“Ubuntu has become increasing popular amongst many Linux users, especially users trying Linux for the first time. Just why is Ubuntu so popular? I’ll explore some of its features and distributions this month, including Kubuntu and Edubuntu, and try to find out.”
I like it because unlike Debian it found all my hardware, and it all (mostly) worked out of the box. It’s the only Distro in a fair few years of trying that’s done that.
Edited to add: Not that I’m saying it’ll be the same on YOURS!
But will I stick with it? Or go back to safe and compf Windows or fast and exciting AmigaOS?
That’s a pretty lightweight article BTW..
Edited 2006-01-24 13:34
Ubuntu is so ridiculously popular because of the great community behind it. Take a look at http://www.ubuntuforums.org if you are a newbie and you can find answers to all of the common, “How do I make linux do foo…” questions. The IRC channel on average has about 600 users and plenty of gurus to answer your questions, you can’t go wrong.
It’s also great to see Ubuntu contribute back to Debian even if there are some sour views from certian DDs.
I’m not sure I would even consider this an article. It has no substance at all, and is severely lacking in the details department. I’ll bet this took about 20 minutes to throw together because it looks like it could have been written by anyone who hasn’t even used the distros before. I was left wondering if it was even finished yet…
Kubuntu.org is Kubuntu’s official home; it’s designed almost exactly like UbuntuLinux.org, except that it is shaded with blue rather then orange.
Talk about stating the obvious… Don’t tell us about the site design. Give us details about the topic at hand.
I don’t like giving negative criticism, but this was just horrible.
Of course, because there’s nothing much to say. Ubuntu is the flavor of the week. It’s been a long “week” but the fact remains, it’s the “cool” distro for now.
The article is so short and brief in the descriptions as to make it almost meaningless! – was it a product description? a review? obviously not analysis! – wasn’t it just a small sampling of marketing material with no explanation?
Not to mention Automatix, a script found on the ubuntu forums that install all codecs and cool stuff automagically.
1) Its the easiest to use
2) things happen to “just work” (well mostly!) on it
3) It is built to show off Gnome in all its glory (or I should say “how it should be”)
4) Its well up to date and cutting edge
5) It has sensible default apps so it can be used straight away with very little if any customisation needed (unlike a plain vanilla debian!)
6) Apt-get and debian based – the best and ultimate package management system.
I totally agree. I was expecting to find some interesting new stuff I didn’t know about in it, but this was just a short overview. Reading the main page of either Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Edubuntu is more enticing than this thing!
Coming from Gentoo, my distro of choice for almost 2 years, I must say Kubuntu rocks. One day I decided to try it out, downloaded both the AMD64 and the PPC LiveCDs, inserted them into my desktop machine and my girlfriend’s iBook, and EVERYTHING worked right out of the box. The iBook powersaving & sleep functionality worked, I had everything I needed installed right away, the Kubuntu devs made some great effort to simplify KDE. Right now, I installed Ubuntu (the Gnome version) alongside my defaul Kubuntu install, and I must say Gnome impresses me a lot (haven’t ever really tried it, except on a Red-Hat install that has last onlya few days).
What I like on Ubuntu:
– works right out of the box (at least for me on two very different machines)
– chooses well-known and quaity software (OOo, Firefox etc.)
– one piece of software for everything, not like Knoppix etc. which has a thousand tools for each task which only confuses people imho
– nice, clean, simplified interface both in Gnome+KDE
– stable architecture (thanks to Debian)
– great packaging tool (Synaptic or Adept, both are nice)
– it’s just cool somehow, it looks cool (the GDM splash is so wonderful), and it just feels cool to have it installed 🙂
I can recommend it to everyone, give it a try, try the LiveCD or install it on a spare partition (everyone running Linux should have a spare partition imho to try out new distros every once in a while 😉 )
Tom
I noticed, that Ubuntu actually uses some kind of secret advertisement. They making rumors, screaming news, etc and this attracts attention. People starts talking, discussing and the word spreads. Just like in this article, that looks bit advertising. It’s not a brilliant distro, but has good marketing.
Other branch – Kubuntu is actually bad and I think do not deserves lots of talk. The main thing I remember from Kubuntu was KDE crashes and lot’s of other bugs. They working on Gnome and optimizing all distro for it. KDE is installed “as is”.
But in the other hand Those distros are small, clean and uses very comfortable apt system for packages. Especially clean. Somes distros are overpacked with lots of stuff and installs them by default. It’s actually often possible to select only needen packages, but this requires time. Imagine fine tuning SuSE and unchecking thousands of them. Also good hardware support and community.
