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Ubuntu 6.06 Reviewed 351

Posted by CowboyNeal from the kicking-the-tires dept.
Mark writes "This year has been a huge step forward for Desktop Linux users. First, Fedora Core 5 was released and featured the new Gnome 2.14. Then SUSE 10.1 showed us how well applications could be integrated to make a desktop look great. Now it was time for Ubuntu to release their latest version: 'Dapper Drake.'" Oh yeah, the inital review is good, too. Worth checking out for desktop Linux users.
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Ubuntu 6.06 Reviewed More

Ubuntu 6.06 Reviewed

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  • Painless Upgrade (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03, 2006 @12:48PM (#15462136)
    Wow...I made a simple change to my sources.list file and ran sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and 15 minutes later I went from Breezy to Dapper. No reboot required. Bravo to the Ubuntu team!
    • Interesting. Does anybody have any details on this operation? This sounds like something I'd like to do, but the review is slashdotted and I can't find any useful information on the Ubuntu site.

      • Re:Painless Upgrade (Score:5, Informative)

        by shreevatsa ( 845645 ) <<shreevatsa.slashdot> <at> <gmail.com>> on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:06PM (#15462220)
        The many (equivalent) ways to upgrade to Dapper ("Ubuntu 6.06") are detailed at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DapperUpgrades [ubuntu.com]. This, of course, is assuming you're already running Breezy ("Ubuntu 5.10").

        • Re:Painless Upgrade (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )
          Yikes. Ok, the easiest route via update manager was fine, but the other two... I quote:

          "EXTREMELY IMPORTANT! Make sure you type dist-upgrade rather than upgrade . The process will totally hose your machine and render it *completely unbootable* otherwise."

          Is it just me or shouldn't that be impossible? Can't you at least fix the dependecy tree so that it'll barf out an error message? I mean I've used tools that are like "do it exactly this way, in this order, OR ELSE..." but that on much more obscure thing

          • Re:Painless Upgrade (Score:3, Informative)

            by MoxFulder ( 159829 )
            I have no idea about what that alarmist warning is about. Normally, if you do upgrade rather than dist-upgrade, it'll just not upgrade all of the packages, because it will only upgrade packages which are straightforward changes from version X to version Y. When you do dist-upgrade rather than upgrade, it will also rearrange dependencies so that if package A formerly depended on package B, and now A depends on C and B is no longer needed, it will do The Right Thing.

            To make a long story short, upgrade is ba

            • Re:Painless Upgrade (Score:3, Informative)

              by HiThere ( 15173 ) *
              I'm not sure what it's about either...but...

              This morning I was upgrading my debian Etch, and got a rather scarey message concerning xwindow-xorg. It didn't cause any problems on my system, but apparently on some systems it destroys the Xorg part without replacing it. ("So be sure you check, and replace it if you need to.") That was the first time I've seen quite such a scarey message during an upgrade, and I wasn't even moving off of Etch.

              I'm not sure this is relevant, but given how similar Ubuntu and De

          • Re:Painless Upgrade (Score:3, Interesting)

            by shish ( 588640 )
            *completely unbootable*

            I did it the wrong way, and X broke horribly (the change to a modular server is a bigger package reorganisation than mere "upgrade" is designed for). However it was /bootable/, and a dist-upgrade from within the crippled box mostly fixed it.

      • Re:Painless Upgrade (Score:5, Informative)

        by HankB ( 721727 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:13PM (#15462259)
        sudo bash
        cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.just-to-be-safe
        vi /etc/apt/sources.list
        1,$s/breezy/dapper/g
        <esc> wq
        apt-get update
        apt-get dist-upgrade
        shutdown -r now


        During the dist-upgrade step you will probably have to answer some questions about using new config files vs. existing modified ones.

        You do need to reboot if you want the new kernel running. (2.6.15)

        Afterwards you might have to tweak some things like the wireless drivers or display drivers. I had to download the synaptics driver because the new one has bugs that manifest for 64 bit systems.

        But it really is that easy!

        -hank

        • Re:Painless Upgrade (Score:5, Funny)

          by mkro ( 644055 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:30PM (#15462336)
          My grandmother's head exploded just after she finished typing the "vi /etc/apt/sources.list" part :(

          Will this be fixed in future versions of the tutorial?
          • Maybe try and teach your granny [Ctrl]+[C] & [Ctrl]+[V].

