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Ubuntu 7.10 Now Available

Started by Donald Darden, October 22, 2007, 11:35:06 PM

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Donald Darden

Ubuntu has been updated and can now be downloaded at no charge off the Internet.  Like other distributions, you can easily locate a download site by first searching for it with a search engine like Google.  Not all sites are alike -- some default to a language other than English, and some are very slow either because of limited bandwidth or because they are getting too many requests at once.  Another factor is that some sites will download CD Burner Software first, to make it easy to burn the image to a CD.  However you can find and download that software separately, or use the software that came with your CD Burner.

Though not specifically stated at most of the sites, the new .ISO image gives you both a live CD and an install capability in one.  By live, we mean your PC can boot up into Ubuntu without having to install it to your hard drive, and give it a test drive.  Or you can install it to your hard drive in place of or in addition to any other OS currently installed.

Some people will like that Ubuntu boots up without a lot of cryptic messages, whereas others might prefer it otherwise.  The desktop gives you two toolbars, top and bottom.  The top one includes Applications, Places, and System.  Ubuntu defaults to the use of GNOME rather than KDE, which gives you a chance to try out both desktops as well (KNOPPIX defaults to KDE, so burn a CD of each if you like and alternate).

Windows users should feel very comfortable with GNOME, because the toolbars make it easy to find just about anything you might be looking for.  It is a very logical and clean workplace.  There were a lot more games listed than I found on KNOPPIX, and it also included menu support for Bluetooth, but KNOPPIX added a fair amount of Development listings to its desktop.  Both environments are highly configurable, so it is really a matter of personal choice, I suppose.  You don't like it; change it.

Donald Darden

Using WINE (Windows Emulator), you may be able to run programs that were written to run under Windows.  There is a new version available, and .DEB packages available for several Linux distributions, including the new Ubuntu 7.10 release.  You can find more information at this link: http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb

E.K.Virtanen

I was very excited when waiting ubuntu 7.10. After all in my use, Feisty 7.04 has been best OS i have ever used. Fast, stable, secure and very easy to use but after few days of using 7.10 i think waiting was not worth of it.
Feels like my computer is slower and more unstable. Naturally it might be up to that there were some problem at installing but cant confirm it.
Something funny should read here?

Donald Darden

As reported on the Knoppix board, I finally conceded that it needs more work.  The software that comes with it is a bit dated, and there is little in the way of available packages for it.  It apparently needs an update to the gcc software in order to perform a configure operation, necessary to build the current wine source code into the necessary install package.

So I am on the outlook for another distribution to weigh in the balance, but for the moment, I am switching my attention to the Ubuntu 7.10 release, which I had already downloaded and burned to CD.

Any decent install process has got to analyze your system, install the necessary drivers, and present you with choices that take into account how your hard drive is presently configured, or make the safe choices for you in going forward.  There is certainly contrast between Knoppix installer and the Ubuntu method, which is at least easier on the beginner.  But being easier isn't automatically better.

If you select the instart or install Ubuntu option, the first choice presented to you, then it will run the Live CD version and get you started.  You have an example folder on the desktop, and and install icon.  What could be simpler?  In fact, it requires you to use the double-click method of selectiing either, so most Windows users will feel right at home.

Ah, but as you work through the install process, you are presented with a menu as to where you want to install Ubuntu.  As I progressed this far over several attempts, the options varied.  Either it will offer to create a new partition out of available free space, with a slide bar to indicate how much of it to use, or offer to automatically use an entire drive and list the available drives (not partitions - actual drives), or offer to let you do it manually.

Since I have a number of partitions with other things on them, I had no choice but to go manual.  Then it listed and identified each partition.  In order to select a given partiton, you have to edit it and change its mount point to root (/).  You can optionally click on the box to have it reformatted, and you have a choice of file system formats available.  You also have to have or create a swap partition, but there is no format option for that. You just specify it as a swap.

If your CD drive gets an error, the install process will fail.  The notice that appears will give you some hints as to get around it.  I would also make another suggestion:  Make a couple of CDs initially, so that you can try another if the first one is bad.  There does not seem to be any way to recover from a failed install, except to start over.

