I'm downloading Ubuntu 9.10 as of now

[madokie]

http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/9.10/

Just started the download. I've been watching for this download this morning and up to now when I cliked on the link it would show version 9.10 rc but this last time I checked it doesn't have the RC on there so I think this is the new release

I'm posting this just in case anyone else is waiting for this download to get here.
have a great day

I'm at 3% download now

[madokie]

1. It took about three hours to download the file

about 30 minutes or so to install and away I go. So far I'm thinking this is my new os.
I'm new to firefox so I'm looking at add ons pretty hard right now trying to figure out what I want.

[RoyGBiv]

2. You can get Opera also ...

Just an FYI.

I can't remember what you were using before. If it was IE, there's nothing exactly like IE in the Linux world, but there are options other than Firefox.

Opera is one of them.

[madokie]

5. I'm kind of liking the customization that firefox allows for now

I was using ie8 with xp.

[pokerfan]

8. I switched to linux last spring

though I've been using firefox since '04. I'd known about Ubuntu for ages and had played with it before but the 8.04 release convinced me that it had finally matured to the point of being suitable for everyday use. I still have Windows on another partition but sometimes I go weeks without booting into Windows. I've read every linux book I can get my hands on but my favorite is Keir Thomas' http://www.ubuntupocketguide.com/index_main.html">Ubuntu Pocket Guide.

Welcome to Ubuntu. I think you'll be happy you took the plunge.



BTW, one utility I use all the time is Googlizer which you can add to the panel. It allows you to search Google from your GNOME menu/panel. You simply highlight some text from any application (browser, email, pdf, etc.) and then click on the G and it will launch a Google search.



And oh yeah, you can see I use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Commander">GnomeCommander because I prefer a traditional dual pane file manager. Apparently so do a lot of people as there about a dozen NortonCommander-like file managers for linux.

[RoyGBiv]

9. Only good thing Norton ever did ...

So, of course, they abandoned it.

It is genuinely abandonware now. I downloaded it the other day and fired it up in DosBox. It was a weird sort of nostalgia.

[pokerfan]

10. Oh absolutely!

Norton AV and 360 suck and are so hard to remove that they should be considered viruses themselves. But NC and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_file_manager#Orthodox_file_managers">orthodox file managers in general rule. Ever use Xtree in the bad ol' days?

[RoyGBiv]

13. Oh, those were the days ...

... back before I hated Microsoft. I never did like them all that much, but back in the day you could find apps like this that made messing with a system easy and interesting.

I did use XTree. When I was 18 or so I started running a BBS, which had tons of files in a complicated directory structure that I had to manipulate all the time. XTree saved my sanity. And ya just have to love a program that has an Oops! option. :)

I miss FidoNet and more specifically an app called BlueWave one used to interact with it. Dial-in, download message packets, log off, read and respond offline within a nice little system.

[SKKY]

3. I think you'll be quite happy with it...

I've been using it for about 2 months and so far, apart from some silly audio stuff, can't really find much wrong with it.

[madokie]

4. So far I love it

You might want to slide on over and download the latest version. The reason I say that is what you're using now is more than likely Beta or RC as this was only released this morning.

[SKKY]

6. I probably will sometime this weekend...

I also want to try Linux Mint. I'll probably install that on a virtual machine. I keep hearing good things about it.

[RoyGBiv]

7. Mint is what I'm using ...

It's the KDE version, which *doesn't* have PulseAudio. (The GNOME version does.) The switch to PulseAudio seems to be the source of many of the sound issues people have reported.

I read an interview and discussion with the lead developer of PA, FWIW. He echoed what I suspected from my SuSE experience. One of the big problems with PA is that it exposes some problems with various ALSA drivers that aren't as apparent otherwise. Also, distributions aren't integrating it well, in part because switching to it requires changes in dozens of packages. Mandriva seems to be the only distro that's done it really well with Ubuntu, as of 9.04, running second.

Anyway, Mint is quite nice.

[SKKY]

11. Mint is your day-to-day OS?

Since I typically follow what those smarter than I are doing, I'm going to give Mint a shot. Plus, I'm kinda tired of the color brown.

