A preview of Ubuntu Linux 5.04 has been released. This release comes with GNOME 2.10 which was released yesterday.
Ubuntu 5.04 Preview Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Already downloading, very excited! Thanks to all developers that worked hurd for us to have a nice distro. I am particualrly interested in fast boot and hrdware detection.
Woooho! And first comment!
pretty much broke the shit outta my install. I still like the distro though and its apt/deb based can’t beat that!
After Gnome 2.10 Yesterday I already expected it to release today.
Great news!
Time to say good-bye to MEPIS on my test 10GB drive. Now Hoary gets to compete head to head against Fedora to be my top dog desktop distro 😉
It will be a tough fight with heaps of digital blood and gore.
Other than significantly improved Wifi and Laptop support the improvements incremental. Quite stable.
Issues I found:
Still no gui to manage services
No gui way to mount a drive – although you can now mount a server with SSH or FTP.
No gui link to launch pppoeconf (altought this is improved). PPPOE not integrated into network configuration
Issues if you change video cards – doesn’t auto detect and reconfigure.
<a href=”http://xminc.com/mt“>http://xminc.com/mt
I’m not a fan of Gnome for a wide variety of reasons, but those Ubuntu guys and gals have done a really superb quality job in bringing a lot of technology together into a usable end distribution.
Thanks to all developers that worked hurd…
I know it was unintentional, but you’ve no idea how funny that sounds.
This summed it up pretty well.
GnomeLiveCd – http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=280&slide=6
I tested Ubuntu 4.10. It has destroyed the geometry of my hd. Now, I am living with only one parition on which w2k is installed. I can no more test any distro. No way to restore the geometry from the BIOS. Has anybody experienced this? Any hints, advices?
Thanks
“I’m not a fan of Gnome for a wide variety of reasons…”
Try Kubuntu – http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=271&slide=1…
//pretty much broke the shit outta my install. I still like the distro though …/
I trust you’re *not* the kind of user who would scream like hell, if this happened during a Windows upgrade.
I admire your loyalty. Any OS upgrade that completely borked an existing install for me, would be the last upgrade I ever did with that OS.
(and no, this has never happened to me with Windows … yet …)
Did you search/ask at http://www.ubuntuforums.org? I’m sure you’ll find something about it there and if you don’t, simply ask. The people there are very nice and helpful in my experience, another plus for ubuntu imho.
you dont upgrade debian based systems by downloading cds and going through an installer. man apt-get sometime…
Matthew (IP: 12.25.238.—):
“did an apt upgrade to hoary from warty last night..”
mattb (IP: 216.191.126.—):
you dont upgrade debian based systems by downloading cds and going through an installer. man apt-get sometime…”
ralph (IP: —.dip.t-dialin.net):
“?????????”
”
I admire your loyalty. Any OS upgrade that completely borked an existing install for me, would be the last upgrade I ever did with that OS. ”
its called a preview release for a reason. if you are worried about broken upgrades only use the final version
Try Kubuntu…
Yes, that sounds like an interesting project. There was some debate as to whether a KDE-oriented Ubuntu would happen, but it looks like it is. I wish them well.
I’m downloading the PPC version and I won’t sleep tonight as I install it
Is polypaudio working better/more consistantly? I downgraded from array five back to warty about 2 weeks ago because I couldn’t get any sound. I’m adopting a wait and see before I upgrade again.
I would say that it depends on your hardware — my three machines are now running hoary and the polypaudio sound system is working fine for all three of them. If it isn’t working for yours I’d suggest you upgrade today and report it as a bug so it has a better chance of being fixed before the release.
Mmm, thanks for the shot. I’m leaning toward KDE these days… but I really don’t see what they have done with it. I mean, Kubuntu looks like just any other generic distro.
For now Kubuntu is a standard KDE install. However, here’s the plan: https://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/Kubuntu
very very impressed by the quality of work and ease of use of Gnome 2.10 and ubuntu.
I tried it on my work machine in windows network and I was able to browse the network right away and even print to windows printer on the network.
it was plug and play no configuration from my side.
I like how Gnome control center is mature now and gives more and easy control to the user on configuring the system and hardware.
