Mark Shuttleworth Proposes Delaying next Ubuntu

Beuno writes "Mark Shuttleworth has proposed on the ubuntu-art mailing list to postpone the 'Dapper Drake' release by 6 weeks. He lays out the reasons pretty clearly: the delay should make the release a more user-friendly distro. He has also called up a community meeting in April 14th on IRC for community input. Is it really worth delaying the release for more then a month just to polish it out a little bit?" Commentary on this also available from the Tectonic site.

Comments

Error

[Doytch]

He proposes a town hall for March 14, not April.

Re:Error

[Beuno]

You are right, I got the dates mixed up

Shut your piehole!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fist Prost, bitches!

Well, looking at Vista

[tlacuache]

How long exactly has Longhorn, er, Vista been pushed off? Six weeks pales in comparison.

Re:Well, looking at Vista

[ben_1432]

One big difference - the world's not holding their breath waiting for the next Ubuntu.

Re:Well, looking at Vista

[2sheds]

If anyone was ever holding their breath for Vista, they asphyxiated a long time ago...

Re:Well, looking at Vista

[ClamIAm]

The comparison is even better when looking at features. Ubuntu's current release already has most of the cool new goodies available (GNOME 2.12, Beagle, etc), and the next release will be out before Vista. On the other hand, Vista keeps cutting features (no EFI booting, no super-duper WinFS, etc), and it will likely take the next one or two releases AFTER Vista to get all that stuff.

Re:Well, looking at Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they would have passed out and started breathing again.

Re:Well, looking at Vista

[sigmaman]

I think we have to give Shuttleworth the benefit of the doubt. He knows what he is doing, so let's see what he wants to do with the next release.

Question? Answer.

[ImaNihilist]

Is it really worth delaying the release for more then a month just to polish it out a little bit?

Absolutely.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Luke Psywalker]

Yeah it gives them time to fix all the quirks in gnome, like that butt ugly logout icon in the top right corner. Its total bunk place for it to begin with. I mean who really needs to logout *that* quickly.

Re:Question? Answer.

[mboverload]

How about they stop being self-rightous assholes and include MP3 support in their releases. Or even the ability to play DVDs? Don't tell me to just download the binaries. I know that. But the people I hand the disks out to wonder why the hell this "Linux" thing can't even play their MP3s!

I mean, jesus christ. People wonder why there isn't "The Linux Desktop."

Re:Question? Answer.

[jdhutchins]

They don't include mp3 and dvd stuff because they don't want to get sued. DVD playing stuff with decss is on sketchy legal ground, and mp3 decoders are covered by vaiours patents. They would include them if they could- but they don't have the money to fight a losing court case.

Re:Question? Answer.

[ImaNihilist]

DVD (MPEG2) requires a liscense. I believe there is something similar with MP3. They can't legally include native MP3 or MPEG-2 decoding. Ever wonder why there are no free LEGAL MPEG-2 decoders?

Re:Question? Answer.

[fLameDogg]

If you want to pass out copies of a Linux distro that's ready to roll with those things, I'd say you already know what to do. Of course, that would require you to be willing to stand on the legally shaky ground that the mainline distributors are avoiding.

Even that shakiness probably depends upon where in the world you live, so you might be free to go for it with no worries.

Re:Question? Answer.

[bshellenberg]

How is it then that other distributions (pclinux being the best at it) provide all the goodies right out of the box year after year without having problems? Afterall, if it was such a contentious issue, they'd be shut down faster than you could say "uck, not turd brown again!".

Re:Question? Answer.

[jZnat]

I'm pretty sure they can't distribute anything that comes from non-free (AKA multiverse in Ubuntu's repositories) due to the non-compliance with DFSG. You can go and download the non-free software from their repositories or wherever, but many non-free programs do not allow commercial distribution and other restrictions not allowed by DFSG and free software in general.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is, many of the pay distributions provide legal playback for mp3 and dvd. Tell them to pay for Linux like they have to pay for Windos, or do something "illegal" and help them download the software.

There's got to be 8,000 guides on how to do it. If you can't read, frankly, we don't want you on a Linux desktop; go use your Windows box and don't ask for help when you're not even willing to read to help yourself!

Of course, they only know the guides exist if you point them out. Most people are understandably unaware of the vast free support around free software! They think support is an Indian with a thick accent.

Re:Question? Answer.

[jdhutchins]

Maybe smaller distros can get away with providing it, but that's just because they are flying under the radar. Larger distros would get caught. As far as I know, none of the larger distros include dvd or mp3 by default.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Frumious Wombat]

True, but only if we're discussing "technical polish" (i.e. show-stopping bugs, major visual glitches), versus "Debian Polish" (If it isn't perfect in the eyes of the last Vax user, we aren't releasing it). So far, they've got the clean and easy to use down pat, so they should take some extra care to make sure that's being maintained.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is unbelievable how deeply seated the arrogant elitism is in the linux user community.

Fuck you. I've been using Linux since the mid 1990s and I still hate reading FAQs, HOWTOs and man-pages to solve a problem that shouldn't be there in the first place. I want Linux desktop to succeed and arrogant bastards like you aren't helping.

I want Linux desktop to work so that everybody can use it out-of-box - without reading anything.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

But the people I hand the disks out to wonder why the hell this "Linux" thing can't even play their MP3s!

So tell them the truth: the technology exists, but U.S. law makes it risky to distribute it.

Re:Question? Answer.

[From A Far Away Land]

How is the best way to obtain those essential parts of the computer software then? I can't exactly tell someone to switch to Ubuntu which I can install, but then say, "oops, sorry, you won't be able to play your DVDs or music files unless you figure it out for yourself!"

Is there a good website with one stop shopping, click it and it's free and also installed?

Re:Question? Answer.

[joeljkp]

I wish. The closest thing I've found is the Fluendo MP3 decoder for gstreamer 0.10. It's a fully licensed, free MP3 decoder that you just unzip and drop into your gstreamer plugins directory.

Not much use at the moment, but gstreamer 0.10.0 distros should be coming out soon.

Word has it they're planning on more of those, plus a DVD player sometime soon.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Justin205]

I believe it is, however, legal to distribute the sources. At least Gentoo does, without getting into trouble. So one theoretical way to do it is to distribute the sources, and at some point during the install ask the user if they want DVD/MP3 capabilities, and if they do, do the compilation then and there. And provide a menu item somewhere if they want to do it later (just get it installed first, compile it later, for example).

Of course, it would take some extra time, but if you explained to the user the reasons behind it, it may open some eyes to the problems with DRM-like things (for the DVD - encryption), and certain types of patents (for the MP3).

Re:Question? Answer.

[Cal Paterson]

Christ, it's not like it's critical to release a new OS every six months. I bet msot of the packages in ubuntu don't change between releases. Releasing every 6 months is just disruptive.

I know theres a lot of hate with regards to the debian way of doing things, but do we really need to spam out new binaries twice a year? Is there actually enough change to justify that?

Re:Question? Answer.

[Eternauta3k]

I thought Ubuntu was bought by a rich southafrican, giving funds for CDs and (maybe) this. In that case it might be a GPL issue or something.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Ice Wewe]

*Clears throat*

Ahem... Mandriva does.

Re:Question? Answer.

[westlake]

So tell them the truth: the technology exists, but U.S. law makes it risky to distribute it.

You could, of course, provide links, as Microsoft does, to sites that can provide you with a licensed player or codec. Something a little more trustworthy than Russian warez.

Re:Question? Answer.

[homer_ca]

Yes, there's an automated installer called Automatix. It's only for Ubuntu Breezy, but there should be a new one when Dapper is final.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then make your own distribution or support one that meets your requirements. Most people don't mind looking at the wiki or reading such a small amount of documentation that is publicly available. You just sound like a complete retard who wants everything his own way, even if it requires these distributions break the law.

For most people that are even mildly competent it takes about 30 seconds to install practically every codec one could ever want. If you've been using Linux so actively since the mid 1990s and you still need to read the FAQs and HOWTOs for something so simple I would question your ability to use a computer at all.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Minwee]

"How about they stop being self-rightous assholes [...]"

Oh, if only they could learn to be as thoughtful and open-minded as you are.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Mozk]

IANAL but AFAIK all distros could provide some sort of codec, however they want to be able to freely distribute their distro. Those without the codec are more open, and those with it have to be more strict on their distrobution.

Re:Question? Answer.

[sql_noob]

Do not overestimate people's intelligence. My boss even sharing a service account with another company that has access to all client's name, credit card number and expired date.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Mozk]

Distribution, not distrobution. It was in my muscle memory. :P

Re:Question? Answer.

[Changa_MC]

I agree that the idea of a precise and inviolate time schedule is silly. Six weeks is a non-issue, and if that's all it is, they should keep polishing.

[...]do we really need to spam out new binaries twice a year?

Why not?

I like knowing that Ubuntu has a solid freeze-and-release schedule, and I upgrade every other time in the hopes that there will be some nice improvements. So far, they haven't broken anything that I've noticed, so I'm happy.

It's really not spam since no-one ever mentions the releases I skip. And for people who are downloading it to try, it's nice that it's right up to date.

Re:Question? Answer.

[t3kw3rx]

This is one thing Ive never understood- How is Linux using codecs any different than a Windows system using codecs to watch a DVD? I install my DVD program on my Windows box, and Im not afraid of being sued over it...so why do I have to be afraid to do the same thing on a Linux box in a different way?

Re:Question? Answer.

[EXMSFT]

Because the DVD program you installed on Windows is using a licensed copy of the MPEG codec - not a hacked codec based on DeCSS.

Re:Question? Answer.

[JFitzsimmons]

A vast majority of the packages change, especially the most frequently used ones. Ubuntu releases are synchronized with Gnome releases, so there's a huge part of the main packagebase changed right there.

Re:Question? Answer.

[fimbulvetr]

Oh yeah....and other operating systems are just so intuitive that you can do anything on them without reading a manual/faq/howto - oh wait, no they're not!

I'd suggest using paper and pen for your primary means of "computing" - oh wait, you'd have to learn to read and write.

Chalk and rock? Damn, need to know how to draw.

Sit on your ass and bitch on how 70 years of developing one of the greatest technologies man kind has been working on to date doesn't have you in a virtual reality with neural interfaces and feeding tubes? You seem to have enough energy to do that.

Re:Question? Answer.

[sud_crow]

SUSE does this, and they include quite a compilation of propiertary codecs, like realplayer and mp3.

Re:Question? Answer.

[mcubed]

Windows licenses CSS. Some Linux distros do as well -- IIRC, Linspire is an example. So it depends upon the distro you're using. If a distro doesn't license CSS (and Ubuntu does not), then you have to use a hack to get around it, said hack being illegal in the U.S.

See the FAQ: http://www.dvdcca.org/faq.html

Michael

Re:Question? Answer.

[Toddlerbob]

Yes, absolutely.

I'm a fifth/sixth grade teacher who still uses floppy drives and floppy disks with my students. It would be great if they could implement floppy behavior to be similar to what windows does. SUSE comes pretty close, actually, but I'm always afraid to try other Linux distros to avoid the hassle of floppy drives, since some seem to want to mount the drives, and mounting the drives (and unmounting them), while not impossible for a fifth grader to do, is next to impossible for 32 fifth graders to do and remember to do.

Anyway, I hope when they think usability, they also consider usability for kids.

Re:Question? Answer.

[shellbeach]

How about they stop being self-rightous assholes and include MP3 support in their releases.

Eh? I'm using Ubuntu Breezy, and the xmms package contains the mpg123 decoder plugin - i.e. it can play mp3s right out of the box. Has anyone got the xmms package installed without mp3 support??

Re:Question? Answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows doesn't license CSS. It's usually bought by the hardware OEM selling the box.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wanted to mention that Slackware does support mp3 out of the box. Libdvdcss is not included though.

As far as Ubuntu is concerned, i am very happy about it's progress. Yes Mark, I agree , 6 weeks are worth it, Dapper is going to be the best desktop operating system ever. And a great opportunity for us here to make it 100% ready for greek users. Going to install Flight 6 now ;-).

Re:Question? Answer.

[aminorex]

They're talking about median end-user usability. People who want it can always download the latest snapshot. But stamping it as a release means "this is what Ubuntu means". The user-experience must be what the project's principal sponsors want it to be, otherwise it's not ready for a release.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Kjella]

I believe it is, however, legal to distribute the sources. At least Gentoo does, without getting into trouble.

Does Gentoo have any money? Shuttleworth certainly does. Many smaller distributions and add-ons do dubious things and get away with it. Maybe they're using the "let it get popular and then charge for it" since it doesn't seem to invalidate patents in practise.

Re:Question? Answer.

[thephotoman]

Well, if you're willing to run Dapper now, you can have all the goodness of gstreamer 0.10.0. That's right, it's already integrated into Dapper--quite well, mind you.

Re:Question? Answer.

[lpcustom]

google automatix

Re:Question? Answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

please note that these goodies are only available on the "Demo" distro of SUSE. "Demo" here means not that the distro is limited itself, just that there are certain limits to the included goodies, as you describe them

Some of the newer video codecs are not included even in "Demo", and you would have to go out and download windows binaries/codecs yourself. Note, that using those on linux is actually illegal in the US of A. While home users fly under the radar currently, no large company can use these safely.

Case in point: no large company deploying linux can provide DVD playback without shelling out some serious ca$h first.

Re:Question? Answer.

[moranar]

That's because Mandriva licenses the mp3 codecs, then offers the distro for free. It's actually something that should be better publicized about the distro.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Al Dimond]

Even if he had all the money in South Africa Shuttleworth couldn't get a DVD/CSS license or an MP3 patent license that he could apply to open-source software. He could get a license for a closed-source player and distribute that; it probably could not be redistributable because such licenses surely would not allow that. Linspire has a closed-source DVD player (http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_details. php?product_id=11804) that Linspire users can buy for forty bucks. Of course if Linspire *could* make an open and legal DVD player they probably wouldn't.

Re:Question? Answer.

[ianezz]

So tell them the truth: the technology exists, but U.S. law makes it risky to distribute it.

Fluendo has released a licensed MP3 plugin for the GStreamer framework. It's already in Debian unstable, and I'd say Ubuntu probably will include it.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/ or http://easybreezy.robotgeek.org/ as automatix will eat your Ubuntu installation.

Re:Question? Answer.

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

Debian includes mp3 players but not encoders, plays dvds but not the encrypted ones (refering to what's distributed in Debian/main).

Re:Question? Answer.

[The Notorious ASP]

spies.

Re:Question? Answer.

[mr_sas]

Don't use automatix. It uses --force-yes to force package installations which will downgrade packages and override any pinned packages, without prompting the user about unsigned repos. Just google automatix problems for more detail.

EasyUbuntu is better and much more in keeping with the Ubuntu way http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/

Re:Question? Answer.

[RidiculousPie]

As far as I can see, someone suggested a VAX port of debian, but there is no actual port, supported or otherwise. see http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0201/msg01512 .html You can however use NetBSD on a VAX, apparently. http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/vax/

Re:Question? Answer.

[Lepaca Kliffoth]

Wrog. Gentoo distributes scripts to install the application (ebuilds). The sources are not on gentoo's mirrors.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Hackeron]

Simple answer, *stop using floppies!* - You can:

1) Use a free gmail account and back work onto there? - its as easy as using a floppy on windows and you can even have gmail show up as a drive on your desktop!

2) You can take any desktop, create a shared drive on it, and everyone can select it from a list. You can also set up an FTP server (its much easier than it sounds) to let people access the data as what looks like a drive from home.

3) Use flash drives, a 128MB flash drive costs as much as a pack of floppies (and I'm sure you get through a lot of floppy packs, we did - they are so damn fragile) and has almost a factor of 100 more storage. I know many schools that charge parents those small fees to get the flash drives as an optional but recommended extra.

Re:Question? Answer.

[octopus72]

Linux has very archaic way of handling removable drives. In fact it handles them as non-removable devices, which causes all sorts of problems when user wants to remove the disc/floppy/usb-key. Not that Windows XP is better, machine often freezes if user suddenly ejects cd.

Re:Question? Answer.

[hamfactorial]

Wrog.

Haha, indeed!

Re:Question? Answer.

[Anivair]

Agreed. I've been saying for a while, though, that the best thing that ubuntu could do wouldbe to have an "unofficual" script to be run after the distro is installed to make for for gaps like this. Such a script would be a cakewalk.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Toddlerbob]

Yes, I appreciate your ideas. The problem with the floppies is not for at school, though, but when the students take their work home. I have lots of floppies for free from former days, so it's easy to turn to them. On the other hand, the way things are going, the computers at home may not have floppies for much longer, either. (I'm running into a similar problem when I send VHS tapes home)On the other other hand, many of my families, if they have computers, have rather old ones, anyway.

Your idea of using gmail as an ftp server is interesting. I didn't know you could do that. On the other hand, the kids would all have to be taught how to ftp. They cannot reach the classroom computer at school because it's behind a giant firewall with local IP addresses on the inside. Probably eventually I'll have to go to flash drives -- as they get cheaper, it should be easier to implement that. I wonder, though, if plugging and unplugging a flash drive in Linux is any easier. Does one have to mount them? I'll give it a try this week to see.

