“The Ubuntu developers are moving very quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. Hardy Heron Alpha 3 is the third alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04, and with this new alpha release comes a whole host of excellent new features.”
Mmm, good to see *buntus relesaed in such fast pace. I always try newly released distros from this stack.
And always come back to Debian… But *buntus are improving definetely though – period of time I use *buntu is longer with every release:)
Yes, Debian and the *buntus are great distros indeed. Could you give some examples of reasons why you always go back to Debian? I’m sure it would help the developers to get *buntu to an OS even closer to your likes, to an OS for which you don’t feel the need to go back to Debian!
Mostly stability and memory leak issues bring me back to Debian. My PC is always on and I hate to reboot PC as if it were some windows machine;)
i wonder – if every release is going to be that much better – what a glorious goodness we will receive in 2017.06 Zippy Zealot
There’s always room for improvement. Operating systems have changed dramatically in the last 10 years, and it’s virtually impossible to compare the old 1970’s “use the front panel switches to manually enter the boot sequence on” Altair OS to anything recent.
Granted, I doubt it’d go on forever. Word 97/Excel 97/etc functionality is all most people need. Eventually, people will stop working on the OS-level and GUI-level (which will be “good enough” for 95% of people) and start working about the really interesting problems.
In the past 10 years the hardware has changed a lot. But the software and the way it interacts with the user hasn’t changed much at all and still feels inefficient and annoying.
There is plenty to be done in fixing the fundamentals of the OS and the basics of how people interact with their computers.
*Individual applications are still off on their own not playing nice with other applications.
*Users are still at the mercy of developers who may or may not have the insight to create their applications in a way that allows them to solve their specific problems.
*Security is still a big issue and will continue to become more of an issue as programs get more and more complex.
*A complete re-think of a lot of applications will be required to make use of the change to highly parallel computing.
*Most businesses are still doing word processing as their major use of computers. This word processing is based on the idea of making paper documents which is a huge waste.
These are still fairly interesting problems that still need solving.
DBUS is doing quite well in this regard, though it is down to the application owners to be sympathetic to the user and accommodate DBUS.
Not sure what you mean here? All software is written to “solve a problem”… if a piece of software doesn’t fit someone’s need, at least with OSS the user can submit a bug report/feature request direct to the developer(s).
Agreed, but recent OS’ include complex systems to alleviate security risks… plus most have a secure foundation of user privilege restriction and threat limitation.
Not sure this is necessary – most software relies on other libraries/components to do the hard work, and most libraries who have this dependency are already working on fully supporting multiple cores at least (look at the latest gstreamer codec packs for e.g.)
Eh? So writing reports to distribute, financial statements, press releases, marketing material, software documentation…. all sorts of things that need to be distributed on paper to people? This boils down to cost and technology – even amazon’s electronic reader (and similar products) won’t solve the use of paper!
I’m not sure your points really summarise the limitations of modern computing… merely the challenges which have mostly been addressed.
I think he means that all software is written by programmers and not necessarily domain expertes. I guess the theory is that if programming was somehow ‘easier’ then architectula visulaization software for example could be written by architects who have detailed knowledge of what they do and don’t need, and who could also tweak the program to their indivdual projects.
Instead the software has to be written by developers who may know a lot about 3d graphics, but very little about the needs and requirements of architects for various projects. So he has to try to talk to the architects and glean what they need, and the architects have to try to understand what is and isn’t possible to do with the current level of technology. A process which is often slow, frustrating for all involved and fraught with the risk of misunderstanding. All of which leads to crap software for the architect to use.
Hmm, it is interesting that pulseaudio sound server is going in. I am running Xubuntu on the eee pc and Fedora 8 XFCE on my home box. I find the performance of both distros similar. Moving to a sound server in Fedora made playing different media format more challenging. Pulseaudio is fun to play around with blending sound channels but it is a little buggy still. It still cuts out on me sometimes I have to restart pulseaudio. It will be interesting to see if Ubuntu integrates it better.
> It will be interesting to see if Ubuntu integrates it better.
It will be interesting to see if Fedora 9 integrates it better.
Sure Ubuntu can’t do worse than Fedora 8. But perhaps they can do worse (or better) than Fedora 9.
