Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On 11 May 2010 07:53, mivzakim.net linux...@mivzakim.net wrote: On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 6:10 PM, Dotan Cohen dotanco...@gmail.com wrote: Sure, here's my list from my Ford. It's a Focus, though, not a Fiesta: Dude, that's [sadly?[ one of the most hilarious texts I've read in my life! :) God is in the small details... If you wrote this - You rock! :) Yes, every word of it. You don't want to see my list of problems with my N-95! -- Dotan Cohen http://bido.com http://what-is-what.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
Hi Elazar, Another problem I have been experiencing for the past 3 major Ubuntu distributions (8.*, 9.*, 10.04, 64 bit OS on a 64 bit dual core) is that the X becomes extremely slow after a major operation (such as running heavy-memory Matlab scripts, or even an ad with sound on walla's weather page). It gives me the feeling that even once the application is long gone, the memory is still not really freed. I tried using google-chrome instead of firefox (which causes this problem itself sometimes), but it did not help. Even logging out does not solve the issue, not even ordering a reboot - I have to shut down and restart manually when this happens. I can no longer proudly claim that Reboot is only due to electricity outages, and I now consider going back to Debian, in which I do not recall such problems. Orna. On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 5:46 PM, geoffrey mendelson geoffreymendel...@gmail.com wrote: On May 10, 2010, at 5:05 PM, Elazar Leibovich wrote: I remeber a few times where users of this mailing list were arguing that ubuntu is a very problematic distribution. I'm evaluating a distribution for developer desktop. Ubuntu seems fitting mainly due to the hardware detection and the ease of configuration. Also, it has up to date versions of many desktop packages. I'll be happy to know which problems did you have with the Ubuntu distribution. Googling with Ubuntu problems etc, did not help me find any informative list of problems. You need to go to the UBUNTU site and look at their problem databases. They are very good at tracking problems, less good at fixing them. The problems I think you will encounter are: 1. They have a very strict release cycle with deadlines. Problems found after the freeze date for a distribution are not fixed until after the distribution. This meant in 9.04 IDE optical drives did not work, ATOM processors did not boot and a lot of minor bugs. The ATOM problem was fixed with the netbook respin, but AFAIK a new boot disk of the regular version was never released. 2. They take about a month after a release to to fix things and then often break them. For example, I have a system where gnome stopped working, and I have tried reinstalling gnome, deleting prefs, etc and it still does not work. It's too involved to reinstall from scratch. 3, They moved things around and are not like any UNIX or Linux based distro. While it's debian based, they forked off a long time ago, and debian packages often won't work, nor will any of the administration things you know. 4. They set things up the way they want them and it's darned near impossible to make them work properly if it is not what they wanted. Ask anyone with a Mac running MacOS 10.5 or 10.6 who wanted to use netatalk. 5. Long term support is a relative term. Fixes that you would think are applied are not carried back. Only the obvious critical ones. 6. Packages are not updated. Many of them are never updated, some are updated daily. I'm still faced with the same bugs in the UBUNTU version of Asterisk that were there since the original one that came with the release. In short a great desktop system for simple users, not a good one for someone to maintain or do anything beyond it. Geoff. -- geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM Jerusalem Israel geoffreymendel...@gmail.com New word I coined 12/13/09, Sub-Wikipedia adj, describing knowledge or understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation. i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il -- Orna Agmon Ben-Yehuda. http://ladypine.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
I am not an Ubuntu user, but this thread seems to me a good opportunity to find out on the cheap whether certain preconceptions have a reason. Somehow I got an idea in my head (marketing must work, probably in mysterious ways) that Ubuntu is a distro explicitly designed for every non-techie Tom, Dick, and Harry and their respective housewives, and the point is to dispel the impression that Linux is for geeks. This may be correct or not. If this is the case, and given that the OP is trying to choose a platform for developers, can anyone say anything regarding Ubuntu's quality as a *development* platform? Is it just the same as any other distro? Is its choice and/or support for development tools better/worse? Is there any advantage or disadvantage to Ubuntu compared to XYZ distro specifically for developers? I can imagine a mindset including 99% of our target market don't care about compilers or linkers, so let's shove development tools somewhere into 'extras' and not even offer to install them out of the box, let's not update them as often as, say, browsers or email apps or multitouch drivers, etc.. I am not saying this is Ubuntu's mindset. I don't know, and I'll be happy to hear opinions. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | p...@goldshmidt.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
Keep in mind that a programmer can also be your average non-techie Joe who learned how to program with Visual Studio/Eclipse. This is the case for some people in my team. They rarely know what's going behind the curtains of Visual Studio. On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 3:46 AM, Oleg Goldshmidt p...@goldshmidt.org wrote: I am not an Ubuntu user, but this thread seems to me a good opportunity to find out on the cheap whether certain preconceptions have a reason. Somehow I got an idea in my head (marketing must work, probably in mysterious ways) that Ubuntu is a distro explicitly designed for every non-techie Tom, Dick, and Harry and their respective housewives, and the point is to dispel the impression that Linux is for geeks. This may be correct or not. If this is the case, and given that the OP is trying to choose a platform for developers, can anyone say anything regarding Ubuntu's quality as a *development* platform? Is it just the same as any other distro? Is its choice and/or support for development tools better/worse? Is there any advantage or disadvantage to Ubuntu compared to XYZ distro specifically for developers? I can imagine a mindset including 99% of our target market don't care about compilers or linkers, so let's shove development tools somewhere into 'extras' and not even offer to install them out of the box, let's not update them as often as, say, browsers or email apps or multitouch drivers, etc.. I am not saying this is Ubuntu's mindset. I don't know, and I'll be happy to hear opinions. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | p...@goldshmidt.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
