A review of the latest Ubuntu release, code named "Dapper Drake", the long awaited Ubuntu 6.06.

Introduction

This year has been a huge step forward for Desktop Linux users. First, Fedora Core 5 was released and featured the new Gnome 2.14. Then SUSE 10.1 showed us how well applications could be integrated to make a desktop look great. Now it was time for Ubuntu to release their latest version: "Dapper Drake".

Since its first release, Ubuntu has been extraordinarily successful. A lot of users began to use it and very few went back to their old distribution. It also participated greatly in attracting new people to GNU/Linux. Of course a few things were said about Canonical Ltd. not having a viable business model, the distribution's success being only a consequence of a trend of the moment, and Ubuntu being a bad fork from the Debian project. But as releases went by, and the distribution simply getting better, it soon became clear to a lot of people: Ubuntu was the most popular distribution.

A lot of things made its success. It is based on Debian Sid and inherited a great stability and a base from which it created up to date and numerous packages. It uses APT, which a lot of Linux users consider to be the best package manager. It benefits from a range of fast FTP mirrors. It comes as a single CD download, and for those who are lacking a good Internet connection, it is shipped all around the world for free! Finally, its release cycle is fast. The Internet is full of documentation about Ubuntu, and it has a huge community of users which help each others on forums, wikis, IRC channels and even local support groups.

D-Day: Dapper-Day

As soon as Ubuntu arrived, the GNU/Linux landscape was changed. I knew this release was going to make a lot of noise, and it did!

The Dapper Drake dance went crazy on the Ubuntu IRC channel. A few hours before midnight, people gathered with only one thing in their mind: "When is Dapper going to be released?", "Where are the ISO files?", "What's going on here, is it 00:00 American time or GMT?" etc... Seveas had to change the channel topic and beg everybody to be more patient. When one of his friend showed up, he even said: "Welcome to hell!". Ubuntu hadn't announced any time for the release, simply a date. But an incorrect announce had been made on "The Fridge" and the consequences were terrible. So, that morning, on Dapper Day, I decided to go to sleep :)

Later in the afternoon, kubuntu.org published their release notes, quickly followed by ubuntu.com. Both distributions appeared in distrowatch.com and I took the opportunity to read everything while downloading the two ISO files. Both release notes were very interesting. I will however cover Kubuntu in a separate review (being a Kubuntu user myself, I will probably have a lot to say). The Ubuntu release notes can be found here:

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/releasenotes/606

As I am only interested in the distribution as a desktop user, I will not cover the server features, innovations and long term support that were added in Dapper Drake. Malcolm Yates wrote a document about that, aimed at professionals, and he probably says things better than I could ever have:

http://www.ubuntu.com/news/606released

After reading all of this, I couldn't wait for the download to finish. Fortunately this was quite fast thanks to the fast FTP mirrors and the fact that each distribution only came as a single ISO file. Note that if you're interested in installing Ubuntu on an x86 desktop platform you only have one CD to download, this one:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/6.06/ubuntu-6.06-desktop-i386.iso

Launching the Live CD and installing Ubuntu

Ubuntu always provided a single CD download for installing the distribution on your machine. The installer however was text-based, and the CD had no other purpose but to allow you to install the operating system on your disc. A Live CD was also available for demonstration purpose.

With Dapper Drake, things changed, and for the best. Like Mepis, Mandriva One and others, Ubuntu now provides a Live CD called "Desktop" which once booted also provides a graphical installer. This way the user can try Ubuntu or show it to his friends without installing anything, and he can also proceed to the installation without rebooting or downloading another CD.

For system administrators who want an efficient way of installing operating systems without having to boot it from the CD, Ubuntu also provides and "Alternate" CD. However it is made quite clear on the Ubuntu website that the "Desktop" CD is the preferred way to install Ubuntu.

When you boot on the Desktop CD, the first thing you see is a menu which offers the following options:

• Launch or Install Ubuntu (which you can use to boot the Live CD and play with it, and eventually from which you can then install Ubuntu on your hard-drive).
• Start Ubuntu is Safe Graphic Mode (just in case you have problems with Ubuntu recognizing your graphics card, which wasn't my case)
• Check CD for defect (it's always a good idea to test the integrity of your media before installing an operating system. This can avoid chaotic behavior and a lot of trouble)
• Memory Test (same here, although you're more likely to scratch a CD than to damage your RAM)
• Boot from First Hard Disk (now this is a great and simple feature. How many times did you break Lilo or Grub?)

The menu also provides help, kernel and accessibility options, and you can set your language and keymap from here.

When you finally decide to launch the system, it automatically logs you in a Gnome environment. I tried not to look at it too much, because I knew I wanted to install the system on my hard drive and I didn't want to spoil the surprise too much. I have that complete series of Lost on DVD, and even though I could watch them all in one go, I can't wait for Monday nights when the next episode is shown on TV. I'm like that. At this stage you'd probably like to see some screenshots (although you've probably read other reviews and visited osdir.com), but I tell you: Ubuntu looks just the same once installed, and as it is faster, it is much better to look at it from your hard drive than from the CD itself.

On the desktop were two icons: One for the graphical installer, and one for a directory containing media files. I clicked on the installer and while it was installing Ubuntu on my machine, I started browsing the files.

The installer asks very few questions (as I remember there are only six steps in it). It allows you to test your selected keyboard layout, to answer a few localization-related questions and to partition your hard drive. It is also quite fast (it took about 15 minutes on my machine to install the operating system).

In the directory were a few documents demonstrating the fact that OpenOffice could read Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, and was good at creating presentations, texts and other types of documents. Selected chapters from the Official Ubuntu Book, and a few audio files were there as well. And there was even a video of Nelson Mandela explaining what the word "Ubuntu" means. I was amused and impressed. I didn't really know what to think of these files, but I had a good time going through them.

The installer finished and I rebooted.