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The advantage of being at work during the day is that this should be seeded and people already having the full download by the time I get home making my bit torrent download faster

"stable"? Depends on what you mean as "stable". Just open glxgears while compiz is enabled and move the window over the desktop, and you will see how high have been the stability goals of the ubuntu team in this release vs the desire to get Shiny New Features

Edited 2007-10-18 15:03

Having done what you suggest many times on 7.04 without issue, can you please tell me what issue you are experiencing?

"stable"? Depends on what you mean as "stable". Just open glxgears while compiz is enabled and move the window over the desktop, and you will see how high have been the stability goals of the ubuntu team in this release vs the desire to get Shiny New Features

Why don't you complain to xorg instead? I don't think the ubuntu developers have the time or knowledge to fix window redirection for the composite extension.

Personally, i never reported so much bug for a realise with so few new feature, and most of them were major bugs (preinstalled apps crashing on startup in beta and things like that)

Prolly, But I don't use compiz, not because I can't, surely I can turn on all the animations but I think is just a waste of resources.

I think is just a waste of resources.

I agree.

What resources?, your GPU is just sitting there doing nothing while your CPU is working away with the moving of your windows on the desktop.

If you dont play games much whats your GPU even doing, sitting idle 90% of the time, bit like a new toy you dont play with anymore.

My computer has a GPU? Where? .. not everyone has a video card with its own chip, much less with megs of ram. There needs to be some consideration for those with less than powerful video configurations.

Right, so having a GPU would free up resources, why have your CPU do 20-40% of the work just to move windows?

Graphics cards are so cheap now, not real reason not to have one unless your running servers or have you just woken up from the 90's when computer parts were expensive?

Um. have you used Ubuntu lately? I just ask because you seem to be under the assumption that Ubuntu enables Compiz regardless of your setup. Ubuntu detects your hardware and if your system passes the requisite test then compiz is enabled, otherwise you get plain old metacity. i really don't see your point here. If ubuntu is not detecting your hardware correctly and is enabling compiz on a machine that shouldn't be running it, then by all means please file a bug report, otherwise please go to ubuntu.com, download the iso and use the thing before you spread misinformation.

I hope you know that the composite extension provides dubble buffering for your desktop. So a composited desktop will actuallty use less resources (GPU/CPU) since the windows aren't redrawn everytime you move them over each other. If the effects are slow, just disable them! Compiz is still an improvement without any eye candy.

I'm using it right now without GPU acceleration and it is working just fine. Exactly what is your complaint here?

Edited 2007-10-19 12:13

I'm happy that 7.10 is released... now I'm crossing my fingers ATI will release the 8.42 driver with AIGLX today.

Well, crossing your fingers shouldn't be a problem, except the fact it can become very annoying feature for you after few years.

But I strongly advice against holding your breath.

ATI won't release drivers with AIGLX,... ever. AMD? Maybe. But, we can probably freely guess burden of that lies on X.Org to provide those drivers based on specs they gave, and even that will probably take few more months.

ATI is part of AMD -- and they do plan on releasing AIGLX enabled drivers in the near future.

Yeah that was several months ago, how near in the future do you think people can wait? Ignore binarycrusader's post, either use something other than linux (which is fine, so long as its not Windows©) or buy an NVIDIA© card. ATI© abandoned linux© even before AMD acquired it, and now it is hardly been any better. Think, the glx_ext_texture_from_pixmap needed for compositing or AIGLX, is still nowhere to be seen, and has only been 'in some senses' validated by the guys at phoronix. W/ as much as I believe in alternative OS's and as much as I want AMD© to Whip Intel©, I'm afraid AMD© (in all its bastardizing glory) is already way to far behind to ever compete on the *nix platform again. Your dillusioned to think otherwise.

I'm afraid you're out of touch. ATi/AMD did originally mention this a few months or more ago but now they've started delivering on their claims. They have released the full 2D spec for their more recent cards and are about to release the 3D spec too, as well as building a new OSS driver framework, including a reference 2D implementation for the OSS community to build on.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjA1Mw

Incidentally, I only use nVidia cards currently, because of the poor state of the current ATi drivers, but I expect to switch fairly quickly if nVidia cards don't get a fully OSS driver before ATi ones do.

