Ubuntu Linux--Would You Like Some Community With That?

By: Bill von Hagen
Thursday, February 3, 2005 08:03:37 PM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/5729/1/

Looking at Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a Debian-based distribution that is probably the most philosophical of all Linux distributions, which is saying a lot in the Open Source space.

The Ubuntu web site (http://www.ubuntu.com) identifies Ubuntu as an ancient African word that means "humanity to others" and "I am what I am because of who we all are." The choice of Ubuntu as the name for this distribution reflects a deep appreciation for the supportive, cooperative collaboration that is the basis of the Open Source Software movement, the global nature of the participants in the Ubuntu project, and the rich, helpful community that is growing up around the Ubuntu distribution.

Philosophy aside, the goal of the Ubuntu folks is to provide a more up-to-date Debian than Debian, while eliminating many of the potentially confusing installation options and permutations encountered when installing many Linux distributions. They accomplish these goals extremely well, with an easy-to-use installation process, a great system update and enhancement mechanism, and a distribution that makes a great starter--or permanent home--for Linux users who'd just like to use their computer to get work done.

This review discusses both Ubuntu 4.10 (AKA "Warty Warthog") and the upcoming 5.04 (AKA "Hoary Hedgehog") release, the latter of which is currently only available in live CD form as a preview but is slated for full release in April 2005 (hence the numbering convention--2005, fourth month). I'd suggest losing the cutesy names, but no one is asking me. Both of these are available and actively supported on the x86, AMD64, and G4 and G5 PowerPC platforms.

Installing Ubuntu

This section focuses on the default 4.10 (Warty) installation process. Installation is largely a misnomer for the Hoary live CDs, which boot and run from CD on an existing system without disturbing anything that's already there (though they will take advantage of existing swap partitions). Live CD "installs" still prompt for some information, such as the language and keyboard layout that you want to use, and do so in the same interactive framework as when installing Ubuntu to disk.

By default, Ubuntu installs a desktop system centered around the GNOME desktop. Server-type or custom-hardware installs are still possible through the extensive options that you can read about by pressing F1 at the initial Ubuntu install screen. For example, to install a minimal system, you specify "custom" at the initial prompt and must then bypass automatic updates later on in the install. This will give you a basic, command-line system that you can tweak to your heart's content using apt-get before breaking out your collection of VT100s or H19s.

After pressing Return to begin my initial Ubuntu 4.10 install, I immediately thought I was having a flashback to Yggdrasil days (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil_Linux) or was accidentally installing Slackware. See Figure 1 for a shot of one of the 4.10 installation dialogs. Luckily, at that point, the epiphany occurred and I realized that my mind had been warped by graphical bells and whistles. What I was actually seeing "what I needed to see." An interesting concept--a modern Linux distribution that serves people who might not have 256MB video cards and a Terabyte of disk space. Even my toaster has SVGA nowadays, but it's still nice to see an installer that will easily work on 32-bit PC hardware of almost any vintage.

Warty's installation process is a two-phase process. The first captures basic information about the language and keyboard layout that you want to use, and then probes and configures your system's hardware. It provides its own disk partitioner, which supports ext2, ext3, ReiserFS, JFS, XFS, and FAT16 and FAT32 filesystems, as well as software RAID and logical volumes. By default, the partitioner creates a single swap partition and a single ext3 filesystem. The partitioner can be a tad confusing if you opt for manual partitioning, but works nicely once you get the hang of it.

After partitioning the disk, the installer installs the base system, copies remaining packages to the disk, installs GRUB, and then ejects the CD and reboots into the second phase of the installer. The second phase installer enables you to create the system's default user and then installs the packages that were formerly cached to disk and, optionally, updates to those packages over the net. Figure 2 shows a sample screen of the vast number of package installs during the second phase of the installer. GUI-lovers, avert your eyes!

Unique to Ubuntu and "Live" distributions such as Knoppix is the fact that you do not create a superuser account or set a superuser password. In Ubuntu, the user whose account you create during the second phase of the install process has the ability to run "execute as root" process (using sudo under the covers) and can even start a root shell in a terminal window from one of the desktop menus. Figure 3 shows the type of dialog that displays whenever you attempt to execute an application that uses root privileges. Because Ubuntu is using sudo under the covers, the password that you must type is the password of the user that is currently logged in--typically yourself. Frankly, this is somewhat confusing for many people since you are already logged in as that user, but this is the wrong place for a discussion of the history and implementation of Linux/Unix security mechanisms and ways of maintaining backward compatibility.