Thanks for your reply!

Re:Question? Answer.

[PitaBred]

The older releases are still patched. If you don't want to upgrade... well, don't. Not a hard choice. But giving a nice binary snapshot so someone new can download and install it without having to download a disc full of updates afterwards is a Good Thing(tm)

Re:Question? Answer.

[PitaBred]

I know ubuntu auto-mounts them (USB drives). I haven't had a floppy drive in years. Try one of their LiveCD's. There are ways to configure it so that it writes directly, rather than caching the writes until it's unmounted, so that may help with your unmounting problems, too.

Re:Question? Answer.

[Ginger Unicorn]

I think the focus of Ubuntu is more about integration than delivery of up to date package versions every six months.

It's kind of a "release early and often" mentality but applied to usability, integration and polish. Most of the focus takes place on the Gnome desktop and how easy it is to accomplish tasks in this environment, and how many things "just work".

That is why they are considering hanging the next release back a bit - they dont want any usability "regressions" for the sake of releasing on time, but they are still eager to output some kind of advancement on their regular schedule.

I kind of regard Ubuntu as a bit of a "Beta" at the moment; they still have "usability features" (ie instantly working video, easily configurable wifi) missing, so i think we are in a period of rapid turnover of feedback; i think therefore this justifies 6 month release schedules. Plus you are under no obligation to upgrade after 6 months; they support each release for 2 years.

Mark Shuttleworth has said that after "Dapper" the next version of ubuntu is going to be significant change, so maybe we'll be at the "Ubuntu 1.0" stage by then.

Mmmm

[gobblez]

Polished Chocolate... *drool*

What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't?

[Anonymous Coward]

What can be done with Ubuntu that I can't do with Debian?

Re:What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing, and thats the point. All distributions run the same programs. It's Linux binaries after all.

Re:What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing you couldn't do with slackware. That's not the point.

Re:What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't?

[petermgreen]

What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't?
a reasonablly predictable release schedule (a bit too fast for my liking in fact) and a bit of polish for some desktop related stuff.

as such it fills the gap between debian stable (slow unpredictable release process) and debian testing (constant upgrade treadmill with little in the way of security support)

What can be done with Ubuntu that I can't do with Debian?
if you feel like supporting debian testing/unstable then nothing. And with sarge for a while probablly not much.

However in the couple of years prior to the sarge release running woody was becoming more and more untenable as recent software simply wasn't getting tested with stuff that old. Sarge is ok for the moment but unless debian can get thier house in order and come up with a release every few years at least then we are going to run into this issue again.

Re:What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't?

[Minwee]

Well, more naked people for one.

Re:What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't?

[1.21GW]

It works very well right out of the box for odd hardware. I'm a fulltime Kubuntu 5.10 user. I have a Sony R505EL laptop that has a relatively strange hardware configuration. The CD-ROM is on a docking bay that the computer communicates with via firewire. Most linux distros get to a certain point in the install and then "lose" the CD drive because they don't detect and configure this odd setup correctly. There are ways around this, but it can be a major pain in the arse to screw with modules during install. The problem occurs with Slackware, Debian, Mandrake, and Suse (yes, my ISP loves me for downloading all these iso's). Anyway, Kubuntu detects my configuration and installs without a hitch. I thought about switching to Debian just last week and figured it would install fine because Kubuntu does. However, I was wrong.

Re:What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't?

[andersbergh]

I used to use Debian on my laptop, but later switched to Ubuntu. Why?

It supports more hardware out-of-the-box, and it has newer GNOME packages than Debian. Things that I had to install in Debian (the touchpad, etc) were already installed.

I wouldn't use Ubuntu on a server though, everything I can do in Ubuntu I can do in Debian. Installing a Debian desktop is just more hassle than installing Ubuntu.

Re:What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to use Debian on my laptop, but later switched to Ubuntu. Why?

Because you eat neaubcakes for breakfast, lunch AND dinner.

Re:What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't?

[happymedium]

But for non-technical users (who are the future of Linux, let's not forget), that "bit" of polish goes a long way.

And "filling the gap" between two unacceptable extremes is a pretty nifty trick.

Re:What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't?

[shellbeach]

What can be done with Ubuntu that I can't do with Debian?

The installation is easier, for one. And it incorporates more up-to-date packages than Debian stable, yet is still stable.

Other than that, not much. Use whatever works for you ...

Re:What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't?

[shish]

What can be done with Debian that I can't do with a blank partition and a hex editor?

The point isn't what we (eg, slashdotters) can do, but what our families and friends can do. In my experience, they can install and run Ubuntu, while Debian gives too many confusing choices.

Re:What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't?

[BroncoInCalifornia]

What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't?

Repositories that are both up to date and coherent. A distro is only as good as it's repositories.

Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it really worth delaying the release for more then a month just to polish it out a little bit?

Yes.

The testers seem to agree

[dtfinch]

505 users in favor of the delay, 50 against at last count.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=142536

Dapper is coming along nicely, but there are a number of bugs that might not get the attention they deserve if Dapper is released on schedule.

Their Flight 5 CD is out. It should be quite stable for normal use.

Re:The testers seem to agree

[teklob]

I've been using flight 4 for a few weeks, albeit with E17, and it's not ready for production IMHO.

Re:The testers seem to agree

[Panaphonix]

there are a number of bugs ... Their Flight 5 CD is out. It should be quite stable for normal use.

Wait. What bugs, how do they affect stability, and how do you know they will be addressed within the extended schedule?

Re:The testers seem to agree

[Breakfast Pants]

That is a very large "albeit." Even after release if you use E17 it won't be ready for production.

User friendly?

[LeonGeeste]

When I installed Ubuntu, and chose the option to install GRUB for dual booting, whenever my computer booted, GRUB would try to load and then give "error 25", and then refuse ALL further input, locking me out of BOTH operating systems!!!!! Now, I can sympathize with errors. I cannot sympathize with errors that LOCK ME OUT OF MY OWN GODDAMN BOX. And yes, I have researched the error and asked for help one the Ubuntu forums, and all I got was "shame on you for following the instructions on the web site" and "why didn't you take [precaution X mentioned nowhere in the install instructions]". By the way, Error 25 refers to a hard disk read error. One small problem though: that hard drive works fine and (once I got rid of GRUB and Ubuntu) have been using it to store data without any problems at all. No problems reading it. Hm.

If you want to make Ubuntu user friendly, how about making it so that you can bypass GRUB instead of being locked out of your system just because it has an error? That to me is the epitome of bad programming.

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you're just incapable.......

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to make Ubuntu user friendly, how about making it so that you can bypass GRUB instead of being locked out of your system just because it has an error? That to me is the epitome of bad programming.

Are you a programmer? You're clearly not one that understands bootloaders. How do you recover from every possible error in only 512 bytes?

Re:User friendly?

[LeonGeeste]

Right. I somehow inadvertently gave it a command that says "GRUB: complain about reading a hard drive that works fine and then refuse input". What a goose I am.

Re:User friendly?

[LiquidCoooled]

If your a VB programmer, thats REALLY easy:

Sub BootLoader()
On Error Resume Next
        CodeLookingStuffHere
End SUb

Re:User friendly?

[LeonGeeste]

Are you a programmer?

In that I write computer programs, yes. I'm also an engineer. A real engineer, not a "software engineer".

You're clearly not one that understands bootloaders. How do you recover from every possible error in only 512 bytes?

You toss control back to whatever would otherwise load when it fails. Now, self-proclaimed programmer, let me turn this back around: wouldn't you agree that programs with more catastrophic results upon failure deserve more testing?

Re:User friendly?

[Tx]

I doubt that it's an Ubuntu thing, they didn't write grub, but I do sympathize. I guess Linux has less chance of dealing with every possible quirk of hardware, due to the smaller installed base compared to Windows. I had a machine a while back that three different Linux distros would consistently lock up during partitioning of the drive. Every test in a Windows machine showed the drive was fine. Eventually I partitioned it under Windows (ironically) with Ranish Partition Manager, then I successfully installed Linux.

Re:User friendly?

[Duhavid]

You toss control back to whatever would otherwise load when it fails.

What would that be?

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a moron? PC hardware won't load anything by default, except BIOS. That windows on your Dell has a chainloader written in MBR, it doesn't magically boot you into the Windows(R) Operating System(R) [R is for retarded]

Re:User friendly?

[LeonGeeste]

Here's a little secret: Windows was able to load before I installed GRUB. Take that hint, and answer your question.

Re:User friendly?

[ameoba]

The problem is that, with a broken bootloader, you can't really 'bypass it'. The bootloader, by definition, is the first thing that runs. If it's broken, there's nowhere to put the logic to do anything else. Maybe if the PC had a more usable firmware than the BIOS we're stuck with, you might have some recovery route, but the way the platform is set up, you have no alternatives.

Re:User friendly?

[jdhutchins]

how about making it so that you can bypass GRUB

You can't just bypass the bootloader.

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used grub for over 5 years without any other problems than the ones I (as it turned out) created myself.

Apart from that, apparently you don't know a lot about bootloaders. Which is no crime, mind you. However, a bootloader cannot give the control back to whatever would otherwise load, because it replaces that very thing. So what you want, cannot be done. Ever. Afaik at least.

I'm sorry about the fact that ubuntu didn't work for you. I feel it would be a bit harsh to say the distro sucks because the bootloader didn't work for you, though, don't you agree? Try and install a certain OS made in Redmond on any other but the first harddrive and you'll notice writing bootloaders is just pretty hard. A lot of people here, me included, would probably say grub isn't doing such a bad job. Not a bad job at all really... And neither is Ubuntu. Give it another try. Be open-minded. Have fun.

Re:User friendly?

[LeonGeeste]

When I had GRUB installed, the BIOS would load, then it would go into GRUB, have the error, and then refuse further input. The way GRUB could have been written is that when it returns an error, it spits control back to whatever would load in the absence of GRUB having been installed. Don't tell me that's not possible. And if it weren't possible, the fact that GRUB failure can be that catastrophic tells me that, being an engineer, it would warrant much more testing before release. But in all fairness, I work in a field where my solutions have to work, and I can't just shrug when the helicopter crashes.

Re:User friendly?

[jdhutchins]

Here's another little secret: Windows could load because it has its own bootloader, similar to GRUB. Except Windows's bootloader doesn't know how to load anything other than linux. If you want linux to run, you need something that can run both, such as GRUB.

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

And where would the windows bootloader go? Remember, you have 512 bytes. The Windows bootloader is also 512 bytes. Next.

Re:User friendly?

[Dunbal]

You toss control back to whatever would otherwise load when it fails.

What would that be?

      My army of 13oTz0rz of course LOL LOL BWAHAHAHA PWNED!!!!11one

Re:User friendly?

[LeonGeeste]

You'll have to pardon me if I hold in low regard a distro in which you can be locked out of your system merely for following the install instructions as written. I wanted to use Ubuntu, I really did, but poor design really grates on me, and this a great example of not-so-great design. As for GRUB, not all distros use the same version of it. And if it's error isn't even the right one, that's even worse. I wish I had gone into software engineering rather than real engineering, where low quality is better tolerated.

Re:User friendly?

[vertinox]

If you want to make Ubuntu user friendly, how about making it so that you can bypass GRUB instead of being locked out of your system just because it has an error? That to me is the epitome of bad programming.

Did you report it? They do have quality feed back.

Re:User friendly?

[LeonGeeste]

I guess the people who called me stupid for actually following the website's instructions didn't mention anything about that.

Re:User friendly?

[dadragon]

You toss control back to whatever would otherwise load when it fails.

Back to whatever would otherwise load? That would be nothing (Well, not nothing, but it's impossible to determine what that something would be). The BIOS loads the first 512 bytes of the disk (the MBR) into ram at location 07c0:0000, that MBR then loads the 512 bytes at the start of the partition marked "active" in the MBR at address 07c0:0000. Now, keep in mind that there are 512 bytes in the MBR for data, and code, also remember that the MBR just loaded the partition bootloader over itself in RAM, it's not there any more at all. Next, the partition bootloader (grub in this case) has 512 bytes at location 0x7c0:0000 to load the rest of itself into memory, including error conditions. Now, the read fails, and you get code like this:

if(read failed)
    print ("read error")
    goto fail ...

fail:
    clear interrupts
    halt cpu

because there isn't any other option. You can't just jump back to code that was overwritten when you came into ram. There is no option but to crash in this case. It's like if your interrupt handling code page faults. Your OS WILL crash.

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had gone into software engineering rather than real engineering, where low quality is better tolerated.

There are no "safety factors" in software engineering like in other engineerings my friend. There is no such thing as tolerances. Things either work or they don't. You can have some error handling, but that is all.

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

The way GRUB could have been written is that when it returns an error, it spits control back to whatever would load in the absence of GRUB having been installed.

As the numerous other posts have shown, you're missing the point; there is nothing to spit control back to, that is just not how it works.

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't tell me that's not possible.

Well, if I don't tell you, it doesn't make it any less true that it's not possible. GRUB gets loaded overtop of that would have been loaded in the absence of grub. What would otherwise have been loaded is no longer in RAM at this point, you can't just jump to a nonexistant part of ram.

This is the failing of the IBM PC architecture. GRUB programmers are writing code within the framework their given. BIOS is crap, and that's one reason that Apple isn't using it in the new Macs.

Re:User friendly?

[moonbender]

It's not possible. And it's great that you work in such a manly field with Real Engineers, as you keep reminding us.

Re:User friendly?

[Cthefuture]

This is exactly why I always install a Linux bootloader on the Linux partition. Never install a bootloader like GRUB or LILO on the master boot record for the whole drive.

However, MBR is extremely handy when put on the master boot record. I have never seen it fail, even on a completely borked drive. All it does is let you select which partition to boot from (or floppy). This can be extremely handy because there is no need to set the boot flag on your various paritions.

Re:User friendly?

[Yaztromo]

You toss control back to whatever would otherwise load when it fails.

The fact that you're not a software engineer shows.

Want to know what would have otherwise loaded? The Windows Bootloader, which would have been within the exact same 512b sector that Grub now occupies. Boot loaders on PCs are extremely restricted in what they can do -- their code can be no larger than 446b in size, they run in real mode, and basically must rely directly on BIOS for all of their I/O routines.

In effect, this is 1980's technology, and flexability is virtually nil. The primary boot loader can't just pass its duties off to another boot loader, as there aren't really sufficient instructions available to do this, and the two boot loaders cannot occupy the same space on the drive.

If you're looking for something to blame for this situation, it's the fact that the architecture of the PC BIOS hasn't changed significantly in more than 20 years. It's still firmly rooted in the days of 160KB floppy booting, where the idea of a second-stage boot loader for choosing what OS you want to boot would never have occurred (want to boot a different OS on a diskette-only system? Use a different boot disk). BIOS should have died a long time ago.

Boot loaders like GRUB do the best they can with what little resources and possibilities they are given. I'm sorry that the GRUB developers don't have access to your screwy system to test and debug on. Here I've run GRUB on a variety of systems, and the only machine I ever found which had problems with it is one with a built-in nVidia chipset, back in the Fedora Core 2 days, which was easily solved by switching to a different boot loader.

Yaz.

Re:User friendly?

[Duhavid]

That was no secret.

Yes, the windows boot loader was able to load windows.

Then it was replaced. By GRUB. For whatever reason,
GRUB had a problem.

There is nothing remaining for it to fall back on.
Same as the windows boot loader.

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

The preferred method is to replace the boot loader but you can also boot Linux using the Windows boot loader if you prefer. Also, if all you want to do is get back into Windows, boot to the Windows CD and run "fixmbr" and reboot. Problem solved.

If you're going to complain about an installer that "locks you out" of your existing system, try installing Linux on a fresh system and then install Windows. It will callously overwrite your existing boot loader and you can't run Linux.

In the absence of GRUB (or other bootloader), you would get some generic error message stating "Operating System Not Found". This message would vary depending the BIOS. Pop in an unpartitioned disk without a pre-existing boot loader and you'll see the message. It's not much more helpful, is it? How much code you think you can fit into 512 bytes anyway?

Oh, and about "real engineering," you don't have to retrofit one engine into every model helicopter, do you? Are the people who design the computer control systems not "real engineers?" No, they're just software engineers that let your precious helicopters crash... right?

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

>> "I wish I had gone into software engineering rather than real engineering, where low quality is better tolerated."

Hmm... It would be interesting to know which "real" engineering discipline you are refering to. I am unaware of any engineering discipline which has not encountered catatrophic failure due to unforseen environmental issues, or simple miscalculation. Your arrogance seems to be masking either a bad childhood, or inability to find love.

Re:User friendly?

[greginnj]

Your arrogance seems to be masking either a bad childhood, or inability to find love .

... thus speaks the AC at 5:50 PM on a Saturday night...

Re:User friendly?

[LeonGeeste]

The fact that you're not a software engineer shows.

And my suspicion that programmers have unjustifiably taken the title "software engineer" in a petty attempt to inflate their status shows basis. Where was the failure analysis? Who sat down and said "if this program has an error, how bad is the consequence? What can we do to minimize this negative consequence?" Instead, if GRUB fails, oops, sorry kid, tough luck. Your fault for following the instructions.

