The warm-hearted Warthogs of the Warty Team are proud to present the very first release of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a new Linux distribution that brings together the extraordinary breadth of Debian with a fast and easy install, regular releases (every six months), a tight selection of excellent packages installed by default and a commitment to security updates with 18 months of security and technical support. Update: A selection of screenshots from the final version.
Announcing Ubuntu 4.10
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I have Ubuntu 4.10 RC running on my laptop. Very solid distro, even from a longtime Debian user. I do have some ambivalence about Ubuntu in general just because they really don’t maintain compatability with debian packages in general, unlike Libranet where you get control panel scripts, a good installer, and then full compatibility with the official Debian repositories. On the other hand, many of Ubuntu’s packages are more up-to-date than Debian, such as Gnome 2.8, obviously. But on yet another hand, some packages don’t even exist in Ubuntu’s “universe,” and ubuntu’s “ubuntu-base” package can be restrictive. For example, I very much prefer dhcpcd to dhclient for negotiating dhcp connections, but if I try to remove dhclient it wants to remove ubuntu-base entirely. And if I want to install dhcpcd (which I did), well, I have to compile it from source… no Ubuntu packages even in universe.
That said, though, it is a really nice distro, especially for a start, and it will only get better. It already has a pretty strong community.
sorry for the separate post, but a more practical question that’s been on my mind:
How does Ubuntu (Canonical) plan on making money? Anyone?
Great new distro.
I’ve been using Ubuntu since the preview release, and i have no plans to change distro again
Congratulations to the Ubuntu team for the wonderful work they have done!
>That said, though, it is a really nice distro, especially for
>a start, and it will only get better. It already has a pretty
>strong community.
Any big reason one should choose this over e.g. doing a Desktop installation of Fedora ?
http://wiki.ubuntulinux.org/WartyWarthog_2fUpgradeNotes
To help you along.
I put 4.10RC on my Laptop. It wouldn’t be a problem re-installing because I don’t have any data on there yet, but is it necessary? Or does Syanptic keep the whole system up to date?
haven’t used the Fedora stuff recently, but generally ubuntu feels very light and not as “bloated” as Red Hat or SuSE stuff… and well apt and synaptic has advantages over RPM package management but it’s true you have to be carefull with the compatibility of Ubuntu with other repositories.
As for upgrading, see a post about 3 up.
As for vs Red Hat. I recently moved from RH8 (yes a horrible release) to Ubuntu, and I am very happy. I have Duron 675, so my machine is certainly not fast, but is faster than windows under load. 2 notes: Rhythmbox is almost completely broken for SOME people, and Totem can also be.
I would recommend trying it, even you choose something else in the end.
Corey
I just ordered the 10 CD’s for FREE I could not beleive they are giving away CD’s for free. How do they plan to stay in Business.
I could not beleive they are giving away CD’s for free. How do they plan to stay in Business.
Because of the project leader Mark Shuttleworth’s money? Anyway, it is a good question in the sense that even people like him don’t have endlessly deep pockets and financial resources… But at least as an initial offer, it may be a good idea to gain more popularity and user base.
Do you have an hotswappable CD-ROM? I tried the LiveCD on my laptop (Toshiba Tecra S1) but the CD didn’t booted because GRUB wasn’t able to find it (Error 21, IIRC). I guess I would have the same problem with the installation CD if they’re still using GRUB.
I would be interested in learning more about how exactly Ubuntu uses sudo to increase security? AFAIK, the first user (installer) automatically has basically full sudo privileges to run all (root) programs and only the user password is needed, am I right?
However, wasn’t sudo was originally designed to be a tool to give very restricted root privileges to a restricted amount of users in a restricted way. Sudo can sure increase security, if used wisely, but not necessarily.
If sudo is used in too loose a manner it can also cause many new security problems:
– shelling out from an editor with root privileges
– sudo password change attacks
– other programs vulnerable through sudo
– etc.
