Best version of linux?

[Scrivener]

I have downloaded 10.04 but not installed it. Now that I have this setup configured, not sure I really need to bother upgrading at this time.

Does anyone think bumping up to 10.04 from 9.10 is worth the bother?

If I'm reading this right, you may be contemplating the difficult way to do the upgrade. With Ubuntu you shouldn't be downloading a new CD every 6 months unless you intend to format and reinstall the base system. Instead, you should use the Distribution Upgrade option in the Update Manager. That will download all the latest packages for you, keep your settings (likely), and upgrade you to 10.04 with very little work on your part.

[fwiffo]

On my Kubuntu machines it's on the Applications menu under "System". I'm not as familiar with the Gnome side of things, however. It gets started automatically by virtue of KDE saving my session when I log out.

If you still can't figure it out, the Ubuntu forums tend to be reasonably helpful.

[cdybeijing]

I think the NM applet is actually part of the "Notification Area" applet. Right click on the panel, click "add to panel" and select "Notification Area."

This is correct and solved my problem. Thank you very much -- it is actually a very frequently discussed help topic on the Ubuntu forums.

[cdybeijing]

I have downloaded 10.04 but not installed it. Now that I have this setup configured, not sure I really need to bother upgrading at this time.

Does anyone think bumping up to 10.04 from 9.10 is worth the bother?

If I'm reading this right, you may be contemplating the difficult way to do the upgrade. With Ubuntu you shouldn't be downloading a new CD every 6 months unless you intend to format and reinstall the base system. Instead, you should use the Distribution Upgrade option in the Update Manager. That will download all the latest packages for you, keep your settings (likely), and upgrade you to 10.04 with very little work on your part.

You read correctly, but I have not included all the information. My 9.10 install was on a completely fresh system, and 10.04 came out about a month later. I chose to format and reinstall because I really hadn't built up all that month in a month that I was afraid of losing.

I don't know whether or not I will upgrade to 10.10 eventually, but I will try using the built-in updater if I do.

[Phelan]

I used to keep the /home directory in a different partition in order to reinstall easier. I don't know if ubuntu's update has become good enough that this has become unnecessary.

[fwiffo]

The update is pretty reliable. What I did when I built my new computer was to put my /home partition on my carry-over 1TB drive, and the OS on a new SSD. Now my computer goes from grub to a a fully running desktop in about 4 seconds flat.

[judicata]

I used to keep the /home directory in a different partition in order to reinstall easier. I don't know if ubuntu's update has become good enough that this has become unnecessary.

I would never assume that is the case with anything. Way too many frustrations over the years. Especially if you want to "roll back," because you really can't without just installing fresh (of course you could just back everything up before rolling back, which is smart anyway). This happened to me when they screwed with the intel graphics drivers a few years ago.

[fwiffo]

On second thought, judicata is right. The last few Ubuntu updates have gone smoothly for me, but each version has had serious bugs. In other words, the update didn't blow up my system, but I had problems with the new stuff. I haven't usually tried to roll back, but it would have been nice to have the option.

Like the first version that introduced KDE 4 was almost unusable. Fortunately, I that was a fresh install, so I didn't lose anything by just starting that box over from scratch with the old version. The latest version screws up fonts in Konsole, rendering it useless (I have no idea how this got through to a release version...). I need to use a terminal, so that's really bad for me! Fortunately, I hacked up a workaround, but I was glad I didn't just go and upgrade my primary computers right off the bat.

[flOvermind]

The update is pretty reliable. What I did when I built my new computer was to put my /home partition on my carry-over 1TB drive, and the OS on a new SSD. Now my computer goes from grub to a a fully running desktop in about 4 seconds flat.

4 seconds for Ubuntu + Gnome? Have you done anything special except using an SSD?

I have recently set up a Ubuntu 10.04 on a new SSD with separate root and home partition (both on the SSD), and my boot time is 15 seconds. Don't get me wrong, 15 seconds is a definite improvement over the 40 seconds before the update, but 4 seconds would be even better . But perhaps that's because it's a laptop...

[cdybeijing]

The update is pretty reliable. What I did when I built my new computer was to put my /home partition on my carry-over 1TB drive, and the OS on a new SSD. Now my computer goes from grub to a a fully running desktop in about 4 seconds flat.

4 seconds for Ubuntu + Gnome? Have you done anything special except using an SSD?

I have recently set up a Ubuntu 10.04 on a new SSD with separate root and home partition (both on the SSD), and my boot time is 15 seconds. Don't get me wrong, 15 seconds is a definite improvement over the 40 seconds before the update, but 4 seconds would be even better . But perhaps that's because it's a laptop...

I installed 10.04 on a fresh 7200 RPM hard drive with a single partition, running Intel Core Duo 2.00 GHz and my boot-time is 10 seconds.

[kirkmc]

I thought people with Linux rarely booted their systems?

FWIW, I have a MacBook Air with an SSD, and it's really fast, even though it's a 2 1/2 year old model, with a much slower SSD than what you can get today. I'd really like to have an SSD as my system disk on my main Mac; I may make the change soon, when prices drop a bit.

