Maverick Meerkat, the version of Ubuntu slated to be released later this year, brings with it several features and improvements that the Linux community has been eagerly looking forward to. I’ve taken a look at the blueprints for this next release, and picked out a few of the major items that Linux end-users will be interested in. Here are 5 things to look forward to in Ubuntu 10.10.
“Chromium as the default netbook browser”
I guess most netbooks have hard drives now, but IMHO for your classic SSD based netbook Chrome isn’t entirely ideal since there is no way to turn off disk caching
I have a classic SSD based netbook (asus eee 900) running Lucid, and Chrome is much, much faster than Firefox there.
They have an interesting way of spinnig it:
I wouldn’t call Chromium “light weight”, it’s just faster. It’s not like it’s a reduced experience or anything (improved security through process separation, etc).
Chromium (and WebKit-based browsers in general) ARE light-weight. Not in terms of functionality or supported standards (not that “light-weight” was ever intended to have that meaning).
The browser is light-weight in regard to resource consumption when compared with browsers like IE and Firefox. There has never (until now) been any doubt about the meaning of light-weight in regard to WebKit-based browsers. It loads faster, is less sluggish (particularly in regard to flash-infested sites), is less prone to crashing, and uses less memory and typically also less cpu time (all bets are off when visiting flash-infested sites).
Well, actually that is a faulty generalization on your part. As for memory consumption, Firefox has the lowest when it comes to viewing multiple pages:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-chrome-opera,2558-4.htm…
The test shows Chrome to be the best at Javascript (those v8 guys know what they’re doing), DOM, Acid3
here’s the summary:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-chrome-opera,2558-10.ht…
Those “tests” are not particularly impressive (but again, we’re talking about tomshardware and that means silly benchmarks, like relying on info from the Task Manager in Windows – hilarious!). In general the review at tomshardware supports my statements, with the possible exception of the (btw. highly controversial measuring of) memory consumption with multiple opened tabs.
You should know better than relying on “tests” as those tomshardware are infamous for – and never rely on the task manager in Windows. It is embarrasingly misleading and inaccurate.
Well, actually I’ve only seen 3 benchmarks (here’s another of them http://lifehacker.com/5457242/browser-speed-tests-firefox-36-chrome…) of the current crop of browsers, and all of them showed that Firefox used the least amount of memory when viewing multiple pages. This is something Mozilla has actively worked on so it’s not a surprise. As for task manager, it’s great to use for measurement if you know what it is you are looking at. I know Microsoft made some changes to it in Vista and Windows 7 so I can’t vouch for that version, but in XP is does it’s job very well. Perhaps you can enlighten me to why you find it inaccurate? Also, perhaps YOU could provide me with some tests that support YOUR claims?
You misunderstood: he was taking about the lifetime of a SSD not the speed of Chrome with a SSD:
a MLC SSD has a not-so-great maximum number of write before it fails so you can improve the lifetime of a SSD if you turn off disk caching..
Today’s SSDs are not that bad, they can take the load without reliability problems due wearing. (100,000 cycles per cell of modern SSDs are pretty hard to hit even without wear leveling).
I think it would be cool if there was a lightweight netbook-centric web browser with an interface similar to the Moblin browser, but with more features. (I’m not talking anything special either…..that browser doesn’t even have most basic features)
It should be based on one of the webkit variants, and have a minimalist navigation/address bar with a simple bookmarks menu….maybe 25 to 30 pixels tall with the window controls tacked on to the right hand side of it.
-Back/Forward/History Combo- -Refresh/Stop Combo- -Home/Bookmarks Combo (home is just a special bookmark)- -Address/search combo- -minimize/maximize combo- -close-
Mpf maybe it’s just me but I don’t find these changes extremely interesting. I’m not that much into the “all shared and on the cloud or in your social network” stuff. (In fact I’m mostly against putting private data around..)
I’m more interested into BTRFS (which is part of the plan), graphic stack improvements (which is not part of the plan), stability etc.
The only remotely interesting thing on that list, imo, is;
“Post-Release application delivery
Developers and users alike will look forward to the ability for new packages to be introduced to the distribution after it has been released. Although the process is not finalized, there will be a process by which developers can submit their packages for review and inclusion into the software repositories, even after a major release. This means that Ubuntu users will be able to receive new packages without upgrading or manually seeking them out, which is the case today.”
Even though it’s another band-aid on this problem, it’s a step in the right direction.
No new features.
Just make the ones that are already there work as expected…
It is not rocket science. The number of bugs for an LTS is truly amazing. Come on Canonical, stop trying to out Fedora Fedora.
Stabilty, Stability & even more Stability
That enough for you?
If you can’t do that then please have the guts to pull the stuff that is clearly not up to standard.
You know there is Debian, right?
There’s a difference between being stable and using 2 year old packages
Fixing bugs doesn’t get them news much but thinking of switching default applications and filesystems does.
It’s good that they’re taking their own spin on the GNOME desktop but it should be solid now after 30 versions of GNOME, yet loads of bugs persist.
When are distro going to fix upsteam bugs that get filtered down to them? Well, it’s just not news.
Edited 2010-07-20 09:26 UTC
ive tried 3 different installs of 10.04, all have serious problems
1) wireless would cut out until reboot
2) switching users would cause weird errors and the machine would show a terminal only, with some strange output
3) keyboard and mouse freeze together. only reboot can fix. the screen doesn’t free, neither the wireless, just the keyboard and mouse at the same time.
i’m about to give up on Ubuntu.
Since I’ve never had any of your problems my conclusion is the opposite.
They can’t fix desktop Linux, but no one said they couldn’t keep pretending.
I hope one enhancement is that “[Errno 5] Input/output error” is finally gone and I can install it from a LiveCD.
I haven’t been able to install any release for a while now. I have a Asus EEEPC 1000HD, doesn’t anyone have one of these in the Ubuntu community so this problem can go away.
It’s your media fault. It could have happened with a burned Windows CD too. It’s not Linux, it’s just a message saying it can’t read the disk. It is usually caused by under-powered (laser) CD burned, bad CD or dirty lenses.
I have read something similar on the ubuntu forums but I believe there is something wrong with the installer. I have tried install from USB, install from a cd connected via a IDE to USB converter. I read somewhere there was a fault with the “universal USB installer” program not extracting squash fs properly. I have tried unetbootwin. Seems to me the ubuntu release team don’t know about this problem or are not bothering to fix this now, because it will be fixed in future (maybe). Would be funny if this occurred when they were sending out cd in the early days. That would have been a big lol.
Edited 2010-07-20 13:43 UTC