I use kubuntu everyday, and it compares in quality to Ubuntu proper. that was not the case with hoary, but with breezy, KDE is as functional and stable as Gnome in Ubuntu, at least in my experience.
Other branch – Kubuntu is actually bad and I think do not deserves lots of talk. The main thing I remember from Kubuntu was KDE crashes and lot’s of other bugs.
I can’t confirm that. It’s very stable on my system, no crashes and no noticeable bugs.
They working on Gnome and optimizing all distro for it. KDE is installed “as is”.
That’s not true. Kubuntu uses a much better control center (called system-settings), a more user friendly Konqueror default toolbar, Adept as package manager, Katapult…
It’s better than standard KDE and definitly not installed “as is”.
What was the last Kubuntu version you were using? 5.04?
Personally, I have used Kubuntu 5.10 for a while. While I do believe those who claim it’s stable as a rock, it’s definitely not what I have experienced. In my case, the system itself was fine (no kernel panics or freezes) but I got crashed with various KDE applications (Kaffeine, Konqueror, Adept, Krita and some KDE games). That said, most of them were segmentation faults, so it might just be some compilation flags (since I don’t remember having these issues with other distributions, save for the games).
system-settings isn’t that bad, but its localisation was not complete. Basically, I got frenglish. Adept got to be the worst package manager I have used. I’d rather have to deal with aptitude. There are some customisations here and there (lipstick theme, a space between minimise/maximise and close), but I would agree that it’s pretty much “as is”. But now that Mark is using Kubuntu, perhaps improvements will speed up!
I know this is OSNews.com, but is it so hard to at least filter out articles that have virtually no content/merit?
Number of sentences devoted to each distro in the article: Ubuntu: 10, Kubuntu: 7, Edubuntu: 4. Not counting the 3 sentence introduction and 4 sentence conclusion. Wow, no insight gained, not even for newcomers…
I’ve submitted a quite a few articles over the last month that have more meat than this and yet they get ignored…
Are submitted articles read fully before being linked, or are they eyeballed or checked for the relevant keywords…?
How Ubu world is better than RH /SLK /Deb world? No idea.
knoppix, linspire, mepis now ubuntu–all are clowns dancing in circus and debian is ring master, i will say
All have exactly same problems of installing and maintaining these distros as it was 2-3 years ago. now technology has improved including wifi cards, laptops etc ect but the AMOUNT OF TIME we spend on getting these distro is the same as we spent 5 years ago.
See their distro forums and u will know what difficulties average persons face installing maintaining these distros. Why each distro repeats same set of problems for average persons???
Why can’t ubuntu learn from mistakes of knoppix and why can’t knopix learn mistakes of mepis etc??
If so called greatest distro like ubuntu can’t even make more than 5% of linux market(<<0.005% of world PC market) penetration then it is not worth of the precious staffhours of all the developers in the world.
Given a choice where would you like to spend your PRECIOUS TIME? (A) with your family/friends/personal activities or (B) sitting in basement and tweaking each distro for days and days….
Ask this serious question every time you boot into linux box….
My experience with Linux is a bit different than what you are describing.
I spent time to learn a bit about Linux, because I have taken the role of Linux Admin (as opposed to Windows user) and there is a different set of knowledge required. That was a bit of work. I had to know what was in my box, and there were two devices that needed attention (IX-4015 scanner that is not supported in XP and my nVidia proprietary 3D hardware drivers).
Once configured, Linux has been literally effortless for me. I choose to do my ‘yum update’ (I use Fedora) manually, but I could have set it automatic. And that is about the limit of the work I do to maintain the box.
Contrast that to my wife’s two XP machines (one laptop, one desktop), which were pre-installed. Those have required an order of magnitude more work to maintain.
So, please don’t state that Linux users have to spend days and days in the basement tweaking and hacking to keep their poor Linux box running. It’s just simply not true.
Well my experience with Linux is also VERY different from what you’re saying here. I chose Ubuntu over Gentoo (which I used previously) just because it is so easy, needs almost no maintenance, detects all my hardware, has a super-easy package management and so on. In fact, I think installing software is easier in Linux than in Windows – at least when the desired package is in the repository. Take OOo as an example. In Windows, you have to go to openoffice.org, download it, start setup.exe, choose a path etc. On Linux, I open Synaptic, click on “OpenOffice” (or any of components) and click on “Apply”. Ubutu (or apt, to be precise) then downloads it for me, installs it for me, adds some menu entries and I’m done. This is way easier if you ask me.
