New Failsafe Graphics Mode For Ubuntu

ianare sends us to Ars Technica for news of the Ubuntu Xorg BulletProof-X feature, coming soon to a 7.10 (Gutsy) build near you. "It provides a failsafe mode that will ensure that users never have to manually configure their graphics hardware settings from the command line. If Xorg fails to start,the failsafe mode will initiate with minimalistic settings, low resolution, and a limited number of colors. The failsafe mode also automatically runs Ubuntu's new GTK-based display configuration utility so that users can easily test various display settings and choose a configuration that will work properly with their hardware."

Oooooooh!

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

Linux gets Safe Mode!

I guess that's an advance.

Re:Oooooooh!

[Jugalator (259273)]

Heh, the flamebait that'd be modded Insightful solely depending on the OS. ;)

Linux has always had "safe mode".

[khasim (1285)]

Linux has always had "safe mode". You boot single user from the command line.

This is more "easy GUI re-configuration of X.org when X.org blows up".

Well ..... I guess you could consider it "safe mode" for X.org. But not for "Linux".

Re:Linux has always had "safe mode".

[bobetov (448774)]

Linux has always had "safe mode". You boot single user from the command line.

A command line driven OS is, to 99.999% of humanity, not an operating system. The OS is the metaphor. Dropping into a text-based mode might as well be powering down. In fact it's almost certainly worse, from a user's perspective - more confronting, confusing and frustrating.

It does no good to tell my Mom or my non-tech friend "Don't worry, your operating system is fine, it's just the GUI." They likely blew something up using the GUI. Trying to find which text file to edit, and how to edit text files, and how to navigate directories, all with a CLI, is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. If I break it in GUI, I need to be able to fix it in GUI, or it won't get fixed.

Stop being a part of the problem here. If X doesn't work, the OS is broken. This is a major improvement in Ubuntu overall, not just some minor fix to X.

Re:

[Planesdragon (210349)]

Don't say the OS is broken...its not.

If Microsoft doesn't get to say that IE and a ham sandwich are part of an "operating system", then GNU/Linux geeks don't get to say that the GUI isn't part of the OS.

How many Linux users do you think do anything without loading a GUI on their userspace system?

Re:Linux has always had "safe mode".

[aichpvee (631243)]

Well I know tons of people who use windows without opening internet explorer. But how many of them can actually remove it from their operating system? I can completely remove the GUI from my Linux without causing any problems unless I want to use a GUI. You should really think that through before using it again, it doesn't really make any sense.

Re:Linux has always had "safe mode".

[drsmithy (35869)]

Please learn what an operating system is. You don't know what you are talking about. The machine is functional without a GUI. You can do nearly everything without a GUI that you can do with a GUI. Some things are even substantially faster at the command line.

If you believe a command-line shell can be considered part of the "operating system", you have zero grounds for saying a graphical shell is not. They are merely different implementations of the same concept.

Re:Linux has always had "safe mode".

[Curtman (556920)]

Simply put, to 99% of users the GUI is the OS, and to hell with facts.

To which users? Linux is strongest in the server room/data center. Why would you bother with running X on your db server when you can just ssh in and use GUI tools from a desktop that is running X? That desktop might even be a Windows box running cygwin/Xorg. X is not Linux, and Linux is not X.

Re:Linux has always had "safe mode".

[Da Web Guru (215458)]

How many PC clones were sold before windows 3.1 hit? How about the Apple II series? Millions. Did the people who bought these get amnesia in 1995?
No, they didn't, but we really aren't dealing with the same userbase. The number of computer users back then is significantly smaller and more computer savvy than the computer users of today.

Just because people don't know something doesn't mean they can't learn btw. Learning is good.
Well, if you don't want more people using linux, then force them to learn the command line. Seriously, the average computer user doesn't even have a clue (nor do they care) what the "black box with white letters" (i.e., a MSDOS prompt window) is, what it is for, or why they need it.