If I designed a helicopter engine that, when retrofitted, caused the doors to be permanently locked (when they're a completely unrelated system), I would probably have a hard time finding a job -- after having my ass sued off. As for software "engineers"? "Meh. Shit happens".

Re:User friendly?

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

I did a bit of poking around, and it looks like -- in this particular case -- there might happen to be more than 512 bytes available to do error handling. Since LeonGeeste mentions "Error 25" being displayed, I decided to do a search:

user@host:/tmp/grub-0.97$ grep -r 'Error %' .
./stage2/char_io.c: printf ("\nError %u: %s\n", errnum, err_list[errnum]);
./stage2/char_io.c: printf ("Error %u\n", errnum);

It looks as though this error occurs during the second-stage bootloader, so it should be possible to archive the original bootloader and jump to it if there are any problems.

However, I agree that there are certain cases where recovery just isn't possible (and LeonGeeste clearly fails to recognize that) but this doesn't appear to be one of those cases.

Re:User friendly?

[ClamIAm]

This is exactly why I always install a Linux bootloader on the Linux partition. Never install a bootloader like GRUB or LILO on the master boot record for the whole drive.

I have never had problems using GRUB to boot various flavors of Linux, as well as dual-booting them with Windows (XP). The difference in my case is that I always searched or asked someone "does this installer set up dual-booting correctly?". When the answer was no, I tried something else.

On the other hand, bugs happen. But saying that it is the fault of GRUB, LILO, or whatever program happened to fail on you is not fair. It creates the impression that certain programs are inferior when the reality is that all programs have problems.

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who sat down and said "if this program has an error, how bad is the consequence? What can we do to minimize this negative consequence?"

Someone did. It took them a couple of seconds. You want to know the answers to your questions? "If we have an error, the user can not load any operating system." and "Nothing" Because that's how software works (Or doesn't) Failures are final in software; that bit is either set, or it isn't. Welcome to boolean algebra, enjoy your stay.

P.S: The only person using the phrase "software engineer" is you.

Re:User friendly?

[Waffle Iron]

What can we do to minimize this negative consequence?

As many others have pointed out, in 446 bytes, we can't do anything. All the Microsoft boot loader have historically done when it barfs is print something like "NT Loader not Found", and then left you "locked out of your system", just as GRUB did.

BTW, you're not really locked out. You can create a GRUB boot floppy and manually boot into your OS installation. You can also use the Windows CD to set the MBR back to its original state. Or you could use most Linux distros' rescue CDs to fix the problem.

Re:User friendly?

[Paladin128]

You're asking the software guys to do something that CAN'T BE DONE on the given hardware. If it fails, there's nothing more it can do. You have to re-install GRUB or a different bootloader (like the one that Windows uses). There's no room on the first 512 bytes of disk for multiple boot loaders.

Is it unfortunate that there was a bug in GRUB? Yup. That sucks. But the guys working on GRUB are almost all volunteers; they don't necessarily have access to your motherboard/hard drive/firmware combination.

Why does the Windows bootloader support more hardware? Guess what happens if Dell builds a system that Windows can't boot? They don't release it, or they make Microsoft fix it. Most OEM's don't test Linux, so these problems don't get found.

Re:User friendly?

[Paladin128]

In absense of the bootloader, there is nothing. There is nothing to fall back to. So yes, it is impossible.

What if you were told that it was unnacceptible for the helicopter you designed to fail even the blades were removed? Or if in case of the death of the pilots and all the crew, it still had to had to fail-over to another pilot?

Re:User friendly?

[Yaztromo]

And my suspicion that programmers have unjustifiably taken the title "software engineer" in a petty attempt to inflate their status shows basis.

I'm a Computer Scientist. I wouldn't know, nor do I care about such semantics.

Where was the failure analysis? Who sat down and said "if this program has an error, how bad is the consequence? What can we do to minimize this negative consequence?" Instead, if GRUB fails, oops, sorry kid, tough luck. Your fault for following the instructions.

The problem here is that Software Engineers are not Hardware Engineers. They develop software for the system that is available. No amount of pure software can overcome the shortcomings of the BIOS.

BIOS sucks. If you're looking for me to argue with you that BIOS is a poor engineering solution, you're not going to find one. It's hardly the software developers fault that you (and most other people) keeping buying systems that feature the crappy old PC BIOS. Would you build a search and rescue helicopter out of a motorcycle engine and paper mache? And if you did, would it have the same level of fault-tolerance as an EH-101?

Boot loaders are fragile because the architecture they are based upon wasn't designed to handle them. Want a real solution? Go out and buy a system that doesn't use PC-style BIOS. Get a system that sports Open Firmware, or the Extensible Firmware Interface. And then go and bitch to Microsoft that their consumer-level OS's won't boot on such systems because they still only support the 25 year old BIOS for bootstrapping.

Fault analysis works best when you have complete control over the entire system. Software developers typically don't get a say in how the handward is designed, however, and PC hardware is so riddled with cruft and poor design from 25 years of backwards compatibility, developers working in dark corners like those of boot loaders have to make do with what little they have. If you want something more robust, then buy something more robust and ditch your PC altogether.

Otherwise, don't complain. The software developers in this case do the best with what little resources the system provides them. The fact that the system can't be made more fault tolerant isn't the fault of the developers -- it's the fault that the 25 year old system they must rely upon actively works against such fault tolerant code from being developed in the first place.

Yaz.

Re:User friendly?

[bigpicture]

There is more than the BIOS that needs to be fixed on PCs, and the whole issue of anachronisms, the technology and processes that aren't needed anymore.

What about printers and the whole WYSIWYG thing. This didn't make monitors and printers work on the same principle. There is a standard monitor output, and how the monitor deals with that internally to present the screen image is up to the monitor manufacturer.

Why can't there be a standard printer output, instead of the thousands of different drivers and outputs. How the printer handles this standard output internally, with firmware or whatever, to present the printed page image would be up to the printer manufacturer. That would solve the Linux printer driver problems, and reduce PC manufacturers and users problems.

Re:User friendly?

[dadragon]

Here's a little secret: Windows was able to load before I installed GRUB. Take that hint, and answer your question.

I was able to close my window on my car before I installed this new power window system that completely replaces the old one.

Now does it make sense? You can't just replace something then expect the old one to be a fail-over.

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

In that I write computer programs, yes. I'm also an engineer. A real engineer, not a "software engineer".

You are also a really arrogant engineer.

Re:User friendly?

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Friendly suggestion for the next time you happen to ask for help in a user forum:

Don't let your anger show. Frustration is understandable, but showing it makes you harder to communicate with. If you want people to help, don't make snide remarks.

Re:User friendly?

[Kancept]

The fact is there are ways to do it. OS/2 has been doing this for ages. It's called making another damn partition to become more flexible. Even XOSL lets you do this. Use the bootloader to hand it off to a real section of drive that can DO something. ie. make it flexible to recover from something such as this. We can afford to use another primary partition when the bootloader is strapped for space. Good god, you lose 10 MB of HD. With today's capacities, that ain't squat.

Re:User friendly?

[RobertLTux]

oaky what you are missing is that in a single engine helicopter there is exactly X ccs of space where an engine can go (this may have a bit of wiggle but..) so given possible engines and performance factors how exactly are you going to put two engines in?? oh btw a couple of things 1 both grub and LILO can be used from removeable media (boot dis[c|k] 2 i think the windows boot loader can be hacked into booting a chainloader or worst case you can use Bootmagic (comes on the Partion Magic cd) (and in your helicopter case isn't it common to have the rotor unhook from the engine if the engine cuts out?)

Re:User friendly?

[TheoMurpse]

how about making it so that you can bypass GRUB

You have to have a bootloader for dual booting. Pick your poison, you don't have a choice in the matter. You could, of course, get rid of your other OS. Then you can bypass GRUB.

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a little secret: Windows was able to load before I installed GRUB. Take that hint, and answer your question.

Are you really this ignorant and incapable of logical thought, or are you just a troll?

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

> spits control back to whatever would load in the absence of GRUB having been installed.

The BIOS knows you want to boot from your hard drive, it does one simple thing to facilitate this, it loads the first 512 bytes from the drive into memory, and it tells the CPU "start executing here". Should the code in those 512 bytes fail, the bios has nothing further it can do, it only knows how to do one thing, grab the 512 bytes and let them execute.

You installed Stage 1 of GRUB in the MBR (first 512 bytes of the drive). When you installed it, you installed it over top of the 512 bytes that were Microsoft's MBR. This is what was there before GRUB was installed, and now it is gone, completely written over, and neither GRUB nor the bios can do anything about it.

I think you would probably like it if the grub installer put a backup copy of the Microsoft MBR somewhere else on the drive, and you would like stage 1 of GRUB to load and execute those if there is any problem. But, if there is an error loading those 512 bytes, absolutely nothing can be done.

There is a perfectly valid explanation for why stage 1 might fail and why the microsoft MBR doesn't.

Stage 1 of GRUB (installed in the mbr) has 1 job, load a file from your Ubuntu partition, /boot/grub/stage2. GRUB needs to do this because it is bigger than 512 bytes, so stage 2 contains all of the GRUB code that doesn't fit in the first 512. GRUB needs to be this larger than 512 bytes because it's a really advanced boot loader, it even understands file systems, which allows it to load configuration files, initrds, kernels, and modules by reading the file system, instead of having hard coded locations of those files location (by disk geometry) rammed into it. (this really helps when you update, replace, or change those files!)

The Microsoft MBR also has a simple job. It looks, at the partition table for partitions marked as bootable, takes the first one, loads the boot sector of that partition into memory, and executes it.

So stage 1 of GRUB and the Microsoft MBR really have a lot in common, as they are both 512 bytes they really do shit all, they just attempt to load more boot code off the drive and let it rip. The crucial difference here is WHERE on the drive they play with. Microsoft MBR reads the partition table and the boot sector of the partition marked bootable. GRUB stage 1 reads the location of /boot/grub/stage2, a location which is hard coded with the disk geometry location of this file. (stage 1 doesn't understand file systems).

As /boot/grub/stage2, the parition table, and the boot sector of your windows partition are completely differnt locations on the drive, it is entirely posible that GRUB stage 1 could have a problem, while the Microsoft MBR could not.

What could be different about these different locations on the drive?

If there was an error on the drive where /boot/grub/stage2 is located, but not in the partition table or boot sector of the Windows partition, one could fail where the other succeds.

Or, maybe the hard drive is fine in all locations, but the mechanism used by these two MBRs to access it is not behaving as it should. What is this mechanism? Our frequenly buggy friend, the BIOS. The BIOS implements a interface that the MBR can use to get its job done. Something like
load_sector_from_ide_drive( ide_channel, master_or_slave, block_number )

Assume neither MBR has any bugs in calling this interface, what if there is a problem with the implementation itself? What if the interface promises that a block_number=(location of /boot/grub/stage2) is loadable, but a bug in the implementation means it only works for block_number=(location of partition table) or block_number=(location of boot sector). Who wants to bet that there are BIOS out there that only get tested by the manufacturer on MBRs that only load play with the partition table and boot sectors of partiti

Re:User friendly?

[XMilkProject]

IANAE but I think that the vast majority of your printers rely on patented Adobe technology, and as such, each manufacturer is on different versions and licenses.

I am, on the other hand, an expert on a technology called SVG, and I know that there are alot of guys at Canon working with the w3c on something called SVGPrint, which they are looking to use as an Open/Free mechanism to transmit data to all their printers. (In place of postscript?).

There is alot of work going on in these fields, but it will take a little bit longer until some of the newer open technologies hit the market.

Re:User friendly?

[Yaztromo]

Good god, you lose 10 MB of HD. With today's capacities, that ain't squat.

I am in fact quite familiar with IBM's Boot Manager, having at one time been a DB2 for OS/2 developer at IBM. And I agree -- it is generally a much more elegant system.

The big problem is that Boot Manager takes up a precious primary partition, of which you're still only allowed 4 per drive. It also has its own built-in limitation that requires the boot partition to be wholely withing the first 1023 cylinders of the hard drive (usually within the first ~512MB of disk space). To some people, such restrictions are undesireable (not to mention that AFAIK there are only three ways to legally get Boot Manager in the first place: from OS/2, from an old copy of AIX x86, or through an old version of Partition Magic back when they used to bundle it).

Boot Manager always worked well for me -- I routinely used it in place of LILO on older Linux distros back in the day. But that hardly excuses the fact that it's still a work-around to what is largely a BIOS problem.

Yaz.

Re:User friendly?

[jlarocco]

I think you're trolling. As an engineer, you should be able to understand "that's just the way it has to be." I'll try to explain further, but for some reason, I don't think you'll get it:

PCs have exactly one master boot record. That master boot record points to exactly one bootloader. When you install GRUB, the single entry in the master boot record is changed to load GRUB instead of the Windows bootloader. There is no "whatever would have loaded." PCs just aren't designed that way. Don't like it? Call IBM and ask them to go back in time and fix it. But until then, that's just the way it is.

As for Ubuntu's install instructions not being correct, I find it highly unlikely. The fact that tens of thousands of people have managed to install it just fine by following those same instructions would seem to indicate that it does work the vast majority of the time. The logical conclusion when a set of instructions work fine for thousands of people but don't work for you, would seem to be that you did something wrong. Believe it or not, even an "engineer" can fuck up sometimes. Did you try the install again paying closer attention to the instructions? Did you make sure your partitions were correct? Did you try using LILO instead? Or did you just get pissed and start trolling?

Oh, and by the way, I like how you state that you're not a software engineer and that you have no idea how PCs boot, and then make suggestions about how GRUB and the boot process should work. Do you have software engineers telling you how helicopters should work? How often are their good ideas thrown out because they don't know how anything works?

Re:User friendly?

[LeonGeeste]

As for Ubuntu's install instructions not being correct, I find it highly unlikely. The fact that tens of thousands of people have managed to install it just fine by following those same instructions would seem to indicate that it does work the vast majority of the time. The logical conclusion when a set of instructions work fine for thousands of people but don't work for you, would seem to be that you did something wrong. Believe it or not, even an "engineer" can fuck up sometimes. Did you try the install again paying closer attention to the instructions? Did you make sure your partitions were correct? Did you try using LILO instead? Or did you just get pissed and start trolling?

Except for LILO and the trolling (odd that explaining your problem and the shortcomings of the solutions others provide now counts as "trolling"), yes, yes, a hundred times yes. I didn't just give up once. I tried installing it again and again, and yes, I did exactly what the install instructions said. Burned to a CD, booted from it, followed install instructions, made partitions, and so on. But don't take my word for it -- why don't you name one thing I could have fucked up that would have caused this specific error -- GRUB error 25, a hard disk read error on a hard disk that works fine? As for intelligence, I made perfect scores on the GRE analytical and quantitative, and completed a mechanical engineering program directly from high school in two years and one semester. So save the attribution to intellectual deficiency.

Oh, and by the way, I like how you state that you're not a software engineer and that you have no idea how PCs boot, and then make suggestions about how GRUB and the boot process should work. Do you have software engineers telling you how helicopters should work? How often are their good ideas thrown out because they don't know how anything works?

The general principles of engineering -- i.e., since you want to call programmers "software engineers" apply to all fields. Following those principles, you should focus most efforts on correcting those components whose failures cause the worst problems. When GRUB had that error, nobody on the Ubuntu forums even knew what I should do. And the fact that, finally, someone with experience in programming bootloaders can help me is bad, not good, because it signals that these eventualities simply were not planned for. There was no Plan B for when GRUB fails -- nor was the error even diagnosed properly! If you think you can excuse these because it's software "engineering", and you have to be a software "engineer" to "get it", I don't know what to tell you.

Re:User friendly?

[ajs318]

A bootstrap loader sits in the Master Boot Record -- the first 512 bytes on the disc. The BIOS knows how to position the reading heads at any cylinder and sector on the disc's surface and select the signal from any head. It knows precious little else. What it does when first switched on is go to head 0, cylinder 0, sector 0 {which is the only sector you can be absolutely cast-iron certain will definitely always exist, no matter what size drive it is}; read that sector, which is 512 bytes big, into memory; and begin executing it as instructions.

Within the space of those 512 bytes, you have to have a program which loads the operating system proper. It can use BIOS calls to find any place on the disc {or just within the first 1024 cylinders, if it's a really ancient BIOS} in order to do this. Once the operating system itself has loaded, it no longer needs to rely on the BIOS's own methods of accessing the disk; it can talk to devices directly.

Windows has a bootstrap loader of its own, which goes in the MBR. Grub also goes in the MBR. Even Lilo, the original bootstrap loader which had nothing wrong with it in the first place before Grub became all trendy, goes in the MBR. When you installed Grub, you overwrote Windows' own bootstrap loader. It is now lost for all time.

The solution is to replace the MBR. Either boot up with a Windows CD and do
C:\> fdisk /mbr
to install the MBR from Windows; or boot up with the kernel from a Linux boot CD, using a cheatcode to specify your usual root file system:
boot: linux root=/dev/hda1
{or whatever partition it's on}, and then re-configure Grub. Or preferably just install Lilo instead.