How does Ubuntu prevent such security problems, or does it? It may matter at least if Ubuntu is used as a server OS, which use of Ubuntu is not discouraged. What have Ubuntu users (like server users) thought or perhaps done about this?
Anyway, congrats to the Ubuntu team from me too! I haven’t tried a new distro for some time but I think that this will definitely be worth trying.
The Madpinguin link says that “Warty can be installed in a minimalist mode for servers, or in full desktop mode.” Does this mean that it is finally possible to select which packages you want to install during the install?
I’m very curious about this… Ubuntu looks really promising, but when I tested the beta in September, the installer threw a bunch of packages on my harddisk I’ll never use. The first word that came to my mind then was …bloat…
>>Rhythmbox is almost completely broken for SOME people, and Totem can also be.
Gstreamer not ready for primetime, Ubuntu people!
Add:
deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat testing main
to your /etc/apt/sources.list and install totem-xine | win32codecs | libdvdcss2 | $whatever_mediaplayer
*Looks like the repo is offline ATM
Upgrading to 4.10 works just fine. I just did an apt-get update && apt-get upgrade here, and rebooted into 4.10. Only downside is they seem to have taken the naked people out
Hey Rayiner,
Yeah, I was going to ask you if you are a Gnome person now that you said that you had used Ubuntu for those screenshots?
I guess I’ll update to 4.10(where’d they come up with that number) from one of the ISO snapshots from a couple weeks ago.
So it’s just apt-get update; apt-get upgrade? no dist-upgrade, or adding the user to the scanner group as linked by a previous poster in the upgrade FAQ?
The release number is based on the release date.
This is the 4th year in the century, and the tenth month of the year. so 4.10.
Hoary will be 5.4, because it will release in April of 2005.
How well does 4.10 install on VMware?
The previous prerelease install CD and the live CD weren’t able to complete the boot sequence.
I mainly use Ubuntu because I like Debian
KDE is available in Universe, and works quite well. I’ve been using GNOME a lot lately, though. They’ve done nice things to it. I like the HAL integration, specifically how it pops up a folder for my iPod when I plug it in. It’s utterly useless (the iPod’s filesystem is layed out for computers to understand, not humans), but it’s a neat trick.
With regards to upgrading, the apt-get upgrade worked just fine for me. I did the scanner group thing to be safe, but I didn’t have any problems without it.
Ubuntu is a really nice distribution. It is most likely going to become my main distribution. I want to hold off final judgement for a couple months to see how up-to-date they keep the packages in the repositories. I don’t want to not be able to apt-get the latest firefox or gaim version until they release their second release in 6 months. They haven’t said whether they are going more of the route like Fedora with publishing releases on a schedule and then not releasing many updates inbetween or if they are going to be like Debian and keep the repositories up to date. I hope they keep it up to date. They are still running Gaim 1.0 when Gaim 1.01 was released on the 9th and 1.02 was released today. Firefox is still .93, although it is still .93 in Debian too.
> I recently moved from RH8 (yes a horrible release) to Ubuntu
RH8 is _OLD_ and _UNSUPPORTED_. So why you still use it ?
After RH8 :
– RH9
– FC1
– FC2
– FC3 => 1 november 2004.
Compare Ubuntu to FC3 and not to RH8 !
Only downside is they seem to have taken the naked people out
Install ubuntu-calendar.
The GDM theme is still available from the login configuration (but I use autologin anyway). Only the splashscreen was removed for good (which I have disabled).
I want to hold off final judgement for a couple months to see how up-to-date they keep the packages in the repositories. I don’t want to not be able to apt-get the latest firefox or gaim version until they release their second release in 6 months.
For the stable release, only fixes will be released. However, if you don’t mind you will be able to track the development branch for the next release, this should always be mostly up to date.
Personally, I’m hoping they do something in between releases and new: Have a repo that only does severe bug fixes and security updates (like fedora or FreeBSD RELENG_X_Y), and have a second repository with all the current ‘tested’ stuff (like debian sid). I like a lot of what Debian does, they’re just too behind on packages for my taste.
