[OT] On upgrading to Ubuntu 12.10

[Richmond]

On 10/21/2012 10:45 AM, Peter Alcibiades wrote:
> Two solutions really.  If you are set on staying with Ubuntu, install
> Cinammon.  I wouldn't for two reasons, one being the crazed desire to
> dictate what other people do with their desktops, the other being the crazed
> six month rlease cycle.  But, if staying with Ubuntu, probably Cinammon.

I found Cinnamon awful. Chacun a son gout, mon vieux.

>
> I never have understood the cult of Ubuntu.  I know lots of people who rave
> about it, but none of them are using it as their only or main workhorse.
> Its very striking - you hear someone telling you enthusiastically how
> wonderful Unity or Gnome 3 is, and it turns out he has played with it a few
> times and his main workstation is Windows 7.

I don't belong to the cult of Ubuntu, far from it, but I do know that I 
can install the
LXDE or XFCE flavours (Lubuntu and Xubuntu respectively - pretty poor 
imaginations when
it comes to names) on just about anything from a Pentium II upwards and 
get a computer
that runs without having to "fart about" all that much post installation.

I do believe that Mark Shuttleworth ("Mr Slugworth") is getting a bit 
too big for
his boots insofar as he and his merry men are making judgement calls about
Gnome and Unity (and the recent kaffuffle about some dirty deal with 
Amazon searches),
that seem (and I mean 'seem') to restrict end-user's ability to 
customise aspects of
the OS to their taste.

However, seeming is as seeming does, and, unlike Apple and Microsoft, 
the Ubuntu "product"
can be hacked, slashed and generally tarted up as much as anyone wants 
with a bit of effort (recipes
abound on the internet).

I do feel that what quite a few people moan about is that when they 
install vanilla 
Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Kubuntu/Lubuntu/Uncle-Tom-Cobbley-and-all-buntu, they 
don't instantly get just what they want.

Well that is a bit much if one stops and thinks how rigid the Mac OS and 
the Windows GUIs are.


One hears similar enthusiasm about Windows 8 by people who never seem to
have seriously tried using that, and only that, for a month.

The second and robust long term solution is go to Debian.


Well, my experience with Debian was that I got fried in dependency hell 
every time I tried to install
anything vaguely 'other' than the stuff that came on the install disk. 
Whatever Ubuntu's short-comings,
and there are quite a few, it was rather a relief to go back to it after 
several fairly painful excursions
into Debian.

>   This is the best
> and the permanent solution, its completely stable and conservative in its
> release cycle and what you install is entirely up to you.

Not really; see my point about dependency hell above.

>    Upgrades when
> they happen will be painless.  At this point, install 'wheezy', the testing
> flavor.  But even that is not going to be fully up to date - you'll get xfce
> 4.8, and for desktop thumbnails you need 4.10.  For example.

Umm, "release cycle", "upgrade cycle": well, nobody made me upgrade my 
box from 12.04 to 12.10.

My school sports 4 machines running on a 2010 version of Ubuntu with no 
obvious reasons why they
should be upgraded.

>
> Properly tested two to three year release cycle.  Complete developer
> agnosticism about which desktop is right for me.

If one installs Lubuntu as one's base system, one can install pretty 
well any desktop one wants
on top (Fluxbox, anyone?), and not suffer unduly.

>   Its a hard combination to
> beat.  Yes, the thing that is coming towards my guys is at some point gnome
> 3 is going to result from a distribution upgrade.  Fine, but its a year or
> two away, and by then we will either go to xfce and they won't notice, or
> maybe Gnome will have recovered its senses.
>
> Seems as doubtful as Windows 8 recovering its senses.  I guess that is the
> consolation with Linux, when you fire up that appalling mess on the Windows
> 8 desktop and realize that its the OS developer that is determined to do
> this to everyone and there is no other desktop available!  At least with
> Linux this sort of insanity is confined to one desktop team, and you can
> just pick a different one from people who have both oars in the water.

Having recently installed Windows 8 on a computer for a friend, I can 
honestly say that it didn't
strike me as "incredibly awful" as a lot of the Linux crowd would have 
it; I just don't happen to like
the one-size-fits-all approach, and the ever present risk of getting a 
virus in the works.

>
> Peter
>
>
> Richmond Mathewson-2 wrote
>> If you. like me, have a "thing" about Avant Window Navigator you may be
>> seriously fed-ip un upgrading to 12.10 to find that Mr Slugworth has
>> removed
>> the possibility of installing it, and, even more mephistophelian, made
>> sure
>> it gets removed on system upgrade.
>>
>> After a dark night of the soul, I found this:
>>
>> http://askubuntu.com/questions/203362/how-can-i-install-avant-window-navigator-in-12-10/203575#203575

The point, and the ONLY point of my initial posting, was about Avant 
Window Navigator, because,
coming from a "Mac heritage" I'm into docks in a big way.

And "Cairo Dock" and "Docky" are but pale imitations of AWN. However, 
the AWN chap hasn't done any work on it since 2010 (and why that is a 
problem I just do not ken), and "Ole Sluggy" and his pals,
who are bugged out of their boxes on the endlessly, restlessly upgrading 
things have decided because
of that it has to go.

ALSO . . .  RunRev Livciode works remarkably well on 'buntu distros!


Richmond.