issue100:notre_grand_ancetre
Différences
Ci-dessous, les différences entre deux révisions de la page.
Prochaine révision | Révision précédente | ||
issue100:notre_grand_ancetre [2015/08/30 14:48] – créée auntiee | issue100:notre_grand_ancetre [2015/09/03 18:50] (Version actuelle) – [Conclusions] auntiee | ||
---|---|---|---|
Ligne 1: | Ligne 1: | ||
- | This one-hundredth number of our favorite magazine (yea!) may be a good time to look back and see what the Ubuntu distribution was like in its original form, and how it compares to the modern versions. The best point to start with is probably the original version that went public, Ubuntu Warty Warthog, a.k.a. 4.10, since it was released in October 2004. Has the distribution changed much? What was included, and which hardware could it run on? Could it still run on a modern computer? These are some of the questions we would like to address in the following pages. | ||
- | Get it! | + | ***Ubuntu Warty: the beginning |
+ | |||
+ | This one-hundredth number of our favorite magazine (yea!) may be a good time to look back and see where the Ubuntu distribution was like in its original form, and how it compares to the modern versions. The best point to start with is probably the original version that went public, Ubuntu Warty Warthog, a.k.a. 4.10 since it was released in October 2004. Has the distribution changed much? What was included, and which hardware could it run on? Could it still run on a modern computer? These are some of the questions we would like to address in the following pages.*** | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | ====== Notre grand ancêtre ====== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Ce centième numéro de notre magazine favori (hourra !) pourrait être une bonne occasion pour regarder en arrière et se souvenir de la distribution Ubuntu dans sa forme originale et comment elle se compare aux versions plus modernes. Le meilleur point de départ est probablement la première version publique, Ubuntu Warty Warthog connue aussi comme la 4.10, puisqu' | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | ***Get it! | ||
The first nice bit of news that I came across when researching Warty is that it is still available, and directly from the original source. Just head over to the " | The first nice bit of news that I came across when researching Warty is that it is still available, and directly from the original source. Just head over to the " | ||
- | http:// | ||
- | This is a bit of a surprise, since not many suppliers even of commercial applications would make an eleven-year-old piece of software still available on their servers. My hat's off to Canonical for this one. | + | http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ |
- | We are faced with a choice of three different architectures: | ||
- | However, it should be noted that most of these CDs are installation CD, not Live CDs to boot a working environment from. The only choice for a Live CD is the 32-bit Intel architecture, | + | ===== Obtenez-le ! ===== |
- | Anyway, I chose to download the i386 images | + | La première bonne nouvelle que j'ai rencontrée lors de mes investigations sur Warty fut le fait qu' |
- | Running in a virtual machine | + | http:// |
- | The first step was to test the images downloaded within a virtual environment. In this case, I used Virtualbox 4.3 under Linux Mint 17.1 on my work machine. The Live CD booted straight up at the first try, with a boot-loader screen that is - in my honest opinion - rather more informative | + | **This is a bit of a surprise, since not many suppliers even of commercial applications would make an eleven-year-old piece of software still available on their servers. My hat's off to Canonical for this one. |
+ | |||
+ | We are faced with a choice of three different architectures: | ||
+ | |||
+ | Ceci constitue une petite surprise, puisqu' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Nous nous trouvons devant un choix de trois architectures matérielles : | ||
+ | |||
+ | ***However, it should be noted that most of these CDs are installation CD, not Live CDs to boot a working environment from. The only choice for a Live CD is the 32-bit Intel architecture, | ||
+ | |||
+ | Any way, I chose to download the i386 images both for the Live CD and for the installation disk.*** | ||
+ | |||
+ | Mais il faut noter que la plupart de ces images de CD correspondent à des CD d' | ||
+ | |||
+ | En tout état de cause, j'ai décidé de télécharger les images i386 tant comme Live CD que pour l' | ||
+ | |||
+ | **Running in a virtual machine | ||
+ | |||
+ | The first step was to test the images downloaded within a virtual environment. In this case, I used Virtualbox 4.3 under Linux Mint 17.1 on my work machine. The Live CD booted straight up at the first try, with a boot-loader screen that is -in my honest opinion- rather more informative | ||
