We’re a little late, but Real Life got in the way, so here we finally are. Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, announced today that Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop Edition has been released. This version focusses on improvements in cloud computing on the server using Eucalyptus, further improvements in boot speed, as well as development on Netbook Remix. The related KDE, Xfce, and other variants have been released as well. Update by ELQ: Just a quick note to say that one of my Creative Commons videos was selected to be part of Ubuntu’s Free Culture Showcase package that comes by default with the new Ubuntu version!
Among others, this new release comes with GIMP 2.6, GNOME 2.28, Mozilla Firefox 3.5, OpenOffice.org 3.1, Linux kernel 2.6.31, X.Org 7.5, and the Empathy Instant Messenger instead of Pidgin. The Ubuntu One client, which interfaces with Canonical’s new online storage system, is installed by default. It also debuts a new application called the Ubuntu Software Center that unifies package management.
The default filesystem is ext4, and Ubuntu 9.10 has transitioned to Upstart, improving boot performance. On top of that, GRUB 2 is now the default bootloader – however, if you are upgrading a system which still uses the old legacy GRUB, it won’t be updated to GRUB 2, as this is a risky operation. The Grub2Testing page explains how to upgrade to GRUB 2 if you wish to do so anyway.
A quick screenshot tour of new features available here and Bittorent download links are available here.
Ubuntu’s KDE variant, Kubuntu, also received numerous improvements, such as the new KDE4 Plasma Netbook interface – still in technical preview. It includes KDE 4.3.2, a whole boatload of social networking plasmoids, OpenOffice KDE integration, and a whole lot more.
There are still a few kinks in there but all over this is a HUGE step forward for Ubuntu. This is the most bug-free release since 8.04.1 and with a slew of new features; it will be a great starting point for Lucid.
Ubuntu is not my distribution of choice on desktops, but this release is indeed very good.
I had a spare machine around and have been testing the release. In the end, I liked it well enough that I put it on my laptop as well.
I am also eager to see what Mandriva´s release looks like as I have been a fan of them for a long time and usually prefer kde to gnome, but I must say that this release is awesome.
A great feautre is the smart integration into gnome that warned me with a livecd that one of the testing systems had a failing drive, which seagate tools indeed confirmed.
That integration was developed by and available for many months already in Fedora 11, FYI.
Edited 2009-10-29 16:08 UTC
“A great feautre is the smart integration into gnome that warned me with a livecd that one of the testing systems had a failing drive, which seagate tools indeed confirmed.”
…which was written by Red Hat’s David Zeuthen, Matthias Clasen and Lennart Poettering, and first included in Fedora 11.
It is a great feature, though, you’re right.
edit: Rahul said so first. Whoops. Still, my post has a bit more detail…
Edited 2009-10-29 17:45 UTC
What do you like in Mandriva, that you find lacking in Ubuntu?
Also, what does being a fan of an operating system mean?
When I say I am a Fan of the Chicago Cubs, it goes with out saying that its not because they are the best performing baseball team of all time, or of the last century. It means they have character, and its more enjoyable watching them. Its fun like a greek tragedy.
Does being a fan, mean you would use it even if it wasn’t the best at what it was supposed to do? Or does it mean you’d use it, even if it stunk because you like the fact that it stinks.
Edited 2009-10-29 22:42 UTC
Not sure what I meant. Wasn’t really finished with that comment. Too late to further edit. Today is not my thinking good like day.
For me, being a “fan” of an operating system means I use it because it does what I want and need it to do. Do I have hats, t-shirts and posters of the operating systems I’m a fan of? Actually, yes.
But still, my point is, I use a particular OS, and am a fan of it, because of what I get out of it. That said, I’m a fan of the following operating systems:
Slackware
Ubuntu
OpenBSD
Slackware was my second Linux distro (after Red Hat), and will always be near and dear to me, and have a spot on one of my computers. I always purchase each release CD set, and install it to one of my computers.
Ubuntu became one of my favorites back in April 2005, when I installed the 5.04 release. I’ve been using it ever since, and have lived through its ups and downs. I’ve cursed at it, I’ve praised it, I’ve watched it get better with each release, and I’ve recommended it to friends. I guess that makes me a fan.
OpenBSD was my second BSD flavor. I started with FreeBSD, and ran it for quite a while, then I discovered OpenBSD. I’ve been a “fan” of OpenBSD for over four and a half years now, and like Slackware, it is near and dear to me, and will always have a place on one of my systems. I also purchase each CD set, along with a t-shirt here and there. I currently have the last nine CD sets, including the latest, 4.6. And yes, it is running on one of my systems.
I’m sure each of the other Linux distros out there (as well as the other BSD’s, OS/2, Windows, BeOS, etc…) have their “fans”, who find they work for them the way they want to work, and that’s fine. I’ve used a lot of those Linux distros over the years. I’ve also used OS/2, Windows and BeOS, and they are fine operating systems. But for me, they just don’t quite do what I want, the way I want it done, which is why I am a fan of the ones I use.
I’ve been testing since alpha releases, and it was very
reliable. With final release, more reliability is expected. Great piece of sotfware
Because of this rsikiness I won’t update my current setup of my desktop to Grub 2. I’m thinking of reconfigure the dualboot on my laptop so I can still enjoy Grub 2.
