Slashdot Mirror
New Enterprise-Level Ubuntu Due This Week
daria42 writes "According to Ubuntu's official release schedule, the next version of its Linux distribution, code-named "Dapper Drake" is due to be released this week, June 1 to be precise. This landmark release will be supported for 5 years (previous versions were only supported for 18 months) and is being touted as ready for enterprise use." From the article: "Dapper Drake will be supported for three years for the desktop version and five years for servers, compared to 18 months for the current 5.10 'Breezy Badger' version. The code release will come after the development process was extended by six weeks in order to improve the reliability of the software."
Yeah likewise. I'm on a Dell Inspirion 1150, totally seamless install and use. It's strange, I've actually had a hard time getting away from the terminal! (I've been using Linux for quite a while). Amazing distribution, really is. Excellent hardware support too (in my case, I know that it's all relative). Next major release is said to be more experimental / bleeding edge, XGL / NetworkManager etc. Honestly can't wait!
I think therefore I am... a Linux geek.
And we'll be deploying it, automatically, to around 400 workstations, which will be switched on, and running Win XP, all without any manual intervention. And they'll dual boot (Windows/Linux!) afterwards. Which is nice. Eat your heart out FAI. :)
Oh, and it works nicely under VPC, apart from needing to rebuild the kernel so that the timer tick runs at 100Hz, instead of 1000Hz. Which is also nice.
I may have been drunk when I wrote this.
Hmmmm, no. My pick is that Ubuntu Dapper got to one level where you get user (not A geek) to use Linux as primary operational system. In result, lot of different bugs have been filled, for example, about using three sound cards (!) or three monitors, because people have started Dapper for almost everything. And as bugsquad is very warm and responsive to bug fillers, in result, people look at things, test them, fill bugs. Lot of those bugs could be fixed by geek, which have been running RedHat, Slackware, Debian, whatever. Ubuntu rises this bar to common users and in result, lot of bugs for next level to fix :)
By default, Dapper is the best Ubuntu distro, without any doubt. Bug count just shows how much users are earing to improve and polish this already good distro.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Well, in our case, lack of x86_64 support in stable. Debian really mangled their x86_64 support, even now it's a bit wierd. Some ultra-purist conspiracy was responsible for the x86_64 debian port, the WHOLE POINT of x86_64 is so that x86 continues to work smoothly, and they pretty much wasted months on "pure64" effort. RHEL or SuSE handled x86_64 much better (academically a little uglier, but much more useful in enterprise environments with mucho in-house stuff to support), Ubuntu at least handles x86_64. An enterprise-stable x86_64 debianoid like ubuntu MIGHT be enough to get me to switch back from CentOS.
I can second that (the parent). i am running dapper on 2 machines which are frequently updated. on the laptop: the power manager fails which is a pitty. dbus seems to have problems and on both machines (the other one is a 2.4ghz pentium workstation) gnome-session fails upon login after every update (the installation on the desktop computer is plain vanilla without any tweaks). i have to remove loads of ~/.gnome* ~/.gconf* files and login again to get rid of the problems doesn't work every time).
Also, i see that gparted bundeled with ubuntu is version 0.1 (it's in the admin menu by default) which is quiet behind the current "stable" release.
I really hope the ubuntu team isn't rushing out a release which would harm its reputation. I really like ubuntu!
I must say my experience is similar. I've been using various unixes and linux and NeXT boxes since the mid 80s - but almost exclusively using text-mode applicatins runnng X just so I could have multiple xterm windows. (I still find reading large amounts of email in pine far more efficient than any GUI - thanks to its more efficient keyboard commands.)
Ubuntu is the first time I really appreciate the GUI rather than using it as a smarter version of 'screen' - as well as being the first distro that gave me sound and the full resolution of my monitor out-of-the-box on installing it.
Still run stock debian stable or solaris (depenging on my employer) on servers I'm responsible for, tho.
- Mercedes - giving a car a girl's name
- Cadillac - doesn't sound like anything
- MAAPICS - pictures of Mars?
- Virgin - you have to be joking
- Starbucks - first mate on a whaler?
- Kodak - deliberately doesn't sound like anything
Brand names acquire legitimacy through the associations that cluster around them, and not vice versa.If Ubuntu succeeds in the market, it will be because of positive associations that will eventually get Joe Public aware of the name. The psychologists in marketing research already know this. They know that you can even make a brand name out of a grimy, crime ridden northern English city (Manchester United), but if it is then taken over by a US entrepreneur and loses its core values it will quickly start to go down the toilet. The entrepreneur may not know that...in exactly the same way, the associations of Windows are starting to go negative. I am sure there are plenty of researchers in Microsoft who know that, but does the management want to listen? If they don't, in ten years time people will be saying "Windows - what a stupid name for something to do with computers. You might as well call it "plasterboard"."
Pining for the fjords
Here here. Similar results for me on a Dell Inspiron 8600 using the release candidate. Everything but the wireless card anyway. The broadcomm wireless card was loaded up with the bc43xx driver, which does not work. I had to do some hand stitching to get ndiswrapper going and ensure the system did not load bc43xx at start up time. Other than that and the total lack of multi-media capability out of the box this is a stunning release.
:) However, it's certainly the best of out the box one.
VPN worked out of the box. The multi-media keys. Ability to browse samba shares, though I still can't figure out how to login.... I can only browse public ones. What was totally amazing is that I had 3D acceleration out of the box for my ATI Mobile Radeon 9600! The external monitor doesn't work yet. I'll have to hand stitch that one, but still. This is huge step forward.
It would be nice if by default a chess game was installed, but that is easily remedied...
After a little tweaking I have full multi-media support.
What's really nice is the user experience and having just installed Suse 10.1, I notice a huge difference. On Suse it's very confusing as to where I should look for a particular admin task. On Ubuntu, it's under "system". When I want to launch a Terminal on Suse, I go three levels of menus down and then get to select one of four choices. Unbuntu just gives me one adequate choice. Same with web browsers and everything else. Because they are not trying to be everything to everybody they make things very slick. It would be nice to see XGL in Dapper by default, but I much more appreciate the stability and correct by default autoconfiguration. That's really nice.
I'm very impressed with Dapper. This is the best distro I have ever seen, other than perhaps my hand-crafted Gentoo boxes.