Here’s a recently written review of the new Hoary Array-5 LiveCD, with some background of the Ubuntu project and a bunch of screenshots.
Review of Hoary Array-5 LiveCD
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Ubuntu Linux 5.04 Array-4 Live CD:
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=235&slide=1
Ubuntu Linux 4.10:
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=156&slide=1
nice article.. i’m on hoary right now – quite stable – few weeks ago i had regular system-breaks with the upgrades but as an experienced debian user i managed to survive it
i guess the stability is improving as the release gets nearer.. one thing that still needs improvement is the palm-sync. (gpilot) it crashes evolution quite a lot which is anoying.. oh and openoffice’s gnome-filedialog (for saving) crashes openoffices – i switched back to the native OOo dialogs..
all in all i’m looking forward to the hoary release – keep up the good work guys!
Download directory (select the proper .iso or .torrent for downloading):
ftp://cdimage.ubuntulinux.org/cdimage/releases/hoary/array-5/
Can anyone reach the article?
not anymore. it was up a few minites ago.
Apparently my pybloxsom setup can’t take the load this is putting out — can you try http://ryanthiessen.com/static/hoary_array5.html and Eugenia maybe update the story link to that too? Apparently I just DDoS’d my own server….
nice article.. i’m on hoary right now – quite stable – few weeks ago i had regular system-breaks with the upgrades but as an experienced debian user i managed to survive it
i guess the stability is improving as the release gets nearer.. one thing that still needs improvement is the palm-sync. (gpilot) it crashes evolution quite a lot which is anoying.. oh and openoffice’s gnome-filedialog (for saving) crashes openoffices – i switched back to the native OOo dialogs..<p>First thing- have you sent off bug reports? Might as well get hoary to run as well as it can on your machine. Second thing- you know OpenOffice2 is in the universe repo….right?
Not only did Eugenia change the link within a matter of minutes — I also got some nifty tips to get apache more able to stand up to the osnews load a bit better. Thanks a tonne!
Oh come on. Enough with this Ubuntu Business. Its not big and its not clever even though it appeals to a few of you. Keep banging your own drums till you get tired and your distro will fall back into near obscurity. See: Linspire, Xandros etc etc.
Yawn!!!!
Ubuntu is the first distro that provided me with everything I needed. Debian’s package management system is awesome and has never broken on me. GNOME is my favorite DE. Ubuntu filled a hole, which is a Debian-Based, Gnome-Centric, Well-Integrated Distro.
http://www.whatsoever.mine.nu/ubuntu/hoary_array5.html
incase /.org
Great review, Ryan, very informative. Lots of cool new stuff to drool over 🙂
Nitpick: one of the thumbnails links to http://ryanthiessen.com/uploads/hoaryarray5/openoffice-sysment.png , whereas it should really point to http://ryanthiessen.com/uploads/hoaryarray5/openoffice-sysmenu.png .
Good work. It wasn’t so much a review as a preview; “Here’s what to expect from the next release” kind of thing. Really helpful and informative. It really got me fired up about the changes that are coming with Hoary. Even though I promised myself I wasn’t going to break my flawless warty install ’till the real realase… argh, temptation.
“Even though I promised myself I wasn’t going to break my flawless warty install ’till the real realase… argh, temptation.”
Yeah, that’s the situation I was in too — which is why the LiveCD is nice for giving you a taste of what’s coming in a few months without wrecking your production system. 🙂
I worried about breaking a perfect warty install too, but the upgrade was smooth. In fact, if I had just upgraded the kernel at the same time as the other stuff I wouldn’t have had ndiswrapper breakage at first.
I’m trying to get xglx server from xorg cvs working right now.
I was also holding off on the upgrade to Hoary until the *official* release. However I recently convinced myself to risk breaking my stable Warty install after having read several positive Hoary reviews. I’m happy to report that I have been running Hoary for a few days without a hitch. Let me emphasize that the upgrade from Warty to Hoary went _extremely_ smoothly. I was worried about how the transition to x.org would fare but it was painless. All of my settings in the XFree86 config file were automatically copied to xorg.conf and the proprietary nVidia driver needed no tweaking afterwards.
Many details have been refined in Hoary the result is a very consistent and polished distro.
I still don’t see what all the rave is about Ubuntu. I’ve installed 4.10 and tried it but didn’t think highly of it. So I went back to another distrobution I usually use. People say it has updated packages, but everytime I went to search for a package it wasn’t the latest. So I would try to compile from source, but it had missing libraries. Overall Ubuntu just wasn’t worth the hassle for me. I’m still willing to give Hoary a try when its released.