[RoyGBiv]

12. Ha!

The color brown is one of the things about Ubuntu that I've always found irritating. I have a rather unhealthy aversion to the color stemming from my childhood in the 70s when BROWN EVERYTHING was a fad in some homes, including mine.

Mint GNOME has a nice green color, and the KDE version is blue.

I switched to Mint a month or so ago. I forget when exactly. I had been using SuSE since I'd installed it some time back so I could play with KDE 4, and inertia kicked in with it. I had been using Kubuntu (8.04 I think), and had used Debian in the past. I love, love, love the DEB method of package management. Systems that use RPM just can't match it.

SuSE (Novell actually) finally pissed me off one day when I discovered the distro was, BY DEFAULT, activating a service with root permissions to download and install without any user input or notification updates to several things, among them Adobe Flash. This is one of the reasons I loathe Microsoft products ... too many things going on in the background at the kernel level that communicate with the outside world and change my system without explicit permission. Novell has, I believe, become far too chummy with Microsoft and apparently has begun employing some of their tactics.

I had intended to go back to Slackware but decided to try out Mint since I'd used it in a VirtualBox machine and had liked it. So, I set aside a weekend to install Mint and set up the system the way I wanted, which usually takes awhile since I do so much customization. The actual install took 30 minutes, and the custom configuration, other than compiling my own kernel and tweaking init services, took maybe a couple hours, in part because Mint had so many things configured the way I normally customize them. It was anti-climatic, almost *too* easy.

About that customized kernel and init tweaks: I normally do this with the basic intent of eliminating unneeded services and ridding the kernel of crap I don't use to speed things up. Mint has been running so well, I still haven't bothered. That is to say, I'm rather impressed. This is the first distro I've run across I actually believe a newbie could install without doing much homework, assuming their system has common components.

And I'm not smarter than you. I just have too much free time and treat my computers like some people treat their cars. :)

[ConsAreLiars]

14. Is there a way to have both Gnome and KDE available as options within one LinuxMint

installation, or would both need to be installed on separate partitions and selected during the boot process? I suspect the latter is the case, but thought I'd ask rather than assume.

[SKKY]

15. Actually, you can do that...

Just install Ubuntu, then when everything is good to go, install KDE (I forget the apt-get syntax). At the login menue, you'll have the option of choosing which session you want. Before I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10, my 9.04 machine ran that way.

[ConsAreLiars]

17. Thank you.

I've been using Linux (9.04) for a couple months and early experimentation, mainly due to confusion about how to correctly get the newest proprietary ATI driver in place (hint, don't then overwrite it with the older driver as the system suggests). Turned on the XP Box a few days ago to retrieve some passwords and it grabbed 11 critical patches on shutdown.

I am quite happy with Linux Mint. A bit of trouble running one important app under WINE which I've recently installed - had it going once during the early trials with one minor defect, but now it hangs on startup and I've forgotten one of the tricks to get the needed libraries installed. Some searching to repeat, but overall it does everything I need very nicely, and wobbly windows make me happy even if climbing the learning curve includes a few stumbles.

[RoyGBiv]

16. Certainly ...

You can install as many desktop managers as you like. Before there was a community edition of Mint with KDE, people installed it anyway by using the Kubuntu repositories.

Someone over in the Mint forums suggested using these instructions:

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/kde

And then this to update to version 4.2.3, which was the first version I'd call stable. OnEdit: Version 4.3.2 is the best version so far. It's what I was using prior to moving to Mint. With the stability of 4.2.3, they were *finally* able to move past patching up holes in the damn into actually improving and expanding functionality. KDE 4.0-4.1.x was a turkey.

http://www.kubuntu.org/news/kde-4.2.3

Some distros come with more than one already. That's one of the reasons SuSE is a 4+ GB download. It comes with half a dozen desktop managers and installs more than one by default ... or did. I'm not sure where they're at with that now. They did eventually dump GNOME altogether, but the last installation I did had KDE 3 and 4 plus Fluxbox and XFCE.

The problem is that this creates clutter in your programs menu, and there are a few issues with the integration of various packages throughout the system. They usually aren't show stoppers, but it can make diagnosing problems a bit more difficult when they do arise.

[ConsAreLiars]

18. Excellent!

You've added the "...and here's how" to the "Yes, we can" from SKKY.

The Repository is added and I will follow the guidance in the first link a bit later this evening.