            :)

          • Re:Painless Upgrade (Score:3, Informative)

            by kestasjk ( 933987 )
            No vi required;
            sudo bash
            sed -i.bak -e 's/breezy/dapper/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
            apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade && shutdown -r now

          • Ubuntu install easier than XP initial startup (Score:4, Interesting)

            by jrifkin ( 100192 ) on Sunday June 04, 2006 @01:20PM (#15467178)
            This past week I've install Ubuntu on my old gateway laptop, and help a friend set up (not install) XP on her
            new HP laptop.

            The Ubuntu install was suprisingly easy. I answered 3 or 4 questions, like my name and my time zone, and
            do I want to install Ubuntu on the entire hard drive (I answered yes). After the install finished, my wireless was working
            without a hitch, and I had a nice clean desktop to enjoy.

            In comparison, the XP setup was mystifying, and it was *already* installed. During bootup, windows kept popping up,
            sometimes several unrelated windows at once. First, a registration window came up. While we were trying to answer
            the list of questions there, an Anti-Virus wizard popped up. Next a little window came up to tells use that XP had found
            my wireless network, but strangely enough the registration app didn't know how to use it.

            Next, a Recovery wizard popped up and recommended that we make recovery disks (using 1 double layer DVD, 2 single layer DVDs,
            or 13! CDs). Another little window told use to install an XP update, so I completed that first. Then, we took the suggestion of
            the Anti-Virus wizard to reboot, and we've never seen the Recovery wizard since. We even went searching the disk and the
            help system - couldn't find it.

            Wireless never came up by itself, we had to drill into the Control Panel to enable it.

            When we were all done, we were greeted by a desktop festooned with icon/ads. There was an icon for Blockbuser,
            AOL dialup, AOL broadband, MS Office 2003 60 day trial, etc.

            Another point of comparison, when I inserted my USB key in the Ubuntu laptop, a folder appears with a list of files on the key. Nice. Under XP,
            before I can even view the contents, I have to choose who to see it. It is a photo album? A slideshow? There were more choices than could
            fit in the pop-window, one had to scroll down to see the Ubuntu equivalent option, view files.

            In every way I preferred Ubuntu experience, and I'm sure my grey-haired Mom would feel the same.
        • "<esc> wq"

          Why do people insist on using slower VI syntax? Use instead:

          ":x"

            -- that writes, then exits the program. It's what you want anytime you'd think to do a wq.
      • You don't even need to modify sources.list directly.

        $ gksu update-manager -d

        Will tell you that a new release is available will do everything for you.

        • Re:Painless Upgrade (Score:4, Informative)

          by advocate_one ( 662832 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @04:00PM (#15463020)
          I didn't even need to do that... After my latest update of breezy yesterday (which updated update manager... :) ), I launched the update manager again from the menu, entered my password, and it told me there was a new version of ubuntu available... all I had to do was click on the upgrade button and follow the prompts... never once had to launch a terminal and use the command prompt...
      • I have simple upgrade instuctions here: http://devrants.blog.com/Ubuntu/ [blog.com]
    • Took all day on Friday (still wasn't finished when I left for the weekend (long 4-day weekend too!). Of course my computer at work is just a PIII 700 or 800 MHz with 256 MB RAM.

    • Re:Painless Upgrade (Score:2, Interesting)

      by SeraphimX ( 978987 )
      I did the same thing except when i did it and rebooted as instructed on the http://kubuntu.org/ [kubuntu.org] site. My raid 5 couldn't be found and my Xwindows failed to load, oh and i was off the network. :(

      So then i figured i would try a fresh install, but as soon as i booted the live DVD, neither of my mice,Logitech mx700 and mx510 worked.

      So i had to reinstall Breezy 5.10

      Needless to say im slightly disapointed in Dapper Drake

    • Re:Painless Upgrade (Score:5, Informative)

      by misleb ( 129952 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @02:41PM (#15462640)
      Not to take the wind out of the Ubuntu sails or anything, but such upgradability has been a feature of Debian for a long time now. Ubuntu just inheritted it. I have a Debian desktop that was once installed 8 years ago with Debian 1.2 or something like that and through the years it has been upgraded from one stable release to the next (and sometime unstable/testing). The HD was also moved into faster boxes.

