Hands on: Understanding Dapper Drake

Finally, each version comes with two options for installing from the CD. Dapper replaces the ‘live CD’ from previous releases with the ‘Desktop install’ CD.

As before, you can boot your chosen release straight from CD, but now you can also install directly from the live system to your hard drive, and it lets you browse the web or chat to friends online while installing.

This option takes less than 10 minutes to install the entire system but offers relatively few installation options.

You may repartition your drive and select the language to use, but not much more. For advanced installations there is the ‘Alternate install’ CD, which is the text-based method used with Breezy and earlier Ubuntu releases.

If you want to install Dapper alone on a PC, or in a simple dual-boot configuration, the desktop install is a great option. For more complex installations, the alternate install CD is needed.

Post-install procedures
Once installed, apply any updates that are available via the update notifier; this is a fully automatic process.

After the updates, a few extra tasks need to be carried out to get it fully ‘desktop-ready’. This is mainly concerned with multimedia applications or restricted licensing.

Due to US software patents, Ubuntu does not distribute many useful packages affected by such patents. These concern almost all multimedia codecs except for open formats such as Ogg Vorbis and Flac.

In the earlier series on Breezy we looked at Ubuntu’s repositories, where thousands of packages are held for automatic download and install, and are also known as software channels in Ubuntu.

There are three official repositories: Main, Universe and Multiverse. Main contains only software that is fully supported by the Ubuntu developers. Universe contains ‘community-supported’ packages, though many of these packages are unofficially supported, and this repository is much larger than Main. Multiverse contains software that is restricted by licence or patents.

Adding support for these repositories is much easier in Dapper than with previous releases. The Add/Remove Applications tool will automatically add both repositories if you choose to install something that requires packages from either.

Load up the tool and tick the ‘Show unsupported applications’ box. Enter ‘xine’ in the search box and tick to install ‘Xine Extra Plugins’. This pops up a warning to tell you it will add the Multiverse repository (it silently adds Universe too).

Adding the remaining packages is best done through the general software GUI tool, Synaptic. The Add/Remove Applications tool offers a smaller hand-picked selection of applications that you can browse and add and remove.