[linux-users] Ubuntu

[Andrew Medico]

Linux project users may be interested to know that we are testing the
Ubuntu distribution (http://www.ubuntu.com/) as a possible replacement for
Debian. Our main reasons behind this are that:

1. Ubuntu is based on Debian, so we can convert an existing workstation in
about 15 minutes.

2. Ubuntu has a fixed release schedule (a stable release every 6 months) -
as opposed to Debian, which hasn't made a stable release in over 14
months. This schedule lines up very well with out existing release
schedule.

3. Ubuntu has a paid security team proactively auditing packages for bugs.

4. There is a very nice community and a collection of documentation on
their wiki at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/.

We have switched the workstation "joker" to Ubuntu as a test. If you would
like to test it out, feel free to log in and let us know how it's working
out. As usual, report any bugs to linux at rt.crew.ccs.neu.edu.

--
Andrew Medico <amedico at ccs.neu.edu>
Crew Linux Administrator