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...Home ... Editorial ... Columns ..Column Story Saturday: April 5, 2014


 Inside the Kernel  
Emmett Dulaney
Emmett Dulaney


 Ubuntu: Getting Back to Linux Basics  
Despite some difficulties with the root account, Emmett finds the simplicity and true openness of this Linux distro very appealing.
by Emmett Dulaney  
3/8/2006 -- It's a funny thing: If you ask any number of IT professionals to describe the Linux operating system, they almost always spout out rather quickly that it is non-proprietary and open source. While that is technically true, most distributions have licensing agreements that closely parallel those of their proprietary counterparts -- you can only do this and this, are expressly prohibited from doing this, and so on.

Enter Ubuntu. Named after an African word for “humanity to others,” it is a completely free distribution (based on Debian) fully developed by the Linux community. While this may be said for other Linux distributions, the real difference is in the ability (or right) that Ubuntu grants you to alter the software in any way that you want. To quote the developers, “Not only are the tools you need available free of charge, you have the right to modify your software until it works the way you want it to.”

Among the other public commitments the Ubuntu team makes, the team promises that the operating system will always be free, and there will be a new release every six months (each release is supported for 18 months).

Curious about how the distribution compares to others I have been using of late (SUSE, Red Hat, etc.), I started poking around with it, and was very impressed by what I found.

Downloading and Installing Ubuntu
The distribution can be downloaded from links found on the Ubuntu site at http://www.ubuntulinux.org. If, for some crazy reason, you cannot download the distribution, you can request a copy of it mailed to you for free (see http://shipit.ubuntu.com). The core OS still fits on a single CD (just over 617 MB), and the requirements for a standard server installation of the most recent version (5.10) are minimal:

  • Intel x86, AMD64), or PowerPC
  • 64MB RAM
  • 500 MB free hard drive space
For a desktop, these numbers are slightly higher, and I would recommend they be considered minimums for a server installation as well in order to provide an environment you can be comfortable working within:
  • Intel x86, AMD64), or PowerPC
  • 128MB RAM
  • 2 GB free hard drive space

Installation is as simple as can be and done in text mode. At the initial prompt, you can type “server” to install only the base system, or just press Enter to begin the regular installation. After answering a few questions about the language and keyboard, the system detects the hardware and networking equipment/peripherals then disk partitioning takes place. Following that, the base system is installed, and then the packages. You must add one regular user, pick a time zone, set up users and passwords, and install GRUB to finish the first stage of installation.

After a reboot, you pick the video mode to use and the rest of the packages install. All the programs included with Ubuntu are free software (no licensing), and the welcome screen informs you that, “Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.” In other words, you assume all responsibility for it -- while that may also be the case with other distributions, it isn't often spelled out so directly.

Using Ubuntu
Overall, I was impressed the distribution for its simplicity and bare-bones approach. Included with the distribution are the 2.6.12 kernel, GNOME desktop (2.12.1), OpenOffice.org (2.0) and a minimal number of miscellaneous applications. There is support for up to 4GB of RAM, Bluetooth, and Python. Filesystem choices include ext3, JFS, ReiserFS and XFS.

I've come to the point where I am favoring KDE over GNOME, and it would have been nice to have that desktop option included, although I can fully understand why it is not. It would have also been nice to have Adobe Acrobat Reader and a few other almost-necessary programs as well (they are included with most other distributions -- you simply independently agree to the license agreements), but I am being picky: They can all be downloaded from their respective sites after the fact.

I did run into one problem that drove me up the wall, however. In the interest of security/safety/whatever, the root account essentially does not work in Ubuntu. Although there is an entry for it in the /etc/passwd file, you do not create a password for it during the installation, and thus it is essentially unable to be used. I spent countless hours trying to figure out a way to change the password associated with this account without having the proper permissions to do so before deciding to go with sudo. Although the user I created during installation does not have the permission to run a command such as init 6, it is possible to type sudo init 6 and then enter the password associated with that user and the command executes.

While I can appreciate the desire to make the system more secure, and to get around the fact that everyone with malicious intent targets the root account, I am not convinced that this is the best approach to that problem. Once I figured out what was going on, I entered the command sudo vi passwd and removed the “x” in the second field of the root entry, then saved the file (leaving the root user without any password at all). I next became root (using the su command and, of course, there was now no prompt for a password), changed the passwd (passwd root) to the entry I wanted and typed pwconv to write it to the /etc/shadow file. Shazam, I was back to working in an environment (right or wrong) that I was more comfortable with.  

Note: Before you point out that some of these steps could have been combined -- “Was vi really needed?” -- let me point out that this is the path I took because it allowed me to make sure what I wanted to happen was happening at every phase of the process.)