The vast majority of linux systems don't have X installed btw. They don't even have monitors or keyboards.
We are not talking about servers. That is a completely different (and significantly more knowledgeable) userbase. We are talking about desktop computers that "normal" people (i.e., people that don't eat, sleep, and dream about computers) will be using on a daily basis.

Most of the most advanced software for the platform does not require X at all.
Regardless of how advanced a piece of software is, if it doesn't run in a window or have an icon they can click on, then it does not exist to "normal" people.

It is attitudes like this that hold back the wide-spread adoption of Linux on the desktop.

great!

[datapharmer (1099455)]

This is great, but should have been done a long time ago! I have heard several people say they "tried ubuntu but it wouldn't work"... I determined the graphics failure to be an issue 100% of the time.

Re:great!

[MindKata (957167)]

"done a long time ago"

It is very good news, but I hope this fail safe also works for everyone in the installer. I had a machine which wasn't possible to install Feisty Fawn on it, via the graphical Ubuntu install program. This was due to the default resolution being lower than required, for the window size of the install program. (So it wasn't possible to complete options in the installer windows and so continue with the install, using that program). (It occured with the on board graphics card on a new PC build at work, so the quickest work around was simply to put a better graphics card in which I had to hand and was planning on using it at some point anyway. A software only solution would have taken longer and isn't going to be so easy for non-technical users who just hope to try out Ubuntu. (I would expect it to be unfortunately enough to put off some non-technical users).

So anything they can do to improve the graphical support is very good news. The more Ubuntu users the better. :)

Re:great!

[Lord_Breetai (66113)]

This was due to the default resolution being lower than required, for the window size of the install program. (So it wasn't possible to complete options in the installer windows and so continue with the install, using that program).

[alt+leftmousebutton] will allow you to drag the window around as needed from any part of that window. Should have been a tip during install. I found this out by accident.

Re:

[Fireflymantis (670938)]

Probably where when looking at the CD in windows, the CD gets burned with only one file...

D:\ubuntu-desktop.iso

Re:great!

[JanneM (7445)]

i'm sorry, but "incorrectly burned CD's" ? how can someone really incorrectly burn a CD?

Somewhat poorly worded, perhaps, but the parent is right. It's not that unusual for a burned CD, perhaps burned on cheap media using an old burner, to contain errors. If the user doesn't verify the burned CD, and doesn't do the "test media" thing on bootup your installation will fail.

Re:great!

[JanneM (7445)]

If the user doesn't verify the burned CD, and doesn't do the "test media" thing on bootup your installation will fail.

So if I don't do post-burn checks, then the disc will be a bad burn? How odd...

No, if you don't do post-burn checks you don't know the burn is bad and won't burn a second disk. It's a difficult concept, I know. Think it over; you'll get it I'm sure.

Re:

[dbcad7 (771464)]

I screwed up and posted this on the wrong thread.. Off topic there,,, so some redemption here..

Often, people will download an ISO, click on it in XP which very helpfuly asks "make a CD ?".. which they do.. but they are not making a bootable CD.. all they have done is copy the ISO to the CD.

If you browse a newly created Ubuntu disk.. it will NOT be one file ending in .iso
There should be several directories.. If not it isn't burned correctly.

You need a proper burning program like Nero or Active ISO Bur

This is the sort of thing OS needs to focus on

[Xest (935314)]

As silly as it sounds, I've come across so many new Linux users who have messed up their display settings in some way, been unable to use the command line to fix it and have just resorted to giving up or reinstalling, neither is really an ideal option.

Whilst to the average Slashdotter this may sound silly, I'd bet it's one of the biggest things that puts your average Joe off Linux through the years. Being able to easier recover from broken Linux installs will, imo go a long way to keeping people using Linux rather than the current situation where quite a few try, but many give up. Linux is generally nice and stable, but when it does go wrong, to most people it's just far, far too hard to recover your installation back into a working state - much more so than, dare I say it, Windows. This is however why I'd say Ubuntu has been making such headway in attracting new users to Linux because they do seem to understand what problems exactly that up until now have been putting many new users off Linux.

