Ubuntu 8.10

[kinmel]

The new release of Ubuntu 8.10 is out today, it is already available from the Cononical's server and will soon be available on the mirror servers too

if you have never tried it and don't want to do a normal install, have a look at the Wubi version which installs safely from windows and can be easily removed too.

[Rik]

You'd better gird your loins ready to answer questions, Alan.  

[somanyholes]

the first question being what is a shell (for when things don't work) lol

[Rik]

I thought it was a 'facade' company used to conceal illegal activities?

[kinmel]

You'd better gird your loins ready to answer questions, Alan.  

The Ubuntu fansites have the answers to questions you and I cannot even imagine !

Ubuntu works pretty well out of the box nowadays and is certainly no harder to tweak than Windows, and the learning curve is no steeper.  

The biggest advantage with Ubuntu is that the community is full of fanatics who will happily spend time talking you through your problems.  Bit like IDNetters really  

[Rik]

That bad, huh?

[somanyholes]

ubuntu really has done wonders for linux in the mainstream world. Shame the full on linux bod's don't see it that way

[Rik]

Elitism rules?

[kinmel]

the first question being what is a shell (for when things don't work) lol

Just the Unix equivalent of Window's Command Line Interpreter, but now that Ubuntu is stable, not people need to bother with it.

[somanyholes]

the shell question was a joke mate

Just the Unix equivalent of Window's Command Line Interpreter, but now that Ubuntu is stable, not people need to bother with it.

don't quite believe you there, one day maybe............

[kinmel]

the shell question was a joke mate

don't quite believe you there, one day maybe............

[petethegeek]

Elitism rules?

Somewhat coincidentally I happened to be reading this article earlier on today - Unix as Literature by Thomas Scoville. It's only short but quite thought provoking and still relevent, some ten years later, to this very discussion.

[Rik]

An interesting take on the issue, Pete. Nice find. 

[john]

The biggest advantage with Ubuntu is that the community is full of fanatics who will happily spend time talking you through your problems.

So one can expect to have problems then ? 

[Sebby]

I keep wanting to give Ubuntu a try on my new(ish) machine, but because my hard drives are in a RAID 0 array, it makes it too difficult.

[esh]

I always smile when the new Ubuntu comes out, because it means at least two of my offices co-workers will be cursing for the next week. The joys of 'dist-upgrade'...

If you're looking to install onto RAID then I can give you a hand if needs be. I just did a Linux install with GRUB on a RAID1/RAID1/RAID5 configuration, but that wasn't Ubuntu mind you.

[Sebby]

Thanks very much, esh - I might just take you up on that.

[uxbod]

Ran 8.04 and did not get on with it so switched back to Gentoo.  Re-installed my T61P last night with 8.10 and very very pleased Everything works out of the box for me.

[mynnydd]

I am running Ubunto 8.10; coming from Vista.
8.10 even runs usb dongles (mobile internet) without ANY problems.

[kinmel]

I am running Ubunto 8.10; coming from Vista.
8.10 even runs usb dongles (mobile internet) without ANY problems.

It's magic I tell you, magic 

[Glenn]

Black or white?

[Steve]

I now have a spare machine (built last weekend from scrap) its running vista(seemed an appropriate OS  ) at the moment if I want to install ubuntu 8.10 or indeed any other OS should I set up a multi boot loader or use something like virtual box. I d love to try running a virtual machine just wondering what the downsides are? presumably need plenty of ram?

[Sebby]

I now have a spare machine (built last weekend from scrap) its running vista(seemed an appropriate OS  )

Scrap OS for a scrap machine, eh?

[kinmel]

Ubuntu can run inside windows using Wubi

It installs into an ordinary windows folder and provides dual boot.

The real beauty of doing it this way as a trial is it is easy to completely un-install.

There is a mass of Wubi info on the net, but start here

U.8.10 will run in 256 ram  

[Steve]

Thanks Alan I will give this a go seems fairly straight forward. Just wondering what the downside is of installing it this way as opposed to utilising another partition or harddrive.

[kinmel]

Thanks Alan I will give this a go seems fairly straight forward. Just wondering what the downside is of installing it this way as opposed to utilising another partition or harddrive.

There is NO downside !