It has been a nice alpha, beta and rc too (on the vm)
I have been using this since the RC and I find that copying large files like videos is fast for the first 200MB or so then slows down to an unbearable crawl. Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon?
Edited 2009-10-29 16:40 UTC
Yes, I have seen that too .. with the beta, though. Not for some time now.
But then again there are other bugs that have not been fixed for over 5 years ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/casper/+bug/9068 )
All in all this is a really good Ubuntu release. I run Kubuntu on my netbook since Alpha2 and it worked really well. Flash had a few fights with Phonon and Pulseaudio, but those are all fixed now.
CONGRATULATIONS!
OK downloading now and I like the release candidate but: that loading screen is ugly – well not to my taste any one like it?.
The gdm login screen is not customizable and a little ugly?
No, it’s goddamn awful. I like all the other artwork, inluding the login and especially the New Wave theme but the loading is screen is horrible. I keep waiting for Mr bean to drop out from the top of the screen.
They should have kept the Hardy loading screen, it was just right.
I actually like it. I guess the reason it’s not as customizable as before is because GDM has been rewritten.
A few things.
First of all you can customize some by changing the GTK/icon-theme and background of GDM.
Background:
sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 –set –type string –set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename /usr/share/backgrounds/some_background.jpg
GTK theme:
sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 –set –type string –set /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_theme/some_gtk_theme
Icontheme:
sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 –set –type string –set /desktop/gnome/interface/icon_theme/some_icon_theme
GTK and Icons are placed in the following folders:
/usr/share/themes/
/usr/share/icons/
Source: http://tinyurl.com/lathund-gdm
second there seems to be a bug that for some of us causes the default imho good-looking black gtk-theme get changed to a simple gray one. I don’t now how to fix that and it bothers me alot!
I hope in their PulseAudio “enhancements”, they made it play better with WINE. This has been a significant problem for some times and its completely ruined multiple attempts by me to get others switching over to Linux desktops. I can get people all situated, show them how everything works, get their needed Windows apps running in WINE… Then 2 weeks later they give up on the whole thing because WINE blows up due to audio issues.
I certainly do not feel that Pulse was anywhere near ready for prime time when Ubuntu first included it in the distro and make ubuntu-desktop dependent on it.
Well, it seems okay this week.
I had horrible sound performance with Wine’s default of ALSA but when I switched it to esd (in winecfg) it settled down nicely. I’m using Crossover Games 8, btw, so it’s under configure bottle, control panel, and winecfg.
It’s also possible that the last updates to Karmic fixed the problem and that my configuration change was irrelevant since it’s all Pulse.
Don’t forget to install the gui PA controls paman, still not standard (?1)
No kidding. 9.10 regressed audio for me. It loses my Realtek HD audio (82801H) after a few reboots, forcing me to do a alsa force-reload to get it back. The bug reports are there for this issue, but it’s still a big regression for me, as 8.04, 8.10, and 9.04 all worked flawlessly on the same hardware.
I’m wondering how far down the tubes Linux sound will have to go before the distros decide that supporting crappy, incapable sound hardware with software mixing and other crap is just not worth it.
Sound has been reliable under Linux for some years now. But over the last year, audio reliability has taken a dive that I can scarcely believe.
And this is one regression that we can’t really blame the hardware manufacturers for. Our distros did it to themselves. And to us.
Oddly enough they broke the Inspiron 1520 which is a very common Dell laptop.
Installing Ubuntu for a relative is a bad idea since they will call you if something breaks.
It’s not for human beings if it breaks working hardware and requires command line hacks to fix it.
Fewt’s rant over this issue is a good read:
http://www.fewt.com/
This particular cancer does come from Fedora. Let’s place the origin where it really belongs.
Edited 2009-10-29 21:27 UTC
Draw brown backgrounds?
You would think that with Dell being their main OEM partner they would make sure not to break any Dell computers with an update.
They have caused problems for people with Minis as well.
http://www.ubuntumini.com/2009/03/ubuntu-810-kernel-update-has-brok…
I’m sorry, but to be honest most comes from Fedora, it’s the Linux-testbed.
“This particular cancer does come from Fedora. Let’s place the origin where it really belongs”
Yeah, Ubuntu ships PulseAudio with broken patches and let’s blame Fedora for that. How nice
http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/pa-in-ubuntu.html
In general, Ubuntu has worked substantially better for my users, and for me, than Fedora ever did. Emprically speaking, that much is pretty definite. It’s the tendrils shooting out of the Fedora camp to poison other distros which take me aback. And yes, I do blame the Ubuntu devs for falling for the hype. Ubuntu should not be using such alpha software as Pulseaudio. Red Hat’s perpetual pre-alpha distro is threatening to take the rest of Linux down with it. And I think it’s about time that the community started turning a more suspicious and pragmatic eye upon projects coming from under the Fedora canopy.
Some are OK. Others are quite poisonous.
Edited 2009-10-30 21:06 UTC
Other distributions continue to include a hell lot of software that Red Hat develops because they find it useful. You know, things like NetworkManager or system-config-printer.