You will be asked to pick a city to identify your time zone, then you will be asked some questions for your user account, and finally presented with a summation of the information gathered.  Note the Advance button in the lower right corner on the summation page.  This is where you specify where grub, the boot loader will be installed.  The default is (fd0), which is the floppy disk drive.  Which is fine, if you want to control access to the Uvuntu install by inserting the boot floppy into your PC.  Otherwise, you will probably want to specify the first hard drive if grup is to be your primary boot loader, or the root (/) partition where you installed Ubuntu if you want to use grub as your secondary boot loader.  In my case, I specified /dev/sdb1, which is the first partition (1) on the second (b) hard drive, which is the one I set up as root (/).  My NTLDR is already set up to boot a Linux distribution from that partition, so I did not even have to modify the boot.ini file on my C: drive.  And that had been modified previously with a free program called partboot that I got off the Internet.  All I have to do now is change the name I gave for this partition from Knoppix 5.1.1 to Ubuntu 7.10 in the boot.ini file, using an editor, and I will attend to that later.

Ubuntu's desktop  is somewhat different from Knoppix's, and it is not all about the theme, color and background.   Knoppix used KDE, and Ubuntu defaults to GNOME.  I'm not sure of the significant differences between the two, but Ubuntu presents a second toolbar at the top of the screen.  And the icons on that toolbar are very significant.  On the left, you have Applications, Places, and System, along with three icons, one being for Firefox.  On the lest is the user, then a tool for checking for updates, then another for checking for available drivers (including some that cost).  I used both, and got a number of updates, then a new driver for my video card.  That only took about 15 minutes.  Then I took on the challenge that had haunted me under Knoppix:  I decided to see if I could get my Canon PIXMA IP6000D printer to work.  Under System (top left) I found Administration, and under that I found Printing, and under that I found where I could attempt to add my printer.  I turned it on, it was successfully detected, and I selected it to search for a driver.  I then showed me a list of venders.  I chose Canon, and it listed all the Canon printers it knew of.  The IP6000D was not listed, so I tried the IP6700, which printed, but failed to print black and was to the wrong scale.  Then I tried the IP4000, which I believe came out about the same time, and it works better than the driver I have from Canon that I use under Windows.  I probably do not have access to the smart card features that the IP6000D has, but I'm not concerned with digital photography anyway.

So here in a half hour or so, I am sitting pretty.  That isn't too bad for a start.  When the update manager ran, it wanted a password, so I gave it the one I used for my user account (it never asked me for a root password when I did the install, so I figured I would just try that one).  It worked.

However, in terminal mode, I would expect to see some action when I type su (for super user), and I do:  A request for a password.  But what is the password?  It turns out that you don't get that.  Instead, if you want to do something that requires administrative priveleges, you precede the command with sudo, and when you press enter, you will be asked for a password.  Here you just use the one for your account, and presto! You have administrative priveleges for just that one command.  A lot of people find this convenient and probably better than the idea of uses becoming super users, then forgetting who they are (or the damage they can do as super user).   


E.K.Virtanen

#4
In ubuntu, first user has admin powers with hes/her password. This is bit different that other distros. Is it good or bad? Well, depends from who you are asking.
If you want continuos superuser priviliges, then type sudo -s and give your password.

[edit]
If you use sudo and re-use it in less than 10 minutes, ubuntu will not ask password again unless you close your terminal between of using sudo

[edit2]
Quote from: Donald Darden on October 23, 2007, 06:43:52 AM
Using WINE (Windows Emulator), you may be able to run programs that were written to run under Windows.  There is a new version available, and .DEB packages available for several Linux distributions, including the new Ubuntu 7.10 release.  You can find more information at this link: http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb


Wine is pretty powerfull tool if you really want/need to use some windows programs but i would not suggest to use it so much after all. Using linux programs except works better in linux but also teaches you how to use linux and it's programs. I doubt there is really much programs wich you can only get for windows. Naturally not the excactly same programs, but similar with what you get same result.
Something funny should read here?

Petr Schreiber

Hi,

just reporting it is possible to run on PII 400MHz, 320MB RAM, GeForce2 MX.

If you are not connected to net during installation, "localisation" of system is very very weak.
It is possible to add it later, with little bit more complicated process, but it works then.

Also 3D acceleration, at least for GF2, is not enabled by default.

Rest is nice, but I still have "unsure linux feeling" with this distribution, exactly like I had when experimenting with other linuxes 3-5 years ago. For example soundcard is detected, programs do not complain as when it was missing, but no sound goes out of it.

Rest is nice, like OpenOffice, Firefox and other "must haves" installed, but I cannot say Ubuntu could replace XPs for me.