Yes, it all sounds good – no pun intended – but I really hope the fine release puts the accent on quality. Earlier today I installed Gutsy Gibbon, rebooted, ran the updater to install three months’ worth of Ubuntu’s own updates as their own updater kindly suggested immediately the login came through, rebooted … and no PC because no initrd. Turns out that a bug that’s been around for a while, well known but uncorrected, in their kernel update package does this. Bugs in kernel packages that produce “install and explode” really are a complete no-no. Withdraw package from repos right away, etc. So I’m back to Debian Lenny where I think I’ll stay, punished for straying. I wish all the best to Hardy Heron but if Ubuntu wants to continue to gain share among the masses the basics matter more than the bling, imho. A lot more.
Ubuntu devs are very, very slow to fix bugs. They’re too obsessed with the next big release to worry about what’s happening in the current release. They’re like a child who skips the main course to head straight for the desert. Once an Ubuntu release hits gold, it’s all but forgotten.
I was worried about you, cmost! It took you alrmost 5 hours from the story’s release time to post your expected flamebait. I feared something might have happened to you. 😉
Anyway, I have users running 6.04, 19 months old, and they are still supporting it just fine, and plan to support it for another 17, for a total of three years. That’s for the desktop version. I don’t happen to have any Ubuntu 6.04 servers, but that will be supported for another 41 months for a total of five years. And the upcoming release, scheduled for April, will be another 3 and 5 year support release. Normal releases are well supported for 18 months, which is not at long as OpenSuse’s 24 months, but considerably longer than Fedora’s 13 months.
So the facts of the matter clearly contradict your (rather inflammatory) claims.
I actually have many more users on Fedora and CentOS than Ubuntu, but I do happen to use it on one of my own machines and some of my users use it at home in addition to at work, so I keep an eye on these things.
Edited 2008-01-12 15:51 UTC
This is exactly what is wrong with Linux distro’s today. They care more about the next thing then fixing show stopping bugs. I have Debian Linux on my laptop today because Ubuntu is so unreliable.
to me, the *buntu is very much in the same league as Fedora.
By this, I mean more of a leading edge distro (F1 Car) than a solid performer (VW Golf etc)
These distros are out there at the leading edge of innovation.
Therefore, they should not be used for production use in either Server or Desktop modes.
The decisions they have made with KDE & their LTS version is certainly strange when compared to RHEL or SLES support plans.
I do wonder if a previous comment about the rush to new tech is pretty close to the mark. This is a very common ‘feature’ in IT with the rush to the next set of ’emperors new clothes’.
I do prefer the approach taken by RH & Novell than Canonical.
I do not recommend people use Ubuntu or Fedora unless they are pretty Linux savvy or have a tame ‘guru’ on hand to help when their next upgrade goes AWOL.
So, apparently it is not wrong with *every* Linux distro?
I’d recommend CentOS or Debian as well to anyone interested in just running the OS and applications and just run it for years without serious issues.
Frankly, I was surprised to see that Ubuntu, for about three years, has been unable to get my Samsung printer to work (the word Linux was written on its box, it’s more or less plug-and-print with just about any other distro).
I did file a bug report, but I admit I didn’t do much more than that since I left Ubuntu for what it was about 1,5 years ago.
Did run it lately, latest version.. no printing.
Now I’m definitely not the only one with this printer, it is a popular cheap laser printer that uses CUPS. Does this mean that everybody using that printer just uses another distro? Does Ubuntu think that is ok?
There are problems with other distros, but if Ubuntu wants to live up to its cool, maybe it should think of other lines than “Ubuntu developers are moving very quickly”. I’m sure they are, but Canonical, in the end, has a business to run.
One used to say Mandriva was very buggy but they improved a lot with extra attention for quality control. Now many people running its latest release are very enthusiastic. It takes a long time, though, to get rid of the “it’s buggy” rep.
Ubuntu has to be careful not to get that kind of reputation, because the others are not merely standing by looking how cool Ubuntu is. That includes desktop BSD’s.
And once people (many of whom think “Linux=Ubuntu” these days, and the other way round) start thinking “it’s free, but it’s full of bugs too”, this is bad for Linux as a whole. When you’re as big as Ubuntu, that comes with responsability.
#edit the below line depending on if you want or do not want to sound like a wiseass
preacher_mode=off
Feel free to dispute anything I just said, I know some of the fans are sensitive.
