I installed Ubuntu 8.10. I am impressed. There were a few minor bugs including 1) amd64 kernel gives iommu error with > 4gb ram. You can eliminate this by including iommu=noapeture in your grub menu boot parameters. Skype does not work correctly because of a missing asound.conf file or .asoundrc. A GTK modules (libcanberra-gtk-module) does not load which makes desktop sound effects inoperative. The last two items can be fixed with simple start-up scripts. All said, this is a fine update of 8.04.1 and the bugs noted are very minor.
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I just installed the amd64 version of Debian Lenny (v5 beta 2). It looks very promising. It comes with kernel 2.6.25.2 and is very up to date. Exim, kernel and most of the packages are newer that Ubuntu 8.0.4.1.
The install was very smooth and I encounted no problems at all.
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I have settled on Ubuntu 8.01.1 as a desktop. I have modified it and run the desktop as a superuser to avoid the sudo thing. It is very stable (I use the AMD 64 version) and all the multimedia plugins work well. I recently installed Flash 10 and nspluginwrapper 1.0.0. I had to compile nspluginwrapper to upgrade to version 1.0.0 (probably not necessary).
To install flash 10 it was necessary to install getlibs from http://www.boundlesssupremacy.com/Ca…etlibs-all.deb and the following libraries to get it to work correctly with nspluginwrapper:libnss3-1d, libnspr4-0d, libcurl3.
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In my previous post I indicated an upgrade probelm with this process. My procedure was incorrect. I attempted to upgrade a 5.1 system with the Centos 5.2 dvd. It failed, possibly due to my selection to update the grub installation.
A simple update/upgrade using yum works fine. I have update two servers using yum update and both function perfectly. Perhaps a reason for the popularity of Centos!
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I have upgraded my desktop to Centos 5.2 (64). First I tried upgrading (5.1) but grub would not install correctly. I was unable to repair grub and ended up removing the old grub from the mbr of the hd. It took a couple of fresh installs to correct the grub issue.
I notice some changes, Firefox 3, etc but mainly evolution rather than revolution (as you would expect). Kernel is still the 2.6.18 series (2.6.18-92.1.1). I do not notice anything unusual. It installs with 4mb memory without problems. No kernel tweeks are necessary (as in Ubuntu) to correct acpi or iommu problems.
I am reluctant to remotely upgrade my Centos 5.1 server, as I had problems with my initial install locally.
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I have be using Slackware since the early versions (about Ver. 3 or so). I cannot resist trying the latest release when it happens. Having just tried Ubuntu 8.04 (amd-64) and having the experience fresh in my mind , I decided to install Slackware 12.1 on a new hard drive. As usual, the install is extremely fast (about 15 minutes or less). Configuration is the usual slackware shell menu system which works flawlessly. I noticed immediately that I could only see 3gb of my 4gb memory. I recompiled the kernel with pae enabled and fixed that problem.
I have grown to like Gnome (while testing Ubuntu and Fedora). Slackware now installs kde only. It was fast and looked good for a kde system. I had to add the nvidia driver (no problem..just run the nvidia driver script). Fonts in Firefox did not look quite as sharp as they do in Ubuntu or Centos (or Fedora). I found a tip which cures that problem. First you uninstall freetype and then you recompile it with freetype.bytecode uncommented and subpixel rendering uncommented (just remove the # in the freetype.SlackBuild script in the freetype slackware souce code. rerun fc-cache -fv and you now have crisp sharp fonts. I had also gotten used to having color xclock on my desktop. Slackware defaults to black and white. All you do is cp /etc/X11/app-defaults/XClock-color to XClock (in the same folder). You now have xclock with green minute hand, red hour hand, and blue second hand.
I like kde but having gnome really was important to me. I found the slackbot 0.91-pluto script after a little googling and installed it (get it here: http://www.mkanet.de/content/buildsystem/). This script downloads the latest gnome packages source, compiles, makes and installs slackware packages based on your distro version. It took about 3 hours to compile ..install and reboot. Amazingly, it all worked without a hitch. Gnome 2.22 came up and looked great.