Soon, there I was staring at the brown desktop from many days back. | Soon, there I was staring at the brown desktop from many days back. | ||
- | More on that later; for the time being, let's just say that the Live CD works in a virtual machine with little changes from a modern GNOME 2 desktop – except for the (perhaps untidy) ramdisk icon. | + | More on that later, for the time being let's just say that the Live CD works in a virtual machine with little changes from a modern GNOME 2 desktop – except for the perhaps untidy ramdisk icon.** |
- | The second test was using the installation disk to try to install the system on the hard drive. This one also booted up rather quickly, and the installation program took over. In Warty, the installer was simply the ncurses-based Debian installer, with little adaptation to Ubuntu. The program started by giving us a choice of language, though options are limited to the 40-or-so choices given by Debian. Ubuntu' | + | ===== Exécution dans une machine virtuelle ===== |
- | With this installer, the process is spread over two phases. Disks are partitioned in the first, and general system configuration is done. The machine | + | La première étape fut de tester les images téléchargées dans un environnement virtuel. Dans ce cas, j'ai utilisé Virtualbox 4.3 sous Linux Mint 17.1 sur ma machine |
- | Speaking of disk partitioning, | + | Je me suis rapidement trouvé devant le bureau marron d' |
- | That was when I remembered that SATA connections between the hard drives and motherboards were not in widespread use back in 2004, since the technology had just appeared in 2003. I checked the settings on the virtual machine, and - sure enough - I had left the default configuration on and the virtual hard drive was controlled through SATA emulation. | + | J'en parlerai davantage un peu plus en avant ; disons seulement, pour le moment, que le Live CD fonctionne dans un environnement virtuel avec peu de différences en comparaison avec un bureau GNOME 2 moderne – sauf pour une icône ramdisk qui peut faire désordre. |
- | Once this was changed and the virtual hard drive was connected through a more traditional IDE, installation proceeded smoothly. Once the machine had rebooted, I created the primary user, and the desktop came up as usual. The bit to take back home is that Warty simply does not support SATA drives – which will have its importance in the next section. | ||
- | Meanwhile, I wanted to see if the package repositories for Warty were still online. As I had suspected, there they were on the Old-releases server. All versions that have since been deprecated are catered for, from Warty up to Saucy (Saucy Salamander a.k.a. 13.10). | + | ***The second test was using the installation disk to try to install the system on the hard drive. This one also booted up rather quickly, and the installation program took over. In Warty, the installer was simply the ncurses-based Debian installer, with little adaptation to Ubuntu. The program started by giving us a choice of language, though options are limited to the 40-or-so choices given by Debian. Ubuntu' |
+ | |||
+ | With this installer, the process is spread over two phases. Disks are partitioned in the first, and general system configuration is done. The machine is then rebooted. Once running again, user creation is performed during the second phase – i.e. after rebooting. This is one area where more modern versions of Ubuntu have accustomed us to a more streamlined process – while Debian has perhaps stagnated a little, with less cosmetic changes since 2004. Even though this text-based installer is a breeze to navigate in for experienced users, perhaps some of the messages are not clear for the novice, for instance when setting up disk partitions.*** | ||
+ | |||
+ | Le deuxième test effectué fut avec le disque d' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Avec cet installeur, le processus a lieu sur deux étapes. Dans la première, les partitions de disque sont créées, et la configuration générale du système est faite. La machine est alors redémarrée. C'est alors pendant la deuxième phase que la création des utilisateurs s' | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | ***Speaking of disk partitioning, | ||
+ | |||
+ | That was when I remembered that SATA connections between the hard drives and motherboards were not in widespread use back in 2004, since the technology had just appeared in 2003. I checked the settings on the virtual machine, and -sure enough- I had left the default configuration on and the virtual hard drive was controlled through SATA emulation. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Once this was changed and the virtual hard drive was connected through a more traditional IDE, installation proceeded smoothly. Once the machine had rebooted, I created the primary user and the desktop came up as usual. The bit to take back home is that Warty simply does not support SATA drives – which will have its importance in the next section.*** | ||
