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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/15/19 11:42 PM, Rick Moen wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20190216074216.GL5734@linuxmafia.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Quoting Bobbie Sellers (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com">bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com</a>):
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap=""> Today's News is that Distrowatch is now stocking
/Distribution Release: Ubuntu 18.04.2 /LTS.
Hopefully this will not be full of the problems that have
plagued Ubuntu lately.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
I haven't followed closely, but I got the impression the Ubuntistas got
hit by mostly problems that we're really their fault, recently, but were
visited upon them from upstream coders. (Canonical doesn't originate
very much. It's a bundler, mostly. Same is true of most distros to
one degree or another.)
It might help to review the basic concept Ubuntu promised for its
releases (and I'm including the several *ubuntus in that). Canonical's
core value proposition was, 'We're going to leverage Debian, except...:'
1. We'll release for only 3 CPU platforms, not 14. (Since then,
PowerPC has been dropped, and i386 is in the middle of joining
it. aarch64 is coming in.)
2. We'll concentrate on a limited set of desktop software for each
*buntu variant, instead of 22,000+ packages as Debian does. (I've
lost count of how many packages are currently in Debian's collections.)
And those will be fairly close to the latest available for the desktop
environment in question as of the release date, something possible
because of our release cadence:
3. We'll have preannounced release dates, about every six months, and
hit the target date without fail -- in contrast to Debian, whose
release motto is 'when it's ready' and has been known to sometimes
go as long as 3 years between releases. (Debian's access to very recent
DE packages is on the testing/unstable rolling distributions, not its
behind-the-curve 'stable' release-oriented distribution.
Novices tend to be confused by rolling distributions and unable to
handle the inevitable bobbles, so Ubuntu addressed that need with
regular releases. It addressed the dissatisfaction with old app
versions in Debian-unstable by targeting new app versions for each
release. And ignoring all CPU platforms other than those vital for the
commodity marketplace helps stick to the rapid release schedule.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Yes I have noticed some of the people I have introduced to
PCLinuxOS and other Linux distributions<br>
have trouble doing the updates and in even understanding the need to
keep the system up to date.<br>
One man, an author, I simply remind of the need and the new
kernels as I have him on PCLinuxOS64<br>
on an ancient Dell. One other man, much less intellectual, could
not do the Lubuntu updates on<br>
even a weekly basis. His computer recently died due to age, most
likely and it is sad for him but<br>
it was a very cheap gift for the services he rendered me and he will
have to decide if he wants another<br>
or will be satisfied with a tablet which he already has. Another
found PCLinuxOS64 to be a pain<br>
to keep up with on her home desktop system and has moved on to Mint
the last I heard from her.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20190216074216.GL5734@linuxmafia.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
That brings us to the price, the drawback: Shipping all recent versions
exposes the distro to upstream bugs, and having a clockwork-like release
schedule means that even if there are still serious bugs as October 2018
comes to an end, because Ubuntu promised an 18.10 release, it had to
go out the door no later than Halloween, significant bugs or not.
In similar circumstances, the Debian Release Manager would just say
'It's not ready yet'. Canonical doesn't do that: It keeps its
promises. Which I respect, but you need to understand the price of
that.
Now, understanding that, you can also see why prudent people might give
18.10 and maybe even 18.10.1 a pass, and wait for 18.10.2. ;-> </pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Well I now have it but have yet to run checksums on the
download. 18.04.2 is now on hand for Ubuntu,<br>
Kubuntu, Lubuntu and Xubuntu. No checksum for the Blue Collar
Linux and we can talk about that later.<br>
<br>
Ubuntu 18.04.1 on Flash Drive is working ok for Jim as he waits
for his machine to be returned.<br>
The problems seems to be with the installed copy and first
updates.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20190216074216.GL5734@linuxmafia.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
Anyway, long as I got you on the horn, Bobbie, I wanted to consult you
on something. CABAL has always kept a distro library, and I've recently
been bringing it up to date again:
Liten-Datamaskin:isos rick$ ls -lh *.iso | awk '{ print $5 " " $9 }'
952M antix-17.3.1_amd64-full.iso
987M antix-17.3.1_i386-full.iso
2.7G blue-collar-linux-initial-release.iso
706M bodhi-linux-5.0.0-amd64.iso
918M centos-7-1810-amd64-minimal.iso
507M centos-7-1810-amd64-netinstall.iso
3.4G debian-gnome-unofficial-with-nonfree-firmware-9.7.0-amd64-dvd1.iso
3.5G debian-gnome-unofficial-with-nonfree-firmware-9.7.0-i386-dvd1.iso
2.2G debian-live-lxde+nonfree-9.7.0-amd64.iso
2.2G debian-live-lxde+nonfree-9.7.0-i386.iso
326M debian-unofficial-with-nonfree-firmware-9.7.0-amd64-netinst.iso
413M debian-unofficial-with-nonfree-firmware-9.7.0-i386-netinst.iso
641M debian-xfce-9.7.0-amd64-cd1.iso
641M debian-xfce-9.7.0-i386-cd1.iso
647M devuan-ascii-2.0.0-amd64-cd1.iso
298M devuan-ascii-2.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso
2.9G fedora-server-29-1.2-amd64-dvd.iso
593M fedora-server-29-1.2-amd64-netinst.iso
1.8G fedora-workstation-29-1.2-amd64-livedvd.iso
593M fedora-workstation-29-1.2-amd64-netinst.iso
318M gparted-live-0.33.0-1-amd64.iso
1.8G kubuntu-18.04.2-lts-desktop-amd64.iso
1.8G kubuntu-18.04.2-lts-desktop-i386.iso
1.8G linuxmint-cinnamon-19.1-amd64.iso
1.8G linuxmint-xfce-19.1-amd64.iso
1.6G lubuntu-18.10-desktop-i386.iso
717M lubuntu-alternate-18.04-amd64.iso
715M lubuntu-alternate-18.04-i386.iso
1.1G lubuntu-desktop-18.04.2-amd64.iso
1.1G lubuntu-desktop-18.04.2-i386.iso
1.6G lubuntu-desktop-18.10-amd64.iso
1.9G manjaro-xfce-18.0-stable-x86_64.iso
1.7G siduction-lxqt-18.3.0-201805132142-patience-amd64.iso
559M systemrescuecd-5.3.2-i386.iso
888M systemrescuecd-6.0.0-amd64.iso
1.9G ubuntu-desktop-18.04.2-lts-amd64.iso
1.9G ubuntu-desktop-18.10-amd64.iso
834M ubuntu-live-server-18.04.2-amd64.iso
881M ubuntu-live-server-18.10-amd64.iso
1.4G xubuntu-desktop-18.04.2-amd64.iso
1.4G xubuntu-desktop-18.04.2-i386.iso
Liten-Datamaskin:isos rick$
At times in the past, it's been a lot bigger than that, and I don't mind
grabbing things CABAL attendees might want, but am not going to grab
_everything_ on speculation someone might want it.
