the user opting in to the official "one" service?"
It would be a lot easier (and more cross-distro) to simply code the malicious program to transfer the data from the computer to where ever the attacker wants it to go. Trying to hijack the One service would be more work with less pay-off. So, it might be possible, but if you've already infected the computer to that point, you've got access to all their files anyway.
Before making wild claims and suggesting the security sky is falling, it would probably be a good idea to either read up on One, and/or install it in a VM and see what it does. I tend to be fairly paranoid with my own systems and take security seriously, so I appreciate the need to be careful. But before attacking the One service, you should really have firm data.
56 • Ubuntu 10.04 is alright, ..but I'm waiting for Mint 9.. (by Jon Iverson on 2010-05-03 20:44:08 GMT from United States)
Installed Ubuntu 10.04 in a VM on my Mint 8 desktop and found it fast and very comfortable to use. Haven't sorted through it sufficiently to fully evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, but I'll keep it in place until Mint 9 in order to preview of some of what will be available when Mint is released.
That Mint is going to offer a new PPC version of Mint 9 based on Debian Lenny is an interesting development. Wonder if this source change might be a harbinger of things to come as Mint goes forward?
57 • Cloud (by fernbap on 2010-05-03 20:50:14 GMT from Portugal)
Just because noone mentioned it before:
No, the main security issue is not hackers. The main security issue is that there are laws allowing the police or the government to access your data, and the companies have to obey to them.
So, there has to be a way for the police to do it, and if there is a way, it can be abused.
The law requires it, it has nothing to do with the companies that offer those services.
58 • Thank you (by Geeeeeze Luweeeeeze on 2010-05-03 21:11:44 GMT from United States)
Landor and Jake ---- thanks to you both.
I haven't laughed this much in months.
Geeeeeze Luweeeeeze
59 • Ubuntu 10.04... Best Linux ever! (by simply awesome on 2010-05-03 22:00:20 GMT from United States)
I love the black screen it gives me, it has more style and is far more useful than the black screen Fedora 12 gave. Thank you kernel mode setting, for being so awesome.
60 • RE: 49-51 (by Anonymous on 2010-05-03 22:48:03 GMT from Canada)
#49
"This would be significantly more useful to the community than paranoid accusations based on no data whatsoever. It would also require significantly more work and skill, so I'm not going to hold my breath. After all, it is much easier to pose as a security expect by just rejecting anything not generally known by everyone to be secure, than to be a real security expert who actually knows what's going on."
This right here tells me you don't understand security at all, in any field. People involved in security "always" believe there's a security risk. That's the first step in what's called risk management. In the way of a service running that shouldn't be for any apparent reason, a security admin would definitely be alarmed by it. That's the point here that you're obviously missing.
#51
So even though you've told it no, it continues to be intrusive. Sounds extremely pushy in my opinion.
#53
I'm just as careful and have been for as long as I can remember. My sister actually is thankful for it when I come over and say, "So how's your computers running?" Knowing full well I'm intending to plop down in front of her system(s) and clean things up or investigate thoroughly. :)
Oh and that was my point to Jesse that I guess I didn't clarify enough. We can see the process/service running and disable/stop it, as Jesse has stated many times most people won't even know that the process is running in the background (let alone how to disable it), especially since they never even used this service from Ubuntu, so would figure it's just "off".
#55
"The notification, perhaps, as another poster mentioned. Or the icon on the menu bar. Either of those would be a good indication."
I should have clarified but thought it wasn't necessary that what I intended was clear. My point wasn't about what you noticed, the service running without any connection. I made my point clearer above in the last paragraph of my reply to Glenn #53 above.
"Before making wild claims and suggesting the security sky is falling, it would probably be a good idea to either read up on One, and/or install it in a VM and see what it does. I tend to be fairly paranoid with my own systems and take security seriously, so I appreciate the need to be careful. But before attacking the One service, you should really have firm data."
Not to be rude here, I find this kind of statement totally unfair since you found the instance of the process running and eating up some of your cpu for no "apparent" reason shall we say, "curious enough" to make note about it in your review without investigating what it was actually doing. Due to that we can only speculate that it's an errant process and what that process could be doing, and from a security standpoint it's more than fair to question it and point out the "possible" processes such a thing "could" be doing. Very unfair indeed when you yourself opened the door and led to this kind of speculation which many would consider almost instantly without further investigation or information provided for them.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
61 • Ubuntu 10.4 - "slow install" probably due to overloaded servers (by ozonehole on 2010-05-03 22:52:02 GMT from Taiwan)
I found Ubuntu 10.4 to install very fast (tried it on 3 machines so far). All these complaints about "slow install" and "locking up" leaves me scratching my head. But then again, when I install, I do not connect to the network. I believe (could be wrong) that the Ubuntu installer wants to connect to the network (possibly for updates), and I imagine Ubuntu servers are heavily overloaded right after a new release. Should be back to normal speeds in a few days.
If you're plagued by slow installation, try disconnecting from your network and see if that doesn't improve the situation. You can always run update-manager later.
62 • Ubuntu 10.04 Experience (by Tony on 2010-05-03 23:04:24 GMT from United States)
No problems here.
I loaded Ubuntu 10.04 netbook edition on my Dell Mini 9 and enable the STA wireless driver. All other hardware features work on the Dell Mini 9. I loaded 10.04 desktop 32bit version on a Compaq Presario with 4 GIG RAM and everything worked. Both PCs installed in less than 15 minutes. I see no problems and didn't experience any problems like some of the other folks. I spent more time adding Codecs and flash then installing 10.04.
Cheers!
63 • bah (by Leroy on 2010-05-03 23:17:25 GMT from Serbia)
I'm missing something vital from the review up there... is vi(m) installed by default? :) Ok and something else from the "security" controversy in the comments: is Ubuntu One a process that is easy to kill in two clicks?
Now, Canonical's evil intent, that's another matter altogether, I agree :)
About 10.04 well it's running just great here on the same machine where 9.10 failed miserably. I'd call this a definitive improvement. Not a single glitch thus far and really that is remarkable.
I hope Canonical stay in the desktop (and the like) and work to improve it. That's their place.
64 • One service (by Jesse on 2010-05-03 23:35:04 GMT from Canada)
"Not to be rude here, I find this kind of statement totally unfair since you found the instance of the process running and eating up some of your cpu for no "apparent" reason shall we say"
That's true, I brought up that the process was running. And I pointed out that I felt it should be sleeping, not churning. But the concern I brought up in the review wasn't so a security concern, it was mostly with performance. My view was/is that the process shouldn't have had anything to do and should be sleeping. I would like to know why it's churning away. I admit to being curious and, perhaps, paranoid. Sadly, I didn't have more time to find out before I submitted the review.
However, there's a big step (in my option) between curiosity regarding what a process is doing and making a leap to the assumption that it's "phoning home" or collecting data on me for secret transmission to someone else. So far those speculations have yet to be backed up with any evidence. The One client is open source (GPL), it should be fairly easy for someone with security concerns to find out what the process is really doing.
So I think it's healthy for people to be curious and, if there is something inappropriate going on it should be brought forward. But until someone proves otherwise, I suspect it's just a process which is in a loop and not sleeping enough. Or polling for input/filesystem changes more frequently than it needs to.
There are a lot of things the One service could be doing. Sure, it could be phone home, or it could be collecting usage information. But I have yet to see anything to support those ideas. I can point to my "top" output and say, "There, it's using 2% of my CPU constantly." What evidence does anyone have that it's also spying on people? I consider caution an asset, but claims without evidence to be fear mongering.
65 • netbook remix (by jacques on 2010-05-04 00:42:54 GMT from Canada)
I installed ubuntu 10.04 netbook remix on my aspire one A110 and experienced the same delay in responsiveness of desktop sometimes. Another problem I had was with the atheros wireless. After a reboot It just said the wireless was disabled!!
Finally I reinstalled zenwalk 6.2 which has been on that machine for a year now and the wifi is rock solid. In fact I tested many distro on this machine and wifi connection had always been unreliable until I installed zenwalk 6.2 (with xfce4). This is the only distro which give a solid wifi connection on this machine.
Too bad because I really like netbook remix desktop.
66 • Ubuntu 10.04 (by Andrew on 2010-05-04 01:16:08 GMT from Australia)
I've installed Ubuntu 10.04 on two laptops so far, will be installing it on at least two more desktops that I own, not to mention friends/relatives that want to dive in. In the end, I'll have a hand at installing Ubuntu 10.04 on maybe 10 PCs - I'm sure I'm not alone.