People say it has updated packages
But not bleeding edge. There’s no reason for such stuff on desktop computer.
but it had missing libraries
apt-get install something-dev?
Overall Ubuntu just wasn’t worth the hassle for me
For you, maybe. For tons of other non-technical people that would like to use Linux, it is.
I’ve tried Ubuntu Warty, and I liked it a lot. It was a really nice implementation of Gnome and Debian SID. It installed easily (albeit a long install for the relatively small amount of packages), ran smoothly, it was stable, Synaptic worked great, and it had an attractive, origninal theme (“Human” brown).
However, I did find it a bit lacking in some areas.
First, hardware detection. Although it was pretty good over all, Ubuntu failed to detect and configure video on my laptop. It ended up in 16 color mode. Insead of digging through the XFree.config file and guessing at the rigth setting, I popped in my SimplyMepis live CD, which has a the ability to save it’s X settings. I did so and when I rebooted with Ubuntu, video was perfect.
The live CD also failed to configure the mouse on my eMachines PC. So it rendered it nearly useless (other than command line terminal sfuff.
Second, I found that the default package selection for the CD installation to be too lacking for my tastes and needs. I want to have development tools (gcc, g++, Glade, etc.), and oddly Ubuntu installed none of these by default. I also like having AbiWord and Gnumeric, also not installed. MySQL, Apache, PHP all would also be nice to have. And I like the Gnome Games, but it’s a good idea to include the likes of Frozen Bubble, LBreakout, SuperTux, and Circus Linux (and others). I believe that there would be enough disc space on one CD for all of this. Knoppix, afterall, has at least twice as many packages on it’s single CD. Yes, it is easy to use apt-get or Synaptic to install from the repositories, but that can be too time consuming, especially on dial up. For me, it’s just nice to have a lot of stuff to use right off the bat.
Third, setting up dial up internet connectivity was a pain. First, I had to go into Gnome System tools and set up a dial up connection. This created the config file for wvDial. Then I had to go into the root console and use wvDial. The config file does not have the modem volumne turned down by default, which made it obnoxiously loud (a setting I was able to change, after digging for the right setting.
Then I wanted to have the Modem Lights applet launch wvDial. But this would not work intitially because my user acount was not part of the “dip” group, something I discovered after digging through the forums.
I don’t like modem lights, and I prefer to use a GUI tool rather than launching a console and typing wvdial (and contorl-C to end it). So I downloaded gnome-ppp, which has to be compiled from source. No biggy (I’ve done it many times with success), except Ubuntu doesn’t have any of the build tools by default (gcc, make, g++, configure, gtk+ dev libs, etc). So I had to Synaptic all of those first. Then I could finally compile and run gnome-ppp.
All in all, this whole process took much longer (a few hours, total) and caused way too much consternation than doing dial up connectivity should. It’s damn near inexcusable, when by contrast with any default KDE installation all one has to do is launch KPPP, provide a dial up number and user and password, and within two minutes one is on the internet.
This whole thing is a major weakness of Gnome, and by extension of Ubuntu. I don’t no why the Gnome and Ubuntu devs refuse to recognize that a very sizable amount of current and potential Linux users are on dial up, and thus don’t priortize making dial up as easy as it should be.
Finally, the fourth weakness was, as I’ve already mentioned, the complete lack of programming/build tools. I know Ubuntu is targeted as a simple desktop distro, and I know it’s easy to use apt-get/Synaptic to get those things. But I consider the basic programming/build tools (gcc, make, automake, gdb, etc.) an essential part of any Linux or Unix system. I think this holds true even the end user is complete non-programmer. It’s both tradition and practicality to have all the essential build tools, as distribution by source is still a major part of the open source and Linux worlds.
Again, I do like Ubuntu. I think it has a lot of potential and I will most likely give it another try with future releases. However, I do hope that the Ubuntu team addresses some of the above weaknesses.
First, hardware detection. Although it was pretty good over all, Ubuntu failed to detect and configure video on my laptop. It ended up in 16 color mode. Insead of digging through the XFree.config file and guessing at the rigth setting, I popped in my SimplyMepis live CD, which has a the ability to save it’s X settings. I did so and when I rebooted with Ubuntu, video was perfect.
Hoary, in my experience, had amazing hardware detection for me. It was the first one that could detect my 1280×768 screen and show it as such. Warty, I admit was lacking at this.