I think that is more a problem of perception.

[khasim (1285)]

Linux is generally nice and stable, but when it does go wrong, to most people it's just far, far too hard to recover your installation back into a working state - much more so than, dare I say it, Windows.

I think that that is the case ONLY because those people are coming from a Windows background.

Personally, I find it far, Far, FAR, FAR easier to recover a damaged Linux box than a damaged Windows box. But that is primarily because the damaged Windows boxes that I get have major Registry issues.

As long as you can get an Ubuntu box to boot to the command line, it is "easy" to fix. "Easy" is in quotes because it takes a little bit of knowledge. But not much. I'm running Gutsy Gibbon at home and even with 2 problems (it is still alpha) I've been able to recover my system without rebooting in less than 5 minutes.

The magic is in APT and the repositories. As long as I can connect to the repositories and run APT, I can remove the problem or re-install over it.

As more people become familiar with Ubuntu (and Debian and Debian-based distributions) the "fear" of Linux will vanish. It's just so much EASIER than Windows. (unless your hardware isn't supported but that's a different issue)

It is a problem of perception.

[tknd (979052)]

I think that that is the case ONLY because those people are coming from a Windows background.

And the problem with your perception is that you think that the linux command line mentality is better for the average joe user. I don't disagree that if you know what you're doing, it is much easier to fix a broken Linux than it is to fix a broken Windows. But the key here is that most people don't know what they're doing. Parts of the design of Windows are aimed at users that don't know what they're doing so that their PC will at least be somewhat functional for them with all of the familiar interfaces even if something bad happens.

You see, the command line or text messages with a black background mean nothing to the user. For all purposes, if they don't see something that resembles their desktop, they think their computer is broken. They also don't care if they have to type in one command to fix it because to them, learning that the command line exists and that you can even enter text commands is too much to deal with. If you can't expect failure in your software and implement necessary messages and functionality to recover to a close but not quite mode expected by the user, it doesn't mean a damn thing because they will end up calling the nearest geek to fix it. And when they do that, it doesn't matter how long it takes you to fix or even if you can't fix it. They've already lost time waiting for your service and your service is only seen as a backup effort. If geeks were not available, they probably would have considered their computer broken and the only way to fix it would be to purchase a new one.

The people at Ubuntu are doing more for linux and open source software adoption than anyone else has. Take a hint and learn something about understanding other (non-techy) user's viewpoints. If all open source developers could actually understand those users, then linux might eventually be ready for the desktop.

Re:I think that is more a problem of perception.

[Kangburra (911213)]

P.S.: Mandriva 4 ever, screw this Ubundu fad. Mandrake was the first user-friendly distro and still holds the crown. 8-)

Sorry, I can't let that go.

Yes Mandrake was the first user-friendly distro, but they messed up several times.

1) Adverts in the installer
2) All the .0 and .1 releases had new bugs.
3) Sacking of Gael Duval was the final straw. It shows the mentality of a lost management team.

Ubuntu has filled the gap left by where Mandrake could have been and Mandriva is.

Re:

[shaitand (626655)]

'The sizes of the repositories are comparable.'

You must live in a special little world of your own. The size of the repositories are nowhere near comparable. Even after you add Apt for RPM and the 3rd party repositories for use with it (and I have had problems with conflicts between those third party repositories) the software selection doesn't compare.

Re:This is the sort of thing OS needs to focus on

[Otter (3800)]

As silly as it sounds...new Linux users...Whilst to the average Slashdotter this may sound silly...your average Joe...