+ | |||
+ | À propos des partitions disque, la première fois que j'ai mis en route le disque d' | ||
+ | |||
+ | C'est à ce moment-là que je me suis souvenu que les connexions SATA entre les disques durs et les cartes mères n' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Une fois la connexion du disque dur basculée vers une IDE traditionnelle, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ***Meanwhile, I wanted to see if the package repositories for Warty were still on-line. As I had suspected, there they were on the Old-releases server. All versions that have since been deprecated are catered for, from Warty up to Saucy (Saucy Salamander a.k.a. 13.10). | ||
http:// | http:// | ||
- | Although the " | + | Although the " |
- | Running on bare metal | + | Pendant ce temps, je voulais voir si les dépôts de paquets pour Warty étaient toujours en ligne. Comme je m'en doutais, ils étaient bien présents sur le serveur Old-releases. Toutes les versions actuellement hors support y sont toujours prises en considération, |
- | Once I was satisfied Warty still worked on a virtual machine, I started looking for physical hardware I could run it on. As stated above, any computers with the hard drive connected through a SATA bus couldn' | + | http:// |
- | As I soon discovered, neither could I boot off a USB stick. An image created with the Unetbootin utility program did manage to load both kernel and initrd image, but the kernel was then incapable of mounting the CD-ROM filesystem image on the USB stick. So options were quite reduced; in essence, I needed a computer with a hard drive and a CD, both connected using IDE. In the end, I resurrected a Benq Joybook R31E built in year 2005 off the junk pile. This is a laptop that has been configured with an Intel Centrino M processor, 640 MBytes of RAM, and a 60 GByte IDE hard drive. It may be interesting to note it is also quite capable of running Xubuntu 14.10 if needed. | + | Bien que les commandes « aptitude update » et « aptitude upgrade » se soient tout à fait bien comportées, il n' |
- | I still had some actual blank CDs left from way back when, and at least one computer with a CD/DVD burner. Once the CD images had been burned to physical media, testing could commence. | + | |
+ | |||
+ | ***Running on bare metal | ||
+ | |||
+ | Once I was satisfied Warty still worked on a virtual machine, I started looking for physical | ||
+ | |||
+ | As I soon discovered, neither could I boot off a USB stick. An image created with the netbootin utility program did manage to load both kernel and initrd image, but the kernel was then incapable of mounting the CD-ROM filesystem image on the USB stick. So options were quite reduced; in essence, I needed a computer with a hard drive and a CD, both connected using IDE. In the end, I resurrected a Benq Joybook R31E built in year 2005 off the junk pile. This is a laptop that has been configured with an Intel Centrino M processor, 640 MBytes of RAM and a 60 GByte IDE hard drive. It may be interesting to note it is also quite capable of running Xubuntu 14.10 if needed.*** | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===== Exécution directement sur l' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Une fois que j'eus constaté que Warty fonctionnait bien sur une machine virtuelle, j'ai commencé à chercher du matériel physique sur lequel je pourrais l' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Comme je le découvris assez tôt, je ne pus le mettre en route à partir d'un USB non plus. Une image créée à partir du logiciel unetbootin est parvenue à charger aussi bien le noyau que l' | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | **I still had some actual blank CDs left from way back when, and at least one computer with a CD/DVD burner. Once the CD images had been burned to physical media, testing could commence. | ||
The Live CD started up correctly, the live system was responsive, and programs worked as they should. There is nothing special to report on here, except perhaps for the amount of RAM used: just 91.7 MBytes. This is certainly a welcome contrast with modern desktop managers. You will not need a Gigabyte of RAM just to test Warty. | The Live CD started up correctly, the live system was responsive, and programs worked as they should. There is nothing special to report on here, except perhaps for the amount of RAM used: just 91.7 MBytes. This is certainly a welcome contrast with modern desktop managers. You will not need a Gigabyte of RAM just to test Warty. | ||
- | As for the installer CD, the installation process also worked correctly – until it was time to install the GRUB boot loader. It then failed miserably, and the accompanying message was unclear as to the cause: | + | As for the installer CD, the installation process also worked correctly – until it was time to install the GRUB boot loader. It then failed miserably, and the accompanying message was unclear as to the motive:** |