Finally, the fourth weakness was, as I’ve already mentioned, the complete lack of programming/build tools. I know Ubuntu is targeted as a simple desktop distro, and I know it’s easy to use apt-get/Synaptic to get those things. But I consider the basic programming/build tools (gcc, make, automake, gdb, etc.) an essential part of any Linux or Unix system. I think this holds true even the end user is complete non-programmer. It’s both tradition and practicality to have all the essential build tools, as distribution by source is still a major part of the open source and Linux worlds.
if you needed essential build tools, you could’ve just `apt-get install build-essential`. This isn’t default and doesn’t need to be for a new Linux user, but it is easily available for those who need it.
I like the Gnome Games, but it’s a good idea to include the likes of Frozen Bubble, LBreakout, SuperTux, and Circus Linux (and others). I believe that there would be enough disc space on one CD for all of this.
One of the greatest things about Ubuntu is the fact that it is only on One CD, instead of being on a DVD or 2-4 CD pack like most modern distros (Slackware, Suse, Fedora, Mandrake, etc.) I’m not sure whether they could’ve fit the extra games you requested (it’s possible), but I’d rather not have them than have to use more than one CD, because that is a pain.
I don’t have any experience as far as dial-up goes to comment on that.
This review broke the redundant daily reviews with some very good in depth info with, best of all, nice pictures.
My favourite thing? That they changed “desktop” as a menu item to “System”. That was driving me nuts with how little sense it made. With that I must say I love the new menu structure. Warty’s menu structure was great but there were some associations that didn’t make a lot of sense (although a huge improvement). This seems to be a perfect seperation.
I would love to hear some thoughts on xorg and stuff. Any improvements noticed?
Does anybody know anything about it? I couldn’t find it anywhere.
I just installed this on a dummy machine.
Overall things have improved much more than I thought. Overall the program that impresses me the most is Open Office 2 with the gnome look. I checked a dev release on windows a while ago but this is amazing. Before Openoffice always felt like an Office step child but this is way improved and with the gnome integration it feels at home more than I ever thought it could.
The author was correct in that a lot of changes aren’t ones that jump out, they are just nice polishes that make the idea of Linux on the desktop feel that much more prime time.
Some notable things I noticed that should be addressed:
-Still no services program like fedora has, restarting services is simply a reality (mostly for servers), there should be easy tools for this.
– I love how the places menu shows my saved dialog places and all but the whole places thing still isn’t implemented right. My biggest gripe is that nautilus doesn’t have a option to add the current location as a saved place. This is a no brainer.
– Still no option to just have spatial windows auto-close after going to a new folder. I always use the middle mouse button but it’s not as easy using a scroll wheel. They really need to make this an option for default behaivor.
Great work overall!!
You do realize that Warty has only been getting security updates for several months now, don’t you? It’s the stable version
Debian Sid = Hoary, not Warty.
kubuntu: https://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/Kubuntu
bug-reports filed – bug-buddy is also improvement-worthy.. but that’s another story
i’m using Ubuntu/PPC and there’s no openoffice.org2-core nor openoffice.org2-bin package, so i can’t get into testing that..
As a Warty-user i think this is an excellent review, and Hoary looks promising – looks like a lot of the annoyances i’ve had with Warty is gone in Hoary. 🙂
“The add repository function could still use a bit of love, to make it more obvious how to add Universe and Multiverse if you don’t already know those names — but it’s an overwhelming improvement.”
It’s the second review in which the author complains about these community and non-free repositories. On a lighter note, what’s up with all these names : Warty Warthog, Hoary Hedgehog, Universe, Multiverse ? What’s next : Ubuntu Anubis Alkesh ?
i’ve worked with many distributions and BSDs over the years – the “right tool for the right job”.
but for my own desktop (email, web, documents, development) i use mandrake. and have done for many years … but i am considering ubuntu. i don’t worry about installing things myself using the package manager… that’s not a problem. neither is gnome/kde … i use xfce with mostly gtk apps.
my main concern with mandrake is that it is getting too big – its kernel tries to do everything, and the base system has scripts authired in different sttyles, all workingin different ways. there is no consistency.
i wonder if this aspect of “quality” is different in Ubuntu?
i’d appreciate people’s experiences of converting to ubiuntu (and back again?)
For those who have had display issues (i810?) add the following to your xorg.conf.
HorizSync 56-85
VertRefresh 30-81
I’ve been running it on my main development machine and on two more that just rarely run Linux (most of the time is Windows.)
Although when we want to keep up with Hoary the systems gets relatively unstable, due to the newness of the packages/softwares/installations, the system tends to support a little bit and we can still keeping working on it.