Why are you putting copyright symbols after everything?

I guess you meant to put trademark symbols, but you only need to do that if you're writing something commercial.

You're free to believe what you like. It doesn't change the truth. I own an nVidia card, and run Solaris, so your implications that I'm an ATi fanboy are ludicrous at best.

I have just purchased an upgrade for one of my systems, the parts only arrived a few days ago. I am still in the porcess of setting it up.

It is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 system with a low-end ATI 3D graphics card, specifically a HD2400 Pro. This card is not currently supported by almost any Linux drive, apart from the very latest ATI proprietary driver fglrx version 8.47.1, which does not support AIGLX as yet.

However, the specs for this card for 2D have been released by ATI, and there is soon to be a further release for 3D specs. Proprieatry driver form ATI fglrx version 8.42, which is almost ready for release, will support AIGLX, and it will support this card.

The open source radeonhd driver, which is in pre-pre-beta stages, recognises this chipset but does not yet support the specific card ... I will try to make sure the radeonhd developers have the information to support this specific card by running the connector test utility and sending them the information it reports.

The system will eventually support Ubuntu 7.10 in full 3D with open source drivers ... just not quite there yet. I have already tested kvm virtualisation on this system using Kubuntu 7.10 release candiate, and it works ... I can run Kubuntu and a Windows XP guest OS on the same system at the same time.

Anyway, the main point of my post is to tell you that your main assumption here is wrong. I was in the market for a new *nix platform, and I chose AMD/ATI specifically because they were opening up the graphics for open source development, and I therefore did not have to choose Nvidia. I could have chose Intel as well, because the drivers for Intel graphics are also open source, but the problem with that is that Intel graphics tend to be available only as integrated graphics (not standalone), and the Intel equivalent system would have been more expensive but less capable on the 3D graphics front.

So, in the final analysis, not only are ATI/AMD competing once again on the *nix platform, they are already winning sales to open source users over Nvidia systems, as my own very recent purchase demonstrates.

Well from what I know and I've been following these drivers very closely the ATI/AMD 8.42 drivers should be out this month and they are scheduled to have AIGLX support.

But then they're also supposed to support every card ever, be 200% faster, perfectly stable, make tea and promote world peace. I think ATI may be just a *tad* guilty of overpromising on the 8.42 front.

When I upgraded to 2.6.23 kernel I couldn't get the ATI drivers to work, they installed but I didn't get 3D support and it defaulted to using the Mesa drivers. Worked fine in 2.6.22.x.

The too biggest problems for me whenever I try a distro tend to be graphics and wireless. I haven't had success in the past with Ubuntu because my X always got messed up really bad if I wasn't satisfied running at 640x480. I guess that my graphics chips are a bit less common. I'm looking forward to trying to get past my graphical issues with the new "bulletproof X" implementation.

I fail to see how the "bulletproof X" is going to help you here since, as far as I know, "bulletproof X" is basically a fall back option for the X server to start whenever it detects that cannot use the proper drivers for some reason and it is intended mainly for troubleshooting broken systems. I believe that it will use VESA at 640x480, 800x600 or something along these lines. Its main purpose is to never let people see the dreaded command prompt ever again in case that Nvidia or AMD/ATI drivers updates break something (as they invariably do from times to times), I guess.

Let me explain briefly then. I don't have anything against Ubuntu, and I would like to be able to use it since there is so much community support. Unfortunately, as I said before, I haven't gotten past the graphical issues. I don't need everything to work perfectly out of the box either, but Ubuntu seems to have more graphical issues than I have seen in other distros (for my hardware).

Probably the biggest reason that I haven't gotten past the graphical issues is due to the fact that once X fails, I'm limited to a single CLI until I manually force X back into some sort of safe mode. From what I've read, the new system would allow me to make a change and test it out, and the worst result should be that I end up back in the same spot. That would make troubleshooting both faster and easier. Surely, it's not that hard to understand.