Not at all! Google for Microsoft SDL, it was not always the case, but nowadays they have excellent security awareness. For example, see evidence for the change here: http://blogs.msdn.com/david_leblanc/archive/2010/04/16/don-t-use-office-rc4-encryption-really-just-don-t-do-it.aspx On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Gilboa Davara gilb...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, 2010-05-10 at 22:10 +0300, Elazar Leibovich wrote: For example, Microsoft is now known for excellent security review practices. Whichever MS software I choose, I can rest assured that it will be relatively on the high end of security. Hidden sarcasm? - Gilboa ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
Hi Oleg When trying to use my Ubuntu for development, I ran into dependency troubles. I needed Eclipse, I had to manually install several java-related packages, the java compilers clashed (something by IBM came with eclipse, it was unable to compile the library I needed to hack (lucene) with it, but I could not get rid of the things eclipse brought with it. I ended up compiling only a part of Lucene, giving up on the webserver testing part, giving up even attempting to use the benefit of Eclipse for java (back to good old emacs). I am not sure Valgrind was installed by default. I do not recall any update offered for devel tools, but I do recall many security updates and many firefox updates. Orna On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 1:46 PM, Oleg Goldshmidt p...@goldshmidt.org wrote: I am not an Ubuntu user, but this thread seems to me a good opportunity to find out on the cheap whether certain preconceptions have a reason. Somehow I got an idea in my head (marketing must work, probably in mysterious ways) that Ubuntu is a distro explicitly designed for every non-techie Tom, Dick, and Harry and their respective housewives, and the point is to dispel the impression that Linux is for geeks. This may be correct or not. If this is the case, and given that the OP is trying to choose a platform for developers, can anyone say anything regarding Ubuntu's quality as a *development* platform? Is it just the same as any other distro? Is its choice and/or support for development tools better/worse? Is there any advantage or disadvantage to Ubuntu compared to XYZ distro specifically for developers? I can imagine a mindset including 99% of our target market don't care about compilers or linkers, so let's shove development tools somewhere into 'extras' and not even offer to install them out of the box, let's not update them as often as, say, browsers or email apps or multitouch drivers, etc.. I am not saying this is Ubuntu's mindset. I don't know, and I'll be happy to hear opinions. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | p...@goldshmidt.org -- Orna Agmon Ben-Yehuda. http://ladypine.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
2010/5/11 Elazar Leibovich elaz...@gmail.com Actually I once have had an Ubuntu at home and it did not give me any trouble. I'm looking for a distribution for my workplace to 4 developers seats with minimal maintainance needs. After we'll install a distribution we're unlikely to change it, so I prefer to ask around for some general impressions. I got you. It's a legitimate questions. I'd second Geof's report after using Ubunut for the last 4 years or so. I've been using Debian for ten years before I switched and still have some seconds thoughts some times, or just for a second even think about using Fedora. Any other word I have to say will just repeat what Geof wrote. I switched because I just wanted a desktop distro which will let me get on with my work (administrating the company's CentOS servers and doing tons of e-mails and documentation work), and generally I get it from Ubuntu. As for platform for developers - I think you should consider the target platform of their developed software - would they need access to a specific distro/platform/compiler-version/interpreter-version/... or are they completely agnostic? How would they use it? (in the office connected to back-end servers, stand-alone)? What specific tools would they need? What hardware would they need to be supported? Cheers, --Amos ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On May 11, 2010, at 12:42 PM, Orna Agmon Ben-Yehuda wrote: Another problem I have been experiencing for the past 3 major Ubuntu distributions (8.*, 9.*, 10.04, 64 bit OS on a 64 bit dual core) is that the X becomes extremely slow after a major operation (such as running heavy-memory Matlab scripts, or even an ad with sound on walla's weather page). It gives me the feeling that even once the application is long gone, the memory is still not really freed. While you are at it, my favorite UBUNTU bug. It was first discovered around release 6. A workaround was found, but it no longer works. At some time in the recent past the keyboard interface under X changed. The version of X provided with UBUNTU did not accomodate the change (for some reason it only shows up in UBUNTU) , while Apple did. So if you enable remote connections via XDMCP on an UBUNTU system, and connect using MacOS's X server the keyboard is broken under Gnome. Gnome is the prefered (as in prefered by the development team, meaning it gets the most support, features, effort, etc) desktop for UBUNTU. The workaround worked under MacOS 10.4 (Tiger) but has since stopped working under 10.5 (Leopard) or 10.6 (Snow Leopard). It is definately an UBUNTU bug and has been documented as so in their bug tracking system. The only working way of accessing the system and still use gnome is to use VNC, which has it's own problems. While this does not sound like a big issue, since MacOS X is UNIX, it very nicely connects via SSH and supports X forwarding, which makes remote use simple. Except that gnome does not work. :-( Geoff. -- geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM Jerusalem Israel geoffreymendel...@gmail.com New word I coined 12/13/09, Sub-Wikipedia adj, describing knowledge or understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation. i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On 11 May 2010 13:46, Oleg Goldshmidt p...