I've distro-hopped for quite a while (over 10 years!) though I've found Ubuntu to be just right for me. If I want to be a bit more hands on then I can still install Ubuntu Server and apt-get package by package till I'm happy while still using the same (quote free with my ISP - wow that rhymes) sources.
One thing I'll add - I'm NOT going to immediately switch to 10.10, I've been using 10.04 for a few days now and I'm really happy (everything has worked, 3G out of the box too which was good compared to 9.10!) - I think I'll keep 10.04 around till at least 11.04.
67 • kubuntu 10.04 (by Bryan on 2010-05-04 01:19:39 GMT from United States)
I have all the computers in the office on 10.04 - runs just great for me. My impression is that the bootup time has improved from 9.10. However, I am pretty completely switched over to KDE now.
68 • ONE (by Anonymous on 2010-05-04 01:24:09 GMT from United States)
Well has anyone actually setup Ubuntu 10.04 and passed its' network cable to another so called Trusted PC running say WireShark and logged all of its' network communications for later analysis?
The trusted PC is basically a network bridge with a packet sniffer logging all communications going through it.
Let this run a few days or so and see what ONE is doing.
69 • Ubuntu 10.04 (by Rich on 2010-05-04 01:58:30 GMT from United States)
No complaints. Always happy to see software move forward. I've got 10.04 on a Intel dual-core Gateway laptop and two home cooked AMD 4-core processor computers with Nvidia and AMD (Radeon) video cards. Everything works well with 64-bit version of this software. (32-bit is on the laptop). . . I'm always happy to see improvements and bug fixes as part of the progression forward in offering stability and speed to computers than run any form of Linux. Windows is a thing of the past to me and is not an alternative. Keep up the progress and good work.
Richard :)
70 • re: 68 (by Andrew on 2010-05-04 01:59:17 GMT from Australia)
Do I need to wrap the trusted PC in aluminium foil or just construct a hat for myself?
71 • ubuntu 10.04 test (by jacques on 2010-05-04 03:03:58 GMT from Canada)
tonigth tested ubuntu 10.04 in VirtualBox installed on windows7
work fine.
Also tested on a 3 years old DELL inspiron 1501 with 2Gig RAM
After setting nomodeset in /boot/grub/grub.cfg and installing the driver for broadcom wifi card it run ok not delay experienced unlike my experience with netbook remix on aspire one.
This with the default gnome desktop as installed from CD.
This is not extensive test due to lack of time.
72 • Why are people so blind when it comes to personal security? (by jake on 2010-05-04 04:17:41 GMT from United States)
First of all, poking thru' the Launchpad privacy policy[1], which "one" uses for personal data[2], I am not exactly impressed. Looks to me like not only can Canonical use anything I place on their servers for anything they want to use it for, but even if I delete it from "mycanonicalspace" (to coin a phrase ...), they retain that info to be used for whatever Canonical, Inc. sees fit to use it for. Including pushing so-called "targeted" advertising at me. AND they allow pretty much anyone to access "my" data. Not a good place to put anything important/private ...
Secondly, by default the "one" application does NOT encrypt the data on Canonical's servers[3]. Most of the *buntu userbase has no clue about this kind of thing ... By using this application, they are allowing a multinational datamining company to use their personal data as said company sees fit.
Thirdly, while it IS possible to use encryption to store files on "one", the Canonical supplied instructions [4] (from [3]) are hardly something that GreatAuntFlorie would feel comfy attempting ...
Fourthly, before anyone says "so don't upload personal data to Canonical", have you bothered to read the so-called "features" list?[5] From my perspective, Canonical is trying to set themselves up as the next google, in the datamining world ...
I haven't got into the unnecessary service running by default yet ... I'll download the install ISO tonight, and make an attempt at breaking this clusterfuck over the next week or so ... Until I have a result or two, I'll shutup on the subject.
[1] https://help.launchpad.net/PrivacyPolicy
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne/Security
[3] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne/FAQ#Are%20my%20files%20stored%20on%20the%20server%20encrypted?
[4] http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7568/2/
[5] https://one.ubuntu.com/features/
73 • RE: 72 (by Landor on 2010-05-04 04:56:36 GMT from Canada)
I rather enjoy this one from the UbuntuOne TOS:
"Collection and use of your data. We may collect certain non-personally-identifiable information, which is located on your computer. The information collected may include statistics relating to how often data is transferred, and performance metrics in relation to software and configuration. You agree this information may be retained and used by Canonical. Canonical may disclose any or all personal data and contents you have sent, posted or published if required to comply with applicable law or the order or requirement of a court, administrative agency or other governmental body. All other use of your personal data is subject to the Ubuntu One privacy policy.
This is the telling part:
"Collection and use of your data. We may collect certain non-personally-identifiable information, which is located on your computer."
Which is located on "your computer".... They also like to throw the word may around a lot. That's like a thief saying, I may "only" take your watch, but leaves you wondering what else he "may" take. :)
74 • Ubuntu One (by ozonehole on 2010-05-04 05:28:33 GMT from Taiwan)
A lot of people seem suspicious of Ubuntu One. If it's making you paranoid, then:
apt-get remove ubuntuone-client
As simple as that.
But it may have value. The music store does interest me.
75 • Oracle/OpenSolaris (by Anonymous on 2010-05-04 09:27:54 GMT from United Kingdom)
I was told at a briefing last month by a major Enterprise/PublicSector IT Chief Officer, that Oracle's "mishandling" of the OpenSolaris product has created some concern in the purchasing departments for some of his projects.
"Dubious retrograde practice", "shafted", "guilty silence" and "swept under the carpet" were his other descriptions. I was pretty shocked - this language is usually reserved for M$ rather than a Linux vendor and is rarely heard in Corporate circles.
Now, in the world of free/hobby/enthusiast OS advocacy, these criticisms of Oracle have been commonplace for a few months now, but I never expected to hear that from a large-scale money-man.
IMCO, I think that illustrates the mistake that Oracle have made and that it will consequently cost them longterm.
I'm no OpenSolaris fanboy, all my ZFS is FreeBSD ;)
76 • Ubuntu Linux market share much higher than 39% (by enedene on 2010-05-04 11:14:54 GMT from Croatia)
Let's face it, most of the people visiting this site are more than average interested in computers (or geeks if you like). While it's true that most of Linux users are geeky, that is changing and most of these other users run Ubuntu or Mint because they are most user friendly with easy to install lot of software. So I wouldn't take the distrowatch stats as a good measure, I'd bet that the real percentage s more than 60-70%.
Ubuntu is doing a great job from release to release, I just hope they will take stability more seriously, at least for LTS.... hope this version will be OK.
77 • PCLinux OS is better than Lucid to me. (by carlicuslinux on 2010-05-04 12:40:24 GMT from United States)
Installed both PCLinux OS and Lucid on my quad core system and PCLinux OS outperforms Lucid in every area I tested...particularly in program start up. I generally try to open Open Office, Firefox, and Gimp (if available) to let me see how fast programs will load...and PCLinux OS smokes Lucid! I was so impressed that I removed Linux Mint 8 from my primary desktop and replaced it with PCLinux OS...great job guys!!!
78 • how can I make ubuntu run faster? (by Shun on 2010-05-04 12:46:30 GMT from Hong Kong)
I have set up ubuntu 10.04 for a trial run on my amd computer but it feels like something is holding it back and I want it to be much more snappy and light in it's response to mouse clicks.
79 • @78: Speed up (by Jesse on 2010-05-04 13:19:25 GMT from Canada)
To speed up Ubuntu, try turning off any visual effects.
System->preferences->Appearance->Visual Effects
And turn off programs you're not using
System->Preferences->Start-up Applications
If you still want to customize further, install the Boot-up Manager via the "bum" package.
"sudo apt-get install bum"
It'll appear in the System menu, under Administration. Turn off anything you don't think you need.
Following the above steps, I got Ubuntu to run fairly well on a single CPU with 256MB of memory.
80 • Ubuntu 10.04 good release. Recommended. (by Zac on 2010-05-04 13:39:16 GMT from Australia)
Installed Ubuntu 10.04 netbook edition on my Dell Latitude 2100 netbook and it's wonderful. It orginally had Ubuntu 9.04 pre-installed by Dell. Installation took less than 20min, and everything worked out of the box. Looks very smart too. The netbook edition is great for the small screen and given this netbook a new lease of life. It's like a new one!
It is still a work in progress but I like where they are heading. Very happy with it.
Still have Ubuntu 8.04 on my desktop as my main PC which I'll install 10.04 when I have the time.
