A beta version (”knot2″) of Ubuntu’s new version is out. More info (including screenshots) is here:
The Edgy Eft Knot 2 is the second alpha release of Ubuntu 6.10, and with this new alpha release comes a whole host of excellent new features.
Remember that it’s alpha, so don’t use it on a production machine. Ubuntu folks, one plea from me: make it trivial to add a virtual private network (VPN). I found this Ubuntu VPN guide from late 2005 about pptp-linux and pptpconfig, but a typical user doesn’t want to use apt-get or edit sources.list. Or read through a PPTP/VPN diagnosis howto page if it doesn’t work the first time.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Maybe you need to put a disclaimer up that a minimum proficiency of math is required to post comments on this site..phew that was tough!
Some videos are available here too.
http://ubuntuvideo.com/ubucon_ubuntu_edgy_eft_preview
I’d like to know if third party software for other flavors of Linux/Unix are compatible with Ubuntu too.
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Ubuntu uses DEB packages [Debian] so if third party software is available in that format then i’d say yes, also you can compile from source. If i’m not mistaken theres a way to convert RPM packages to DEB but don’t quote me on this.
Hmm
Persoanaly id do VPN stuff on the Router (get a wrt54g and stick DD-WRT on it) using a full pc to do routing is a bit of a waste.
Also i found what looked like a google page but i think it looks a bit dodgy – not shure where the best place to report it is.
http://www.google-my-website.com/
the capatchta is ambigious:
do you mean add ‘x’ + ‘y’ and put that result in or add the strings ‘x’ and ‘y’.
Damn, all my friends have switched to Linux after Ubuntu was released, I guess I should give it a try too
Is it really easy to use?
Maurice, given that your comment appeared, it looks like you guessed correctly.
Paul Mellors: thanks for the video pointer! And it’s even on Google Video, which warms my heart.
(Ah, it’s 40 minutes, so YouTube probably wasn’t an option anyway..)
Just had to find to many bugs in losely typed languages
Maybe a non native english speaker might have a problem though
One horrible new “feature” is getting rid of the “scary” text during boot. One thing I liked about ubuntu was the fact that they got their logo on the screen for technophobes to look at during boot, but I could still tell what’s going on.
Ubuntu is very shiney and pretty but, in my brief experince with it, seems to have much more of an “our way or no way” attitude.
Mike –
You should be able to hit F2 during boot to get the verbose output that you are missing. I haven’t tried it in edgy though . . . let me know if that works.
Mike–
I haven’t had much experience with Ubuntu (it’s on my list of techno-”todos” but that list is pretty long at the moment) but my sense about the “our way or no way” thing is, that Ubuntu is trying to make Linux more approachable for the not-so-sophisticated user who doesn’t actually want to make choices about very many things…
I’ve been working with computers daily since 1977, have a CS and EE degree, >15 years of work as a developer including 7 years in Unix environments… and I find Linux daunting enough that I can’t be bothered, unless I have to for some job. Given my druthers, for a day-to-day computing platform, I’ll take Windows most of the time because a lot of things just work “well enough”, without my having to make decisions about them. I can focus on my actual task at hand.
I’m not some great Microsoft partisan– but Linux makes me think too often about too many things.
There is a simply awesome VPN utility out there that adds on to the Network Manager (the cool wifi controller thing you can add to your panel). It works exactly as expected, for me, under PPTP.
For the love of me, I can’t remember where I found it, but I use it all the time and it works great. Just letting you know the answer is out there somewhere.
I fell in love with ubuntu until I realized that I couldn’t mount an ftp site as a hard drive so that I can have my text editor upload directly to the ftp site under wine….without re compiling my kernel.
while some of you may enjoy it, I should never have to do such a thing…ever.
The linux distro that lets me install and configure stuff without having to compile code will win my business.
ubuntu is almost there.
Try using network-manager for VPNing. You’ll need some plugins, not sure they are present in ubuntu, but I’m pretty sure you can find ready-to-use .debs easily. Agreed it should be present by default, though.
I like your weblog and your spam protection. So I added you on stumbleupon. Hope you don’t mind.
Matt, try OpenVPN: http://openvpn.net/ — I had it running on my ubuntu box in less than an hour. The config is easy and the ssl key generation has helper scripts that hold your hand through the process (they install into /usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/easy-rsa). There are a bunch of pointy-clicky GUI clients for windows and OS X.
There are known security issues with the PPTP protocol (http://pptpclient.sourceforge.net/protocol-security.phtml) which make it a less-favorable solution.
Ryan: you most definitely don’t have to recompile your kernel. Compiling a loadable kernel module is a lot less of a pain than compiling your own kernel. However, you don’t even have to do that. If you’re still using Ubuntu, get the fuse-utils package, and then see:
http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html
http://curlftpfs.sourceforge.net/
Installed “edgy eft” last weekend and I’m loving it. And then I added Beryl, wow. I honestly believe that with better hardware compatibility that Ubuntu could spell serious trouble for Vista.
Improvements have been made all around such as faster system boot up times, faster GNOME start up times, improvements to the user interface, a shiny new optimized kernel, GNOME 2.16, and much, much more.