@goldshmidt.org wrote: I am not an Ubuntu user, but this thread seems to me a good opportunity to find out on the cheap whether certain preconceptions have a reason. Somehow I got an idea in my head (marketing must work, probably in mysterious ways) that Ubuntu is a distro explicitly designed for every non-techie Tom, Dick, and Harry and their respective housewives, and the point is to dispel the impression that Linux is for geeks. This may be correct or not. This in fact the case. Grandma loves Ubuntu, finally she has a computer that she can use (Windows was way too complicated). If this is the case, and given that the OP is trying to choose a platform for developers, can anyone say anything regarding Ubuntu's quality as a *development* platform? Is it just the same as any other distro? Is its choice and/or support for development tools better/worse? Is there any advantage or disadvantage to Ubuntu compared to XYZ distro specifically for developers? I can imagine a mindset including 99% of our target market don't care about compilers or linkers, so let's shove development tools somewhere into 'extras' and not even offer to install them out of the box, let's not update them as often as, say, browsers or email apps or multitouch drivers, etc.. I am not saying this is Ubuntu's mindset. I don't know, and I'll be happy to hear opinions. That _is_ exactly the mindset. You will need to install some things before you can even compile software, this page will illustrate that: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CompilingEasyHowTo -- Dotan Cohen http://bido.com http://what-is-what.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
2010/5/11 Orna Agmon Ben-Yehuda ladyp...@gmail.com: Hi Oleg When trying to use my Ubuntu for development, I ran into dependency troubles. I needed Eclipse, I had to manually install several java-related packages, the java compilers clashed (something by IBM came with eclipse, it was unable to compile the library I needed to hack (lucene) with it, but I could not get rid of the things eclipse brought with it. I ended up compiling only a part of Lucene, giving up on the webserver testing part, giving up even attempting to use the benefit of Eclipse for java (back to good old emacs). Ubuntu packages three Javas, but only the Sun Java has any worth. The other two only serve to mess up Sun Java installs. Stay away from them. I am not sure Valgrind was installed by default. I do not recall any update offered for devel tools, but I do recall many security updates and many firefox updates. No, not installed by default: $ aptitude search valgrind p libtest-valgrind-perl - Perl module to test Perl code through valgrind p valgrind - A memory debugger and profiler v valgrind-callgrind -- Dotan Cohen http://bido.com http://what-is-what.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On May 11, 2010, at 2:52 PM, Dotan Cohen wrote: Ubuntu packages three Javas, but only the Sun Java has any worth. The other two only serve to mess up Sun Java installs. Stay away from them. Ouch, that brings back another UBUNTU problem. It does not install Java (are most programs) in /usr/bin. It installs them in /usr/bin under another name, or eleswhere. Then it links /etc/alternatives/ name to them. Then it links /usr/bin/name to /etc/alternatives/ name. For example: ls -l /usr/bin/java lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Mar 2 2009 /usr/bin/java - /etc/ alternatives/java ls -l /etc/alternatives/java lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 36 Oct 13 2009 /etc/alternatives/java - /usr/ lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java Lots of extra overhead and confusion. It even is worse because for simple binaries, such as mpg123 it does it too. If you want to have mpg123 and mpg321 both installed, it won't and gets confused. To answer the question before it is asked, I need mpg123 as there is a bug in mpg321 and it was easier to use the other program than go through the bug tracking system for a bug I'm probably the only person who ever noticed. Geoff. -- geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM Jerusalem geoffreymendel...@gmail.com New word I coined 12/13/09, Sub-Wikipedia adj, describing knowledge or understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation. i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On 11 May 2010 22:01, geoffrey mendelson geoffreymendel...@gmail.com wrote: On May 11, 2010, at 2:52 PM, Dotan Cohen wrote: Ubuntu packages three Javas, but only the Sun Java has any worth. The other two only serve to mess up Sun Java installs. Stay away from them. Ouch, that brings back another UBUNTU problem. It does not install Java (are most programs) in /usr/bin. It installs them in /usr/bin under another name, or eleswhere. Then it links /etc/alternatives/name to them. Then it links /usr/bin/name to /etc/alternatives/name. That's actually part of the inheritance from Debian. Debian tends to have a long history behind most of their decisions so this system makes sense there. I'm not sure how different is Ubuntu from it though. --Amos ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 3:01 PM, geoffrey mendelson geoffreymendel...@gmail.com wrote: Ouch, that brings back another UBUNTU problem. It does not install Java (are most programs) in /usr/bin. It installs them in /usr/bin under another name, or eleswhere. Then it links /etc/alternatives/name to them. Then it links /usr/bin/name to /etc/alternatives/name. Most distros do that, e.g., Red Hat and Fedora do the same. IIRC, the alternatives system originates from Debian, and was originally invented to deal with multiple versions of perl. For java it is even more essential, since just about every application comes with its own JVM and cannot work with anything else (so much for portability), so you typically have several JVMs on a machine. At the same time, you need a default. The alternatives system is meant to make switching between versions easier. I wouldn't consider it an Ubuntu-specific feature, and by now it is probably a feature, not a bug. ;-) -- Oleg Goldshmidt | o...@goldshmidt.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On Tue, 2010-05-11 at 04:08 -0700, Elazar Leibovich wrote: Not at all! Google for Microsoft SDL, it was not always the case, but nowadays they have excellent security awareness. For example, see evidence for the change here: http://blogs.msdn.com/david_leblanc/archive/2010/04/16/don-t-use-office-rc4-encryption-really-just-don-t-do-it.aspx I rather not go into this argument, but a company the officially has an policy of patch Tuesday and still believes in security by obscurity can not (and must not) be considered as security aware. Plus, even if MS truly changed its colors (and I -really-, -really- doubt it), considerable parts of the Win32/WinNT basic design was never designed with security in mind, and breaking them will force MS to drop backward compatibility with previous releases (such as XP/2K3/etc) - something that MS simply cannot do. But, feel free to think otherwise. Hopefully (for you), you are right and I'm wrong. - Gilboa ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 2:06 PM, Elazar Leibovich elaz...