Ubuntu gets "Lucid" - new version released - Page 2

Thanks Djembe and Mr. T. I'm going to install it in a dual-boot config later in the morning, and will let all know what happens.

It isn't hard to fix even if it does happen, but my understanding is also that it shouldn't happen now. Let us know if it still is happening.

Seablade

So far both systems seem to be working fine. I was able to boot into my Windows partition, and now I'm logging into my Ubuntu without a problem. Installation was as easy as ever of course.

I had to say something, sorry....if you're new to linux, definitely start out with Ubuntu. But the rest of that above, just isn't true...never has been. Sorry....couldn't let it pass.

Actually I would disagree with you. Whether or not it is true really depends entirely on the person. Gentoo was VERY rewarding for me, which I used for my workstation for quite some time. Debian has been very rewarding for me on my NAS, where Ubuntu and many other distros A) doesn't have a distribution capable of running on it, and B) Would severely hamper performance without severe modification.

Ubuntu is not a perfect fit for everyone, but it does make a good entry distro for most people until they decide where its limits lie. Once they find its limits, it can be quite rewarding to go to a different distro, be it Gentoo, Debian, Fedora, DSL, AVLinux, DreamLinux, eLive, whatever, until they find what meets their needs the best. If Ubuntu works fine for you, then by all means stay with it, but for many people that isn't necessarily the case in the long term if they truly learn Linux.

Seablade

WTF is that supposed to mean? I've been running Linux since the early/mid-90s. In that time I've used all of the major distros more than once. I've been running Gentoo as my primary OS since 2004 and it has been installed on my inspiron 9300 without any need to reinstall since I purchased it years ago.

What did I say that was untrue? Debian has the largest repository of any distro, period! That's a fact! Ubuntu / Kubuntu is a subset of what's available in Debian that is not binary compatible with any of the Debian repos, again that's a fact!

Debian has so many apps in it's repos that at times when I'm looking for what I can't find in Gentoo I just head over to Debian download the sources and compile it for my machine. A good example is the firewall I use, Guarddog. It was removed from Gentoo back in Feb, because it's based on QT-3 which was removed from portage along with KDE-3 and has never been ported to QT-4 / KDE-4. Until a newer version arrives I just use this from my personal portage overlay.

The friend I mentioned in my previous post, who had been running Kubuntu is a mechanical engineer. He needed a specific fortran based app that wasn't in the Ubuntu repo, but it was in Debian. He could have spent a ton of money and purchased the commercially available Windows app that served his purpose, instead he switched to Debian so he could run the "free" alternative. Now after using Debian for several months he loves it and has no intention of ever switching back to Kubuntu.

Ubuntu / Kubuntu has been designed by Canonical Ltd.as an easy to use and set-up commercial enterprise, but it isn't Debian and never will be. Canonical holds your hand for you. If you run Ubuntu you seldom if ever need to get your "hands dirty" working with what's underlying your system. I know that for me part of the joy of using Gentoo is the feeling of satisfaction of running the latest OSS and successfully solving issues when they arrive and contribute back to the community so that ALL distros can benefit.

Ciao

now hold on....what I'm trying to say to a newbie, is they can get just as much out of using Ubuntu as you can using Gentoo....eventually. Not as much control over the OS, and I fully understand what you are saying. But there is a point of diminishing returns with regards to being productive with GNU/Linux. From purely a hobbyist point of view, I'm with you ALL the way. I haven't used linux as long as you, but I did start in 97......I personally like Slackware because of the way I can edit text files to change things. Gentoo is the holy grail for a linux hacker and the learning curve for me would be STEEP....I'm getting too old....haha

So, I retract my original remark and replace it with the above (didn't mean to be a smartass, really..just hurried)

Err last time I used Ubuntu that was only partially true. Some applications were not binary compatible, however many were in most repos I used. You had to be careful obviously, and I wouldn't reccomend trying to use debian repos in Ubuntu to a newbie certainly, but the statement itself seems to be false to me.

Two things about this statement.