I've been using Linux since MkLinux zero-point-something, and when I had to update a Gentoo box from XFree to X.org, my old conf file didn't work and xconfigurator (or whichever one the command-line tool is called) didn't generate a working file. Eventually it turned out that a serial mouse isn't supported, and switching to a USB mouse allowed a working conf file to be generated that I could then tweak. I never did get the beloved old mouse working.

So anything that improves the X configuration process is a very welcome improvement over calling users names when the crappy old tools don't work.

Re:

[Bloater (12932)]

X auto detection (of which this is an emergency component - for the auto detection to be tuned/hinted when it fails) is probably *the* biggest deal for Linux since 1997. This is the thing that gives Mr Ballmer angina.

Re:

[DAldredge (2353)]

In which universe is that user friendly?

Re:

[Jarjarthejedi (996957)]

Hah! That's a good one, format and reinstall. If that was even remotely the case the number of Windows users would not be anywhere near as high, they'd all just get Macs or learn Linux. Repairing Windows is pretty easy unless you manage to get some major errors, I've installed the wrong drivers for 3 pieces of hardware, 2 were auto-repaired (with a little message saying 'Hardware not recognized' then the little 'Installing driver' and bingo it works) and the last one simply forced the computer to boot into

Very good

[HalAtWork (926717)]

This is very good, I'm sure a lot of users would like to have the choice of selecting these in a graphical mode, which with they may be more familiar. Many users familiar with Windows/OSX will automatically be more familiar with Ubuntu because of this feature. It's important to have as many options available on CLI and GUI at the same time.

I remember that back in the day YaST (SuSE's Yet Another Setup Tool) used to be incredibly handy because the CLI and GUI for the tool, which controlled almost all configurable options of the Linux distro, would behave almost exactly the same. The CLI used curses for display, and I believe the GUI was QT-based. They functioned pretty much identically. Personally, I have no problem just editing a text file. But, if you are a linux newbie and you poke around in the GUI and mess something up, then suddenly you can't start X, you feel a little bit safer knowing that there's a tool you can use to revert your settings that works exactly the same on the CLI as it does in the GUI, so you can access the program in almost any situation, even from a remote terminal.

Good!

[aarmenaa (712174)]

Being able to get a console and edit xorg.conf will probably always be with us, but it should never be the primary means of configuration for a desktop machine. I see this as a major step forward for Ubuntu in reaching it's target audience. I use many distros, but I generally choose Ubuntu for desktop systems because I really don't have the motivation to do all that by hand just for a lousy desktop. It's also for people like my dad: he can follow instructions and install an OS, but he's not touching a config file.

Thanks, Ubuntu.

[Esteanil (710082)]

Although I've haven't had *nix installed on any of my home computers yet, I'm very happy indeed that Windows XP looks to be the last MS OS I will ever use.
Changing to Linux is now something I'm thinking about on at least a weekly basis, and the upcoming version Ubuntu seems very likely to make me leave Windows. (Except for a small gaming partition).

How is this news?

[boylinux (775361)]

Xandros and other distros have had this for years.

Re:How is this news?

[FoolsGold (1139759)]

It's news because Ubuntu is currently the flagship of the mainstream Linux distros - it's generally the first option for people wanting to try Linux out, so improvements like this are rather important to its success.

Nice

[PhaxMohdem (809276)]

This has been a problem I've run into a lot as a Linux novice, and newly converted user to Ubuntu 7.04. I really wish that someone would make dual/multi display configuration much more intuitive. In Windows even the n00best of n00bs can easily configure a dual monitor setup. In the various Linux flavors I've tried it is not that simple. Seems like the system display configuration utility and the video drivers I install for nVidia/ATI cards just want to fight each other over who gets to control that second monitor, instead of just working like it does in Windows. Like I said, total novice here so I don't know if its an issue with the distro's themselves, or the third party drivers by nVidia/ATI, all I know is it is annoying, and one of the major caveats preventing me from totally embracing the penguin.

Also Planned

[JamesRose (1062530)]

An error screen that appears in a crash, maybe a nice calming blue one... ;-)

Planned for a while...

