Ubuntu is amazing!

[Sgood1971]

Originally posted by Sepero
Something that might be even MORE user friendly is if someone wrote a script or program that automatically installed multimedia support.

One prog that auto installed multimedia, Java, Flash, etc. No configuring at all. Bingo! Now that's user friendly; that's the power of Linux! I would love to see that.

That was what I was trying to say in my previous post. There are actually 2 scripts, 1 for warty and 1 for hoary. you can find them on the Ubuntu forums. My only beef is that they aren't sticky where they are easy for people to find. (Or at least they weren't when I set mine up a few weeks ago.) I don't remember if they do Flash or not, but they do everything else.

[Sgood1971]

Correction, they are sticky now.

Here's the link for the script. If you have problems, read through the post as many have been solved.

[Sepero]

Originally posted by hard candy
Will not happen, proprietary software involved. Windows and Macs make you download and install all that themselves, and they can afford licenses if they wanted.

Why would you say that? It's nonsense.

GPL only prevents the combined distribution of Free and Non-Free Software. It doesn't prevent autoinstallation at a later time. This is per user discretion.

Much thanks for the link SGood.

[Hayl]

Originally posted by Sepero
Why would you say that? It's nonsense.

GPL only prevents the combined distribution of Free and Non-Free Software. It doesn't prevent autoinstallation at a later time. This is per user discretion.

Much thanks for the link SGood.

the GPL doesn't block it but potentially the license of the software/plugin/whtatever being installed _does_ block it.

For example,,, in gentoo you can not emerge the sun java jre/sdk, etc. because the sun licenses on those products prohibit it.

[Sepero]

Originally posted by Hayl
the GPL doesn't block it but potentially the license of the software/plugin/whtatever being installed _does_ block it.

For example,,, in gentoo you can not emerge the sun java jre/sdk, etc. because the sun licenses on those products prohibit it.

I see. I didn't know that about Sun Java. I've heard that Gentoo does allow emerging of other proprietary software, so that would likely make it a result of Sun's licensing and not the GPL.

Though, I wonder if the Gentoo devs might be just taking a little bit extreme (Debian-ish) Free Software stance on the issue. When the user is in complete control, it is a highly trivial difference between:
'voluntary manual install'
and
'voluntary auto install'.

Essentially, a script IS a manual installation. The only difference is that a script is a manual version that has been 'recorded' earlier in time.

[MorphiusFaydal]

Originally posted by Hayl
tFor example,,, in gentoo you can not emerge the sun java jre/sdk, etc. because the sun licenses on those products prohibit it.

actually, you can, but you have to manually download the packages from sun and then put them in /usr/portgae/distfiles

[Malkosha]

I'm trying Ubuntu and I don't get it ... what I mean is I don’t get the "it just works" thing.

While I understand the philosophy of only using free software, which precludes the use of Java, flash etc, it makes the "works out of the box" scenario untrue. Yes, you can load these things in, but you can do that in any distro. Mepis, IMO, is the only Deb clone that I know of that can make the claim “works out of the box” because it really does work out of the box including the 3D drivers for both ATI and Nvidia cards. Noobs like me don’t give a rats butt about philosophy; we want something that really works as advertised.

Also, gnome is sad when it comes to usability. While moving around in gnome is a no branier, it is horrible in the simplest of ways. For instance, I used apt-get to download some games for the family and guess what ... they never showed up on the menu. This is strictly a gnome thing because their menu system has changed and some of the older (read most) of the packages don't understand it. Not having to manually install programs to the menu after an install is stuff that KDE has down to a science. I thought about using Kubuntu, but I’ve heard that it’s still based on their gnome system with KDE 3.4 added on and I’ve heard some other negative things about it as well. For instance … no firefox? Weird for a new distro if you ask me.

Ubuntu isn't a bad distro, in fact it’s very fast and smooth, but it’s hardly the greatest in the land. Even now I'm looking for something that "just works" and doesn't have the gnome interface in it ... or at least has a decent KDE build attached. Except for Mepis, which doesn't have the source or headers available in their 3.3 build (which I need to install cisco vpn) I haven't found it yet. I guess I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.

Oh how I wish that FC3 had a better apt/yum than what they do.

[Sgood1971]

Originally posted by Malkosha
Except for Mepis, which doesn't have the source or headers available in their 3.3 build (which I need to install cisco vpn) I haven't found it yet. I guess I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.

Source and headers are available, they are named different and I can't remember the name off the top of my head, but check the mepis and/or mepislovers forums. If you search around, the answer is there.

[Malkosha]

Originally posted by Sgood1971
Source and headers are available, they are named different and I can't remember the name off the top of my head, but check the mepis and/or mepislovers forums. If you search around, the answer is there.

Ah! The old "seek and ye shall find" thing.

ThX!!

[Syngin]

Has anyone used Ubuntu as primarily a server? I'm looking for a Debian-based distro to use as a server but, occasionally as a desktop (g/f needs inet access occasionally and is always kicking me off my main system :P)

My main criteria:

1) Minimal bloat: I'm a big fan of a bare minimal system from the start and then going from there. I've tried Libranet before and liked it apart from the bloat.

