[ale] phoronix.com: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Desktop To Be Supported Longer (5 Years)

Sat Oct 22 21:25:45 EDT 2011

David, Rich (and anyone else reading this):

Yeah I think I came across as a bit more of a Ubuntu fanboy than I actually
am.  I've got two machines (without getting into all the specs at the
moment), a Dell XPS M1530 laptop that's my main machine, as well as a Lenovo
H215 desktop that functions a bit more as my sandbox.  The Lenovo desktop is
duel boot Ubuntu 11.04 (classic Gnome 2.32.1) and Windows 7 Home, the Dell
laptop duel boot Debian 6 (Squeeze - stable .. Gnome 2,30.2), as well as
Windows 7 Professional ... although at this point I'm natively in Linux on
those respective machines about 99%/95% of the time, and I'll fire up
Windows XP in Virtualbox if I wanna watch Netflix or need to M$ Office 2007
instead of Libreoffice.

And the Debian on the Dell laptop is a very deliberate choice after
discovering multiple versions of Ubuntu had GPU lockups in Gnome (although I
could still Cntl-Alt-F1 and get to a terminal and handle the situation).  I
suspect that the GPU lockups were related to Compiz, however in Debian
Squeeze I am using Compiz and the most amazing thing to me is after
initially booting up before launching any apps, the RAM footprint is a very
lean 230MiB (and w/o Compiz 200MiB).  A full 1 GiB < Windows 7, and even
through I've got 6 GiBs RAM on it, it's nice to have all those resources
available for my VMs in Virtualbox.

About the only bug I've found in the stock Gnome 2.30.2 is I do some cut and
pasting from PDFs from time to time, and in a multiple column PDF the stock
Evine 2.30.x has a bug that overlaps the multiple columns in a PDF when I
attempt to select-cut-paste from it, however pulling in the Evince 2.32.x
from Debian Testing it works like a champ. I think if I were to make a
custom fork it would be Debian Squeeze with Gnome 2.32.x.  I did briefly
this week now that Gnome 3 had migrated from Debian Experimental -> Sid try
an upgrade to Sid natively on that Dell ... only to have Xorg hitting 100%
CPU (which I suspect is a combination of Xorg + the Nvidia 280 drivers (the
card is Nvidia 8600M GT).  I suspect the 100% CPU problem would have been
solved by using the open-source Nouveau Gallium 3d drivers for Nvidia,
however I've encountered high fans speeds for the CPU/GPU fan that I suspect
the fan control is lacking in the Nouveau drivers (however in the Mesa 7.12
branch in development that I think is the 3d part, I think Nouveau is
getting that fan speed functionally into the drivers.  Oh the other nice
thing about Debian Squeeze on that Dell laptop, much of the time the
processing load is so low the fan is either at 0 rpm or low.  After briefly
trying out Sid, used a Clonezilla image and I'm back in Squeeze :)

Brief introduction since I've been on this mailing list (and ale jobs) for
several months now.  I'm Don Kramer. Spent the good portion of the last
decade in the Global IT division at Coca-Cola in production support.
Although to some degree I've been involved with Linux as early as the late
90s with Red Hat 5.2 and Caldera OpenLinux (and remember the joys of having
to recompile the kernel just to get sound working on my Packard Bell at the
time) ... more recently Linux has breathed new life in my passion for IT.  I
am taking the CompTIA+ Linux+ exams next month for certification, and I am
very interested in entry/intermediate/junior level positions as a (but not
limited to) Linux Systems Administrator.  I hope my brief introduction is
appropriate for the board.

Don
-- 
Don Kramer
donkramer at gmail.com - email / 404-213-7738 - cell
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dgkramer
http://www.donkramer.net/linux

On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 8:50 PM, David Tomaschik
<david at systemoverlord.com>wrote:

>  On 10/22/2011 08:31 PM, Richard Faulkner wrote:
>
> Interesting development and a wise move (IMHO).  But speaking from my own
> narrow opinion, I am not a fan of Unity nor Gnome 3 nor KDE or Xfce.  I'm
> rather partial to Gnome 2 and am quite happy with that.  I liked Fedora and
> I really like Ubuntu but more and more find myself wondering if I'm going to
> be custom building my own fork of Ubuntu to get what I want or go to Mint.
> Am I the only one thinking this way or are others like me and happy with the
> desktop classic?  Perhaps a well placed email to Canonical asking for a
> choice at installation for which desktop we want?  Is such a thing
> feasible?  Perhaps not in a CD release but certainly in a DVD image?
>
> Rich in Lilburn
>
>
> The biggest problem you're likely to run into with this is the fact that
> there's nobody maintaining Gnome 2.  All new development out of the Gnome
> project is focused on Gnome 3.  I imagine it won't be too long until many
> applications have switched to GTK 3 for their toolkit, but maybe I'm wrong.
>
> David
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> *From*: Don Kramer <donkramer at gmail.com<Don%20Kramer%20%3cdonkramer at gmail.com%3e>
> >
> *Reply-to*: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org> <ale at ale.org>
> *To*: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org<Atlanta%20Linux%20Enthusiasts%20%3cale at ale.org%3e>
> >
> *Subject*: [ale] phoronix.com: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Desktop To Be Supported
> Longer (5 Years)
> *Date*: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 17:06:40 -0400
>
> I think this is big news on the desktop front: Starting with Ubuntu 12.04's
> April 2012 release, Canonical's support for the desktop release will be five
> years (which they've already been doing for the server edition) instead of
> three.
>
> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAwNDE
>
> And for you Gnome 3 haters, since for Ubuntu 10.04 the LTS three year
> support cycle also included the KDE version (Kubuntu 10.04 LTS) and the Xfce
> version (Xubuntu 10.04 LTS), hopefully the five year support cycle will
> include those too, as well as the newest official Ubuntu derived distro ..
> Lubuntu with the LXDE desktop.
>
> I switched to Debian Squeeze as my primary distro (from Ubuntu) this year,
> but this development may make me reconsider Ubuntu.
>
>
> --
> David Tomaschik, RHCE, LPIC-1
> System Administrator/Open Source Advocate
> OpenPGP: 0x5DEA789Bhttp://systemoverlord.comdavid@systemoverlord.com
>
>
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>

-- 
Don Kramer
donkramer at gmail.com - email / 404-213-7738 - cell
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