Installing Ubuntu

[EUIX]

Everything should be under /mnt, if not then the media is not mounted, I can't remember the command off the top of my head but a quick google search for "mounting cdroms in linux" will get it for you.

 

Boy I haven't been here in forever. Joined 2004...

[Gorgon]

I joined 3 days after you.

luls.

[samm]

One thing that has befuddled me is how the mini navigator you get when you open a file from within an application, for instance VLC player, you can't locate the physical drives, all you get is the file system where you can open a 'my documents' type folder.

You can also go further up, say /. If you have patience and no one else answers, I can offer you a screenshot tomorrow.

[Darth Tratious]

its been years since i have used linux i don't even know what distros exist anymore although its nice to see ubuntu still around i guess that means debian still exists?

Edited April 21, 2009 by Darth Tratious

[neckthrough]

More so in the 64 bit version of Linux there are a lot of issues, if you don't want problems with flash especially, go with 32-bit.

I'll second that, Flash has been a real nuisance on the 64-bit install I'm running on my mediacenter, but it works right out the box on a 32-bit install.

[taks]

its been years since i have used linux i don't even know what distros exist anymore although its nice to see ubuntu still around i guess that means debian still exists?

i think so. not sure since most of what i've used is either red hat or fedora. red hat at the office because the tools we use aren't supported for any other system, and i prefer fedora for any box that doesn't require fedora, particularly at home. of course, i also have a gentoo at the office, which i curse daily (it is different enough to be confusing and i refuse to learn because i plan on wiping it soon). i haven't used linux at home for a while, however.

 

taks

[taks]

if you don't want problems with flash especially, go with 32-bit.

the gurus i work with won't even attempt to install flash, 32-bit or 64-bit, period. i believe that is because many (if not most) security holes that have been uncovered in linux OSes ultimately have something to do with flash apps. if they happen to come across a website the requires flash, oh well.

 

I particularly like how you have to reinstall nvidia drivers every time you update the kernel, not a big deal, but still annoying.

drove me nucking futs, too. however, if you are using your box for business purposes (well, business that doesn't require high-end 3D rendering), nvidia graphics solutions and drivers really aren't even necessary. no loss for me in particular, at least, not at the office.

 

taks

Edited April 21, 2009 by taks

[Humodour]

More so in the 64 bit version of Linux there are a lot of issues, if you don't want problems with flash especially, go with 32-bit. I have had a lot of problems with Maple classic worksheets the Java Gui works okay but when you need to do intensive computation its too tedious, and I have never gotten Mathematica working. That said Linux does have an excellent analysis suite that would otherwise cost big $$$$ on Windows like, the Linux clone of Origin which is totally free but will cost you a pretty penny otherwise. Then there are printing issues and issues with fonts because some are propriety and burning software K3B is good but there are problems out of the box with burning mp3's into audio cds and the like. Ubuntu is relatively good for most of the stuff but I run Fedora 10 with xfce and its a pain to get everything running. I never yum update, because every time I do some piece of crap stops working. I particularly like how you have to reinstall nvidia drivers every time you update the kernel, not a big deal, but still annoying.

 

OK, 64-bit problems conceded, but last I heard that was a similar situation for 64-bit Windows (or has that all been patched up now?).

 

Ubuntu fixes a steady stream of problems each update. For example, with 9.04, tablets are auto-detected and configured out of the box now like every other peripheral, which is a blessing. 9.04 also comes with a big upgraded burning package called Brasero which rivals Alcohol and Nero (though I think K3B is KDE, right, so you might not get it?)

 

As for fonts - well, the free replacement seems fairly decent. I just download the proprietary ones from the package manager though. But this is similar to codecs and stuff - sure, they aren't installed by default, but nor are they on Windows. So many people think what the OEM puts on their computer is part of Windows, but doing a Windows install yourself is an eye-opener.

 

Last 2 times I've installed XP on computers, it hasn't detected the soundcard, network card, or wireless card, which caused no end of headaches, especially since I obviously couldn't fetch drivers off the net.

 

Ultimately a lot of the problem is just there is so much variation in distro and relatively little standardization, solutions to technical problems mostly rely on spending an afternoon combing through technical support for Linux forum posts using google.

