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If you look at some of the pics they have 5.10 on them?
Well for Kubuntu.

Noob question. I'm using FreeBSD, but I'm interested in kubuntu, and I have a partition (10G) to spare. If I install this release, is there an easy upgrade path to new releases? Is it just an apt-get dist-upgrade (or whatever it was) away? What about repositories? Are there separate repos for this alpha release and for stable kubuntu, or is there just a single repo that Just Works for all?

Yes, upgrades are easy. (You still may want to put /home on a separate partition in case things ever go wrong.) So far each Ubuntu release has had its own repository that changes until it is officially released. After that point the release will only get security updates.

Release Code Name/Repository Name
-----------------------------------
Warty Warthog.....warty
Hoary Hedgehog....hoary
Breezy Badger.....breezy
Dapper Drake......dapper

At this point in time there is not one purpetual development repository in Ubuntu that is equivalent to Sid in Debian although it has been hinted that that may change in the future.

Ha! Same exact advice. I guess I should type faster, or think slower.

There are separate repositories... currently the stable kubuntu is "breezy" and the unstable is "dapper". Most third-party software compiled for Ubuntu will have versions specific to each release, which so far have been "hoary", "warty" and "breezy".

All you have to do to upgrade is sudo apt-get dist-upgrade, once you've changed the names of the repositories in Synaptic to the new one.

They may do that for you once the release becomes stable; it seems needlessly complicated (and rather unlike Ubuntu*) to make users do all that fiddling to upgrade.

Personally, I'd still make /home a separate partition, though.

*I consider upgrading to the next version a different animal from installing MP3 support or enabling universe (non-Ubuntu guaranteed) software.

Thanks - both of you

Final question - where is this info located? I looked at starter guides, and they are pretty sparse... I saw an announcment when kde 3.5 came out that there are packages available for breezy - are these repos more or less in sync? In other words, are the same number of packages available for dapper as for breezy? What about the "universe" - is it branched in the same way (it would make sense, for I guess the reason behind maintaining different package repos for releases might be glibc incompatibilities since upgrading kernel+glibc can be a PITA).

I downloaded the torrent file btw for the DVD iso, but there are no seeds or peers. No wonder everyone goes for the FTP download

Ubuntu test releases are usually named according to what you call a group of the animals in question. Breezy Badger had "colonies", for example. A group of ducks is called a "flight", hence the name.

I'd like to add that ducks are quite capable of flight; we have mallards flying around our house all the time. They're a good deal more graceful in the air than they are on land.

Yes they are but the code is not done yet. Expect it for Dapper Flight 3.

Corey
Ubuntu Documentation Team

Does it default to booting into the LiveCD, or the installer? IIRC the current DVD images default to installer, which IMO is kind of backwards.

That's cool. Even though I use Gentoo, I'm glad to see that Ubuntu is improving.

My understanding of it was that initNG still has quite a few problems/takes more than a bit to get working (just read the thread on the ubuntu forums) so I doubt they'd move to it. Maybe next release?

initng is an outstanding, yet disruptive, technology. I was trolling the Gentoo Forums the day JimmyW (ice cream truck driver by day) released the first version.

As far as I know (I haven't been following development that closely since very early on) the initng core has stabilized to a large extent. The problem is that distributors don't package initng compliant initscripts with packages that provide services, so the initng developers must ship a broad selection of initscripts for commonly used services along with initng.

The two major problems with this arrangement are that 1) there are many services in, let's say, the debian repositories that don't yet have initscripts shipping with initng, and 2) the provided initscripts are developed by someone running distribution A who might make assumptions that cause the script not to work with the same service on distribution B.

Not only does initng really speed up the boot process a great deal, but the initscript format is really simple. Here's an example:

daemon daemon/cardmgr {
need = system/initial system/mountroot system/modules system/pcmcia;
exec daemon = @/sbin/cardmgr@;
exec_args daemon = -s /var/run/stab;
pid_file = /var/run/cardmgr.pid;
}

It also provides a gentoo-style, BSD-inspired runlevel configuration layout, with a tool called ng-update that works (pretty much) the same way as rc-update on Gentoo.

So, if distributors considered supporting (the option of using) initng, it would require a man-month or two to get all of the supported services working correctly. In the longrun, I think it would be worth the initial effort.

What about port core distribution daemons initscripts only ?

Maybe it is the only way to break such situation so other developers start to create new format initscripts.

It's not LSB-compliant.
Next ?

This coming release is targetting LSB 3.0

Ubuntu for some reason seems to be really picky about the speed at which you burn the CD/DVD and in the case of PPC, the quality of the media.

I've just given in to the fact that I need to burn at 4x (the lowest my burner allows). While my G4 iBook is a bit more forgiving, when I was trying to install on my G3 iMac I went through several brands of media, finally trying an Apogee branded $10 CDR that I bought for audio archival purposes.

I'm on the laptop testing team with my iBook and a Toshiba Portege and nobody has really been able to give a reason WHY Ubuntu is so picky about these things, claiming that all distros have these problems, but I've only experienced them with Ubuntu.

Just FYI if you want to give Ubuntu another go. (I recommend it).

Sorry, but the optical drive on your Mac is the same kind of optical drive in any other PC.
Nope, it's an Apple drive, so it must be an arrogant drive

> A bit written at 48x is still the same bit written at 4x.

Well, if you read the data than they are of course logically the same on your system. But if you actually physically inspect the medium, then you'll see that there are small differences.

So what difference does that make in terms of his CD burner sucking ass? If it can't read back what it wrote at 48x, but can read back what it wrote at 4x, that's faulty hardware -- no more, no less.

It might very well be the Mac optical drive, which sucks ass, not the burner.

A bit written at 48x is still the same bit written at 4x.
Actually, it is not. Burning CDs is one of the borders, where digital, precise, binary things become analoug, unprecise, fuzzy/noisy. A pit (in CD terminology) written at 4x was being created 12 times longer than at 48x. You had a 12 times bigger chance of creating closer to perfection. If you use bad media, this difference can be important. Especially, if the reading drive has some issues.

Caulktel, i recive the same error with a powerbook. While i was looking for a solution with google, it continue loading.

Wait 1 or 2 minutes and it will continue.