Thread: Ubuntu

Originally Posted by ninja9578

Looked like from what was on their site that this was mainly a back end change. They are using a newer kernel and better process scheduling and such. You got spoiled with Windows where there are no back end changes, but a lot of GUI changes

Pretty much

Originally Posted by wasup

Hmm, hardy heron seems a bit dissapointing I think. Not because it's bad, but I suppose I was expecting more? As in, more stuff I could see. To be honest everything seems exactly the same. I suppose firefox, from what I've tested so far, seems perhaps a bit more stable. I'm not only talking about cosmetic changes but I was expecting some more like, differences in applications, new ones, new features, etc. There doesn't seem much new, am I missing something?

well,
people'd have a fit if they changed everything visually
gnome's been the same, cosmetically, for 10 years
if you want flashy stuff, there's plenty of other desktop environments / window managers to choose from - have a play

nice to see the 3D windows back on the compiz cube, though

Originally Posted by Ynot

nice to see the 3D windows back on the compiz cube, though

How do you bring up the cube? Even if I set it as "on" using the compiz config UI (gnome-compiz-manager in Synaptic or something), I can't seem to work out how to do it.

And how do I switch desktops with a keyboard? Newb questions I know.

In exchange, top tip: Change your browsers default sans font to FreeSans. Looks so much better!

Ctrl + Alt + arrow button

and Ctrl + grab the desktop and drag

Originally Posted by Identity X

How do you bring up the cube? Even if I set it as "on" using the compiz config UI (gnome-compiz-manager in Synaptic or something), I can't seem to work out how to do it.

enable:
- Desktop Cube
- Rotate Cube
- 3D Windows

ctrl+alt+left & ctrl+alt+right for flip the cube
ctrl+alt+mouse1 for the free rotate (& 3D windows)

Thanks. I'm in Windows now but I'm missing Ubuntu!

Still no wireless network

Originally Posted by Ynot

enable:
- Desktop Cube
- Rotate Cube
- 3D Windows

ctrl+alt+left & ctrl+alt+right for flip the cube
ctrl+alt+mouse1 for the free rotate (& 3D windows)

I believe you also have to set your config to have 4 desktops instead of the default 2, and lay them out horizontally.

Originally Posted by Replicon

I believe you also have to set your config to have 4 desktops instead of the default 2, and lay them out horizontally.

yes,
forgot that (has to be horizontal, but can be 3 or more)

Actually, it only has to be 2 or more. When you have 2 it just looks like a plane with two sides.

I want a dodecahedron that I can control with an old Nintendo Power Glove.

Originally Posted by Replicon

I want a dodecahedron that I can control with an old Nintendo Power Glove.

Heh.

Desktop Cube can deal with desktops from two to infinity (or whatever maximum GNOME enforces).

In other news, Ubuntu is r0xing my b0x0rs. W00t.

Originally Posted by Identity X

In other news, Ubuntu is r0xing my b0x0rs. W00t.

yep,
I'm loving PulseAudio, as well

Routing Wine & DosBox through PulseAudio means I can play WoW (wine) or Lemmings (dosbox) and have RhythmBox playing with no sound issues

also, individual volume controls on every sound-producing app means nothing drowns out anything else

Can't wait to make a fresh install with Ubuntu 8.04. (I'm switiching to x86)

Since my internet connection sucks here I ordered last week a CD from the site, by the time I get home in 2 weeks time it'll probably be there already.

Anyone else experiencing severe stablility issues? Programs are segfaulting everywhere and taking Ubuntu with it, necessitating some painful and potentially corrupting hard reboots. It's really starting to piss me off, Ubuntu seems to have no crash protection at all, as soon as a segfault is registered it just hangs.

Originally Posted by Identity X

Anyone else experiencing severe stablility issues? Programs are segfaulting everywhere and taking Ubuntu with it, necessitating some painful and potentially corrupting hard reboots. It's really starting to piss me off, Ubuntu seems to have no crash protection at all, as soon as a segfault is registered it just hangs.

Anything in particular causing the problems?

If something's taking the OS down, it's not going to be any user-level program
Are you using anything "out of the ordinary", driver-wise?

I know it's hardly useful,
but I'm pretty rock solid (flash throws a barney occasionally, but sadly that's normal)
but certainly nothing that takes the OS with it

worst comes to worst
drop back to 7.10 (it's supported till 2009), and enable the backports repo if you want

I was having problems with Firefox crashing 7.10 yesterday, but it may have been something to do with the torrent file I'd just clicked on, since it was perfectly fine up to that point. I think it was trying to open it with a program not installed, as I left it at FF's default instead of choosing KTorrent.