 

Which is why I'm glad Ubuntu is killing all the other Linux distros while standardising certain practices. Variety and competition are good, but I think that between BSD, Solaris, Apple, and Windows, enough of that exists already that we don't need Linux competing with itself.

[neckthrough]

I particularly like how you have to reinstall nvidia drivers every time you update the kernel, not a big deal, but still annoying.

drove me nucking futs, too. however, if you are using your box for business purposes (well, business that doesn't require high-end 3D rendering), nvidia graphics solutions and drivers really aren't even necessary. no loss for me in particular, at least, not at the office.

If you use Ubuntu's standard repository kernels as well as the auto-detected "restricted" Nvidia drivers from the respository, then the update process automatically does everything for you.

[Gorgon]

One thing that has befuddled me is how the mini navigator you get when you open a file from within an application, for instance VLC player, you can't locate the physical drives, all you get is the file system where you can open a 'my documents' type folder.

You can also go further up, say /. If you have patience and no one else answers, I can offer you a screenshot tomorrow.

I press the '/' button, or type it into a command line..There are up and down arrows but they don't lead anywhere that shows the drives like the system dropdown menu. Maybe it's just that one application. Edited April 21, 2009 by Gorgon

[taks]

If you use Ubuntu's standard repository kernels as well as the auto-detected "restricted" Nvidia drivers from the respository, then the update process automatically does everything for you.

i would never use ubuntu.

 

taks

[Humodour]

If you use Ubuntu's standard repository kernels as well as the auto-detected "restricted" Nvidia drivers from the respository, then the update process automatically does everything for you.

i would never use ubuntu.

 

taks

 

Well there's your problem.

 

One thing that has befuddled me is how the mini navigator you get when you open a file from within an application, for instance VLC player, you can't locate the physical drives, all you get is the file system where you can open a 'my documents' type folder.

You can also go further up, say /. If you have patience and no one else answers, I can offer you a screenshot tomorrow.

I press the '/' button, or type it into a command line..There are up and down arrows but they don't lead anywhere that shows the drives like the system dropdown menu. Maybe it's just that one application.

 

Um. Ubuntu automatically mounts all drives, partitions and external storage. However, for internal drives/partitions, I often have to explore them (open as a folder) once at the start of each session for it to mount, but it will appear under 'Places' for you to do that easily.

 

Assuming you've done that, go to /media and look for 'disk' or whatever the name of your drive is.

 

If you're at command line, type:

 

cd /

cd /media

ls

 

And that will display all disks available.

[taks]

Well there's your problem.

any OS that is more user friendly is necessarily less powerful. i don't use linux to play games or have fun. i use linux to develop signal processing systems. at one point red hat was the only NSA approved linux distribution for carrying out the types of missions i'm interested in (and fedora/red hat are essentially the same minus support).

 

taks

[neckthrough]

Well there's your problem.

any OS that is more user friendly is necessarily less powerful. i don't use linux to play games or have fun. i use linux to develop signal processing systems. at one point red hat was the only NSA approved linux distribution for carrying out the types of missions i'm interested in (and fedora/red hat are essentially the same minus support).

 

taks

I wholeheartedly disagree with your assertion that "more userfriendly == necessarily less powerful". What's the difference between Ubuntu and any other distro? Distros are just convenient starting points. You can build up any Linux system any way you want to. You can argue that the set of default packages that come on a Redhat distro suits your needs better than Ubuntu's default set. Or that you prefer the yum repositories to the apt repositories. Or that you dislike Ubuntu's use of proprietary blobs such as the NV driver (which you can choose not to install anyway).

 

The entire point of GNU/Linux is that you can build and install anything the hell you want to. Ubuntu is no more and no less powerful than any other Linux distro. It's just a very nicely put-together package that appeals to Linux newcomers as much as it appeals to more serious users.

[taks]

I wholeheartedly disagree with your assertion that "more userfriendly == necessarily less powerful".

obviously you've never done any embedded programming. this is a well-known paradigm at any rate, for just about anything. user friendliness generally requires taking away some measure of the control offered to the user in order to make it easier to use. the control may still exist, but it is going to be put under the hood, so to speak, and harder to access.

 

It's just a very nicely put-together package that appeals to Linux newcomers as much as it appeals to more serious users.

it doesn't appeal to embedded programmers nor does it appeal to the NSA. it certainly does not appeal to major tool developers (software tools in my business) as they almost all require you use red hat if you want your support contract honored.