81 • Does Lucid mean sleepy? (by Sam on 2010-05-04 15:38:40 GMT from United States)
Okay, three days after installing Ubuntu Lucid on my Thinkpad R61i, and I'm waiting on opensuse 11.3's latest build to download. This is yet another Ubuntu experience that leaves me puzzled as to why this is such a popular distro. The thing is just slow, especially compared to Fedora 12. I'm having package management issues left and right. My laptop's ability to detect wireless networks seems significantly reduced compared to Fedora 12 and Windows 7. I can't get the darned OS to sleep or hibernate the system without freezing up and forcing me to do a hard shutdown. I mean, c'mon Ubutntu. This worked fine in 9.10 and it isn't like Thinkpads are some exotic or rare brand of laptop.
And as for the new design? 1. The splash screen looks very very pixelated (and I've noticed various blogs pointing this out so I'm not alone in thinking the resolution of the default desktop images isn't all that great). 2. Purple? Really? 3. Moving the window close/minimize/expand buttons to the left leaves a whole lot of empty real estate on the top/top-right of every window. Doesn't look good. 4. Why not just take 1/5000th of Shuttleworth's fortune to hire a graphic design team to do the GUI right?
82 • re:72,73. security (by jack on 2010-05-04 20:06:55 GMT from Canada)
PCworld, may issue. Big article re. security
Landor's view is supported in general
83 • REF: 77 • PCLinux OS is better than Lucid to me. (by carlicuslinux) (by Bing Crosby on 2010-05-04 20:44:58 GMT from United States)
That statement is laughable for me.
On the same machine, P4, 2.4 hgz, 2gig ram:
PCLinuxOS boots up in 40+ seconds
Ubuntu 10.04 in under 23 seconds !
84 • Ubuntu free ~ live CDs on old Tosh laptop (by gnomic on 2010-05-04 22:52:50 GMT from New Zealand)
Yep, no Ubuntu in this post ;-) Yesterday was fooling around on an old Toshiba 2100 with K6 at 400MHz day. Just having a look at what might run. 800x600 S3 video, 160 MB RAM, 4G drive with W2k, no swap. AntiX 8.5 486 base, slitaz 3 lo-ram, and a live cd version of Absolute 13.0.9 all booted and ran passably well. The Absolute live cd made by one AegisX who has various live cds listed on Softpedia.
AntiX picked up a Xircom ethernet/modem card in the PCMCIA slot and ran on a network, the other two appeared not to have the drivers. Slitaz and Absolute played MP3s, antiX doesn't seem to have requisite software. AntiX and slitaz were both quite responsive in the gui, Absolute was a bit sluggish at times tho' it had a lower CPU occupancy than slitaz when playing an MP3. A Puppy spin and Debian 5.0.1 live cd failed to boot.
So, just a few tasting notes on an old machine which will soon be running Linux. For me, a reason to like Linux - an antique running contemporary Linux kernel versions. You can't do that with Windows, or indeed MacOS. Hope to try the i486 alpha of Crunchbang next.
85 • #84 antiX-base (by anticapitalista on 2010-05-04 23:22:19 GMT from Greece)
Just to mention that the base version of antiX doesn't have any multimedia player.
Even in live mode you can install a media player such as alsaplayer-gui (for audio) or gecko-mediaplayer (it will drag in mplayer) for video or whatever you wish. For 160MB RAM, maybe install moc for audio.
What, no Ubuntu!
86 • Ubuntu 10 works well (by atonz on 2010-05-04 23:52:18 GMT from Canada)
I tried PCLOS KDE for a week and then opted to try Ubuntu for the first time and I must say I'm impressed not only with the response time but by the colors and ease-of-use it provides.
I doubt it will stay on forever, but adding a dock makes me friends think its a mac lol :P. Once i get more comfortable with linux I'll try fedora.
87 • old Tosh and mp3 players - 84/85 continued (by gnomic on 2010-05-05 00:52:33 GMT from New Zealand)
Hi anti, digging your work :-) No Ubuntu on this baby - the Gnome version of 10.04 took about 5 minutes to boot live on a 1.8 gig Pentium M ThinkPad, don't know what was up with that, may have been the CD, forgot to look for evidence of a problem there with dmesg. Guess only Lubuntu would have any show of running on the Tosh, and I wouldn't bet on that.
Slitaz has alsaplayer gui and the Absolute version XMMS iirc - both worked OK with a couple of VBR MP3s. AntiX base maybe doesn't have the necessary in /usr/lib for MP3s besides no player? I nosed around for a cli player in antiX base, but didn't see one for obvious reasons.
By the way, have the antiX forums ever required re-registration because of a shift, or are inactive users expired - thought I had a logon but couldn't get on lately.
88 • One Step Forward, Two Steps back (by Robin on 2010-05-05 01:01:37 GMT from United States)
Jaunty was the last forward step Ubuntu made, IMO. Both karmic and Lucid are "two steps back." I too am suspicious of "the cloud" and prefer not to have all the bling and bloat that Lucid is offering. I'm hopping again, looking for a nice, fast, simple, back-to-basics OS like the one that first got me hooked on Linux.
Giving PCLinuxOS (LXDE version) a try,
Robin
89 • Distro Overdose? (by RollMeAway on 2010-05-05 01:49:53 GMT from United States)
All the releases last couple of weeks, even those not *buntu related !
What is a junkie to do?
Is it possible for a distro junkie to overdose?
Nah, we just pass out, sleep it off, and go back to it when we wake up again!
Only surprise for me (so far!) was the "kubuntu-10.04-netbook" release.
Quite different. Evidently something from KDE org itself?
Haven't dug into it yet. This one seems like a beta. Little info in the kubuntu forums.
Anyone else tried this one?
Any info or links to explain its workings? (Yeah, I know, google is my friend)
90 • Ubuntu 10.4 Netbook Remix on Vaio P series - No Go (by RO on 2010-05-05 02:53:17 GMT from United States)
I probably made trouble for myself by installing over a prior 9.10 Xubuntu (and that was on top of Xubuntu 9.04 after Mint 8 kept locking up) while keeping the /home dir (supposed be a "best practice", right?...). It seems Xfce config settings and NR do not "remix" well. Selecting the NR desktop several times at logon seemed to get it more in sync, but not sure if I got all I was supposed to. The NR desktop scheme seems a little too single-app focused - reminds me of Windows CE on my Jornada Handheld PC's (6x0/7xx).
I killed Maximize at startup since I was always doing it manually, but having more than 1 window open is harder to manage without a task bar separate from the menu bar (I know - with the limited vertical pixels that uses up precious screen space, even with 768 such as the Vaio supports). The machine can handle multiple windows, but the interface is not meant for that, especially when I increase the widget/font sizes for my old eyes on that 1600x768 8-inch screen - I cannot even set up Evolution because the OK/Cancel/Next type buttons are below the bottom of the screen - how does anyone manage with the more typical 600 pixel-high netbooks? Tiny fonts with magnifying page lenses?
The final deal-breaker was the inability to resume from suspend mode - the power light comes back on, but the screen never reappears/powers up. Back to 9,10 Xubuntu for now. Maybe after they get the usual slew of bug fixes after a month or 2 I might give it another shot...
BTW, I finally figured out a rationale for that Netbook scheme that NR and Easy Peasy use: it is putting the menu you usually see dropping down/popping up permanently on-screen on the left (Favorites/Internet/Settings/Multimedia/etc) which would be ideal with a touch screen netbook such as my Fujitsu Lifebook P1120, but that pitiful Transmeta Crusoe and 240MB RAM just won't support most newer "full" distros. However, I am giving Lubuntu 10.4 a shot right now (since it ran so fast in a VirtualBox vm), and it supports the touch screen (!), but needs a calibration tool.
Hopping right along ...
91 • Imperial Oracle (by RO on 2010-05-05 03:06:54 GMT from United States)
@75 This does not surprise me after participating in the futile fight of Oracle product admins against the daffy notion that Oracle would "serve" us better by converting their support web site to a FULLY Flash-based one, "My Oracle Support" (POS... err MOS). Not just a "lot" of Flash usage, the whole site is one huge Flash application - sucks up cycles and memory even from high-end PC's. It has taken a huge amount of programming work on their part to get it back to something like the functionality of the prior "MetaLink" site. The Lords of Oracle are alienating a lot of customers.
Just waiting for the massive security hit when the baddies figure out how to plant something amidst all that Flash code, and we cannot trust the site for fixes...
92 • Phenom II X6 (by whitespiral on 2010-05-05 04:11:20 GMT from Mexico)
"I have a nice system, running a AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition"
They just announced them and you already have it? How did you do that?
