[Xastir] Suggestions for linux book -- somewhat off topic

[Tom Russo]

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 01:05:12PM -0400, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <cen94999 at centurytel.net> flavor, containing:
> Hi.......... 
> 
> I am running successfully running xastir under VMWARE with Xubuntu 8.04 on a laptop running Win Xp and I don't want to screw it up<grin>. 
> 
> I want to try to become more competent with linux and so am shopping for books.    Amazon has several and reading the reviews hasn't helped me a great deal is trying select one. 
> 
> Does anyone have any suggestions?

I found "Ubuntu Linux for Non-Geeks" helpful when I bought my daughter her first
Linux laptop.  With the frequency of Ubuntu releases, though, you have to watch
out for which edition you buy.  By the time the book is printed, the release 
it documents is already out of date unless you are getting a book that 
describes one of the "LTS" releases.

> It seems that the "current" version of xubuntu is 9.04 and there was a 8.10 also.   All the books seem to be for 8.04 or 8.10.   Is there any good reason to upgrade to 9.04?  How difficult is that while trying to keep a functional setup with xastir running?  

My current preference is to stick with 8.04 for a while.  This is the latest 
"Long Term Support" (LTS) release and is very stable.  It was released in 
April 2008 (that is what "8.04" means) and is supposed to be supported with 
bug fixes and security patches for three years.  These patches come often,
especially if you enable the "backports" repository (don't enable the 
"proposed" repository unless you can afford the odd breakage from updates that 
haven't been fully tested now and then).

I make this choice because it is often the case that upgrading from one release
to the next requires a big time investment to chase down changes that impact
all the source-code builds I have on my systems (e.g. Xastir, GRASS, GDAL, etc.)
and I don't want to spend that time every 6 months.    In fact, some vendors
even make the unbelievable recommendation that it is better to do a full 
reinstall of the new system than an upgrade --- something I would consider
a completely unreasonable approach on a regular basis.

All other releases are pretty much one-shot bleeding-edge releases that happen 
every 6 months.  I choose not to chase them.  Many others choose otherwise to 
get the benefit of newer kernels and updated third-party packages.  The LTS 
releases pretty much get only bugfix and security patches, so if you want the 
bleeding edge version of The GIMP or Compiz or GNOME or whatever, then you want
the latest Ubuntu release.  If you're like me and value long-term stability of
your working platforms, you might choose to stick with 8.04 until the next LTS
release comes out (which will probably be 11.04).

HTH.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
  In some cultures what I do would be considered normal. 
                                  -- Ineffective daily affirmation