Petr
AMD Sempron 3400+ | 1GB RAM @ 533MHz | GeForce 6200 / GeForce 9500GT | 32bit Windows XP SP3

psch.thinbasic.com

Donald Darden

I'm not ready to make a home under Linux either, but I have the feeling that if I try, it would not be that confining.  Sort of like renting a beach cottage for a week, and debating the idea of actually living at the beach year round.  There would be lots of unanswered questions remaining.

However, there is a gray area between the Windows and Linux world that says maybe a commute between the two is not only possible, but desireable.  I want to check out that possibility a bit more.  Is it really worth the effort, and are the results in tune to my needs?  Or do I lose much if I decide to just switch from one to the other?

You don't know until you try.  I thought of a problem the other day that I considered posing as a challenge to the math gurus among us, but realized that there were probably no formulas available that would fit the problem.  In a case like that, people are forced to experiment, then try to identify relationships that can be expressed mathematically, then use the new formulas to predict further behavior, and continue on until they establish all the correlations between the formula and real world behavour.  In other words, instead of being a quick and fun thing, you have to perform extensive tests and labor over the problem for a considerable time.  The details of the original challenge escape me at present, but it represents the difference between passing thought and blith statements, and getting down to established facts.  My experiences, reported here, then become a roadmap of my trip through that gray landscape.

Some might argue that a blog is a better place for this type of journey, but that would put me in an uncertain community of strangers, most of whom have no commonality with this subject.  Here I hope to be in a good crowd.  And besides, it did not start off as being a self-imposed task, but the idea that a number of people would contribute and share.  However, so far there has been little of that.  I do appreciate what has been contributed thus far though.

Kent Sarikaya

Donald, your writings inspired me to have a wild weekend of experimenting last weekend with many distros again. I even setup vmware with ubuntu, haiku and reactos and that is remaining for future playing as the mood strikes.

I have two reasons for wanting to learn linux. First, if Microsoft forces a version of Windows that I am repulsed by that I want an option. The second is for portable devices.
For instance, if you look at any windows based UMPC, they start at around $800 and are usually more like $1500 - $2000. Where as linux based devices are from $299 on up.
That is a substantial difference in pricing. This tells me that unless a windows based device that drops dramatically in price, I will be going with a linux based device for such purposes.

Also there are some new ultra low costs notebooks coming out and they are linux based. So keep up the good work and writing. Your documentation is being read if not responded to in an active manner.

http://www.asus.com.tw/news_show.aspx?id=7317
http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/spearhead/nanobook/

Charles Pegge


The analogy of operating systems being like different homes - commuting between them - is exactly how it feels. The commute in my case is a distance of 6 feet. MS Windows has the hard wooden chair, Mandriva has the comfy chair, so I have come to associate it with a more relaxed kind of computing. Also it feels a lot more secure and private. No unwelcome visits from Microsoft officials and various other busybodies interfering with my PC every few days or so, not to mention the criminal underworld of the Internet. So I have moved all my sensitive stuff like emails into the Linux box.

But I have not been tempted to venture far into the internals of Linux. I know just enough to get by, which somewhat limits what I can contribute here, other than to say that the KDE desktop suite and the Bash shell are wonderful rich environments and very comfortable to work in once you get used to them.



Donald Darden

After you install Ubuntu, you get access to any drive via the desktop.  This is something that Knoppix does, but also did from the Live CD.  And with the KDE Desktop on Knoppix, if I ventured to a different folder, I found I could select under Tools to go right into a terminal mode there.  But with Ubuntu, whenever I enter the terminal mode, I am at my home directory.  And I can't get a handle on how to access other folders not in my directory tree when in terminal mode.  That's a safeguard in Linux I know, but it does not give me full ownership of my PC, does it?

However, with Ubuntu, I can right click an .EXE file and tell it to open it with the Windows Emulator, and it does.  So I tried it with the CCEdit.exe, and it opened right up.  But it does not let me access any of the files or folders that I have in the same area.  With Knoppix, the CCEdit was able to fetch files in the same folder and access other folders as well.  There seems to be a different philosophy at work here.