93 • RE: Testing Distributions @ 92 (by Landor on 2010-05-05 05:03:55 GMT from Canada)
Any judgment for any new release should really be made by the user after a couple months have passed. Especially those that have short release cycles. That's if of course your hardware is working. I usually don't have that problem and can honestly find little to gripe about when it comes to the distributions I do try based on giving it a decent evaluation period and possible fixes coming down the pipe after the release, which all of them have usually.
#92
They did have a (silent) release on the 26th of April I do believe. I noticed a flaw, though maybe a typo, 8 gigs of "DDR2"? Even "if" an older board supported it, what's the chances of getting a new bios to support that chip that quickly. Also, factoring in possible shipping and such, it is a little hard to believe. I've seen the 1090T on pre-order still for a few places.
I'm quite happy with my X4, maybe I'll jump on board when they hit X8. :)
Keep your stick on the ice....
Landor
94 • re 72&73, one security and ubuntu LTS in general (by dopher on 2010-05-05 09:53:13 GMT from Belgium)
I am not a fan of putting your confidential stuff online. But both remarks are a bit over the top.
RE:72
Yes, by default, ONE doesn't store the files encrypted. the most logic reason will be that ONE is being used to share files between multiple devices and perhaps not all devices will be able to use that kind of encryption. And there goes your ease of use with sharing stuff.
I would not use this feature, because i don't want my files and other data to be stored there unencrypted. But it's a service they offer. It's your choice to use it, and how.
RE:73
The word "may" in the eula(?) is often being used. That's the case with many eula's. To cover their own ass when people use their space for illigal stuff I guess. These lines are nothing to get paranoid over.
I personally support paranoia (and I love M Jackson 's song "Somebody's Watching Me") But i don't think this ONE feature they offer is a reason to judge Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, and go all paranoid and say that everything what you do on it is being used by the borg. I just remove ONE, I don't install/use stuff like skype (which is a real clusterfuck and privacy killer) and be careful in general. It'sall about trust anyway with whatever you use.
I have installed 10.04, and after disabling compiz, removing ONE components, disabling certain visual effects, and apps i don't use, it is a fast and good looking distro.
It's well supported by many software developpers, hardware companies etc, which means you will almost always find an ubuntu package, howto, etc, and this is very important to me. Especially if you don't wanna migrate every half year. You can use this distro for the upcomming 3 years on your desktop computer and it will be widely supported, as mentioned above.
I use several distro's, for several purposes on different hardware. Slackware on my server (also for long support), puppy on my netbook (for the speed). But this ubuntu 10.04 LTS will most likely (or MAY ;) ) stay on my main desktop for the next 3 years.
95 • forgot to mention in my 94 message Thanks ladislav and helpers (by Dopher on 2010-05-05 10:07:17 GMT from Belgium)
Sorry, just wanted to say to Ladislav and little helpers ;) that they do a great job. You know that on monday there will be a distrowatch weekly. This certainty is due to your (and little helpers) hard work and shows how much effort is being put in this website.
Keep on the good work, and thanks for all the info I can find here. ( i hate advertisement, but i'll click some advertisements here today ;) )
96 • In silent Lucid-ity (by Michael Raugh on 2010-05-05 11:15:49 GMT from United States)
(Oh, come on, somebody had to make that pun!) ;^D
Put Kubuntu Lucid on my crash-dummy laptop (Dell Latitude 620) yesterday and had a couple of interesting quirks.
First off, upgrading from Karmic flat-out failed. The error message suggested I was using nonsupported repos or some such, but I wasn't. Might be because I had one package (ncpfs) pinned at the Jaunty version because of a bug I'd found after that upgrade. Interesting because this is the first time I've had a 'buntu system fail to upgrade in place.
Booting the live CD and picking "Install Kubuntu" from the GRUB menu also failed. It churned and thought and then started scrolling "Authentication error" down the screen. Hmmm.
Booting the live CD into a desktop and then starting the installer worked fine. I wiped Karmic and replaced it with Lucid. Not surprisingly (unless you read this comments thread, anyway) all the hardware was recognized and worked properly when the install finished.
One of the hidden benefits of using Kubuntu vs. Ubuntu proper seems to be that a lot of the shiny new goodies they roll out for Ubuntu don't turn up in the alternate interface brethren. There was a plasmoid on the initial desktop for social media (1 click to remove it), but no window-button rearrangement, no pop-up asking me to log into UbuntuOne ... in fact, no ubuntuone-client package installed or ubuntuone service running! Sometimes it's not so bad to be the neglected stepchild.
Haven't used it enough to get a realistic impression of performance yet, but it's certainly comparable to Jaunty on that hardware. Boot-up is definitely quicker than Jaunty was, for what that's worth (I tend to think it's worth more on a laptop than on a desktop). Vim was there; GIMP was not, as advertised, but was simple enough to add.
-MR
97 • security, cloud, corporations... (by Anonymous on 2010-05-05 15:54:16 GMT from United States)
Don't waste your time trying to explain to people who don't know enough about the subjects they pretend to know. Everything is hunky dory to them. The truth is everything is the greatest thing since sliced bread because they live under a rock and don't know any better.
What do you expect from people who uses *buntu distro and windows? Most of them have no idea what's out there in the *nix, linux world in term of distros and softwares. Let alone any other issues relating to security and corporation strategies in the modern targeted ad-revenue schemes. And Canonical is going that same route, they got to give out the carrot first, to build a community before they change the "end user agreements". Same trick, different dog trainer.
On windows, I have seen many people who have "Toolbar" from Yahoo, Google on their systems and have no clue of the implications. Even regular "web searches" from Google and Yahoo are not much better.
98 • re: 97 security, cloud, corporations... (by dopher on 2010-05-05 16:50:11 GMT from Belgium)
paranoid and who is living under a rock here?
Ofcourse is all depends on what you use a computer for, but the way you see it, you can only use some *nix or bsd in textmode highly encrypted and secured. and use encrypted vpn to connect to the web. If you are okay with that, that's fine, but don't try to attract others with that bizarre lifestyle. I guess you have your computerroom installed like that guy in enemy of the state. copper cave, and explosives when they found you.
An other strategy would be that you act like you are normal, happy peppy, trust everthing, and do you confidential stuff on a seperate computer behind copper cave. that way you will less likely be monitored ;)
The analogy of your computer use irl would be that you only go outside at night, and do your shopping in the local nightshop with cash money, while wearing your sunglasses and hat. You don't see sun, don't let others see you and just live paranoid and secured. Nobody knows it was you, what you bought, and where you are going. Takes a lot of energy though. have fun with that! ;). Some sunlight is fine now and then.
the "What do you expect from people who uses *buntu distro and windows? " was really funny.
I do however, like many others, try to think how and what I use. My harddrives are encrypted, i'm using a firewall, by default no scripting or flash will run in my browser, i don't store data unencrypted at some company. I avoid close source software on my linuxes (except within wine). But that's about it. Because trusting nothing will make it impossible ( or extremely time consuming) to actually make use of your hardware.
Yes, i use ubuntu on the desktop, because of the reasons i mentioned. (well supported for long time by many software devs/companies, and hardware companies) This makes life easier. And besides coding in C I like to play games, and listen to music. It runs the same apps as other linuxes, has a kernel, packagemanagement system, etc.
I use it because, like some other distro's as well, it has long support. I just don't have the time to reinstall every 6 months. I could ofcourse neglect my family and quit my dayjob, but that's just not an option.
The problem ofcourse is that ubuntu is backed up by a company. And, companies want to make profit. It all depends on how they try to achieve that. I think that ONE service should be watched. But let some sunlight in dude.
99 • #87 antiX forum (by anticapitalista on 2010-05-05 19:50:19 GMT from Greece)
#87 gnomic, it should be ok. If there is a problem, send me an email and I'll fix it, or re-register with a different name.
100 • antiX (by distrojunkie on 2010-05-05 21:09:42 GMT from United States)
I hop and I hop and I hop and still have yet to find a distro that satisfies my endless pursuit for Linux bliss. For ease of use there’s Ubuntu, for the geeky there’s Slackware, and for the sadomasochist there’s Gentoo. But a-ha! I found antiX and man it’s a keeper.
This distro (I believe) uses Mepis as its base; then strips it down to make an almost perfect distro. It uses fluxbox as its primary window manger but others are just a click away (not sure why anyone would change). Its fast, lightweight and easy to carry in my back pocket – what else could you ask for.
Hip, Hip, Hooray to the developer/s of this most excellent spinoff.
101 • GPL on TV (by Merlin on 2010-05-05 21:49:41 GMT from Canada)
LOL, I just noticed my TV came with copies of the GPL, LGPL, MPL, FreeType licence, and the openssl licence. I suppose it won't be long before we're unpacking toasters and coffemakers with the same!