However, I will not switch to Ubunta (even though I seriesly consider it) The only reason is that debian package database (which Ubunta is based on) is not complete as gentoo’s. Debian packages are mostly open source, I couldn’t find comercial packages like vmware or opera. I know there are opensource alternatives, but I need a choice. Gentoo gives me a choice. I can’t wait ’til Gnome 2.10 is ready for Gentoo.
I highly recommend Ubunta for people who like debian (it’s better than Linspire($$$) which is based on debian too and ubunta is free unlike Linspire)
-Bedros
Opera can be downloaded in .deb format, for Debian SID, which Hoary is based on.
I’m currently running Opera 8 beta 2 on Hoary.
I have a Dell D505 laptop. I tried Ubuntu 4.10, Fedora Core3, Suse 9.2, and NLD (I know same thing). None of them would configure either KDE or Gnome properly. All I got on a straight install was a green screen. I tweaked the configs on Fedora and got it working at 800×600, but not the native 1024×768. I gave up because I have two other machines running Ubuntu and did not want to mess with it anymore.
Long story short.. I am typing this on 5.04 Live CD. No tweaking, no green screen. Just plain worked. I was already an Ubuntu fan, but they have me hook, line and sinker now.
vmware has scripts which make its installation super simple. even after a kernel upgrade, just rerun the config script and it will recompile your kernel modules. i’d say it as almost as if not as easy as doing an emerge vmware-workstation.
RE:I tested Ubuntu 4.10. It has destroyed the geometry of my hd. Now, I am living with only one parition on which w2k is installed. I can no more test any distro. No way to restore the geometry from the BIOS. Has anybody experienced this? Any hints, advices?
Thanks
partition magic is your friend
yeah, kubuntu isn’t there yet. ubuntu is great, I’d use it if it wasn’t gnome 😉
You can install KDE-3.4 in Hoary:
sudo apt-get install kde-core kdebase kdemultimedia
Woah, even the LiveCD boots fast, detects the hardware very fast, runs fast..
I love this distribution!
This is what Linux should be:
– nice look and feel (tiny details like the introduction sound rocks and makes me feel all warm and nice when I hear it
– fast boot / hw detection (it just flies)
– and indeed, it does ‘just work’! (all my hw is detected out of the box! even MS hasn’t been able to do that for years)
>Is polypaudio working better/more consistantly
I had a bit of trouble with it – the latency it added to sound meant sound would get out of sync while watching movies, so I switched to ALSA/DMIX for most things. I’ve seen polypaudio go mad and take up 100% CPU until I killed it once since then (a few days ago). It’s better than ESD, anyway.
I switched from FC3 to Hoary last week and Hoary is the more stable and bug-free of the two, despite being a preview release. It even had GNOME 2.10 two days before the official release! FC3 might have been marginally faster at redrawing and general desktop things, but it’s hard to tell.
There are still a few bugs (mime-info etc) but they’re being fixed rapidly. It’s a massive improvement on Warty.
Just wow, love this distro. They have really cleaned up Debian and Gnome to a level any person can use easily. I’ve been using pure Debian GNU/Linux Unstable for about 4 years now, and I think I’m going replace it with Ubuntu soon. I just love the way everything comes together so nicely without effort.
My current desktop looks very similar to Ubuntu after tweaking through the years, but it’s so nice to see someone get it right on the default install. Also, Nautilus browsing of Windows domains works properly now!! YEAH!!!
Ubuntu looks like they will be the one. The one to get it all right: philosophy, ease of use, and consistency.
Only problem so far… when you lock the screen on the Live CD, WTH is the password to unlock it?
“No gui way to mount a drive – although you can now mount a server with SSH or FTP.”
Wait wait what????
Forgive me… I’ve been running WindowsXP on my laptop (and my previous laptop, which I would’ve installed linux on if it wasn’t impossible to use my linksys usb wireless b/g adapter with) for a while, and I’m going to install this preview release on my new amd64 laptop, but from what I remember back when I ran gentoo+gnome on my desktop machine not too long ago (which I sold to buy my previous laptop), you could easilly mount a drive from your desktop w/ gnome.
Another nice detail: when you logout (using the LiveCD), you’ll get at the GDM screen, which shows a message that (depending on what you do) Ubuntu will automatically re-login after a number of seconds.
