Hi gurus,
I am going to install a new laptop which I want to convert to 12.04 at one point of time. Can anyone tell me if 12.04 is more-or-less usable already now? I would prefer to skip the later upgrade. This will be my wife laptop, used primarily for writing (openoffice), web (firefox/cromium), and occasional movies.

For years I used Debian testing, it was mostly OK for such kind of everyday tasks.

Why would you want to install a beta for trivial things like writing documents and surfing the web? Won't the current stable release do?

Just a thought.

eco -- stable release works fine. Just I want to upgrade all my (work & family) computers to 12.04 sometime this spring. I would be happy to skip the upgrade for that computer (Thinkpad X121).

Tried to install alpha. The installer ran slow, seemingly due to a memory leak in ubiquity (amd64 version on Thinpad X121e). After memory footprint of 3G and the machine virtually in standstill I restarted.

Now installing 11.10.

12.04-testing is not a beta. Alpha2 will be out at the first week of February.

There really is little difference, right now, between 11.10 and 12.04. The changes are just starting to be added.

When A2 comes out, in the Ubuntu dev cycle, is usually where the "fun" begins. By fun I mean major problems. The changes are major after that point and often. Things break regularly. This keeps up through B1 (there is only 1 beta this round) although they should slow down some.

About the time the RC comes out, a whole week before release, things usually are pretty tame.

If you want to try the dev release sometime, start at the very beginning, when the tool chain goes up or when the daily builds start. Things are very tame then, you can get used to the idea that it is supposed to break, you can get your launchpad account so you can file bugs.

This is a short dev cycle and requires real hardware testing. The devs do their work in VB. Testers find out what works and what doesn't work on real hardware, file bugs and let the devs sort it out.

Anyone that wants to actually use an OS instead of spend time filing bugs should not even consider installing a dev release before the RC is released and it is much better to wait until at least 2 weeks after the final release if you want something that is somewhat stable.

I have Xubuntu 12.04-testing installed on this box. It works pretty fair right now. Cups seems to have a slight problem with the .deb install script so that upgrading in a chroot environment (as I do) doesn't work but can be fixed the next time I visit over there quite easily with "dpkg --configure -a" (run as root preferably from a tty prompt before booting in to the gui).

The Ubuntu version from what I read seems to be pretty stable so far but there are some major "improvements" coming into Unity having to do with USC integration that could get interesting.

Frankly I think you would be better off to install Debian Wheezy, on which 12.04 is based. It is much more stable, does not have Unity and will become the stable release for Debian sometime this year. It will be going into freeze this coming weekend so the only updates will be bug fixes.

Unlike Ubuntu, Debian has a policy of actually trying to have a stable release stable before calling it that. What this means in the real world is that Wheezy is more stable right now than 12.04 will be when it is released.

We are not running, yet, 3.2.0 but should soon, still on 3.1.0. Not sure what the Gnome3 version is as I run Xfce but do have Gnome3 and Gnome Shell on a Sid install and it is running Gnome3.2 and GS3.2 so it will be in Wheezy soon.

This is the 6th testing cycle I have run with Ubuntu and can tell you that it will be my last. They are just not getting the number of testers they need nor are they working the bugs anywhere near as fast as they need to.

The reliability of the OS is questionable, in my opinion, and folks should really consider alternatives.

One good thing, I hope anyway, for Ubuntu 12.04 is the fact that the desktop LTS will be supported for 5 instead of 3 years. This is not true of all the other Ubuntu family members but is for the Ubuntu (gnome) release.

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Thank you widget.

I see, Ubuntu testing is rather different from Debian testing. I actually ended up installing 12.04, it mostly works, just has a large number of dependency problems. Will think about alternatives.

Does Debian have a similar sudo-system now like Ubuntu? A major reason I switched to ubuntu was the need to avoid using root password on a multi-admin box.

You can use sudo under Debian. It is a package in the repo.

I believe that it is installed by default in Debian stable (currently Squeeze). You may have to configure it to what you want.

Ubuntu LTS releases are, in theory, based on Debian testing. The thing is that is referring to the LTS release. That means that current packages used in 12.04-testing may well be coming from Debian experimental. This also does not take into account the packages that Ubuntu may use directly from some upstream projects, by passing the Debian repo all together. The same is true of packages developed by Ubuntu like Unity.

I use Debian testing as my production OS as it is more reliable than Ubuntu in my opinion. I installed this OS just after the release of 10.04 when it was still Squeeze and in a couple days it will be going into the freeze proceeding the release of Wheezy. In that time I have had one short period of time that I needed to be careful due to bugs. That had to do with the transition from gnome2 to gnome3 and as I had already installed Xfce on here it was not really an issue for me at all.

Your sources.list can read either "wheezy" or "testing" currently and you will be getting the same packages. If it reads "wheezy" you will probably not notice the change from testing to stable. If it reads "testing", as mine does, the day Wheezy becomes the "new stable" there will be a huge upgrade to pick up all the packages not migrated during the freeze that should start this weekend.