 

i've made these points clear in my posts, try to respect that in light of the fact you clearly have no experience with such things.

 

taks

 

PS: until the last few years, VxWorks was actually the primary embedded OS. it wasn't until real-time linux kernels began appearing that developers began to switch since VxWorks is incredibly expensive to deploy on high volume projects.

Edited April 22, 2009 by taks

[taks]

i should add, fedora has better support for the powerpc, which i use regularly. the same reason linus uses fedora, apparently, though that's not why i started with fedora personally.

 

one of the laptops i have right now has gentoo on it, which is driving me crazy. generally speaking, once you get used to one setup, that's the one you'll stick with if you don't have any problems or reasons to switch. i try not to chase kernels, either (using 2.6.23 on my embedded PPC8641 system), since stability and consistency is a bit of a must when you're developing code. the drivers i work with are kernel modules and rewriting drivers and other modules for every kernel change is a colossal waste of time and money.

 

taks

[neckthrough]

obviously you've never done any embedded programming. this is a well-known paradigm at any rate, for just about anything. user friendliness generally requires taking away some measure of the control offered to the user in order to make it easier to use. the control may still exist, but it is going to be put under the hood, so to speak, and harder to access.

In general it's certainly true that user-friendliness usually implies hiding some control capabilities under the hood. That doesn't mean that the control isn't there or is not accessible at all.

 

it doesn't appeal to embedded programmers nor does it appeal to the NSA.

I didn't claim it did.

 

it certainly does not appeal to major tool developers (software tools in my business) as they almost all require you use red hat if you want your support contract honored.

I didn't claim it did. Many corporations (including the one I work for) use distros from vendors with a good record of providing support contracts.

 

i've made these points clear in my posts, try to respect that in light of the fact you clearly have no experience with such things.

Let's not get personal. I didn't mean to provoke you.

 

I merely challenged your specific assertion about the user friendliness of Ubuntu necessarily making it less capable than RedHat. They're both fundamentally similar GNU/Linux distros whose capabilities extend far beyond the small feature set you receive with the CD. All distros have access to the same massive open-source software pool. Some distros happen to be more convenient starting points for some sections of users, that's all. FWIW I would have had exactly the same reaction if you'd claimed that Suse is less capable than RedHat, or that RedHat is less capable than Mandriva. They're all similar, and you have the freedom to change whatever you don't like.

[taks]

it doesn't appeal to embedded programmers nor does it appeal to the NSA.

I didn't claim it did.

but you were responding to WHY I DON'T USE IT.

 

I didn't claim it did. Many corporations (including the one I work for) use distros from vendors with a good record of providing support contracts.

again, you were responding to MY REASON for not using it.

 

i don't think you understand what i mean about support contracts, btw. i have specific software tools that i use that require i use red hat or they will not support their linux product. they use red hat (usually rh enterprise), and thus cannot answer questions regarding other distributions. simple as that. i could use winders products, but then it is not as seamless to integrate the linux work required for my system. my system, btw, uses ELDK, which is derived from fedora core 4, though it is really a custom job my colleague put together for our purposes. very slimlined OS.

 

Let's not get personal. I didn't mean to provoke you.

nor did i get personal. had you read and understood what i posted you would have understood the context in which i replied. you did not, and i responded accordingly.

 

I merely challenged your specific assertion about the user friendliness of Ubuntu necessarily making it less capable than RedHat.

i did not claim that at all. i said more user friendly necessarily means less powerful. ultimately, the fact that you have to go to extra lengths because of added features decreases the power of an OS. anytime a distribution automatically does something, there's a greater chance you have to undo it later.

 

there is one specific problem with ubuntu that most users would never care about (i don't, my colleague does): in particular, if a package puts a file in some directory, it is easy to figure out which package install it came from using fedora/red hat. apparently this is not true with ubumtu.

 

taks

[Humodour]

Well there's your problem.

any OS that is more user friendly is necessarily less powerful. i don't use linux to play games or have fun. i use linux to develop signal processing systems. at one point red hat was the only NSA approved linux distribution for carrying out the types of missions i'm interested in (and fedora/red hat are essentially the same minus support).

 

taks

 

Ah, fair enough. I've been looking at Solaris for that purpose. Hopefully now that Oracle bought Sun so they'd own Solaris, it'll get even better.

