[11.04]-Turn Off Unity & Use Classic Gnome?

[Tom H]

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 10:19 PM, Tom H <tomh0665 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 11:19 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 1:47 PM, Tom H <tomh0665 at gmail.com> wrote:



>>>> If a Gubuntu declination isn't published (not officially, like
>>>> Lubuntu), you'll be able to use the regular ("Classic") GNOME or
>>>> install and use gnome-shell.
>>
>>> Gubuntu is something else, or rather, several distros of that name
>>> have been announced over the years, including a Free-software-only one
>>> akin to GnuSense.
>>>
>>> "Ubuntu Gnome 3 Remix" is the officially-sanctioned style, I believe.
>>
>> Whether the above name is sanctioned or not and whether it's been
>> mooted as the name for something else, an Ubuntu version with
>> gnome-shell's as the default's been referred to by many as Gubuntu.
>
> I'm not saying it's in any way official, merely that AFAIK that is
> what Ubuntu Ltd want people to call remix editions, and that calling
> them ?buntu is now discouraged and will receive notification of a
> trademark infringement. The long-standing UbuntuLite project received
> just that, for instance, after 3 or 4y in existence and development.
>
> Got any references to this Gubuntu name? I've not seen it anywhere, on
> any mailing list, blog or anything. A quick Google before my last post
> threw up a gaming 'buntu and a few other stillborn efforts and nothing
> to do with GNOME3.

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/26982/
http://www.linuxonline.ca/?q=node/252

AFAIK Lubuntu wasn't official when it launched (and may still not be)
but the person/team behind it must have asked Ubuntu's permission at
some point since it's still available. So Gubuntu should be able do
the same; although, politically-speaking, Canonical/Ubuntu might be
less well inclined in this particular case.



>>> But between  Unity instead of GNOME 3 and Wayland instead of X.org,
>>> yes, I can see a "more mainstream" Ubuntu remix coming about in a year
>>> or two, certainly, one with plain ol' x.org and plain GNOME3.
>>
>> While Unity's an Ubuntu-only project, Fedora's X devs are planning to
>> move to Wayland too so classic, plain X'll eventually be history for
>> many distros.
>
> Well, OK, point, but there is quite a bit more to Linux than
> Ubuntu+Fedora! IOW, that's a bit of a sweeping generalisation.

I mentioned Fedora because, in spite of the fact that Ubuntu's more
widely installed, it's more of a trend-setter because of its close
association with RHEL and its corporate client list, because of
historical reasons, because there's less (no?) jealousy directed at
it, and because its developers and maintainers are often members of
upstream (in this particular case, I think that the developer who made
the fedora-devel Wayland announcement is a member of X's upstream).



>>> But on the other hand, I heartily approve of Ubuntu's efforts to
>>> follow the "KISS principle". I kinda wish they'd get a bit more
>>> radical, as Apple have with OS X - they have pensioned off large
>>> chunks of the config files in /etc and so on and move things into
>>> network-distributable databases, for instance. That's not what I'd do,
>>> but it's an interesting approach.
>>
>> Moving files from "/etc/" to "/Library" and "/System/Library" (and
>> possibly to "/Users/~user/Library") isn't necessarily progress! The
>> uppercase letters are already moronic.
>
> Why? Seriously, why? In these days of tab-completion and so on.
>
> It's a handy at-a-glance way to distinguish Apple stuff, especially
> GUI-level stuff, from the BSDish underpinnings. Also bear in mind
> that both OS X and Gobo tend to hide the Unixish stuff away from
> casual users. Look at / on an OS X box and the Finder hides /usr and
> /etc and all that.  It's there but invisible. Gobo uses a kernel
> module, "gobohide", to do the same thing.

Thank God that Apple hid /etc, /usr, and /var within the Finder. I
wouldn't have wanted to be involved, as I was in the early and mid
2000s, in OS 8/9 transisions to OS X without that!

As for the upper-case nonsense, tab completion doesn't help if the
first letter's upper-case and /Applications, /Library, and /System
would've been Macified enough without upper-case A/S/L since these
directories don't exist on a nix box.



>> Furthermore, OS X's config files are in PitA, crappy xml.
>
> *Shrug* I run 4 or 5 OS X boxes and have supported many others; I've
> never needed to dabble more than the *very* occasional single-line
> edit, and most of that was years ago, in the 10.1-10.2 timeframe.

I've either lead or been involved in a few 100+/500+ and one 1,000+ OS
X rollouts and I can assure you that we needed to edit config files
and scripts in a terminal.



>> Booting into single-user mode might not be your first choice, but I'm
>> sure that it is for many, whether they are long-term Unix/Linux users
>> or Windows/OS X switchers (safe mode).
>
> Er, Safe Boot is not Single-user mode. On a Mac you hold down Cmd-S
> for runlevel 1 and it's much like it was in the olden days.
>
> Scares the fsck out of Mac owners when you do it, too. :¬)

My bad. Confusing the name of single-user mode with booting with login
items and kernel extensions disabled. :(

It remains though that single-user mode is available and used for
troubleshooting. There even used to be - and may still be - an OS X
freeware application to automate the use of single-user mode that's
probably Ubuntu's inspiration for its single-user mode menu.



>> Single-user mode isn't just
>> about having only "/" mounted on a box with separate, unmounted
>> partitions for "/usr", "/var", ... but also about booting into a
>> (possibly read-only) system with as few daemons running as possible
>> and only one user logged in (root).
>
> Thanks for that. Tell me, what end is it best to suck an egg from? :¬)

I was just explaining in what way what you indicated is useless is
actually useful...



