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

Sat Oct 22 23:44:07 EDT 2011

I think the introduction is totally appropriate and you're in good
company here...

I too am a daily driver of Linux with one Acer Travelmate and two
desktops in the house on 11.04.  One additional desktop is 10.10 with
none of them dual-booting.  We've taken the Linux oath.  The only
Microsoft product that we use (my wife, my youngest sons and I) is for
(in my case) a VM where I do work on a project that I use CorelDraw 10
and (for my wife) two XP boxes (one is her's that is a Windows only h/w
mix and a second version of the same that belongs to a client - their
proprietary equipment).   Our eldest is okay with Linux but wants to be
able to play Windows-based games so he's still running XP.

I cannot say that I'm an Ubuntu fanboy but I do lead a group that
refurbishes laptops with Ubuntu to be re-purposed into the mission field
for Christian missionaries, teachers and ministers.  So I guess in some
ways I am a fanboy...but my enthusiasm is for Linux.

Good points on Gnome but being as this is a community effort I hope that
we'll see developers sticking to support of Gnome 2 for a time to come.
RinL

-----Original Message-----
From: Don Kramer <donkramer at gmail.com>
Reply-to: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
Subject: Re: [ale] phoronix.com: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Desktop To Be
Supported Longer (5 Years)
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 21:25:45 -0400

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>
        > Reply-to: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
        > To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
        > 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: 0x5DEA789B
        http://systemoverlord.com
        david at systemoverlord.com

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

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