JP Vossen on 20 Feb 2012 23:46:52 -0800


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Re: [PLUG] Linux distributions without version upgrades


On 12/20/2011 04:18 AM, JP Vossen wrote:
Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2011 20:47:56 -0500
From: Scott Budihas<budihas@gmail.com>

Have you tried the PPAs for some of those packages?

No. I was aware that some existed, though I never got around to coming
up with a list. Thanks! I also would have sworn I looked for Liferea and
didn't find it...


https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/firefox-stable

https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/thunderbird-stable

https://launchpad.net/~libreoffice/+archive/ppa
for LibreOffice on Lucid you have to remove OpenOffice packages

https://launchpad.net/~liferea/+archive/ppa


I have been using these (except liferea) with no issues. You get
security updates too. There are many other PPAs out there but these are
by the same packaging teams that handle the newer releases so I am
assuming these are safe.

That's a great list, I'll try them when I have a few moments...

I finally tried these.

1) The Firefox one was gone, because FF 10 is now merged into 10.04 LTS, so that isn't needed. (I dunno who thought tabs on top was a good idea, but I really hate it. First thing I do is View > Toolbars and uncheck that.)


2) Thunderbird installed, but had no dictionaries. At first I thought that was due to the OpenOffice --> LibreOffice screwiness, but I found a bunch of stuff in Google that says otherwise. Loosely following steps in http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2417105 finally fixed it for me. I did:

1) In FF: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/language-tools/
2) Download "English (US)" to Desktop
3) In TB: "Tools, > Add-ons > Extensions > {HIDDEN inside the really stupid and obscure wrench&screwdriver icon} > Install add-on from file..."
4) Pick the XPI file on the Desktop & install
5) Restart TB

"United States English Spellchecker 5.0.1" is now installed in "Extensions" (not in Languages, which has "English (GB) Language Pack 10.0.2" which does not work. Also, 'sudo aptitude install thunderbird-locale-en-us' and TB restart failed to do anything at all.

OTOH, the "Lightning" Calendar looked like it might finally be ready for prime-time, so I tried that again. It looks great, too bad it doesn't actually work with my Google Calendars. I have a different failure on each of several different calendars, though I admit that a) some may be Google's fault and b) I haven't spent any time t-shooing.

Bottom line, neither of those things are a really good first impression of TB 10, though granted this is from a PPA, not the main repos.


3) You do have to remove OO.o first, or you get all kinda of complaints. But uninstalling OO.o also took a bunch of the spell checkers. Huh? When I did the install LibreOffice looked really, REALLY bad. It turns out you need "libreoffice-gtk-gnome" or "libreoffice-kde" to make it look right. I also installed some other stuff:

a) sudo apt-get purge 'openoffice*'
b) sudo aptitude install aspell aspell-en dictionaries-common iamerican ispell language-support-en wamerican wamerican-large c) sudo aptitude install libreoffice libreoffice-pdfimport libreoffice-presenter-console libreoffice-wiki-publisher libreoffice-presentation-minimizer libreoffice-gtk-gnome

The "libreoffice-gtk-gnome" thing was mildly annoying, but again, for a non-main PPA, bolt-on to a couple-years-old-release (10.04 LTS), understandable. I really don't get removing the other spelling stuff though...that's just a bad deps list. And it's a good thing I actually read what it was removing, and understood that it was a Bad Thing...


4) Liferea Just Worked, so far at least, but the PPA is circa 2010 and only a few minor point releases newer than the LTS version, and no where near the current release version.


There's a reason I mostly only use Ubuntu LTS releases, and this just re-affirmed that. I want this stuff to Just Work and not change too much. And before anyone tells me to get a Mac, I also want to work the way *I* want to work, I don't want vendor-lock-in-from-hell, *when* it breaks I want at least a chance to be able to fix it or work around it, and I don't want to pay an arm and a leg for "pretty" hardware.


<rant>I thought one of the benefits to F/OSS software was that it shipped when it was ready, not because Marketing said so. Well, you sure as hell can't tell that from Mozilla or Ubuntu lately... :-( Too many changes, too fast and way too buggy. (Yeah, yeah, and get off my grass too!)</rant>

Later,
JP
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