      -matthew

    • Re:Painless Upgrade (Score:3, Informative)

      by palumbor ( 854887 )
      Well I love Ubuntu, but the upgrade was *not so painless* for me and a few other users according to the forums. The upgrade process seems to fail on specific motherboards upon detecting that PCMCIA does not exist. If you are upgrading from Breezy, the kernel has no support to restart the detection or for this instance, fail out. Upon restarting the system, you are left with a hodge-podge Breezy/Dapper install that fails even in safe mode due to the newly introduced PCMCIA junk. If anyone is seriously co
    • Lots of people complaining about X breaking, and I had the same problem (and a load of others) -- then I realised I ran "apt-get upgrade" instead of "apt-get dist-upgrade". Dist-upgrade worked, and fixed X (and several, but not all the other problems)

  • But does it run... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ant P. ( 974313 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @12:51PM (#15462145)
    XGL?

    • Re:But does it run... (Score:4, Informative)

      by piquadratCH ( 749309 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @12:58PM (#15462180)
      But does it run XGL?

      With a little work, yes [ubuntuforums.org].

      If you're question was whether XGL is the default, the answer is of course no. XGL is unstable and it's future is uncertain as it's 'competitor' AIGLX [wikipedia.org] is included in Xorg 7.1.

      • Personally, I would hate to see XGL get canned. I just upgraded an older Suse version to 10.1 and setting up the XGL/Compiz stuff was extremely easy (install nvidia drivers and 3 or 4 rpms -- then turn it on through the control center). The eye candy is second to none. Some of it is just dressing, but some is going to great. For example, the Expose like feature is flawlessly smooth (compare to the clunky Kompose). I can't really say how impressed I am with it. For years, linux DEs have been perfectly
    • Yes it does, but there are problems. (The same problems that exist in SuSE. No DRI being the #1). However, AIGLX is fairly stable, and I've been running it on my laptop for about 2 months now. There are some problems with playing video, and 3D graphics have a tendency to flicker, but I don't do any gaming on my laptop, so it doesn't bother me. I just make sure that I have a 2D screensaver selected, and it's fine.

  • Here is why it is a big step (Score:5, Insightful)

    by El Cubano ( 631386 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @12:51PM (#15462149)

    This year has been a huge step forward for Desktop Linux users.

    I know that people here frequently complain about things like duplication of effort and forking as things that dilute the impact of Linux and free/open source software on the world. I tend to be of the opposite opinion. You want something geared at the business desktop with good integration and commercial support? Get SuSE. You want something that carries the name of a recognized brand? Get Fedora (yes it is still in many places considered the standard, just look at how many hosting providers provide is as the primary or only platform). You want something different that has a reputation for rock solid stability? Get Debian. You want a user-friendly Debian? Get Ubutnu.

    The point is that the diversity is what makes these things possible. None of those things would be done nearly as effectivly under a "one size fits all" approach.

    • You want something geared at the business desktop with good integration and commercial support? Get SuSE. You want something that carries the name of a recognized brand? Get Fedora (yes it is still in many places considered the standard, just look at how many hosting providers provide is as the primary or only platform). You want something different that has a reputation for rock solid stability? Get Debian. You want a user-friendly Debian? Get Ubutnu.

      You want desktop with good integration and commercial su
    • I agree with your post however I choose not to use Linux anymore. (I use FreeBSD). I recall the days of Slackware, Stormix, Redhat (Hurricane) and know that Linux has come a long way from my days of Slackware. While I have used Fedora, CentOS, Debian (Knoppix), and Ubuntu, I felt a long time ago there was a bit too much diversity for me and no core focus. I've always been a Solaris fan as well as well as (yikes) Irix. It's nice to see a more userfriendly Linux though since it becomes easier for Linux to go

      • I really don't see a problem here. The majority of what you learn in installing and setting up a linux box is distro-independent. When you add to that the fact that 90% of the desktop oriented distros ship with one of two desktops, there's really very little to distinguish among them for the uninitiated. It's true that newbies may not understand the differences among all the available distros, but they don't need to. All you need to know is to look at the top five or ten distros at distrowatch, and start tr

  • The ISO come in 3 flavours, desktop and server are obvious - what is Alternate? All three types are available in a range of architectures. Couldn't find a simple answer. Will be trying this out on my new laptop (an HP) as according to the Ubuntu website there is an HP customized version of ubuntu - which hopefully will now have the native broadcom wireless drivers.

    • Re:Desktop/Server/Alternate (Score:5, Informative)

      by jmataya ( 880375 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:00PM (#15462198)
      From the Ubuntu website http://www.ubuntu.com/ />, alternate is for:

      * creating pre-configured OEM systems;
      * setting up automated deployments;
      * upgrading from older installations without network access;
      * LVM and/or RAID partitioning;
      * installing GRUB to a location other than the Master Boot Record;
      * installs on systems with less than about 192MB of RAM.

