[clug] Ubuntu Gutsy Beta

[Michael Cohen]

Ian,
<vent warning=long advice="dont read this">
  I did the same, but accidentally downloaded the live version rather
than the alternate installer. I have 1gb ram on my laptop (i thought
that would be enough) but it takes about 10 minutes just to get a
desktop up. The GUI installer is way too heavy (does it really need to
have all the compiz crap loaded for installation?).

Granted I thought it was nice to be able to check your email/browse the
net while you are installing but its just not such a big deal.

The live installer still does not have an option to install onto a
dmcrypt (debian had that for how long? about a year now). There was a
howto on how to do it on the wiki - you need to setup your luks
partitions by hand, then create lvm by hand, then the installer notices
it can install onto the lvm partition and you can go from there. At
least its better than edgy/dapper where you had to install onto a
temporary partition and then copy the system to the cryptroot.

I followed the wiki and when it didnt work realised they stuffed up the
cryptroot scripts in initramfs (it was looking for the root partition in
fstab and couldnt find it because the installer used UUIDs in fstab
rather than /dev/mapper/cryptroot. Ok, so that why its called a beta i
guess but a couple of weeks from release you would hope they tested that
part?

I thought I would cut a few corners and booted the livecd into "safe
graphics mode" to do the install - that doesnt load compiz and friends
in the live cd.

Unfortunately the live cd installs whats running - not a proper system
from scratch - it literally copies everything from the unionfs to the
hdd - that seems silly to me because for a live system you want a lean
mean low resource usage system (you cant even guarantee you have a swap
partition - which is what happened with me as I was installing onto a
new hdd).

So I didnt end up with compiz and friends installed at all. So it seems
that to install a fully functional system you need to boot the full
system with bells and whistles... Its ok though because i stuffed around
with apt-get install xserve-xgl and got it up and running in the end. I
did have to edit the xorg.conf file several times though.

Sorry about this vent - took me most of the night to stuff around. If it
was just bugs that can be fixed i wouldnt mind, but I dont think i like
the way this ubuntu is going...

Maybe im just a grumpy old man - after all that stuffing around I gave
compiz the flick and did an "apt-get install wmaker xemacs xterm" and
now my brand new gutsy system looks exactly like my old edgy system
which looks exactly like my old sarge system and my old potato system
(and rh9 and i cant quite recall before that - im sure there was a
slackware there somewhere)...

</vent>

Michael.



On Tue, Oct 02, 2007 at 08:20:03PM +1000, Ian Bardsley wrote:
> Hi List
> 
> FYI, in a fit of curiosity, I downloaded Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) Beta 
> the other evening and installed it on my "el Cheapo" AMD Sempron powered 
> Notebook.
> 
> This Distro installed in 20 minutes and for the first time recognised 
> all aspects of the system without any interference from me.  Previous 
> Ubuntu installs required me to edit xorg.conf to get the wide screen 
> display working amd also to use ndiswrapper to get the DLINK PCMCIA 
> wireless thingi working.  All I had to do with Gutsy to make it a 
> workable system was activate printer sharing.  Yet another step forward 
> for Desktop Linux in the hands of a novice.
> 
> The whole thing seems pretty stable although I only use this device for 
> quoting so it dosn't get worked very hard but I plan just to leave the 
> Beta on it and use it in the real world and see what happens.
> 
> If anyone out there would like a copy, let me know and i'll get a copy 
> to you
> 
> Have a great week
> 
> Ian Bardsley
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