I wont be trying it.
Debian, SuSe, Fedora(RH) and Gentoo.
Those are the only 4 distro’s we need, I wont support yet another fork, yet more reinventing the wheel just so some developer can say he made his own distro. If I have a need one of the above will solve it.
It has apt-get! (so does fedora, debian and gentoo has portage)
Stable? (suse, RH, Debian)
New packages? (fedora, gentoo, Debian unstable)
Philosophy? (Debian, Fedora)
Read their about page, its just the same old thing you can get with just about any disto, 6 month releases, 18 months updates, etc.
Why does it have version 4.10 ? and not 1.0 ? Is there a story behind it ?
I wont support yet another fork, yet more reinventing the wheel just so some developer can say he made his own distro.
Well, you know, most of the Linux distributions are not even forks but basically just a bit modified version of one of those 4 big ones mentioned by you (plus at least Mandrake & Slackware), usualy with some add-ons that the dev team seemed useful but that could not be done inside the original project (because of resources, philosophy, different goals etc.).
Knoppix, Libranet = Debian
Vector, Buffalo = Slackware
etc.
That’s is open source freedom: modified tools to fit different tastes and purposes. What could be wrong with that? It is not necessarily something bad that breaks the unity of Linux. (I admit that there seems to be too many distributions. however…)
I found it lacked critical packages, but the gui package tool made short work of that.
Getting root access and making the partition bootable with lilo were challenges but I have those solved. I have been running ubunto as my daily-driver linux (vs just for fun installs) since 4.10 RC, I was using a knoppix based install before that. for the moment ubuntu is the best of the debian distros IMO.
I think that both Ubuntu and Fedora are excellent choices, the best I have used so far by a huge margin, but I’ll soon erase my Fedora partition to have more space for Ubuntu for the following reasons:
– It comes as a small and lean package (one CD), there are no unneeded choices and the default installation provides a very sane and simple operating system. Although the basic system doesn’t leave you any choice, the huge Debian repository is available as the unsupported “universe”, providing more choice than you could ask for.
– It is not afraid to try fresh and unusual ideas, like the sudo choice or the iconless desktop. Fedora is still using the old panel setup by default to be more compatible with KDE and older installations. I don’t like that. Ubuntu feels more exciting.
– While valuing free software as much as Red Hat does, it is a little less strict when it comes to drivers. The most important point for me is that NVidia drivers come installed (but not enabled) by default and it’s very trivial to activate them. This also means that new kernels will not break your video configuration, etc. This is especially important for me when recommending Linux to other users like gamers. Finally I can do that.
– I always had trouble with up2date, yum, etc. It wasn’t working as fast as I hoped, sometimes it wasn’t working at all and it was a little more work than it should be, especially when using third party repositories (which was usually necessary because the official Fedora repository is not nearly as large as the Debian one yet). With Ubuntu it has been a great experience so far (reminds me what I liked so much about Debian) and the servers have been extremely fast. Of course this might change as Ubuntu gains in popularity.
– It feels to me a lot faster than Fedora and also starts up a lot faster (I measured it but forgot the exact times). But I’m comparing this to FC2 with GNOME 2.6, so part of this might be the more recent GNOME.
– It is directly targetted at desktop users, while Fedora is less focused and mainly meant to be used by enthusiasts and developers.
Other than that, they share most advantages (free software, frequent releases, polished GNOME desktop, …).
Red Hat probably still has a much larger engineering staff and many of the great things in Ubuntu are actually developed by Red Hat guys. That’s the great thing about free software, even competitors are cooperating.
2004 -> 4
October (10th month) -> .10
=> 4.10
See: http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/documentation/faq/version-number…
ubuntu is debian, if you are using something direct from debian to install debian you are truly into self abuse.
Did they remove the previous theme with the half naked people?
Does anyone have screenshots of the new theme?