With a Wubi install, Ubuntu is the only O.S. running when selected at boot up and so you get the "full" experience for your hardware, any P.C. that runs Vista at all will run U8.10 brilliantly

[Cookie]

If all you want to do is try out a different operating system, I'd recommend using Virtualbox from Sun.  It's a free download from http://www.virtualbox.org/.  I'm using it to run Fedora 9 as a guest operating system from Windows Vista host (with no problems so far ).  One feature I find particularly useful is the ability to take a snapshot before applying patches to Fedora - this allows me to role back any changes if it all goes pear shaped  .

Martin Cookson.

[Lance]

Thanks for that, Martin! Useful advice. 

[kinmel]

If all you want to do is try out a different operating system, I'd recommend using Virtualbox from Sun.  It's a free download from http://www.virtualbox.org/.  I'm using it to run Fedora 9 as a guest operating system from Windows Vista host (with no problems so far ).  One feature I find particularly useful is the ability to take a snapshot before applying patches to Fedora - this allows me to role back any changes if it all goes pear shaped  .

Martin Cookson.

Thats's good advice if the PC hardware is not stressed by Vista alone, but you will not get the full performance if your PC is struggling to run Vista and Virtualbox and Ubuntu, all in a less than ideal environment.

[Steve]

Was going to try Wubi tonight but she who must had other ideas

[Cookie]

Thats's good advice if the PC hardware is not stressed by Vista alone, but you will not get the full performance if your PC is struggling to run Vista and Virtualbox and Ubuntu, all in a less than ideal environment.

Good point - although if the PC is struggling to run Vista and nothing else, perhaps it's time to downgrade to XP .

[kinmel]

P

Good point - although if the PC is struggling to run Vista and nothing else, perhaps it's time to downgrade to XP .

Personally, if I only wanted to test an update I would test the update inside Virtualbox on an Linux host. 

At least you would know the problems were not caused by Windows 

[Steve]

P
Personally, if I only wanted to test an update I would test the update inside Virtualbox on an Linux host. 

At least you would know the problems were not caused by Windows 

So in this scenario you have the host and guest possibly as the same OS? and the guest is an update checker before applying them to the host?

[kinmel]

So in this scenario you have the host and guest possibly as the same OS? and the guest is an update checker before applying them to the host?

Yes,, but it is all a bit extreme and I imagine very few non-commercial installations are that serious about update testing.

After all none of us do it when updating Windows and I trust Linux updates more than those for Windows.

Ubuntu's modules are under constant development and are released as soon as ready, so Ubuntu and it's applications have a constant stream of updates between the 6 monthly upgrade versions and virtually all of the incremental changes have actually been on machines for months.

I know I sound like an Ubuntu fanboy, but I am not !

All my machines, except my servers, first boot to Windows XP, the system I am most comfortable working with, however Ubuntu is set to dual boot on 3 PCs and i am trying to master Ubuntu without falling back to it's command line - that's a work in progress 

[Steve]

Thanks Alan,have you used Wubi? I understand it runs on a virtual disk allegedly with minimal performance hit.I see you can then move this installation to its own partition etc if you wish.

[kinmel]

Thanks Alan,have you used Wubi? I understand it runs on a virtual disk allegedly with minimal performance hit.I see you can then move this installation to its own partition etc if you wish.

Yes 2 of my pcs have Ubuntu through Wubi;  a Wubi install avoids the need for disk partitioning and is therefore the best way for people to try it out.

There is no performance hit and many people always run Ubuntu from their Wubi setup. There is probably no gain from changing to a traditional installation

I would definitely start with a Wubi install

[Steve]

 

[Sebby]

I'm going to give this Wubi a try tonight.

[Steve]

Same here! Not expecting too much of a distraction from the football.

[Sebby]

I gave it a try, but unfortunately, software RAID is not support yet. On the forum it says a version that supports it should be out in October.

[Steve]

I managed to install it without any issues despite the football yes we won 2-1. Now what do I do with it? Tried to find my WHS shares can't see them at the moment who's hardy heron, samba and gutsy. its a whole new ball game.

I will say it one thing it feels no quicker than vista

[Sebby]

I always did find Ubuntu slow.

