Common problems with Ubuntu

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 11:49:06AM +0300, Udi Oron wrote:
>   Hi Elazar!
>
> On 05/10/2010 05:05 PM, Elazar Leibovich wrote:
>> I'm evaluating a distribution for developer desktop.
> I am using Ubuntu since 7.04.
>
> As a starter I tried to stick only to the official distro packages,  
> which caused me to use older versions of the development tools.
>
> Later I have realized the main tools are distributed in a very easy to  
> install packaged - The latest versions of Eclipse, Aptana, Netbeans,  
> VirtualBox and more tools can be download from the vendor and installed  
> in one click, system wide or per user.  (You do have to choose to use  
> Sun's Java but this is really trivial using update-alternatives.).  Most  
> of them even auto update with their own mechanism.  

I consider this a bug rather than a feature. You can easily proxy all
downloads of apt [or whatever package manager you use]. You can easily
automate it.

But can you automate the updates from Oracle's packages? Are you sure it
won't breaks you system?

> Although this might  
> sounds strange, it works just as good as using authentic packages, and  
> this is the important part for me.

"Official"? maybe. But I've often seen such third-party packages do
rather horrible things. E.g. a package I'm trying to get properly
packaged, has updated files under $HOME in the standard install script.
This means they completely fail to understand the concept of a
multi-user system.

> Same for stuff needed to be installed from public source control.   
> Checkout, build, install - just works.

"Installed from public source control" means "bleeding edge" and
"untested".

>
> In the last two years people tend to use Ubuntu's PPAs (  
> https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA ) more and more.  Developers  
> choose to use this as their main distribution mechanism, and users love  
> it.  For example,  I use the daily chromium-browser and mercurial ppas.

Packages there vary greatly in quality. Test and inspect before you use.

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