@gmail.com wrote: Keep in mind that a programmer can also be your average non-techie Joe who learned how to program with Visual Studio/Eclipse. This is the case for some people in my team. They rarely know what's going behind the curtains of Visual Studio. Then I'd think twice before choosing a distro that does not even deliver development tools out of the box and requires installing them. The URL Dotan supplied explains how to install a *basic* set of build tools for (and suggests building stuff under /usr/local/src but as a regular user - not a good idea, IMHO). I suspect (I do not know) that this basic set is not enough to actually *develop* SW. I'd probably give bonus points to a distro that allows you to check a Development box at install time. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | o...@goldshmidt.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
I'd probably give bonus points to a distro that allows you to check a Development box at install time. Fedora had that back when it was called Fedora Core, but I haven't used it since then. -- Dotan Cohen http://bido.com http://what-is-what.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On Tuesday 11 May 2010 16:04:29 Amos Shapira wrote: On 11 May 2010 22:01, geoffrey mendelson geoffreymendel...@gmail.com wrote: On May 11, 2010, at 2:52 PM, Dotan Cohen wrote: Ubuntu packages three Javas, but only the Sun Java has any worth. The other two only serve to mess up Sun Java installs. Stay away from them. Ouch, that brings back another UBUNTU problem. It does not install Java (are most programs) in /usr/bin. It installs them in /usr/bin under another name, or eleswhere. Then it links /etc/alternatives/name to them. Then it links /usr/bin/name to /etc/alternatives/name. That's actually part of the inheritance from Debian. Debian tends to have a long history behind most of their decisions so this system makes sense there. I'm not sure how different is Ubuntu from it though. Last time I checked (Debian 3.1 or so), Debian did not take the /etc/alternatives system to its natural conclusion though. I noticed that when I wanted to install postfix on what was then eskimo.iglu.org.il, I had to uninstall qmail (which I wanted to get rid of eventually), because the /usr/sbin/sendmail file conflicted between the two packages. Later on, when I worked on Fedora, I was able to install Postfix as well as sendmail (the Fedora default) because I could play with the symlinks in /etc/alternatives and other places. It's possible it was fixed in Debian since then. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Best Introductory Programming Language - http://shlom.in/intro-lang God considered inflicting XSLT as the tenth plague of Egypt, but then decided against it because he thought it would be too evil. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
Why do you think that MS believe in security by obscurity? I believe that security problems in MS products are generally speaking being released to the wild. Why I think MS products has better chance to be secure than your local Joe Software shop, because they're having strict policies which are supposed to enforce that: 1) The SDL development process, which includes fuzz testing the software specifically against security breaches. Every MS software must undergo that. Do regular software you use do? 2) Cryptography awareness. Every product which uses crypto must be authorized by a specialized crypto group. Crypto is a thing which is easy to create and hard to verify. Is Winzip encryption algorithm being reviewed by crypto expert? I'd rather know that the software I use had a strong peer review. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this two processes are hardly seen in other places of the software industry. On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 5:39 PM, Gilboa Davara gilb...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 2010-05-11 at 04:08 -0700, Elazar Leibovich wrote: Not at all! Google for Microsoft SDL, it was not always the case, but nowadays they have excellent security awareness. For example, see evidence for the change here: http://blogs.msdn.com/david_leblanc/archive/2010/04/16/don-t-use-office-rc4-encryption-really-just-don-t-do-it.aspx I rather not go into this argument, but a company the officially has an policy of patch Tuesday and still believes in security by obscurity can not (and must not) be considered as security aware. Plus, even if MS truly changed its colors (and I -really-, -really- doubt it), considerable parts of the Win32/WinNT basic design was never designed with security in mind, and breaking them will force MS to drop backward compatibility with previous releases (such as XP/2K3/etc) - something that MS simply cannot do. But, feel free to think otherwise. Hopefully (for you), you are right and I'm wrong. - Gilboa ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On Tue, 2010-05-11 at 20:23 +0300, Elazar Leibovich wrote: Why do you think that MS believe in security by obscurity? I believe that security problems in MS products are generally speaking being released to the wild. Why I think MS products has better chance to be secure than your local Joe Software shop, because they're having strict policies which are supposed to enforce that: 1) The SDL development process, which includes fuzz testing the software specifically against security breaches. Every MS software must undergo that. Do regular software you use do? 2) Cryptography awareness. Every product which uses crypto must be authorized by a specialized crypto group. Crypto is a thing which is easy to create and hard to verify. Is Winzip encryption algorithm being reviewed by crypto expert? I'd rather know that the software I use had a strong peer review. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this two processes are hardly seen in other places of the software industry. ... I doubt that any of the above has anything to do with the points I raised in my previous post, but never-mind, lets agree no to agree. - Gilboa ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On Tue, 2010-05-11 at 19:54 +0300, Dotan Cohen wrote: I'd probably give bonus points to a distro that allows you to check a Development box at install time. Fedora had that back when it was called Fedora Core, but I haven't used it since then. Fedora still has it. (Development tools are a big part of Fedora) - Gilboa ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On Tue, 2010-05-11 at 10:42 +0300, Dotan Cohen wrote: On 11 May 2010 07:53, mivzakim.net linux...@mivzakim.net wrote: On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 6:10 PM, Dotan Cohen dotanco...@gmail.com wrote: Sure, here's my list from my Ford. It's a Focus, though, not a Fiesta: Dude, that's [sadly?[ one of the most hilarious texts I've read in my life! :) God is in the small details... If you wrote this - You rock! :) Yes, every word of it. You don't want to see my list of problems with my N-95! (Or KDE :)) - Gilboa subscribed to a number of your BZ reports Davara. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