Why does it have version 4.10 ? and not 1.0 ? Is there a story behind it ?
Yeah it’s actually in the FAQ. 4.10 means as much as “the release of October 2004”. The next release should be 5.4 or something.
Ubuntu is not “reinventing the wheel just so some developer can say he made his own distro”. Ubuntu basically is Debian but made more attractive for Desktop users and with some serious funding behind it. Lots of Debian developers have been hired and are now getting payed for their work, what’s not to like.
Ubuntu is not at all in competition with Debian but builds on and contributes back to it.
Hi,
I’ve been reading a lot about Ubuntu in the last month – practically it seems the only linux distro that gets advertised here.
What makes this distro different that the others? Please give me a real reason to try it not “A great gnome desktop” kind of reasons.
Pavel
Ubuntu basically is Debian but made more attractive for Desktop users and with some serious funding behind it.
So it is to Debian what Fedora is to Red Hat.
OK, but for the people who are supposedly switching to ubunto from Fedora, and citing such huge reasons as “uhh no RPM hell” and “it comes on one CD!” or my favorite “its faster than my 3 year old RH 8” I’m just not buying it. Those in the know are aware of how silly those reasons are.
Hey I think slackware has a cool name but I’m not switching just for that reason. I think SuSe having mp3 out of the box is nice but I wouldn’t switch just for that. Why create a whole new distro for things you can fix yourself in 30 seconds?
No offense its great if those are really must have things for some people I just think forking is something we should try harder to avoid instead of stuff where that guy who forked gnome cause he didn’t like the dialog box.
I don’t know, maybe i’m wrong and infinate forking and fragmentation is a good thing I just don’t see how.
(me replying me…)
Ah, I just found the Ubuntu Wiki page that replies well most of my above questions concerning sudo & Ubuntu security:
http://wiki.ubuntulinux.org/RootSudo
I think i will stay with Gentoo, i dont need any CDs, all installation from Knoppix (or the universal-minimal-livecd less then 100mb) over network, always up-to-date…
I’m missing really nothing.
Hi, can anyone tell me how does this distro compared to Mepis?
“What makes this distro different that the others? Please give me a real reason to try it not “A great gnome desktop” kind of reasons.”
– Community driven
– Sponsored (at the moment)
– Support for GNOME (this is unique, as far as free distros are concerned. Fedora sucks)
– 1 CD or less
– Clean and tidy. Install software on demand. (why do I need lots of software installed if I won’t use them?)
– Debian based (supported by Debian as well?)
– Fast installation (auto setup of the hardware)
– Binary distro (kind of redundant, but good to reinforce the highlights)
– It’s like a Windows installation, where you still need to download and install the missing packages and apps, but it comes with a handful of well integrated apps.
– Super free
– No heroes behind it? (The heroes behind some distros get tired with the time)
– Current packages and promising future.
Some of these points may be irrelevant, but Ubuntu is awesome. 🙂
It’s not a fork. They’ll continue to adopt changes to Debian’s codebase, they’re not just taking a snapshot and moving forward. They’ll also be offering their work back to Debian to be merged back in, and like has already been stated, many of the developers are well known Debian developers, and Gnome too.
Yet it’s not Debian, they offer an easier to install/configure Debian based operating system with more up to date packages. True, a lot is very similar to Debian, but that will change more and more as the project matures. For example, they’re working on a graphical installer, I think for 5.04.
Some people just don’t like Fedora. I know I never liked the likes of Red Hat, Mandrake, and Suse because they seem heavily bloated to me, and the ISO downloads are hell on dialup (one CD is manageable). If I only had the choice of those distributions or Gentoo, like you suggest, I’d still be using Windows. I just don’t see much advantage with them over Windows, and Gentoo is a joke on dialup. Debian would be doable, but I much prefer the configuration philosophies of Arch. Others like the speed of Yoper. Yet others like the layout of Gobo and Rubyx. Others won’t be happy unless they build from scratch. Just because YOU don’t see a need for any distributions aside from your favorite four doesn’t mean the community should conform to your preferences.