That freeze will basically mean that only critical upgrades of packages will be allowed besides bug fixes. The number of upgrades per day has already noticeably decreased.

As most bugs are picked up in Sid you can know about them easily before upgrading a package if you install "apt-listbugs". This is a package that Ubuntu no longer supports in their repo. I think it was available for 8.04 but not after that. Have no idea why they dropped it. It will not be of any help if you are the lucky one to discover a bug, obviously, but if you go with Debian install the bugger.

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Tried Wheezy yesterday, couldn't get it to boot from USB. Will give another try later when I will change the harddisk of my server.

BTW, do you know if the patch for lowering the power usage (http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente..._appetite.html) will do it to wheezy?

So you think Debian is among the best choice for maintaining similar distros for a number of different computers with a stress of similarity and not too much management effort? I am usually not interested in the latest stuff, but unfortunately the new hardware may be a pain to get to work on a few years old distro. That's why I do not have 10.04 on my laptops.

Debian should be about as easy to maintain as any. Wheezy is going into freeze in the next couple of days so it should be pretty stable for the next several years.

This is the first I have heard of this patch. About time this was fixed. They are saying it is proposed for 3.3.0. That is not going to be in Wheezy I am pretty sure.

However Wheezy is getting close to release. When released there will be a Wheezy backports repo and that kernel will be available I am sure.

That article mentioned the possibility of the patch making it to 3.2.0 and I doubt it. Ubuntu also uses the backport repo so the kernel with the patch will be available there too.

While I am not a big fan or the RH branch of Linux (personal prejudice against rpms) another very stable disro is CentOS although there may be the same concern for the newest hardware support with them.

Fedora is popular with a lot of folks too, more cutting edge.

I would still go with Wheezy.

Debian's Stableness + Debian Packages + Ubuntu Hardware Support + Ubuntu User-Friendlieness = The Perfect OS
I see your guys concen as the last few package updates (I had to use the proposed caigory to use Linux .15 instead of .14 in order to play minecraft) broke all but simple video, animation and graphics. Can't play minecraft. KDE's beautiful fade in and out for the shutdown button is broken. Never choosing proposed again, even if I have to use (*Vomit*) Windows.

If you are trying to use a dev release as a production OS, with warnings against doing this clearly put up on every page related to installing it, then you certainly are getting what you deserve.

The thing is just getting into real development. I have never understood how someone can think that you can just bat out a release on a 6 month dev cycle and have it stable months in advance of release. This certainly shows little understanding of development.

I actually used Ubuntu testing releases as my production OS. I had 3 identical installs so that I could be sure to have one that worked. I also, on the same drive, had a stable release in case I blew it and screwed all three at the same time. This gives you something to boot to so that you can do repair work in chroot.

Every cycle though we get these clowns that say Oh my God a half finished OS is broken, this is crap. You really don't know how to react. Laughter is usually not well received.

I suggest doing a little bit of actual research and study before you ever attempt to run, not as a production OS, a dev release OS. If you do you will find it a very satisfying and educational experience.

The first thing to learn is that the devs putting the thing together do so in a virtual environment. This means that they are not interacting with real hardware except through the host OS. The release is out for TESTING by people that are willing to donate their time, effort and hardware to see if it actually works installed. It is, in other words, supposed to break. The testers job is to report these bugs so that the devs can fix it.

This is what gives the person installing the actual release version a, hopefully, stable experience.

I have no idea what linux .15 or .14 is supposed to mean. Linux is a kernel on which GNU Linux releases are built. Linux stable is 3.2.x (not sure what that x is currently) 3.3.999 (dev release of the linux kernel) is available for testing.

Ubuntu is numbered by the year and month it is released. 12.04-testing will be released in April of 2012.

Debian is released in numerical number so the current stable is 6 which is actually called 6.3 now if you get it as they have updated the install medium to include all updates 3 times. This coming weekend they will do it again and be on 6.4.

12.04LTS is not based on Debian stable (currently Squeeze). It is based on Debian testing (Currently Wheezy) which I am on right now. Regular Ubuntu (non LTS) releases are based on Debian unstable (Always code named Sid).

I have been using Debian testing for better than year now and have had no trouble keeping it running at all. It pretty much takes care of itself pretty well.

I do have a Debian 6 install set up for security for doing online business. Visit that install about once a week to see if it is working.

This testing install runs 24 hours a day and runs Boinc. You can look that up. The way I have that set up it runs all four of my cpus at 98% or more all the time.

I was able to do that with Ubuntu dev releases from 10.04-testing through 11.10-testing without missing more than 3 days of number crunching that entire time.

You do have to know what you are doing and be somewhat lucky to do that.

If you cannot understand that, I would suggest using an MS release.

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