If you're using Ubuntu in a commercial setting, the implications of giving normal users the ability to run privileged commands requires some sysadmin forethought. It requires a significant amount of trust in anyone with physical access to anyone else's system, but it is a great way to discourage people from asking for or using the root account when it isn't actually necessary. Whether or not sudo is a complete replacement for root access on an installed systems is a philosophical discussion that is scheduled to complete shortly after the vi/emacs flames wars finish.

What's in the Box

As stated earlier, a primary goal of the Ubuntu project is to provide a more accessible, up-to-date version of Debian Linux than the Debian project. In general, no one who installs Ubuntu and is searching for up-to-date versions of their favorite software packages will be significantly disappointed. The following table shows the versions of some of the most popular GNU/Linux software packages found in the current (Warty) and upcoming (Hoary) Ubuntu releases. For those new to Linux, this tables lists the versions of the Evolution mail client, the binutils, GCC, GDB, and Glibc packages for compilation and debugging, the GNOME desktop system and its graphical underpinnings in the X Window System, the Perl, Python, and Ruby scripting languages, the Open Office desktop office software package, the Linux kernel itself, and the Synaptic graphical package management system.
PackageUbuntu 4.10 (Warty)Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary)
binutils2.14.902.15-5
Evolution2.0.22.1.3.2
Firefox0.9.31.0
GCC3.3.43.3.5
GDB6.1-36.3-5
GIMP2.0.22.2
Glibc2.3.22.3.2
GNOME2.8.12.9.4
Kernel2.6.8.12.6.10
Open Office1.1.21.1.3
Perl5.8.45.8.4-5
Python2.3.4-22.4
Ruby1.81.8
Synaptic0.53.40.56
X Window SystemXFree86 4.3.0X.org 6.8.1

Because this review discusses a live CD pre-release of Hoary, the full Hoary release will no doubt include slightly updated versions of some of these packages.

As you can see, Ubuntu's Warty and Hoary releases are generally quite similar, and feature a default desktop configuration. Figure 4 shows Warty's default desktop with a few open applications. Figure 5 shows Hoary's default desktop (from the Live CD pre-release) with other sample applications.

As you can see from these figures, Ubuntu offers a nice look and feel for GNOME fans. KDE fanciers will no doubt be disappointed, but independents who aren't registered with the GNOME or KDE parties will find an eminently usable and attractive desktop. The primary difference between the two is that the Hoary desktop uses the new GNOME menu defaults that will be used in GNOME 2.10, which (among other things) have broken the contents of the old Computer menu into two menus: Places (which deals with access to folders, devices, and so on) and Desktop (which deals with general desktop-related tasks such as administration, setting preferences, locking the screen, logging out, and so on). IMHO, the new GNOME menu organization in Hoary is an improvement to the older GNOME organization used by Warty. YMMV. Flames cheerfully ignored.

With the new version of GNOME used Hoary comes the traditional slew of GNOME application updates and some new GNOME applications. Most notable among these are the GNOME update manager, customized in Ubuntu as the Ubuntu Update Manager, and a parallel daemon, the the Ubuntu Update Notifier. The latter watches your repositories and lets you know when updates are available, while the former is an even friendlier front end to Synaptic. Figure 6 shows the version of the GNOME Update Manager currently available as an update for Hoary from the hoary repositories (update-manager and update-notifier, respectively).

Fine Tuning and Updating Ubuntu

Being Debian-based, Ubuntu uses the DEB package format and associated applications such as apt-get, aptitude, and Synaptic. The Debian package management system and apt are unquestionably fantastic. DEB packages and apt-get are what RPM packages and RPM itself want to be when they grow up.

To my mind, updating your system using apt-get is quaint and so 1990s (outside a shell script), but Ubuntu includes a tremendous graphical front end to the apt package management system known as Synaptic, shown in Figure 7 in its Ubuntu incarnation. Synaptic was originally developed by the folks who bring you the Connectiva Linux distribution (http://www.conectiva.com.br/ for the Portuguese speakers in the audience), but is now widely used in many RPM and Debian-based systems because it is a clear example of "the right thing."