Don’t forget Linux is different. Many people often compare Linux with Windows, thinking it has to act like Windows, behave the same as Windows, should be threated the same as Windows. But Linux is DIFFERENT, it’s not a Windows clone, it’s an ALTERNATIVE. So whn you come to Linux, throw your Windows knowledge away, you have to start all over again – because it’s a different system. But if you’re willing to do that (some of my computer-noobish friends have been!) then you’ll never regret it.
Tom
I’d rather be productive than be fiddling with getting things to work on Linux. They don’t always seem to work. And as for installs, you mention opening Synaptic and clicking on Open Office. Well guess what, you forgot one more step, searching for Open Office and THEN clicking to apply it.
Also, A LOT of applications for Ubuntu are out of date. Yes you can put in a request, but it takes ages or most of the time ignored (ie. new versions of OpenOffice, FF, MySQL, and so on). It really sucks that people have to rely on 3rd party scripts (ie. Automatix & Easy Ubuntu) to get codecs and newer software installed.
I despise the Windows way, I think the best way is how OS X does it. Synaptic should be great for system installs, but I think Klik or Autopackage (preferably Klik) should be used for Application installs.
Oh wait, I forgot, you can’t mention Klik or Autopackage to Ubuntu users because they’ll throw a fit. Sorry, but Klik is great for Apps, just like OS X does it.
Edited 2006-01-24 17:15
Well as for having to search for openoffice in synaptic it shouldn’t be so hard for a user to start typing openof… in the search field, which then only shows him the appropiate packages. You’ll find “openoffice”, “openoffice-writer”, “openoffice-calc” and so on. Every noob user I converted to Linux/Ubuntu found this was really easy, even easier than on Windows.
Well it certainly true that some people have problems with Ubuntu, but I can only speak of my own experience here, and I didn’t have ANY problems at all, not on my desktop, and not on my girlfriend’s iBook. The install went trough without any trouble, all hardware was detected, using my USB stick, my printer & our digital camera is easier than ever, I have most programs I need installed right away (on Windows, after installing the OS, you first have to install all the other apps to get a usable system).
As for some apps being a little out of date, I agree with you. But this is just a matter of taste. As I said, I came from Gentoo, but after one year with it I just got tired hunting for every little minor version change. Gentoo is great, no doubt, but I now have more work & studying to do than before, so I need a system which just works, and Ubuntu does just work.
I don’t care if I have Firefox 1.05 or 1.07, or if I have the very latest Gnome. The system runs, is rock-stable and “just works” and this is important for me now. The system needs virtualy no maintenance now, there’s a security update or a new version of an app from time to time, but a simple single click will install them and I don’t have to care about them anymore.
As always, you have the choice with Linux. There are also more bleeding-edge distros, so if this is more important for you, then choose another distro.
Ubuntu has a policy that all software should be free, so that’s why they don’t include things like w32codes or mp3. I don’t like this too, but I understand their reasons. You actually don’t need any scripts to install those, you merely just need the right deb sources, they are easy to find and if you know them, you can also install those things without Automatix etc. One of my wishes (and from many other people) for Dapper (the next Ubuntu release) is that during the install, the user gets asked if he wants non-free stuff installed too. The installer could shortly explain what it’s all about, and then the user can choose. That would be great.
I’m not against Klik or Autopackage, I just don’t demand it at all because I think that apt-get is just wonderful. I think it’s easy enough, sometimes I just which that even more packages would be in the repositry. Well at least we have the same opinion about Windows’ install system 😉 This is definitely just crap.
Tom
> Also, A LOT of applications for Ubuntu are out of date.
They’re no more than 6 months out of date. Generally, it’s no big deal these days. Back in the 1990s, crucial stuff happened every day so if you weren’t 100% out of date, you were really missing out. These days, most of the piece are in place, so it’s not that big a deal. Firefox 1.5 is sweet, but Firefox 1.x basically gives you everything you need.
However, if you are a real eager beaver, you can always enable one of the backports repositories. It gives you the most current.versions of the most common software.
The title of your rant is funny. Because going to Linux at home was done especially so that I have more time to spend with my family. I understood a long time ago that Linux needed order of magnitude less maintenance than the other OS I tried, and it still deliver the same functionalities and more.
Then again, I know not everyone is interested in computing.
knoppix, linspire, mepis now ubuntu–all are clowns dancing in circus and debian is ring master, i will say
You missed the point of most of these distros then, especially Ubuntu, if I guess well at what you meant.
