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No, the DesktopCD (former LiveCD) features a fully graphical installer which is run from within the live environment.

Tom

The XP installer isnt fully graphical. Have you even checked it out yet?

I have to look at it almost every day :/ My point is that the Ubuntu installer is a plain looking very-dull form. Other OS's take a lot more pride in their installers.

Ok, so it gets the job done, but it doesn't use up system resources on eye candy. And that warrants it being compared to a Visual Basic "My First App" program?

Most Linux distributions including Ubuntu have much better installers than every single version of Windows that has ever existed. When Windows can do a clean installation without fscking up on hard drive detetion or layout, requiring steps where you have to press keys like F1, F3, F5 and F8 with constantly changing associated actions, being half text based and half graphical, and needing several reboots then you can complain about Linux installers.

Other OS's take a lot more pride in their installers.
Maybe that's, because you have to spend much more time with those installers of other OSes. Either because they take so long or reinstalling has become a needed regular task.

Fully graphical is a stretch of the imagination. The live CD installer looks like a 'my first app' program bashed together in VB. You're installing a whole OS for cripes sake, have some pride! It should be branded with pretty images to entertain the person whilst it installs. Check out the Windows XP or Vista Installers or even the sparse but still interesting OS X Installer.

So let me see. With Vista, XP and OS X I'm "entertained" by some pretty images while it installs. With Ubuntu (and other Linux distros that employ similar systems), I can read websites, chat via IM, read my e-mail, play some games, edit some photos, even write a short novel -- anything I could do on a regular Linux Live CD in other words, whilst the installation is going on.

Gee, it really is tough to decide which is better, isn't it?

Kroc, you seem to have something on your face... wait... is that egg?

Oh good, so what kind of minimum resources do you need in order to simply install the thing now then? A number of times i've wanted to install linux on systems that simply would not cope with the memory requirements involved in booting a liveCD(and may well struggle with an installed version of ubuntu, but they may cope ok), i don't want to have to download a separate CD image in order to do so. Why couldn't they manage a simple graphical installation routine with minimal overhead, that just works? Mandrake, for example, has been doing it for the past 6 years at least.

If you can't use the live CD use the text installer.

If you don't want to download two CD's, download only the one you need; forget Mandrake, in this case, because it took 3 CDs the last time I checked it.

If you don't like it, don't use it. If you only want to bitch, at least try to appear intelligent.

So does the fact that people wishing to install ubuntu now have to wait for a liveCD to intiate before getting the option not matter at all? This can take a surprisingly long time on some systems and just seems to serve to make proceedings more complicated, or should everyone download both just incase the other is needed in the future?

Why doesn't the experience of installing Mandrake matter, first time i checked it only had one CD and a nice and simple graphical installer with clever paritioning helpers, the fact that it's a 3 CD distribution these days doesn't negate the fact that its intaller was obviously a pretty good system and is worth learning from.

If all you care about is maintaining an intelligent appearance at least try to calm down a little.

If you don't want the Live disk, use the text installer. It is one disk only, and using it is hardly rocket science.

no, right now you boot a live cd and then you can install it from there using a graphical installer.

and while you wait, you can browse the internet, play games, etc...

The installer on the LiveCD (Espresso) is using GTK+. It got its quirks, but I believe it's going to be the recommended choice for installing Ubuntu 6.06.

I have been using Dapper daily for two months... While it made a lot of progress, I do believe they should have made another delay before calling a release candidate. Although I suspect the issues are coming from GNOME/GTK+ rather than Ubuntu, it's just a pain to work with remote folders. It's sluggish (refresh can takes seconds when I'm in a LAN; a terminal session don't have this issue) and can lock the system for minutes when the remote server isn't giving answer. I'd like to lend a hand but I won't touch GUIs made in C with a 10-foot pole. Oh well, at least I reported some bugs.

It's getting quite good. What works is working quite well. Still, I would call a major QA/bugfix rush for another month before releasing it, especially since it's going to have long term support.

It's true there are some dangling ends, but I guess if you have to wait till it's perfect, then you might wait forever.

It won't be cast in stone upon release, anyway; be sure there will be continual fixes as there have been for the previous editions.

Another is the new graphical Python-based installer, which is part of the Ubuntu Live CD. Less featured, more clicky.

It's alarming that they actually plan to include that hive of bugs in a "super-stable" release that's meant to be supported for, what, three years?

I doubt anyone who's after 3 years of support will be using a clicky livecd-based installer - if they want clicky, they'll move to Edgy Eft as soon as they can.

Those of us who want to make full use fo the long support cycle will be using the text installer anyway, for preseeding.

It's alarming that they actually plan to include that hive of bugs in a "super-stable" release that's meant to be supported for, what, three years?

Maybe it's not very buggy at all?

No, it's definitely buggy--to the point where I couldn't get it to do a complete install on my computer at all. Options would disappear if you went back and forward the wrong way, it'd assume incorrect choices, etc., etc.... it probably should have been held till the next release.

It crashed between making the filesystem and installing everything on mine. Not sure why. When I ran mkfs by hand and then installed it, it went fine.

I've got a question concerning the graphical installer:
Is it still possible to decide which partition is to be the /boot, the root, ... partition?
Thank you in advance.

Yes (at least there was when I tried it) - there's a graphical partitioning thingy where you can also choose where to mount partitions to.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormats

Thank you so much Sir, I'd mod you up if I could.

Spiffy. I found out the gstplugins-ugly package by myself, but I was rather clueless on DVD playback. It's just a shame that you need another media player.