[d3ik (798966)]

I remember Jeff Waugh (Gnome guy, also worked at Canonical) had mentioned at last year's Ohio Linux Fest there had been talk about this for years but everyone was always busy working on other stuff. Glad to see they finally are getting it out.

OSS on the move!

[Brummund (447393)]

This is clearly a great example of the agile developers of the OSS community. Only months after Microsoft announces similar features in the upcoming Windows version customized for the home user, the OSS movement has once again beat them to it, and implemented features only mentioned with vague release dates by the huge Seattle-based software company. Way to go, guys!

I suggested this ages ago!

[Theovon (109752)]

Ok, I'm sure others have too, but I filed a bug report on this problem a LOOOONG time ago. It's taken them quite a long time to get around to fixing this, a rather significant usability problem.

Re:I suggested this ages ago!

[Theovon (109752)]

You seem to forget that they ALREADY have this tool. It runs when you install the OS! It's very smart and figures out exactly what card you have and everything!

The problems occur when you do something as simple as move the graphics card to a different slot after installation. X is not smart enough to figure out that it just needs to substitute a different PCI bus ID.

This is a good thing...

[confused one (671304)]

I want to re-iterate some of what's been said here. Just to be clear, I'm no *nix n00b. I learned on VMS and IBM VM/CMS then moved to a mixed VMS, Ultrix, HP-UX and SunOS/Solaris environment in 1991. I started using redhat in 1995, switched to Suse in 2002, and to Ubuntu in 2007. I work as an engineer and do some software development. At home I have a Windows box which gets used for work and acts as a file and print server (since it's the more powerful machine). Beside it is a linux box that likewise gets used for dev work and cross compiling code. I am capable of dealing with problems that may arise on either the Windows or *nix platform.

In my kitchen is a laptop. It's running Ubuntu. It's the machine my non-techy wife uses. She has been using linux since 2002 and I would guess she represents a "typical" user. Present her with a GUI, dialog boxes, a clear and user friendly interface and she's fine; put her in front of a shell prompt and she's lost.

Features like this "Failsafe Graphics Mode" are critical if we expect more widespread adoption of linux. This is where Microsoft and Apple have done a very good job of making it easy for a typical person with limited or no technical background to configure and use the machines. A previous poster suggested that linux has always had a failsafe mode; but, booting into single user mode and dumping someone at a shell prompt is not good enough. At that point most people would give up. We have to work to make the platform as user friendly as possible if we expect it to be adopted. linux needs more of these user friendly interfaces for diagnosing problems and configuring hardware. That laptop my wife uses, in order to get the wifi interface to work I had to drop back to a command prompt to troubleshoot the problem, then edit a couple of configuration files to make it work. (and for the record, it's a Ralink 2500 based card made by Asus, which is supposed to be well supported) That's just unacceptable to most users. Let's try to keep the typical end user in mind when we design these projects. I think the folks working on Ubuntu are setting a fine example.

This is new?

[nurb432 (527695)]

FBSD has defaulted to a VESA mode for some time now i thought. Not that its 100% but it covers 99% of what is still running ( and that you would want to try running X on ).

Sure its nice, but doesnt seem 'earth shaking'

Welcome to the 90's

[JohnnyBigodes (609498)]

Welcome to the 1990's and the VESA support in just about every graphics card in existance that never got used until around 2000, and only now at the mid-to-end of the decade we get a VESA safe mode.

It doesn't look that good..

[-Neko- (67564)]

Assumptions:

1) You're running an x86 PC with a VESA compliant graphics card, or any platform which has 'legacy VGA' registers mapped. What about PPC or something? It's frighteningly rare for the kernel framebuffer not to work on these platforms but there are some times where the X.org driver/autodetect or most commonly GDM doesn't quite configure your card correctly and hands you a garbage display. I never understood why X.org can't have a TRUE framebuffer console driver which simply inherits the mode the kernel gives it.