I hope this explains why you can't have a fallback when the bootstrap loader fails. In the Olden Days, with no bootstrap loader you would have been given a simple memory editor which would allow you to display the contents of memory, enter instructions and data in hexadecimal, and begin executing instructions from memory. Things like this would be useful to programmers {you could type in a bootstrap loader by hand if you needed to}, but they stopped being popular about the time more non-programmers started buying computers. More sophisticated display devices began needing more sophisticated BIOSes, and the hex editor {which most users would not know how to use anyway} was squozen out to make room.

Re:User friendly?

[bigpicture]

Thanks, this is the kind of information that I never see posted anywhere, when I am about to beat on my printer with a hammer because there is some Linux USB or printer driver that I don't have. The light at the end of the tunnel thing. Take the problem outside the PC box.

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Except Windows's bootloader doesn't know how to load anything other than linux"
Not very bright, are you?

Re:User friendly?

[gtwilliams]

Except Windows's bootloader doesn't know how to load anything other than linux.

I guess your meant Windows.

But that's not true either. The windows boot loader is fully capable of loading another OS.

Take a look at

C:\boot.ini

Re:User friendly?

[Rakshasa Taisab]

True, and even if that was not the case, where would we put the Bootloader Recoverer recoverer?

Re:User friendly?

[Criterion]

"And my suspicion that programmers have unjustifiably taken the title "software engineer" in a petty attempt to inflate their status shows basis."

Why don't you take your beef about using the term "engineer" up with microsoft, who use it regularly in their tech support titles.. ie:MCSE - Microsoft Certified Software Engineer, etc..

Get over it man. So grub failed. I'm sure you're scarred for life from that experience. Guess what? Regardless of all the ranting you've done here, at least you've learned something (hopefully, anyway).

Re:User friendly?

[Kjella]

All the Microsoft boot loader have historically done when it barfs is print something like "NT Loader not Found", and then left you "locked out of your system", just as GRUB did.

That'd be "NTLDR not found". I have a laptop which is infected or something and keeps printing that message on every boot, and even when I fix it all the files in root of C:\ disappear on shutdown... strangely enough that seems to be the only thing wrong with it, so I just do suspend and fix it from a boot CD until I find time to reinstall...

Re:User friendly?

[frogstar_robot]

In that I write computer programs, yes. I'm also an engineer. A real engineer, not a "software engineer".

If you actually have to go out of your way to point out your dick size.....

Re:User friendly?

[Kancept]

XOSL also did this using a fat partition, and it was freely available. This is an option for many folks.

Doesn't everyone own a copy of OS/2? ;-) Oh yeah, got any cool ibm or os/2 swag you wanna get rid of?

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

The way GRUB could have been written is that when it returns an error, it spits control back to whatever would load in the absence of GRUB having been installed.

That would be the bootloader, unfortunatly there can be only one.

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

And my suspicion that programmers have unjustifiably taken the title "software engineer" in a petty attempt to inflate their status shows basis. Where was the failure analysis? Who sat down and said "if this program has an error, how bad is the consequence? What can we do to minimize this negative consequence?" Instead, if GRUB fails, oops, sorry kid, tough luck. Your fault for following the instructions.

You have an 1 mm steel rod, it has to hold weights from 1 g to 1 Tg, good luck engineer.

Re:User friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

You weren't called stupid for what you were saying (while you said reasonable things that is, didn't last long), but for how you said it.

Re:User friendly?

[Cthefuture]

No, that's not what I am saying. Bootloaders (any bootloader) can get screwed up if your drive changes. LILO is most sensitive, just changing a partition will make it freeze up. GRUB is not as bad but it still sometimes freaks out if the drive is in a state it doesn't expect. And when your bootloader freezes then you have no way to do anything without using a boot CD or something.

Re:User friendly?

[PitaBred]

Meanwhile your credit card data is being sent to Kathmandu...

Re:User friendly?

[ElleyKitten]

>>You'll have to pardon me if I hold in low regard a distro in which you can be locked out of your system merely for following the install instructions as written.

I've seen Windows systems refuse to boot after install. It's called bad luck. It's fixed by sticking the install disk back in and clicking "rescue" or "repair". Also, if you're mad at Ubuntu for accidently locking you out of your existing OS, remember that Windows does that by design.

Re:User friendly?

[IdntUnknwn]

"There was no Plan B for when GRUB fails"

This is hardly GRUB's fault. Rather it is because we are working with incredibly outdated *hardware* system architecture that only know how to do a single thing: load the bootloader. If the bootloader fails, then the system doesn't know how to do anything else.

So no, its not GRUB's fault for not providing a backup plan. It's the system architecture inherited from the 1980s that makes it *impossible* to provide a backup route. Don't go around blaming the GRUB developers for a system they didn't design.

"When GRUB had that error, nobody on the Ubuntu forums even knew what I should do."

Patently false. People were trying to help you, but you weren't playing very nicely.

Polish

[Anonymous Coward]

Polish is good. Do it.

"Linux for human beings"

[theurge14]

As a Gentoo user, I tried out Ubuntu on an old Toshiba laptop about a month or three ago when the current version came out. I liked what a I saw, but I ran into to huge problems. One, Ubuntu completely screwed up the monitor settings for the laptop, and the sound was completely futzed. I found the solution to fixing the monitor settings on an Ubuntu user forum (involved hand editing X.org's conf file) and the sound, well, I managed to get it to play somewhat but GNOME still never detected it properly.

If Ubuntu wants to be "Linux for human beings" it needs all the polish it can get after that experience.

Keep up the good work guys.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[jsight]

More anecdotes... I tried Ubuntu on my laptop (Dell Inspiron 6000 w/ ATI) and it installed cleanly, and handled all suspend modes perfectly, right out of the box! Sound worked, the wireless (Intel) worked, and the display was quite nice (albeit with no 3D acceleration).

The only real issue was the 5.10 didn't handle ALPS Touchpads well at all. It was almost unusable as a result. :(

Fortunately, the Dapper betas have fixed that, and Ubuntu really is the most usable easy distribution for this box. OpenSuSe and Fedora both had significantly greater issues (either with suspend or the touchpad, or both).

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Urusai]

The necessity of hand-editing xorg.conf or frankly any .conf file keeps Ubuntu and Linux in general out of the mainstream. Joe Sixpack isn't going to do it. Fundamental things such as video, keyboard, and mouse should work immediately, with sane and functional fallbacks.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[GoatPigSheep]

Ubuntu is actually the only distro that works well on my toshiba laptop (newer model).. No other distro supported 1280 x 800 res out of the box.. Ubuntu AUTO-DETECTED it. That was one of the features that made me stick with it.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[jrumney]

I had a similar experience on my laptop with lots of proprietary hardware. The laptop had come with Windows XP Home, which my employer promptly replaced with XP Pro, but a lot of the hardware didn't work, and even after finding out what chipsets were used and hunting down all the drivers I could find, it is still running with Generic video drivers (its based on an NVIDIA chip, but the standard NVIDIA drivers don't detect it since its an OEM version) and standby and hibernate don't work. After installing Ubuntu, the only problem I've had is that it won't switch the power off on shutdown (but standby does work - go figure). I've had that problem before with another laptop that would power off with an older kernel that used APM, but with a kernel that used ACPI it stopped working, so its probably a buggy ACPI implementation.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[theurge14]

Well, one one hand, this didn't stop Windows 3.x or Windows 95 from becoming ubiquitous (autoexec.bat and config.sys anyone?). But in fairness, that was 10-15 years ago.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Fafnir_b]

And yaa (yet another anecdote): I installed breezy badger on my notebook (asus m2n) and everything but sound worked flawlessly out of the box, with the exception of ACPI (which is due to a bug in the notebooks original bios (which I never updated because I'm just too lazy). More precisely: it's the portion of ACPI for the graphic card and I simply compiled my own kernel disabling that bit. The really bad thing was, that an ACPI-enabled default kernel will crash on this notebook[note again: it's a bug in the notebook's bios, not in the kernel or the distribution] unless I disable acpi in the bootloader. That's not nice if you want to convert someone to linux...). With my new kernel, ACPI is now fine, the sound was fixed (magically) and I could marvel at the really perfect installation which even tied the multimedia and other hotkeys to sensible functions. And not only did my (stupid shared memory intel) graphics card work without any additional work, it even had 3d acceleration enabled.

(The sound thingy is a known problem in ubuntu and there's a workaround documented in the Ubuntu wiki's section on notebook compatibility. I must admit, however, that as much as I do appreciate wikis and such things, it really is a problem of linux distros that many (if not most) users have to search for information and do manual work in order to get _all_ their hardware running well. Still one should also appreciate the difference to windows, where hardware manufacturers provide drivers etc when you buy the stuff. I don't have windows, but I could get a legal copy from my university for free (as in beer). I doubt, however, that windows XP would out of the box support as much of my hardware as an up-to-date linux distribution does. Because this comparison is not quite fair, I also doubt that when it is released windows vista will support all the hardware of my notebook without manual interaction. I probably won't try, though...) The text in this paragraph better shouldn't be in parantheses but it's almost midnight here.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[EnronHaliburton2004]

On the other hand, I've installed Suse, RedHat Enterprise, Fedora & Debian on dozens of boxes. Ubuntu is the only one who autodetected all of my video settings correctly.

I actually think this much to do with the good work done by the x.org folks, as well as work done by

For example, Debian "stable" still uses Xfree86, and Xfree86 couldn't detect it's left nut without editing the Xfree86 conf file.

Fedora at this time used an experimental version of X.org , wheras Ubuntu had a polished & more stable version.

RedHat used a stable version of X.org (maybe it was still Xfree86), but the config tools screwed up the config so badly taht X wouldn't start.

Suse had some propietary tools which mucked up the display.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[petermgreen]

windows 95 and 98 don't need config.sys or autoexec.bat unless you are running some strange hardware than needs real mode drivers indeed i fixed computers before by deleting/renaming them. I've never admind an ME box but i belived they removed the option for them altogether.

config.sys and autoexec.bat really belong to dos and in the dos days there wasn't exactly a lot of choice on what you ran on your IBM compatible PC.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[yorgasor]

Hahaha, a Gentoo user complaining hand editing files on another distro? Now that's funny.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[theurge14]

Hey now, Gentoo only claims to be "Linux for basement dwelling subhumans" like myself. We don't have the lofty goals of polish and bliss over here in emerge-world-ville.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[byolinux]

Dapper Drake installed without problems on my iMac G5 20 inch.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Henry V .009]

Ubuntu didn't work at all on my new Presario M2000. I had to disable framebuffer on boot and use the vesa drivers instead of ati. This allowed both the 64-bit and 32-bit version to function.

Knoppix by contrast worked great, no tweaking necessary. Although it was annoying to hit shutdown, go away, and come back to find the battery drained because it was stuck on the "Remove CD and hit ENTER" screen.

Windows + cygwin tends to be enough for me though.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[16K Ram Pack]

I tried a live CD on my machine, and was completely bowled over how much it just detected everything. It got the HP printer slightly wrong, but it was easy to fix.

I'm cleaning up my machine ready for a dual boot of it.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

I tried out Ubuntu on an old Toshiba laptop

I'd never base my opinions about a distro on how they perform on Toshiba hardware. Toshiba hardware tends to have quirks that need to be handled in a special way. Of course, it would be nice if the hardware was always handled perfectly, and sometimes it is, but it's not surprising to me when it doesn't.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Bah. s/they perform/it performs/

If you're able, I encourage you to find the bugs and submit fixes for them to the software's maintainers.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Minwee]

"But in fairness, that was 10-15 years ago."

I would say that clearly people were much smarter then, but then again they were running Windows 3.1 and 95.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[TheoMurpse]

I never had to edit autoexec.bat nor config.sys for anything. In any case, those were used to load drivers which didn't automatically add themselves to config.sys, and autoexec.bat was almost unnecessary to edit (aside from making the last line in autoexec.bat, right after "win", say "defrag c: | Y" or something like that). The average user never had to touch this. Contrast this with xorg.conf, which I have had to manually edit when I installed Debian and Gentoo. I did not, however, have to edit it with Knoppix (installed to the HDD) nor with VectorLinux .

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[theurge14]

Thanks, I did. And I look forward to seeing how good Ubuntu becomes.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[jeroendekkers]

As far as I've heard, when you install XP, you need a floppy disk with drivers so windows sees your hard drive. When you run it for the first time, it boots up in 640x800, because it obviously doesn't have a driver yet for the video card yet. And then when you finished installation, you can't use your built-in wifi because windows doesn't have the driver yet. And when you want to work, you don't even have an office suite yet and a countless number of other software packages you want. Oh, you shouldn't forget to install stuff like anti-virus and anti-spyware of course. And you can't install all the software you want in one time and for each piece of software you've to go through all those wizards, clicking "next" 20 times, etc.

Of course, this is really a lot more userfriendly than Ubuntu is. Or is it maybe the case that Joe Sixpack isn't able to install any OS, and that he just uses what came with his computer or his computer savvy nephew installed?

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[eraserewind]

same result for my desktop, though you can add in a non functional network card. It's a shame that linux still struggles with these issues. I would like to use it, but really, having a mixture of the same hassles every time I try over the last ten years kills the enthusiasm somewhat.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[jacksonj04]

Have you installed Windows XP SP2 recently? Here's what happened:

Install XP - 6 keypresses
Format HDD - OK
3 Clicks
Enter Key
Install - OK
Detect Video - OK
Detect Mouse (USB 6 Button) - OK
Detect Keyboard (Multimedia with 6 function keys) - OK
Detect WiFi Card - OK
Find 192.168.1.1 Internet Gateway - OK
Install Windows OneCare Beta (Antivirus, Antispyware, Firewall etc) - 4 clicks
Install Office 2003 - 4 Clicks + entering key
Done, secure and ready to use for 96% of home users.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[fimbulvetr]

I have ubuntu on 4 computers, and only on the one with Xinerama/dual monitors did I have to do any editing. Nvidia, intel810 and intel855 is the hardware I run. I'd be genuinely interested in hearing an anecdote about how the recent ubuntus didn't properly setup Xorg. I'm sure there are some out there - OEM hardware, piss poor ATI crap, etc, but it's obvious they're leaps and bounds better than they were.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Anonymous Coward]

I would label this as trolling.

I have personally used Ubuntu on three computers and have friends that have tried it on others as well. On none was any .conf editing required for Joe Sixpack functionality.

You don't even need to open a terminal to install applications as there is a handy "Add Applications" tool that downloads, installs, and configures a set of popular programs automatically. For advanced installations there is Synaptic, which is another GUI two click install program that checks dependencies, downloads, installs, and configures all required packages for the ones selected.

Video? Keyboard? Mouse? Give me a break. I've got both PS/2 and USB mice and keyboards that work perfectly. From old IBM Model M keyboard to new Evoluent vertical mouse. All detected and work out of the box. That's scroll wheels, fourth buttons, etc.

Video drivers for esoteric or bleeding edge hardware I can understand. But WTF are you using for input devices Urusai? A serial flight stick and bluetooth VR wand? I call bullshit on your post. You don't sound like you've used Ubuntu. The only ".conf" file I had to edit was my repositories.list and I had a fully functioning system for applications, development, and casual gaming.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Dapper is still in ALPHA .
2) Reducing the acceleration and sensitivity did wonders for my usabiliy. ...but my network card could not be deltected and my HAL ( device managers etc ) went kaput... i was warned though...oh well

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Chandon Seldon]

This stuff all just works unless you have really strange hardware.

Realistically, a Ubuntu install is far smoother than a Windows XP install where you need to screw around with stacks of driver disks before anything works right.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Criterion]

Being a Gentoo user, you actually had to go to the Ubuntu forums to figure out how to edit your x.org file? Wow. Color me boggled.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Kjella]

For example, Debian "stable" still uses Xfree86, and Xfree86 couldn't detect it's left nut without editing the Xfree86 conf file.

I just wish the frigging X server wouldn't crash missing its "Core pointer device" when I hook it up without a mouse. Of course I could configure it without one, but then it doesn't work when I plug one in either. This happens quite a bit since it's sort of a half-server setup.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[be-fan]

It's essentially an unavoidable issue for any alternative OS. Few vendors certify their products on Linux (they sell the PCs with Windows, after all), and the Linux developers can only test on a fraction of the possible combinations of hardware.

Your best if you're serious about running Linux is usually to get a Dell system. Their hardware is extremely vanilla --- basically Intel CPU and motherboard + a NVIDIA graphics card.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[be-fan]

The need to hand-edit text files happens when the automatic configuration mechanisms fail. It's regretable that the mechansisms fail, but it's inevitable. The hardware wasn't certified for Linux, it was certified to run Windows. If you bought a machine with Linux, you wouldn't have to do any configuration or tweeking.

Your point can more generally be put as: Joe Sixpack isn't going to install an OS on his computer.

Well duh. Anyone who is expecting any OS to enter the mainstream by having Joe Sixpack download and install it is delusional. Joe Sixpack barely even knows what an OS is, much less that there is any other type of OS.

