| Ubuntu's Dapper Drake is one impressive Linux distro |
Jun. 02, 2006
Perhaps the most widely anticipated Linux distribution of the year finally arrived on June 1: Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Long Term Service), aka Dapper Drake.
Already number one on DistroWatch's latest seven-day download tracker, the Dapper Drake runs the GNOME 2.14 desktop environment on top of the X.org 7.0 window system and a Linux 2.6.15.6 kernel. The operating system is available for download for x86, AMD64, and PowerPC architectures. A beta version for Sun's T1 UltraSPARC will also be made available as soon as T1000 and T2000 certifications are complete.
Ubuntu 6.06 downloads are in ISO files that must be burned to a CD or a DVD before you can either try it or install it. You're given three main installation choices. The first is the "Desktop." This gives you the options of either running Ubuntu off a bootable "live CD" or installing it permanently with an integrated graphical installer.
The "Server" is meant both to install the Linux permanently on a system and to automatically set up a certified LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack. It uses an easy-to-use text-based installer.
The purpose of the Server version is to make Ubuntu more attractive to business customers. "This new functionality is a first step towards the simplification of common server deployment scenarios using Ubuntu" said Fabio Massimo Di Nitto, product manager of Ubuntu Server Edition in a statement.
Finally, Ubuntu has an "Alternative" setup. This is intended for setting up customized OEM (original equipment manufacturer) systems; running automated deployments; seting up upgrading for older installations without network access; performing LVM (Logical Volume Management and/or RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) partitioning; or installing Ubuntu on systems with less than 192MB of RAM.
Anyway you do it, Ubuntu doesn't require much in the way of system resources. Any Pentium-plus or PowerPC system should be able to run it. Indeed, the command-line interface based server can run on systems with as little as 64MB. The desktop requires 256 MB of RAM.
If the Server requirements, for a full LAMP stack along with the usual network server trimmings, such as Samba file/print services and Apache 2.0 web hosting, sounds too low to be believed, I've got news for you: it works.
I took the slowest and oldest of my regular test systems, a 120MHz Pentium with a 10GB hard-drive and 64MB of RAM. This system normally runs NT 4.0 for testing older Windows networking. I was able to quickly and easily install Ubuntu Server.
Ubuntu actually worked far better than the ancient copy of NT on this old server. If I wanted to get some real work out of my older servers, without sweating the details of pulling out services to get the right minimal mix, I'd look to Ubuntu.
For users who need a cheap, really cheap, server, Ubuntu demands that you give it a look.
On the other hand, if you've got big iron, Ubuntu also boasts a high-end server kernel with support for systems with more than 8 CPUs, like the Unisys ES7000 and Sun's Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers.
Ubuntu's Desktop is meant, above all other things, to be one thing in particular: easy.
The Ubuntu Desktop gave me the easiest install of any operating system I've ever installed. After burning the CD, I simply popped in my test system, answered a few mindless questions -- such as what time zone was I in -- and inside of ten minutes I had a working and connected to the Internet. That's impressive.
To do this, instead of the kitchen sink approach that, say, OpenSUSE 10.1 takes to software, Ubuntu only installs a pre-selected set of software by default.
The Ubuntu software pack includes such popular choices as OpenOffice 2.02, for office work; Firefox 1.503 for Web browsing; GIMP 2.2 for graphics; Evolution 2.6.1 for email; and GAIM 1.5.1 for instant messaging. If you want more, or a different program, you can use the Synaptic Package Manager to get other programs or plug-ins.
The new Ubuntu also boasts an automatic software update system to keep your system up-to-date without sweating the details.
My test system was an HP Pavilion a250n. This PC comes with a 2.6GHz Pentium 4 processor with 800MHz bus speed, and a GB of PC2700 DDR (double-data-rate) RAM. For graphics, it uses a low-end NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX. This is a decent PC, but it's no speed demon by today's standards.
Despite that, I found Ubuntu to be very responsive on it both in live CD mode, and once I had installed it as the system's default operating system.
Next, I updated a similar system running the prior version of Ubuntu, Breezy. The installation here was also a piece of cake.
I also found it very easy to install the programs I wanted on the system. For instance, adding Thunderbird as an email client was a snap with Synaptic. When I needed to add a plug-in to the default video player, Totem 1.4.1, to play MPEG files, the actual installation was straightforward.
If you just want to update your system in a hurry with many of the more popular modifications, such as the Skype VoIP client, proprietary NVIDA graphic drivers, or non-free video codecs, you can also download Easy Ubuntu. This independently produced Python script automates all these and other tasks for Ubuntu desktop users.
Ubuntu's instructions are available online via an integrated help system. They are very straightforward. Any computer-savvy user, even if they were new to Linux, shouldn't have much trouble managing, installing, or updating Ubuntu or its programs.
If I were going to look at Ubuntu as just a standalone Linux desktop, I'd already be giving it a big thumbs-up. However, I always look at any desktop as a potential office machine, so I also looked at how ready the system was for a business network. There, unfortunately, I found some glitches.
For example, while I had no trouble hooking Dapper into my NFS (Network File System) resources, the system balked at logging into AD (Active Directory) or NT Domain style drives and printers.
While the operating system eventually connected, it always, at first, gave me error messages about the user id not being recognized. I eventually found that if I just bulled through the error messages, I actually would be logged into the appropriate server and be able to access the network drives and printers.
The problem was that the system was defaulting to having the user name include the Windows default "Workgroup" domain. Doubtlessly, some SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) networks do use that, but I don't know of any serious networks that use that default.
It's the kind of problem that many users, and even some administrators, might go crazy pulling their hair out before stumbling across the simple fix.
Another problem that most home owners are unlikely to run into is that I was unable to install the VMWare Player. Unlike other distributions, such as OpenSUSE that uses Xen for running multiple operating systems at once, Ubuntu doesn't come with a virtualization platform.
So, a friend of mine grabbed VMWare, but then he found that the shipping version of Ubuntu doesn't include the correct matching source code headers files. He could build the kernel himself to get those files, but if he wanted to do that, he'd be running Gentoo, not Ubuntu.
We both strongly suspect that the Dapper mirrors haven't quite caught up with the most current source code. Still, this is a problem that should vanish shortly.
It does spell out, though, that Dapper is still in its teething stages. It's certainly no longer a beta, but I'd wait a bit before deploying it into a business.
Of course, there is a wide-variety of community help available for people who get stuck with problems. The Ubuntu community is, even by the friendly standards of the open-source community, a very helpful crew.
If you need more than the community, Ubuntu's corporate big-brother, Canonical Ltd., will be more than happy to support your Ubuntu systems. Canonical is intent on making Ubuntu not just a popular distribution, but a commercial Linux as well.
Support prices start at $750 per year for servers, and $250 for desktops. For that, besides online support options, customers will get no-extra-charge 24x7 phone support in both English and French.
The bottom line? As a free distribution for home use, I think it's a great desktop. It's also extremely impressive as a low-end service. For a business desktop, though, I'd give it some more time to mature. By year's end, however, Ubuntu should be giving any Linux desktop -- home or enterprise -- a run for its money.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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