Loading
The Desktop is to be Dapper No More
"All Things have an End," said Jonathan Swift, "and a Pudden has two." Such is the case for Ubuntu as well, and later this month the first of the ends will come due for its longstanding legacy, the Dapper Drake.
The Ubuntu release cycle is relatively unique among Linux distributions in that it occurs exactly every six months, without exception — almost. The odd duck amongst the Ubuntu releases is Ubuntu 6.06, Dapper Drake — its version numbering reveals it was released in June, while all other releases have arrived in April or October (X.04 or X.10). Nonetheless, the release was groundbreaking, including for the first time a number of features now taken for granted, among them graphical installation from the LiveCD, an improved — and now much bemoaned — Human theme, and a number of next-generation software packages, including MySQL 5.0, Firefox 1.5, and OpenOffice 2.0 among others.
It was also the first to bear the Long Term Support (LTS) label, the source of the present attention. Long Term Support releases come with the commitment to be supported for three years on the desktop and five years on the server — the intent is to provide a sustained release for users, like those making large-scale deployments, who would be unable to utilize the distribution under it's normal eighteen-month support schedule. The release's three-year lifespan on the desktop has now come to its close, and as of next week — July 14 — will no longer receive security notices or updated packages. The server edition of the release will continue to receive support through June 2011.
Users of the release are strongly urged to upgrade immediately, particularly given the security implications involved in running a three-year-old distribution. Though Ubuntu provides security updates and high-priority bug fixes during a release's lifespan, it otherwise does not update it's packages — those installing packages from the Dapper repositories are receiving software that has not gained new features or anything but the most serious bug fixes in over three years.
The upgrade path for Dapper Drake is to Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), the second and current Long Term Support release, which will receive updates on the desktop until April 2011 and on the server through April 2013. Hardy Heron introduced features including PulseAudio, the Wubi installer via the LiveCD, desktop search application Tracker, and Likewise Open, providing login and authentication for Active Directory. It also includes features added in the previous three releases, which include the Upstart init daemon, AppArmor, full NTFS support, restricted driver/codec installation assistance, Kernel-based Virtual Machine support, graphical configuration for X.org, and, of course, the much ballyhooed Compiz Fusion.
In addition to users of Dapper Drake, an urgent upgrade is recommended for anyone still running any of the versions prior to Hardy Heron, as they also no longer receive any security or bug fix updates. This includes Ubuntu version 6.20 (Edgy Eft), 7.04 (Feisty Fawn), 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), and, of course, the pre-Dapper releases 4.10 (Warty Warthog), 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog), and 5.10 (Breezy Badger). While Hardy Heron is the current Long Term Support release, users also have the option to upgrade to either of the currently-supported non-LTS releases, Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) and Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope), or to the forthcoming Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), scheduled for release in October.
______________________
Justin Ryan is a Contributing Editor for Linux Journal.
White Paper
Fabric-Based Computing Enables Optimized Hyperscale Data Centers
Today’s modular x86 servers are compute-centric, designed as a least common denominator to support a wide range of IT workloads. Those generic, virtualized IT workloads have much different resource optimization requirements than hyperscale and cloud applications. They have resulted in a “one size fits all” enterprise IT architecture that is not optimized for a specific set of IT workloads, and especially not emerging hyperscale workloads, such as web applications, big data, and object storage. In this report, you will learn how shifting the focus from traditional compute-centric IT architectures to an innovative disaggregated fabric-based architecture can optimize and scale your data center.
Sponsored by AMD
White Paper
Red Hat White Paper: Using an Open Source Framework to Catch the Bad Guy
Built-in forensics, incident response, and security with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Every security policy provides guidance and requirements for ensuring adequate protection of information and data, as well as high-level technical and administrative security requirements for a system in a given environment. Traditionally, providing security for a system focuses on the confidentiality of the information on it. However, protecting the data integrity and system and data availability is just as important. For example, when processing United States intelligence information, there are three attributes that require protection: confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Learn more about catching the bad guy in this free white paper.