[fwiffo]

4 seconds is hyperbole, but certainly under 10. I have the splash-screen turned off, so I can see the counter during the kernel boot messages, and that usually gets to about 4 (sometimes less) when it switches video modes to go into X. It's only about a second before I have a prompt, then logging in to KDE and getting a completely working desktop takes about 2 seconds. But still, all that together is almost less time than the POST screens.

Everyone NEEDS an SSD. The difference in day-to-day use is radical. Imagine being able to get Firefox back in like 2 seconds after it crashes. When I have to use my laptop, which doesn't have an SSD (yet), it's like going from a Ferrari to a tricycle. I used to say that if you wanted to build a fast system, trim the amount you budgeted for a processor and throw in enough RAM to make the motherboard groan under the weight of all the DIMMs. You should still do that, but you should also get an SSD. And I think they should be mandatory for laptops, which are cursed with pokey drives to save power. An SSD will save a lot of power while silently delivering a huge leap in performance. The 80 gig Intel X25-M has dropped under $200 now, which makes it about the best bang/buck way to speed up your system.

It actually makes me kinda angry. All this time computers have been a lot slower than they need to be, all because of these stupid, slow, noisy, power-hungry, mechanical hard drives. After feeling the difference first hand, all I can think is "what the hell have we been doing with these stupid spinning disks all this time?" OK, rant over.

I thought people with Linux rarely booted their systems?

I booted it a lot getting all the hardware set up and adjusted and getting OSes installed. I also had a couple parts arrive later (quieter fans and a controller) so I had to shut it down to install those. Also, I dual-boot into Windows for games (if I ever get time to play them ever again...) So I've gotten a good feel for boot times.

But you're right, unless you're shutting your computer off at night, or you install a new kernel update, it's rare to reboot even a desktop Linux box - up-times of hundreds of days are typical. It's common to have an up-time of years on a server. But I'd expect a Mac to be similar, being based on BSD.

[kirkmc]

I thought people with Linux rarely booted their systems?

I booted it a lot getting all the hardware set up and adjusted and getting OSes installed. I also had a couple parts arrive later (quieter fans and a controller) so I had to shut it down to install those. Also, I dual-boot into Windows for games (if I ever get time to play them ever again...) So I've gotten a good feel for boot times.

But you're right, unless you're shutting your computer off at night, or you install a new kernel update, it's rare to reboot even a desktop Linux box - up-times of hundreds of days are typical. It's common to have an up-time of years on a server. But I'd expect a Mac to be similar, being based on BSD.

Yes, I only reboot when I need to for software updates.

I saw something the other day about a new hard disk that combines an SSD with a regular 7200 RPM disk. The SSD has some sort of smart circuitry that, after the first couple of boots, copies the most-used files so they get read from the SSD rather than the hard disk. It seems like a pretty smart idea, because, in most cases, 80% of the files on your startup volume are not accessed often. This new disk was much cheaper than an SSd, and not a lot more expensive than a regular Hd.

[fwiffo]

Yeah, Anandtech reviewed one. Basically it uses 4G of flash as a read cache. It doesn't seem to do as well as a separate SSD and mechanical drive, but it's cheaper...

I think Anand's conclusion is about right. For a desktop, you'd be better off with a small SSD plus a mechanical drive. 32 gigs is more than enough for your OS and your most important apps (my vmware machine is less than 30 gigs which is plenty for Windows and CS4, for instance). A hybrid drive is going to be $50-$90 more expensive than the same size traditional drive. You can get a small SSD for $80-$120 and get a lot more performance and finer grained control. I guess it's lower-maintenance too; you don't have to think about how you want to split up your files across two drives.

For a laptop it's the way to go if you need the space and only have room for one drive. But if you can get away without terabytes space, SSD-only isn't a bad way to go considering the power savings. 64 gigs really is still a lot of space unless you're backing up your DVD collection or something.

Actually, my plan is to do exactly that with my laptop. Sometime in the next few months I'll probably move existing cheap 64 gig SSD to my laptop and upgrade buy a high-end SSD (something in the range of an 80 gig X25-M to a 100 gig Sandforce depending on what prices do) for the boot drive in my desktop.

[SpongeBob]

Let me place a little off-topic question, maybe somebody has an advice here ...

I have a ten year old Dell laptop (Inspiron 5000e) with 500 MB (will not take more) which I installed WinXP on (because W2K is not supported anymore and you do not get recent software for it). It turns out that WinXP is really slow on this machine, so I now want to install Linux.

I bought a DVD with current Ubuntu which also runs as a live version without installation. I tried the live version and the screen is not detected or adressed correctly, it looks broken, mouse pointer appears at two different locations of the screen simultaneously and there is some flickering.

I also have a very old version of Linux (called Knoppix) which runs fine as live version. Now I tried a current live version of Knoppix and the screen is also broken in the same way as with Ubuntu.

So it might be that the current Linux kernel does not support my laptop screen anymore?? Is there something I (not familiar with Linux) can do so that I can still run the current Ubuntu?