If you don’t like that point your fingers at Ubuntu for what Ubuntu ships. It’s not like they are muppets who cannot make their own decisions and would fall for mere hype. Trolling about Fedora for what Ubuntu includes and with broken patches is ridiculous.
Maybe Fedora should tone down their public claims about the stability of some of their software projects? Or at least give other distros the inside track on the real problems. Or maybe other distros should just watch what Red Hat is willing to accept into their distro. But then, Red Hat hasn’t made a release since early 2007. (Violating their long-held promise to of 18-24 month releases, BTW.) Still waiting for Fedora to produce enough stuff that’s actually stable, I guess. Seems to be taking longer than they expected when they made the release interval promises.
Edited 2009-10-30 21:32 UTC
“Maybe Fedora should tone down their public claims about the stability of some of their software projects? ”
You are again being silly. All the developers who decided that Ubuntu, Mandriva, SUSE, Debian and Nokia N900 must include PulseAudio by default are not stupid.
“Or at least give other distros the inside track on the real problems.”
What inside track? It is a public open source project.
Anyway, quit your repeated and irrational trolling about Fedora. PulseAudio is not a Fedora Project anymore than say GTK+ is a Fedora Project. These are independent upstream projects later funded by Red Hat.
If you hate Ubuntu so much for including PulseAudio, take it to them. Fedora Project is not responsible for Ubuntu’s own decision to include PulseAudio by default and include broken patches and configure it in a way that causes issues.
So… you are now distancing Fedora from Pulseaudio rather than giving Fedora “credit” for it? OK. Maybe that wasn’t you. Maybe it was a large number of other Fedora advocates. But I do recall a lot of credit attribution regarding Fedora and Pulseaudio.
You have a habit of calling those who disagree with you “silly”. I will refrain from reciprocating.
Edited 2009-10-30 21:54 UTC
“So… you are now distancing Fedora from Pulseaudio rather than giving Fedora “credit” for it? OK. Maybe that wasn’t you. Maybe it was a large number of other Fedora advocates. But I do recall a lot of credit attribution regarding Fedora and Pulseaudio.”
To make this simple to you: Ubuntu is responsible for what Ubuntu ships including patches and configuration.
I am not distancing Fedora from anything. Just explaining to you how ridiculous your position is. PulseAudio was a independent upstream project developed voluntarily for a long time.
Red Hat hired the primary developer and made it default in Fedora first but that doesn’t make it a Fedora Project anymore than GTK+ or PackageKit or Nouveau driver or any of the in-numerous upstream projects later funded by Red Hat.
Let me make this simple for you, Rahul.
At one time, you couldn’t count on sound working in Linux. The early to late 90s. Then it was just something one could expect to work. (2000-200?) I loved those days. But then pulseaudio showed up. Widely credited to Fedora, for whatever reason, and sound is now on par with 3D Video and wireless in Linux. It doesn’t work. A huge backslide. Feel free to call my criticism of that particular regression silly if it makes you feel better. But it’s a dirty shame. And Fedora was the distro trying to take the credit for that one… before it blew up.
Edited 2009-10-30 22:21 UTC
Transitional bugs happen on every occasion including the move from crufty distribution specific scripts to NetworkManager. I am not saying that your criticism of the project itself as silly (it might or it might not be but that is a entirely different discussion) but I am definitely going to call it very silly and ridiculously stupid if you persist on blaming Fedora for what Ubuntu decides to include by default with known broken non-upstream patches.
You are indulging is some wild hand-waving and mental gymnastics like guilt by association to somehow rechristen PulseAudio as a Fedora project despite the clear facts being explained to you. PulseAudio, originally called Polypaudio was developed for several years as a entirely volunteer project. Fedora Project widely got the credit for including PulseAudio by default. That does not somehow make it a Fedora Project.
Face the reality: Pretty much every major distribution and several popular mobile devices are shipping with PulseAudio by default. So somehow all of them are stupid or they understand the benefits and it is working well for them. I will leave you to decide which sounds more realistic.
And where has it gotten Linux? Windows is still killing us on the desktop. Linux is still a rarity on mobiles. Sound has taken a dive on all platforms that use Pulseaudio. What is it that you are trying to say?
I have told you this many times but I will tell you one more time just in case you haven’t understood it yet. Stop blaming Fedora for what Ubuntu includes by default! PulseAudio is NOT a Fedora Project. It is included by every major distribution. It is working very well for the large majority of users and getting increasing adoption all the time. This is the reality.
PulseAudio exposes more features and has exploited certain ALSA API’s never used before. This has resulted in various ALSA bugs getting exposed for the first time and fixed. So many of the issues which seem superficially as PulseAudio bugs are often not. This is similar to how adoption of NetworkManager resulted in various wireless drivers getting fixed.
If you don’t like anything about individual upstream projects, engage in constructive criticism. Calling free software projects cancer or poisonous is pointless trolling. It is just disappointing to see that.
*Sigh*
I’m thinking about all the times that Fedora advocates have claimed Pulseaudio as a Fedora project here on OSNews. But it is certainly interesting to see you backing away from it as fast as you can, now that it’s a registered hot potato.
Edited 2009-10-30 23:26 UTC
“I’m thinking about all the times that Fedora advocates have claimed Pulseaudio as a Fedora project here on OSNews. But it is certainly interesting to see you backing away from it as fast as you can, now that it’s a registered hot potato.”