OK, but for the people who are supposedly switching to ubunto from Fedora, and citing such huge reasons as “uhh no RPM hell”
Another advantage of Apt/dpkg is that you can upgrade to a new release without CD’s. You just have to switch the repository.
and “it comes on one CD!”
Not everyone in the world has broadband, think of someone else.
or my favorite “its faster than my 3 year old RH 8” I’m just not buying it.
It’s faster than FC1 too, I can’t speak for 2 or 3.
Those in the know are aware of how silly those reasons are.
You and you alone judge who’s in the know?
Hey I think slackware has a cool name but I’m not switching just for that reason. I think SuSe having mp3 out of the box is nice but I wouldn’t switch just for that. Why create a whole new distro for things you can fix yourself in 30 seconds?
Some people don’t want to, in fact, most people don’t. This is another step towards the desktop Linux revolution where the goal is for things to work off the CD and be easy to maintain. Ubuntu isn’t there yet, but they appear to have noble goals.
Nobody’s asking you to use it, but it sure seems you’re trying to tell everyone else what to do.
– Community driven (So is Debian, Fedora and Gentoo)
– Sponsored (So is everything else on the planet)
– Support for GNOME (Fedora’s gnome support sucks? heh)
– 1 CD or less (hands you a boot.iso for 400 different distro’s)
– Clean and tidy. Install software on demand. (points to the boot.iso he just gave you)
– Debian based (Woh, a valid reason, okay check.)
– Fast installation (Can’t vouch for other distro’s but anaconda does too)
– Binary distro (This feature could really catch on I bet.)
– It’s like a Windows installation (cool)
– Super free (i’m getting bored.)
– No heroes behind it? (Really bored.)
– Current packages and promising future. (neat.)
Why create a whole new distro for things you can fix yourself in 30 seconds?
If you can make a stock Debian install work like Ubuntu in 30 seconds, something that took a team of full time developers to do, I’ll give you a million dollars. Oh, you didn’t say Debian. Same offer applies if you can give ANY distro the functionality of Ubuntu in 30 seconds.
Ubuntu is NOT Debian with a different background picture and a few menu tweaks. I’ve tried over 20 different distros in the last year and Ubuntu is BY FAR the fastest, most stable, most visually appealing, and best supported (by devs and community) free distro on the planet. Period. Don’t believe me? Install it. “You can only posess what you experience. Truth to be understood, must be lived.” – Charlie Peacock
You and you alone judge who’s in the know?
Oops didn’t mean to make it sound like that. I’ll show you what I mean by explaining more deeply why those issues are not very relevant:
OK, but for the people who are supposedly switching to ubunto from Fedora, and citing such huge reasons as “uhh no RPM hell”
Like you stated all you have to do is change a repo to update, so do I on fedora, i’m using FC3 right now and only need to change my yum.conf
Okay rpm is basically the same as dpkg people are comparing rpm to apt-get which means they don’t know whats going on. Does anyone you know compare yum to dpkg citing yum as a major reason to not use Debian? No. apt-get is available to RPM and Dpkg
These are two of the reasons i said “people in the know” not as an arrogance thing its just that others who don’t use a distro every day are unaware of ways to get things done.
Now the CD issue. you CAN install Fedora with one CD, you do a custom install and uncheck everything. that will leave you without asking/needing CD 2 or 3, or if your bare minimm user wants a boot.iso that is available for FTP, NFS, or disk install.
It’s faster than FC1 too, I can’t speak for 2 or 3.
yes it probably is faster than FC1 or FC2 but you know what FC3 is faster than them also. Gnome 2.8’s (+new Xorg) speed difference was huge, I noticed this immediatly on the first start-up, gnome took 8-10 seconds to load which for me use to take some 45-55 seconds on previous releases.
i just ordered ten cd’s.
an i got friends who will order more i see no reason not to
it will beat using windows 98 or xp.