Shlomi Fish shlo...@iglu.org.il writes: Later on, when I worked on Fedora, I was able to install Postfix as well as sendmail (the Fedora default) because I could play with the symlinks in /etc/alternatives and other places. Today you don't need to play with anything: $ cat /etc/redhat-release Fedora release 12 (Constantine) $ rpm -q sendmail postfix exim sendmail-8.14.3-8.fc12.x86_64 postfix-2.6.5-2.fc12.x86_64 exim-4.69-17.fc12.x86_64 $ rpm -qf /usr/sbin/sendmail sendmail-8.14.3-8.fc12.x86_64 postfix-2.6.5-2.fc12.x86_64 exim-4.69-17.fc12.x86_64 $ ls -l /usr/sbin/sendmail* lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 2009-12-06 20:40 /usr/sbin/sendmail - /etc/alternatives/mta lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 2009-12-06 20:11 /usr/sbin/sendmail.exim - exim -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 213616 2009-09-16 16:37 /usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix -rwxr-sr-x 1 root smmsp 825128 2009-09-16 21:54 /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail $ ls -l /etc/alternatives/mta lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 2009-12-06 20:40 /etc/alternatives/mta - /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail $ sudo alternatives --config mta or similar will let you switch between MTAs. I expect Debian to have a similar arrangement today. I wonder if Ubuntu offers the options. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | p...@goldshmidt.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
Yes, every word of it. You don't want to see my list of problems with my N-95! (Or KDE :)) - Gilboa subscribed to a number of your BZ reports Davara. That list is 1300 bugs long, and I've got about another 400 left to file! -- Dotan Cohen http://bido.com http://what-is-what.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 08:53:46PM +0300, Gilboa Davara wrote: On Tue, 2010-05-11 at 19:54 +0300, Dotan Cohen wrote: I'd probably give bonus points to a distro that allows you to check a Development box at install time. Fedora had that back when it was called Fedora Core, but I haven't used it since then. Fedora still has it. (Development tools are a big part of Fedora) The reason for that is because Ubuntu is installed from a single CD, whereas Fedora is installed from a larger set of CDs. However, installing development tools is trivial - just let the package manager do that. You can easily automate the installation to provide you the exact set of packages you need (in both distributions). Normally I don't need most existing development packages anyway. -- Tzafrir Cohen | tzaf...@jabber.org | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il || a Mutt's tzaf...@cohens.org.il || best tzaf...@debian.org|| friend ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
I guess we'll stay divided, but still, for the sake of the completion I want to clarify my argument. My point is, that some security decisions (for example, the Tuesday patch you mentioned), even if they are very wrong (and obviously, MS security guys would beg to differ) doesn't play a very big role in the overall security of your products. However good software engineering practices plays a big role, and MS is doing that big time, and putting a lot of resources for secure software development. So the question whether or not the Tuesday Patch is a good idea, and whether or not full disclosure is a good idea matters much less than the question whether or not they have security expert evaluating the security of each and every software signed by MS. About the complexity of Windows and backwards compatibility, it is indeed an issue which any company which develops for Windows need to handle with. I really don't see how is it related. Keep in mind that MS is making much more software than just the windows OS. On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 8:49 PM, Gilboa Davara gilb...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 2010-05-11 at 20:23 +0300, Elazar Leibovich wrote: Why do you think that MS believe in security by obscurity? I believe that security problems in MS products are generally speaking being released to the wild. Why I think MS products has better chance to be secure than your local Joe Software shop, because they're having strict policies which are supposed to enforce that: 1) The SDL development process, which includes fuzz testing the software specifically against security breaches. Every MS software must undergo that. Do regular software you use do? 2) Cryptography awareness. Every product which uses crypto must be authorized by a specialized crypto group. Crypto is a thing which is easy to create and hard to verify. Is Winzip encryption algorithm being reviewed by crypto expert? I'd rather know that the software I use had a strong peer review. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this two processes are hardly seen in other places of the software industry. ... I doubt that any of the above has anything to do with the points I raised in my previous post, but never-mind, lets agree no to agree. - Gilboa ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On Tue, 11 May 2010 04:08:39 -0700 Elazar Leibovich elaz...@gmail.com wrote: Not at all! Google for Microsoft SDL, it was not always the case, but nowadays they have excellent security awareness. For example, see evidence for the change here: http://blogs.msdn.com/david_leblanc/archive/2010/04/16/don-t-use-office-rc4-encryption-really-just-don-t-do-it.aspx Lets start with the problem that Microsoft encourages all users to be set as administrators by default. It's almost impossible to be a regular user usually and just switch momentary to administrator for small administration tasks ... Managing simple folder / file permissions is also a difficult task (doing complex permissions is complex on unix as well though) On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Gilboa Davara gilb...