- | I then re-tried installing, this time with a different disk partitioning scheme. I avoided the very first tracks, under the assumption that they may have gotten a hammering earlier on in their lives. This seemed to help a tad, as GRUB was - supposedly - installed with no error messages on screen. But the computer never got to reboot, just going back into BIOS time and again. | + | J' |
- | So there ended my efforts of installing Warty on a physical machine. It certainly seems more finicky than more recent versions of Ubuntu. As stated above, Xubuntu 14.10 has had zero problems with installing and running on this particular piece of equipment. | + | Le Live CD s'est mis en route correctement, |
- | Using the desktop environment | + | Pour ce qui est du CD d' |
+ | |||
+ | **I then re-tried installing, this time with a different disk partitioning scheme. I avoided the very first tracks, under the assumption that they may have gotten a hammering earlier on in their lives. This seemed to help a tad, as GRUB was -supposedly- installed with no error messages on screen. But the computer never got to reboot, just going back into BIOS time and again. | ||
+ | |||
+ | So there ended my efforts of installing Warty on a physical machine. It certainly seems more finicky than more recent versions of Ubuntu. As stated above, Xubuntu 14.10 has had zero problems with installing and running on this particular piece of equipment.** | ||
+ | |||
+ | Ensuite, j'ai essayé de réinstaller le système, mais cette fois-ci avec un schéma de partitions différent. J'ai évité les premiers secteurs, avec l' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Ainsi se terminèrent mes efforts d' | ||
+ | |||
+ | **Using the desktop environment | ||
With Warty Warthog comes a standard complement of " | With Warty Warthog comes a standard complement of " | ||
- | • an image editor, Gimp version 2.0 | ||
- | • a productivity suite, OpenOffice version 1.1 | ||
- | • a web browser, Firefox version 0.9.3 | ||
- | Gimp works well in both the virtual environment and booting off the Live CD. It is certainly usable to work on images as long as the physical hardware is up to the task (memory may be a concern). Although there have been some changes in comparison with today' | + | an image editor, |
+ | a productivity suite, OpenOffice | ||
+ | a web browser, Firefox | ||
- | OpenOffice: also usable. Both OpenOffice and GIMP are rather fast, even in a virtual environment. The toolbars | + | Gimp works well in both the virtual environment and booting off the Live CD. It is certainly usable to work on images as long as the physical hardware is up to the task (memory may be a concern). Although there have been some changes in comparison with today' |
+ | |||
+ | **Using the desktop environment | ||
+ | |||
+ | With Warty Warthog comes a standard complement of " | ||
+ | |||
+ | an image editor, Gimp version 2.0 | ||
+ | a productivity suite, OpenOffice version 1.1 | ||
+ | a web browser, Firefox version 0.9.3 | ||
+ | |||
+ | Gimp works well in both the virtual environment and booting off the Live CD. It is certainly usable to work on images as long as the physical hardware is up to the task (memory may be a concern). Although there have been some changes in comparison with today' | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | ===== Utiliser l' | ||
+ | |||
+ | On retrouve avec Warty Warthog le choix standard de logiciels « majeurs » : | ||
+ | |||
+ | * un éditeur d' | ||
+ | * une suite bureautique, | ||
+ | * un navigateur d' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Gimp fonctionne bien tant dans un environnement virtuel qu'en démarrant l' | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | **OpenOffice: also usable. Both OpenOffice and GIMP are rather fast, even in a virtual environment. The tool bars and so are mostly in the same places, and everything works in the way a modern user would expect. This just goes to say that the teams at OpenOffice and later LibreOffice have not gone on changing things just for the sake of change. Instead, they have concentrated on making the internals of the software suite even better, for example adding Word docx file support and making presentations more rich. | ||
With Firefox and web browsing in general I have not that much luck. No Flash is available, for starters, and not even CSS stylesheets are supported. Google' | With Firefox and web browsing in general I have not that much luck. No Flash is available, for starters, and not even CSS stylesheets are supported. Google' | ||
- | The fact that some certification authorities in widespread use nowadays did not even exist back in 2004 does not help. For example, FCM's page comes up, but the inclusion of a live link to Twitter causes grief. Back in 2004, Symantec had not yet jumped on the Class 3 web server certificate (EV or Extended Validation certificate) bandwagon, so the corresponding Certification Authority public certificate was, naturally enough, not included in the browsers' | ||