Try Puppy Linux then sir.

That's ok, Fedora Core 6 borked on my wifi card too, but somewhat displayed video correctly on a Radeon X1300, as long as the highest resolution was 1024x768. Any higher and that scrolling with your mouse thing would kick in which makes me completely insane and look to boot back into XP.

Always a tradeoff with this stuff. Ubuntu is really the only distro that (mostly) gets it all right the first time. Except for Fiesty running on a Thinkpad T61....forget it. Errors abound, even off the Live CD. I'll try Gutsy tomorrow at work and see how she does.

I have tried many, many laptops, desktops, etc., and I have yet to find a computer that fully supports sleep and hibernation. Most of the time they never come back awake. If they do, usually something doesn't work, usually X. I have had 0 success on this issue with every major version of Linux. I realize some people do have power management working fully, but I believe it is still a minority. A least frequency-scaling and battery management usually work, so hopefully the suspend/hibernate situation will also resolve itself some day.

I bought a Thinkpad X31 recently. I installed Debian Lenny (testing) and sleep/hibernation fully worked out of the box.

It works near flawless on a T42

So because your laptop works you have no idea why people are complaining? You'd make great tech support!

I don't want to be tech support. So there.

Every last one of the things you mentioned except wireless worked "out of the box" on my Latitude C610 with Edgy. While I'm happy for you, your bar is set a bit low.

What required tweaking was wireless (because the Broadcom chipset in my cardbus adapter wasn't supported in the kernel) and sleep/hibernate (because the default configs for detecting lid closure were incorrect).

New hardware, Ubuntu supports very well. Older hardware is another story:

Feisty is full of launchpad reports on IDE drives being unsupported on both PPC and x86 architectures. The official Feisty release liveCD would not boot on a standard Dell Optiplex GX260 without inserting options at the opening screen, dropping to busybox and then modprob'ing hardware.

Installing Xubuntu has borked recognition of PS/2 mice.

Feisty let in versions of key math libraries compiled solely against AltiVec-enabled PPCs, making G3s unable to use them without crashing. Gnash is one of the applications which requires these libraries. (replacing them with G3-enabled versions allows this to work, so it wasn't a judgment call)

Myth users are still manually compiling LIRC for IR support and IVTV for Hauppauge tuner cards rather than using the repository's versions, four release versions after people started using Ubuntu as a platform for Myth. Kernel maintainers broke audio support for BTTV (one of the most common tuner card chipsets) in 2.6.15.

The liveCD's partitioning tool has been incapable of correctly setting up an XFS partition since at least Dapper, requiring the use of an alternate install CD.

And that's just hardware.

The default network applets have been incapable of supporting WPA encryption out of the box for all wireless chipsets.

Static IPs are not possible with wireless unless you manually configure chipset-specific scripts.

OpenOffice.org has been incapable of digitally signing documents without crashing since at least Dapper, because the Debian maintainer insists on compiling it against the wrong encryption library (manually compiling against the correct encryption library results in a version which does not have this problem). Bugs have been filed with launchpad and both Debian/Ubuntu maintainers have been informed at least three years ago, with no changes.

I'm an Ubuntu fanboy. I've got it running a Mythbox MBE/SBE combination, Gutsy is running on a vintage 1998 iMac in my office, and I've used it to run LAMP based servers with satisfaction.

But as a desktop platform, there are places where either a new release forgets to maintain backward compatibility compiler flags or old, important bugs are swept under the rug.

Myth users are still manually compiling LIRC for IR support and IVTV for Hauppauge tuner cards rather than using the repository's versions, four release versions after people started using Ubuntu as a platform for Myth. Kernel maintainers broke audio support for BTTV (one of the most common tuner card chipsets) in 2.6.15.

I have Mythbuntu installed right now on my HTPC and it's very nice, has LIRC support and everything compiled in (though I don't use an IVTV card, so I don't know about that).

You don't have to 'manually' compile them, use module-assistant. Anyone who manually compiles them just doesn't know how to do it the 'debian' way.