Now if I can get that blasted toilet to log on to ubuntuone....
102 • @101 toilet to log on to ubuntuone (by Master Crash on 2010-05-05 23:36:04 GMT from United States)
LOL! Shoulds like a good place to store your shi...stuff! :D
103 • DistroWatch Weekly (by Jon Mason on 2010-05-06 00:36:59 GMT from United States)
DistroWatch Weekly just keeps getting better and better. Thank you.
104 • RE: 94-100-Linux The Majority (by Landor on 2010-05-06 03:01:11 GMT from Canada)
#94
Hey Dopher,
I can't really agree with that. TOS' and EULA's are definitely set to cover their proverbial butts, they're also worded to allow them more freedoms than someone may assume generally. Here's an instance from the Ubuntu One TOS:
"Canonical may disclose any or all personal data and contents you have sent, posted or published if required to comply with applicable law or the order or requirement of a court, *administrative agency* or other governmental body."
By not stating "exactly" what administrative agency they have a free hand there at disclosing a users information to "any" administrative agency legally, government or not. They can easily argue in court that is exactly what the TOS stated and they'd be correct. It doesn't matter what someone believes it says, it's the word of the agreement they are agreeing to. :)
I'm not being paranoid here, or trying to be a fear monger, I'm just trying to point out that storage of information on sites can and most often are used to the site owner(s) benefit. I agree one billion percent too, shut it down, remove it, and be done with it. The unwashed masses won't understand that procedure though unless people lend a warning to the "possible dangers" of using such a service and letting them know they have options available. :)
#100
The only distribution that I don't consider completely easy to use is LFS. The rest are extremely easy to setup and maintain. Go back 10 or 12+ years ago and that was a totally different story.
For LFS, I'd consider it pretty well the only hard distribution to use in the Linux World of today. I'd even go as far as to say that LFS, once built to your liking, shouldn't be hard to maintain, just time consuming. That's my point about why I consider all others easy to use and maintain. The information is readily available, there's tools and guides that make it extremely simple and the only thing that someone has to do is invest time.
Not saying you stated this, but I always shake my head at people who believe there's this massive learning curve that some feel only the anointed could possibly ever use. They're downright simple once you wrap your head around that one fact. It's like anything else, if you believe something to be some way it will always be that until (if you do) you change your mindset.
----
I think it's a great thing and must have left Ladislav pleasantly surprised to see after all this time that Linux was the main system used to view this site. I know it surprised me.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
105 • PCLinuxOS KDE - Fujitsu U810 (by CrashMaster on 2010-05-06 05:18:42 GMT from United States)
Everything Ive checked works fine (touchpad, yada yada), snappy despite the A110 chip, 4200rpm HD and 1GB RAM. If people say 2010 is slow .......... something aint working right..
Even stranger, I agree with everything Landor said this week.
106 • ease of use (by distrojunkie on 2010-05-06 10:05:23 GMT from United States)
@Landor #104
I had forgotten about LFS, but like you said, it only takes the ability to read to install and maintain. It's very much like Gentoo in that respect and I have installed and used both.
I said I was looking for Linux Bliss and not ease of use and I realize my definition may be different than others. antiX realizes for me the old and new combined in a unique way that brings together nostalgia and the cutting edge.
107 • Does anyone wish for a game break from debating? (by KimTjik on 2010-05-06 10:22:00 GMT from Sweden)
I couldn't see anyone mentioning it here, but for those who wish to support developers with an interest in supporting Linux, and who prefer games with some originality, take a look at this offer: http://www.wolfire.com/humble?l=groups
Even though it could be a very cheap deal I hope that Linux users keep on proving that we're not tight-fisted. When 2D Boy tried a similar offer Linux users proved to be significantly more generous.
108 • re: 104 linux the majority (by Dopher on 2010-05-06 11:22:00 from Belgium)
Hi Landor,
I knew you wouldn't agree, or even partially, because you only agree with your own rock solid opinion.
I agree with you that putting your unencrypted personal data online at some company is not a good thing. that's why i don't use ubuntu ONE, and i have removed it's components. That is my freedom, and choice.
But I do not decide for others that they can't use it and that the service should shut down. Like i said, it's a service they offer, use it, or not.
if you say "The only distribution that I don't consider completely easy to use is LFS. The rest are extremely easy to setup and maintain." You only see it from your perspective.
Imagine this:
Some average person working at a factory, or even some office job. In a relationship, perhaps even kids. Do you really think that person would have the time to setup LFS or some other hardcore OS? ( that is, if computering is not his/her main hobby)
Even slackware would then be too timeconsuming or difficult to maintain. And i'm not meaning simple use like browsing the web or typing a letter. But i mean a computer with scanner, games, printer, webcam, and once in a while buy and install new hardware like a photocam, or syncing your phone with a computer.
What use do you have of the above if you are not able ( due to lack of knowledge or TIME) to configure it rightly (drivers, permissions or other stuff). Saying this person is too stupid or lazy because he/she has a busy life next to using a computer is not the right approach here.
Some can grow a perfect garden, some can tweak a car, or some are sys admins. if you don't know how to maintain a car, you must trust the dealer to take care of that. Else you can't use your car no more. And to complete this anology, some don't need a perfectly tweaked car, they just want the car to use it for a long time to drive from A to B.
109 • Oracle (by Andy Figueroa on 2010-05-06 15:02:37 GMT from United States)
I just received email this morning from Oracle saying: "Oracle Open Office is available now at the Oracle Store. OpenOffice.org and Oracle Solaris operating system registered users save an additional 15% when you buy the latest release now from the Oracle Store." With a link to the Oracle Store:
http://www.oracle.com/store/oracleoffice?msgid=email-link1-button-shopnow-ooo-em0100&eid=4861138532&lid=1
It looks like the fee based StarOffice versions are being re-branded. The Oracle link from the OpenOffice.org home page takes one to a different location still offering StarOffice and StarSuite alongside the free OpenOffice. The disclaimer at the bottom of that page: http://www.sun.com/software/openoffice/index.jsp was curious.
It will be interesting to watch this play out.
Andy
110 • laconical (by Leroy on 2010-05-06 18:27:39 GMT from Serbia)
In comment # 104, it says,
"'Canonical may disclose any or all (...) if required to comply with applicable law or the order or requirement of a court, *administrative agency* or other governmental body.'
By not stating 'exactly' what administrative agency they have a free hand there (...)"
Well why not put asterisks on the word OTHER?, as in, "or 'other governmental body'..." The phrase "other governmental" sure narrows it down from "free hand" to severely restricted hand.
You may wish to consider that not all countries have mechanisms where warrants related to criminal investigations are issued by courts. In some countries "agencies or other governmental bodies" will also be in charge. For instance, in the U.S. of A. :)
The point is, you may be reading too much into the wording, although I do generally agree that it should be done. I deal every day with manipulation, bias, etc., sometimes quite subliminal, that comes from and with carefully crafted wording. I work in the media, see :)
Anyway how strange and disgusting to find myself - kinda - defending Canonical! Bloody hell :) Still.
I agree with Dopher here, in all but his understanding of the opposing argument. Those whom he argues with do not really want people to be widely using and adopting Linux. They are basically saying, if you can't tweak your car, you should not drive. It's a point of view, fair enough. Me, I'm more into Linux everywhere, for everyone ;)
111 • RE: 108 /110 (by Landor on 2010-05-06 19:59:05 GMT from Canada)
#108
I'll take rock solid as meaning that it's flawless...lol :) I don't think I ever told anyone what they could or couldn't use. I don't know where you're going with comment.
Also, I don't think I said any person had to spend time using or to maintain Gentoo or Slackware. Nor did I even consider them lazy. My singular point was that they are simple to maintain and stated the only thing a person had to do was invest time. This had nothing to do with any slur against any individual, and in all truth, it was more of a compliment has become that easy, and a compliment that every person using Linux has the qualities to use "any" distribution, "if they have the time or want to".
#110
"Well why not put asterisks on the word OTHER?, as in, "or 'other governmental body'..." The phrase "other governmental" sure narrows it down from "free hand" to severely restricted hand."
I knew someone would just on this part, regardless of the exact words. In law the words are extremely important. In a contract you agree to the exact meaning of words, not your assumption of it. Explain to me where the part that says, "administrative agency" , specifically has anything to do with the courts or legal system. You can't, you can say it implies it does because it comes after the word court and then is followed by other governmental body, but that's all you can say. That's one of the many loop-holes for Canonical in the TOS.