Why can’t ubuntu learn from mistakes of knoppix and why can’t knopix learn mistakes of mepis etc??
You can answer this yourself once you understand the purpose of each distro you cited (and they actually help ech other).
Given a choice where would you like to spend your PRECIOUS TIME? (A) with your family/friends/personal activities or (B) sitting in basement and tweaking each distro for days and days….
Ask this serious question every time you boot into linux box….
Some powerful BS I see there. You know, I chose (A), and that’s why I have a Linux box (but it’s not in the basement).
I never read someone with your vision, it’s enlightening to read this actually. What I will tell you will boggle your mind I think :
– I stopped tweaking distros as soon as I saw them break after too much abuse. With my knowledge of Linux, I now know that if you do not understand how everything works in the distro, and why it was done, you’re in to lose a lot of time learning all of that.
– I never had more time with my family than since I installed my OWN Linux OS from scratch in 2001 (not the first month I installed it obviously)
– Despite having one Ubuntu installed on a laptop, and one Mandriva installed dual boot on a desktop, I mainly use my self made Linux OS, which is very easy to maintain and use for exeryone. I have two more boxes that have the same own made Linux OS : my Internet gateway that runs on an old Thinkpad 380 laptop, and my media center box (with MythTV, games, paddle, dance pad, MPlayer, everything).
– I rarely boot my Linux box, it is always on with 3 simultaneous sessions, one for each family members, and it never crashes
– Mandriva was for helping my neighbours which I migrated to Linux. But these days, I just launch it from time to time (say every 2 months) to update it, as I don’t receive any more calls.
– Ubuntu I launch and update from time to time, to see if I missed something in the state of the art Linux desktops
You’ve got a point about Linux taking effort to get working, but how much PRECIOUS TIME does installing all the Anitvirus/firewall/patches etc to make Windows safe for the Internet take?
OP wrote:
> “Ubuntu has become increasing popular amongst many
> Linux users, especially users trying Linux for the
> first time.
And Linux users trying Solaris for the first time too… Nexenta, which is Ubuntu-based, is one of the four OpenSolaris-based distros that’s catching on pretty fast. See:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/ahl?entry=opensolaris_on_lugradio
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/eric_boutilier?entry=debian_gnu_so…
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/eric_boutilier?entry=opensolaris_a…
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/eric_boutilier?entry=simon_phipps_…
Eric Boutilier
OpenSolaris
Ubuntu is popular becuse its Debian with some of the geek shaved off. There is a lot less confusion by haveing KDE and Gnome in two differnt “distro’s” or forks or whatever you want ot call them…not to mention the support from the community is brilliant. Especially ubuntu guide. its easier than a wiki!
-nX
I must say, as a full time kubuntu user, it’s quite stable. Except for Kaffeine, which crashes like hell :s. It is clean and Automatix is really nice to have. Only 64-bit version is not that supported actually. too Bad.
That was supposed to be an article? I considered it totally unreadable. Little blocks of text. Big ones. Pictures which add nothing. Adverts. What was the article and what wasn’t?
Wasn’t there a rule about submitting stories to OSNews with a minimum of two pages of text?
Some articles get published on OSNews because the topic is worth discussion– not nescesarily the article itself.
Some articles get published on OSNews because the topic is worth discussion– not nescesarily the article itself.
That makes no sense. You are basically saying that total crap is accepted, as long as it brings up a few good talking points. Well, it’s kind of hard to focus on positive comments when the article attached to it is rubbish.
You are basically saying that total crap is accepted, as long as it brings up a few good talking points.
When the subject matter is actually interesting, and MANY people are actually interested in it, why not? Many of OSNews’ readers have said that it’s the comments’ section they read OSNews for. Hence the importance of discussion-provoking articles like this– even if they lack a lot of meat.
Well, it’s kind of hard to focus on positive comments when the article attached to it is rubbish.
That’s a problem on your end, then. I see enough normal comments in this thread.
When the subject matter is actually interesting, and MANY people are actually interested in it, why not? Many of OSNews’ readers have said that it’s the comments’ section they read OSNews for. Hence the importance of discussion-provoking articles like this– even if they lack a lot of meat.
Lack a lot of meat? This had no meat at all. Someone took a few lines here and there from the official websites of the distros and turned it into some kind of mediocre grade school report.
That’s a problem on your end, then. I see enough normal comments in this thread.
Well, i’m sorry for the interrupting the ever so important comments on porn. Please continue…
When the subject matter is actually interesting, and MANY people are actually interested in it, why not?