Explaining the internals of Debian package management is outside the scope of a review, but an overview is important in order to appreciate some of the enhancements that Ubuntu has added. In a nutshell, Debian-style updates are typically done over the net, and involve comparing the versions of packages installed on your system with the versions of packages available from repositories that are organized first into various distributions or branches (in this case, "warty," "hoary," etc.), and into various sections within those releases. Traditional Debian section are "main," for packages compliant with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG, Debian's definition of "free software"), "contrib," for packages that comply with the DFSG but may do things like depending on non-free packages), and "non-free," the gulag for packages that don't comply with the DFSG.

To this clever hierarchy, Ubuntu uses sections such as "universe," which are packages that are not officially supported by Ubuntu but have been submitted by members of the community, and "multiverse," which are packages that are not supported by Ubuntu and have not been determined to be free software. Synaptic provides easy access to the list of repositories that it knows about and the distributions and sections that are available from each through its Settings > Repositories dialog.

To look for and install any favorite packages that may not have been installed on Warty or Hoary (xine and qemacs come to mind), simply add the new sections to existing repositories and reload Synaptic's list of available packages. You can then search package name and descriptions for program names or related keywords, and click on the packages to select them for installation. Thanks to the intelligence built into DEB packages, selecting a package also selects any other required packages. You can then update or enhance your system by clicking Apply, and sit back while Synaptic retrieves and installs the right packages in the right order for you. This makes it easy to resolve problems such as that shown in Figure 8, in which I've tried to enable Windows networking but didn't realize that Samba and SMB support weren't installed by default.

Once Synaptic has retrieved all requested or required packages, it displays an Applying Changes dialog that provides a glimpse into what's actually going on under the hood and prompts you for any information that any of the packages that you are installing may require.

For the truly gutsy, you can even use this mechanism to upgrade an existing Warty installation to the current Hoary release, by replacing the distribution entries in all your repositories from "warty" to "hoary", reloading, and updating everything that you've installed. You should also make sure to use Synaptic's Smart Update feature when doing this, to minimize the number of bullet holes in your feet. Like updating to any pre-release, this should not be done lightly. You may break things, you'll have to make sure that fundamental changes such as a new kernel and X Window System implementation still start and run correctly. Until the official Hoary release comes out, this is a loaded pistol--useful if you really know what you're doing and are willing to live on the bleeding edge, but dangerous otherwise.

Ubuntu Releases and Support Commitments

All Ubuntu Linux releases are free, and they do not differentiate between free and enterprise versions--everybody gets the same , complete thing. Official media is available if you don't have a CD burner or just want "official" CDs to comply with some regulation or obsession. Actually, getting Ubuntu on official media is one of the most impressive things I've seen in the Linux/Unix community since Dennis Ritchie would put Unix on a disk pack for you--the Ubuntu folks will even ship you free CDs and cover the cost of shipping for you! See http://shipit.ubuntulinux.org/ for more information.

Another nice thing about Ubuntu is that they are very up front about their release plans and support commitments for existing releases. New releases are scheduled every six months, and each release is supported for a minimum of 18 months from its release date. This is a nice touch for anyone who has bought Microsoft's FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) about the lack of support for Linux.

Commercial support for Ubuntu is available directly from Canonical, LTD (http://www.canonical.com/), which is the company that sponsors the Ubuntu project. Canonical's support offerings are listed on the Ubuntu site at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/paidsupport/. A substantial number of firms all over the world that provide support for Ubuntu are also listed in the Ubuntu Marketplace site at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/marketplace. The latter is an incredible testimonial to the wide-spread and well-established nature of Ubuntu after a relatively short time in Linux years.

Free support for Ubuntu is also available online at a variety of places in a variety of formats, as summarized on their Web site at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/freesupport. These include FAQs, actual documentation, IRC Chat, Forums, and Wikis. There are even local language support channels and mailing lists for Ubuntu, once again showing their global perspective and commitment, and the popularity of the distribution.

Bill von Hagen is the author of numerous books and articles on Linux. For more information about Bill, see http://www.vonhagen.org.

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