Ubuntu Archive

While eyes were drawn to Novell as a potential acquisition target for Oracle, a far less expensive Linux distribution was also mentioned as a better fit for the database giant-turned-open-source advocate. The distro was Ubuntu, the most popular Linux flavor, according to the user community site DistroWatch.com. Larry Ellison, Oracle's chairman and CEO, recently made some public comments about wanting his own version of Linux for Oracle. Snapping up Ubuntu would not only save Ellison and Oracle a considerable amount of money, it would also eliminate some of the headaches associated with trying to integrate a company like Novell.

MadPenguin takes a look at Flight 5 of Ubuntu Dapper, and concludes: "All in all, Ubuntu 6.06 is gearing up to be quite an impressive release. Granted, I saw some bugs during my stay on the distribution, but can I really complain? It's not a full release, so it deserves some breathing room. Considering some of the horribly authored software I've looked at over the years, I feel that Ubuntu in pre-release form is more stable than other distros when they reach final release status. It's not quite in the league of Slackware and Red Hat/Fedora in that respect yet, but it's surely getting there in a hurry."

As many already said yesterday, the Kubuntu.de story seems to be a classic example of a storm in a teacup. "Their article makes everything sound much worse than it is. The problem was that when kubuntu.org moved to a new host the sysadmin request to recreate Amu's account never got answered. Amu makes the cool Live CDs that get published along with KDE releases so it's obviously very useful for him to have an account. I should have poked Canonical's sysadmin to remind him but the account has now been added so problem solved. This doesn't mean, as some people seem to have suggested, that Canonical is in any way dropping support for Kubuntu, they continue to be wonderfully supportive, both to the community of developers and commercially if you want to buy a support contract off them."

Troubles for the Kubuntu project: a number of Kubuntu developers are complaining that Canonical is not answering their requests. They state: "We all from the kubuntu.de-team have pursued this aim together, but most of the work has been done by Andreas Mueller (amu). He is not only co-founder and unpayed developer of the Kubuntu-project, but he's also hosting this website and he's taking over all the arising expenses. During our endeavours for Kubuntu, there were made several requests to Canonical. All those requests are unanswered 'till today! Up to now, there is only one payed developer. Since Canonical ignores all our personal and partly financial engagement until now we have to assume that Canonical is not willing to make Kubuntu a '1st class distribution'."

This project combines Ubuntu and MythTV into a lightweight, undemanding HTPC computer. "The plans were, roughly, to install a hard drive, move to a more powerful Linux distribution, and add PVR capabilites to the system. Because the computer was already situated in my living room, making it into a personal video recorder was an obvious choice, though doing this on a Mini-ITX Linux system would surely take a bit of finesse."

Not too long ago Mark Shuttleworth proposed a delay of six weeks for the release of Ubuntu Dapper Drake. Today, after discussion within the community, the delay was approved and announced. "June 1st 2006 is the updated release date for Ubuntu Dapper, Desktop and Server editions, a delay of 6 weeks over the previous release date of April 20." More information in the release schedule.

A major, critical bug and possible security threat has been discovered in Ubuntu Breezy. Apparently, the 'root' password (not actually the root password because Ubuntu uses sudo) gets written into the installer's log files in clear text, and can be read by any account on the Ubuntu machine. The bug was first discovered and reproduced on the Ubuntu forums. The bug does not seem to affect Dapper, however, users upgrading from Breezy to Dapper might still be at risk because the log files are not modified. Update: Bug is fixed. Please upgrade.

The 5th preview release of Ubuntu Dapper Drake is out on the mirrors. As usual, there are both install and live CD's for PowerPC, x86, and x86-64. "We are now in the final stages of Dapper Drake development. Everything is stabilizing, and Ubuntu 6.04 will certainly be a top-notch professional OS. Now that all of the lower level improvements have been made, it is time to close the hood and rub on a coat of wax. With Flight 5 comes a new and improved Human look-and-feel, a few new GUI power tools, and much more." Update: Screenshot tour.

"Mark Shuttleworth is the founder of Thawte, the first certification authority to sell public SSL certificates. After selling Thawte to Verisign, Mark moved on to training as an astronaut in Russia and visiting space. Once he got back he founded Ubuntu, the leading GNU/Linux distribution. He agreed on releasing a quick interview to Free Software Magazine." One of the more interesting quotes: "With Ubuntu, it's still too early to say we've been successful. My personal goal is to make the distro sustainable - then there will be a team that pays its own way and can focus on producing the best free software desktop on the planet without my interference!"

The Ubuntu team has released Dapper Drake Flight CD4, the 4th alpha release on the way to the final release of Dapper Drake (which is now in upstream version freeze). Besides many cosmetic changes to the boot sequence, GDM, and GNOME in general, this release features Espresso (a live-CD installer), GNOME 2.14 Beta 2, and much more. The team has also included a 'very special and early gift' - Novell's Xgl and Compiz. Downloads for Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Edubuntu are in the release announcement.

Ubuntu Dapper Drake Flight CD3 has been released. I haven't received the email on ubuntu-devel yet, but the .iso files appear to be up (Ubuntu | Kubuntu). Improvements in this release include an updated installer CD boot splash, X11R7, GNOME 2.13.4, improved and simplified menus, new default desktop panel configuration, some new applications such as XChat-GNOME, a faster live CD, live CD persistence, and more. In addition to software improvements, Launchpad is now officially open for business for all bug tracking.

"This is a detailed tutorial about the steps to set up a Ubuntu based server (Ubuntu 5.10 - Breezy Badger) to act as file- and print server for Windows workstations in small workgroups. This howto uses the tdb backend for Samba to store passwords and account information. This is suitable for workgroups for up to 250 users and is easier to setup than an LDAP backend."

Jeff Waugh is an employee of Canonical Limited, the firm behind Ubuntu Linux. In his spare time he works on the GNOME window manager program. Jeff formerly was the release manager for GNOME. On November 7, 2005, Jeff Waugh was far away from his native and current home in Australia. He was at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, as part of his BadgerBadgerBadger tour. Jeff offered his insights into GNOME and Ubuntu in a talk titled 'Running with Scissors'.

"Unlike a lot of people, I get very excited when a new beta of Ubuntu/Kubuntu is released. It's amazing how Ubuntu has taken the Linux community by storm over the past couple of years. Finally, Linux is stepping up to be a real contender on the desktop." Here is a first look at Ubuntu, and here at Kubuntu.