You’re basically admitting you need an article, no matter how bad it might be, as an excuse to bring up something interesting. That doesn’t strike you as a little bit odd? Why not just bring up the topic without resorting to a meatless article? Same result, less comments on the bad quality of the article.
You’re basically admitting you need an article, no matter how bad it might be, as an excuse to bring up something interesting.
Yup. On a slow newsday like today, I indeed need a bad article to bring up a discussion. If that surprises you, you probably don’t read many newspapers/watch a lot of televion/browse the web very often, now do you?
Why not just bring up the topic without resorting to a meatless article?
You *really* haven’t been around OSNews often, have you? Doing the thing you suggested would’ve created alot more bitching in the comments than now.
If that surprises you, you probably don’t read many newspapers/watch a lot of televion/browse the web very often, now do you?
If by that you mean to imply that OSNews.com tries to adhere to the lowest common denominator standard, then yeah, maybe I am idealistic to still expect differently from this site
Doing the thing you suggested would’ve created alot more bitching in the comments than now.
Don’t knock it till you tried it, at least with an interesting topic. However, in this case (starting yet another discussion on Ubuntu which will create bitching no matter what), you’re right.
“Some articles get published on OSNews because the topic is worth discussion”
Because the topic “Ubuntu” hasn’t been discussed enough aleready…
I loved ubuntu hoary, it was (for its time) perfect. Then along came breezy, and there were clear cracks all over it. CD’s would get locked in the drive from time to time, I’ve never successfully unmounted a usb pen or ipod mini/nano using the methods intended (desktop icon, panel applet), installing python 2.3 to /usr/local breaks ubuntu’s package manager prefs (i guess it’s not using shbang?) and lots of other annoyances.
I was a die hard gnome’er, but overrall things are just moving too slowly in the linux desktop world. Everyone moans that vista is going to be released in the distant future, but i guarantee it’ll be technologically more advanced than any ubuntu release at the time.
For example, XGL/OpenGL desktop rendering – we may have it before vista appears (though thats just a guess), but I bet vista is more optimised and looks better.
When I look at a Mac OS X desktop, and even some vista screenshots, then look at a brown ubuntu desktop, I just think we’re in the stone age.
Of course none of this matters, since linux on the server wins out every time, and thats where the money is.
one word: porn
Hahahahah. If only they gave free pr0n with Ubuntu ….
Of all the hype around it, i’ve tried KUbuntu, i would say yet another distro.. but it’s one seem great since it’s based on Debian and user friendly.
I’am addicted of the KISS principle, but this one seem too ‘minimalist’. No GUI to configure my PPPoE connection, damn X, i can’t configure the refresh rate.. So.. i’ll stick with Xandros for a while.
Just why is Ubuntu so popular?
Because linux becomes more popular among non proffesionals.
How many profesionals prefer ubuntu?
How many profesionals will use linux distro that does not allow to remove a single package from default installation? 😉
How many profesionals prefer ubuntu?
Quite a few I’d guess.
How many profesionals will use linux distro that does not allow to remove a single package from default installation? 😉
What are you talking about? Of course Ubuntu does allow that.
NOT TRYING TO FLAME OR ANYTHING, JUST MY PERSONAL OPINION:
Sorry foks, I just don’t like ubuntu. I always have memory hog issue with it. I’m not the only one, head on over to http://www.liuxgangster.org, and you’ll see some articles about it there too.
Seems whenever I use Ubuntu for more than 12 hours, (as in leaving the PC running) my memory useage goes from 128 MB to 590 MB! And there’s nothing else running.
Pretty crappy. I’ll stick to my ever-faithful, always working, trouble-free, SlackWare
Edited 2006-01-24 14:31
Seems whenever I use Ubuntu for more than 12 hours, (as in leaving the PC running) my memory useage goes from 128 MB to 590 MB! And there’s nothing else running.
Pretty crappy. I’ll stick to my ever-faithful, always working, trouble-free, SlackWare
It’s not always the case, but for me (k)ubuntu caches a lot of memory, depending on what i’ve done with it, and also what driver X driver i’m using. It can also be because of what filesystem you are using. It also depends on how much memory you have on your graphics card, and how that memory is included in som figures. The point beeing cache isn’t a bad thing, it can be released when needed to.
Memory usage go from 150 megs (including cache that is) to almost all of my 1024 megs (and i can still fire up new programs, it releases memory which new programs get), and this is also the case on my other desktop with only 256 megs of ram, BUT it rarely even touches the swap space.
