Ubuntu 7 Success!

[nikster]

I tried the ubuntu live disk - when I tried 6.x, I deemed it "not ready" because it would not recognize my graphics card (X1600 mobility in laptop).

Since then, it's gotten *much* better, so much that I installed 7 (feisty fawn) on my system: Acer TravelMate 8204.

Main reason for installing: There is now a "Restricted Drivers Manager" which automatically popped up and offered me to install ATI drivers. That's _exactly_ what I was asking for last time - ubuntu can keep its open source philosophy and let the rest of us who just want stuff to work and don't want to write our own drivers install evil closed source drivers. There are still dire warnings, but OK - I can live with that. I just need my screen to work thankyouverymuch.

Another reason for installing - feisty stole the wireless network control from OS X. This control is at the same time the simplest and best way to display / connect to wireless networks and I am amazed Microsoft hasn't copied it for Vista - click on a network icon, get list of networks, connect by selecting network. So simple. 1 click to connect. I love ubuntu for this - thanks! I don't remember how this was done in 6.0 but it was much less elegant, more like Win XP.

System before:

Dual boot Windows XP / Vista

System after:

Triple boot ubuntu, XP, Vista

Installation was not quite as smooth as promised. First GParted didn't work - was unable to resize a partition.

I then booted into Vista and resized it from the computer management console. Then I made new partitions in Vista, one 3GB for ubuntu and 1GB for swap, then booted back into the live CD, used GParted to format these into ext3 and linux-swap, then used the manual install option in feisty to install.

All worked. The ATI drivers also installed and worked perfectly. Which is interesting because installing these drivers from the live CD produced a crash on startup. But I kind of had a feeling that these drivers are too close to the system to work with the live CD.

Now installing all apps I need - I kind of like the application manager in ubuntu - that makes things very simple. Again, dire warnings against "evil" closed source software, but OK.

Looks great so far. I might make the switch if I can get all the software I need every day working...

[A_Traveller]

Glad to hear of your success. Query, where did you source your CD from, I keep getting failures from a downloaded iso?

Regards

[Richard-BKK]

I installed Ubuntu 7.04 for testing purposes in VMware 6, and was very impressed with this combination. As my system uses wide screen monitors, the VMware 6/Ubuntu 7 combination was able to detect this and offer me wide-screen settings for my virtual machine.

I have now Ubuntu running in a box on my screen in 1440x900 very impressive. I look forward to see what the new release of Fedora has to offer, if Fedora cannot impress me I will consider switching to Ubuntu

[jackk]

lick on a network icon, get list of networks, connect by selecting network. So simple. 1 click to connect. I love ubuntu for this - thanks! I don't remember how this was done in 6.0 but it was much less elegant, more like Win XP.

network-manager applet has been around for a while now and was even available for Ubuntu 6.0. But it wasn't installed by default.

There are really a lot of fixes/improvements in 7.04 but you have to be familiar with Ubuntu to notice them. Also, Debian 4.0 is quite impressive and I wish next Ubuntu release will also include the possibility to encrypt partitions during the install process.

7.04 comes also with Compiz (System/Preferences/Desktop Effects), the eye-andy plugins to make all Windows users jealous But not for newbies for now as all setup/tweaks have to be done via gconf-editor.

Last but not least: reading thai web pages with Firefox works right out of the box. Vowels are well positionned now.

[endure]

Is yours one of the Acers that reverts to an external display and switches the internal display off if you install Linux? I have an Acer 4005 and have tried installing Linux of various flavours in the past and I always finish up with a running system with a blank screen. Have to plug an external screen in to see it running.

[nikster]

Glad to hear of your success. Query, where did you source your CD from, I keep getting failures from a downloaded iso?

Regards

I just downloaded the ISO from the ubuntu site. I used Flashget to get around temporary outages and such, worked just fine.

[nikster]

Is yours one of the Acers that reverts to an external display and switches the internal display off if you install Linux? I have an Acer 4005 and have tried installing Linux of various flavours in the past and I always finish up with a running system with a blank screen. Have to plug an external screen in to see it running.

No, doesn't do that. I have an Acer TM 8204 with ATI X1600 graphics card.

The problem with Ubuntu up to version 6 was that it would run my screen in 1400x1050 instead of the native resolution of 1680x1050. So everything would look fat. Because it wasn't using the ATI drivers (evil, proprietary), it was also dead slow with the graphics.

I could see artifacts when dragging around windows and such.

ubuntu 7 has a nice proprietary driver install manager which installs wireless and graphics cards drivers automatically and worked very well for me.

I am now stuck on the next step, getting VPN to work. I downloaded the cisco VPN drivers and followed steps explained on some website - VPN now connects OK, but I can't seem to get ubuntu to actually use it to display our internal company websites etc so something might have been missing from these instructions. There's something about ubuntu 7 that makes cisco VPN difficult...

[stub]

Glad to hear of your success. Query, where did you source your CD from, I keep getting failures from a downloaded iso?

Regards

You can get cds shipped to your door for free from http://shipit.ubuntu.com . Mine arrived a few weeks ago and can spare one or two if people can't wait.

