Submitted by The Ubuntu team has released Dapper Drake Flight CD4, the 4th alpha release on the way to the final release of Dapper Drake (which is now in upstream version freeze). Besides many cosmetic changes to the boot sequence, GDM, and GNOME in general, this release features Espresso (a live-CD installer), GNOME 2.14 Beta 2, and much more. The team has also included a ‘very special and early gift‘ – Novell’s Xgl and Compiz. Downloads for Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Edubuntu are in the release announcement.
What an absolute solid lineup of apps! As a Windows/OSX user, I’m impressed by the solid design and continuity of GNOME apps. GEdit looks amazing! Compared to the button-spam I’ve seen in other distros (e.g. SUSE9) GNOME is looking every part its goal to provide a human usable version of Linux.
People need to stop fighting, if GNOME is not your preferred desktop then don’t belittle it, it’s doing absolute wonders for Linux adoption; and in the end that matters even to terminal-campers. Wider addoptance could lead to better support from driver manufacturers.
People need to stop fighting, if GNOME is not your preferred desktop then don’t belittle it – agree 100% just a pity you felt the need to belittled SUSE9 and other distros in the previous sentence.
SUSE10 no longer has these issues; Novell have done wonders with the distro; which is why I picked on SUSE9 specifically. A lesson learnt though, thanks for your sharp spotting.
You won’t be so impressed when you realise just how poor multimedia and wireless support is.
nick
Using Ubuntu Breezy. I admit it takes more than 1 step to enable the universe & multiverse repositories, but after than I’ve got my multimedia apps arm with all the codec that I want.
And the wireless support for DELL Inspiron 510m is simply flawless. I assume it can’t get worst for Dapper.
Some distro works best with some hardware. All I’m saying is it works wondefully with mine.
Wireless support is *not* a gnome or ubuntu problem. It is a kernel problem complicated by the fact that not all wireless drivers have standards to base themselves off of. Take broadcomm for example. The US Military / Department of Defense uses Broadcomm chips extensively in their wireless networks because they can transmit on a variety of frequency ranges. They cant release the specs without being persecuted by one of their biggest customers, the DOD.
I don’t guess that you have tried much Multimedia support in gnome and it shows. All you need to install is the extra gstreamer plugins and everything just works. I think the package name is something like gstreamer0.10-plugins-evil or gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad, I’m not sure from memory. Also, a free mp3 plugin and a (sadly proprietary) windows media plugin are or will be available from fluendo soon.
>> You won’t be so impressed when you realise just how poor multimedia and wireless support is.
That statement is somewhat surprising given that in my experience Ubuntu has some of the better hardware support ‘out of box’ than most other distro’s… The PPC distro blows Yellowdog out of the water – and on the x86 side Ubuntu has MUCH better ‘out of box’ support for devices than it’s ‘parent’ Debian… even the installer changes are ‘common sense’ things like starting PCMCIA services BEFORE network device detection, so you can actually HAVE wireless networking on laptops. (Something debian STILL doesn’t seem to want to do automagically)
On the multimedia side that’s somewhat true ‘out of box’, but it’s that way because of legal concerns over the codecs for MP3 and WMA… It’s easy enought to enable universe and multiverse through the GUI; which is why I’m surprised ALL the instructions still say to manually edit the apt sources… BULL, you can enable them inside Synaptic under the repositories settings. Just “Show disabled sources”, then enable them.
Mind you, totem sucks donkey balls, so my first step is usually to add XMMS and VLC… but to say it’s NOT supported is just wrong.
Mind you, totem sucks donkey balls, so my first step is usually to add XMMS and VLC… but to say it’s NOT supported is just wrong.
If you like to keep your desktop running GTK2 goodness;
apt-get install totem-xine beep-media-player
Sweet… exam coming up… must resist fiddling with computer… *drools over screenshot*
same here! exams!
Nice work Ubuntu team and community !
5.10 did not work with my computer due to the version of the kernel. But flight 2 onwards works great! I’m building a new PC next week and hope to put this new version on it.
I switched over (temporarily) to kubuntu a week or so ago to mess around with xgl and compiz, which work great. The overall instability of kubuntu dapper has been killing me though (not really a knock against ubuntu, it’s a development version and they state clearly not to use for everyday use).
Little things like printing. KDEPrint doesn’t work with Cups 1.2. Perhaps a fault with KDE, but the two shouldn’t be bundled together in a desktop friendly distro. Hope to see that and other things worked out before Dapper goes final.