Sponsored by DLT Solutions
- RSS Feeds
- Making Linux and Android Get Along (It's Not as Hard as It Sounds)
- New Products
- Drupal Is a Framework: Why Everyone Needs to Understand This
- A Topic for Discussion - Open Source Feature-Richness?
- Home, My Backup Data Center
- Validate an E-Mail Address with PHP, the Right Way
- New Products
- Trying to Tame the Tablet
- Developer Poll
- enterprise
8 min 23 sec ago - not living upto the mobile revolution
2 hours 59 min ago - Deceptive Advertising and
3 hours 35 min ago - Let\'s declare that you have
3 hours 36 min ago - Alterations in Contest Due
3 hours 37 min ago - At a numbers mindset, your
3 hours 38 min ago - Do not get Just Almost any
3 hours 41 min ago - A fantastic rule-of-thumb to
3 hours 43 min ago - Keren mastah..
Penting,
4 hours 41 min ago - mini tablet compare
5 hours 59 min ago
Enter to Win an Adafruit Prototyping Pi Plate Kit for Raspberry Pi
It's Raspberry Pi month at Linux Journal. Each week in May, Adafruit will be giving away a Pi-related prize to a lucky, randomly drawn LJ reader. Winners will be announced weekly.
Fill out the fields below to enter to win this week's prize-- a Prototyping Pi Plate Kit for Raspberry Pi.
Congratulations to our winners so far:
- 5-8-13, Pi Starter Pack: Jack Davis
- 5-15-13, Pi Model B 512MB RAM: Patrick Dunn
- Next winner announced on 5-21-13!
Free Webinar: Linux Backup and Recovery
Most companies incorporate backup procedures for critical data, which can be restored quickly if a loss occurs. However, fewer companies are prepared for catastrophic system failures, in which they lose all data, the entire operating system, applications, settings, patches and more, reducing their system(s) to “bare metal.” After all, before data can be restored to a system, there must be a system to restore it to.
In this one hour webinar, learn how to enhance your existing backup strategies for better disaster recovery preparedness using Storix System Backup Administrator (SBAdmin), a highly flexible bare-metal recovery solution for UNIX and Linux systems.
Developer Poll
Comments
How do you differentiate
How do you differentiate between Server and Desktop? uname -a, or /etc/issue just say Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.
"Nonetheless, the release
"Nonetheless, the release was groundbreaking, including for the first time a number of features now taken for granted, among them graphical installation from the LiveCD, "
Not to be a pest, but many other distros offered this at the time, and had been for some time. Knoppix and MEPIS, to name two.
Not groundbreaking, but definitely a good distro
The Dapper Drake was indeed not groundbreaking at its release, as someone already pointed out.
But that does not take away one bit from what it represented. What it was, and still is, is a very tight, good looking desktop distro that "Just Works". NO FUSS, NO MUSS. I remember installing Kubuntu Dapper in June of '06 at work and I ran it as my primary work desktop OS until Hardy came out last year (I'm on Jaunty now). Kubuntu Dapper still runs on my PowerBook G3 Pismo, but I will be changing that to Debian this month (no PPC Ubuntu anymore).
It's been a great ride. And the Dapper Drake has definitely lived up to its name. The only *buntu version I ever liked as much was Kubuntu Feisty Fawn.
It also deserves much credit for the improved fit 'n' finish of recent Debian releases (Etch and later). Without this "competition" from Dapper, I don't believe Debian would've improved as soon as it did. Not that Sarge was "bad" as a desktop, but Etch and Lenny are way, WAY better.
--SYG
Derivatives too.
This warning also affects any other distros which are derived from Dapper.
SimplyMEPIS 6.5, for example, has been a real stable and secure workstation workhorse at our house. With the repos going quiet for desktop-app security updates, though, it's time for us to move on to MEPIS 8.