People who support Linux on the desktop realize that it will happen through pre-installed machines and corporate deployments. In both cases, Joe Sixpack won't have to edit any .conf files --- the hardware will be pre-configured and certified to run Linux.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[wolrahnaes]

You got lucky on that WiFi card.

Here's how it goes on my system....

Video starts at 800x600...unacceptable on my 1680x1050 LCD....let's get some drivers......

Fuck, no networking.....neither of the two Gigabit devices are supported.....

*go to roommate's computer, download nVidia Forceware and nForce4 chipset drivers*

install chipset drivers, rejecting the "ActiveArmor" firewall.....reboot
install video drivers.......reboot
realize I have no local network access, since gigE card 2 is still not on.....download more drivers...install....no reboot this time

run Windows update, reboot, repeat about 5 times

Now, let's try this with Ubuntu....

installer asks which of my two NICs I prefer to use, autoconfigures with DHCP
when X starts, it's already working at 1680x1050, and has 2D acceleration
sound works, everything is detected, all that's left to do is install nvidia-glx with a few clicks in Synaptic and restart X

Same situation with my Tablet PC. On a computer built specifically for a certain version of Windows, the wireless still doesn't work out of the box, where any Linux distro in the last 4 years picks it up just fine (Orinoco miniPCI card).

Aside from OS X on to my powerbook, I've never had an OS install go so easily as it does with Ubuntu. It was a bit more interesting with my old laptop that had ATI graphics and a Broadcom wireless card, but Windows didn't support those out of the box either, so the fact that Ubuntu at least knew the right resolution to run it at gave it the lead.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[wolrahnaes]

Same here. When I had a Compaq R3000 DTR notebook with a 1680x1050 screen, Fedora and Mandrake always made me jump through hoops to get it working right, and even then more often than not I nuked X. I tried Ubuntu on a whim one day, and it autodetected the proper resolution. That was enough to get me to stick around long enough to realize the benefits of the apt-get way over the "fun" I'd had on RPM based systems for years.

Ever since then, I've been a Ubuntu user on the desktop and all Debian on my servers, though my laptop is OS X.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[zcat_NZ]

This Saturday I helped a guy install Windows XP on a white box using an ABIT motherboard.

Out of the box onboard video was using the generic drivers, and onboard sound didn't work. The S3 SonicVibes card he had also wouldn't work. The ABIT website in Taiwan (after trying to download foreign language support at every page) only had chipset drivers for 95, 98 and 2k. Drivers for the S3 soundcard were the same.

I'm not sure how much else didn't work but he eventually went out and bought another cheap soundcard and decided he could live with the generic unaccelerated video. He's not a gamer..

I don't know why we had so many problems.. the mobo wasn't all that much older that Windows XP itself which is about 5 years old now. It was a fairly ordinary Taiwanese board, and a very common S3 soundcard. I took the old soundcard home because I have used a few of these in the past and know from experience it will work flawlessly in any Linux distro.

If this were about Linux, many people would suggest at this point that it will never be ready for mainstream use until this kind of issue is sorted out. My experience is that I usually have much bigger problems sorting out drivers for Windows unless it's a fairly new machine with all the OEM CD's still at hand.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[zcat_NZ]

Forgot to mention..

The whole time I was dealing with this windows box, my kids (age 9 and 11) were playing games on my machine, running Dapper Flight 4 with the XGL desktop. Dapper found _ALL_ my hardware on install, I had no trouble getting nvidia drivers, xgl and compiz sorted, and it (an alpha release) was completely stable for the five hours that the kids used it. I also burned off a couple of CDs and recovered some files from a corrupted media card that Windows couldn't access.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Anonymous Coward]

You edited your repositories list by hand!!? You know you can add and remove repo's through synaptic, right? Even custom repo's.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wish {Xfree, xorg, x-whatever} had a fallback contingency for those cases when the *.conf file results in an xserver crash.

"Gee, I noted that the x server died. I'll put up a crappy dialog box in text mode and disable the server, rather than do something sensible like drop back to the vesa or vga server, so that the less technical users can get back into the windowing system to make changes".

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[zerocool^]

Corporate release schedule versus free.

When a corporation releases a new version, they expect to be able to pay for it. When Windows XP was released, it included support for damn near everything. The fact is simply that there's been too much hardware come out since XP was released - you can't expect them to have built drivers into the OS 5 years ago for hardware they didn't know would exist. Likewise, you can't expect them to release new versions, because that will cause confusion with people who already own XP ("Oh, I've got WinXP 4.2" - "Oh, that's why my sound doesn't work, I've only got XP 3.7").

Think for a second: Just using redhat as an example, since WindowsXP was released, we've seen the release of RH7.3, RH8.0, RH9, Fedora Core 1, FC2, FC3, and FC4, and we'll see FC5 before Vista comes out. Try installing RH7.3 on modern hardware, see what it recognizes...

If you install Windows 2003 server, it has more drivers - it detects almost everything these days (except frustratingly enough sometimes it doesn't detect eepro1000 intel cards). This is something that windows is continuing to do - from previews I've seen of Vista, it supports almost every current piece of hardware.

Why aren't microsoft putting out updates? They are. Whenever you build a new system, keep a realtek 8139 network card with you; or a D-Link COSMO USB-network adapter and a floppy or thumbdrive with the driver. When you get windows installed, head over to windows update, and rather than hitting "express", hit "custom" and look for hardware updates. It catches quite a lot of hardware - modems, ethernet cards, sound cards, all kinds of stuff.

This is really a non issue.

~Will

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[gnarlin]

over here in emerge-world-ville.

Hello neighbor. How long have you lived in Gentoo GNU/Linux EmergeWorldVille? Have you tried the funny hats? Nice weather we're havin'. I'ma rebuildin' ma' house today. How 'bout you? By the way, don't tease the cow 'mkey?
Also, don't min' the inaproriate remarks from the city folk who passed by. Just because we like the extra chimneys, the horizontal X-windows 'n the constant rebuildin'. Just keep on doin' what makes 'ya happy, an' let the rest take care of it self. Thats what my gran' pappy used ta' say, although he lived in SlackwareVille. Poor chap.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[kestasjk]

Another anecdote; when I first tried 5.04 on my laptop I needed to tweak Xorg.conf, the synaptics mousepad had incorrect key bindings, standby functionality was poor, and it could only use the vesa driver (Dell laptop Intel grpahics card).
When I tried 5.10 a couple of months later it worked flawlessly, and I've been using it since. (Well, at least until recently when my supposedly anti-MS university forced me to use XP with a barrage of .docs and .exes)

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[howlingmadhowie]

with me it sort of worked like this:

• 'borrow' XP -cd
• place cd in drive. cd is not recognised by bios during system boot.
• turn computer off and start again. cd recognised this time
• cd does some weird stuff to begin with (loading system kernel? -unlikely). this crashes - try again
• cd gets to a welcome screen. doesn't recognise hard-drive, installation impossible

since i don't have a floppy drive i sort of gave up at this point. some one told me later, that the cd can also read in drivers for a s-ata hard drive from the usb-port, but at that stage i'd already put a suse-linux 9.1-64 cd in the drive, which installed without difficulties in one go and also gave me support for the 64-bit command set.

windows xp may be good if you have standard middle-of-the-range hardwarefrom the year 2000, but nowadays it's a nightmare to install. of course, once it is installed, you can find all the drivers you need, but some people just don't get that far (me included).

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[zcat_NZ]

It's not a non-issue. Both the motherboard and soundcard had drivers available for 95, 98 and 2k.. so it's a case of 'too old' not 'too new'

The hardware obviously existed when XP was first released, and the S3 card must be fairly common; I've been given about five so far (mostly from users who found they couldn't get drivers for it after they upgraded to Windows XP. :-) Microsoft couldn't be bothered including more than generic support for the mobo, or any support for the soundcard, and the manufacturers couldn't be bothered releasing new drivers for hardware they no longer manufactured or supported. Thus in order to upgrade to Windows XP, John has had to accept reduced functionality on his motherboard and discard an otherwise perfectly good soundcard.

I've seen MANY reviews of Linux that are harshly critical about 'users having to buy new hardware' because there are no drivers for their existing hardware. So why shouldn't I be just as critical of Windows?

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[jesterzog]

The necessity of hand-editing xorg.conf or frankly any .conf file keeps Ubuntu and Linux in general out of the mainstream. Joe Sixpack isn't going to do it. Fundamental things such as video, keyboard, and mouse should work immediately, with sane and functional fallbacks.

I don't disagree with you that most people aren't going to edit a configuration file. The frustrating irony though, I think, is that most people wouldn't be able to do what it takes to install Windows on their PC, either, if it wasn't already pre-installed when they bought their PC. I've lost count of the number of times I've tried to install Windows on a PC and not had it run smoothly, because fundamental things such as mouse and video let alone the CD Rom drive that I needed for various drivers (at times when I'd installed older Windows from floppy disks) simply didn't work cleanly out of the box.

Some people, including techies, are much more used to the Windows way of doing things, and would have a few problems configuring Linux immediately. That said, I'm skeptical that the use of a text editor is anywhere near as much of a barrier as knowing what's going on underneath, and knowing where to find the configuration. I also don't think people should need to understand this.

I'm not convinced that Windows is that much better than some of the more advanced Linux distros when it comes to installation. Its primary advantage lies in the various marketing deals that Microsoft has in place so that regular people don't have to install it. Good for Microsoft.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully I had an almost perfect experience on my Tosh Tecra A5. Atheros WiFi worked, the SATA disk worked, the 915 graphics controller worked (and at the proper 1280x768 res). The only thing that didn't work straight away in Breezy was the MMC/SD card reader, but since I've dist-upgraded to Dapper I've noticed that occasionally that works. Seems to work OK if I boot up with an MMC card in, but it doesn't seem to handle removal/insertion properly.

Come to think of it, I'm not too sure about power management either, Tosh provide a Windows utility which can set brightness, CPU throttling etc. powernowd claims that my Celeron-M CPU doesn't support any throttling, and there's no automatic adjustment of screen brightness when I move from AC to battery (although the hotkeys work fine so I can lower the brightness manually).

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[nutshell42]

Suse had some propietary tools which mucked up the display.

OTOH SuSE is the only distro who's ever managed to give me more than 60Hz on my monitor without editing the config files by hand. Ubuntu seems to detect the correct vsync/hsync values but completely screws up the config file.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Mo6eB]

The necessity of editing config files keeps the idiots out.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Etyenne]

Fundamental things such as video, keyboard, and mouse should work immediately, with sane and functional fallbacks.

You mean just like Windows, where it work out-of-the-box 100% of the time ? Because it's not like you ever have to dig out that freakin' drivers CD for your video card while being stuck at 640x480 ...

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Mongoose]

The problems here go for a lot of distros.

1. Video: Xorg can't tell what your hort / vert rates are on some older laptops, so if you set them by hand it will work.

2. Sound: You're likely running alsa instead of OSS, and for older hardware you'll have to hand tune the modprobe'd settings.

Hell if you use old enough hardware you have to set the all the parms by hand just like old dos! Next time be more specific. Old as in a 486 or a 586?

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Mongoose]

Yeah, but a lot of this was done by the vendor with preinstalled windows. I used to fix and sell laptops, and trust me -- this is a real problem with a lot of models.

Ubuntu works out of box on every laptop I've tried newer than PIIs with xorg and alsa. If you're using a PII (which often had horrible graphics chips) you'll have to touch xorg.conf. I've had some PII systems that had audio hardware that wasn't PnP or able to be autoprobed.

What do you want the OS to do in that case? Try and guess your irqs and fuck something up?

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[someone300]

They already do release updates other than plain XP... XPSP1, XPSP2.

What Windows needs is a good package manager (no: Windows update, MSI and SUS are not good) and the ability to download newly built XP CDs with the latest packages. If you want an entire list of software, the package manager can provide it, a little like the windows update logs.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[HiThere]

I've had good luck with both Breezy Badger and Dapper Drake WRT sound and video...of course I don't do anything very fancy.

OTOH, both have failed with printing to my networked HP PSC 2510. For that I still need to switch to my Sarge installation...or boot the Mephis live CD (I think that's the one).

OTGH, the real problem that I have with Ubuntu is package selection, even with Universe and Multiverse selected. So I'm using Etch as my main distribution, even though it ALSO has failed printing to my networked HP PSC 2510. I'd think it was the printer or the connection if I didn't have a Sarge installation that worked. This breakage happened sometime recently when the libraries were upgraded, as my original Etch installation worked at printing (or so I remember). And I don't even know which upgrade, because I don't print that often.

Re:"Linux for human beings"

[Makarakalax]

Congratulations on your unbearably obvious comment.

Well...

[Jugalator]

A 6 week delay doesn't sound earth shattering to me... I fail to see the problem here, to be honest. Especially if it's about improving usability, an area critical for Linux adoption, which is one of the main purposes for this particular distro.

To me, this feels basically like delaying an extra security heavy distro 6 weeks to implement verify a new security protocol implementation works correctly.

Re:Well...

[MadJo]

I think the biggest issue is, that Ubuntu promises a new version every 6 months.. and this would make it 7 for this new version. (October - May)

Re:Well...

[robgamble]

this feels basically like delaying an extra security heavy distro 6 weeks to implement verify a new security protocol implementation works correctly

Well put, it's what they do best so let them do it! Ubuntu is the friendliest distribution I have used to date, and I have no issue waiting another 6 weeks so they can say they put their best effort forward on this release.

Support/enterprise

[slavemowgli]

Considering that they want this to be the first Ubuntu release that's supported for a long time and that can compete with things like SuSE's or RedHat's enterprise distributions, I'd say six weeks are perfectly acceptable.

Ubuntu is Debian, Debian is Ubuntu...

[petteri_666]

OMG, Ubuntu is closing on Debian.

Really...

[Clazzy]

To be honest, Dapper is very stable and polished already. There's mixed reactions over the new Clearlooks scheme they've implemented but overall, it's turning out very well. I can't speak for the localisation issues, but a stable release is much better than a rushed release. If you want to try Dapper, Flight 5 should be just fine.

Re:Really...

[Goalie_Ca]

While lots of it is polished and well done there are too many broken things. Blam, liferea (crashes a lot), theme glitches (Expected), and tons of various other problems. I'm still finding issues esp on the amd64 branch.

Re:Really...

[arrrrg]

There are certain things that simply do not work on Dapper at the moment. Most important for me, I haven't found a single Lisp compiler that works. CLisp, CMUCL, and SBCL all worked fine on breezy; as soon as I upgraded to dapper, they started segfaulting on startup... I know very little about the internals of Linux, but I think its something to do with changes in the memory model that are messing with the garbage collectors.

Re:Really...

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, you still program in languages using garbage collectors?

d'uh.

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

>Is it really worth delaying the release for more then a month just to polish it out a little bit?

there are hundreds of distros already, and the only thing they all lack is polish, so yes.

what's the hurry?

Re:d'uh.

[ClamIAm]

there are hundreds of distros already, and the only thing they all lack is polish, so yes.

On the contrary my friend, PLD Linux is made by Poles in Poland, so they definitely have the whole thing covered.

Re:d'uh.

[gentooligan]

PLD has lots and lots of polish actually

Re:d'uh.

[thedletterman]

what's the hurry?
Every week they delay their product, they are losing tons of money! Oh wait.. nevermind.

YES!

[geddes]

One of the reasons, imho, that Blizzard's games are always so good, is that they are not afraid to delay them. They test and test and tweak and tweak and when they game comes out, it is of the highest quality. Blizzard is admirable because they respect that programming is an art that can't be rushed. Most companies rush their products so they can start generating revenue.

Patience is a virtue. Ubuntu has no need to generate revenue, and if it takes six more weeks to make the release more usable for human beings, that can only be a good thing.

Re:YES!

[Anonymous Coward]

At least by your logic, Duke nuke'm forever will be a really nice game... Good to know, thx.

Re:YES!

[Dunbal]

At least by your logic, Duke nuke'm forever will be a really nice game...

      It had better be nice, considering we will have all of eternity to play it. After all it will be released after we're dead, right? You have to believe in DNF, man. If you don't believe you'll never get to play...

Re:YES!

[Lifyre]

You haven't played World of Warcraft much have you?

Re:YES!

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time someone says they don't believe in DNF, a stripper is given money, then detonated.

Re:YES!

[danielk1982]

You've never played World War 2 Online or Anarchy Online after they launched.. have you?

Real reason for the delay...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Ubuntu is based on Debian right?

It seems that now they are also copying release schedules (with delays) from Debian projects :)

Re:Real reason for the delay...

[miscz]

But it's based off Sid which doesn't really have any release date :)

Out of sync

[miscz]

If it wasn't for the fact that Ubuntu is synchronized with Gnome releases I wouldn't mind the delay. But now they would have to either rush the next release, be late with it or completly skip Gnome 2.16. I hope they'll find some good solution because many users are preferring Ubuntu to other distros because of fairly nice bleeding-edgeness. With this step they could lose major selling point to causal Linux geeks.

The recent theme changes are not a step in good direction too. It looks abysymal and burns my eyes. Even tough I didn't like brown theme the new one made me miss it.