This isn't bulletproof it's just a band-aid.

2) Everyone loves GTK+ - well, I pretty much don't. Does this mean the Kubuntu guys have to install GTK now? Actually not, because there is a cute KDE app for it, but seriously.. why does everyone fawn over the GTK stuff and never show the Qt stuff?

In fact, it turns out this was a KDE app to start with. Quote;

displayconfig-gtk is a GTK/Python frontend being developed for KDE's guidance configuration system by glatzor, mvo, and others. In addition to using this in the failsafe mode, this is plugged into Ubuntu's System / Administration menu so users can also use it for configuring their system once successfully booted into X (shown below).

Which just begs the question, why wasn't this news when the KDE app got written?

3) Everyone loves GDM, well, I don't. What's up with KDM these days? Does it handle it better? None of the developers are telling the success story on any project I'm watching right now, it's all "GDM breaks this" and "we have problems with that". So it worked on KDE before, but nobody thought to say "this is a great feature, now we port it to GTK"?

There are some very strange priorities in the software world these days.. bug reports flood the net and nobody talks about anything being finished..

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

X11 brought a standard means of controlled extensions to the X protocol. So called "X extensions". So the need for a new protocol revision number for anything other than marketing purposes would be quite miniscule, though these days much of the drawing on your desktop is happening through an extension (e.g. X composite, render, glx ...) rather than core X.

The only thing that would merit it would be a fundamental change to the rendering model necessitating a core protocol change, and really, X's renderi

Re:

[Lorkki (863577)]

You might not have heard, but these days the X.Org Foundation [x.org] is the one running the show and making the reference implementation (latest being X11R7.2 [x.org] as of now). If you've used a desktop-oriented distribution of Linux within the last five years, chances are that it came equipped with it as the default choice.

In any case, I'm not exactly sure about what cause would be served by changing the base protocol.

Re:

[Waffle Iron (339739)]

I still don't understand why you keep referring to changing the protocol in the first place.

Probably because the original GP post proposed moving from X11 to X12 to fix usability problems, but the '11' actually refers to the version of the low level client-server communications protocol, which has little to do with usability.

Re:Nice

[by Anonymous Coward]

I still don't understand why you keep referring to changing the protocol in the first place.

Because the protocol version number is "11", and the name "X11" includes the protocol version number. The X Window System (or just "X" for short) has been stable on version 11 of the protocol for a long time now.

The name "X12" implies a change in the protocol that is so serious that no existing X software will know how to talk to it (because all existing X software is X11 software).

They keep on changing the release revision; we are up to 7.2 now, as in "X11R7.2".

So now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Take in computers that need repair, fix them using my bench and give the tower back to the customer knowing their system would automatically adjust itself to their display and input devices when they went home from win95b on. The fact that I STILL can't do that with Linux/X today is just pathetic.

The X.org guys are in fact working on that. The fact that we can't do it today is just legacy fallout from the poor way that the Xfree86 guys used to run things.

A short (and not polite) summary of the history of X:

-- X invented at a university. Runs quickly through version numbers but stabilises at 11.

-- X not generally available for free for years.

-- Some guys make a free version of X for the 386, and call it "Xfree86".

-- Xfree86 becomes the standard X for free OSes.

-- Xfree86 project management becomes an obvious problem.

-- Talented X developer Keith Packard starts talking to people about ways to improve Xfree86 project management.

-- Xfree86 lead developers accuse Keith Packard of trying to "subvert" Xfree86 management, and kick Keith Packard out of Xfree86. Keith Packard goes to X.org.

-- Xfree86 lead developers go completely insane, and change the licence for X to include onerous new "advertising" requirements.

-- The whole Free Software world, more or less simultaneously, abandons Xfree86, and X.org becomes the new standard X.

-- Xfree86 is now completely irrelevant.