Am I saying they'll use it? No. I'm saying it's there and it was obviously intended to be written that way, which lends reason for caution.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
112 • UE (by Sammy on 2010-05-06 21:33:07 GMT from United States)
I was about to download and install Ultimate Edition, the latest, but the post up there about the problems (Sherlock Holmes?? lol) discourages me.
No other input about UE among you fine folks?
113 • @112 UE (by RollMeAway on 2010-05-06 22:00:04 GMT from United States)
My take on UE is:
It is Ubuntu with a lot of the extras, codecs, etc thrown in.
A lot of apps I will never use, and about 2 GB of ultimate themes.
114 • TexLive...??? (by Thom on 2010-05-07 05:31:53 GMT from Denmark)
Just got my update notification (SuperOS 9.04) and it claim I must have TexLive...
Now, between never having installed LaTex on the system, and *buntu 10.04's many new 'features' (as in processes running in the background, cloud readiness, etc.), I must confess to more than a normal level of curiosity.
Any thoughts, anybody?
@112: SuperOS has been my one and only this past year. Never had a problem. Just remember to purge the MONO stuff creeping in with Gnome :-/
(sudo apt-get purge libmono0 mono-common libgdiplus)
That said, I am looking to get off the *buntu train. I don't like the way it's heading...
115 • More old Tosh (by gnomic on 2010-05-07 07:57:09 GMT from New Zealand)
More about the old Satellite 2100 that is. Incredibly the MUD version of Mandriva 2010 with lxde booted on the K6/400. However it was unusably slow. Zenwalk 6 live booted but couldn't put up a gui. Crunchbang 10 alpha openbox i486 ran X Window, but many of the included apps are too heavy for this machine, eg VLC. WattOS RC1 ran (openbox/lxde) but was too slow. Papaglinux 10.1 ran but no X Window. PureOSLight_10beta1 ran, but kept logging out of X Window.
On the failed to run list were Debris, Vector 6 Light LIve, hag-0.1-20, CentOS-5.3-i386, refracta-0.0.4, & wolvix-2.0.0 beta1. So far the antiX i486 base and slitaz 3 low-ram which I started with purely by chance are the best contenders.
116 • RE 98,108 (by Langue de Vipère on 2010-05-07 10:28:55 GMT from Germany)
"Some average person working at a factory, or even some office job. In a relationship, perhaps even kids. Do you really think that person would have the time to setup LFS or some other hardcore OS? ( that is, if computering is not his/her main hobby)
"
Is averaging a pertinent operation? On human beings (and UBU linux claims to be "meant for mankind").
Learning a text processor, or even how to write in one's mother language, is time-consuming, too. Even knowing how to put clothes.... (in winter, it is useful not to be naked...).
Therefore, arguments based on lazyness, ease of install, maintenance (ease of use is often "forgotten") and the Joe_the(fake)_Plumber way of thinking are based on lies . Why can they be found in the UBUworld?
*
"The problem ofcourse is that ubuntu is backed up by a company. And, companies want to make profit. It all depends on how they try to achieve that. I think that ONE service should be watched. But let some sunlight in dude."
Well, some companies offer to their customers (testers : in the case of UBUlinux, it is no more than an ad for Canonical and some unpaid testing) some safety warnings (ex:IBM, Red Hat), some funding for improving software (Google summer of code gave money to netBSD cloning of apt* and to some R packages). Examples (code developpement for evry body and code audit) are more likely to have good software adopted than advertising and Public Relations (some people are fed up with M$ advertising and poor softs : it is not a reason to choose UBUlinux advertising , if they get poor software/software suppression).
And, if a company had to be uniquely profit-driven, there would be only banks...
What about UBUlinux?
117 • Re 115: Debian on old Toughbook (by CGL on 2010-05-07 11:25:14 GMT from United States)
I've got Debian Lenny and KDE 3.5 running on a 2.2-pound Panasonic Toughook CF-M33 with a Pentium 266, 192 MB RAM and 4 GB hard drive. Slow but surprisingly usable - sort of the original netbook! The trick was using the 486 kernel - any distro with a 686 kernel will not run - and installing just the a base system at first. I then installed xorg, kdm and kde-core from the CLI. I'm planning to replace the hard drive with a Compact Flash drive. Mmmm, Debian - what can't it do?
118 • Jumping off the *buntu train? (by Michael Raugh on 2010-05-07 12:26:02 GMT from United States)
@114: Depending on your levels of desires and needs, there are plenty of well-supported alternatives. Just off the top of my head I can suggest MEPIS, AntiX, PCLinuxOS, Fedora (about to release v13), Mandriva. Any of those are popular and well-supported (lots of community to help out, big repositories) desktop distros.
Want something more geeky that invites you to tinker? Arch is awesome if you're willing to invest the time and be responsible for more of your own system management. Ditto sidux, which is what I'm using now on my main home machine. Lots of people swear by Slackware, though I haven't tried it myself.
Is stability more important to you than having the latest versions of software? Looking for something you can install and then leave running with minimal fuss? Look at Debian, CentOS, or Scientific.
None of the above are based on the Ubuntu family, but they're all good distros. So are the *buntus and their offspring, for a lot of people. So you've got plenty of options.
-MR
119 • the train (by Sammy on 2010-05-07 14:02:51 GMT from United States)
What direction is "the *buntu train" going?
120 • Companies and profit (by fernbap on 2010-05-07 14:34:43 GMT from Portugal)
Companies are not evil (well, in fact some are) and there is nothing wrong in wanting to make a profit.
Linux owes much to such companies, and will continue to benefit from them in the foreseeable future.
While people praise Red Hat for finding a way to make money out of Linux, the same people is now trying to crucify Canonical for trying to do the same.
There is nothing inherently wrong in canonnical wanting to make money out of ubuntu, and, in doing so, creating a good base for other distros to use.
I, however, chose not to go in the same direction Ubuntu is going, but i guess i'm a minority in the market. Windows did indeed much harm to his user base, and it shows on the direction ubuntu is going.
The only thing that is important is freedom of choice and open source. As long as it is kept that way, that's great for everybody.
121 • #115 (by Torik on 2010-05-07 14:58:26 GMT from France)
I really like Slitaz but it kept dropping stuff like my printer. I will try it again as it seems to be constantly improving.
122 • What a week for Distrowatch comments. (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-05-07 18:30:18 GMT from United States)
There is a lot of hate in a lot of comments on this site. It's just not at Ubuntu (even tho it catches most of it) it's about easy Linux distros in general. You see a lot of hypocritical comments about people wanting the general public to adopt Linux, use Linux, and then Linux could become mainstream. Linux will not become mainstream and that is because people here will not allow it to do so. You hear ridiculous comments about the "direction Ubuntu / Canonical is taking" and this convinces me of the true feelings of most of the users here. You want Linux to stay in the server or on the geek's desktop where it belongs. You say, "let's keep it away from the general public. They want cloud computing, social networking, online gaming, they want to buy music online in mp3 format, they want bling, they want it all and it's dangerous to do that because they are too stupid to know what is good for them". The makers of Ubuntu would love to see the general public make Linux mainstream and that is the direction they are taking. I do understand why a lot of the people here can't understand how the general public uses their computers and that's because they come from the IT world and have only worked on servers all their life and that's well and good. The attitude of a lot of users in the Linux community has chased a lot of potential Linux users away. If you ask a person in the real world what they want a computer to do, they tell you, and then you say well we don't do that with Linux because it's unsafe or improper, guess what? They will not use it. It doesn't have to be Ubuntu either. It could be any of the other big distros. A lot of people here would love to see Canonical fail with Ubuntu and then they would be happy. They could have their little IT world back and the general public with their bad habits would not be a danger to their little Linux world. The community is it's own greatest danger. Think about it.
123 • @ #22 by Eddie Wilson (by Jon Iverson on 2010-05-07 19:37:42 GMT from United States)
Well said Eddie.
Fortunately we don't have to wonder whether Canonical and M. Shuttleworth give a rip about what the nay sayers and Window$ trolls post here. The Ubuntu project will stay the course, and Linux Mint and others who benefit from it's work will continue moving forward.
In the end those who do their best to turn others away from today's more popular Linux distros will still be thumbing their noses as they're left sitting in the dust at the side of the road. And no one will care in the least..
124 • #122 (by Anonymous on 2010-05-07 19:45:14 GMT from United States)
Well said. I think that Canonical is doing a great job. That is the beauty of choice. If you don't like what is happening in one distribution then you don't have to use that distribution. I personally use whichever distribution gets me to what I consider a working system with the least amount of effort. That definition of working system changes though depending upon what the pc is going to be used for. Currently for this PC (which is the primary pc in my home) I have 10.04 installed. I think it's a great distro. As far as other PC's in my house one is running Slackware, and the other is running Lenny. Once they were set up they just work. This being my main pc I wanted all the social networking stuff. I play online games. 10.04 was the best fit for this pc, but that doesn't mean it's the best fit for all my pc's.