Bottom line: Ubuntu rocks! Hoary is awesomely fast in GTK+, GNOME, and pretty. But when you want to live on the edge, you live on the edge. Enough said. 🙂
Anyone know anything about this? Please share if you do. This sounds interesting.
my main concern with mandrake is that it is getting too big – its kernel tries to do everything, and the base system has scripts authired in different sttyles, all workingin different ways. there is no consistency.
i wonder if this aspect of “quality” is different in Ubuntu?
This is also what I don’t like about some distributions like Mandrake. They do weird things behind your back that you have no clue about.
Ubuntu doesn’t really do anything “behind your back” except when you install a package it may do some sort of pre/post-configuration for you to get it working (same way Debian does it).
There is a new graphical front-end for apt called “Update Manager” that notifies one when system updates are available. What it seems to do is run “apt-get update” in the background and if newer versions of any installed packages are available then an icon appears in the system tray to notify the user. Clicking on the icon opens a window that displays a list of the new packages that are available. Each entry in the list contains the name of the package, a brief description of its purpose and the new version number. There is a check box next to each package so that one may individually select which updates to install. Update Manager has a preferences section that allows one to add additional repositories to the apt sources list. This tool is a vast improvement over synaptic when it comes to installing system updates because it is so much easier to navigate and the interface is much cleaner. Kudos to the Ubuntu team!
I forgot to mention that only users with sudo privileges are permited to run Update Manager so that the security of a system cannot be compromised by allowing anyone to install updates.
<<I still don’t see what all the rave is about Ubuntu. I’ve installed 4.10 and tried it but didn’t think highly of it. >>
Heretic! ;p
But seriously now …. Why not? It’s got the least kruft of any Linux distro I’ve yet tried. Granted, it’s no OS X, but more so than any other Linux I’ve attempted, it pissed me off the least. I mean, I’ve managed to get actual work done with Ubuntu as opposed to just trying to make it work.
<< but everytime I went to search for a package it wasn’t the latest.>>
Aha, therein lies your problem.
Ubuntu is NOT about the bleeding edge. It’s about letting the others get their fingers all sliced to ribbons, harvesting the good stuff and polishing it up a bit and putting it in a package that just motors along with very few problems.
It’s goal is to be the Honda Civic of Linux. (It’s not quite there yet, but rather close.)
I really hope several things coincide with this release:
1. Mono 1.2
2. F-Spot stable version (the version in hoary is buggy as all…)
3. OOo2, although since they have it in there all things poin t to this being included (if it comes out on time)
4. Beagle, this is supposed to coincide with gnome 2.10 but I think it needs 1.2 mono. So far there is no sign of either but I thought they mentioned they were going to try and get it included on the dev-list.
These are my biggest concerns. Other than this, is anyone using a wireless card? I’m curious how good their wireless stuff is now, warty’s included tools were pretty darn lackin g (no ability to have wireless profiles for this office, home, etc).
2.6.11, but I’m not sure when this is coming out.
Supposedly this is the first release where Suspend to ram will work with my laptop (nx7010 by hp). Here’s hoping.
Some things Gnome and Ubuntu need:
– A dial up tool
– Bigger resize grip on lower right corner of all windows, it’s a pain to resize a window currently.
– A keyboard layout switcher that _works_, mine throws errors when adding new layouts on fresh install
– Better taskbar with windows not resizing depending on the number of opened windows. Just look at http://ryanthiessen.com/uploads/hoaryarray5/update-manager.png, there’s a pleanty of free space there and still windoew titles do not read. Take a look at how XFCE guys solved that.
– Bayesian filter for Evolution, spamassassin does not cut it at all
– I would really like a Macos X style menu on the top, please…
– Did I mention dial-up tool?
Thanks!
Is this a review of ubuntu or a review of new gnome?
Because if I was a gnome developer I would get a bit annoyed that other people take merit of my work.
– Bigger resize grip on lower right corner of all windows, it’s a pain to resize a window currently.
I really agree with this. I miss the corner all the time. It’s so annoying.
Is this a review of ubuntu or a review of new gnome?
Because if I was a gnome developer I would get a bit annoyed that other people take merit of my work.
Ubuntu uses a Gnome desktop, thus a review of the new features in Ubuntu is mostly the same as a review of the new features in Gnome. I’m certain the Ubuntu developers aren’t taking credit for all the new features that Gnome has made, and I didn’t try to imply that they did all the work either. If you find a place in my article that I unfairly suggested or implied that Ubuntu developers were doing work that they are not, please let me know and I’ll make a correction to it.