- | IPv6 addresses were not yet supported by programs accessing the Internet such as wget or Firefox, though the operating system itself (kernel and utility programs) was well up to it. | + | The fact that some certification authorities in widespread use nowadays did not even exist back in 2004 does not help. For example, FCM's page comes up, but the inclusion of a live link to Twitter causes grief. Back in 2004, Symantec had not yet jumped on the Class 3 web server certificate (EV or Extended Validation certificate) bandwagon, so the corresponding Certification Authority public certificate was naturally enough not included in the browsers' |
+ | |||
+ | OpenOffice est utilisable aussi. OpenOffice et Gimp sont tous les deux assez rapides, même dans un environnement virtuel. Les barres d' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Je n'ai pas eu de résultats aussi bons avec Firefox et la navigation sur Internet en général. Flash n'est pas disponible, pour commencer, et les feuilles de style CSS ne sont même pas prises en charge. Les produits de Google (courriel, Drive, Calendar) fonctionnent, | ||
+ | |||
+ | Le fait que certaines autorités de certification utilisés couramment aujourd' | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | **IPv6 addresses were not yet supported by programs accessing the Internet such as wget or Firefox, though the operating system itself (kernel and utility programs) was well up to it. | ||
+ | |||
+ | A solution that came to mind was upgrading Firefox with a more modern version. However, Warty still depends on earlier versions of the main GNU standard C++ library (version 5), while Firefox depends on the later version 6. It has been available in GCC (GNU C Compiler) version 3.4.0 since April 2004, but was not used to build Warty. So no luck with web browsing in the modern world, which is perhaps the most important defect that precludes from using Warty in an actual work environment today.** | ||
+ | |||
+ | Il n'y avait pas encore de support pour les adresses IPv6 par les programmes accédant à Internet tels que wget ou Firefox, bien que le système lui-même (noyau et logiciels utilitaires) y étaient préparés, eux. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Une solution qui m'est venue à l' | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | **As for additional hardware, there is naturally much less support in Warty for USB-connected peripherals such as cameras and printers than in recent releases. This is perhaps understandable, | ||
+ | |||
+ | USB sticks are supported, more or less. That is to say, they are detected IF formatted with a VFAT (Windows 32-bit) filesystem, and IF the flash drive is formatted directly as a file system, without using partitions. Support is more flaky than today; not every insertion is correctly detected and mounted. Due to hardware constraints, | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | Quant à d' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Les clés USB sont prises en charge, plus ou moins. En tout cas, elles le sont à condition qu' | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | **As for screen drivers, Warty still relies on the very old X configuration files – that used to be edited manually. In Warty, some X server detection is performed automatically, | ||
+ | |||
+ | The availability of a WiFi connection is also much of a hit-and-miss proposition. If you are lucky enough to have a WiFi card that is supported by Warty, then it may have an older chipset that will not connect to modern access points that support only 802.11g or 802.11n, and may also present difficulties with WPA encryption that is practically mandatory in modern networking.** | ||
+ | |||
+ | Pour ce qui est des pilotes d' | ||
+ | |||
+ | La disponibilité d'une connection WiFi est quelque peu aléatoire. Si vous avez la chance d' | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | **Conclusions | ||
+ | |||
+ | This trip back in time made me realize three things. The first is that -despite the incident with Unity- there is actually quite a lot of coherence between Ubuntu versions all along the now eleven-year-long timeline of the distribution. The main objectives -such as ease of use for most users- have not really changed. A large offering catering for the non-English-speaking users has been there since day 1, and has only been improved over time. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The second point is that some things have changed on the hardware side. And, although GNU/Linux distributions such as Ubuntu have at times lent a hand towards hardware support, at the end of the day both the distributions and the user are tributaries to one main project: the Linux kernel itself. To this I would add the various device drivers available as source code, and the utilities needed to use them and for specific hardware-related tasks (such as ntfs-3g to use Windows' | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | ===== Conclusions ===== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Ce retour en arrière | ||
