Tech by Alex @ 11:11 pm
Ubuntu 8.04, otherwise known as Hardy Heron, is going to be released tomorrow. I thought I’d post some Ubuntu related stuff to celebrate the occasion. 
- Information on upgrading from 7.10 to 8.04 from Ubuntu’s website.
- From FOSSwire, there’s a nice Ubuntu cheat sheet that you may find useful. (Found through Lifehacker.)
- A review of Ubuntu 8.04 on InfoWorld and another review on Lifehacker.
- A guide from the Ubuntu Community Documentation on adding software repositories and another tutorial from Psychocats.net’s Ubuntu Tutorials on adding extra repositories. Don’t forget to go into Updates under Software sources and check “Important security updates” and “Recommended updates” if they aren’t already checked. I also recommend checking Main, Universe, Restricted, and Multiverse repositories for easy access to software you might want in the future.
- Last, but not least, a post on UbuntuCat entitled Linux for home users - stop the hype! which warns against overhyping Ubuntu or Linux in general. My view is that Ubuntu is an overall better operating system than Windows, and that people should give the Live CD a try. However, there are many issues you might encounter when beginning to use it. For me, it was mainly connecting to the Internet and getting the sound to work, which took a week or two to deal with after getting my first computer a few months ago. Once I *finally* got pretty much everything working I was very satisfied with Ubuntu. Right now my outstanding problems are getting BitPim to work with my LG Chocolate phone, which I was able to accomplish on Windows XP, and getting Ubuntu to play 3G2 files. Neither are a huge deal, but both are an annoyance that I don’t have on Windows. My point: Unless you’re willing to deal with problems every now and then, don’t use Ubuntu. Not that you won’t have a bunch of problems with Windows either, which has also been the case for me as well.
Update, 2008-04-25: Here’s another good article from Lifehacker on Hardy Heron entitled Hardy Heron Makes Linux Worth Another Look.
I’m thinking about repurposing an old Windows 98 laptop with some flavor of Linux. Do you have any gotchas to avoid with old hardware, or is it just “your mileage may vary?”
I think it depends on the hardware I guess. I haven’t really tried Ubuntu on many different computers, and I’m hardly a Linux expert. You might want to ask around on the Ubuntu Forums since there’s many knowledgeable people over there.
Ubuntu supports old hardware far better than Windows does. I have a laptop that is 5 or 6 years old with 512 MB of ram that was consistently running the latest version of Ubuntu and ran everything perfectly.
The only reason I bought a new laptop is my little sister wanted a laptop and I wanted something with a DVD burner and built-in WiFi.