I recently downloaded and installed both the server and desktop version of 8.10, and thought I'd share some experiences. In general, I like the server version for its purpose much more than I like the desktop version. There are several things I didn't particularly like about the desktop version. I'm not a huge fan of gnome, the standard desktop environment. I think it's way too bloated for what it is, far more than any alternative, like KDE. At the same time, it restricts the user's access to the "back end" system changes that the linux model makes possible. This is probably good for the newbie that can't leave stuff alone. But me, being a guy that believes "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" I'm not about to go fiddling with every option I see anyway, so I'd rather have the advanced config there for when I do feel I'm ready to explore such things. It seems REALLY unprofessional that they include 2 different package managers with Ubuntu desktop. And the system doesn't even show a preference. Hitting Applications-> Add/Remove brings up one, and (I believe) System->Administration shows an option for Synaptic package manager. Now for those that don't know, the package manager's job is to handle all the requests to install new software and get rid of software you don't want. It's whole job is to keep track of what's installed in the system, and to make any needed changes to that list. It's really not a job that you need two different programs to do. At the same time, some of the functions I would have LIKED to seen variety on weren't there. I had a CD burning program, but if it burned ISO's, I couldn't figure out how. I ended up installing Brasero to do that. Likewise, I was given no way to mount an iso, either. The Mount Filesystems tool I installed to handle quick mounting and unmounting, promised to allow me to make changes that would stay in effect, after I restarted, but it turned out not to be the case, apparently it never did write to the fstab, only made the changes live. But the biggest annoyance is probably that Ubuntu desktop did not give me any way to identify my video card, so I could install the appropriate 3D graphics drivers. But enough about what I don't like. The server version I DID like. I've actually gone out in the past seeking a command-line only version on linux, typically because I want to take an old machine, and make it useful again. These days, it becomes increasingly hard to find a distribution, even on some server distros, that doesn't use X windows, or any desktop environment whatsoever. But Ubuntu server does install command line (CLI) only. That's not to say that I'm fully knowledgeable in all important CLI commands. I just think it's worth the learning curve, when I can have my server stuff running mostly as daemons, and be using only 1/10 of my RAM. Teamspeak gave me a rude awakening. I always used it and liked it on Windows, but the linux version seems to be just an afterthought. After the server crashing twice, a week apart (nobody could transmit sound), I decided to switch to Ventrilo. Both make me a little nervous, because of the fact that this is server software, and it doesn't bother to install itself. You just run a binary, or make a startup script in your /etc/init.d/ folder based on that binary. One thing about the Ventrilo server, though, is that it does not want to start as a daemon (meaning run in the background). When you start the Ventrilo server, it brings up a status screen, showing you who is logging in and out. It will continue to show status until you exit out. This makes startup scripts difficult, because if I tell Ventrilo to start, the system will hang, waiting on Ventrilo to finish executing. And of course, Ventrilo won't finish executing until I manually close it. There may be an alternate way to start Ventrilo, but I just use the "screen" command. It's kind of a windows manager for CLI. I can "sudo screen /path/to/ventrilo" and it'll look just the same, waiting and watching to see who connects, but the difference being I can disconnect from that window by hitting Ctrl-A, then D. But there are a lot more commands, too. If I "screen -m -d .... " it will start whatever program I tell it without actually attaching to the screen it creates. This is very nice for startup scripts, because now the system can complete whatever other startup scripts I have, and will not hang waiting for Ventrilo to complete. I also pair that with the -s option. If I "screen -S ventrilo /path/to/ventrilo" then that session has a name, and when I go to reconnect to screen, and check on my server, it makes less to type. One of the first things I ended up installing on my Ubuntu is a wonderful package called "Webmin." I've found it truly indispensable. Not only does it give you an easy way to remotely administer your server, but it organizations common functions of a sys admin, so that if you're still learning your way around linux, and all the important functions, you can easily find them in the layout of webmin. It kinda reminds me of the control panel you might get with a good webhost. Except of course, it's much more powerful. I can create startup scripts, execute them now, or reset the server, check on my server programs, change users and passwords, file managers, mount/umount, get a command shell, an http tunnel, look at all running processes, monitor bandwidth, change firewall settings... it's pretty great. Another tool I find myself using all the time that I had to install was ssh. I had used it before, but not set it up. I was a little worried that it might be hard, but it wasn't. I just did "sudo apt-get install ssh" and after setting up the 14 megs of new data, I was able to immediately use a ssh client (putty) to start a remote terminal session that seems to function exactly as if I had a keyboard and mouse connected right to the server. Well, okay, not exactly. The direction buttons on the keypad (with numlock off) don't work the same as the arrows. Boohoo.. Although my best find, in this experience has to be the package rtorrent. Rtorrent is a command-line driven torrent program that offers a level of control you wouldn't expect to find with its text only display. I ran into some setup problems, but they ended up being my fault not the program (If you edit linux system files on a windows machine, be sure to run dos2unix on them before putting them in place on the linux machine. Apparently dos/win doesn't handle end-of-line characters very well). But those were quickly solved, and now I've got a screen session handling those downloads. You can set global speed throttles, you can set priorities, for the torrent as a whole, or individual files, only grab parts of the torrent if you want. My favorite feature, though, is that I have rtorrent monitoring a network shared folder for new torrents. So any computer on my network, windows or linux, can start a new throttled download, that won't eat up all the bandwidth, simply by going to the Torrents folder, and saving a new torrent file there. If I delete a torrent from that same folder, the download stops. It couldn't be any easier. Well, that's enough for me. I may post more later, if anyone's interested.

Geez, you leave a lot to comment on. Hopefully I'll have time to break it down a bit later.

Well no one said you had to comment on it all. It was just supposed to be a lot to read, you know, hopefully a little easier to understand than some of the linux pages out there, but helpful to actually learning something. That was the plan anyway. And speaking of plan, I'm off to burn and test my new Plan 9 disk. It's another alternative OS made by AT&T, so you know it's the.. poop.

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