I added slapt-get and the repo for it, installed compiz-fusion, emerald, etc. All of this worked excellent also. Actually, the end result is better than my Ubuntu experience. The Gnome 2.22 packages include great multimedia support. I have everything working (mplayerplug-in, flash, and java). I highly recommend Slackware 12.1 if you understand slack and know how to configure it.
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Here is the way to upgrade your Slackware 12.0 to 12.1.
It works pretty much as indicated in the UPGRADE.TXT file located on the cd/dvd. Here are the steps for your linode (assuming you already have 12.0 installed).
wget http://slackware.mirrors.tds.net/pub/slackware/slackware-12.1-iso/slackware-12.1-install-d1.iso
Use your favorite mirror above.
Once you have the slackware-12.1-install-d1.iso,
mount slackware-12.1-install-d1.iso /mnt -t iso9660 -o ro,loop=/dev/loop0
Then execute:
telinit 1
cd /mnt
upgradepkg /mnt/slackware/a/glibc-solibs-*.tgz
upgradepkg /mnt/slackware/a/pkgtools-*.tgz
upgradepkg –install-new /mnt/slackware/*/*.tgz
That should do it. Read the UPGRADE.TXT if you have questions. This installs some stuff you probably don’t need if your running slackware as a server (like gimp, etc). If you are worried about disk space you can run pkgtool and remove things you are sure you won’t need.
Reboot and..
Have fun!
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I ususally give up on this but here is the cure (at least for my system). I am running lilo, however I expect it should work with grub also.
Add the following to your lilo.conf
append=”iommu=65534,noagp,soft”
Run lilo -L, and reboot. You should now be able to see 4gb memory and run xorg correctly!
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I have installed Ubuntu 8.04 – amd64 version. Here are some of my impressions.
Easy installation, one cd/network install very quick. Debian based- If your familiar with Debian, Ubuntu is an evolved version. It is virtually identical to Debian with some eye candy and improved 3d setup. You also have the advantage of the latest kernel/libraries that are available to new distros. Firefox 3 (beta 5) is the default browser. I find it very stable. Openjava and flash work fine as well as all the mplayerplug-in’s necessary to play movie trailers, etc. Pulseaudio seems to be transparent. I have noticed no problem with either software compatablility or other issues. Repositories seem to be very complete. Nvidia support works out of the box. I opted to try the new Nvidia beta driver so I did a manual install which worked with no issues. Support forums are excellent. I found answers to all but a couple of questions there, including how to update the browser with the latest plugins (which worked).
Problems- I had few. One major problem that I also had with Debian was an annoying hard disk error message. I previously found the fix (while using Debian) for my hardware. I needed to add:noapic nolapic as a kernel boot parameter (lilo in my case) which eliminated the error. I did not like the xterm looks (compared to Fedora/Centos). After a little experimenting, I was able to use the Centos configuration by replacing the /etc/X11/Xresources folder with the Xresources file from my Centos installation. This produces the identical xterm look you have in Fedora/Centos. One other obvervation. I am using 2gb ram with this install. 4gb ram will not function correctly with this hardware. It will boot and bring up X however, the cursor is a large grainy block. There are several suggested cures for this however, I have not found one that works for my configuration. I can use the same hardware with 4gb ram and Centos 5.1 (64 bit) without problems. I am guessing Centos has patched the kernel to eliminate the bug. One other obversation. I like a large virtual screen. Apparently you cannot do this with gdm and Ubuntu (unlike Debian). Instead, I do not run gdm. I simply boot to a console terminal and use a runx script (startx — -depth 24 -dpi 96).
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To get your best looking fonts while using the Nvidia driver under Xorg.. try this:
xdpyinfo | grep resol
If the result is not 96×96, then add the following line to xorg.conf in the “Device” section:
Option “DPI” “96 x 96″
Restart Xorg and check again with xdpyinfo. It should report 96×96 and your fonts should be improved!
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