It will be something different
Why these distros don’t ship with auto-hinting on?
It makes a world of difference to me. I just turned it on and this is the first time in all the years of using Linux that I think the fonts look great on linux (especially small fonts).
I ordered ten CDs to give to friends. It’s an absolute must, as the RC is a great distribution.
Now what other distro can claim to have the first(?) space tourist as its project leader & as a millionaire sponsor, half naked chicks on its wallpapers and login screens, and releases named like “Hoary Hedgehog” or “Grumpy Groundhog”…? Nah… – there’s no real competition… 😀
Ok, it sounds like RPM has finally caught up with Apt/dpkg, now they both just have to catch up with Pacman
It’s also good to know that Fedora is speeding up. As for having to deselect packages to get a 1 CD install… I prefer adding on from a base install. That’s one of the many things I’ve never liked about Anaconda, their package selection methods. Though I don’t like most installers when it comes to package selection, Libranet being one of the very few exceptions. Ubuntu too, since it doesn’t offer it. Well it does, but you have to boot with the ‘custom’ parameter, and I suspect it’s not very functional yet. I expect this to be somehow addressed in the new installer, though I haven’t seen a statement one way or the other.
And honestly, as I stated in my preview, there isn’t a whole lot that’s installed that isn’t needed. I personally like more control, but I think it will be good for the vast majority of people.
Um, what do you mean by shipping with auto-hinting on? You mean the bytecode interpreter or the auto-hinter?
Mark Shuttleworth was the second space tourist, after Dennis Tito.
I’m sure we’ll see plenty more of them soon…
The auto-hinter in /etc/fonts/local.conf
Here’s a screenshot: http://screenshots.haque.net/screenshots/show/21784/
The fonts look a lot blurrier in the screenshot than they are as I look at the desktop, but I can safely say that I consider these fonts to be very, very close to what I prefer on XP.
This is actually Tahoma-11, instead of the Tahoma-10 that I sent you. Still 96 DPI.
I am very happy. I can no longer say that the XP desktop looks better than Gnome’s.
Let me revise that last comment. The Gnome PNG viewer made the screenshot look a lot blurrier than the actual desktop. The screenshot link looks pretty much the same as the actual desktop.
My thoughts exactly!
In all seriousness, I couldn’t be happier with Ubuntu. Fast, compact, snappy, elegant. Like Slackware but even easier to use.
Whoa. I just turned on the autohinter and I’m definitely seeing an improvement. Thanks for pointing that out.
I know…a world of difference. Most linux screenshots look like crap. This should be on by default. Kudos to the freetype guys.
From what I read, it is a matter of preference when it comes to packages. =p
Hmm, that’s interesting indeed. My first reaction was “oh my god, that looks aweful”, but it does indeed improve the shape of many letters and it makes small fonts a LOT more readable. Bold fonts look like crap now though and everything appears a little more blurry (the larger fonts at least).
I thought I was completely happy with my font rendering already, but now I’m not so sure anymore… I’ll try this auto hinting for a while.
I just can’t use this distro until it acknowledges my SB16 and LG-8080B CD-RW. No distro in recent memory has failed to detect these but lo and behold!
Just downloaded the rc version a few days ago but haven’t gotten around to trying it. Guess I will download this one now too
Ubuntu differs from Fedora in many ways. Firstly, it is not a “technology preview” edition, it IS the product. Ubuntu maintains that it will ONLY charge for support. The way many think Linux distro’s should be supported financialy.
Jeff Waugh has experiance as a Release Manager, considered by many to be the benivolent dictator of GNOME, he has been the man behind each release of GNOME for a while.
Debian and Arch are also projects that currently have developers being paid by Canonical.
This can only be good for each project, with more time devoted to each project, and contributions coninuing to be made to those projects.
Ubuntu has a small staff currently, but they are barely past the planning stages in many ways. Remember where Red Hat was in 1996? Well they had the same amount of developers roughly.