First and foremost is, what exactly prevents you from doing this(Solving Problems/Contributing back) in Ubuntu? Second, not everyone WANTS to dig deep into their systems, in fact many people I set up Linux for never want to touch that stuff and never have to. For them Ubuntu is a fine choice as they are doing the basics and nothing complex.

I can give examples of even semi-advanced things on Linux that make many people shudder and toss Linux out the window because it ISN'T done for them and they HAVE to do things manually.

So as I said before, what distribution is best for a newcomer to Linux depends on the newcomer and what THEY WANT TO GET OUT OF LINUX. Some people WANT to dig into their system, learn what they can, and for them Debian may be a better bet, or Gentoo. But many newcomers to Linux WANT to try it out and see if it can replace their windows workflow first and foremost. They DON'T want to have to dig into the depths of Linux to do this, and spend the months learning the ins and outs of its inner workings, they want simple answers before they invest what could easily be wasted time for them, will it work? Is my time to replace my existing workflow worth more than the cost of a license to keep my existing workflow? Do the benefits outweigh the disadvantages for the end result?

Note that I am not touching on the moral, ethical, and philosophical benefits of running Linux yet, because for most computer users those don't matter as much, at least initially. If they did, Linux would be a heck of a lot more popular than it is on the desktop.

Seablade

Actually, I stand by my statement that Ubuntu is NOT binary compatible with Debian! If you read the warnings on the Ubuntu and Kubuntu webstites it rather specifically admonishes using the Debian repos and states that doing so one is at one's own risk.

It doesn't take much to break binary compatibility, after years of running a sourced-based distro (Gentoo) I speak from experience. Sometimes something as small as a patch to GCC or GlibC can muck with your entire system. Or on complicated apps like Open Office or Mozilla-Firefox a simple revision in libpng for example, can render them unusable until recompiled against them. There are many other examples, small changes in GTK often can make any Gnome apps fail or any number of things can make KDE go haywire.

When using a binary distro like Ubuntu/Kubuntu the preferred method of installing an app not in the repo is to request the maintainers to compile one and submit it into the repo for all to use. That way it can be throughly vetted before release to the public as being "stable".

This doesn't mean that you might be able to "kludge" your system together with these mixed binaries, but I assure you that with a "mixed" system you WILL run into problems when by some chance you need to compile your own app. That's when the mixed binaries will really reveal themselves.

Now for your other statements, I think we're really agreeing, but talking past each other. I think Ubuntu and Kubuntu are outstanding OSes. If something like they are, had been around when I first started using Linux years ago, I probably wouldn't have done as much distro hopping as I did especially in the early years. When I originally got into Linux I wanted to have my hand held.

It's only because I was forced to venture out on my own to fix things and set things up the way I wanted that I got into getting my hands dirty with the underpinnings and grew to like doing so. Having said this, I of course realize that the average user just wants to be able to install things and have them work, like in Windows or Mac.

This is where Canonical has excelled, bringing Linux to the masses. They've been able to succeed where RedHat, Suse, Mandrake, Storm, et al, have failed before them. The bottom line is for most people Ubuntu / Kubuntu is all they'll ever need out of an OS. My point is that if they want to delve more into what makes their machines tick or have more choices in how they operate then Debian, or a sourced based distro like Gentoo is a way to go.

I hope this clarified things.

Ciao

Those warnings are there for a reason exactly, and that I agree with. But those warnings themselves do not preclude binary compatibility. Yes small changes to GCC of more comonly is different versions of glibc will in fact break binary compatibility in many cases, but that doesn't mean that repos don't exist that are binary compatible with both. Heck even repos for debian break binary compatibility for debian depending on who is running the repo and how they compile the program for those reasons, similar for Ubuntu.

All this being said, it doesn't change my statement one bit. Again I don't recommend it for a newbie, but if an advanced user wishes to carefully include repos and they are aware of the warnings, then they can and it can be done successfully, speaking from experience, though I haven't run Ubuntu in a while.

Trust me, you aren't the only one

As for the rest of your statement, at the moment I can't read to deep into it just because I am at work right now, but at first glance I believe I do agree with everything else you said.

Seablade