It also wouldn't update for some reason. Gah. I only ever use Ubuntu at wireless hotspots anyway, but I had to hard reboot it twice as Ctrl+Alt+Backspace wasn't working, and neither were any other key combinations.

can you run Windows programs in Ubuntu with mods? like games and stuff, or MS Word for school

sorry i'm not the most software-savvy person but i am going to build a computer and am thinking about using linux instead of gay hacker-friendly-spyware-NSA tracking- Windows

Originally Posted by Hercuflea

can you run Windows programs in Ubuntu with mods? like games and stuff, or MS Word for school

sorry i'm not the most software-savvy person but i am going to build a computer and am thinking about using linux instead of gay hacker-friendly-spyware-NSA tracking- Windows

Yes, you can
There's a compatibility layer for Win32 applications, called Wine
See http://www.winehq.org/site/download

however, I would advice you to use native Linux applications where ever possible
OpenOffice for example, come pre-loaded on many Linux distros
and offers a native office suite (instead of running MS's Office under Wine)

It's largely down to personal preference
but always consider native apps

If you really must run Windows Apps (games, for example) that have no native port, you can check how well the app performs under Wine
Wine has a large database of working & non-working apps
http://appdb.winehq.org/

Can it run MS Word? Because thats what the school computers use and i need to put stuff on a flash drive and transfer it to school

Originally Posted by Hercuflea

Can it run MS Word? Because thats what the school computers use and i need to put stuff on a flash drive and transfer it to school

You should be able to open the documents saved using OpenOffice on your school computer, yes. Just be sure not to save them to the newest format (yet). My aunt sends me lots of power point documents as forwards, and I can open them all.

ok

well anyways i am probably just going to install ubuntu once i build the computer and if i dont like it ill just wipe the whole thing

Rather than start a new thread,
A follow up on the French police force's migration to Linux

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/n...ing-ubuntu.ars

French police: we saved millions of euros by adopting Ubuntu

A recent report has revealed that France's national police force has saved an estimated 50 million euros since 2004 by migrating a portion of the organization's workstations to Ubuntu Linux. They plan to roll out the Linux distro to all 90,000 of their workstations by 2015.

France's Gendarmerie Nationale, the country's national police force, says it has saved millions of dollars by migrating its desktop software infrastructure away from Microsoft Windows and replacing it with the Ubuntu Linux distribution.

The Gendarmerie began its transition to open source software in 2005 when it replaced Microsoft Office with OpenOffice.org across the entire organization. It gradually adopted other open source software applications, including Firefox and Thunderbird. After the launch of Windows Vista in 2006, it decided to phase out Windows and incrementally migrate to Ubuntu.

At the current stage of the migration, it has adopted Ubuntu on 5,000 workstations. Based on the success of this pilot migration, it plans to move forward and switch a total of 15,000 workstations to Ubuntu by the end of the year. It aims to have the entire organization, and all 90,000 of its workstations, running the Linux distribution by 2015.

A report published by the European Commission's Open Source Observatory provides some details from a recent presentation given by Gendarmerie Lieutenant-Colonel Xavier Guimard, who says that the Gendarmerie has been able to reduced its annual IT budget by 70 percent without having to reduce its capabilities.

Since 2004, he says that the Gendarmerie has saved up to €50 million on licensing and maintenance costs as a result of the migration strategy. He believes that the move from Windows to Ubuntu posed fewer challenges than the organization would have faced if it had updated to Windows Vista.

"Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users," said Lt. Col. Guimard. "Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy. The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority."

Support for open standards is a key part of the Gendarmerie's emerging IT policy. Standards-based technologies give it more freedom to choose which vendors it adopts and also makes it easier for the Gendarmerie to interoperate with other government networks. It has found that open source software is better at handling open standards. Linux has also simplified remote maintenance tasks.

Linux has also been adopted by several other government agencies in France. The French National Assembly runs Ubuntu on over 1,000 workstations and the Ministry of Agriculture uses Mandriva Linux.

The success of the Gendarmerie Ubuntu migration reflects several emerging trends in IT. First, it represents the rising influence of community-driven distros which are largely supported internally by the organizations that adopt them. Analysts have noted a growing preference for this approach which can be cheaper than adopting a conventional enterprise distro like Red Hat with annual commercial support contracts.

The Gendarmerie migration also demonstrates the significant cost savings that governments can get from adopting open source software. As the global financial downturn continues to put pressure on budgets, governments are going to increasingly look to open source software as a way to cut IT costs. We have recently seen moves in this direction from Canada and the UK.