      Sounds to me like something that could be invaluable to people not necessarily running the latest and greatest.
    • The desktop CD boots into a live session and lets you install from there, with very few options that can be changed.

      The alternate CD boots into the old text based installer, and allows more options to be configured.

      I don't much care for the desktop method of installing.. it didn't even ask if it was OK to install GRUB, just went ahead and did it.
    • I heard tell that alternate might allow installation on existing linux partitons. As it is right now, I have never been able to install ubuntu as it can't see the existing EXT3 partitions or swap partiton that I have from a current Mandriva install.

      Until they fix their disk partitioner to see existing partition, I consider it not ready.

      BTW some people said run gparted from the desktop before I run the installer. It doesn't see the partitions either.
      • The desktop installer can install just fine on existing partitions, I did that yesterday and it worked fine. It was in fact Kubuntu, but it would be strange for them to have so big functionality differences between the installers...
  • ... boot the Live CD properly. Guess the reviewers were more lucky than me.

  • Dapper is good, but it's not there yet. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bwd ( 936324 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @12:58PM (#15462183) Homepage
    It's not ready for grandma to use, and as such, it's not an XP replacement. It still takes many keystrokes to get MP3 and video codec support. Want a binary nvidia driver? Due to ideological reasons, you'll need to manually enable universe and install it. And exotic wifi protocol support is still spotty (but better). Try explaining all that to someone who is computer illiterate. All they know is that this stuff works automatically in XP or OSX.

    Not that I'm ragging on Dapper Drake; I installed it the first day it came out. But it is being touted as an XP replacement when it isn't. I think it is only a marginal improvement over the last version in terms of ease of use for people who aren't already savvy. The improved theme certainly looks good, but that only goes so far when you are looking to replace XP for normal users. I think the Ubuntu team really needs to rethink leaving out MP3 decoders and regular codec support. Microsoft doesn't seem to have 'licensing issues' when they ship XP with those features, and neither does Apple.

    • Re:Dapper is good, but it's not there yet. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by swab79 ( 842256 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:13PM (#15462255)
      Yeah but if YOU do the install, it is ready for grandma to use. I don't think grandma would do too well installing XP either.
    • This is a major problem for all distributions. Basically I as a user don't give a damn if the driver I need to get my display to work is binary-only or not. I just want the installer to do its job and install the bloody thing.

      A dist should still offer to download and install it if it feels putting it on the CD violates their sensibilities in some way.

      • This is one of the things that has bugged me the most about Linux distros, but it's all as a result of software patents and copyrights, not a fault of the distros.

        On Ubuntu's site, there is an easy and excelent step-by-step walkthrough to get everything to work, as well as an explanation for why they legally cannot include that stuff in the core distro. RestrictedFormats [ubuntu.com]. Another thing I had trouble with is getting midi to work (not sure why that didn't work out-of-the box, but Ubuntu's wiki had good instructions for getting midi files to work too. I downloaded the DVD iso and I must say, the install and desktop experience is the best I've had - Windows or Linux.

        They are also in the process of trying to reach a point of automation where getting everything working is as easy as possible while still complying with the law. See RestrictedFormatsProblem [ubuntu.com] and RestrictedFormatsSolutions [ubuntu.com].

        And as always, if you want it done faster, feel free to lend them a hand. The solution you propose is being worked out and discussed; for starters you can look here [ubuntu.com]. As far as the law goes, well, the congressional elections are coming soon (if you live in the US) so find out how your incumbent has been voting and get 'em out if you don't agree with how they've been voting on tech issues.
    • It's not ready for grandma to use
      Grandma can use it easily enough if you set it up for her. Take a look at this [knightwise.com].
      (Also consider it just proof of concept; you might not want to do exactly the same things. For example, it's better (IMHO) to do things the right way [ubuntu.com] than to use automated options like Automatix or EasyUbuntu.)

      • Re:Dapper is good, but it's not there yet. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by From A Far Away Land ( 930780 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @03:57PM (#15463007) Homepage Journal
        I think Ubuntu should have a popup for people not in the USA, to a site like Easy Ubuntu, so they can play MP3s, without editing files and manually downloading codecs. Really, Windows users don't have to do that, why should Linux users be inconvenienced?
    • No matter how much Ubuntu wants to put in MP3 support, they can't! It's patented. That means they're not allowed to, without paying license fees. License fees for patents are usually based on how many people are using the product, but Ubuntu don't know about every deployment because they allow free distribution of the OS.

