Linux Ubuntu 6.06 vs 6.10?

[dantonic]

I am new to Linux.

I am thinking of installing a version of Ubuntu,

what would be the major differences between 6.06 and 6.10? I seem to gather that 6.10 is the newest version, but I've read on the ubuntu website that 6.06 has more support.

What does this mean to me exactly? should I go for the newer 6.10 or the 6.06 because it has more "support"?

If I install 6.10 would I have to be proficient in linux to get any updates that i might need? while 6.06 would update automatically?
what are any advanatges of 6.10?

Thank you for any comments

 

[drag]

Check out Ubuntu's documentation for details. They have a wiki and some other stuff. It looks like you've already checked out some, which is cool.

Also there a unnofficial Ubuntu guide which should be handy.
http://ubuntuguide.org


Ubuntu 6.06 is 'Dapper'. When they talk about 'support' they are probably talking about commercial support. So if you want to pay somebody to help you deal with it you can get a year-long contract. Typically you'd do this for corporate servers, business desktops, or a professional's workstation. That way if you get stuck with something you can find somebody whose living revolves around helping you and solving bugs (vs people in forums that may try to be helpfull, but can't dedicate a lot of time to you).

Also Ubuntu 6.06 they have a version called 'Dapper LTS'. LTS is for 'long term support'. This means that they will keep that version supported for the long-term... that is a couple years at least.

So if you want to have something you don't have to mess around with and do major upgrades.. to have something that will 'just work' for a long time then that is what you want. (you will still need to update you system time to time to install the latest security fixes and bug fixes. I am talking about upgrades between Ubuntu releases)


With Ubuntu 6.10 you have the more up-to-date release. This will have better hardware support and better usability (generally).

So if you want the latest stuff that Ubuntu releases you want to use Edgy. This is what most people will use for their personal desktop system, and is generally what you want to use.

So your trading the 'Long term support' for the ability to have the newest stuff, but you have to uprade in 6 months to a year when the next Ubuntu release happens.

Keeping your system up to date works the same irregardless. You use apt-get or synaptic package manager as a front end to the debian packaging system to keep your system updated and to install software. The same level of expertese is required either way.

The only 'gotcha' is that during a major upgrade between Ubuntu versions there is a higher likelyhood of you having to fix someting that went wrong during the upgrade.

For a new user you might as well go with Edgy. That's what most people will run for their desktops so you can get the best help fo that in the ubuntu forums and such if you need it. It's a lot easier for other users to help you (and you to help other users) when you have the same system the other person has.

 

[dantonic]

OK,
Thank you so much, that's what I needed to hear. I think I will get 6.10

I am very new to this so I will have to figure out how to upgrade and update and all that good stuff.. Are updates supported through the gui? or do I have to use the command prompt?

Thanks.

 

[drag]

Command prompt is easier in the long run (it's easier to search for software and such), but the Synaptic Package manager is a handy gui and is aviable through the application menu on your desktop.

 

[Robor]

I saw this thread and I was going to post a reply but then I opened it and saw drag already did. No point now. (and I mean that in a good way drag)

 

[dantonic]

Well, I successfully installed ubuntu 6.10

I wasn't 100% sure regarding how to partition the drive for this, I am somewhat limited on space.

I went ahead and setup a 9 gb partition for the root /
and a swap of about 1 gb.

there were a lot of other options like /usr /boot etc. While reading on the ubuntu help files I determined that other partitions are not mandatory, however how would those help? is it a good idea to set those up as well like /usr etc.?

BTW I've installed this on my laptop Dell Inspiron 8600, and so far it seems to have recognized all my hardware properly. I am posting this message from my linux Operating system.

Thanks for your help

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: dantonic
Well, I successfully installed ubuntu 6.10

I wasn't 100% sure regarding how to partition the drive for this, I am somewhat limited on space.

I went ahead and setup a 9 gb partition for the root /
and a swap of about 1 gb.

there were a lot of other options like /usr /boot etc. While reading on the ubuntu help files I determined that other partitions are not mandatory, however how would those help? is it a good idea to set those up as well like /usr etc.?

BTW I've installed this on my laptop Dell Inspiron 8600, and so far it seems to have recognized all my hardware properly. I am posting this message from my linux Operating system.

Thanks for your help

Generally, separate /usr, /opt, etc partitions aren't needed.
Separating /var can be a good idea since variable data will be stored there, logs, package caches, etc, but for a home user, you can pretty much just never mind that as well.
/home is another sensible candidate for having it's own partition, but again, for your average home user, it won't really matter.
It's pretty much yet another of those "If you need to ask, you don't need it" things

 

[Brazen]

As to your first post, if you are setting up a server, Ubuntu 6.06 is better for many reasons... more stable, more deployments, better tested, 5 years of security updates before you need to upgrade to a new version, etc. Unless you specifically need, or want to test, the new features with Edgy (6.10) than Dapper is best on a server where reliability and stability are important.

For a desktop, Edgy does have a lot of worthwhile improvements, in both hardware support, "neat" features, and "ease-of-use". So if this is a desktop install, by all means go with the latest (Edgy at this point).

As for your last post, in regards to partitioning... The short of it is, if you don't have a reason to do any special partitioning, then don't. Folders like /usr and /boot already exist on your system (if you haven't figured that out yet). Their are reasons for partitioning. For instance, I ALWAYS set up a 106 MB /boot partition formatted as Ext3. This is because I like everything else to be formatted as XFS (which is faster), but Grub does not play well if /boot is on an XFS partition (I think I heard this is supposed to work now, but old habits die hard). You also might do things like put your /home directory on a different partition, so if you outgrow the current harddrive due to files in /home, it would be trivial to move just that partition to a larger drive.

I also like to put my /var/log folder on a different partition than / for my servers. That way, just in case something goes nuts and starts writing massive amounts of logs, it won't bring the whole system down.

 

[dantonic]

thank you for your comments.

You know I dont know what is going on, but when I am using firefox, it seems to often just close itself down completely when I click on a certain link or type in a specific address... Last night it wasnt letting me on anandtech.

As soon as I hit enter after typing anandtech.com it just closed the program.
What could be going on? is it 6.10 incompatible with my system maybe? Dell inspiron 8600.

Thanks

 

[SleepWalkerX]

This is a bug that relates to firefox. The rest of your system should be fine.

Did you perhaps install any extensions or do anything to firefox? You could try to start with a blank state by closing firefox, deleting /home/<your username>/.mozilla (this contains your profile data for firefox) and start firefox. Try going to anandtech and see if the problem occurs again.