Back to Xgl, all the necessary stuff is in universe. compiz, xserver-xgl etc. Apt-get install those two and you should have all you need. There are a couple glitches yet, it is not possible to start KDE through KDM yet (has to be done from a tty). The KDE systray doesn’t work unless one applies a patch from the forums. The desktop switched only shows on desktop.
Minor stuff though, I’ve been using it for a while now, with uptime of 100+ hours. Not a lot in the linux world of course, I just mean to say that it hasn’t crashed my computer
Worth giving a shot if you are so inclined.
Wobbly windows may not be your cup of tea, but it’s absolutely wonderful that apps don’t have to redraw themselves every time the window in front of them moves. It adds quite a bit of smoothness to things (as long as the CPU isn’t too occupied.. I need dual core hehe)
Hi,
I am trying to get compiz/xgl working with Kubuntu but haven’t succeeded yet. Starting compiz comes back with something like ‘No manageable windows found on display 0:0’ etc.
Can you post a few steps to do this?
Sorry if this is a wrong forum to ask these!
Sorry if this is a wrong forum to ask these!
You’ll have better luck at:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org
There’s a search box on the home page, and there’s lots of discussion about xgl and compiz. You should be able to find something.
Can’t wait to test XGL and Compiz, I don’t have exams so there’s plenty of time for me to fool around with it
I was just curious how many of you guys have upgraded ubuntu as the new releases came out.The last two times I ended up just re-installing.
i tried that! it brokemyubuntu !!!
I upgraded two boxes from warty to hoary to breezy and one up to dapper – no too hard problems. I had to reconfigure Xorg manually though on upgrade hoary -> breezy.
But maybe that’s because i never trust unofficial repositories. Most broken upgrades are caused by users installing everything and the kitchensink from unofficial sources.
I seriously don’t get this:
http://www.simplifiedcomplexity.com/images/screenshots/dapper/fligh…
Do they really believe that REMOVING the Reboot and Shutdown commands from the GDM login screen actually SIMPLIFIES the interface?! To a power user it’s one more needless click and mouse movement, and a novice user might even get confused: “How do I restart or turn off the damn thing?” To him this Options menu where they’ve hidden the commands would most likely be associated with configuring something.
This is a really stupid change. If they really want to have as few controls as possible, they could at least make an Action menu with Reboot, Shutdown, Suspend, and Hibernate commands, and a Preferences menu with Select Language, Select Session, and XDMCP Chooser options (I doubt that the latter is even needed). That way it would still require more clicks than necessary, but at least it would be more discoverable.
I guess the normal user chooses shutdown or reboot in the menu on the desktop. He doesn’t logoff and then chooses shutdown on the login screen.
But still I think there should at least be a clear distinction between “Action” and “Option”
I guess that making these options a click away will help the user logging in with the keyboard and also won’t confuse (or require reading) the user which button should be used. (but, still… wtf is a “re-BOOT”? “Restart” is way more understandable to the user)
If reading is an issue, then adding icons besides the Reboot/Restart and Shutdown buttons would be a better solution. Now, an user that would like to make one of these two operations are going to wonder where the buttons are gone, especially those who have already used them… Even if eliminating them was a good thing, Options doesn’t look like the proper place to put them since they are actions.
Keeping things simple is nice, but wasn’t it already simple enough? If anything, I would have added a button besides the username/password box since less knowledgeable people might not know that you need to do Enter.
The rest is nice, though. I just downloaded Flight 3 but I’m going to give it a try.
I agree, most of the time I like the refinements made to the Distro in Ubuntu, but this GDM login screen is less elegenat IMHO than the older ones. I hope that they didn’t do anything that would make it harder to use a different GDM login theme…
–bornagainpenguin (who usually changes his anyway)
I have a daily CD installed from a few days earlier, but have dist-upgraded, so I have “dapper-current”. I must say I’m very impressed. Enabling Xgl/Compiz was relatively easy and it works very well for such an early stage of development. Everything what was shown in Novell videos works. I can’t resist moving the cube and wobble windows around. It’s extremely responsive and it’s stable too! Great work Novell and Canonical!
Supported, as in out of the box – try to connect to a WPA router. I have VLC and xmms, but cannot play WMV files.
Wine is also broken.
nick
>try to connect to a WPA router
I did, and it works great. Flawless in fact. Piece of crap on Windows. It keeps changing access points and disconnecting every 1-2 minutes (no exaggerating). Linksys really makes it harder than it needs to be on Windows. That’s why I like GNOME’s simplified philosophy.