-- X.org guys (including Keith Packard) revamp X to make it easier to work on, revamp dev protocols to make it easier to get things done, and start making cool stuff happen.

Feel free to look up X11, Xfree86, etc. on Wikipedia if you want to know more.

Re:Useless

[vga_init (589198)]

A Windows user boots Ubuntu on a new laptop, say, and gets a low-res 'safe mode' telling them that there's no specific support for their video hardware ("Ubuntu failed to start the windowing system because it was unable to properly configure your hardware").

Out of the box Xorg supports more video cards than Windows does. It also supports the use of generic drivers for standards compliant cards, such as VESA.

They can't download a driver package and update.

Of course they can. ATI and nVidia, the two biggest graphics card vendors provide Linux driver packages you can download. In fact, Ubuntu has a utility that will do this automatically for you.

They can't use a driver off a CD that came with the machine, because there aren't any.

Generally it's the same with Windows. My last computer, a Compaq, didn't come with any CD. The only option was to create a "restore" CD/DVD which amounted to little more than a disk image. Say I want to install a different version of Windows than what the machine was imaged with, where are the drivers?

None of your arguments against X hold water, and of course if you actually put some thought into it, you'd be able to come up with some simple reasons why failsafe mode is useful. What if your X has the right drivers, but the auto detect failed or something you did borked the configuration? With failsafe mode you can revert back to a correct driver setting and recover your desktop rather quickly and painlessly.

You cite Windows as "the superior way," but don't you even realize that Windows has a graphics safe mode for exactly the same reason as Ubuntu has now? If anything Ubuntu is mimicking something Windows has done for over a decade. If the feature were as useless as you claim, why hasn't Microsoft removed that feature by now, and why do I have so much first hand experience utilizing it at home and work?

Re:Mark Your History Books

[fyoder (857358)]

When can we expect a unified program installation method?

Done already. In fact, Linux has many of them: apt-get, yum, emerge, and more! It's a veritable cornucopia of unified program installation methods.

Re:Mark Your History Books

[MMC Monster (602931)]

The gui is called synaptic. It's so awesome compared to anything on the MSwindows side of things, it's hard to describe to someone who just uses MSWindows. But I'll give it a try:

Synaptic contains a list of repositories. Each repository is a website that has a group of applications for the OS. Synaptic comes with some default repositories and has an easy way for the user to add new ones using a GUI interface (or a text interface).

You run synaptic and it will give you a list of all possible programs to install on the OS. Everything. You click on a program to install. If it requires other applications to be installed, it will warn you that it will also install the other applications.

The magic comes when a new version of any application (ie: Firefox) comes out that you already have installed. The OS knows that there is a new version because the repositories will have a version number higher than the version installed on your system. The OS will put a little star in the corner of the screen. Click on it will bring up synaptic with the option to install the newer version.

Think of it as a Windows Update that does not send information about your system to any website, and which can update any program installed on your system (including OS files and files not distributed by Microsoft), regardless of who makes it. (repositories are available for proprietary products such as Opera and Google Earth).

Re:

[MMC Monster (602931)]

Another cool thing about using synaptic and repositories: When Ubuntu came out with version 7.04, users of version 6.10 got a notice via synaptic, stating that a new version of the OS was available. If the user chose to upgrade to the new version, the only thing that was changed was the version of the OS listed in the list of repositories in synaptic. Then synaptic just did it's usual business and downloaded all the new files. A single reboot later, and the entire OS and all applications were upgraded.

Re:Mark Your History Books

[miro f (944325)]

So, can I go to a website and click on a link and download a new package and have it just install by opening it? Can this package open a GUI to allow options to be chosen (things like optional features, like spell check and file associations)?

No?

yes.

Re:Now I can try linux again!

[HeroreV (869368)]

If you hit Ctrl+Alt+F# (F1, F2, etc) you can get into a command line, then login and use sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf to edit your configuration file. Of course, users should never be expected to do such a thing, but it's at least nice to know that you can.