> On that note, I'd add that Debian's also done away with all the other
> runlevels apart from 0, 1, 2 and 6. Personally I quite liked having 2
> and 3 at least (2 = all services, no X, 3 = everything).

It used to be easy to re-create other runlevels but, with upstart on
Ubuntu and insserv on Debian, it's become more of a PitA.





>> Whilst I'm not necessarily opposed to merging all the "*/bin"
>> directories into "/bin" and all the "*/sbin" directories into "/sbin",
>> it's not something that I lose sleep about nor, I suspect, something
>> that the Ubuntu developers would want to do without Debian doing the
>> same (good luck with that happening!) because they'd have to repackage
>> every deb.
>
> Hmmm. True, possibly. I have thought that maybe a few simple simlinks
> would do, but I'm sure that's a naïve view. I don't have enough
> low-level Unixy knowledge to really tell.
>
> Gobo has managed it, though, while retaining source compatibility with
> a hundred thousand existing makefiles.

Gobo's got the advantages of being totally independent and of being
built from scratch.

I didn't say that Ubuntu couldn't do it! However I doubt that
Canonical would be willing to devote the resources to such a change
(especially to re-package the "unmaintained" universe and multiverse
packages) and that the Ubuntu developers who are also Debian
developers (for example the grub2 developers) would be willing to use
radically different package-building procedures for the two
distributions.



>> I'm not sure that I'd want the "*/bin" and the "*/sbin"
>> directories merged though.
>
> I'm curious. Why not? Is the distinction useful any more? If so, why?

Because regular users don't have "*/sbin" in their path.



>>>>> You do realise that you can only upgrade from one release to the next?
>>>>
>>>> Not true. You _can_ skip releases. I've done it a few times. I'm not
>>>> recommending that people should, or that it's wise, just that you
>>>> _can_.
>>>
>>> Oh really? With the update manager? I thought that was expressly
>>> forbidden. Or are you talking about leaping in with editing
>>> sources.list and doing an apt-get dist-upgrade? I've comprehensively
>>> broken a Debian 5 box with that approach in recent months and would be
>>> loath to try again, frankly.
>>
>> Yes, by editing sources.list, running "apt-get upgrade", "apt-get
>> dist-upgrade", and a few other steps before and in between. The Debian
>> 5 to 6 upgrade is the Ubuntu equivalent of skipping 3-4 Ubuntu
>> releases!
>
> True.
>
>> It's not forbidden (how could it be?!)
>
> Well, OK, not "forbidden", but unofficial and unsupported.

Unofficial, yes.

Unsupported?! If you have a Canonical support contract, it's most
probably unsupported but that's it.



> Q.v. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes
>
> (snip of ubuntu.com promotion of update-manager and do-release-upgrade)

There's nothing about not using apt-get in what I've snipped (there
may be elsewhere on ubuntu.com or or on the link that you've posted).
There's just the advice to use the Ubuntu upgrade applications and not
to skip releases (although there's probably an indication elsewhere on
the page that an LTS-to-LTS upgrade's possible).

I look at these instructions as Ubuntu's way of lessening the
possibility of having many botched upgrades being discussed here, on
ubuntuforums.org, on various blogs, and in various articles because an
upgrade using apt-get is a systematic multi-step procedure (take a
look at the Debian 6 release notes). There's nothing magical about
using apt-get to upgrade an Ubuntu or Debian box. I'd looked at the
do-release-upgrade script for the 9.04 to 9.10 (the main script was
held in the repos IIRC) and it basically amounts to an apt-get
upgrade.



>> but a good anti-dote to someone
>> just "editing sources.list and doing an apt-get dist-upgrade" and
>> killing his box - if that's what you did.
>
> It was, but it was only an experiment. It wasn't a problem.

It may have been an experiment and therefore not a problem for you.
But it's a problem if you then base advice that you give here or
elsewhere on your experience.

It's akin to someone who decides to drive from NYC to LA and simply
gets onto an interstate in New Jersey, puts the pedal to the metal, is
surprised not to make it to LA, and then tells others "don't drive
from NYC to LA, it's impossible."



>> Furthermore, Debian 6 was released about ten days ago so your failure
>> in "recent months" might have been due to upgrading to a beta issue
>> that's been ironed out since.
>
> I was trying to go from 5 to the current "sid", but it's not really
> important any more.
>
> Every few years, emboldened by my growing Ubuntu knowledge, I give
> Debian another try. Every time, I give up again a day or two later,
> chastened.

I'm not interested in promoting Debian over Ubuntu (or the opposite)
however there's no reason to end up chastened because there are far
more similarities than differences. From a desktop user's perspective,
Ubuntu has two advantages, namely, (1) the standard mozilla apps
rather than Debian's ice-this and ice-that and (2) an easy, GUI
procedure of installing proprietary drivers.

The transition from 5 to sid isn't trivial. You have to follow the 6
release notes to the letter in order not to make a mess of the upgrade
(and now that wheezy and sid are getting newer and newer packages, you
might be better off going through an upgrade to 6 first). I've always
preferred clean installs and I've never been a believer in upgrades
but for the transition from 5 to 6, I've done many upgrades in VMs and
on actual hardware - a majority in VMs and a majority X-less installs
so not what a typical desktop user would be doing. I had a few issues
but not one upgrade failed (except for a one-step a test upgrade from
8.04 to 10.10 that failed miserably because I simply changed
sources.list and ran "apt-get dist-upgrade" out of curiosity; it may
have been recoverable but I preferred not to waste any time on this
and deleted the VM; perhaps I shouldn't have...). I've also tested
apt-get upgrades from 8.04/9.04/9.10 to 10.04/10.10 and then done
these upgrades on production boxes without a problem.