2) Good hardware detection (monitor detection if possible) This monitor I was going to use is an old 17" and I know nothing about its specs except that it'll do 1024x768.

3) X-Windows installs easily.

I'd go with just Debian Sarge except that the last 2 have presented problems in the past.

What's access like to the Ubuntu apt sources? I hear its a nightmare if you try mixing Ubuntu / normal Debian packages?

[Sgood1971]

Originally posted by Malkosha
Ah! The old "seek and ye shall find" thing.

ThX!!

LOL Yes

I had more time, so I searched Mepislovers and found this link which is dealing with installing VMware, but the source and headers are still needed.

There is no kernel-source-2.6.10 package for the mepis kernel as far as I know. It's a generic one.

and

To get the kernel headers for the mepis one, apt-get install kernel-headers-2.6.10 and then open terminal and type su to become root then type: ln -s /usr/src/kernel-headers-2.6.10 /usr/src/linux

hth

[bigmac99]

Just wanted to stop and say that after installing Suse 8.x, 9.0, 9.1, Novell Linux Desktop, etc...that I have finally found Ubuntu! I could not make Suse/NLD recognize my sound card, play movies, etc. But, with Ubuntu in less than 15 minutes using the ubuntu starters guide (www.ubuntuguide.org), I was able to play movies, listen to music, etc. It's great. It's nice to move away from a rpm based distro to apt-get.

I have ordered some of the cd's and will be passing them around to whoever will take one.

-Charles

[MorphiusFaydal]

Originally posted by Syngin
Has anyone used Ubuntu as primarily a server? I'm looking for a Debian-based distro to use as a server but, occasionally as a desktop (g/f needs inet access occasionally and is always kicking me off my main system :P)

My main criteria:

1) Minimal bloat: I'm a big fan of a bare minimal system from the start and then going from there. I've tried Libranet before and liked it apart from the bloat.

2) Good hardware detection (monitor detection if possible) This monitor I was going to use is an old 17" and I know nothing about its specs except that it'll do 1024x768.

3) X-Windows installs easily.

I'd go with just Debian Sarge except that the last 2 have presented problems in the past.

What's access like to the Ubuntu apt sources? I hear its a nightmare if you try mixing Ubuntu / normal Debian packages?

Knoppix HD install perhaps?

[Rinias]

Hi-

So I've installed and used Ubuntu for a while now on my HP Pavilion zv5430us and I have to say that I am not surprised by the outcome.

Ubuntu sucks, from my point of view. No, let me rephrase- I think that Ubuntu x86_64 sucks. I was really happy in the beginning- everything seemed to go smoothly. It gave a great first impression, but now it is leaving a sour taste in my mouth.

I need to erase it, just get it the hell off my harddrive. Slack 10.0 upgraded with only swaret to Slack current was better. And it's only 32-bit. Even with all the crap it gave me when trying to compile programs I liked it ten times more.

I dunno, but it just seems like a crappy x86_64 distro. From what I can tell the normal x86 is great- and I've seen enough examples to imagine that it is not bad.

My problems are that it is absolutely awful for movie playback (AWFUL), the audio is a pain in the a$$ (alsa error messages screw everything up and then you can't choose the options you want), ndiswrapper- which installs nicely and tells me that things are ok won't run (it did on other distros- I even had the broadcom soft led lighting up!), synaptic is trash except for being useful as a search tool. Ubuntu update is a G-D joke- you hit apply or install or whatever and it thinks and then gives up. What kinda crap is that? I have a list three miles long of things that need to be "upgraded" and refuse to do so.

I can go, but I am sick of it. Nothing stays the way you want it to- I install the Nvidia driver perfectly (from the Nvidia site). I restart a few times (to use Windows cause I can't do what I want in Ubuntu or cause ubuntu had some sort of mem leak and I had to reboot) and then Nvidia is broken. Then it won't install right. So I uninstall and try to use the ubuntu package. Doesn't have an nvidia driver. What the hell is going on?

I'm sick of it, I'm gonna look for something else. I can't wait for Debian64 (I don't understand how it is "out" yet there's no .iso, or rather I can't find one...

I'm really disappointed cause I was really excited... and I think that if an "experienced" Slack user can't figure it out, it's not worth figuring.

@ +

[Sepero]

Originally posted by Rinias
I'm sick of it, I'm gonna look for something else. I can't wait for Debian64 (I don't understand how it is "out" yet there's no .iso, or rather I can't find one...

Just so you know, this image is of "testing", and is regenerated weekly:
http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/weekly...-1.iso.torrent

PS.
I know it can be difficult at first to navigate the Debian website, so if you'd like to to know how I got this link:

• www.debian.org
• Click link on left side "CD ISO images"
• Click link "Download CD images with BitTorrent"
• Click link "Official bittorrent files"
• Go in the folder "ia64/"