+ | |||
+ | Le deuxième point est que certaines choses ont changé par rapport au matériel physique. Bien que les distributions GNU/Linux telles qu' | ||
- | A solution that came to mind was upgrading Firefox with a more modern version. However, Warty still depends | + | **Finally, I also came to realize our dependency |
- | As for additional hardware, there is, naturally, much less support | + | In retrospect, most of the ways in which Warty could be a found lacking |
- | USB sticks are supported, more or less. That is to say, they are detected IF formatted with a VFAT (Windows 32-bit) filesystem, and IF the flash drive is formatted directly as a file system, without using partitions. Support is more flaky than today; not every insertion is correctly detected and mounted. Due to hardware constraints, I have not been able to run USB-3 with Warty. It should work in principle, though perhaps only in USB-2 mode. | + | Enfin, je me suis rendu compte de notre dépendance vis-à-vis de l' |
- | As for screen drivers, Warty still relies on the very old X configuration files – that used to be edited manually. In Warty, some X server detection is performed automatically, | + | Rétrospectivement, la plupart des faiblesses de Warty par rapport au monde moderne ont été traitées et résolues assez rapidement par Canonical et par l' |
- | The availability | + | ***This means that even though Karmic still used the version 3 series |
- | Conclusions | + | It shows us how much Ubuntu had evolved by 2009, in aspects that directly impact the user experience. Karmic could eventually still be used as a daily driver if you are not too worried about security or being on the bleeding edge of technology. Warty could not.*** |
- | This trip back in time made me realize three things. The first is that - despite the incident with Unity - there is actually quite a lot of coherence between Ubuntu versions all along the now eleven-year-long timeline of the distribution. The main objectives - such as ease of use for most users - have not really changed. A large offering catering for the non-English-speaking users has been there since day 1, and has only been improved over time. | + | Cela veut dire que, bien que Karmic comprenne toujours la version 3 du navigateur Firefox, une version plus récente peut facilement être téléchargée depuis la page Web de Mozilla et la remplacer directement. Notez le numéro de version de Firefox et le signal du WiFi dans la capture d' |
- | The second point is that some things have changed on the hardware side. And, although GNU/Linux distributions such as Ubuntu have at times lent a hand towards hardware support, at the end of the day both the distributions and the user are tributaries to one main project: the Linux kernel itself. To this I would add the various device drivers available as source code, and the utilities needed to use them, and for specific hardware-related tasks (such as ntfs-3g to use Windows' | ||
- | Finally, I also came to realize our dependency on the Internet. This may seem a platitude, but consider: a US $150 Chromebook can be considered a viable option to work with (via Google Drive or Microsoft Office 365) or for entertainment. But a $1000+ computer without a viable Web browser capable of handling JavaScript, Flash and CSS will not. We depend on access to Web services to the point that having a modern browser is something of a game maker or breaker. | ||
- | In retrospect, most of the ways in which Warty could be a found lacking for the modern world had been addressed and solved, quite quickly, by Canonical and the GNU/Linux ecosystem as a whole. To take an example, Karmic Koala (9.10) had the USB stick problem entirely solved. A Karmic desktop can be installed directly from USB, and once installed, can recognize and work with USBs in different formats. Speaking of formats, the upgraded ext4 filesystem was available in 2009. WiFi support had been much improved in the five years since Warty, and the C library also went up to version 6. | ||
- | This means that even though Karmic still used the version 3 series | + | ***Author biography: Alan teaches computer science at Escola Andorrana de Batxillerat (high-school). He has previously given GNU/Linux courses at the University |
- | It shows us how much Ubuntu had evolved by 2009, in aspects that directly impact the user experience. Karmic could eventually still be used as a daily driver if you are not too worried about security or being on the bleeding edge of technology. Warty could not. | + | Biographie de l' |
issue100/notre_grand_ancetre.1440938922.txt.gz · Dernière modification : 2015/08/30 14:48 de auntiee