      Of course Ubuntu would have support for MP3 if they were allowed to!
      • Actually, they can. Fluendo, the makers of GStreamer, paid for a license. Canonical could include the GStreamer plugin binary legally, but because of Canonical's ideology, they won't, because the license wouldn't apply if a user recompiled it from source ----- yet they still include nVidia and ATI binary drivers, where a user can't recompile them at all.

    • Re:Dapper is good, but it's not there yet. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by say ( 191220 ) <sigve@wo l f r aidah.no> on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:38PM (#15462368) Homepage

      Bah! Is MS paying these people to write one post like this on every mention of linux progress anywhere?

      Dear Sir,

      Your post is addressing the needs of a computer user (Grandma). You argue that she could not use Ubuntu Dapper for her computing needs. According to you, she would have problems with the following:

      • Getting mp3 and video support
      • Getting a binary NVIDIA proprietary video driver
      • Getting a driver for her exotic wi-fi card

      Because this is why she can't switch, I am guessing that you presume she does not know anyone who can help her with that. Fine. And because you argue that this is what makes Ubuntu inapt as an XP replacement, you must be arguing that she em can do all of that on her own with Windows XP.

      "Grandma" does not exist, so stop pulling her out. Let's analyse what kind of person Grandma would have to be to fit the description: She is concerned about the performance loss between the nv and nvidia drivers, but unable to follow the three steps documented under "documentation" on Ubuntus webpage to get the nvidia driver. Also, she is completely able to download and install an updated executable from the correct website when she is in Windows. That kind of person does not exist.

      I am really sick and tired over these kind of comments. "It is really good, I use it, but I doubt anyone could manage to use it". What you are trying to say, is that not everyone can setup and manage a computer, and maintain a healthy, powerful and updated operating system on it. This is old news. It applies just as much to your favoured operating system (which pshyciatric examination would reveal to be Windows) as Ubuntu Dapper.

      As a counter-point, and an exercise to the GP, please do compare the routine of installing office applications on Windows compared to Ubuntu Dapper. Oh, it came pre-installed on Dapper? OK, that's unfair. Then compare installing any other application on Dapper vs. Windows. The ease-of-use for new users is vastly better with Dapper's extremely user-friendly shell over apt-get and dpkg. Windows is more difficult on this much more common task for a newbie than installing custom, 4%-extra-performance-gaining graphic drivers.

      • Wow, that's way better than my reply to the same parent, I wish I had read it first.
    • Grandma doesn't know how to install WinXP, either.
      If you need mp3, it's only a part of the installation to get it.
      Installing NVidia support, too.

      Installing Ubuntu + mp3 + nvidia binary drivers is not harder than installing XP, and least it was for me.

      Plus, when installing XP, you then need to install office software, plus some pdf reader, plus AV software, in order to have a usable desktop. Does grandma know how to get those things?

      Aside from that, even if lack of mp3 was a real problem, there's no reason w
    • Why do we need to see this every time? Who's talking about grandmothers here, or XP for that matter? I've never recomended anything but a Mac to someone over 65 because I doubt any grandmother I know could figure out either windows or linux, especially the instalation. I recomend ubuntu linux to anyone with computer literacy or interest in becoming computer literate and it is very good for that demographic. For an early 21st century operating system Ubuntu is easy to install, use and maintain. But it still
    • "All they know is that this stuff works automatically in XP or OSX."
      They may "know" it, but the rest of us know they're wrong. Every system needs configuration when you install new hardware or an OS. Most users just use whatever came on their computer; the work has been done for them, but it still had to be done. Windows won't magically work when you put new hardware in any more than Linux will.

      "I think the Ubuntu team really needs to rethink leaving out MP3 decoders and regular codec support. Microsoft doe
    • Your grandma plays 3d games and downloads music from thepiratebay? The reason neither Apple nor MS (nor many commercially distributed Linux distros) have problems is that they charge money for their software. Moreover, neither Apple nor MS feel any obligation to make it easy to modify and redistribute their software the way Ubuntu does.