I should mention that I first used the terminal mode to try this:  echo alias ls="ls --color=never -F" > .bashrc

Now what this should do is cause the entry between echo and > to be put in a file called .bashrc.  But when I did a ls command, I did not see a .bashrc file, though I did see a bashrc file without the leading period.  So I did a cp bashrc .bashrc, and I now had both.  Then i did a rm bashrc, and now only had a .bashrc file.  So I exited the terminal mode, then entered it again, and got a -F not found error.  I tried ls, and it only did part of what I asked, which was the --color option.  I exited the terminal mode and then used Applications/Accessories/Text Editor to start the text editor.  But I could not find the .bashrc file.  I finally just typed in the name .bashrc, and it opened right up.  The trouble was, the double quotes around the "ls --color=never -F" had disappeared.  So I manually inserted the double quotes, saved it, exited the editor, and went into terminal mode again.  This time the option to append a symbol to show the type of file was working, and the use of color for this purpose was suppressed.  Now I can easily read and identify the type of file without fighting the color issue.  You can use --classify instead of -F if you want.

The next thing I did was to do Applications/Add.Remove.  This gives you a long list of possible applications that you can choose from to download and install, and includes a rating list by other users as to how they evaluate them.  You go through and choose any that you want, and the process will automatically download and install them.  Some are pre-selected (these make up the standard Ubuntu distribution, including those for which there was no room on the CD, I suppose).  Wine is not included in this list, but you can get it separately.

Now the problem I have, is how to I negotiate drives and folders in the terminal mode?
This is a biggie to solve if you want to consider any form of integration between the Windows and Linux world.


E.K.Virtanen

Hi Donald.

Devices such as usb stick are at /media. So if you want to copy from your desktop to usb stick, it will be done like this.
cp /home/USER/Desktop/vaavipieni.png  /media/KINGSTON/

Now, hdd is in different place. You can figure out them by goin to console/terminal, and typing sudo gedit /etc/fstab
Simplest way is to create symbolic links to every hdd you are using. Remember, with linux you just cant copy something to C:\ :)
Something funny should read here?

Charles Pegge

Donald, the home directory problem might be resolved by checking out the Konsole Settings // Configure Konsole menu option. On the Session Panel, the Directory line should not contain anything.

Donald Darden

Yes, I did find the hard drives under /media, and I also found that a windows-compatable description of them is maintained under /disks.  I found where you can access the CD and DVD drives via the desktop. but you cannot use eject there to open the tray doors because they are not mounted, and you cannot mount them unless media is inserted, and you can't insert media unless you can get the door open.  You would think somebody would have seen the problem there, wouldn't you?

I finally used a terminal and checked for the possibility of a command such as eject using man (man eject), and sure enough, it exists.  I then went to /media and looked at possible device names.  I found names for both the CD and the DVD drives, but in trying all of them, the only door that would open was for the DVD drive.  Adequate, but not very satisfactory.  Some warts are showing, and I wanted that second distribution to compare to.  Having no better suggestions, and coming to realize that I might have given Knoppix short shift, I decided to reinstall it to another partition, and that is how I spent my evening.

Donald Darden

For reasons beyond my knowledge, Ubuntu decided that my system has SCSI drives rather than IDE drives.  That is why the partitions show up as sd__ rather than hd__.  This hasn't caused any problems yet, but they also show up as removable media rather than standard devices.  So in order to locate them on my system, I have to look under /media rather than /dev.

The CDRW and DVD drives to not show up in the desktop.  As I remember, they did when I was using Knoppix.  I did download some CD burning software, and calling one of them does show the devices as being available.  The main disadvantage is that I cannot open either the CDRW or DVD tray doors under Ubuntu.

-------------------------------------------------------- Later ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I found the same problem with Knoppix as described in the last paragraph.  I was able to create a link to a device
there, so I came back to Ubuntu and looked for a similar capability.  If you right click on the desktop, you will see the option to Create Launcher.  There, set the command to eject /media/cdrom0 or eject .media.cerom1, whatever is suitable in your case.  Name it something like Ekect CDRW Drive, and there you are.  Problem solved.

Unfortunately, Ubuntu failed to recognize my second drive as being a DVD-ROM drive.  I'd like to fix that, but right now I am not sure how.  I did not have a similar problem with Knoppix.  And I also found a way to update Knoppix to wine 0.9.48.  Plus, I found that Knoppix also gives you a wide range of additional packages to download and install.

So right now, I think that the two edges that Ubuntu have over Knoppix is (1) In selecting add-on packages, Ubuntu presents you with a user rating system and brief as to the package contents.  And (2), Ubuntu willl notify you automatically whenever updates are available for any of the installed packages.

Kent Sarikaya

Donald here is an interesting link. I haven't tried it, but it is step by step instructions for installing ubuntu studio version. Perhaps you will see something in there to help.
http://www.howtoforge.com/the_perfect_desktop_ubuntustudio_7.10

You need to scroll down a bit to see the step by steps.