Gstreamer development was very rapid in the last months. The information about totem ist outdated. I play dvds with totem-gstreamer for some weeks now on dapper. Just install all gstreamer plugins and libdvdcss.

apt-get install gst-plugins-ugly

Anyway, that's the only thing I did.

Windows is indeed on the way out, and it is getting there fast, look at these headlines from this weeks Microsoft Love in...

http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=14718

http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=14714

http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=14713

http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=14707

Not even the biggest Windows fans around here can see the future will be rosy for Microsoft.

Not only is Microsoft getting a hard time on this site, look here ;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5018372.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5013712.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4996630.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/4978230.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4856492.stm

And as usual the Windows fans who cannot see the woods for the trees will mod me down and continue on their lives like sheep getting rogered by Bill Gates

hahahahahaa you are a retard man.... but a funny one at that.

moderators; do not ban this guy, he cheers me up no end.

How is that an example of Desktop linux's failure? How is anything you say based in reality? The GPL is not the cause of Linux's slow adoption on the desktop, there are many factors, but IMO, mostly it's a "percieved" lack of user-friendliness, the fact that Windows comes with most OEM computers, and businesses are reluctant to change what they run their systems on, as well as a lack of MS office. It's nice to be able point at something and say it's your fault, but things are not that simple

is this all you do? sit around and make comments about the "GPL Virus" and preach how great OSX is...

get a hobby and stop bothering people.

Choice ? Choice ?

How many Windows users had the choice of buying a PC WITHOUT Windows installed.

Don't you talk to me about choice, young man, etc etc

If you go with headlines like that, Windows has been on the way out since 2000, Ubuntu is great, GNU/linux is great, so is MacOS X, but until major OEMs start shipping one of them on consumer level machines, they'll never compete at the same level

Stands for Long Term Service, silly.

NM

I've never known Ubuntu to revert changes made xorg.conf . Or any other file for that matter. Synaptic always pops up and says "You've changed filename.conf , do you want to keep/replace/view difference "

I've never known Ubuntu to revert changes made xorg.conf. Or any other file for that matter.

grub's menu.lst seems to be fair game for ubuntu. I have kernels for more than one distribution on my boot partition and all other distributions I've ever used accepted that but ubuntu doesn't. I now have an init-script that restores my version of menu.lst at each shutdown.
Perhaps there's a more elegant way to protect that file

grub's menu.lst seems to be fair game for ubuntu. I have kernels for more than one distribution on my boot partition and all other distributions I've ever used accepted that but ubuntu doesn't. I now have an init-script that restores my version of menu.lst at each shutdown.
Perhaps there's a more elegant way to protect that file

I'd file a bug report: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+filebug/+login

As mentioned in the file itself (possibly not in the clearest language):

# Put static boot stanzas before and/or after AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST

Anything in the AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST section will be rewritten whenever update-grub is called. Anything outside that will be left untouched.

Look at /boot/grub/menu.lst.

There are two lines
### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
and
### END AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
and a comment saying not to put your own options between there. So try putting the options outside of that area, if you're not already :-)

Edited 2006-05-26 13:29

You go get a job, and a life. Each and every one of your comments is about bashing Linux on the desktop, and spreading your thoughts that everyone should use OSX.

5 posts on the review about SUSE 10.1
4 posts on the release of Ubuntu Dapper Drake.

You never get tired of posting the same thing all the time?

If you're not interested on linux on the desktop, because OSX is superior (to you), then why waste your time posting comments on these articles?

To each his own, but it almost seems that it's a pain to use OSX, because instead of using it and enjoying your desktop, you're more worried about posting negative comments about linux on the desktop... or maybe you can't handle a linux install and are frustrated about and need to bash on it again and again?

Just to save you some trouble in the future: no matter how much you complain about desktop linux, it works for me and it's gonna keep working for me, and I think it works for a whole lot of people. You might better use your energy to post useful comments on articles on OSX.

But I'm still happier using an OS that doesn't kludge things around for me, if for no other reason than it's easier to troubleshoot things when you set them up in the first place.

Well, thats a common problem and not only with Ubuntu. This problem often occurs when a new version of a package comes out and requires some changes in config files. There is no way to know what will happen if you changed something. And using a less user-friendly distro wont help that much...because it will most likely leave the modified files as-is...giving you much more trouble later.

But if you're fine with Arch, well, go for it! I've been myself a long time user of Slackware because I wanted to do everything by hand. Now I'm just a bit too lazy ;-)

"Has anyone used the server install cd for dapper? Can one use it to install a bare minimum system (without any server packages)?"

Yes. Also, there's a seperate install option for installing a LAMP server in one go if you like.

When you boot up the text-mode install cd, there's an option to "install a server." This is the install you're looking for. It doesn't install server packages, nor a GUI, just the system core and utilities. The kernel is the same as the desktop kernel.

I recently installed Xubuntu (which is a light weight ubuntu distro using xfce) on my PII-366 laptop. I've been really really pleased. It's quick even on such a very old machine, and good apps are included without much bloat. It can be installed by doing a minimal/server install and then "apt-get xubuntu-desktop" or from a xubuntu disc.

The easiest way to a minimal installation is to download their netinstall cd from http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/dapper/main/installer-i386/c... or http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/dapper/main/installer-amd64/... . Then when it asks for boot parametres just type server <enter>. This installs the minimal working system without any bloat and doesn't force you to download hundreds of mbs of useless software.

Please don't. Instead, do what mjg59 said.

Doubt i will,instead i might make /etc/fstab read-only aswell to prevent multiple obsolete /dev/ entries (I have two dvd-+r's why the hack should i have 10 (cdrom) > entries after an update?.

Edited 2006-05-26 17:18