And while i’m at this “issue”, konqueror is much, much, nicer in terms of memory consumption on my 2 computers, than firefox. Especially when browsing web pages with much graphical contents. I am using ff 1.07 though…
I am with you on the subject matter. It seemed that we were subject to as much advertising text as article text. I also am not known for negative comments but this article is extremely light on specifics and void of any real information.
I couldn’t agree with you more on that statement. There was no redeeming value to this particular article what-so-ever. I have used Ubuntu since it’s first release Warty Warthog, and have consistantly found reading about Ubuntu pleasurable and educating, however, this article left me feeling that all those comments made in the past on this website about “over-advertising” and “over-kill” are absolutely “spot-on”!
It is actually a little embarassing …………..
I think Ubuntu is very popular since it just works right after it is installed. This is appealing to new users that don’t have a lot of technical knowledge aobut linux. There is a trade off with this though, since you are not necessarily getting the latest and greatest of overthing.
I am a Fedora user mainly since we run Redhat servers at work and I feel comfortable experimenting with the bleeding edge applications from Fedora 5. I wouldn’t reccomend it for a newbie though unless I could setup the system for them and show them how to maintain it.
An example of a common gotcha for Fedora new users is updating video drivers. With Ubuntu the kernel and the video drivers update since the kernel drivers are needed to make the 3D acceleration work right on ATI or Nvidia cards. Try this on Fedora and you might end up with a slightly broken system. The proprietary video drivers will not update automatically. Most 3D Fedora users understand this and know you need to open a console and pull up yum and update the video kernel drivers first. This is too dificult for a newbie.
I would say cut your teeth on Ubuntu and when you feel more adventurous and understand most shell commands, how to compile applications and the kernel then think of trying out Fedora.
Between Ubuntu and Debian i choise Debian. Why?It’s more scalable….
George
( [email protected] )
This article is cool, but there is just no content.
What is the point?
Another totally crap Ubuntu article. Do you not think Ubuntu has been discussed enough?
i can just download a firefox installer, double click it and install it, linux wont be ready for the mainstrean … just look at the install instructions!
Notes
* You will no longer get automatic updates through the repositories (but firefox itself has a built into auto-updater).
* The Totem video plugin doesn’t seem to work with firefox 1.5. You may want to install package ‘mozilla-mplayer’ instead before you start.
* You need package ‘libstdc++5’ installed.
sudo apt-get install libstdc++5
* This is for i386. If you are on amd64, there are some specific tips in [WWW] FirefoxAMD64FlashJava
* If you are using scim-1.0.2 as your input method platform, firefox will crash on startup. You may manually build firefox 1.5 to make both of them work.
* You may get an error dialog (twice) each time Firefox starts up saying Firefox could not install this item because of a failure in Chrome Registration. Please contact the author about this problem.. This is due to [WWW] this bug. To work around it, do the following:-
# create the directory if it does not already exist
sudo mkdir -p /opt/firefox/extensions/[email protected]
sudo touch /opt/firefox/extensions/[email protected]/chrome.manifest
Installing
* First, back up your bookmarks and settings:
cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default
mkdir ~/Desktop/ffsettings
cp bookmarks.html cert8.db cookies.txt formhistory.dat key3.db signons.txt history.dat mimeTypes.rdf ~/Desktop/ffsettings
* Download [WWW] firefox-1.5.tar.gz from [WWW] mozilla.com, and change to the directory you downloaded it to.
* Install it to /opt/firefox:
# extract tar into /opt (you should make sure /opt already exists)
sudo tar -C /opt -x -z -v -f firefox-1.5.tar.gz
# remove the package if you no longer require it
rm firefox-1.5.tar.gz
* Link to your plugins (and remove totem-mozilla as it doesn’t seem to work with Firefox 1.5):
cd /opt/firefox/plugins/
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/* .
sudo rm libtotem_mozilla.*
* Change to your home directory, and rename your old profile, leaving it as a backup (using the existing profile may cause problems with Firefox 1.5):
cd
mv .mozilla .mozilla.ubuntu
* To ensure it is used as the default version, modify the symbolic link in /usr/bin:
sudo dpkg-divert –divert /usr/bin/firefox.ubuntu –rename /usr/bin/firefox
sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox
The dpkg-divert command will move the original system-wide /usr/bin/firefox to a new name. The ln command will place a symlink to the newly installed firefox in /usr/bin
* Try it out: 🙂
firefox
* Restore your old data:
cd ~/Desktop/ffsettings
mv * ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default
* Restore your Searchplugins:
sudo cp -i –reply=no /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/searchplugins/* /opt/firefox/searchplugins/
sudo cp -i –reply=no ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/search/* /opt/firefox/searchplugins/
* If you want to keep the original Ubuntu icon for firefox, enter this command:
sudo cp /usr/share/pixmaps/firefox.xpm /opt/firefox/chrome/icons/default/default.xpm
* To ensure that other programs use version 1.5 of firefox and not the old 1.07 version, go to Preferences -> Preferred Applications in the System menu. For the “Web Browser” tab, choose “Custom” and then enter the command:
firefox %s
* Firefox 1.5 should now be installed and working properly. If for whatever reason you become unhappy with firefox 1.5 and would like to remove it, see the “Removing” section below for directions.