PulseAudio is a awesome project and I would very glad to tell anyone that Red Hat is sponsoring the development. It is getting greater adoption by a wide variety of projects all the time but I would not tell anyone that it is a Fedora project because it is not true.
Feel free to continue engaging in this repeated handwaving about mystical Fedora advocates without a single reference. I think you are just trolling and cannot trust your claims at face value anymore.
Defending Fedora is your job. And your assigned post here at OSNews. I suppose I should respect that.
Actually my job has nothing to do with Fedora. Don’t continue to make claims you cannot defend.
Ah, you mean just like how they call you when Windows breaks?
I made the mistake of giving away free support years ago. Windows is supported by Microsoft, not me.
They did? Sound is working fine on my Dell Inspiron 1520 here – using the 64bit version of 9.10.
Software mixing is good.
ALSA is just not very reliable, has a history of general crappiness, and our best solution is to either use a kitchen-sink sound server that duplicates work, or to give up power saving features (assuming OSS4 works with your hardware at all).
Edited 2009-10-30 23:06 UTC
I’ve been using this for a long time on my home machine:
– Audio has problems on kde. At home, it was fixed by switching to kdm (and possibly some new fixes), but at work it’s still broken. I blame KDE’s reluctance to work with pulseaudio on this, but I may be horribly wrong.
– Wine + pulseaudio (spotify) works with this hack:
http://blog.paulbetts.org/index.php/2007/05/27/make-wine-and-pulsea…
– KDE with the nvidia binary drivers is insanely fast. Really. I’ve never seen compositing work that well (with either Gnome or KDE).
I don’t know if it’s relevant, but Spotify-Wine-PulseAudio worked flawlessly out of the box on Fedora 11. No hacks required. Hopefully it’ll work fine in Ubuntu as well.
No problems at all for me with KDE audio on several test machines.
KDE with the ATI open source drivers is also insanely fast. Really. Compositing doesn’t work yet however with R600/R700 cards, only R500 or older. This isn’t Kubuntu’s fault however since ATI only released programming specs for R600/R700 in January of this year, and consequently the open source 3D compositing driver is not available in kernel 2.6.31.
Network manager does work after a fashion, but it doesn’t really suit my purpose. I arrange for scripts to mount samba file shares as users log on, and dismount them as users log off. This works fine for a wired interface, but on Kubuntu the network manager seems to turn off wireless networking before the logout scripts can run, which is stupid IMO. To work around this, I just install wicd using the command: “sudo aptitude install wicd” (which automatically removes KDEs networkmanager), and everything is sweet thereafter.
What else?
Kubuntu doesn’t include or require Mono. The samba filesystem mounting capability isn’t installed by default, so use the command: “sudo aptitude install smbfs” to overcome that. Firefox KDE integration works for file picker dialog boxes. OpenOffice has KDE integration out of the box. Other GTK applications in general now use the selected KDE theme and system fonts OK (but for the most part not the KDE file picker dialog boxes).
There is a “Firefox installer” helper applet, but I wouldn’t use it myself, since it installs a whole raft of only remotely related of GNOME dependencies. I use the command-line: “sudo aptitude install –without-recommends firefox” instead.
Don’t install the non-free Adobe flash player plugin package on amd64 systems using any package manager, as this will download and use the 32-bit plugin instead of the 64-bit plugin. If you want to use Adobe’s binary flash plugin on amd64, get it from the Adobe website instead.
VLC integrates well and will play DVDs immediately. SMplayer doesn’t, it requires libdvdcss, as does k9copy. This library can be downloaded as a .deb file from the medibuntu servers, and installed after download by using gdebi or Kpackagekit from the file manager. Google for medibuntu and dvdcss as keywords and you can find this package easily.
Both amarok and k3b will suggest additional libraries to install on first run. Install them.
I don’t doubt it – after all, it works on my home machine too. I know it’s not a driver/hardware problem, because the sound works on Gnome.
Big part of the problem is that audio can be broken in so many ways that the combinations are not tested properly.
There’s problems with PulseAudio setup on Karmic. Unfortunately there will be no fixes for Ubuntu 9.10 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/406702)
http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/pa-in-ubuntu.html
Does Kubuntu work with Ubuntu One or as usual KDE is treated as a second class citizen on Ubuntu?
I does, but it’s a Gnome app, as well as Software Center.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2009/10/install-ubuntuone-in-kubuntu-kar…
Kubuntu developers are doing a good job, but they need more people working on Kubuntu, KDE deserves more love.
Better than last year, but severely lacking in polish. Jarring, buggy and without vision.
Windows has been stable for a long time, and Apple have a strong idea of vision. Ubuntu’s release-schedule-first format is doing it no favours. There’s nothing here that makes my hardware more productive, exciting or usable.
Why don’t you try to do or say something constructive for a change, Kroc?
Quite simply because it will fall on deaf ears. Filing bugs is unwelcoming, hostile and extremely difficult to get any traction for my line of work (UI/X). It’s considered low priority and I get endless kickback from stuck-up geeks who can’t see anything as the end-user does.