As for WMV, Microsoft doesn’t make it hard enough to install on Ubuntu. You would expect them to really make it tough, but it’s strangley simple for a competitor. I guess with the questionable legality, that is enough to scare most people off. Typical MS tactics.
With Breezy or Dapper? If it’s the former, then it would be surprising that it went completely flawless, considering that wpa_supplicant wasn’t in the official repository. To my knowledge, GNOME 2.12 didn’t supported WAP passphrases; it’s possible to enter an hex key, but that’s not what most people are using. It might have worked for you without an hinch, but results may vary…
I did managed to get WPA/TKIP work, but it took me about an hour. PEAP/LEAP didn’t worked, but I believe my driver was to blame.
Maybe the driver you are using doesn’t do WPA well, but this is not ubuntu’s fault.
I can play most WMV files, using VLC of course, on my dapper install, so i guess you are just out of luck!
Wine is NOT broken. This is a kernel issue, try running the 2.6.15-14 kernel until they’ve fixed the problem in a newer kernel build.
Last of all, get your facts right.
I have to say overall it looks good, although I agree with Temcat on the changes to GDM. That menu opens to what, six options? I’d rather have the six options displayed all the time than hidden with a big blank page… To be honest I find the login screen a bit TOO spartan, some instructions for ID-ten-T’s like “Enter your username to login” instead of just “Username”. While most of US know what that means, a LITTLE bit of prompting for the greenhorns wouldn’t hurt.
Basically, I get the feeling it’s one of those changes that were made to make it look like the GDM coders are doing something, instead of actually doing something useful… but it’s the login manager, you only look at it briefly so it’s not the end of the world, and certainly not something to get ones panties in a twist over.
The tabbed terminal and tabbed gedit are VERY welcome – this is something I’m surprised TOOK so long, given how long MDI interfaces have been around. The python and shell script output features are what I’m really looking forward to.
Yelp has always felt a little ‘bloated’, so any improvement there in the speed and memory department are more than welcome.
XGL and Compiz are ‘cute’, but not exactly a wow to me – but then I’m unimpressed with expose as well – basically tools for people too stupid to figure out how to use a taskbar. (I’d rather have a simple tooltip that shows the full name and a thumbnail on a taskbar, but that’s me).. but then I don’t use multiple desktops either – something I never ‘got’, I need more ‘room’ it’s called slapping in another video card and a second (or third or fourth) monitor.
The change to the update manager – as long as I can turn the update manager OFF, I really don’t care. Programs/plugins like that have a nasty habit of popping up right in the middle of working on something important – so to me the “Jack Russel {censored} terrier” update managers in the various operating systems are an annoyance, not a feature.
They say Thunderbird 1.5 is installed by default – my question would be is it the default mail client? Evolution lets more windows users bridge the gap with minimal fuss, and I’m not certain that would be a good change. I’m assuming thunderbird isn’t the default… but they don’t specify one way or the other in the article.
The inclusion of MoinMoin is welcome, it’s a really slick program with a nube friendly interface.
Some good, some iffy, but always good to see progress on what’s become my favorite distro.
gedit and gnome-terminal have been tabbed forever with MDIs. The new features are that gedit was completely redesigned and both now allow you to drag tabs around rather than it just being the order that you opened them.
I’m running Ubuntu Dapper 3 with Xgl and it’s awesome and GNOME is nice and fast. It’s great they supply the Xgl/compiz packages in universe and experience the goodness of Xgl.
I still find Ubuntu/Kubuntu to be visually inferior to Fedora. How so? It just seems so washed out and overly bright. I tried fiddling with the brightness/gamma but I can’t get Ubuntu/Kubuntu to look as solid as Fedora. Am I the only one that thinks this?
>> It just seems so washed out and overly bright.
Washed out AND overly bright? Aren’t those kinda polar opposites?
Actually, I suspect I know what you mean, is it like the gamma is up too high no matter how you adjust the contrast? If adjusting the color themes in gnome to the same on both still looks different, I would suspect the difference being the default monitor timings. I’d run dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg on ubuntu and try and tweak the monitor refresh rates. (I suggest the medium difficulty monitor page, it’s the best if you aren’t 100% sure on the proper timings) Ubuntu tends to default to higher refresh rates, which on some older displays can cause the image to wash out.
Mind you, that only applies to CRT’s… if your issue is on LCD I’ve got no clue what you mean.
I’ve been using Ubuntu since 4.10, and recently have felt the urge to try out Kubuntu. My experience with Kubuntu, however, has been pretty bad, I’ve been trying out all the Kubuntu 6.04 Flights and have yet to find one without a major feature missing :/