125 • Ubuntu (by pfb on 2010-05-08 00:47:00 GMT from United States)
Wow! I had to try it because I haven't used Ubuntu in years. I am impressed, almost. This distro on my machine is very fast at boot, and almost instantaneous at shutdown. On top of that, almost everything works. Almost, because of samba. I thought I knew most every trick to get samba working, but Ubuntu has thoroughly humbled me. Yet for a single computer, with no need for networking, what an awesome distro.
I think I will keep it for a short, until the next thing that catches my eye. Maybe there will be a fix for samba before then. If not , I can try it again at 10.10.
126 • Ubuntu (by pfb on 2010-05-08 01:16:22 GMT from United States)
I guess i was a little too optimistic. It appears that Ubuntu has torpedoed the Fedora system running on the same machine. And, it has locked me out of the User/Group management GUI. It now looks like I have two systems to replace. But --- It still starts and stops very quickly. How is that for optimism?
127 • RE:126, Very Good Optimism (by Eddie Wilson on 2010-05-08 01:23:56 GMT from United States)
Sorry to hear that it borked your Fedora system. I have several distros that is on the same system and I haven't had any problems yet. Even my Arch system is going good. I hope you get it worked out. Optimism is always good for Linux.
128 • #126 (by Anonymous on 2010-05-08 03:12:30 GMT from United States)
Did you have both Fedora and Ubuntu on completely separate partitions? I don't use Fedora, nor Ubuntu. I do know that keeping each distro totally separate from each other is the way to go.
Some older recommendations say that you can have a shared /home (and/or /etc) mount point. Don't do it. Some newer verions of apps may add new configuration sections, and/or new parameters in their configuration files that older versions of that app would not know how to deal with those.
129 • #126 (by Anonymous on 2010-05-08 03:20:20 GMT from United States)
If you have Fedora and Ubuntu on totally separate partitions, you might have just lost the boot instruction in Grub (or your partition manager). Chances are the Grub config file of Fedora is in the [Fedora-partion]/boot/grub/ diretory. Now that you just installed Ubuntu, new and active Grub config file is in the [Ubuntu]/boot/grub/ directory. If that is the case, you can mount the [Fedora] partition, copy the appropriate Grub boot instruction for Fedora and add similar instructions to the currently active Grub config file in [Ubuntu]/boot/grub/ directory.
If that's not it, let us know if you can figure out exactly what went wrong.
130 • removing mono from ubuntu 10.04 (by forlin on 2010-05-08 03:41:36 GMT from Portugal)
For those who care, on Thursday, April 29th, 2010 at 15:30, Alan Lord posted an article at "The Open Sourcerer" titled "How to remove Mono from Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx" with detailed instructions and other related important information.
131 • Re: Eddie Wilson (by jake on 2010-05-08 05:57:21 GMT from United States)
Eddie, you might want to re-read various comments.
I don't think anyone's "anti" any given distro. Rather, various folks are raising issues about certain aspects of various distros. There is nothing personal about it.
The GreatUnwashed[tm] having an irrational personal attachment to their hardware/OS of choice is a totally different issue, and one I'm not going to address in this comment.
n.b. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ad+hominem
132 • #128 (by pfb on 2010-05-08 11:30:33 GMT from United States)
Yes I have Fedora and Ubuntu using a common swap partition. This worked with Fedora and Mandriva, so I am not sure that this is the problem. Fedora tries to load but freezes near what appears to be the loading of xorg.conf. At least, it is similar to that which happens when Fedora gets a new kernel without the corresponding update for nVidia.
I think Ubuntu uses SELinux. I wonder if that is the problem. I mounted the Fedora partition in Ubuntu to access the home directory. Perhaps I have screwed up all my permissions.
133 • actual most used distro (by bugman on 2010-05-08 11:34:04 GMT from United States)
debian
what happens to *buntu if debian calls it quits?
134 • #128, #132 (by pfb on 2010-05-08 12:20:18 GMT from United States)
Fedora is back! It seems Ubuntu created new permissions on the Fedora partition? In any event, changing the mount point to a shared partition restored Fedora start up. There appear to be some things that failed on start up, so I still have further work to do.
135 • #132, #134 (by Anonymous on 2010-05-08 14:24:52 GMT from United States)
Don't know your specific problem, but a couple of things to consider.
Can you bring up Fedora in runlevel 3? Try adding "init=3" , or "init 3" to the Grub boot loadder instruction line that specify the kernel image to load. I recommend copying the whole set of Grub instruction for Fedora, and change the "new copy" and change the load instruction as well as the label/title.
If Fedora can startup OK on runlevel 3, you can try to become root and reconfigure Xorg. Save a copy of the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (or tar.bz2 the whole /etc/X11/ directory) before reconfigure Xorg is a good idea, too. Don't know Fedora and Yum, but Debian has "dpkg-reconfigure" command to reconfigure any package as if it is invoked automatically right after installed from the repository.
The newer Xorg may not need any xorg.conf, except for custom nVidia/ATI driver stuff.
---
Sharing only swap partition may be OK between distros, except for laptop, there are some issues to be aware of. Things may improve, or worsen with new releases of Xorg, or the Kernel.
When the laptop goes into sleep/hibernation mode and then was turned-off, or lost power. On next startup, if you select the different distro (or different release of the same distro), the kernel loader will try to load the "live RAM image" from the swap partition in "wake up" mode which is often a different kernel release (different kernel modules...) That can cause problems when it can't load modules, or custom Xorg driver now have different links/pointers in the kernel, Xorg itself may be at different release number and pointers are out of sync there, too.
136 • #132, #134 (by Anonymous on 2010-05-08 14:37:04 GMT from United States)
It's now almost Sunday in Europe. The comment section may be locked when Monday rolls around. Not sure how appropriate it is to continue in the next week's comment section of the distrowatch weekly.
Did Fedora show up as a selectable choice in the Grub boot menu that was installed by Ubuntu? If not, then Ubuntu script for Grub install didn't do a good job of that. If it is already a selectable choice in the Grub boot menu, try verifying the Grub boot instruction from the two Grub config file (old one in Fedora partition, and new active one in Ubuntu partition) to make sure the active one in Ubuntu partition uses all the proper options to boot up the Fedora partition the same way it was done in the old Grub config.
Recent Grub 2.0 (1.98.xx???) is now the default on many distro's too. It uses slightly different syntax for Grub config file than the old Grub, something to check.
137 • #132, #134 (by Anonymous on 2010-05-08 14:48:17 GMT from United States)
Some distro installation allow option to mount all partitions by default, some don't have that option. You can always mount each partition manually, and/or change that in the /etc/fstab file. Is that your problem?
Or, you have an entry in the Grub boot menu for Fedora, chose that and Fedora doesn't boot, or it boots up with some errors/problems? This is a different set of problems.
138 • #132,#134 (by pfb on 2010-05-08 17:27:38 GMT from United States)
From what I can see the Fedora problem is solved. When Ubuntu locked the mount point, it appeared that some permissions were propagated down into the files. Well, that is what it acted like, anyway. When I loosened the permissions (on the Ubuntu mount point), everything started working again. I don't have any other explanation.
So my only remaining problem is that I can't recall what program equates computer names with their numbers. Ubuntu will easily display the contents of 192.168.1.3, but gets lost when I use the computer name. I thought there was a program that loaded this information into hosts, or hostnames, but my brain doesn't seem to recall what that program is. (I thought nmbd did this, but I have it running with no luck.) Anybody know what I may be missing?
139 • Swap partition lost after installing new distro (by RollMeAway on 2010-05-08 19:01:13 GMT from United States)
A very common problem, now that most distros use UUIDs to identify partitions.
The new installation will re-format the swap partition, and assigns a new UUID.
Now when you boot the previous distro, it doesn't recognize the new UUID and
has no swap partition.
Either edit the fstabs to something human readable, like /dev/sdaX, or play
the UUID game to figure out the new ID and change the previous distros fstab.
If your ram is limited, having no swap could cause a crash.
140 • UUID (by Anonymous on 2010-05-08 22:15:35 GMT from United States)
UUID's should be optional, not required.
libuuid is only needed for uuid operation.
If you don't have to use it then why make it mandatory?
I've always done ok with things like dev/hda or /dev/sda
Now nothing works without uuid or volume labels.
Conveniences should be addable not un-removeable.