Look at the work they are doing though, everyone from Debian of notariety appears to be working with the product, and its being recieved well because these guys ARE Debian Developers.
I have maintained, as have other Debian users, that Sid has always been the best Desktop linux available, well now we can prove it. And now it IS supported – at least a selection of packages are.
Ubuntu however promises to never charge for the software itself, thus avoiding one of Red Hat’s principle downfalls to many.
Ubuntu, to many – especially Debian users, – IS the perfect Desktop. We have been trying to accomplish such things on our computers for a while. Now we have it.
First, let me say that I am an ubuntu user. Tried several other flavors (Slack, FC2-3) and Played with DragonFlyBSD (which I might come back to with another machine someday, once they work on more of front-end stuff) but found that I really liked ubuntu the best.
But… it really doesn’t have anything that you couldn’t manage to install/configure yourself with any other distribution. I think what makes it appealing to some people is that it has what they want, and nothing more/extra. For me the reasons were:
1. Installed and ran perfectly first time.
2. Had useful, desktop software.
3. Easy to maintain and add to (for instance I add pptpconfig, gkrellm2, and a couple minor apps that I am just used to having around) thanks to synaptic.
4. Quick, like a bunny.
5. Very positive community… even during the “naked people” crisis everyone maintained their cool and got along.
6. Everyone wants to help everyone else… maybe this is a great distro. for the newbie or mediumbie…
7. I like the muted colors..
…and there are more reasons. All of these can be achieved with any other debian, slack, or gentoo distro. but ubuntu just comes that way, right off the CD without tweaking. It just “feels” right… and good.
Mike
Hey Mike. You can use rsync and just get the bits of the ISO file that have changed.
i am using a third party – boot loader. does ubuntu have a option for choosing boot loader (mbr/first sector). i tried the first release when it was announced and it didnt have that option.
No one considers Jeff Waugh to be a ‘benevolent dicatator’ of GNOME. Least of all me (ahem). GNOME doesn’t have a benevolent dictator at all.
Does the term synergy mean anything to you?
Personally I uninstalled Ubuntu, prefer KDE and KDE is not even a real part of Ubuntu, living in Universe. But it is an awesome Gnome desktop.
> Personally I uninstalled Ubuntu, prefer KDE and KDE is
> not even a real part of Ubuntu, living in Universe. But
> it is an awesome Gnome desktop.”
Yes, I hope their KDE support improves over time. Currently I run a self-compiled KDE on Ubuntu which works fine but it’s missing all the love they give to Gnome.
Since a month they write in their FAQ:
“We are working with the KDE team to collaborate on that, so that Ubuntu will be an excellent platform for KDE users too… more on that in due course.”
Maybe there are some interesting news in the pipeline.
I thought this was retarded.
I mean they are trying to get my off supporting it. What company would buy a distro with Naked people. Great for the philosophy (I guess), bad for business.
Anyone else like the new login background? Its really nice. I can see someone worked hard on it.
well, the HAL stuff isn’t anything ubuntu-specific, it’s part of GNOME nowadays.
what’d be cool would be to edit the detection stuff so that when you plug in an iPod, Rhythmbox opens up instead. the reason this doesn’t happen yet is because as far as the HAL stuff is concerned, an ipod is just a USB disk (a USB mass-storage device). I’m not sure if the system is flexible enough to read USB IDs and launch different programs depending on what it finds, but it would be cool if it did.
“- Support for GNOME (this is unique, as far as free distros are concerned. Fedora sucks)”
eh? Mandrake fully supports GNOME, and Mandrake’s online release is 100% free software. Please justify the above.
“Another advantage of Apt/dpkg is that you can upgrade to a new release without CD’s. You just have to switch the repository.”
you can do this with urpmi, apt4rpm (obviously), and I believe with yum as well, though I haven’t tested yum myself. I’ve upgraded eight different systems between various versions of Mandrake using nothing but urpmi.