 

One day I'll try compiling Gentoo or Linux From Scratch just for the experience.

[Humodour]

One thing that has befuddled me is how the mini navigator you get when you open a file from within an application, for instance VLC player, you can't locate the physical drives, all you get is the file system where you can open a 'my documents' type folder.

You can also go further up, say /. If you have patience and no one else answers, I can offer you a screenshot tomorrow.

I press the '/' button, or type it into a command line..There are up and down arrows but they don't lead anywhere that shows the drives like the system dropdown menu. Maybe it's just that one application.

 

Um. Ubuntu automatically mounts all drives, partitions and external storage. However, for internal drives/partitions, I often have to explore them (open as a folder) once at the start of each session for it to mount, but it will appear under 'Places' for you to do that easily.

 

Assuming you've done that, go to /media and look for 'disk' or whatever the name of your drive is.

 

If you're at command line, type:

 

cd /

cd /media

ls

 

And that will display all disks available.

 

Oh, just to be clear, you don't NEED command line for this. You could just as easily click 'Places' then 'Computer' and see a GUI explorer view of it, like 'My Computer' on Windows.

[taks]

One day I'll try compiling Gentoo or Linux From Scratch just for the experience.

i dislike gentoo as well. really, what it comes down to is i'm used to fedora (and its derivatives), which has enough differences from the "popular" distributions that i have a hard time using them, and i don't really have time to learn the others when most of what i use is fedora-based anyway.

 

i have compiled linux from scratch many times, or at least, i've been part of the process. i've also compiled glibc and gcc from scratch (i was using a quad-core MIPS processor that had poor optimization due to a lack of support and i needed to make changes). what a pain. i'm pretty sure i've forgotten it all, too, which is fortunate since it caused me grief.

 

i originally worked on sun/solaris machines for development purposes in 1995 but have not had to muck with them since i left harris in 1999. they are typically supported, btw, and i'm sure the NSA approves of solaris as an OS, though i've never met anyone that uses it for embedded purposes. VxWorks, nucleus, etc., and linux only recently, are the real-time OSes of choice. quite frankly, i'm not even sure what the difference would be using linux vs. "real-time" linux other than perhaps the ability to execute kernel functions directly.

 

taks

[Humodour]

For Gorgon and others: Ubuntu 9.04 is out now. Grab an ISO and burn it.

 

Apparently it provides a significant performance boost, too, along with various user interface updates and touch-ups in general (the work of Shuttleworth's new dedicated 'user experience' team no doubt).

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10226746-92.

 

You can also enable the new ext4 file system in 9.04, which provides yet another performance increase. It will be enabled by default in 9.10, but for now it's up to you to enable it.

[Gorgon]

For Gorgon and others: Ubuntu 9.04 is out now. Grab an ISO and burn it.

 

Apparently it provides a significant performance boost, too, along with various user interface updates and touch-ups in general (the work of Shuttleworth's new dedicated 'user experience' team no doubt).

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10226746-92.

 

You can also enable the new ext4 file system in 9.04, which provides yet another performance increase. It will be enabled by default in 9.10, but for now it's up to you to enable it.

Can you update from the old one. I'm not sure I have enough contiguous free space without defragmenting first. Old 750 gig hd, lots and lots of clutter on it.

[Humodour]

For Gorgon and others: Ubuntu 9.04 is out now. Grab an ISO and burn it.

 

Apparently it provides a significant performance boost, too, along with various user interface updates and touch-ups in general (the work of Shuttleworth's new dedicated 'user experience' team no doubt).

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10226746-92.

 

You can also enable the new ext4 file system in 9.04, which provides yet another performance increase. It will be enabled by default in 9.10, but for now it's up to you to enable it.

Can you update from the old one. I'm not sure I have enough contiguous free space without defragmenting first. Old 750 gig hd, lots and lots of clutter on it.

 

You can but I wouldn't do it. I've heard the update feature is spotty and can cause stability issues. Still, it's worth trying if you really don't want to do a fresh install.

 

Why not just back-up your data and replace existing Ubuntu partition? No need to free up space that way.

[samm]

Concerning ext4: It'll probably not be the default FS even for 9.10, see Linus Torvalds' amusing rant about the strange decisions that made it into the FS...