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, 2010-05-10 at 22:10 +0300, Elazar Leibovich wrote: For example, Microsoft is now known for excellent security review practices. Whichever MS software I choose, I can rest assured that it will be relatively on the high end of security. Hidden sarcasm? - Gilboa ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On Tue, 11 May 2010 23:50:49 +0300 Elazar Leibovich elaz...@gmail.com wrote: I guess we'll stay divided, but still, for the sake of the completion I want to clarify my argument. My point is, that some security decisions (for example, the Tuesday patch you mentioned), even if they are very wrong (and obviously, MS security guys would beg to differ) doesn't play a very big role in the overall security of your products. However good software engineering practices plays a big role, and MS is --- you're joking, right? They are still at the point of let's get it into the market and worry about making it work right later on (see windows Vista, or Fichsta as I like to call it for example. Win 7 is still not half there either, see the new graphic driver model for examples which you won't believe how much trouble it causes, virtual memory on the video card handled by the operating system behind the drivers back ...) doing that big time, and putting a lot of resources for secure software development. So the question whether or not the Tuesday Patch is a good idea, and whether or not full disclosure is a good idea matters much less than the question whether or not they have security expert evaluating the security of each and every software signed by MS. About the complexity of Windows and backwards compatibility, it is indeed an issue which any company which develops for Windows need to handle with. I really don't see how is it related. Keep in mind that MS is making much more software than just the windows OS. On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 8:49 PM, Gilboa Davara gilb...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 2010-05-11 at 20:23 +0300, Elazar Leibovich wrote: Why do you think that MS believe in security by obscurity? I believe that security problems in MS products are generally speaking being released to the wild. Why I think MS products has better chance to be secure than your local Joe Software shop, because they're having strict policies which are supposed to enforce that: 1) The SDL development process, which includes fuzz testing the software specifically against security breaches. Every MS software must undergo that. Do regular software you use do? 2) Cryptography awareness. Every product which uses crypto must be authorized by a specialized crypto group. Crypto is a thing which is easy to create and hard to verify. Is Winzip encryption algorithm being reviewed by crypto expert? I'd rather know that the software I use had a strong peer review. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this two processes are hardly seen in other places of the software industry. ... I doubt that any of the above has anything to do with the points I raised in my previous post, but never-mind, lets agree no to agree. - Gilboa ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
I left windows on my last remaining because I got tired of having to wait hours for the virus scans every time I turned on the machine. True that was with XP, but a company that thrives on market domination, corruption to accomplish said domination, and is known to have bugs around for years, is not someone who I trust with security. It is simply that security and everything but the kitchen sink in the code, including legacy compatibility and legacy code, do not go together. I worked for a while at a software house, and we had to write code around MS bugs because they would not fix them, even though we were a development partner. These were not security bugs, but regardless, they were not sensitive to the needs of their developers, except maybe the largest customers. I have never had any problems with any of my Linux installations, and only one virus was ever found with my OS-X machines. In contrast, I had numerous problems with my windows machines, even after fresh installs and updates. That said, I don't think in this forum we should try and convince people or convert them to what we think. If the gentleman is content with MS security (and I am taking his words at face value, not a bait), let him use it and enjoy the outcome. Just my two cents. Zvi. On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 4:21 PM, Micha Feigin mi...@post.tau.ac.il wrote: On Tue, 11 May 2010 23:50:49 +0300 Elazar Leibovich elaz...@gmail.com wrote: I guess we'll stay divided, but still, for the sake of the completion I want to clarify my argument. My point is, that some security decisions (for example, the Tuesday patch you mentioned), even if they are very wrong (and obviously, MS security guys would beg to differ) doesn't play a very big role in the overall security of your products. However good software engineering practices plays a big role, and MS is --- you're joking, right? They are still at the point of let's get it into the market and worry about making it work right later on (see windows Vista, or Fichsta as I like to call it for example. Win 7 is still not half there either, see the new graphic driver model for examples which you won't believe how much trouble it causes, virtual memory on the video card handled by the operating system behind the drivers back ...) doing that big time, and putting a lot of resources for secure software development. So the question whether or not the Tuesday Patch is a good idea, and whether or not full disclosure is a good idea matters much less than the question whether or not they have security expert evaluating the security of each and every software signed by MS. About the complexity of Windows and backwards compatibility, it is indeed an issue which any company which develops for Windows need to handle with. I really don't see how is it related. Keep in mind that MS is making much more software than just the windows OS. On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 8:49 PM, Gilboa Davara gilb...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 2010-05-11 at 20:23 +0300, Elazar Leibovich wrote: Why do you think that MS believe in security by obscurity? I believe that security problems in MS products are generally speaking being released to the wild. Why I think MS products has better chance to be secure than your local Joe Software shop, because they're having strict policies which are supposed to enforce that: 1) The SDL development process, which includes fuzz testing the software specifically against security breaches. Every MS software must undergo that. Do regular software you use do? 2) Cryptography awareness. Every product which uses crypto must be authorized by a specialized crypto group. Crypto is a thing which is easy to create and hard to verify. Is Winzip encryption algorithm being reviewed by crypto expert? I'd rather know that the software I use had a strong peer review. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this two processes are hardly seen in other places of the software industry. ... I doubt that any of the above has anything to do with the points I raised in my previous post, but never-mind, lets agree no to agree. - Gilboa ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il -- Check out my web site - www.words2u.net ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
