Ubuntu

What is Ubuntu?

A distribution of GNU/Linux Operating System based on Debian. Its main sponsor is Canonical,Ltd., an enterprise lead by the South-African Mark Shuttleworth. Ubuntu's main difference is that new releases are launched every six months and the fact that it supplies technical support for 18 months after the launching of a version.

It has a strong focus on usability and internationalization. The original conception of Ubuntu was that it must have only open-source and costless software. It even provides the service of making costless distribution of its CDs for the whole world. Every release has a codename, making it easier to get the appropriate packages from the repositories.

It uses the Debian based APT tools for managing packages, which makes the package administration very efficient compared to the more frequently used RPM tools of some other distributions.

The Ubuntu community doesn't distinguish between novices and experts; it is very active on the Internet IRC chats. Its preferred graphical environment is GNOME, but it also can use KDE, where Kubuntu is a variant consisting of Ubuntu integrated with KDE.

sergiol

RLH Besides it being another "flavor of the month" for Linux, how is this Tcl related?

snichols I'm hearing a lot of hype about this flavor of Linux. Has anyone used it, and what did you think? I tried running the bootable CD version, but got some boot errors and never made it to the desktop.

wdb Yes, for a few months I've been using Ubuntu (with Gnome). I am very pleased. IMHO even simpler in use than Win -- my experience in OSes from MS dates back to '97 where I bought Win95 which was definitely more difficult than Ubuntu.

But I have a problem: Ubuntu inhibits Tk's command raise and lower. In Kanotix, I could correct the same behaviour with some switch. Anybody out there who can tell me how to do it in Ubuntu?

LV It seems likely to me that it isn't Ubuntu, but the GNOME window manager you have chosen, which is the cause of the problem with raise and lower. Which window manager are you using? wdb Yes, it's GNOME. Any hint?

MG A friend of mine has reported problems copying and pasting in Tk on Ubuntu (using GNOME), though all the appropriate text widget bindings seem to be in place, so it would seem to be an issue with how Tk interacts with the OS/WM. I thought I'd seen similar comments about that on the wiki before, once, but can't find them now (and wonder if they're related to the raise/lower problem mentioned above). Anyone have any ideas? (I can ask him to check things on the machine if necessary, though obviously it'll be a little slow waiting for him to reply.)

LV Ubuntu isn't an OS - it is a marketing term for a Linux distribution. It seems more likely that something strange is either happening with the configuration of Tcl and Tk, or that there is one or more components running in this distribution that are interfering with the copy and paste features used in Tk (as well as the reported problems with raise and lower). Otherwise, all Linux users would be having these problems, right?

_hc the "wm group" trick mentioned in the bug report solved this issue for me, more or less: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=514115

LES 2009-08-13: I've been using Kubuntu (KDE) for little more than a year and I have had the following problems:

- All applications that require Tcl/Tk will require Tcl 8.4. I always ended up giving up on the application, because apt-get would install 8.4 and displace my manual installation of 8.5. I don't want to be reinstalling/symlinking 8.5 over and over. Tcl/Tk 8.5 took a long time to show up in the official repositories.

- I would like to see a Batteries Included Tcl package for Ubuntu. Active Tcl makes it all a lot easier because of all the bundled extensions. Newcomers probably hate having to hunt them all over the Web. Some extensions are available as individual packages, but very few. RZ You could try the Linux versions of kbs*-bi. See http://sourceforge.net/projects/kbskit/files and Tclkit Kitgen Build System

- I have lots of trouble copying and pasting text into Tkcon. Tkcon rarely ever recognizes my current clipboard content, it insists on pasting something I copied quite some time ago. Even worse, it doesn't happen all the time, rather about 98% of the time, which makes it all even more mysterious. The clipboard in Linux sucks anyway, but I solved all my problems with A Little Clipboard Daemon. Tkcon is the only application that causes me trouble. I have acquired the habit of launching Tkcon and running [getclip], a proc that always captures the current clipboard successfully, but that is absolutely annoying. I've thought about asking for help here (Jeff?), but I always forget and postpone. I am almost sure I didn't have that problem on Slackware, on the other hand none of my own Tcl/Tk apps with text widgets cause me that problem, so I really don't know if the problem is in Ubuntu or Tkcon. I just saw MG's comment above regarding the clipboard and thought I would add my testimony FWIW.

SEH -- FWIW, when using Tkcon via Tcl/Tk 8.4 on Ubuntu, Ctrl-V flat never worked for me. I used Alt-E-P as a workaround. After upgrading to 8.5 Ctrl-V started working perfectly. No idea why.