      For a long time the argument against MP3 was pretty simple: liscencing fees were expensive. But Fluendo appears to be offering mp3 support in gstreamer free of charge. The on

    • Re:Dapper is good, but it's not there yet. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by advocate_one ( 662832 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @04:21PM (#15463113)
      It's not ready for grandma to use,

      whoah... let's kill this "It's not ready for grandma to use" meme... I'm a grandparent and I have absolutely NO problems with Linux at all... If Grandma can follow a recipe in a recipe book, or follow a set of knitting instructions (and I'm pretty sure very few of you could), then she's perfectly capable of following the instructions for doing easyubuntu [freecontrib.org] or automatix [ubuntuforums.org]... although looking at Arnieboy's thread for automatix... even I'm confused... trying to work out where to start with it

      and the easy ubuntu page of instructions, while simple, fail to mention that you have to copy and paste each line at a time into a terminal... durr... come on guys... switch on... some people require very explicit step by step instructions to do this...

      mind you, recipe books assume a lot of basic knowledge and so do knitting patterns...

  • Me experiences (Score:5, Informative)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:00PM (#15462192)
    I just finished spending about 3 hours on a test install on my IBM Thinkpad notebook.

    In a nutshell:

    • install was flawless. Very clean, very fast. I like the LIve CD initial install, then the icon to do the full install.
    • apps install were a good selection, not the usual Linux overwhelming "install all apps I can find". Organization of the apps on the menus was nice.
    • I like the admin capability, instead of having to bounce to root when I want to do something. Much more thought out than Microsoft Vista's harassing UAC.
    • wireless support was lacking. It saw my Atheros 802.11abg PC Card, but could not do anything with it. I could not connect to my wireless network, even when I cycled security down to 'no security', i.e., it could not connect to a wide open access point.
    • I tried to send a test page to a network printer (a share on a Windows box) , and the whole notebook hung solid. Power-down required to get it moving again.

    So overall, I'd say, "excellent" on the visuals, apps choices, functionality (so long as wireless networking or network printers are not needed).

    IMO, desktop users will be happy. Notebook users will be less than happy.

    • Isn't the ability to print and get on a wireless somewhat important for a desktop computer?

      Not quite sure why you gave it 'excellent' when those important things didn't even work.

    • Re:Me experiences (Score:5, Informative)

      by Junta ( 36770 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:45PM (#15462398)
      -Wireless support:
      Funny thing there, install networkmanager (and probably the gnome applet to go with it) and a great deal of the complexity goes down. It's surprisingly easy. At least with my ipw chipset. It configured things for WPA or WEP or wide open. It lacks LEAP support and therefore I couldn't use just that and had to do more advanced things, but if you just need wide open, WEP, and WPA support it will make configuring the wireless Windows-easy.

      -Remote print support:
      I recently wrestled with printing to a windows desktop system with attached printer, but the bad side effect wasn't as you described. In my case, the target windows Box print queue would hang, requiring restart of the windows print spool service. The workaround was to disable bidirectional support under the ports tab of the printer tab on the windows box. At least in my case with an hp printer/hpijs, you can't do the bidirectional support on a windows server, but hplip would support it locally, but that won't help to access a windows printer.

      So wireless support they left out the thing that makes it much easier by default (don't understand why), and with that it would have been very nearly perfect there.

      Print support to a Windows shared printer was quite evil and obscure google searches were required to figure it out. It was nothing that Ubuntu itself could have done much about, since HPLIP doesn't support remote printing, and HPIJS supports remote printing, but not the bidirectional features. Add to that the only work around is a server-side print config change. However, I imagine this to be a fairly frequent for Ubuntu users and probably should be documented somewhere prominent.

  • This is useless (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MoogMan ( 442253 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:05PM (#15462216)
    I'm sorry, but you cannot review a whole operating system in two days. Sure, you can get the immediate "ease of use" and an idea of the speed of things. But it's only when you start using it properly every day for at least a month or more, you can appreciate whether an Operating System is good for you, or not.

    Saying that, Ubuntu already won me over at Breezy. With the new Gnome 2.14, Dapper is much faster again.

  • A milestone (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:08PM (#15462231)
    I have been checking on Kubuntu for about a year now. I always said Kubuntu is not yet but has great potential. That was mainly because of the work that has already been done and the resources FOSS makes available. Add to that the a rich guy and you get the great potential. I used to throw away the CD I burnt but yesterday was the first time I was not disappointed with it and I even went ahead and installed on one of the desktops I have. Draper Drake is a milestone to Ubuntu and Linux. Great distro over all. It is clean, fast, reliable and robust. I think it will be the envy of many including MS.