What does ‘its kernel tries to do everything’ actually _mean_? The MDK kernel is fairly small, it’s a little bigger than a floppy since 2.6 rolled around, but pretty small. There’s a huge pile of modules, sure, but hey – they’re *modules*. If you don’t have the hardware they’re not even _LOADED_. I fail to see how providing comprehensive hardware support can possible be a bad thing.
Set your minimum tasklist width to however much space you actually have for it, and it’ll work how you want it to. That’s how I have mine setup. Spamassassin _is_ a Bayesian filter, although it has a lot more than just Bayesian analysis.
– Bigger resize grip on lower right corner of all windows, it’s a pain to resize a window currently.
You can use alt+middle click to resize windows anywhere you click on them, but I agree that’s not immediately obvious. I miss it in Windows, though.
– Better taskbar with windows not resizing depending on the number of opened windows.
Definitely – there seems to be something odd going on with the task bar in GNOME. Just truncating the titles more intelligently would help a lot.
.- Bayesian filter for Evolution, spamassassin does not cut it at all
spamassassin catches 95% of my spam with zero false positives (yet). That’s about 100-120 spam a day. You just need to retrain it every so often. I don’t think there’s much point the evolution guys implementing yet another filter.
– I would really like a Macos X style menu on the top, please…
I would love this too. I’m sure I’ve seen some work on it on the GTK mailing list, so maybe we’ll get it eventually.
Here we go..ubuntu will be that Gnu/Linux system that will be running on my parents pc.
Use the force opensource
I’ve installed Warty & Hoary on the new VMware 5.0rc2 and it works wonderfully. I can use windows xp and a gnome/debian desktop all at the same time.
just wanna say hi to the author who also lives in Vancouver!
anyway…
love Ubuntu
I’ve switched from Mandrake => Fedora => now Ubuntu.
I have to say Ubuntu is the best.
Fedora, though seems to be more cutting edge with features, is just too bloated and unorganized.
Ubuntu is really well tuned out of the box.
Hi
Just installed Ubuntu and it would let me login as root.
I can log in as a regular use but when I type su it won’t let me
How do you fix this?
>Set your minimum tasklist width to however
I have the same problem the dude has. I still cannot make every window to be the same size on the taskbar, no matter if there are only 3 or 10 windows open. You have some tips about this?
I currently use xfce4taskbar and it’s doing prety good job. I also use xfwm to be able to minimise and restore without animations and use mouse wheel to shade the window and change the desktop. I really thing Metacity and Gnome panel are two of the weakest parts in Gnome.
The answer you seek is here:
http://www.ubuntuguide.org/#setchangeenablerootpassword
– Bigger resize grip on lower right corner of all windows, it’s a pain to resize a window currently.
I would strongly recommend using openbox instead of metacity. The resize grip is not any bigger, but you can easily maximize windows vertically or horizontally by clicking on maxify with the middle or right mouse button respectively. This at least satisfies almost all my resizing needs. It’s particularily handy if you work with lots of terminals.
Spambayes does a pretty good job for me, I use sb_server (POP3 proxy) and it catches spam that goes undetected by my ISP’s spamassassin (could be that my ISP set up spamassassin wrong though).
http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/
The shipped kernel will be 2.6.10, but the power management code has been backported from 2.6.11. Suspend to RAM will be disabled by default, but easily enabled.
That’s odd. AFAIK, the default behaviour is for every one to be the same width, even if there’s just one. I don’t like this, I’d rather it always used up the same space and just resized the buttons to fit (yes, like Windows, I know, I know). I distinctly remember I had to change the settings to make this happen – by default it just created a tiny little button even if just one app was open, then an equally sized one next to it for the next app, and so on and so forth. This was with GNOME 2.6, since updated to 2.8. If yours doesn’t work like that the only thing I can suggest is to set your minimum width really small, like 64, and your max to 4096 or whatever, if that doesn’t do it then I don’t know, sorry. Setting the min width to the space you have available makes it act like I want it to, Windows-style.
Hey thanks for the pointer about the root thing. I’ve already set that!. Still no go.
even if i log in on console (<ctl><alt><f1>) it doesn’t log in.
THe root password is correct because I can log in as a regular user and then run the system commands after typing in the proper root password.
Maybe it’s time for a reinstall or somthing.
Lets keep trying. A reinstall sounds drastic (well….until Hoary preview release comes).
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/documentation/faq/root/
What about the MODEM? Not everyone is on broad band. how easy is it to set up a modem and get it to work in the new version?