That’s really a great feature for a LiveCD, I like it! No more “eh, what’s the password?”-questions anymore when trying out this dist, just wait and it will again ‘just work’
I can’t understand why Gnome still doesn’t have a gui for PPPoE. Sheesh.
I’m guessing it’s about a month a way from -final? I thought Ubuntu released a new version DAYS after a new Gnome, but the final version won’t be available for another month? I was sure that 4.10 was released just days after a new gnome?
Nup. Warty Preview was released on the day of GNOME’s release. Warty Final was a month later. Very similar release cycle for both. 🙂
I tested Ubuntu 4.10. It has destroyed the geometry of my hd. Now, I am living with only one parition on which w2k is installed. I can no more test any distro. No way to restore the geometry from the BIOS. Has anybody experienced this? Any hints, advices?
Pretty old problem and not specific to Ubuntu.
Way back in the depths of time, CHS values actually related to the physical characteristics of the hard drive. Times moved on, now they don’t. This means that for legacy code that still depends on CHS (Mostly some ancient, but useful BIOS functions) the operating system that installs the MBR has to make up some CHS values for the drive that’ll allow the legacy code to run (Eg Windows bootloader relies on the CHS values stored in the MBR if the drive isn’t set to LBA in the BIOS, thanks to using the old version of the BIOS disk functions).
Now the 2.4 kernel’s gave CHS values that are the same as ones Windows would use, however the 2.6 kernels DON’T (It tries to use information from the drive afaik). The CHS values produced by Windows and a 2.6 kernel are now totally different.
This has two major consequences if you alter the partition table using a 2.6 kernel (Eg During a distro install), thanks to the Linux disk tools getting their CHS info from the kernel.
a) Unless you set the disk to LBA mode in BIOS your Windows install will no longer boot.
b) If you later attempt to partition your drive using Windows things will screw up in new and fun ways.
How to fix:
a) Backup your Windows
b) Try using Ranish Partition Manager to change geometry to 16 heads and 63 sectors/track
Pray that works.
If it doesn’t you have two options.
You can accept that you’re never going to use Windows to partition you disk ever again:
a) Grab a 2.6 kernel linux recovery disk/cd/livecd
b) Use whatever tools the disk has to create your partitions (Eg fdisk/cfdisk/parted etc)
or
Be damned if you’re gonna let a few 0s and 1s get the better of you:
a) Sacrifice two live chickens
b) Active the Win2k recovery console boot option (Use google)
c) Grab a Linux recovery disk/cd/livecd (My favourite is RIP)
d) Boot Linux
e) Use dd to back up your existing MBR
f) Read the sfdisk manual
g) Repeat f) until you actually know what you’re doing
h) Use sfdisk to get ALL information on the current partitioning scheme
i) Create a new blank MBR using sfdisk with a geometry of 16 heads and 63 sectors/track. It should calculate cylinders for you.
j) Recreate your MBR using sfdisk and the information from h), making sure that partitions are aligned to cylinder boundaries (The Windows partition already will be). Be sure to give everything the appropriate type and set the Windows partition to bootable.
k) Reboot
l) Pray to the deity of your choice
m) Boot Windows in recovery console mode
n) Run FIXMBR then FIXBOOT
o) Boot Windows normally
p) Use Windows to partition things to your heart’s content
q) Curse whichever Linux dev decided not to calculate geometry using the existing MBR
After k) you’ll need to be able to get your hands on a floppy with GRUB installed and use GRUB’s command line mode to chainload the Windows bootloader because at this point the MBR contains no code, only partition information.
For portability and stability reasons, polypaudio has been removed for Hoary in favor of ESounD, which has seen a bit of love these past couple months. Sticking with something that works for all supported platforms is better than “upgrading” to something that shows regressions on PPC, for instance.
A number of “software mixing” solutions have been considered. Hoary+1 may well see polypaudio. Then again, something completely different may surface.
http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2005-March/005336.htm…
A “sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade” should have worked for you last night, though post-Preview, i.e. now, will work better since a couple packages have seen additional tweaking.
I tested Ubuntu 4.10. It has destroyed the geometry of my hd. Now, I am living with only one parition on which w2k is installed. I can no more test any distro. No way to restore the geometry from the BIOS. Has anybody experienced this? Any hints, advices?