The default network applets have been incapable of supporting WPA encryption out of the box for all wireless chipsets.

Odd, I've not had problems with getting WPA Encryption since Edgy (when I first tried it) then again, I bought smart and have an Intel Wireless card which is very well supported.

OpenOffice.org has been incapable of digitally signing documents without crashing since at least Dapper, because the Debian maintainer insists on compiling it against the wrong encryption library (manually compiling against the correct encryption library results in a version which does not have this problem). Bugs have been filed with launchpad and both Debian/Ubuntu maintainers have been informed at least three years ago, with no changes.

Didn't crash here under Gutsy Gibbon updated to the latest today.

Well, for starters Ubuntu doesn't feel like a stripped down version of Canonical's main offering because it IS Canonical's main offering (remember, we're talking distros here, not support contracts).

NB: I'm not saying that Fedora and OpenSUSE aren't feature complete, it's just that _I_ get the feeling that Red Hat and Novell aren't too interested in polishing Fedora and OpenSUSE too much as it would threaten their commercial offerings. YMMY though.

Secondly, Ubuntu has IMHO a superior package management system as it is Debian-based.

Thirdly, it's Debian-based and everybody loves Debian except for the fact that Debian releases "always" are "outdated" and "far between". The unsupported Debian-unstable is the way out, but unstable sounds "nasty". Not to mention how nasty "unsupported" sounds...

Which brings us to the fourth reason: Ubuntu is essentially an up-to-date Debian with support.

I could go on mentioning Mark Shuttleworth's likeable personality, Canonical sending free CDs to anyone that asks, and so on. Suffice to say: yes, there is indeed something about Ubuntu.

Thirdly, it's Debian-based and everybody loves Debian except for the fact that Debian releases "always" are "outdated" and "far between". The unsupported Debian-unstable is the way out, but unstable sounds "nasty". Not to mention how nasty "unsupported" sounds...

Debian releases are meant to be as stable and reliable as possible, they're not meant to be as up-to-date as possible. Debian releases are good for servers as well for those desktops where stability and reliability are more important than up-to-dateness.

For those who want Debian with more up-to-date software, there's also Debian "testing" that is slightly behind Debian "unstable" in up-to-dateness. There's also the option to stay in "testing" while getting some select packages from "unstable". Also, you seem to forget that Ubuntu is built on Debian "unstable".

Debian "unstable" is *not* unsupported. On the contrary, Debian "unstable" is fully supported -- it gets bug-fixes and security updates come from upstream developers. However, the largest component of Ubuntu, called "universe", *is* unsupported. The Ubuntu web site says that it "comes with no guarantee of security fixes and support".
http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/components

Which brings us to the fourth reason: Ubuntu is essentially an up-to-date Debian with support.

This is a myth that needs to be busted.

Like I said, Debian is fully supported (security & bug-fixes) but Ubuntu's "universe" and "multiverse" components are unsupported. Ubuntu releases get outdated soon after the release but Debian "unstable" and "testing" receive version updates every day, which always keeps them more or less up-to-date.

I agree with you 100% In fact, if Debian had a bit more polished set up out of the box, it'd cream Ubuntu as far as popularity etc. Well and a more steady release schedule.

Personally I usually play with Ubuntu, but there is always something that makes me go back to Debian Sid.

I agree with you 100% In fact, if Debian had a bit more polished set up out of the box, it'd cream Ubuntu as far as popularity etc. Well and a more steady release schedule.

There's a bit of friendly competition, which is always healthy between distros, but I don't think Debian really aims to "cream" Ubuntu or any other distro "as far as popularity etc." ;-)

Different distros have different strengths and different weaknesses. Canonical has hired a bunch of top Debian developers and these skilled full-time developers can make some big changes happen quickly. Debian, with a thousand volunteer developers, has more man-power and strict packaging policies that ensure the high quality but the big changes tend to be slower. Still, big changes do happen also in Debian.