I think you have to make a distinction between older MS software (such as XP) and newer ones (such as 7). For example you defenitely don't run as administrator in Windows 7, and you've got a built-in sudo like system. I, like some people who replied, had bad experience managing Windows machines, and it was usually viruses. However in recent versions I noticed that even at the hands of the inexperienced users, and without any virus scanner, the system stays relatively clean. The point about Windows complexity and background compatability is true and taken. It is against security, and maybe it tips the balance against MS and Windows related products security-wise. The other remark which I highly disagree is that there's no need to convince me. I'm discussing here in order to be convinced, and I'm usually glad when someone enlightens me. On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Micha Feigin mi...@post.tau.ac.il wrote: On Tue, 11 May 2010 04:08:39 -0700 Elazar Leibovich elaz...@gmail.com wrote: Not at all! Google for Microsoft SDL, it was not always the case, but nowadays they have excellent security awareness. For example, see evidence for the change here: http://blogs.msdn.com/david_leblanc/archive/2010/04/16/don-t-use-office-rc4-encryption-really-just-don-t-do-it.aspx Lets start with the problem that Microsoft encourages all users to be set as administrators by default. It's almost impossible to be a regular user usually and just switch momentary to administrator for small administration tasks ... Managing simple folder / file permissions is also a difficult task (doing complex permissions is complex on unix as well though) On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Gilboa Davara gilb...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, 2010-05-10 at 22:10 +0300, Elazar Leibovich wrote: For example, Microsoft is now known for excellent security review practices. Whichever MS software I choose, I can rest assured that it will be relatively on the high end of security. Hidden sarcasm? - Gilboa ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
This is a very disturbing problem, and actually it sounds as a dealbreaker. I assume you did not find a workaround, but did you find some other documentation to the problem on Launchpad/Xorg issue tracker/blogs? Thanks for the valuable input! On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 2:42 AM, Orna Agmon Ben-Yehuda ladyp...@gmail.comwrote: Hi Elazar, Another problem I have been experiencing for the past 3 major Ubuntu distributions (8.*, 9.*, 10.04, 64 bit OS on a 64 bit dual core) is that the X becomes extremely slow after a major operation (such as running heavy-memory Matlab scripts, or even an ad with sound on walla's weather page). It gives me the feeling that even once the application is long gone, the memory is still not really freed. I tried using google-chrome instead of firefox (which causes this problem itself sometimes), but it did not help. Even logging out does not solve the issue, not even ordering a reboot - I have to shut down and restart manually when this happens. I can no longer proudly claim that Reboot is only due to electricity outages, and I now consider going back to Debian, in which I do not recall such problems. Orna. On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 5:46 PM, geoffrey mendelson geoffreymendel...@gmail.com wrote: On May 10, 2010, at 5:05 PM, Elazar Leibovich wrote: I remeber a few times where users of this mailing list were arguing that ubuntu is a very problematic distribution. I'm evaluating a distribution for developer desktop. Ubuntu seems fitting mainly due to the hardware detection and the ease of configuration. Also, it has up to date versions of many desktop packages. I'll be happy to know which problems did you have with the Ubuntu distribution. Googling with Ubuntu problems etc, did not help me find any informative list of problems. You need to go to the UBUNTU site and look at their problem databases. They are very good at tracking problems, less good at fixing them. The problems I think you will encounter are: 1. They have a very strict release cycle with deadlines. Problems found after the freeze date for a distribution are not fixed until after the distribution. This meant in 9.04 IDE optical drives did not work, ATOM processors did not boot and a lot of minor bugs. The ATOM problem was fixed with the netbook respin, but AFAIK a new boot disk of the regular version was never released. 2. They take about a month after a release to to fix things and then often break them. For example, I have a system where gnome stopped working, and I have tried reinstalling gnome, deleting prefs, etc and it still does not work. It's too involved to reinstall from scratch. 3, They moved things around and are not like any UNIX or Linux based distro. While it's debian based, they forked off a long time ago, and debian packages often won't work, nor will any of the administration things you know. 4. They set things up the way they want them and it's darned near impossible to make them work properly if it is not what they wanted. Ask anyone with a Mac running MacOS 10.5 or 10.6 who wanted to use netatalk. 5. Long term support is a relative term. Fixes that you would think are applied are not carried back. Only the obvious critical ones. 6. Packages are not updated. Many of them are never updated, some are updated daily. I'm still faced with the same bugs in the UBUNTU version of Asterisk that were there since the original one that came with the release. In short a great desktop system for simple users, not a good one for someone to maintain or do anything beyond it. Geoff. -- geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM Jerusalem Israel geoffreymendel...@gmail.com New word I coined 12/13/09, Sub-Wikipedia adj, describing knowledge or understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation. i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il -- Orna Agmon Ben-Yehuda. http://ladypine.org ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