Easiest thing is to get a Demo of Paragon Partition Manager
http://www.partition-manager.com/comparison.htm
Everything in GUI – partitions to ext2/3, Reiser, fat32,NTFS
one thing can’t do in the free Demo is resizing partitions- you can buy it or use resizing when installing – if I recall
PCLinuxOS, Vector offer resizing at install time …
and if should get the HD so messed up that no Windows or BIOS would acknowledge you have a HD- go to your manufacturer site – like Maxtor,WD,Seagate- they all have utilities to download on floppy, and doing a zero format would make it show up (that’s what I did on an old HD nonFAT that would not be seen by the PC if I equiped it w/glasses.
Got Ubuntu(debian),Vector(slack),PCLinuxOS(rpm),win98(1st edition -thnx to Linux or I would have had to return my Netgear wireless card) BeOS5PE on own partition on a Winbook XL2 with 1 pixel off after 5 years.
I thought I submitted this news
But anyways I am already downloading!!!
Can anyone guess when Gnome 2.10 will be in Debian Sid?
Sigh. I actually prefer “straight” Debian a bit more than Ubuntu (after getting it installed and configured, of course), but since they are preparing for the release of Sarge for SOME time, things have slowed down…
i’m now in a quandry over whether to install Hoary or Suse 9.3 when i get a new box next month.
It seems most internauts have a positive view on ubuntu. No bad comments so far. That’s a welcomed change on Osnews’ comments sections! Maybe we’ll completelly get rid of trolls (no matter the subject), and we’ll have only insightfull comments from now on!;)
More on topic: Go Ubuntu!
Thanks you all for your answers. When and if I have time, I
will try to do something. This accident is not so dramatic.
It happened on an only 5-years old (!) DELL machine (12 Gb hd),
I got for free. My daily working box is a win98 machine
running very well.
Anyway, this incident has shown some interesting things:
-“Linux” is complicate.
-Ubuntu does no do better than the other distros.
-This type of incident is not due to a mistake from me.
-Windows just works.
Having only a dialup connection, I will not be able to
download all the nice tools you kindly suggested to use.
For the present time, I will stay with Windows. It works
and it does the job. After having tried several distros,
I come to the conclusion “Linux” is not for me. Now with
only one partition, I will no more be tempted by any
other “Linux” experience and finally this will save my
time.
Thanks again for your replies. Regards.
this is one of those rare occasions when all most of the gdesklets actually work. Nice!
Now I just need to figure out how to get ubuntu to go online at my local Bread Company restaurant with wireless.
Is it “wireless-tools that I need? Does that package include the drivers for my Belkin usb nic? I’ll figure it out but a quick how to will be nice.
Having only a dialup connection, I will not be able to
download all the nice tools you kindly suggested to use.
I love ubuntu. I use it daily. But I shudder to think what the experiance would be on dial-up. To get it configured how I want, it needs to download at least 170mbs more than the plain install.
That would be hell on dial-up. Oh well, broadband saturation grows not shrinks. Everyone I’ve wanted to give Ubuntu to has had broadband.
Just updated my Warty install to the Hoary preview. Been working just fine for me so far. Lack of menu editing is a pain, but I can deal.
Wow. Ubuntu screwed up my disk geometry recently too, and I have been ripping my hair out trying to figure out what the heck is going on. I’m glad I read these comments.
So the real question is: How can I install Ubuntu in the future without completely hosing my hard drive?
fraeone
kubontu daily cd can be found here:
http://cdimage.ubuntulinux.org/
I actualy run normal Ubuntu hoary + kde (3.4beta) from multiverse with all options 3d and transparency it works very well, a bit slow but I guess it will improve by the time.
I chose to have a normal ubuntu with Kdesktop because the kubuntu i have tried didn’ t provide any gtk tools and logs I like to use.
I guess it will be the choice for several newcommers.
For the HD and the geometry prob. at a time Icould turn this by going in the bios and not using the “auto” choice on my hard disk but manualy forcing the ‘lba” option fefore installation.
(I am not sure at all that the Ubuntu install care of the bios defs)
I hope this will help
Bravo for the Ubuntu team for the youth you give to the lin-desktop.
Sign up,
Be patient,
You’ll have CDs in the mail.
http://shipit.ubuntulinux.org/