Ubuntuisierung
Ubuntu is the new star at the distribution firmament and caused some riot his origin, old dame Debian, never achieved.
If this proves right we wil have a look at.
Ubuntu - Linux for Human Beings...
it reads on top of the Ubuntu homepage, to show us that we're quite right here.
Friendly people huging each other smile at us and we get the information that Ubuntu means something like:
and it is hard to explain such a long sentence saying so little.
Fig1. Ubuntu-Financier Mark Shuttleworth
Apparently Linux has reached the marketing departments by now und they bless us with the first all-inclusive distribution.
Looking at the discussions boards could lead to the opinion mainly hackers that can't cope with the Gentoo compiling-flags are attracted.
But this impression is wrong.
Soon you will see that Ubuntu has a qualified deveopment team which is rather quiet and maybe stopped announcing heroic uptime-statistics in their signatures in the age of middle of twenty.
The Test
Ubuntu bases on Debian and is released in a fixed six month-frequency.
Or so it is planned.
The versions are named after the year and month of release.
Version 5.04 has been released in time which was the greatest difference to Debian.
Ubuntu can be obtained as 600MB ISO-image from http://www.ubuntulinux.org/download/
or via BITTorrent.
As a special service you can order a CD at http://shipit.ubuntulinux.org/ completely for free.
Fig2. Installation tool
The installation works text-based only which is anachronistical compared with other distributions.
Normally this should be no problem due to the functions are the same but nowerdays a newbie-friendly installation needs colorful pictres and helping texts in a new frame during installation.
At least the both big distributions did so the last three years.
At least when reaching the partitioning tool newbie-friendlyness is over.
Without any knowledge of UNIX-naming conventions this step is the most cryptic of all.
But that step can't really be eased up without endanger the user data.
The installation worked without problems except the network interface (a standard NE2000-compatible card with RTL8390 chipset which never caused any problems, yet) couldn't be identified automatically. Because tehere is no option to enter information or module options during the installation the needed modules had to be loaded manually using the second console.
During installation a user (beneath root) is created for daily work. A root-password is not asked for which could irritate non-newbies. Installing the packages worked problemless but querying a server for available security updates the installationstopped for about 10 minutes to continue its work after the timeout without further error message or information given to the user.
The desktop
Fig3. Ubuntu Gnome Desktop
After restarting you'll be greeted by a gnome 2.10.0 desktop. The colors are mainly brown and bring back the 60s feeling which ich quite "in" actually but may be "out" again as fast as it became in. If you intend to sit in front of that desktop a longer time you should switch to more eye-friendly colors.
KDE can be installed without problems if you have a DSL-connection or better. Otherwise you should stick to Kubuntu http://www.kubuntu.org/ which uses KDE as standard instead of gnome.
After installation the number of installed packages is rather small. For every need there is only one software installed, if there is. OpenOffice, Evolution, Gaim, BitTorrent, Gimp and Totem work for the most important tasks. Due to this the menu stays easy, a very pro for linux-newbies.
If switching to ubuntun from another distributrion you'll miss some applications especially out of the media section.
And so this seems to be a disadvantage on the first look but it proves to be a feature afterwards.
Because of basing on Debian and ist well thought packet management you can gain access to thounsands of packages if you only know how to.
But thanks to the (already) big ubuntu-community and the good documentation it is easy to find out what steps are to be done.
At first the additional repositories universe, multiverse and
marillat should be activated to gain access to further applications
| /etc/apt/sources.list |
deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary multiverse deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary multiverse deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat stable main deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat unstable main deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat testing main deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security universe deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security universe |
After going through the tutorial for installing important applications at http://www.ubuntuguide.org/
step by step you'll have installed most of the usual programes.
Further software can be installed using the graphicalpackage manager Synaptic or the console-based tool apt-get.
Accessing those and some more system tools require entering a password.
But not the root-password is needed but the password of the user created during installation.
Available updates are announced in the gnome panel.
The configuration work for hard- and software can be done unsing the tools in the system-menue.
There is no central configuration tool.
If you install programs still using GTK-1.2 they will not really fit into the current desktop design.
Conclusion
Fig4. My desktop
How far the ubuntu-development effects Debian we have to await.
It is debatable whether the changng of some developers from Debian to ubuntu has any negative effects.
But it is supposed that Ubuntu profits more of Debian than other way round. (see also
Ubuntu versus Debian Sarge?).
But what the Ubuntu-developers realised so far is still remarkable.
Except some small problems during installation they compiled a rather newbie-friendly distribution.
To be honest: The differences in the current distributions are very small and exist nearly only regarding the GUI.
Standard desktop design and specific configurations toos (if they are used) are the only ways to differ from other distros.
Different package managing tools hide behind similar looking graphical interfaces or conole-based tools having a similar syntax.
With only a little work every distribution can be personalized to ones needs and used-to workflows.
Thus Ubuntu is not only for newbies butr offers the advanced user a well designed base to personalize it fast and easy.
The fact that it is based on Debian and the large number oif applications available for Ubuntu using the additional repositories make using Ubuntu quite comfortable.
For newbies an easy-to-use desktop system, for all other users an up-to-date Debian system.
This article has (as you can see on figure 4) been written (and translated, too) on an Ubuntu system and I'll surely stick to this system for the next time. Not only because it is fun to work with but also because there is absolutely no need to change again.
Links
- Ubuntu Homepage: www.ubuntulinux.org
- German Community: www.ubuntuusers.de
- German Forum: www.ubuntu-forum.de
- Unofficial Ubuntu-Anleitung: www.ubuntuguide.org
- Ubuntu versus Debian Sarge?
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