And when there are visions set by the projects, the subprojects never step up to meet the requirements. Just look through GNOME where there are a list of projects still relying on deprecated components:
http://www.gnome.org/~fpeters/299.html
Evolution relies on LibGnomeCanvas, the bug notes that someone has worked on porting it to libfoocavas, but nothing has happened since then. It is sitting in limbo with no development happening – something that has been known about for over a year and still no work has been done to remove LibGnomeCanvas as a dependency. Then there is replacing HAL with libudev/gudev – again, many components are still relying on HAL and hardly any of the components have been updated.
So not only are you faced with, as you said, “falls on deaf ears” and even when the bug is acknowledged, no one is willing to work on the unsexy, behind the scenes but fundamentally important components. People talk about the millions of eyes but millions of eyes are useless if bugger all people are contributing anything to improve the situation. Millions of eyes don’t get things done, programmers get things done when provided with strong leadership.
Oh you’re right, there are millions of armchair critics, but bugger all people prepared to do any work, sexy or not.
Of course, which is why paid programmers are important – because the paid programmers look after the things that are unsexy and boring; I’m more disappointed not by the lack of volunteers but the lack of any sizeable development teams from Novell, Red Hat or Canonical doing something about the problem.
I don’t blame the volunteer only focusing on what interests them – after all, they’re doing it for free and to scratch and itch but I do expect more from vendors who seem to take a heck of a lot from the open source world and do give very little back in addressing the problems that the respective desktops face.
Yes, and we get a lot of armchair users and even developers that paint over the problems in order to get praised, who repeatedly tell us that the status quo is fine and expect users to pick up open source software and use it in place of other, usually proprietary, software and hype it as a replacement………..as long as there is no criticism.
There are simply a lot of people around open source desktop development who can’t take the rough with the smooth.
Remind me how long has the transition from Carbon to Cocoa been taking? Your comment is simply dishonest, you’re suggesting that this sort of transition would be any faster with proprietary software? Get a clue the reason why MS and to a lesser degree Apple keep all these deprecated APIs around is because these transitions are even slower for proprietary software.
Bah. Trolling again like a n00b, eh? No surprise there.
Supposedly Windows 7 (which is not too bad, for Windows) gives you so much more than Vista compared the change from Ubuntu 9.10 to 9.04? That sounds more one-eyed that an Aegean Cyclops. Although I’m yet to try it (about to) I think a stable Upstart will make a difference to Linux desktop users.
I’m not sure where the arrogance lies: in the supposedly haughty Linux developers that give up their free time to build stuff (and maybe don’t get everything right), or someone who supposes they know what all users want. Do you think that Win7 best meets the needs of high-performance scientific users, internet-scale application developers, or cash-strapped students? really? Looking at the changelist I think that different users have different requirements and this version of Ubuntu has enough changes to represent value-for-money (can you say the same for your $500 version of Windows?).
Why not come up with some balanced criticism instead, we’re prepared to listen to that.
Et tu. Windows cost me $82, Snow Leopard cost me $41, both very reasonable prices for an OS.
And how does Ubuntu meet the needs of scientific users and the like when it kernel panics when you use the wifi key toggle on an eee901?
Well done, you are lucky to get Windows and OS X for that price. Yes, the cost is mostly hidden in a hardware purchases, but for people who already have recent computers (a large proportion of the population these days) it is not possible to always get these deals. No matter what the cost, it is still more expensive especially if you get the Ultimate version (you can always get the equivalent ‘ultimate’ Linux version as there are usually no artificial limits placed on the software and services you can run).
It is interesting you mention eee901 and science. I’m about to purchase one to put my custom astronomical acquisition software (which integrates a custom hardware GPS clock and $60k NZ CCD camera) onto an eee so it is portable and can be flown around the world to be mounted on telescopes. I decided to use Ubuntu for it since it is great for this sort of stuff, and is very easy to administer. From what I’ve tried Win 7 works well enough for desktop but kind of a PITA for custom device control since that is not its orientation.
Just tried the latest Ubuntu. It’s looking better and the Upstart cut by boot time by from 20 seconds to 7. I didn’t expect that big a gain.
Anyway, to go back to my original point. Perhaps you don’t know the needs of users as well as you think, and maybe the Linux developers, you seem to think are out-of-touch, do?
Edited 2009-10-30 18:11 UTC
Just to clarify… because in retrospect, I don’t think I was very clear… it is not the criticism of Ubuntu that I disapprove of. It is the presumptuous title: “This will not be a popular comment”, which effectively prejudges Ubuntu users, and OSNews readers, in general. If the comment turns out to be unpopular, then fine. But if you believe your viewpoint to have value, let the readers decide how they feel about it, rather than goading them with condescending assertions as to how your criticism will be received by them.
Declarations like “this will not be a popular comment” are not constructive.
Edited 2009-10-30 17:34 UTC
It’s funny how you people always expect free software/linux to work as you expect it to, because you know “how it should be done”. However if someone states reasons why linux is more productive for them because of several reasons and that MS/Apple don’t implement this, the answer is always something along the lines of: “Why would anyone want this?”, “Nobody needs this”, “This is not the Apple/Windows way of doing things” …
At the same time the same people will criticise every single bug in free software saying that this bug proves how immature the platform is, but have no problem excusing serious bugs in software they paid for.