Consider, for instance, polish on the desktop. Debian's switch first from XFree86 to Xorg, and then to modular Xorg, was greatly helped by Ubuntu doing these switches before Debian but, since then, Debian has developed their Xorg packages quite independently from Ubuntu. There's also been great improvements in Debian's installer that has been developed independently from Ubuntu, while Ubuntu has concentrated in developing their live-cd installer.

Also, a lot of work has gone into improving the "out of the box" desktop experience in the default Debian installation and to making it more polished. Also in this area, Debian has made its own choices instead of copying what Ubuntu has done. Many reviews of Debian Etch testify that users have been quite happy with these changes. Some of the reviewers wonder why Debian has a reputation of being a difficult distro when, in fact, the default Debian installation is easy even for beginners and it gives "out of the box" a polished desktop.

Some people attribute these improvements on the desktop to Ubuntu's influence, but I see Debian going its own independent way also in creating a polished desktop experience. Ubuntu and Debian both look and feel different. Ubuntu customizes its desktop(s) heavily while Debian makes smaller, more sophisticated changes. If a lot of people like Ubuntu's desktop polish better, fine. Some of us prefer the Debian way of adding desktop polish. And Debian keeps improving, so wath out in the future...

I would also like to point out that, although both Ubuntu and Debian have stable releases plus a development branch, Debian also has in addition a "testing" branch that changes every day but is more tested (and lags somewhat behind in up-to-dateness) than Debian's main development branch, "unstable". Ubuntu has more frequent stable releases but it lacks such "testing" branch. (Ubuntu can make frequent releases because they don't officially support the large number of packages in their "universe" component.)

You could consider Debian "testing" as a "rolling release" that is constantly updated but still aims to be release-ready at all times. Historically, Debian added this "testing" branch because "unstable" tended to get utterly broken after stable releases and, yet, it's important to have a development branch that can be temporarily broken when big changes are merged in. But for users it's not ideal to track a development branch that can occasionally get broken. In contrast, Debian "testing" aims to be usable at all times.

One of the slow, big changes in Debian for the past couple of years has been the effort to improve the security support for "testing", and it's currently working quite smoothly. I don't really know if Debian plans to release snapshots of "testing" as special desktop releases (like, say, once every six months) but if they have such plans, I'd say that Debian "testing" begins to be ready for that. :-)

Two words: Mark Shuttleworth. A rich and famous geek icon poured his heart, soul, and lots of cash into Ubuntu, and people noticed. Also, Ubuntu's user community is huge, knowledgeable, and friendly -- an unbeatable combo in my book.

What is it about Ubuntu that makes people so enthusiastic about it? Don't get me wrong, I use it at home, and I can be counted amongst those enthusiasts. But rationally, it doesn't appear to be much better than the likes of Fedora or Suse

I'm not too familiar with (recent releases of) Suse, but I have tested practically every release of Fedora. For me, Ubuntu wins because of apt-get (much faster than YUM) and the huge repositories. And Automatix solves those pesky "patent issues."

I'm not trying to start a distro war - for those who prefer RPM-based distros, more power to you. I've played around with all the big distros from Slackware to Debian, and each has some endearing feature. But all things considered, Ubuntu just seems easier than the others. If I wasn't using Ubuntu, I'd probably be using Debian.

But rationally, it doesn't appear to be much better than the likes of Fedora or Suse

Rationally, it doesn't appear to be much better than Fedora or Suse now. But it wasn't long ago that Ubuntu was the simplest to download and install, had the most up to date packages that I cared about (mostly Gnome) and worked the best on my hardware (and others' too presumably).

If Fedora was as good as it is now when Ubuntu came out it could be the one with so many fans.

Edited 2007-10-18 15:43

I can give you one example: package manager.
Fedora's Pirut and Pup is quite frankly an embarrassment. It's sluggish but even worse is the complete lack of user feedback of what's going on. Often you launch pirut, get prompted for the root password and then have to wait forever while it does something in the background without ANY indication or feedback of what's going on. Heck, it doesnt even show a window. Thankfully there's Yumex.
I still use Fedora (when not in my primary OS, OpenBSD) but pirut and pup are a huge pain in the ass.

Ubuntu is also admittedly more polished than most other distros.