Edited 2006-01-24 17:14
Oh, come on. My command for installing firefox was apt-get -i firefox
Similar holds true for nearly every distro that has a repository. Just install the rpm or whatsoever.
I recently hat to reinstall a Windows XP. Can you imagine how long it took to grab the latest installation versions of the programs, how long it took to get the latest drivers and so on and installing them one by one by one? tedious is a nice word for it. When I install a Linux-distribution I fire up synaptic or kpackage or yast or whatever package manager-(GUI) comes alont, mark everything I need and install it with a single command. No searching, no fuss.
And yes there are progs that do not come as a binary, but they are few and if they are really good, a binary simply pops up somewhere.
there are no official binaries of FF 1.5 that i can download. That is the official instrucitons on how to install it. I followed it, and i did installed it without problems. What i said is that a “windows user” would never be able to do that, or would run scared back to windows.
PS: “apt-get -i firefox” would only get you 1.0.7 installed.
While I’m tired of Ubuntu hype, I’ve grown to really like this distro, for the following reasons:
1. Great Gnome implementation. Yes, I’m very much a Gnome user. I like KDE too, but I usually fall back to the comfort, pleasantness, ease of use, elegance, and productivity of Gnome. And Ubuntu really presents Gnome in all it’s glory.
2. Frozen Deb Sid repositories (only security updates and bug fixes – not new incompatible stuff). This is absolutely huge. I mean HUGE. With Ubuntu, you not only get an up to date Debian, but you also get stable repositories, from which you can update to your heart’s content, and install new software to your heart’s content, without fear of your system becoming screwed up due to the instability and rapidly changing Debian testing and unstable repositories.
I’ve had lot’s of experience with regular Debian in testing and unstable, as well as Mepis, Knoppix, and Kanotix. In every case, eventually, something becomes screwed up (unless I stay in Debian stable).
3. Well polished and configured system that’s easy to install and use.
Things I’d like to see improved in Ubuntu:
1. For HD detection, I’d like to see the standard Debian Discover ditched in favor of Red Hat’s Kudzu (which is in Debian repos). For me, Discover is hit or miss, especially for video. But Kudzu has never failed me. When Ubuntu does not detect video (or something else) properly, I apt-get kudzu and xdebconfigurator, then type sudo xdebconfigurator -k, then sudo dexconf, and joila’ video is perfect.
2. GUI config tools extended and polished. The Gnome System tools are quite nice, but they don’t come close to Red Hat’s tools, or Mandriva’s Control Center, or SuSE’s YaST.
With Ubuntu, you not only get an up to date Debian, but you also get stable repositories, from which you can update to your heart’s content, and install new software to your heart’s content, without fear of your system becoming screwed up due to the instability and rapidly changing Debian testing and unstable repositories.
Results may vary… I never got much luck with packages in universe. For instance, quod-libet got broken FLAC support (doesn’t support FLACs, without mentionning it’s significantly outdated), Kdevelop got some menu issues (in the program itself and in the KDE menu), etc.
Not that it means that the rest of universe doesn’t work, but I feel it misses some love!
“Results may vary… I never got much luck with packages in universe. For instance, quod-libet got broken FLAC support (doesn’t support FLACs, without mentionning it’s significantly outdated), Kdevelop got some menu issues (in the program itself and in the KDE menu), etc. “
Yes, I’ve heard that Universe can be a little more of a hassle, as it’s not officially supported by the Ubuntu team, and derives from regular Deb sid distros.
However, correct me if I’m wrong, I believe that they still freeze it (except for security updates).
Thus, far, I have not had any problems with Ubuntu Universe, and I have had many problems with Mepis, Kanotix, Knoppix, or pure Debian in testing or unstable.