A Few Notes…
A few assorted and sundry notes about Ubuntu:

  • The current version, 5.10, is also known as the “Breezy Badger” build – this name appears in the welcome screen and various other places.  
  • The next announced version, 6.04, nicknamed “Dapper Drake” is currently planned for an April release.
  • In addition to English, Ubuntu is available in a number of derivatives and languages ranging from Finnish to Taiwanese.
  • Free technical support is available online, but you can also purchase support in the marketplace (see http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/supportoptions).
  • At the Ubuntu shop (http://www.cafepress.com/ubuntushop/), you can buy everything ranging from shirts and boxer shorts to postcards and mugs to show your support for the OS.
  • There is an unofficial Ubuntu Starter Guide that can be found at http://ubuntuguide.org. As I write this, it has not been updated for the latest build, but most of the items it addresses are the same in 5.04 and 5.10, so it is a valuable resource to look at.

Final Thoughts…
Ubuntu offers an interesting approach to Linux. An attempt to make everything truly free, and including only software that requires no licensing, Ubuntu is definitely a step in the right direction. The ability to not only have the operating system, but make the modifications to it that you want in order to fulfill your needs, is something that should appeal to developers and businesses of all types. It is my belief that this distribution will become a strong marketplace contender in coming years, and one that is worth becoming familiar with now.


Emmett Dulaney is the author of several books on Linux, Unix and certification. He can be reached at .

 


More articles by Emmett Dulaney:

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There are 179 CertCities.com user Comments for “Ubuntu: Getting Back to Linux Basics  ”
Page 1 of 18
3/8/06: Anonymous says: It's wierd how so many otherwise experienced Linux/Unix users have never heard of sudo before they try Ubuntu. sudo has, after all, existed for decades.
3/8/06: cameron says: There are a bunch of ways to reenable the root account if you want, although I agree with the first comment that 'sudo' is pretty good and been around a while. (btw, this is also akin to my experience on recent MacOSX - sudo works, root is out from the start). A cleaner way of reenabling root might be 'sudo passwd', which should do the job (naturally untested, although I'm sure I've done this :).
3/8/06: dave says: The root account is simply locked, I usually use 'passwd -l root' to enable it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Cameron's suggestion worked perfectly. BTW, on a multi-user system, a nice balance is to use 'sudo -s' to get your root shell, rather than enabling the root account. That way, only the users in the admin group can get a root shell.
3/8/06: jordan says: if you really like KDE then use Kubuntu, its exactly the same as Ubuntu except the GUI is KDE.... i use it and its so customizeable that i love it and i would recommend it over any other distro, even suse. suse has good stuff but too much extras and its slower Kubuntu you choose what you want and don't want, its the cleanest distro out there!! :D
3/9/06: Tao says: The straight way is that in the first screen of the installation, you type "expert". You will see the root password setting back in that mode.
3/9/06: willem says: to change the password, simply do a "sudo su" then you are root and can change your password simply with "passwd"... nothing to it really, although i use sudo most of the time and never feel the need to get root... if i do, i just sudo su....
3/9/06: cybervegan from north wales says: You mention Adobe Acrobat isn't included - that's because it's NOT FREE. Evince, a free PDF reader IS included, and it's better. The sudo thing has been done to death, but did you know that sudo won't ask for a password again until a predefined timeout has occurred? 5 characters extra for improved safety can't be bad. Yes it's different but you get used to it. I've been using Linux since the early days of slackware, and I've used several distro's including RedHad and Mandr/iva/ake, and Ubuntu is the winner right now. 1 CD gets you everything you "need"; the rest you can add with synaptic after. I'd recommend googling "easy ubuntu" to get the (non-free) media extensions going, if you want them. -cybervegan
3/9/06: Drew says: I was surprised by the Root issue when I first started using Ubuntu until I realized I could go into the Users menu and manually change the root password there. Of course now that I've gotten used to using sudo I don't need the root password so much, but it's nice to know it's therer ;)
3/9/06: Baby from Buenos Aires says: Funny thing that what you especially liked about Ubuntu (its true "freeness"), it is inherited from Debian. Debian is also free... anyway, you could say that Ubuntu is like "Debian for the rest of us" :-D
3/9/06: variant says: Saying that Ubuntu or the software that comes with it is not liscenced is totaly wrong "All the programs included with Ubuntu are free software (no licensing)" that is completely incorrect.. you are bound by the General Public Licence and some other licences used for the software in the distrobution to follow certain restrictions laid out in those respective licences. this article contains a lot of inacuracies like this and I really think it should be proof read before its publishd like this. (yes i know my spelling is not perfect but thats not really an issue :))
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