[Gumballl]

This evening I tried installing Ubuntu 7.04 on a Dell Inspiron E1505 that has the ATI Radeon X1300 chip set. The Ubuntu distro did not have the appropriate driver for this chip set and hence it could not start GDM (X windows); ditto when I configured the contents within the RAM disk to use the Vesa driver (at 1280x1024, 800x600, etc. resolutions). Anyhow what a big disappointment!

I read online that one can install Ubuntu in text mode (and then perform updates later), but that choice was not available with the 7.04 distro. Or may it is, but it is not documented anywhere (?). Anyhow, with GDM failing, the installation dropped me at the command line. Unfortunately I cannot add updates/upgrades because Unbuntu is running in a fixed-sized RAM space.

Earlier in the day, and on the same system, I installed Fedora Core 7. It also did not have the appropriate driver for the ATI X1300 but at least it was able to load the Vesa driver so that I have Gnome up and running.

Another issue that seems to be plaguing both distros is an issue with the Broadcom 43xx chip set I have for the WiFi. Periodically an error is spewed out indicating that the chip set's firmware cannot be updated.

As for the video problem, Fedora Org claims that there will be an update for the ATI X1300 chip later this month (June' 07).

Edited June 9, 2007 by Gumballl

[Gumballl]

Btw, I cannot remember what post I read this in, but someone was "complaining" that some Linux distros takes up more than one disk, and that Ubuntu was "better" because it fit on one disk.

This is partially true... Ubuntu does fit on one CD-R disk.... and Fedora Core fits on one disk too... a DVD-R. Which do you think is better? My vote goes for the distro that has the most drivers on it. Ubuntu reminds me of the Slackware I used back in 1997.

[Gumballl]

Ok, I sorted out the problem with Ubuntu. I used the "Alternate" CD disk to install the OS and then found very helpful guides within the the Ubuntu forum that provided clear instructions on how to setup the driver for my notebook's ATI X1300 chip set and also for the Broadcom 43xx wi-fi chip as well.

Anyhow, now everything is up and running. Looks great, although I cannot understand what is the purpose of performing a 'sudo' for every root-level command. It is easier to just log in as 'root' and then perform the same commands.

My next task is to install an SSH-daemon and HTTP-daemon (Apache).

[Ranger77]

Btw, I cannot remember what post I read this in, but someone was "complaining" that some Linux distros takes up more than one disk, and that Ubuntu was "better" because it fit on one disk.

This is partially true... Ubuntu does fit on one CD-R disk.... and Fedora Core fits on one disk too... a DVD-R. Which do you think is better? My vote goes for the distro that has the most drivers on it. Ubuntu reminds me of the Slackware I used back in 1997.

It might interest you to know that Ubuntu 7.04 is offered as a DVD (iso) download. See section "DVD downloads" near the end of this webpage:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors

Also the DVD is offered for sale for USD $ 9.99 at Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Canonical-Ubuntu-7-04-PC-Edition/ ...

So it appears we have the best of both small & fast (CD iso) and larger with more files (DVD iso) for download.

[Ranger77]

Glad to hear of your success. Query, where did you source your CD from, I keep getting failures from a downloaded iso?

Regards

What kind of "downloaded iso" failures?

A-- If you mean straight forward disc read or write errors, why not try higher quality CD-RW discs such as TDK , Memorex or Verbatum [note1]. Avoid the majority of the CD-RW styles & brands on the market, because most of them are not manufactured to "data processing" integrity & standards. Instead they are manufuctured to (lower) "consumer/entertainment" standards, which is enough to satisfy the masses of people who only record break dance videos and/or mp3 music files. (As you might imagine, any badly recorded random bits and bytes on such CDs would not even be heard or seen by human listeners.) So therefore, why would CD manufacturers waste monetary profit by manufacturing all CDs to "data processing" integrity & standards -- when "consumer/entertainment" quality is sufficient for the greatest mass market of CD consumers.

B-- I always like to check my iso downloads for "MD5 integrity", at two places: 1. The recorded iso file on my hard drive, and 2. The resultant burned CD-RW. (http://mirror.in.th/ubuntu/7.04/ and specifically http://mirror.in.th/ubuntu/7.04/MD5SUMS)

C-- Insufficient memory: This is my problem, by the way! I find that my 256MB of RAM is just too little! I am trying out the Live-CD function so as to evaluate Ubuntu. But my system, with each keypress or slightest mouse move, the system chugs along in an elaborate 1 to 3 minutes of CD disc accesses! (A real, royal pain.) I've spent literally many, many hours just attempting to see or do the simplest of things. (However, I must admit that the little I've personally seen and felt with Ubuntu so far is very favorable.)

It is my good guess that if I just straight away go for installing Ubuntu on my hard drive, I might get by OK with no (or not major) problems. [However, I've been postponing an install for a few months until I can get into town to buy a USB hardddrive (and a few boxes of "data processing" quality CDs & DVDs) to make image backups of my Windows XP harddrive, before I start mucking around with surface scanning, defragmenting, partitioning and etc.]