A few examples why I use linux with e17 as a window manager and why I find myself extremely annoyed when sitting in front of Windows/OSX.
No sloppy focus. I don’t think it’s possible to do sloppy focus in either Windows or OSX and I don’t want to search google for hours to find some program which might hacks around this and probably costs $20.
I find graphical filemanagers a pain to use, for anything but the simplest file operations. CLI file operations beat graphical ones by orders of magnitude in almost all cases. (I am aware that you can use the CLI on either OSX or Windows, but I find compared to Linux they feel more like they’ve been glued on instead of being part of the OS, although OSX is a lot better than Windows).
I do quite a bit of experimental analysis with python/numpy/scipy. Often I find myself trying to do something where I need another python module. I simply do “apt-cache search python [something], apt-get install python-[]” I do not want to waste my time searching google for the right package. I also don’t want to need to look for updates manually, I have better things to do. On a similar note, almost all the install problems on the numpy/scipy lists are about installing on OSX, so stop giving me the crap about how software installation is so simple on OSX.
The other day we had a seminar at my department cancelled, because the laptop which was being used was doing a Windows update and apparently you can’t Windows can’t do that in the background. The Windows admin told us we had to wait (after 20min waiting the seminar was cancelled). I upgraded my office PC from ubuntu Jaunty to Karmic while continuing to work yesterday (until I had to do one reboot).
The laptops used to control on of my experiments is running Vista (most other PCs in our department are XP), it takes >2min from pressing the on button to login screen and another ~2min from login to actually being able use the computer. I’m amazed about how that is even possible. And no I don’t want to clean up the registry tweak around to make the computer more usable, I don’t have to do that with my office PC. (I do have admin rights for this PC, and maybe someday I get fed up with it enough that I will).
Bottom line, stop claiming how immature, unusable, buggy … free software is. Proprietary software has as many quirks, problems. Some of the problems might be more relevant to you, making you prefer OSX/Windows/Linux over the other, but this is subjective and might be very different for other people.
My Kubuntu installation stopped responding at 26% of finalization stage. Killed my spirit right away… too bad, because I was really looking forward to this release.
They should go the extra mile and use MC Hammer for the startup sound.
I’d be content with sound.
Almost 20 years of linux and still cannot have more than 1 program using the soundcard. Windows 3 with multimedia extensions could do this in 1990.
Perhaps we need a Linux with multimedia extensions.
No problems whatsoever with Kubuntu and KDE 4.3/Phonon. Multiple programs using the Phonon/Xine/Alsa sound stack simultaneously.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntustudio
http://ubuntustudio.org/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mythbuntu
http://www.mythbuntu.org/
Enjoy.
Edited 2009-10-30 05:30 UTC
I appreciate your intention, but when looking for solutions in the past on boards and IRC, all I’ve ever heard is: “I’m running distro X. Try distro Y”
So all I have to do is replace my existing Linux operating system, with another Linux operating system? Fantastic.
Changing operating system is a big, time-consuming event. The OS may be a commodity, but it isn’t a triviality!
I could get Windows 3.0 to play sound (including multiple files at once) by installing the multimedia extensions. In Linux in 2009, the best bet is a total reinstall.
Time to calm down and listen to music. but not before closing firefox to free the soundcard for xmms!
Google for enabling software mixing, or, if you have the CPU to spare, using Pulseaudio.
No.
A) MME was released in 1991.
B) It didn’t support sound card sharing until Windows 2000.
No. This feature was present in Windows 95. My soundcard supported it under Windows 3.xx.
I’m sorry, but either your memory is faulty, or you actually bought an expensive add-on sound card that could do full blown hardware mixing, and are forgetting to mention it.
Windows 3.x did not support sharing one sound card between multiple applications. At all.
Windows 9x supported sharing one sound card between multiple applications if, and only if, you had a sound card capable of hardware mixing. By this point, real sound cards were actually pretty common.
Linux has supported this since the first drivers for cards with hardware mixing were added to OSS. ALSA has always supported cards with hardware mixing.
About this time, hardware manufacturers started moving to on-board sound, which does not have hardware mixing. Windows 9x can not, and does not, play multiple sounds on these things.
The first version of Windows to actually support full software mixing, allowing sound cards without hardware mixing to be used by multiple applications, was Windows 2000. I think Windows ME may have had something similar.
This is what I could do: open two Sound Recorder and have them play at the same time. A P90 NT4 laptop we keep for testing can have Winamp playing + Simcity 2000 with audio. I have told it that what it is doing is impossible, but it stubbornly continues to work.
Perhaps the capability is in the driver, and not using the OS?
Back to the present: My workstation has an AC97. Apps are compiled with ALSA support. Two sound apps cannot use the sound card at the same time. My recourse is: reinstall Linux. Go distro-hopping until the problems are resolved and pray there are no new ones.
Or, you could configure the dmix plugin for ALSA.
Or, you can install OSS4 and tell ALSA to use that for sound output. (Doing it that way means you don’t have to reconfigure all your apps for OSS output.)
Or, you can install a sound server like esd, artsd, pulese, etc.