Re:Out of sync

[Fafnir_b]

I could imagine they would rush the next release, because dapper will be more than just an ordinary half-yearly ubuntu release. They plan to have enterprise-grade releases every other year (or so), with very long (5 years) support. If you want someone to stick with a distribution for 2 years or more, you better deliver something that's as good as it can get (within a reasonable delay from the originally foressen release date, where reasonable obviously still needs to be defined but may be six weeks). For the release following dapper, they can probably simply switch back to ${gnome-release-date}+1month.

Re:Out of sync

[xenocide2]

I don't think they nessecarily need to push the next deadlines to accomodate this one, as many of the polishing etc is coming from additional members. I've always wondered why there are so many Asian specific distributions of Linux, and maybe Mark has found an answer. Here's to hoping it gets fixed. It's possible that in the mean time Compiz will be improved, which is certainly still on the leading edge of GUI stuff.

Furthermore, it's also the case that anyone who really wants Dapper now can get it via the Flights. Unfortunately, this path of thought is what brought Debian stable to its knees. I may upgrade to Dapper over Spring Break when I get the chance.

Re:Out of sync

[From A Far Away Land]

I'd hope that they make an OS that can work for at least as long as Windows 2000. Microsoft can realease Service Packs that keep a system "current", so I'd certainly hope that Ubuntu can do the same thing.

Re:Out of sync

[lintux]

> With this step they could lose major selling point to causal Linux geeks.

I can hardly imagine that those Linux geeks mind those six weeks. And if they do, they're probably already running a pre-release version (don't know how that's called in Ubuntu).

Re:Out of sync

[thehunger]

>With this step they could lose major selling point to causal Linux geeks.

Missed the "Linux for human beings" tagline?
It implies target users have a life, so I guess it's back to Debian for you, eh?

Re:Out of sync

[miscz]

Six weeks is 1/4 of time between Gnome releases, a bit too much if you consider that Ubuntu was always one of the first distros to have newest Gnome included. I don't mind this delay as I've been using pre-release for over a month but there are some people who do not like downloading 200mb of patches in few days and prefer something really stable.

Re:Out of sync

[lintux]

Well, if they want something really stable, they certainly shouldn't push Ubuntu to release in April already, right? ;-)

But okay, this is getting a bit redundant, so never mind. But really, I can't imagine the new GNOME version is so cool that waiting a bit longer is unacceptable...

Strict schedules suck. Example: Microsoft Tuesday

[Anonymous Coward]

Enough said.

Polish away guys. Keep up the great work!

Absolutely it's OK!

[NorbrookC]

Is it really worth delaying the release for more then a month just to polish it out a little bit?"

Yes, it's worth it. FTA, this isn't a release aimed at the "average Linux user." It's meant for enterprises, and it's important to get it right. It's something that can be a big point for the adoption of Linux in the desktop workspace, that this is a distro which looks good, has a wide range of language options, and has support. Spending a rather trivial amount of time getting it fully ready is what should be done, rather than try to hit an arbitrary "release date", only to, a few weeks later, do the MS routine of "here's the update package, Service Pack X".

Not just polish...

[BaltikaTroika]

I think that almost everybody would agree that a little more time spent making a product better is a good thing.

It's not just about polish, though. TFA lays out a number of points where improvements are needed:

1. Testing
2. Certification
3. Localisation
4. (last but not least) Polish

Improvements to Asian localisation should help a ton of people - we're not all English speakers. :) Any steps, no matter how small, to appeal to the Chinese/Korean/Japanese markets will probably pay off well.

Not that it all matters to me, though... I use SUSE. :)

BaltikaTroika

Re:Not just polish...

[njh]

Wouldn't Polish come under the category of Localisation?

Re:Not just polish...

[wilburdg]

Wouldn't creating a Polish version fall under localisation?

Re:Not just polish...

[sql_noob]

>> Following his tour of Asia, Shuttleworth also believes that support for support for Asian languages and fonts, as well as Asian input methods, is somewhat lacking in Ubuntu.

Finally, the basic of basic would be included.

Re:Not just polish...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't Polish come under the category of Localisation?
That's why they aren't Russian to Finnish it. It takes time to Sweden a distribution and there's Norway they are going to German any last-minute Belgium whistles. The users may be Hungary to get their on it, but the developers simply have to Czech their work. If you prefer having it now over having it good, then either Greece the wheels with some cash or Yugoslavia self, you Turkey.

As for those of you who hate puns, i'm sure this Herzegovina it again so soon after the parent post.

Re:Not just polish...

[muszek]

it was mentioned separately just to emphasise that he didn't forget Poland.

Re:Not just polish...

[zippthorne]

Glad to see Bush's advice didn't fall on deaf ears.

Re:Not just polish...

[PitaBred]

So spit and polish is a hate crime? :)

Software delay?

[nurb432]

Its not like this isnt common practice in the first place.. "sorry its not quite done' is a good answer..

Why the personality injection?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it particularly newsworthy that it's Shuttleworth proposing this rather than anybody else? The reason I ask is that he was singled out as the person responsible over at Digg as well, and I see no point to saying that it was Shuttleworth rather than simply "Ubuntu release delay proposed". I know he's the founder of Ubuntu, but does everything have to go through a hero-worship filter before making it onto sites like Slashdot and Digg? It's pretty embarrassing to see tech-oriented sites act like teenage girls fawning over their latest pop singer pin-ups.

Re:Why the personality injection?

[From A Far Away Land]

"It's pretty embarrassing to see tech-oriented sites act like teenage girls fawning over their latest pop singer pin-ups."

Hey, don't dis the fawning teenage girls. It was those type of people that made the Beatles more popular than Jesus to some people. We could only be so lucky to have thousands of screaming teenage girls promoting Linux use at home.

So what's the message?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what's the message these distros are sending?

"We're too cheap to license mp3 and without the license it's illegal to include it in the distro. So, instead, we'll ask you to download the illegal code yourself. Have a nice day with your (almost) complete open source operating system."

Re:So what's the message?

[moonbender]

I don't know what applies here, but there you go: 1. There might not be licenses for unlimited redistribution; in other words, you can't distribute the software the license covers under the GPL. 2. It might not actually be illegal for the end-user to download the software -- downloading it for your own usage might be all right, redistribution not.

You only get one chance to make a first impression

[Anonymous Coward]

...and besides, it is open-soure.

"Deadlines, we don't need no stinking deadlines!"

Prostitute Schedule for Mar. 11 at the MBOT in SF

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks, check out the updated prostitute schedule for March 11 at the Mitchell Brother's O'Farrell Theater (MBOT), located at 895 O'Farrell Street, San Francisco, California. The MBOT is the most convenient way for you to buy a blow job, a hand job, and full service (i.e. vaginal sexual intercourse).

I kid you not.

Please establish a hypertext link to this message. Spread the word!

It's worth delaying

[babbling]

This is the Ubuntu that will be competing with Windows Vista. It needs to be polished.

There is going to be a reasonably large number of desktop users willing to "try Linux out" just before they "upgrade" to Vista. The distribution they're most likely to try is currently Ubuntu, and if it is good enough, they might switch to Linux rather than Vista.

Re:It's worth delaying

[jrcamp]

There will be another Ubuntu release sometime in October (if they continue to follow their schedule, maybe Novemeber if this push back is reflected in the next release). Even given that, how will this release be competing with Vista? Nobody even knows for sure when Vista is coming out.

Re:It's worth delaying

[dtfinch]

I expect that most people will get Vista the same way they got XP, preinstalled. For just twice the price of a retail copy of Windows, you can get a new computer that already has it.

Re:It's worth delaying

[Shadyman]

With the exception that this will be a long-standing release, and they will be supporting this longer than than they have with previous versions.

Re:It's worth delaying

[flappinbooger]

I agree 100%.

Ubuntu breezy, the current one out, is amazing. If someone installs it, follows the step-by-step instructions to run the Automatix, there is NO reason to use windows over Ubuntu.

There is, honestly, only ONE thing that windows (apple?) has over linux, and that is good video editing packages. There are a few "decent" ones, but I'm talking final cut, vegas, premiere level stuff and higher.

Ubuntu installs easy and works with everything I threw at it.

Another reason, along with Vista, is Dell. I recall in a previous /. article, that Dell likes Ubuntu... I'm sure they will be looking HARD at dapper. Breezy is so good there is no reason to hurry with so much to gain.

Re:It's worth delaying

[erikdalen]

Windows and Mac OS also has decent accounting and desktop publishing programs, which is what's stopping us from using it at work.

At home I'm running Ubuntu 'dapper' though. Works nicely.

Re:It's worth delaying

[Anonymous Coward]

"There is, honestly, only ONE thing that windows (apple?) has over linux, and that is good video editing packages."

Games.

Codec support, automatix fixes most of this. Still no ability to play DRMed files, and I'm not sure about the very latest apple/MS codecs. Plus, it's very likely illegal :(

Hardware support, I had to be very careful buying a wifi PC card that had linux drivers. On the plus side, Ubuntu supports it out of the box. Where linux works it does it very well indeed.

Linux has advantages over Windows too, but mostly in areas that people don't give a shit about, e.g. security, an incredibly functional command line, x-forwarding, customisability...

Ubuntu release philosophy: A fatal flaw

[Andrew Tanenbaum]

Ubuntu's release philosophy is to take a snapshot of Debian every 6 months, and then stabilize it for two months. During this stabilization period, they import only minor fixes, leaving major ones behind. Often they will backport smaller fixes into their packages - but with limited resources they can't do this for everything.

The fatal flaw with this is that a lot of buggy software still gets in, with new releases with bugfixes coming out after the "Upstream Version Freeze" -- rejected because they have new "features" in addition to the bugfixes. And with a lot of important open source software being still immature, with versions less than 1.0, these few weeks of "stability" are a very long time.

Other major distributions, SuSE and Fedora, constantly release updated software, with new bugfixes and features. They don't just do constant snapshopts, and in my opinion this creates a better system. Ubuntu is even more conservative in their releases than Microsoft or Apple.

Re:Ubuntu release philosophy: A fatal flaw

[forlornhope]

Yeah, thats a common misconception. Ubuntu is not a snapshot of Debian Unstable. Multiverse is a snapshot of packages in Debian Unstable that are not in Universe, Main, or Restricted. Universe contains packages supported by the community, which is encouraged to work closely with Debian. Main and Restricted are both modules that are directly supported by Canonical. These packages are worked on heavily by employees of Canonical and while there is significant collaboration(some would like to see more, but thats a seperate debate) these packages are not just stabalized snapshots. Canonical puts a lot of time into Main and Restricted and you will often see versions of packages(and packages) that are in Ubuntu before they hit Debian. You can see that by the fact that Ubuntu Dapper currently has the prerelease gnome 2.13 while Debian still has 2.12. Please stop spreading this misinformation.

Re:Ubuntu release philosophy: A fatal flaw

[Cthefuture]

Yeah, I sort of agree. That's actually one thing I liked with Debian. Who cares if there is never a new version? The packages would still get updated. I miss that with Ubuntu.

I have to admit that Ubuntu has many nice useability tweaks over Debian though. Ubuntu is almost install and run without thinking about it. Debian still requires a bit of work in certain areas.

I really do wish there was an "unstable" Ubuntu though. Something where any new package can be stuffed, all bleeding edge junk like Debian unstable. I hate waiting months for another Ubuntu release when I want some newer version of something (eg. Breezy is still using Thunderbird/Firfox 1.0 when 1.5 has been out for ages; inline spelling, yum) and I dislike munging up my system by manually installing some newer version of a specific package.

Re:Ubuntu release philosophy: A fatal flaw

[flurdy]

You want ubuntu unstable? Well that is dapper at the moment isn't?
Though when dapper is released you have to do a dist-upgrade to the next development release.

If you really want bleeding edge ubuntu, then perhaps this version is better: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDownUnder/BOFs/Grump yGroundhog ?

Anyway, if you want just more than security updates, then the backports repositories is enough for me.

Re:Ubuntu release philosophy: A fatal flaw

[Cthefuture]

Well, the Ubuntu "unstable" releases tend to be a lot less stable than Debian unstable. It's because they tweak so much stuff and are preparing for a stable release and expect a consistent environment for the upcoming release. Nothing wrong with that but the pre-releases don't tend to work that great until the beta is released.

worth delaying for WPA support alone

[keithy]

Except, I don't believe, that's on the cards

Considering that Dapper is going to be a major release, oriented towards gaining the business market, not supporting WPA is a big mistake!

I hope I'm wrong

Re:worth delaying for WPA support alone

[astroboscope]

??? I've been using WPA2 with Ubuntu for most of a year.

Re:worth delaying for WPA support alone

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you remember how you got it working?

Wpa_supplicant is in the Universe repository, which means it isn't part of the default distribution. And as far as I'm aware you can't configure it with the GUI tools. This just isn't good enough, it needs to be part of the default install with a proper way to set it up that doesn't involve editing text files.

I don't mind so much about editing the text files myself, but hunting down packages to make it work is annoying at the very least, especially if you only have a wireless connection when you are doing the install.

Re:worth delaying for WPA support alone

[Mathiasdm]

I've already installed WPA-supplicant.
Now just getting it to work...

I do think they should put it on the CD by default! Ndiswrapper is there, why not WPA-supplicant?

Re:worth delaying for WPA support alone

[electronerdz]

The whole wireless is an issue. I haven't tried out Badger, and certainly not Drake yet, but when using it on my laptop, changing the wireless settings because I am at a new location was a pain. Hopefully there is a better wireless solution for laptop users. Kinda like Windows tells you a new wireless network is available...

Re:worth delaying for WPA support alone

[sir_montag]

I recently tried to get WPA working on a fresh Ubuntu install. I spent the better part of two days before I gave up, and I'm no slouch when it comes to computers. How can I advocate using linux to someone when *I* can't even get WPA encryption working? Certain things should just 'work' right off the bat. MP3 and such, that I can understand. WPA, on the other hand... And WEP is next to useless. Should I go around saying "It's better than Windows XP. But you can't really get WPA working." I'll have them right up until that last sentence. No one in their right of mind is going to switch to an OS that can't even get bloody WPA support working. And saying 'well, if you do X, and really mess around with X config files' isn't going to cut it either. If *I* ended up throwing in the towel over trying to get WPA working, then the average user sure as hell isn't going for it. Linux is *worthless* as an operating system for the regular home user as long as basic things like WPA aren't supported. That would be similar to selling a car that didn't have working locks. Nobody in their right of mind would want a car like that. So what if it's free? If you're using wireless and want do anything over the internet that requires a password, switching to an OS that doesn't support WPA is ludicrous. Long Live Bill Gates and Microsoft. I'll still be using XP as my primary OS until Linux becomes a reasonable choice as a home user OS. And at this rate, I don't see that happening any time soon.

Re:worth delaying for WPA support alone

[fimbulvetr]

I have a feeling you're gonna like the new NetworkManager. I had the same gripes as you, and the newest ubuntu solved them. The newest NetworkManager, 0.60, is the one that natively supports WPA - though it doesn't appear likely that it's going to end up in the new ubuntu.

Re:worth delaying for WPA support alone

[astroboscope]

Can you remember how you got it working?

Yes, I edited /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf with jed or emacs!

It wasn't hard at all (Did you try "man wpa_supplicant"?), but what you might be having trouble with is the driver for the wireless card. I had to use ndiswrapper to load the Broadcom driver from my Windoze XP partition. That requirement might(? I don't know) have gone away with the latest Linux kernel. Finding the driver directory on the Windoze partition, and especially the correct driver in that directory, was a bit of a pain, solved by using trial and error.

But all in all it's not much harder than properly setting up a wireless router.

Re:worth delaying for WPA support alone

[electronerdz]

Well, because of the lack of WPA support, I usually don't use WPA anyway, so that won't be a problem with me. A little googling on NetworkManager, and it looks like I am going to like it a lot... now I just have to wait a little longer... now if I could only get my Dell Photo 720 to work in Ubuntu.

Simply said...

[etnoy]

No, I don't want the next ubuntu release to be polish.

What if 6.04

[Ethan Allison]

Got released in April, but the CDs didn't come out until everything was polished? Maybe a 6.05 edition?

Re:What if 6.04

[Richard Dick Head]

Got released in April, but the CDs didn't come out until everything was polished?

If you roll out two releases, then you have to support two releases, which isn't very fun. If you REALLY want the latest Ubuntu in April, you can just install the latest snapshot. That way you can help test it, and file bug reports, etc!

Re:What if 6.04

[funpet]

Good idea. mod parent up.

Why not release both 6.04 and 6.06?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is keeping Ubuntu from _only_ making two releases a year?

Release 6.04 on schedule for those who want it, and release again six weeks later when the polishing is done.

Re:Why not release both 6.04 and 6.06?

[Sri Ramkrishna]

The problem is that from here on in, Canonical will be supporting each release for 5 years. Having two releases would take a lot of extra support that you don't want. They are going "enterprise" with this release including "enterprise support".

sri

The Flight 5 DL Link

[matva]

get it here: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/flight5 Live CD and .torrents available

Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

and fuck you to all the impatient twats out there. I'd rather wait for something to work right than something rushed at the last minute coming out.
hoary has some nasty glitches here and there that often dont get resolved until the next release.