  • Good, but... (Score:3, Informative)

    by freakified ( 957821 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:10PM (#15462243) Homepage
    While Ubuntu is, IMO, the best Linux distribution out there, it still has issues. For example, I noticed that, in that default installation, there is a boot option for "Recovery Console," which simply gives anyone who starts it root access to the computer without a password. While it can be disabled by editing a configuration file, something like that should never have been added in the first place.

    Also, after installing Dapper on my computer in one location and then moving to another network, my ability to use DHCP suddenly disappeared! I'm sure I can get it back, by Mac OS X and XP didn't give me any trouble. (Though, to give credit where credit is due, XP died completely, because of a hardware upgrade, which, didn't affect Dapper at all.)

    All in all, though, not to be overly negative, I recently set up Dapper on a school development computer and got Apache, PHP, PostgreSQL, and SSH working in a matter of minutes, so, to the developers of Ubuntu, kudos.

    • Re:Good, but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by smash ( 1351 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:16PM (#15462276) Homepage Journal
      While it could be seen as a security "issue" - there's nothing to stop someone booting a knoppix CD, linux boot floppy or any other number of options to get root on a Linux machine they have physical access to.

      If you're paranoid about your users getting root on the box, physically secure it for a start and deny them shutdown permission (to reboot to the boot menu) you'd be better off...

    • Re:Good, but... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Poppler ( 822173 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @02:09PM (#15462494) Journal
      For example, I noticed that, in that default installation, there is a boot option for "Recovery Console," which simply gives anyone who starts it root access to the computer without a password. While it can be disabled by editing a configuration file, something like that should never have been added in the first place.

      I don't love that, but it's not a big deal for most people. It's certainly not something that should prohibit average desktop users from running Ubuntu. Try holding Apple-S during boot on your OS X machine sometime, it does the same thing.
      Besides, if someone really wants your data and has physical access to your unencrypted hard drive, you're screwed anyway.

    • . For example, I noticed that, in that default installation, there is a boot option for "Recovery Console," which simply gives anyone who starts it root access to the computer without a password.

      or he could press e on an option, and specify init=/bin/sh or similar, and boot up directly in a shell. This works on every distro, unless you lock your grub menu.

      Repeat after me: if untrustworthy people have physical access to your box, your security by login is basically gone. If you want to secure your data i

  • MEPIS: (K)Ubuntu with codecs (Score:5, Informative)

    by rbrander ( 73222 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:12PM (#15462248) Homepage
    Probably the two biggest issues that many have with Ubuntu are that it takes extra work to install MP3 support - not to mention every other codec or player.

    MEPIS has recently confirmed the fears of some that Ubuntu is turning into a platform, displacing Debian itself...MEPIS is/was a KDE desktop based on Debian. The founder's concern with the stability and reliability of the Debian base recently led him to base his distro on Ubuntu sources instead.

    So now with MEPIS, you get Ubuntu, except that it's KDE default, and it comes with every player (Real, Quicktime) and codec plugin for Kaffeine that can be found. Plus, the general layout of menus and the installer have won good reviews all around.

    They're currently a week into beta4 on the new version based on the Dapper base and will likely have an RC1 out by mid-June.

    • MP3 in Free Distros (Score:5, Informative)

      by xenocide2 ( 231786 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @02:35PM (#15462613) Homepage
      The fundamnetal problem is that MP3s are patented. As long as Ubuntu is dedicated to giving out free and liberated software, they'll be at odds with the patent holders who hold the right ensure that neither of those goals is possible. Recently there have been attempts to work within the patent holder's framework to provide something legal and acceptable, but the closest we have is Fluendo's licencing program [fluendo.com], which explicitly doesn't allow for redistribution, one of the key things in the GPL's operation. For example, Ubuntu can mail you a 6.06 CD containing the mp3 plugin, but it's legally questionable for you to redistribute those CDs to your friends. And MEPIS would certainly be in trouble, unless they also secured such a contract. Ubuntu represents it's distro as a "people should be able to modify and share changes" aka a Free Software distro. This contract goes against this ideal, and if MEPIS isn't aware of this contract, and chooses to modify Ubuntu in other ways, then Ubuntu's exposed the people they told could modify the software, people like they guy behind MEPIS, to hidden legal liabilities.
    • Ubuntu doesn't incorporate MP3 and other codecs as part of the distribution because of legal issues, but you can install support for MP3s and most of the other software you want that's excluded with a few clicks of the mouse by using EasyUbuntu [freecontrib.org].