Or, move to FreeBSD, which uses a modified OSS3, but fully supports multiple sound sources at once (/dev/dsp is an auto-cloning device, which uses either software or hardware mixing, depending on the actual sound hardware).
Or, …
Well… there’s your problem. Workstation, you say? Let me guess… Green Acres Sound Studio? 😉
really change the crux of the argument?
Shouldn’t Linux have sound that is equal to Windows 2000 by now?
It does.
It doesn’t.
Alsa has enabled software mixing by default for a while now.
Adam
I just upgraded (it took 6 hours) When I rebooted and logged in I got a crash that totally reminded me of a crashed TRS-80 Colour Computer – low-res characters of random colour filled the screen. After pressing the power button to restart, it booted – this time fine, but no sound. It can’t find either the built in sound or PCI sound card.
I think this thing needs more testing.
Upgrading any OS at all rarely works well.
The recommendation for Linux distributions is to make separate partitions for / (root), /home and swap. When it comes to a new distribution to try, or an upgrade to your existing distribution, then install the new OS with re-format to the root partition (/), and use but do NOT re-format the /home partition.
Sweet. Works every time, no problems normally. Installing a Linux distribution to a freshly-formatted / partition from a LiveCD normally takes only 20 minutes or so.
If you haven’t done this separate partitions arrangement, then you can still recover the situation. Using a LiveCD, save everything existing under /home to another backup disk, wipe the first disk and re-partition it to have separate /, /home and swap partitions, restore the contents of /home from the other backup disk, then re-install the new OS to /. After re-boot, re-create your users with the same usernames as before, and accept the existing home directories for them.
If the new OS doesn’t work for whatever reason, then just get the previous version Live CD and revert to that. It will take another 20 minutes, but you have lost nothing but less than one hour of your time.
Edited 2009-10-30 00:10 UTC
Yes, but wouldn’t you have to manually re-install all your software too? (stuff that wouldn’t be in the home folder)… and the dependent libraries… and other miscellaneous stuff…
I did a complete wipe when I went from 8.04 to 8.10 and reinstalling and reconfiguring everything was a major pain in the ass.
That’s what made me want to do an upgrade this time. Having to reinstall and reconfigure every time there’s an update seems like total inefficiency to me.
Edited 2009-10-30 00:15 UTC
Meh.
Most distributions, such as Ubuntu or Kubuntu, install almost everything that you would need for a standard desktop out of the box.
On Kubuntu, after a fresh install I install firefox and smbfs and a couple of extra libraries, and that is about it.
If you really want, keep a couple of files from /etc that you find yourself having to reconfigure all the time. I haven’t found that to be necessary. I do have an off-system copy of some .ttf files however (saved from a ttf fonts directory several years ago), but it takes only a minute to re-add those files as system fonts.
I do find it advisable to edit /etc/adduser.conf. In that file I enable the default user groups that I want. Then adding my users back again is simply a matter of typing “sudo adduser username” and then their password for each user. I do believe there is a “newusers” script that you can run if you have a lot of users, that will take as input a copy of the old file from /etc/passwd, so saving that file as well could save you time for a new install.
Here it is:
http://linux.die.net/man/8/newusers
What you do is ensure that /home is intact, then take a copy of the existing /etc/passwd file before you wipe / and re-install the new OS. You would then replace all of the encrypted password fields with a new clear text password. You would then run the newusers command using your modified file as input.
Your existing users would all then have their existing /home directories and be able to log in to the new OS with the new password.
It would be prudent to require that they all change their password straight away.
Edited 2009-10-30 03:24 UTC
FWIW, that has not been my experience. I’ve updated Debian from testing to unstable or from stable to testing numerous times with no problems. Recently, I’ve upgraded SuSE 11.1 to various stages of the 11.2 beta (now RC) without problems too. While I have had times when the process has foobared, this hasn’t been for two or three years now and I suspect that distros have generally got better at dealing with big, system-wide upgrades.
I agree that a fresh new install may well be a better option in some circumstances, or may be unavoidable because, for example, you wish to change the filing system. But increasingly, I think it is worth having a go at upgrade in situ, although as always you need to back everything up in case it all goes wrong.
This computer has had its Ubuntu installation updated more than four times, including Karmic alpha, and it still runs fine.
This time I went even further, even though I have partitioned as you recommend here.
I usually just reinstall on my «/» partition, leving all my previous settings and then run s script I’ve hacked together to get things such as java, flash, dvcss2, all the codecs, fonts and a few apps I like to have (as skype & google earth…), but aren’t installed by default on UNR (oh, yeah my main computer is an EEE 900). You can find the script at the following address: http://nalle.no/apps/standard-installapps-ubuntu As I said, it’s just a hack, but it’ll give you all the extras.
This time I did a clean install; only copying back again .mozilla, .mozilla-thunderbird and .evolution (yeah, I use them both, and I did backup my /home-partition). That way all I get to see how the interface looks by default, as I usually configure my interface quite heavily.
Usually I do this only on LTS-releases, but 9.10 had been hyped so much that I felt I just had to….
Edited for typos….
Nalle Berg
./nalle.
Edited 2009-11-01 06:56 UTC
I’m surprised no one had noticed that the above post is a troll; google “TRS-80” and you’ll know why.