Xchat freezes on exit for me, I've unloaded my scripts and get the same effect.

So I welcome such delays to ensure everything is perfect. People bitch when microsoft doesnt do this. So why bitch when a linux distro does this? I'd also like to see an x input driver put in for the genius wizardpen.

Release already!

[Hackeron]

Polish can come after the release. Personally, I couldnt wait and upgraded to dapper drake because of XGL and Compiz (the 3d desktop) - Boy I'm glad I did, so much have been fixed and improved, it fixed all my video playback problems, the startup times are infinitely lower, far better hardware support (wireless anyone!?), etc.

Why do I appose to delaying the release? - Because the only reason my less technical friends didnt upgrade is because, ah, hell, a couple of weeks more now and its ready, now they will and probably ruin their experience with the rash of pushing packages into an unstable branch, shame :(

Blame X

[Stalyn]

Actually the Linux kernel does these things pretty well. And modern distros that use udev, hal and dbus can detect hardware configurations on-the-fly. I was half-shocked when I plugged in my digital camera and it was detected and mounted automagically. The problem is X has it's own hardware subsystems for the sake of portability (BSD kernel does not Linux-like subsystems) and are not as good. It would be great if X just would let the Linux kernel do its thing. There is some work being done along these lines and hopefully will improve the situation.

Compile kernel modules for dapper

[Fafnir_b]

By the way: does anyone know if dapper will ship a kernel that's been compiled with the version of gcc that's included on the distribution CD's? If badger had one fundamental flaw, it would be a kernel compiled with gcc3.4 and gcc 4.? included on the CD. People who need to compile e.g. their wireless driver because it's not included in the standard kernel, are fucked, because they may not have network access with the distribution files and need to download either gcc 3.4 or kernel sources...

Re:Compile kernel modules for dapper

[IANAAC]

And that was a pretty bad flaw, IMO. Try and install VMWare. Once you figure out it's a GCC issue, you can always go out and get the correct version, but it's a pain. Lord help the brave Windows soul who decides to try Ubuntu and then goes out and buys a copy of VMWare (not cheap) to ensure s/he can still run Windows and apps when s/he wants, only to run up against that error.

Re:Compile kernel modules for dapper

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be living under a /.-rock if you haven't heard about the free VMWare Player/Server products.

Value of Polish vs. New Features

[buckhead_buddy]

The biggest issue is that not everyone will work on polish and bug fixing. Some will be working on development of new features. A good version control system should allow this state of affairs, but what will happen when someone working on the development branch gets a major new feature developed in the long six week time frame that others are working on the polish?

One faction will say, "Don't commit any new features until the next major release after this one!" while another faction will say "This is too important to wait through endless patch releases and another major release cycle!" The temptation will be to "just risk a few bugs" for this "major new feature" by those who don't really see the value of the polish right now. The offense will be that "any new feature" will require more polish, patches, or in essence de-values the work the polish team has been doing. Great amounts of spite and venom will be launched at each side.

Set a firm, clear policy about what the polish window will be and about the firm exclusion of new functionality that's independent of any particular technology before this starts and make sure everyone knows what that policy is. Not setting a policy is bound to cause chaos. Setting and then breaking a policy is bound to drive off any future desire to work on future "polish" release work.

Great

[ion_]

I think that's great. Just a while ago Dapper got a new urine-colored Human theme, and - all due respect to the people who put their efforts into making Ubuntu better - frankly, it's just horrible. If the release is delayed, they have a lot better change to fix the theme.

Another thing i'd really like to see in dapper is the new NetworkManager 0.6 with its WPA and OpenVPN goodness. "Automatic network detection and configuration management" is high-priority target for dapper, and the new features in n-m 0.6 are needed by many users.

Re:Great

[MattFlower]

If your urine is that color, you might want to see a doctor -- or at least drink more fluids. :)

Re:Great

[ion_]

If your urine is that color, you might want to see a doctor -- or at least drink more fluids. :)

Thanks for your concern, but it's okay, it's because i'm Finnish. The color of our urine is a result of a long, nationwide gene manipulation experiment with the ultimate goal: urine that glows in the dark.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Just FYI, FC5 will have NetworkManager 0.6.

Re:Great

[SmartSsa]

Sounds like a waste of money. I just drink a lot of Corona for that to happen.

Re:Great

[Anthony Liguori]

I think that's great. Just a while ago Dapper got a new urine-colored Human theme,

I think you've been eating too many carrots if that is the color of your urine...

fix slow firefox

[towsonu2003]

While there, they should fix the slow firefox issue that plagued Breezy and overflowed to Dapper.

See slow firefox problem in Dapper and the un-upgrade-able firefox 1.0.7 still vulnerable to security issues in Breezy. They also need to fix the fact that they cannot update firefox because everything else in the distro depends on it...

Multiverse

[Andrew Tanenbaum]

One very nice thing about Ubuntu is that they do host these decoders in their Multiverse repository. You have to edit your sources.lst to add a Canonical run repository (packages are signed), apt-get install the codecs, and you're done.

On distributions like Fedora Core, you have to add a Russian warez site ("livna") to your yum configuration to be able to get MP3 support. These packages may be unsigned and full of root kits. It's a risky proposition.

Re:Multiverse

[From A Far Away Land]

Why isn't a clickable install script made available on a trusted site though?

Re:Multiverse

[Fallingcow]

It is.

They just don't publicize it enough. Probably so they don't get sued for that, too.

Re:Multiverse

[From A Far Away Land]

Thank you, everyone should have that, it should be an easy to select install option when installing Ubuntu.

Re:Multiverse

[Fallingcow]

I agree completely, but it's still probably too much liability for them.

Stupid patents.

So, it's up to users to tell other users.

Re:Multiverse

[Anonymous Coward]

Livna is not a "Russian warez site", it's 1. hosted in France, 2. doesn't include "warez", only stuff which is legally redistributable at least in regions of the world which don't recognize software patents (pretty much the same standards Multiverse holds to) and 3. does sign their packages (though not with the Fedora GPG key, obviously).

Re:Multiverse

[Andrew Tanenbaum]

"Warez" content is legally redistributable at least in regions of the world which don't recognize software copyrights. You can't just pick and choose laws my friend.

And the fact that they don't block American IP addresses means that they are aiding in patent infringement. These people are international criminals, and we expect them not to engage in other criminal activities? We know from the drug economy that those involved in "light" crimes are, almost always, also involved with higher crimes, including fraud, robbery, and sometimes murder.

If it's not signed with Fedora's official keys, it may as well be unsigned. Anyone can self-sign a package filled with spyware, rootkits, and keyloggers.

Re:Multiverse

[pajeromanco]

And the fact that they don't block American IP addresses means that they are aiding in patent infringement.

That is *so* ridiculous. Basically, you're saying that every person should be aware of any existing law in the world and put blocking rules accordingly?

Please do a favour to yourself and buy some common sense.

Excited about Drake...

[biglig2]

... you see, in my latest try to switch to Linux, I used Breezy Badger, and cam within a hairs breadth of being able to switch. So Dapper is something I eagerly await.

I'm a very awkward bugger when it comes to switching, so if Dapper can satisfy me, then it's going to satisfy a lot of other awkward buggers too, and that has to be good news.

Re:Excited about Drake...

[PsychoBrat]

Ditto! I was almost ready to adopt Ubuntu as my primary desktop (still keeping XP around though, for those odd occasions when I really needed some Windows app, or game). The thing that killed it for me was my endless string of troubles with ESD (ranging from no sound to freezing my entire session until I manually killed it from another). Seeing Ubuntu's dependence on it removed in Dapper was a godsend. :)

Re:Excited about Drake...

[biglig2]

With me it was a general lack of slickness; I kept having to fiddle with the wifi settings, for example. I have to do that occasionally in windows too, but not as often.

God, that sounds pathetic when I write it down! I mean, WINE now more or less runs the one app I use daily that I cannot get for Linux, time to get serious.

MP3 license

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a 50 or 60 grand one time fee to fraunhoffer. You could have "legal" MP3 then. Most large distros could pay the fee. It is not free software though.

costs money and is not free or Free or "free" software

And that is what is up with that.

Re:MP3 license

[ajs318]

If you live in the EU or the UK, and certain other countries, a software MP3 player licence costs nothing; the patents in question are not valid in those countries.

Hell yes Hold the release.

[AgNO3]

Why waste all the bandwidth twice? Really? If they release on schedule then release a major patch that soon that everyone will apply. Why waste the bandwidth. I thought /.ers where all about things like saving resources of all kinds?

Re:Hell yes Hold the release.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I thought /.ers where all about things like saving resources of all kinds?"

Yes, they never post unless they have something vital to say. ;-)

Re:Hell yes Hold the release.

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG that was an AWESOME response.

Please. PLEASE!

[Chris Snook]

I'm not even an Ubuntu user, but I think the whole community would benefit if some major distro said "Okay, stop everything, we're going to spend six weeks on making the distro usable by normal people." Thanks and Kudos to Ubuntu if they lead the way on this.

Polish and stability?

[miffo.swe]

I dont mind waiting a bit more if it means a more stable experience. Users should not have to tend to bugs and such issues at all. A better more polished experience means less drive to test the next distro. If its good and easy to use you dont have that voice in your head urging you to upgrade all the time.

I really hope Linspire get their CNR for Ubuntu thing up and running. Having an easy way of buying apps and installing them would make for eg. gaming on Linux much easier and give a boost for commercial games on Linux.

Yes

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Is it really worth delaying the release for more then a month just to polish it out a little bit?

Yes. We're not talking a year, here. A month is inconsequential. The question is silly.

And, with a distro where being "user-friendly" is a primary feature, it's all the more important to make these minor adjustments in release dates for improvements that are fundamental to the underlying concept.

Quite possible to bypass GRUB- Dont be a troll!!!

[giorgosts]

Install XP on one disk, install Linux on another. Write GRUB on Linux disk and set the BIOS to boot from that. Now if GRUB boots ok, you can choose between linux and xp. If GRUB errors, then change the BIOS setting and boot from the NTFS disk. Your xp installation will boot without a problem. If your most important installation is xp, the wise thing to do is install Ubuntu in a new disk and not repartition the old one

Holy Crap!

[HangingChad]

The stockholders are going to revolt!

March 14, not April 14!!

[zippity8]

Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
I would like to call for a community "town hall" meeting on Tuesday 14th March - once at 09:00 UTC (for the Aussies and Asian communities) and then again at 18:00 UTC (for Europe and the Americas). The meetings will be in #ubuntu-meeting on irc.freenode.net. Based on feedback at those meetings, we will ask the Tech Board and the Community Council to take a view on the proposal, and announce the decision by the end of the week. The submitter added an extra month on that town hall notice!

Delay in Debian Derived Distro??

[doublem]

I'm Shocked, shocked I tell you that a distro based on, and dependent upon, Debian packages would choose to focus on some kind of abstract "usability" or "stability" issue over fast and frequent updates!

Where's the bleeding edge code? Where's the "It compiled this morning let's push it out" mentality that's so common with Debian based Distros??

I'm astounded and saddened. Microsoft has updates coming out weekly. It can't be good for Ubuntu if it loses the "update war" with Microsoft. If you lose the update war, everything else is down hill from there.

Re:Delay in Debian Derived Distro??

[porl]

'updates' and 'new releases' are two different things... if we carry out the comparison more correctly we will see that ubuntu's 6 month release schedule beats the living shit out of microsoft's. If you are worried about a 6 week delay, then microsoft is probably *not* the company to compare it too...

Re:Delay in Debian Derived Distro??

[fimbulvetr]

Are you trolling, or is there some sarcasm I missed? Seriously, though, if you really feel that way, I dare you to point to even one operating system that you think is more stable package wise. One that doesn't change configuration files/behaviour of programs with updates, one that's been updating their security packages regularly, and one that contributes to the software community more than debian and it's respected branches. One that only requires reboots infrequently for kernel updates. One that has standard(s) and has stuck to those standard(s) as steadfast and reliably as debian.

Re:Delay in Debian Derived Distro??

[doublem]

I kind of thought that expressing "shock" over a slow Debian related release cycle would be enough to highlight the fact that I was kidding.

Re:Delay in Debian Derived Distro??

[quanticle]

He was just being sarcastic dude...

Re:Delay in Debian Derived Distro??

[Anonymous Coward]

I dare you to point to even one operating system that you think is more stable, etc. etc.

ehm... FreeBSD?

/bows

Re:Delay in Debian Derived Distro??

[fimbulvetr]

Remind me again how security updates are done with FreeBSD? I seem to remember it needing a buttload of downloading and a whole lotta compiling - Not exactly convenient when you're running several hundred servers. I could be wrong, of course.

Re:Delay in Debian Derived Distro??

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude! understand the tone...He is srcastic here...

Re:Delay in Debian Derived Distro??

[porl]

ahem.... maybe i should have had more sleep.... ;)

Re:Delay in Debian Derived Distro??

[Cornswalled]

Feh. Sleep? More caffeine. :)

Re:Delay in Debian Derived Distro??

[myvirtualid]

OK, there's some sarcasm in there. But there's some truth too: The regular release schedule with long post-release support is a major goal and major marketing ambition of Ubuntu. Debian releases way too often, if you count Sid as a release. But should you? Look past Sid, and those "releases" are way too few and far between.

It can't be good for Ubuntu if it loses the "update war" with Microsoft. If you lose the update war, everything else is down hill from there.

Yes, Ubuntu needs to get to a regular release cycle, with quality controlled stable releases. Yes, it would be terrible if Ubuntu "lost this war" to MS.

The war's not over yet, dude, Ubuntu is just realizing growing pains. Dapper always struck me as ambitious, I'm a little disappointed that the delay may prove necessary, but I'll take a better system six weeks late than a buggy system now (and I've been running Dapper since Flight2!)

Ubuntu also needs to catch up to the level of "it just worksatude" that MS and the box vendors have spent years and bazillions of $$$ getting into Windows. Dapper is going to go a long way to achieving this goal.

IMHO, one of the most important building blocks of the future Ubuntu regular release schedule will be a solid foundation. That's what Dapper is intended to be.

Better late and solid than on-time and shaky. We'll get 'em next time...

...and every single time after that, once we've got the right foundation.

Re:Delay in Debian Derived Distro??

[doublem]

All good points.

I'm reminded of the last major release that MS insisted be on time rather than ready.

Windows ME.

*Shudder*

The Horror. The Horror.

Give them more time; they've earned it

[happymedium]

I remember keeping track of the Breezy Badger planning wiki before that version was released, and it seemed to me that the team deferred many of their major goals... on the other hand, it looks like most improvements planned for Dapper have been implemented already, as Shuttleworth notes in his message:

https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/dapper/+specs

I'll refrain from Debian comparisons, as they're not needed to communicate what stellar work the team has done here. Point is, Ubuntu users and admins ought to support this delay, for the same reason I support Ubuntu... the Ubuntu team simply has its shit together, moreso than that of any other freely available distribution.

Let Shuttleworth strategize to take on Red Hat, SuSE, and Vista--because Ubuntu actually has a fighting chance. That prospect ought to excite Ubuntu partisans (like me) and fence-sitters alike.

Parent is a Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

After analyzing LeonGeeste's post and answer style, it becomes obvious that he is a troll.
Definative replies to his questions are ignored, and his replies to other answers focus on the irrelevant, ignoring all else. You can't help him understand, because he isn't here to understand, just to waste people's time and energy.

I'm all for the delay if the goals are met

[koreth]

One of Shuttleworth's reasons for the delay is

After the Asia business tour I realised that we need to improve our support for Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other Asian fonts, translations, input methods and supporting tools.

Amen to that! I tried installing Ubuntu on my girlfriend's laptop, and in the end I just gave up getting Chinese input working properly (she's Taiwanese and sends a lot of mail in Chinese to her friends back home.) After a couple of long nights spent fiddling with it, I could get it to sort of work with some apps, but this is one area where Windows beats Linux hands down -- after I gave up and installed Windows on her machine, enabling Chinese input took me all of about 30 seconds to do, and it works flawlessly in every app she uses.

Re:I'm all for the delay if the goals are met

[Dolda2000]

but this is one area where Windows beats Linux hands down

I don't know about Ubuntu, but in Fedora Core, if you only install the Chinese (or other) locales, then perfectly working input method support comes without further ado -- if you log in with the Chinese or Japanese locale settings (selectable through gdm, or during installation), it's even turned on by default. I even got Japanese input working without any problems in Gentoo.

I definitely did have greater problems getting it to work in Ubuntu, though, but it was quite a while ago, and I don't recall what I did anymore.

Re:I'm all for the delay if the goals are met

[koreth]

Yes, I expect if you install with just the Chinese locale then it probably works. But in this case the computer was going to be used for English stuff most of the time, with the occasional Chinese E-mail message or web site, so that didn't seem like the right way to go.

Plus I wouldn't have gotten very far setting the thing up with all the necessary apps and such if I'd had to navigate a Chinese-language UI -- my Chinese-language skills are elementary-school level.