Apt-get and the huge Debian repos are very wonderful things. However, unless you stick with pure Debian stable, or unless you go with a Debian derivative that either freezes their own repos (like Ubuntu), or go with a Debian derivative that extends apt-get and handles their own repos (like Linspire), then you might be in for trouble eventually.
As a daily user of XP, Tiger and Sarge, Kubunu comes across as the worst of both worlds to me.
Its installer is less sophisticated than SuSE. Even the LiveCDs waste time asking me about hardware instead of detecting it (so much for “just works”) when Knoppix doesn’t have this problem.
A bleeding-edge OS is pointless with a behind the curve repository. If this were BSD, you could argue a server-oriented OS doesn’t need the most current version of FF or OOo, but Ubuntu is clearly aimed at desktops.
The “no root user” policy sounds good in theory but is user-unfriendly in practice. An end-user desktop OS that requires me to open a terminal and su just to install FF 1.5 is three steps backwards. Linux is designed to be flexible, and Debian is built to overcome dependency hell by permitting you to install needed libraries automatically.
Ubuntu isn’t as friendly to older PCs as most distros, which dilutes a chief advocacy point for Linux; economics of resources.
The idea of a user-friendly desktop-oriented Debian-based distro is a very good one. No arguments there. I just don’t think Ubuntu is a good introduction to Linux for noobs. It teaches you little about Linux, and the limitations it presents make that necessary if you want to get around them.
I was using SuSE for some time in the beginning of my first encounters with Linux (from 9.2 to 10.0). I also took a look at Kubuntu, which I did not yet like at that time (because I could not get my WLAN to run. SuSE’s YaST really helped me in the beginning).
But shortly after SuSE 10.0 I changed to Kubuntu 5.10 with no regret. The community is great as is the distribution.
I do not like Ubuntu because of Gnome (i prefer KDE), so I’m very happy that there is Kubuntu for people like me 😉
I hope (K)Ubuntu 6.04 will continue the great success of this superb distribution.
And big thanks @Mark Shuttleworth!!
“That’s a pretty lightweight article BTW.. ”
Agreed, I expected a review, not a short description of the ubuntu internet sites…
In addition to the Gnome & KDE based version of Ubuntu, there’s also a lighter version called Xubuntu that uses the XFCE window manager. I’ve been using it for a little while, and I’ve been really pleased. To install it just requires doing the server install of Ubuntu and then doing “sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop.” I use it for surfing the web, playing media, and writing, and it “just works” easily and very quickly.
That wasn’t an article… it was about 5 pointless lines of text for each variant of the distro.
I have toyed with Kubuntu on old hardware and it strikes me as a fine beginner’s distro and an excellent into to Linux for Windows refugees…
But even with my pathetically small Linux knowledge and experience I could write a better “article” than this in under 10 minutes.
Was it even worth bothering to link? you could have just linked to the (K)Ubuntu site – it would have been more worthwhile!
Nice to see some good comments in this thread though
Hello,
We got a *lot* of unexpected traffic yesterday, and we couldn’t figure out why. Well, osnews was the answer!
Many people here criticised the article (BTW, “criticised” is correct. I use UK spellings).
I’d like to make clear that that article was absolutely fine for what it was: a newsletter which talked about out great free software web sites – hence the article’s code, “fs_sites_review_january_2006”!
It wasn’t meant to be a detailed article about Ubuntu. And… well, if you have a look around FSM’s web site, you will notice that there are many more articles which are definitely more in depth and full of “flesh”. For example, issue 10 has just come out:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/issue_10/
Well… I hope this clarifies it!
Bye,
Merc.
Actually, this “article” was meant to be a free software web site review written in 1000 words or less.
These website reviews are designed to point the reader at the key web sites relating to a particular topic.
The review was used as a newsletter which was sent to FSM’s subscribers.
It was not designed to tell already informed readers anything new about Ubuntu.
It was designed to show readers–who hadn’t already looked–where to go if they want to try Ubuntu or get more info.
Many of our more “interesting” and “in depth” articles have been submitted to OSNews and have not been picked up.
This one article should not be used to make an opinion on the magazine as a whole.
This was just one of well over 200 articles we have released for free.
Happy reading.
-Dave
I use debian at home (and, gratefully, at work) on my desktop mostly because
– I don’t need Gnome or printing to work,
– I don’t have any out of the ordinary hardware, and
– I’m plugged right into my cable modem, so I don’t need to fiddle with dialup.
So, for really simple setups like mine, Debian Sarge + X11 + icewm works fine and is very stable. But if I wanted more out of my desktop, I’d go with Ubuntu.
I like the brown, btw. Earthy.