What are you talking about? That is NOT a frigging troll. That’s exactly what it looked like!
If I could have taken a screenshot, I definitely would have.
Don’t make stupid assumptions.
Edit: Judging by the fact that you had to “google TRS-80”, I’d say you’re too young to even know what that is. So I guess I don’t blame you for being ignorant. I do own a TRS-80 computer, by the way. (two, actually.. along with 20 other computers from the 1980’s)
Edited 2009-10-30 03:38 UTC
I had Ubuntu 9.04 working just fine on my Hackintosh under VMWare Fusion 2. Upgraded to 9.10 and sound and video didn’t play in the correct manner. Tried all sorts of fixes from forums – nada.
Screw it, going back to 9.04 😐
Edited 2009-10-30 11:18 UTC
I use 9.04 on my home PC for some months now – no major problems encountered. Yesterday I have installed 9.10 on my work laptop (Lenovo T61p, as second OS alongside Vista) – as far as I can see it – everything works fine. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, video (NVidia proprietary driver), card-reader, sound – all works. Installation (from USB stick) was quick and painless. Boot times: 40 sec vs. 100 sec. for Vista
Ubuntu shutdown is also noticeably faster. With more and more applications moving to the Web, so software compatibility becoming less critical, I think Ubuntu becomes really viable OS to use in many scenarios.
But I see people in real life using local applications.
Yeah, I see Canonical, Goole and everyone’s hyping the cloud, while computer users prefer to have both apps and their documentation locally.
I fint this a bit amusing, really!
Nalle Berg
./nalle.
Shouldn’t this kind of personal plug be reserved for one’s own personal blog? Walter Kronkite would never have been so shameless, that’s for sure.
I think its relevant. If you are using Ubuntu 9.10 now open:
/usr/share/example-content/Ubuntu_Free_Culture_Showcase/water-and-wind .ogv
Its Eugenia’s video.
I did. Her video is completely unrelated to Ubuntu, FOSS, technology, OSNews, or pretty much anything else that belongs on this site.
This is one time that I can’t help but feel that “Why is this on OSNews?” *is* an appropriate question.
Edited 2009-10-30 21:33 UTC
Another great release. First time I’ve used a default theme by choice. Looks sharp, lot’s of new features but not without a few hangups.
This is just my system, your mileage may vary.
ATI Catalyst driver for my 3650 HD is a no go at this point. Firefox (and the net connection in general) is slower that I remember with 9.04. So far that’t it in my one day of use.
The pro’s are the track pad for my laptop is less sporadic and more under control, new software, 2GB of cloud storage (yay, remote *.conf.bak file storage!), looks sharp, boots fast, but I think I upgraded to early. Wait a couple weeks if you just want pick up and go where you left off. I contemplated a rolling release alternative like Arch or returning to a more manual admin solution like Slackware after losing a lot of customizations I had made over the last 6 months. But ah, whatever, I’ll live.
Nice work everyone! Another great release.
Just install chromium from PPA:
https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa
“disable touchpad while typing” (without custom hacks) also works now.
I have installed Kubuntu 9.10 and I’m really trying to like it, but so far I really don’t.
Visually it has been a real disappointment. Is it a Kubuntu thing or does the KDE world have something against *contrast*? Icons, wallpaper, applets, window borders, window areas… everything is white, very pale shades of baby blue or extremely light gray, which makes everything mash together in an indistinct blob. The tiny font sizes they have chosen don’t help usability either. And there is not a single vivid theme or color set available by default.
The start menu is large and ugly, using an enormous space in screen for no good reason, and it works in a less than intuitive way, with panes that shift out of existance (and eventually back in, once you figure how).
Kpackagekit sucks badly. It opens to an absolutely empty list of packages. Results from searches make it less than clear if packages are already installed or not, and icons use the smoke-like contrastless KDE convention. And for some reason, package installation appears to be SLOW, far slower than with Synaptic.
And the terminology! It sounds like phony-kool, and is often impenetrable, but it is thrown at your eyes mindlessly. WTF is Akonadi? And what in the world is A PLASMOID!! Like, is it something from outer space? And what about Nepomuk/Strigi? All this comic-book talk does not help usability a bit.
I’ll keep using it for now, to see if it does grow on me. It does look far more polished than the 4.1 version I tried a few months ago, which I found disastrous. The subjacent software technology is very impressive, but I think a lot of work has to be poured into streamlining and accessibility until I find it as as simple and comfy as Gnome is now. Of course, it is my opininon, YMMV, and I am in fact taking the plunge and adopting it for some time to to check if I am wrong.
— EDIT: It DOES have very nice things, like that default integration of 3D effects like window previews in the taskbar, and the default Exposé (TM) feature that works very well.Activating those things in Gnome is a pain in the butt, and does require installing extra software and deciding on absurd little details just in the way that has been traditionally been criticized about KDE (like, what corner?, what delay?, what transparency?, with what key?, etc.)
Edited 2009-11-01 23:23 UTC
No, it’s not just you. Sadly, where Kubuntu is concerned time-based releases and a lack of resources mean they just cannot get ahead. The time-based releases don’t help regular Ubuntu either. Too many things are half-finished or bumped repeatedly until later releases, sometimes never to be heard or seen of again.