Ubuntu shows its roots

[stinky wizzleteats]

I think Ubuntu is just trying to silence critics that say that they've run off and abandoned Debian. I think that delaying the release date is a move to get back to the distro's roots.

Re:Please. PLEASE!

[ajs318]

Already happened. Debian took three years to get Sarge declared "stable"!

Wow.

[Spy der Mann]

I'm listing the specs for Ubuntu, and I'm glad to read that many things I had complained about in Hoary seem to be fixed, like network availability for installation and upgrading.

Some example specs (copied / pasted) :

The current i386/amd64 CD boot loader (isolinux) and configuration are not very user-friendly. Prompts can only be displayed in one language, and responses must be typed in by the user.

We should evaluate available options for replacements, and ways to simplify the process for the user, including:

  - Displaying a countdown and automatically continuing after a timeout
  - Allowing language selection from the boot loader
  - Localized help

---

Upgrading from one Ubuntu release to the next is currently a power-user operation, involving editing of configuration files, careful attention to the decisions made by the packaging tools, and manual cleanup of obsolete or unwanted packages. This process should be wrapped in a tool (perhaps as extensions to update-manager), suitable for backporting to breezy-updates, which simplifies it for users, incorporating:

Automatic detection of the availability of a new release, offering an upgrade to the user

Preservation of user package selection (e.g., via metapackages)

Removal of obsolete packages (e.g., openoffice.org, python2.3)

Warnings about unsupported packages?

Do something sane with old kernel(s)

Upgrade packaging tools (including itself) first?

This is what all linux distros should do, start listening to the users instead of relying on the old "RTFM n00b" cliché.

I'm sure that if Ubuntu keeps doing all of these user-friendliness checks in a couple of years, Ubuntu will match the usability and installation-friendliness of WinXP, yay! :D

Re:Wow.

[kwandar]

Thank you for saying that. I'm more or less a noob, and recently tried to install Badger on my fairly new Toshiba laptop. I figured it was safe since it has an Nvidia card, and I'd tried the Live CD first - wrong!

This is not for noobs - hopefully Dapper will be.

First, the instructions with respect to paritioning, were misleading. I don't recall where exactly, but the wording certainly left me with the impression that I was going to fry my windows parition.

Second - I couldn't get root. Ohh yes, I could use Sudo (after I learned about it) but I wanted to edit the Grub menu. How to do that? Okay .. not important - I'll eventually get it figured out ... then

Third - I couldn't get my Intel 2915 ABG wireless connection to work. I tried multiple things, tried reading how-tos on NDS wrapper, downloading drivers, copying drivers until .....

I gave up!

A system without connection is pretty much useless. Trying to get information by booting up Windows - then going back to Linux, was hopeless. So I hope that they polish a bit more and make it easier for us noobs.

Just my $0.02 worth.

Ambitious features makes for perilous releases

[Ravalox]

I think the next release of Ubuntu has some really bleeding edge new features and testing is probably not going well. XGL alone is a bit of a gamble(though I cannot wait to have it running soon after a full install) and I think he's looking at some of the QA for some of these features and flinching. I don't blame him but the community will be there for it, so let it delay 6 weeks if they think that's enough time to make some significant resolution to the quality of the distribution, otherwise let it fly and see if it stabilizes with the increased interest.

Re:Ambitious features makes for perilous releases

[GauteL]

"XGL alone is a bit of a gamble(though I cannot wait to have it running soon after a full install) and I think he's looking at some of the QA for some of these features and flinching"

XGL is not part of the default install. It is available in the repositories, yes, but it requires some manual work to install still. I doubt that the Ubuntu-team are putting much work into XGL and I'm pretty certain that it will be an unsupported feature.

Comparison

[nexcomlink]

I think this could be best compared to the Xbox 360. Microsoft rushed Xbox 360 = Heating issues. Ubuntu delays Ubuntu = Problems where fixed and it just works. Simple eh?

Firefox version

[wilfie]

It will be good to go from the Firefox 1.0.7 that comes with Breezy Badger to Dapper's Firefox 1.5, but I still think it's worth the wait.

Re:Firefox version

[Anonymous Coward]

Stay with 1.0.7 because it eats up less RAM than 1.5. Better yet, try Opera 8.52 until a better browser becomes available--like Firefox 2.x or Opera 9.x.

I won't be able to make it.

[dotgain]

...because it's Steak & BJ Day. Wouldn't miss that for the world.

Polish

[dohcvtec]

Is it really worth delaying the release for more then a month just to polish it out a little bit?

If they delay the release for more than a month, then maybe they will find and fix some of the minor issues and inconsistencies missed in a hasty release.

linux and unix

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using linux (Mandrake to be precise) consistently for 2 years now and was eXtremely disappointed when it turned into Mandriva. I'm open to suggestions about choosing another distro. Someone atleast point me to a reliable comparison site. I remember having attrocious problems with bsd, my x window was this fugly grey screen that didn't do much. I need to atLEAST have a pretty desktop with icons. And I run heavy java and c SVMs and do image processing stuff.

*Complete newbie*
Ubuntu is out of the question.

Re:linux and unix

[Anonymous Coward]

noob friendly and polished, a lot of extra tweaking done so you don't have to:

Linspire, xandros, mepis

almost noob friendly and very advanced and very polished

fedora, suse (I am redhat/fedora biased and run that almost exclusively)

really fun to try and works "live" from the Cd, no installation required-go for knoppix, the original and best live cd. It is just *fun* to see it work. Processor not as important as RAM, need lotsa ram for it to function well, but works good enough on half a gig

Seeing as how the price for all of the above is free or wicked cheap cloned disks, try them all, see what ya like.

OK, real engineer coming though.

[spaceturtle]

[[puts on real engineer hat]]

WTF!!! Are you trying to get your self killed? Refitting a helicopter without any formal qualifications? Do you think we charge $500 an hour to do something that some "software engineer" can do after chatting with their mates on a web forum???

Don't even try to fly the helicopter until we get someone over from London to fix it and certify it is in good condition... Yes, we know its expensive, but it is important to get it checked out every six months anyway. You are damn lucky that it didn't start, it could have crashed, killed everyone, been infected with spyware, leaked your credit card to phishers and deleted all your data.

[[Takes off real engineers hat]]

Yes it is unfortunate that out of 15 million installs, yours had to be the one that failed. It is also unfortunate that no-one knowledgeable was able to help you on the web forum. But you do catch more flies with honey you know, and otherwise you could always pop down to the local computer shop and reinstall your old boot-loader for $50, assuming you don't know how to do that yourself.

A Link.

[spaceturtle]

Perhaps you could provide a link to the forum where this was discussed? Although the webforum is not staffed by paid employees, it does sound as if more constructive solutions could have been proposed.

Re:A Link.

[aristofanes]

A depressing series of comments
Only one person said that you can put a link in the MBR (is 512 bits enough for a link?).
  to as much space as needed
only one person

Re:A Link.

[spaceturtle]

> is 512 bits enough for a link?

Ofcourse. The MBR loads the stage 2 boot loader. This isn't much help though if the MBR fails to read in the stage 2 boot loader. (Apparently this isn't what happened here, though it seemed to be at first).

However... I was talking about a html link, i.e. a clickable link. There isn't much point in putting a full web browser in the boot loader, even in the stage 2 boot loader ;)

Also if he really was "locked out of his computer" so bad that he couldn't even reinstall the Windows bootloader then either his HDD or BIOS is fscked and there isn't anything grub can do about it.

Its not April 14th but March 14th

[ravee]

@Zonk
There is a typo in your post. It is march 14th and not april 14th. I guess on this day, the irc channel is going to get a flood of traffic. I wonder how many users will be allowed to enter the channer and participate in the discussion. Will there be a cap on the number of people logged in at any time ?

Just get the Broadcom driver up and working

[sketchydave]

I'm all for them taking their time in the next release especially since the development builds started supporting Broadcom chipsets. I'm running Fedora at the moment but I would gladly swith if I could get wireless running natively instead of having to deal with ndiswrapper. No disrespect to ndiswrapper, it works just fine, I just hate fiddling with it everytime I install an update to the kernal.

Request

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

WPA configuration via GUI isn't too much to ask for, is it?

Errata

[Spy der Mann]

I said:
I'm listing the specs for Ubuntu

I should've said:
I'm reading the specs for Ubuntu

Sorry.

Re: Automatix

[GetSource]

I use this every time I do my Ubuntu Install. It not only installs the DVD/MP3 codecs, but can install much of the other "non-gpl" (but free to download) software that a lot of people use, including Opera and Skype.

Urine??

[dolson]

Guy, if your urine is dark orange like that, you oughtta go to the doctor's office. I suspect a bladder infection or UTI. Get some cipro, and get that puppy fixed!

Re:User friendly? [OT]

[Yaztromo]

Oh yeah, got any cool ibm or os/2 swag you wanna get rid of?

Own a moving van? :)

I must have a metric ton of OS/2 swag around here. T-shirts (including pink Team OS/2 t-shirts). Mugs. Ball caps. Pens. Pins. Posters. Signs. Buttons. Shorts. Sunglasses. Bumper stickers. Note pads. Bags of various shapes, sizes, and types. Mouse pads. OS/2 hand grip excercisers. And software. Gobs and gobs of software. Including still shrink-wrapped copies of OS/2 2.1 on diskette. You name it, I probably have it somewhere. And a sizeable chunk of it predates Warp. I even have the OS/2 WARP v3 presss release kit kicking around somewhere, with slides of what the boxes looked like :). I even have stand-up booth signs that proclaim things such as "we're developing for OS/2!" and "we're OS/2 compatible!" for use by vendors at trade shows.

And I'm probably forgetting a lot of other really odd items. And that list doesn't include some of the interesting non-OS/2 related IBM items I have (like my VisualAge leather jacket).

Say what you will about IBM (and as a shareholder, I have my share of things to complain about), but one can't deny that know how to create and give away some damn fine marketing swag :).

Yaz.

MOD PARENT FUNNY

[lengau]

Either this guy has the best sense of humor in the world or he/she/it is a complete idiot.

Most likely the first.

Re:MOD PARENT FUNNY

[Anonymous Coward]

so we agree on "he" then ??

I'll Wait for Fixes

[ArizonaKid]

I have a HP Compaq Business Notebook NC6220. Ubuntu recognized many of my drivers; however, I continued to have similiar problems expressed in this post.

After coming out of suspend mode, my sound would take a dive. A full restart was needed to bring back sound. I tried the numerous fixes through Automatix and Ubuntu forums without any avail.

The point...these little things add up to a major annoyance, and the fix is installing XP Pro back on the notebook. Hopefully waiting another four to six weeks for a smooth Dapper with be worth it.

Re:I'll Wait for Fixes

[mattyrobinson69]

im guessing ubuntu has a alsa startup script, try restarting that. alternatively, try unloading and loading your sound module.

To answer the question...

[Theatetus]

Is it really worth delaying the release for more then a month just to polish it out a little bit?

Yes. It is. Full stop.

Free software ships When It Is Ready. That's why it's better.

Default installed packages

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone notice that most of the development packages for various libraries don't seem to be installed by default? Not that I've looked too hard during the installation process. But it's annoying to find basic stuff missing to compile a program.

Re:Default installed packages

[stereoroid]

Yup, we've noticed. Considering how many MB extra the libraries take up, and the time they add to the base install, this doesn't bother me. Besides, the target market for Ubuntu is the kind of user who doesn't want to have to compile programs, who doesn't want to know how. As long as the likes of you and I can add that functionality on for ourselves...

Ubuntu and Debian

[ClamIAm]

I just realized how ridiculous this discussion is compared to announcements about Debian delays. Ubuntu delayed? "YES YES YES!". Debian delayed? "Haha they're teh dum lol"

Re:Strict schedules suck. Example: Microsoft Tuesd

[CCFreak2K]

I think Patrick Volkerding has taught us well.

Get Tomahawk if you do not want to wait

[Anonymous Coward]

What does Ubuntu offer that Debian doesn't other than cosmetic? Tomahawk Desktop features Resistant to Viruses, Resistant to Pharming, and package user based simple yet very effective package management system. Its based on latest KDE.

It really seems that we are somehow connected...

[Pecisk]

.. in metaphysical way (joke :)) because this delay what was in my mind all this weekend. Dapper comes to be *good*, in sense "cheap, working iPod for masses", so it should be polished at maximum. I mean, almost *everything* works out of box, so why not done it that everything what is possible to be done is done?

Actually I would welcome all hackers/coders/common linux crowd take a way in their browsers to Ubuntulinux.org, download latest beta, install it as some test partition and try to crash/test their favorite apps. Then, get all those nasty bugs to www.launchpad.net and get them filled. Kudos tu Ubuntu bugsquash team, which are very quick in testing/confirming bugs. You won't be left in cold.

So, let's get over "we have different distros", and let's help make one who really rock!

just to polish it out a little bit?

[mnmn]

Yeah thats all Ubuntu is, standard Linux, just polished out a little bit.

2G/2G Lisp problems fixed in newer kernels

[Sits]

Normally I'd ask whether a bug report has been filed on this but I happen to know there's a launchpad bug about the 2G/2G kernel option breaking WINE and Lisps. You're in luck too - a fix for the problem was released two days ago.

Remember folks: Slashdot isn't your distro's bug tracker. Complaining here may give your issue exposure but it probably won't help your bug to be fixed. Please, please report bugs in your distro to your distro's bug tracker. There's no guarantee that your issue will ever be fixed but your odds are vastly improved...

Mandriva MP3 licence?

[Sits]

Hi there, I've seen this mentioned before in comments on other sites but I've never seen an authorative source mentioning this. Is there any chance you can post a link to an offical Mandriva/Thompson spokeperson mentioning this? My (old) understanding was that many years ago they were shipping MP3 support without a licence...

Re:Mandriva MP3 licence?

[moranar]

Sorry, no. The time I read this was in one of the Mandriva Mailing Lists, and it was said by Adam Williamson, who works for Mandriva as PR. You could ask him, if you want. His blog is http://www.happyassassin.net/ .

apt-get install build-essential

[Sits]

Isn't
apt-get install build-essential
the usual way to get the minimal libraries/headers/programs for when you wish to have a basic build environment on a Debian based distro?

Please file a bug on this!

[Sits]

It could be that your particular problem isn't seen by anyone else (they may have similar but subtley different kit and not see the problem). If you wander off and no one else mentions it the odds are when you come back in six weeks the problem will still be there (hint: looking at the HP Laptop Support page no one has mentioned the problem on your laptop model).

While it may be daunting, your best chance of having this fixed quickly is to head over and file a useful bug report (e.g. Description of the problem, simple step by step instructions indicating the lead up to the bug, what you expected to happen and what actually happened) over on Launchpad.

Don't you get it? More than a month!!

[alienmole]

I think what we're dealing with here is that six weeks is an appreciable fraction of the lifespan so far of the article poster. Assuming it's a he, and that he is 12, then six weeks is nearly one whole percent of his lifespan so far. To an adult, it's like having to wait an entire quarter, which is the maximum timespan that even those paragons of patience, corporate CEOs, are capable of waiting.

I don't understand...

[Anhaedra]

Why does Linux have to be as user-friendly as Windows?

Ubuntu release cycle

[wysiwia]

I'm currently switching to Ubuntu from Debian because of the rigid release cycle. If Ubuntu starts to slip release times it might soon fall into the same trap as Debian. I don't mind if this release is postphoned but Ubuntu (Mark) should make clear that the release afterwards is scheduled at the normal release time.

A top project needs to have a reliable roadmap since many other projects and activites depend on them. As soon as this reliability is lost the confidence is lost also and will finally lead to a decline in the inportance of the project.

O. Wyss

Enterprise linux releases need wxWidgets libraries

[wysiwia]

If Ubuntu strives for enterprise linux releases it needs to have the wxWidgets libraries in its base release. wxWidgets libraries are far more used in enterprises and are a requirement for many small ISV's. If Ubuntu wants to become a real contender agains Redhat/Suse/... in enterprises the top framework libraies have to be available in the base release.

O. Wyss

Release when ready and please not before!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, considering how broken various parts of all the previous Ubuntu distributions have been at release i think it's certainly a better idea to release when it's ready as opposed to when the release says it's due, why do we need a new version every 6 months if it's always going to be just that little bit less than completely usable, what's the point?!

this is something microsoft doesn't do, they don't promise a free upgrade to a new version of windows every 6 months, such a promise would almost certainly either need to be broken or introduce serious bugs from extremely rushed coding and review cycles.

6 weeks is not enough

[tka]

It took about 5 months to discover <a href="http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03<nobr>/<wbr></wbr></nobr> 13/0525254">this</a> major and pretty simple bug in Breezy so will 6 weeks be enough for polishing Dapper?

Not going to happen.

[Benanov]

Ubuntu will not include this plugin by default, last I checked. It was discussed to death on the devel mailing list.

Re:Not going to happen.

[ianezz]

Ubuntu will not include this plugin by default, last I checked. It was discussed to death on the devel mailing list.

I'm sorry, you are right: I thought the only issue was the exception to the GPL programs linking to GStreamer, and seeing it available in the Debian archives I believed that was already sorted out. I didn't realize there were other issues.