  • Easy Dual Boot Install (Score:3, Interesting)

    by d3ik ( 798966 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:21PM (#15462295)
    I'm a Windows user who's been looking at Ubuntu for awhile. I had tried Fedora and Mandrake in the past, but I just wasn't impressed enough to switch.

    All I have to say is: wow! I burned the 'Desktop' CD, booted it up on my Thinkpad R52, and was able to play around in the OS to get familiar with the environment. Once I was satisfied that everything was running smooth (it saw all of my devices, including wireless, with no problem) all I had to do was click on the 'Install' icon on the desktop.

    The installer itself was excellent. Like I said having installed other distros in the past this graphical install *in a desktop environment* was excellent. The part that I had dreaded the most was setting up dual boot (I already had XP installed). The installer saw the XP partition (NTFS) and allowed me to resize it and install Ubuntu in the newly freed space (and automatically installed GRUB). This was absolutely beautiful functionality, and I think it will really make a great transitional tool for migrating us lame Windows users over to Linux.

  • Impressive (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ditoa ( 952847 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:25PM (#15462313)
    I am a [very] long term Windows user and Windows Admin for a large corporation witl 100,000+ desktops. I love Windows. It is a superb operating system for a corporate environment. Sure it can be a pain in the arse because of updates but its ability to be centrally managed, etc is awesome. There is nothing else that can compete with it on an enterprise level, not even the stunning OS X 10.4. However Ubuntu 6.06 is an incredible operating system. While I am a Windows user I have a lot of respect for a lot of other operating systems. Linux being one of them. Ubuntu is probably the most professional release I have ever used. It installed without a hitch on my 6 months old IBM test workstation. I am very very impressed and I take my hat off to the Ubuntu team. The delay was worth it. Easily. They [the Ubuntu team] have done an incredible job and you have to respect that. I could easily give a Ubuntu system to a new computer user and they be able to learn how to use it for general tasks just as fast as a Windows system. You only have to go to the terminal as much as you need to go to the registry in Windows so it isn't really a battle on ease of use anymore. Ubuntu has brought Linux on par with Windows in that regard. Ubuntu just need to push on hardware support so that if it fails it fails gracfully. X server critical errors need to be replaced with a more graceful drop down to 800x600z256 colours similar to what Windows does. Also the most important thing to get working (other than the graphical interface) is the network. Once you have the network up and running you can get any other driver you need to. Ubuntu worked fine with my network card but I know that it isn't perfect from reports I have read online. I hope that this is fixed in the next release (7.01?). In a nutshell. SUPERB.
  • On May 29th, two days before release, an ATI bug was introduced via the xorg driver that makes Dapper unstable on certain ATI based systems. In my own case this means that my G4 is now unusable. Just as a reminder, if you think you might be affected, don't upgrade.

    Just for reference, the forum post [ubuntuforums.org] and the bug report [launchpad.net].
    • Actually, it's bad for desktops, too. R2x0 chips on the desktop were affected in a different way when using the fglrx driver. I'm amazed at how fuX0r3d the ATI driver set became, and how quickly it went to being a mess.

      FWIW, this isn't just mindless bitching on my part; I'm subscribed to the relevant bugs and have confirmed not only a bug but also a fix (to the fglrx bug in question).

      These bugs are grave enough that I have no doubt the Ubuntu folks, with our help, will work on getting the regressions fixe

  • Xubuntu (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Distinguished Hero ( 618385 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @01:44PM (#15462395) Homepage
    More importantly (for me), the first official release of Xubuntu (Xfce) is out [xubuntu.org].
  • Hi all,

    I just bought an Acer 5670 Aspire laptop. I had to install the Dapper Drake beta initially as the ATI Radion X1400 high end card wasn't supported by Breezy Badger. The particular Broadcom ethernet wasn't supported either by Breezy Badger. But with the new version, everything works very well.

    After hacking FreeBSD and other Linux distros for years I got into a mode where I "just wanted to use" a computer and not have to be continually fooling with it to get an OS and apps to work. Ubuntu has been t

  • Broadcom Wireless works! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pherthyl ( 445706 ) on Saturday June 03, 2006 @03:56PM (#15462994)
    Finally!! For the first time my broadcom wireless networking card works with the open source driver! Follow this guide and it's easy: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=185174 [ubuntuforums.org]

    No more ndiswrapper, and now I can use the absolutely amazing knetworkmanager!

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