Wich Samsung laser printer model is giving you problems? I’ve got a ML-1250 and it works fine with the two computers connected to it, one on USB, the other on Parrallel.
ML-1710P (=ML-1710).
It’s connected to a CentOS box and working, and I occasionally plug the USB line into the iBook (same CUPS, on OS X Tiger). There have been several Fedora, Suse (in da past), Mandriva, and CentOS installs on several pc’s, all using that 4-year-old printer on both usb and parallel port, with a negligible effort to set it up (i.e., click click, done).
Yet for some vague reason this is not the case with Ubuntu.
I have minor issues with every distro, but not every bug makes the distro unusable.
I know, on the web, anecdotal evidence is no evidence. You’ll have to trust my ‘karma’.
Hey, it might just be the only printer in the universe that Ubuntu cannot get to work.
This is exactly what is wrong with Linux distro’s today. They care more about the next thing then fixing show stopping bugs.
This is quite an overgeneralization. Fedora’s use of bleeding edge packages could support your statement but take another distro CentOS and your argument has no merit.
.. it will have two versions. One stable with 3.5.8 which is ONLY supported for 18 months!
And one with KDE 4.0 with is only supported for 6 months!
I think Canonical isnt really interested in KDE anymore and i think that kinda sux!
If they go this road there is no real reason why the 3.5.8 release should not have been a LTS.
So IMHO it boils down to: Canonical does not like KDE anymore PERIOD
Me sad ;,-(
stop your wining – Ubuntu have some very legitimate reasons for only supporting KDE 4.0 for 6 months. They have explained this already.
Basically there is no point in supporting a platform for 18 months when it will undergo immense change over that period of time, by the end of 2008 we’ll see a much more polished version of KDE 4.1.
Remember KDE 4.0.0 is not KDE 4. Its the first developer release of the software.
This makes complete sense, they are not dropping the platform.
Canonical went down this road because (as one Ubuntu developer put it) there was no way they were going to guarantee that KDE 3 was going to be worked on and supported until 2011. KDE 4’s release is the reason for this; a lot of development is shifting to KDE 4, and Canonical doesn’t want to risk components of KDE 3 going unmaintained at any time during the 3 year support cycle.
And besides, Canonical has hinted at 8.10 (with KDE 4.1) being Kubuntu’s LTS instead. I’d hardly say a different support/release schedule for Kubuntu means Canonical is not interested in KDE; it’s just more business as usual considering it’s no secret Canonical puts more of their effort behind GNOME.
Meh. It’s been discussed in other places, but that was either an uninformed decision or a strictly partisan one. At any rate, KDE has committed to supporting 3.x alongside 4.x. In fact, 3.5.9 will be released at some point after 4.0.1/4.1.
Novell is supporting KDE 3.x for more than 3 years on SLED, even RH supports KDE/Qt on their enterprise products, which means they’ll need to support it beyond 3 years. Debian by their very nature will probably be using 3.x for the next 3 years simply because it will take that long to move to 4.x. Xandros will be supporting 3.x. One assumes that the commercial Asianuxes, like RF or Turbo, will also support KDE 3.x beyond, particularly since Turbo is popular with the Asian banks.
If they could have admitted that the problem is that Canonical only employs a single KDE developer with everyone else tasked to Gnome, then at least they’d have a credible reason. But they didn’t. So Canonical stands alone as one of the few commercial linux support organizations, actually the only one I’m aware of, that is unable to commit to supporting one of the most popular desktop environments, albeit not their *own* most popular desktop environment.
*buntu is free to decide how they build their distro and what to support, but their excuse for KDE is a cop-out. It was an intentional decision.
> RH supports KDE/Qt on their enterprise products, which means they’ll need to support it beyond 3 years.
7 years for RHEL.
thats like saying Redhat/Fedora doesnt like KDE, bit stupid, Canonical/Ubuntu has always been a Gnome Based OS where its main focus is, just like Redhat/Fedora, an now OpenSuse
It’s funny to watch Gnome borrow many of the GUI features from MacOS X (watch the PolicyKit that comes with alpha 3). Yet they want to conceal it making HUGE widgets that renderer simple ugly.
Why not just copy MacOS X the way it is if you have no better ideas?