Hardy Heron is the name for Ubuntu 8.04 I think, and Gutsy Gibbon for Ubuntu 7.10. Samba... have a look here.

[Steve]

I was after all using SAMBA to view my network shares,succeeded with vista and xp but not the whs probably something to do with users and permissions but it does not produce a logon prompt either. I will have to try and debug this its a whole new world, slackware gentoo what next.

[kinmel]

I will have to try and debug this its a whole new world,

A whole new world of hurt 

Takes you right back to the first time you saw Windows.

They say the 10th install goes very smoothly 



Welcome to Ubuntu, you will enjoy the challenge of mapping your new world.

[Steve]

Well I am now on the 3rd install of ubuntu 8.1. I decided to give ubuntu its own hard drive. Uninstalled in a flash and installed EasyBCD as the boot manager in Vista.. Should have read the instructions at this stage.
Restarted with ubuntu live cd and installed flawlessly however managed to alter the MBR of vista by putting something call grub or whatever on the wrong drive.

However back into vista restored vista MBR using EasyBCD deleted the ubuntu partitions on the other hard drive and started again. Read the instructions this time, partitioned the intended drive manually including a swap partition and told it where to put grub this time.

Restarted in vista and told Easybcd where to look for Linux,and dual boot Vista and Ubuntu sorted. I could have left it as is after the second install but wanted to use Easybcd as a vista multiboot loader

Only annoying issue at present is not being able to browse WHS shares from ubuntu. I can access them but have to type in the full path i.e smb://whs-server/music. I think?? its a known bug. gvfs?

[Rik]

I need subtitles. 

[Steve]

I need to get back to work!!!

However its very user friendly unlike MS i.e media codecs no annoying unsupported file prompts. It goes and looks for a codec pack on the internet and asks you if you would like to download it.

[Rik]

Work!!! That word normally attracts a ban, Steve. 

[Sebby]

I know what you're saying, Steve, but I don't know the answer!

[kinmel]

Only annoying issue at present is not being able to browse WHS shares from ubuntu. I can access them but have to type in the full path i.e smb://whs-server/music. I think?? its a known bug. gvfs?

I don't use WHS but a look round found this post elsewhere ...

How are you mounting the share?  I mount my WHS shares all the time from Linux boxes and have never had a problem.  You are mounting the share and not the D: drive directly right?  The command I use is:

mount -t -cifs -o username=<username>,password=<password> //<ipaddress>/Music /mnt/music

Of course the /mnt/music directory has to be created first.  Also if you have DNS working or have modified your hosts file you could use the name in place of the IP address.

I have no idea if that helps, or is even coherent

[JB]

Alan,

I used to do this on linux using the 'alias' feature. Basically you can add 'alias' commands to your start up script so the whole line you typed could be aliased to, for example, 'mount_c', which you would type when you wanted to mount that share.

OK, it's not as snazzy as a GUI but it gets the job done.

HTH.

[Steve]

Thanks Alan, I did find something similar earlier, I can mount a whs share by  typing the full pathname in the whatsit  and the entering the appropriate username and password and a "shortcut" to that share appears on the desktop. It's a shame I can't save it as a shortcut (I probably can but haven't discovered how yet).

If I explore xp and vista pc's on my network from Ubuntu I have no problem browsing their shares and subdirectories.

[Steve]

Thanks Alan, I did find something similar earlier, I can mount a whs share by  typing the full pathname in the whatsit  and the entering the appropriate username and password and a "shortcut" to that share appears on the desktop. It's a shame I can't save it as a shortcut (I probably can but haven't discovered how yet).

If I explore xp and vista pc's on my network from Ubuntu I have no problem browsing their shares and subdirectories.

I think this may hold the answer?

Edit; Wish I understood what the hell it meant though

[kinmel]

ooooooooooh, that all sounds painful

[Steve]

I agree, much easy just to type the full path at least the mount stays on the desktop for the whole of the session. However probably worth a shot,it would be nice to have my WHS music folder automatically available on startup.

[kinmel]

I passed your prob to someone and they recommend you read THIS and then if necessary post in that forum, or in #ubuntu (or #ubuntu-uk) on the freenode irc network

[Steve]

Thanks again Alan I feel slightly reassured that I was heading in the right direction with CIFS