But I'm very excited with anticipation to finaly install Ubuntu... Bye.

[note1: In Bangkok, Chiangmai and many other Thai cities, try Office Depot, Data IT or IT City for "data processing" quality CD-RW -- such as TDK , Memorex, Maxell and Verbatum.]

[Richard-BKK]

I have some stock of original Ubuntu CD's both ia32 and AMD64/EM64T. I'm willing to share them with anybody interested in Ubuntu.

[Niloc]

Quote "Anyhow, now everything is up and running. Looks great, although I cannot understand what is the purpose of performing a 'sudo' for every root-level command. It is easier to just log in as 'root' and then perform the same commands."

I have seen this before, how does one login as "root" pray?

[bkkguy1970]

how does one login as "root" pray?

if one does login as root one should indeed pray - not to make any silly mistakes!

under Ubuntu one by default does not login as root (though you can change the default setup), however sudo options like -i and -s should give you enough root rope to hang yourself by in a shell - see man sudo

and there is also gksu and gksudo if you need to root something graphcal - see man gksudo

bkkguy

[Gumballl]

Whatever "evil" one could do when logged in as 'root' can also be done by running the command with 'sudo'. I really do not see why 'sudo' is so popular. Maybe it saves users from having to remember their login password and the 'root' password. That might be too much to ask.

Some say that by using 'sudo', one has an opportunity to think before they type (or hit the carriage return)... I never quite understood this. How about just paying attention to the command-line prompt? Generally regular users and the root account are defaulted with different command line prompts. The former appears with a '$' and the latter with a '#'. If you choose to deviate your command-line prompt from these "standards", then as they love to say in LOS, "up to you".

Anyhow if you want to do something evil to your Linux system, feel free to employ any of the following (they all have the same effect):

1)

$ su

# rm -rf /

2)

$ sudo rm -rf /

3)

$ su -c 'rm -rf /'

Note that options 1 and 2 require you to enter the root password. Have fun!

[jackk]

On all debian-based systems, including debian 4.0, you cannot login as root by default. By that doens't mean you cannot at all.

Linux is getting more and more popular and therefore there are a lot of newbies who started using it lately and since they don't know too much how to use it, it's better that way.

Just think about all those windows xp users who are always logged in as administrator. Each time they get a virus, it will get the administrator privileges, turn their PC into zombies and spread the world with spams.

In linux, when you are not root, the virus will sit in your /tmp directory (anyone can read/write/execute in /tmp), and will try with no luck at all to open your firewall. Then it will be deleted after next reboot. But if you are root, it could mess up with your system just like those millions windows zombies.

And of course I'm not even talking about the fact that root can do anything, from the best to the worst...

Now if you want to be able to log in as root, just click System/Administration/Login Window and... you'll have to find the rest yourself But read the above lines 100 times before doing so.

[stub]

Whatever "evil" one could do when logged in as 'root' can also be done by running the command with 'sudo'. I really do not see why 'sudo' is so popular. Maybe it saves users from having to remember their login password and the 'root' password. That might be too much to ask.

Sudo became popular on larger system, where multiple people would need administrative access. Instead of maintaining a shared password, which is an administrative and security problem, sudo made it unnecessary. Other advantages where also there such as being able to limit what commands could be run as what user, allowing delegation of administrative duties such as giving people the ability to clear print queues or start and stop services without needing full superuser access. Even on single user machines it is useful, as it allows you to access root without needing a root password set - an excellent idea if you are running a service that might allow root login such as an ssh or ftp server which may allow direct root access otherewise. sudo also sanitizes the environment when you use it to escalate your privs, blocking various attack vectors such as setting LD_PRELOAD environment variables or similar, making it much harder for an attack to gain full superuser privs. Also sudo lets you run sequences of commands as root, but by default the authentication credentials time out so if you wander away from an unlocked workstation there is less likely hood of someone being able to gain root access on your box. Given these advantages, and the lack of any advantages whatsoever of allowing direct root access, it seems a sane default setup for Unix like systems.

And if you really don't like it or just feel like revisiting the 80s, changing it is as easy as typing 'sudo passwd root'.

[Gumballl]

Well put argument 'stub'. I guess I am just old-fashioned.

[Insight]

Managed to get Ubuntu 7.04 installed on my HP Pavilion. Had similar problems as Gumballl did regarding the X1300 drivers but advice on the Ubuntu Forums put me right here. Also running a RTL8139 network card which has issues (sometimes appears, sometimes doesn't), so threw in a NetGear wireless PCI job which was detected instantly.

Also got Compiz Fusion up and running which makes Vista look like a toy, and can also run my existing XP partition simultaneously by following the guide found here, followed by this one for ultimate integration.

Taken a good 12hrs to install, but all well worth it. Think I'm now a Linux convert...

[Richard-BKK]

It is not possible to login as root in Ubuntu, it is a security issue. For the sudo command, see it as something that indicates that you doing something what can effect the whole system.

For other Linux distributions it is possible to login as root, but then some users start to use the root account as regular login account and things get wrong.