To eliminate uuid would require editing the source packages and rebuilding.
All this so someone can plug in a usb stick and magically have an icon appear
to access the data.
Oh well.....
141 • Mandriva's up for sale! (by kalecon on 2010-05-08 22:17:27 GMT from Canada)
I wonder how long it is that they've been on the market?
They're not the big linux shakers they used to be - so it'll be
interesting to see who buys them.
http://www.mandrivalinux-online.org/news/news.php
142 • Ubuntu hits a homerun (by George on 2010-05-08 22:50:43 GMT from United States)
Ubuntu 10.04 has finally put linux in the big leagues. This release is fast, stable, and professional looking. What more could a user want ?
143 • Mandriva up for sale ? (by rrexsmith on 2010-05-08 22:58:18 GMT from United States)
The potential sale of Mandriva is bad news - first of all, what do they have that a potential buyer would want ? What will probably happen to Mandriva will be similar to that of Freespire, which is someone will buy them out and merge them into an existing company and essentially kill the distro. If that hapens, PCLinuxOS will be in a world of hurt because Texstar will be forced to find a new base os to build from.
144 • UUID not mandatory (by RollMeAway on 2010-05-09 00:42:37 GMT from United States)
While most distros default to using UUID, I don't believe it is mandatory.
I routinely edit fstab, replacing UUIDs with /dev/sdxy, on most every distro I install.
There is an option in grub0.97 and grub2 to NOT use them.
I also edit the grub config files and replace UUIDs with /dev/sdxy.
I believe Fedora favors using LABEL instead. Much easier for humans to read.
145 • #138 (by Anonymous on 2010-05-09 00:50:48 GMT from United States)
>>>
From what I can see the Fedora problem is solved. When Ubuntu locked the mount point, it appeared that some permissions were propagated down into the files. Well, that is what it acted like, anyway. When I loosened the permissions (on the Ubuntu mount point), everything started working again. I don't have any other explanation.
<<<
Depends on what you mean by loosen the permissions. If you loosened the /etc, /root, /bin, /sbin so that any user account can peek, it can be a big enough problem especially with SSH, or remote access. If you got them loosen them so any user account can overwrite the files in those directories, you have bigger problems.
>>>
So my only remaining problem is that I can't recall what program equates computer names with their numbers. Ubuntu will easily display the contents of 192.168.1.3, but gets lost when I use the computer name. I thought there was a program that loaded this information into hosts, or hostnames, but my brain doesn't seem to recall what that program is. (I thought nmbd did this, but I have it running with no luck.) Anybody know what I may be missing?
<<<
It depends on what you try to use. If it is the web browser or other TCP/IP apps, then what you are after is DNS, and/or /etc/hosts file. If you try to browse NetBIOS sharing, or SAMBA then it's NetBIOS related. I haven't used SAMBA for quite some time, I don't remember that any more
.
146 • RE:144 (by Anonymous on 2010-05-09 03:09:32 GMT from United States)
Did you ever try and remove lib-uuid?
Usually it is a definate dependency of current file system packages.
Remove it and no longer will you have file system tools.
The only way to dump uuid is to edit the source packages and remove any dependencies there.
So much for a convenience when it is not an option to remove uuid and slim down.
Now look at hplip.
I usually print something once a month or so.
The newer hplip packages need Dbus to check the ink levels.
The older ones never did.
I don't run Dbus, so I can't use hplip to see my ink levels.
In fact I'm not even sure why I need Cups, for the little printing I do.
But the easiest way to print is: load Cups & Hplip - Ta-Da - printing works.
If I want it all to work I need to let it load Dbus too.
No Dbus here....
Things keep getting more complicated and intertwined.
Thanks for the reply.
147 • Mandriva for sale? (by Lucky on 2010-05-09 04:04:36 GMT from Australia)
141 and 143
If Mandriva is for sale that is sad news. However, not as bad for PCLinuxOS as 143 suggests as from their website we learn ----
PCLinuxOS 2010 was built from the ground up . . .
The packages in the repo may be original creations but there may also be repackaged and modified material from Fedora, OpenSuse and Mandriva as well as patches from Ubuntu, Debian, PLD and Chakra. The PCLinuxOS team thank the distributions who may have indirectly contributed to the PCLinuxOS distribution.
148 • Mandriva (by glyj on 2010-05-09 12:00:36 GMT from France)
For me this is very very bad news.
I'm a Mandriva user for many years.
This is the best one for desktop user.
The security level of the distro is very very good : Look at msec, this is a kind of jewel.
They contribute a lot to the free software regarding the size of the company.
Example among others: The main K3B developper is paid by mandriva.
When the company was wealthier, they were even more than nowadays.
I really don't understand why the distro is in a such situation. There were some mistakes but the product was still here. One or two release were not so good but with the updates everything was quite fine.
regards,
glyj
149 • #145 (by pfb on 2010-05-09 12:08:51 GMT from United States)
"If you loosened the /etc, /root, /bin, /sbin so that any user account can peek, it can be a big enough problem especially with SSH, or remote access."
Interestingly, what happened is that the owner of etc, usr, and some minor folders is now me rather than root. Probably not a good thing. But easily fixed. Bin/boot/lib/root/sbin/et.al. are still good.
"If you try to browse NetBIOS sharing, or SAMBA then it's NetBIOS related. I haven't used SAMBA for quite some time, I don't remember that any more
."
Yes it is samba. I have two XP computers on the system. As outstanding as Ubuntu is in nearly every way, I find samba a big disappointment. Almost every distro I have ever tried will do smbclient right out of the box.
150 • mandriva (by forlin on 2010-05-09 14:35:05 GMT from Portugal)
In fact Mandriva is for sale, and a few details are given on their french news section site. It's stated that the sale was the unique alternative to closing. Anyway, I believe this may not necessary mean the end of the Mandriva Linux O/S. According to the same news the Boursorama bank is cooperating on the payment of salaries and on the monthly founding of the Brazilian branch, as a mean to assure keeping the key people, while sales negotiations are now taking place. Meetings have been held at the offices of the Ernst&Young auditors, with the french group Linagora, to the purchase of part of the Mandriva assets. Another company, LightApp's, UK based, is also interested in the purchase of Mandriva, as disclosed by the above mentioned bank.
151 • @150 • mandriva (by Master Crash on 2010-05-09 15:41:08 GMT from United States)
I hope Mandriva Corporate will get in front of this and give us Mandriva users some official information.
152 • #149 (by Anonymous on 2010-05-10 03:51:12 GMT from United States)
>>>
Interestingly, what happened is that the owner of etc, usr, and some minor folders is now me rather than root. Probably not a good thing. But easily fixed. Bin/boot/lib/root/sbin/et.al. are still good.
<<<
Check to see group ownership of those files/directories were changed to your userid also. If they were, chances are you don't know what groups those things were associated with. So something may not work right, often you only find out when you need that feature right at that time.
I suppose it is better safe than sorry, I'd suggest that you setup another partition and install Fedora on that new partition. Copy/salvage what you can/want from the "broken Fedora" partition. It's best to do it now, when you have plenty of chances and time. It would be a huge headache when you try to run something because you need the info and the app wouldn't run.
>>>
Yes it is samba. I have two XP computers on the system. As outstanding as Ubuntu is in nearly every way, I find samba a big disappointment. Almost every distro I have ever tried will do smbclient right out of the box.
<<<
As I got rid of Windows, I got rid of old habits, too. No Samba/NetBIOS for me. SSH or rsync only when I need the files. No need to keep Samba connections, Samba network discovery broadcast... If you log firewall messages, you will see these messages broadcasted every few minutes for anyone on the network to see, hackers probably love them.
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| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
| • Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
| • Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
| • Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
| • Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
| • Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
| • Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
| • Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
| • Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
| • Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
| • Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
| • Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
| • Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
| • Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
| • Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
| • Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
| • Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
| • Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
| • Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
| • Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
| • Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
| • Full list of all issues |
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Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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| Random Distribution | 
SENTINIX
SENTINIX was an operating system (or a so called Linux distribution) designed for monitoring, auditing, intrusion detection and anti-spam. It's completely free; free to use, free to modify and free to distribute. SENTINIX includes the following software installed and pre-configured; Nagios, Nagat, Snort, SnortCenter, ACID, Cacti, RRDTool, Nessus, Postfix, MailScanner, SpamAssassin, openMosix, MySQL, Apache, PHP, Perl, Python and lots more. SENTINIX was shipped with a lot of programs, not all licensed under the same license (e.g. GNU GPL). SENTINIX contains (and will only contain) software whose license has been approved by the Open Source Initiative. Compledge Sentinel was the predecessor of SENTINIX.
Status: Discontinued
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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