Wow JM that was a mouthful but definitely a good preview of the upcoming Hoary release. You noticed my laptop last saturday had Hoary running - it was just a dist-upgrade from Warty after changing the sources so I really have no idea how the installation of Hoary went, but it is very similar to Warty. After all, why fix it if its not broken.
> The first thing that impressed me was the boot help screens > (accessible from pressing F1 through F10). Each screen had really > useful information. For instance, there were two screens listing > commonly known problematic hardware and the linux kernel options you > had to pass to get them to work or be detected. There was a screen > listing information about Ubuntu, as well as the four possible setups > you could run (desktop or server installation, both either at the > 'default' or 'expert' level). There was also a screen of minimum > hardware requirements needed for Ubuntu. Very similar to the Ubuntu LiveCD options at start up. > One thing that should surprise a lot of people: on Ubuntu, you are not > asked to provide a root password. In fact, the root account doesn't > have a password (/etc/shadow has '*' in there) and can't be used to > login directly. However, the first account that the installer prompted > and created for you is added to the 'adm' group (among other groups), > and /etc/sudoers allows 'adm' to run sudo as root for all commands. > Which means you can simply 'sudo su -' to get a root shell. (I believe > most of the GUI tools that need root are configured to launch gksudo > instead of gksu). If you really want a root password, you can always > 'sudo passwd' and type in a new password. This sudo thing is actually explained a bit further here: http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/RootSudo In a work place setting, the root account is probably the least taken care of with regards to password maintenance. In an audit trail, root usage is very vague; sudo can be easily traced > A note on the Ubuntu package repositories: Ubuntu apparently has two > repositories in general: the supported packages repository and the > 'universe' repository. Unlike Debian, there isn't a 'main' or > 'contrib' per se; 'main' roughly maps to the supported packages, and > 'contrib' roughly maps to the 'universe' packages. AFAICT, there > aren't any nonfree packages. nonfree packages are up to the user to add (Marillat, etc.) since Ubuntu only aims to have free packages in it. > Anyway, I got ratpoison set up properly, and am now running a similar > desktop configuration as with my Slackware installation. ratpoison intrigues me..i will probably try this today and see if I can tolerate such an environment. I wouldn't say "harsh" probably "challenging" would be a good term. > I did give the GNOME desktop a more-than-cursory glance though. Hoary > has GNOME 2.10, IIRC, and the chrome is purty. I'll probably try it > out one of these days, just for comparison's sake-- my Slackware > installation only has GNOME 2.4, and a semi-ept install at that. GNOME 2.10 is quite fast with X.org in my experience. I guess you haven't tried installing OOo2 (milestone release). It's also included in the repositories. > The choice of Debian as a base, I think, is a big win for Ubuntu. The > package management is great -- the configuration and setup was > painless, mostly due to the package management. If you noticed, under the Systems Menu, there is an entry called Ubuntu Update Manager. This is just a frontend of a frontend (Synaptic), but Update Manager gives you a nice overview of what software gets to be upgraded/installed/removed after an update of the repositories. > Although the Ubuntu package repositories aren't as extensive as > Debian's (and that's quite an understatement), the packages are pretty > much what most users will be downloading. Some people actually use Debian repositories to get other stuff. Like codecs, libdvdcss2, etc. > I heartily suggest you give it a try. Now if only the CDs would arrive > soon... so I can critique the packaging. ;) So you sigining up for the LoCo Team? *wink* -- Cheers! Jerome Gotangco Ubuntu Local Community (LoCo) Philippine Team http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/PhilippineTea Lok'tar Ogar! http://loktarogar.blogspot.com -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List plug@lists.q-linux.com (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