2010/5/12 Elazar Leibovich elaz...@gmail.com I think you have to make a distinction between older MS software (such as XP) and newer ones (such as 7). For example you defenitely don't run as administrator in Windows 7, and you've got a built-in sudo like system. I, like some people who replied, had bad experience managing Windows machines, and it was usually viruses. However in recent versions I noticed that even at the hands of the inexperienced users, and without any virus scanner, the system stays relatively clean. The point about Windows complexity and background compatability is true and taken. It is against security, and maybe it tips the balance against MS and Windows related products security-wise. The other remark which I highly disagree is that there's no need to convince me. I'm discussing here in order to be convinced, and I'm usually glad when someone enlightens me. On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Micha Feigin mi...@post.tau.ac.ilwrote: On Tue, 11 May 2010 04:08:39 -0700 Elazar Leibovich elaz...@gmail.com wrote: I do not understand how a discussion about Ubuntu as a development station became into discussion about windows security and management. -- Ori Idan ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On Tue, 2010-05-11 at 20:16 +, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 08:53:46PM +0300, Gilboa Davara wrote: On Tue, 2010-05-11 at 19:54 +0300, Dotan Cohen wrote: I'd probably give bonus points to a distro that allows you to check a Development box at install time. Fedora had that back when it was called Fedora Core, but I haven't used it since then. Fedora still has it. (Development tools are a big part of Fedora) The reason for that is because Ubuntu is installed from a single CD, whereas Fedora is installed from a larger set of CDs. However, installing development tools is trivial - just let the package manager do that. You can easily automate the installation to provide you the exact set of packages you need (in both distributions). Normally I don't need most existing development packages anyway. True. Though, I doubt that the OP will care if he's installing Linux from a single LiveCD or from an installation DVD. (I would assume that if he's talking about multiple machines, the DVD version will be far less bandwidth hog) - Gilboa ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On May 12, 2010, at 8:22 AM, Gilboa Davara wrote: Though, I doubt that the OP will care if he's installing Linux from a single LiveCD or from an installation DVD. (I would assume that if he's talking about multiple machines, the DVD version will be far less bandwidth hog) Actually it does not matter. Just about all of the modern distros dowload their add ons or updates to a staging directory. Some of them have cleanup set to run by cron, some never clean up, waiting for you to do it manually. All you have to do is to turn off cleanup (deleting old package files) on a master computer and then point the slaves to it's staging directory. UBUNTU does have a process where you can sync the packages installed on one computer with another. You do it by listing the status of all packages to a file, input the file to the package manager on the other computer and then tell it to install anything it now thinks should be installed and isn't. I think that is done via dpkg, so any debian based system will do the same thing. Note that you may have to do a grep to remove uninstalled packages from the list, or it will happily go along and remove anything that is on the second system, but not the first. I think that you probably would not want to run auto updates, and for that version avoid a distro like Fedora , with it's constant updates, because it becomes a moving target as it were, and makes development that much more difficult. The last thing a programmer needs is to find that what worked yesterday fails because over night a new version of the compiler or a library was installed. It has happened to me with various distros, because I am overnight to them and they uploaded an update of several libraries that were in separate packages over several hours. I just happened to get the update midway and only had some of the libraries updated, which caused the application to crash. :-) Geoff. -- geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM Jerusalem Israel geoffreymendel...@gmail.com New word I coined 12/13/09, Sub-Wikipedia adj, describing knowledge or understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation. i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Common problems with Ubuntu
On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 7:43 PM, Shlomi Fish shlo...@iglu.org.il wrote: On Tuesday 11 May 2010 16:04:29 Amos Shapira wrote: On 11 May 2010 22:01, geoffrey mendelson geoffreymendel...@gmail.com wrote: On May 11, 2010, at 2:52 PM, Dotan Cohen wrote: Ubuntu packages three Javas, but only the Sun Java has any worth. The other two only serve to mess up Sun Java installs. Stay away from them. Ouch, that brings back another UBUNTU problem. It does not install Java (are most programs) in /usr/bin. It installs them in /usr/bin under another name, or eleswhere. Then it links /etc/alternatives/name to them. Then it links /usr/bin/name to /etc/alternatives/name. That's actually part of the inheritance from Debian. Debian tends to have a long history behind most of their decisions so this system makes sense there. I'm not sure how different is Ubuntu from it though. Last time I checked (Debian 3.1 or so), Debian did not take the /etc/alternatives system to its natural conclusion though. I noticed that when I wanted to install postfix on what was then eskimo.iglu.org.il, I had to uninstall qmail (which I wanted to get rid of eventually), because the /usr/sbin/sendmail file conflicted between the two packages. Later on, when I worked on Fedora, I was able to install Postfix as well as sendmail (the Fedora default) because I could play with the symlinks in /etc/alternatives and other places. It's possible it was fixed in Debian since then. qmail was not packaged in Debian since it was non-free, not sure about its status nowadays. If you install something yourself or from an unofficial package you can not blame Debian for its failures. Baruch ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