Way back in days of yore, I would have dutifully fired up the CD/DVD
burner, burned each to as many optical discs as required, jotted the
contents description on each with a Sharpie, made a library reference
copy, and filed that in a set of soft cases I kept around for that
purpose, filed alphabetically.
Man, that was a lot of work, and the _real_ solution was to load them on
a dedicated CABAL installfest server to serve them for network installs,
but I never quite got around to that. But meanwhile, the world changed:
People no longer use optical disks, mostly because USB flash drives
are on balance better for most things.
And here's what I'd appreciate knowing, Bobbie: How do you do physical
management of USB flash drives, in the context of your big library of ISOs?
(I'm assuming you aren't burning CDs/DVDs, as if it were 1998.)</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Well I had a old food plastic container that I no longer
care to use for food and I have a <br>
lot of my single drives in that to bring to meetings. Some came in
plastic bubble cases and<br>
I trimmed away the excess cardboard and used the bubble to write
on, tossing those into<br>
a internal side pocket of my wheeled case. A lot of my drives are
large bodied with room <br>
to write notes on.<br>
Toward the end of last year I bought a couple of 10 drive lots
of 4 GB and 8 GB Flash<br>
Drives, 10 of each size and was happy to find that they came with a
plastic divider that<br>
held them inside light cardboard boxes. When the boxex fail i think
flat plastic sandwich <br>
boxes will accomodate the plastic dividers.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20190216074216.GL5734@linuxmafia.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
Probably like me you have a dozen or more flash drives sitting around,
of various capacities. Each is a tiny little thing -- ergo, no room
for external labels. Blessedly, each can be just overwritten if it
doesn't have what you currently need, a large number of times, in fact.
But how do you avoid having a dozen little widgets each with
uknown-to-you contents?</pre>
</blockquote>
I have about a dozen or more in the plastic food container, and
20 or so in the shipping <br>
boxes which I have found so handy. Now the later purchases have
room to write the <br>
necessary to me information of Name, version, architecture so that
"Fedora 29 wksn amd64" <br>
seems clear enough to me. These drives will be supplemented with
another batch or more, <br>
they are cheap at $35 per 10 drives. They will be reused much as I
reused DVD/CD r/w <br>
optical disks from the begining of adding this service. I will, for
a $5.00 deposit loan them<br>
to any member and return that deposit on return of the Flash
Drive. If they do not return<br>
the drive I have funds to replace the drive already collected.<br>
I have almost all of my check-summed iso files stored on half of
an external 2.5 inch<br>
USB 3.0 drive of 1 terabyte and I bring this to the meeting along
with my functional but<br>
ancient Dell system and can easily make a copy to your media or to
a specific flash drive. <br>
Looking at your list I realize that I am currently behind on Debian
but few people ask for <br>
it so I tend to be neglectful but have a disk 1 on hand. I think it
is 9.6.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20190216074216.GL5734@linuxmafia.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
Pondering that problem, just now, I had an idea: Small ziplock bags.
You can either write directly on the bag with a Sharpie, or just insert
a slip of paper saying what this drive currently contains.</pre>
</blockquote>
I have used such measures in the past.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20190216074216.GL5734@linuxmafia.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
A different routine would be to _not_ have distros installed on flash
drives in advance, but just plan on writing to one from your collection
of ISO files at time of needing to use one. Could work, too.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
The ddCopy to USB is pretty fast and much faster than writing to
DVDs or CDs. <br>
A Flash Drive (USB) can make an install or simple evaluation much
quicker. That <br>
is why I started using my first Flash Drives as one member was very
tired of waiting<br>
for a disk to load.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20190216074216.GL5734@linuxmafia.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
How do _you_ handle that, Bobbie?
</pre>
</blockquote>
I hope I have answered your question Rick.<br>
<br>
Bobbie Sellers<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:20190216074216.GL5734@linuxmafia.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
</pre>
</blockquote>
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