Slashdot Mirror
Ubuntu 6.10 is Out
cloudmaster writes "Apparently they were watching me to see when I downloaded the 6.10-rc release isos, as I did that last night, and the full release happened this morning. :)
Neat stuff, including Firefox 2.0, Gnome 2.16, myth 0.20, faster booting thanks to upstart (sort of a replacement for init, among others), etc.
The announcement and download pages are up. I've got *my* torrent running..."
It runs kernel 2.6.17, which means it does not yet include the realtime patches by Gleixner and Molnar which find their way into the Linux kernel from kernel 2.6.18 on. To me, this would still mean manually recompiling the kernel, but not for long anymore!
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
A small success story;
The company that I hire my office from has been running redhat for ages, they're getting problems installing their in-house software to the newer versions of redhat because they are using cups instead of the older lp/lpr/lprng systems. Knowing this I started synaptic (the ubuntu package manager), searched for LPRNG with one of the senior guys behind my shoulder. Choosed to install LPRNG, synaptic automaticlly disabled cups and change the appropriate settings. 15 minutes later we were printing useing their sed-scripts from the 80's again.
I think I can safely say that I singlehanded arranged for a bunch of new ubuntu installs with that 20 minutes of my time.
Does anyone have any thoughts about MythTV on Ubuntu vs. other distros?
I'm a relative Linux noob, having only been using it for half a year. I ran Myth 0.19 on Fedora Core 5, but broke it somehow when I upgraded to 0.20. I ran into some sound bug that I couldn't figure out, so I took the easy way out and installed KnoppMyth, which has worked like a charm. However, I'm not in love with Knoppix, so I'm thinking about running trying Myth on Ubuntu.
As a relative noob, I really loved using Yum on FC5, but I haven't had as good of an experience with Apt on Knoppix. In my limited experience, I've had more issues with dependencies using Apt than I did with Yum. I know Ubuntu is also Debian-based and also uses Apt, but I've heard it's very noob-friendly, so I was wondering what merits there would be in switching from KnoppMyth to an Ubuntu-based Myth system.
faster booting thanks to upstart (sort of a replacement for init, among others)
I just had a look at "upstart" and some of its configuration documentation, and while I understand "traditional" rc script processes (such as sysvinit, and the variations on that) I cannot see how upstart will speed anything up. It still seems to be a serialised startup process, and the documentation does not make it clear how to specify startup dependencies ("IP before NTP", or "spamd before sendmail"), so there is no implied optimisation behind-the-scenes by using parallel startup.
Have I missed something, or is this just a move to an event-driven RC process "because I can" ?
Enjoy Y2K? Roll-on Year 2037!
I just tried updating like that, going from an Ubuntu 6.06 system running GNOME 2.14. But now that I've got GNOME 2.16 installed, I've hit some major performance problems.
The most serious problem is that it now takes 12 to 15 seconds for a new window to open. Even running a GNOME app from an xterm exhibits this problem, so it's not a problem with the GNOME deskbar. Applications like xterm, xedit, and Opera, which do not use GTK+, do not suffer from this problem. They start up almost immediately. Mozilla Seamonkey, on the other hand, also suffers from this long delay, I presume because it is using GTK+.
I need my workstation to actually function, so I have installed KDE, and it's working fine. I think it's significantly more responsive than GNOME 2.14 was. I wish I had time to debug this problem with GNOME 2.16, but I don't. To me, it's just another example of the decreasing quality of the GNOME and GTK+ code. Ever since Miguel left to work on Mono, I've been running into more and more problems. This incident is completely unacceptable, so I think I'm done with GNOME. KDE has really progressed lately, and I think it even now offers me more than GNOME ever did.
I just installed 6.06 last week, and am quite impressed by it compared to other flavors of Linux I've tried.. Nice philosophy of installing best of breed applications rather than 101 alternatives and the kitchen sink, and it all seems to work.
One thing that spoiled the experience though, was that I initially got a blank screen with the Live CD, so had to go back and do a "safe graphics mode" boot/install. It turns out (no mention of this in the release notes - had to dig for a day to find it) that the X.org ATI driver for 6.06 is broken such that it doesn't work for RV280 based (Radeon 9200) cards using the DVI output (flat panel)... The fix requires downloading and editing the source and rebuilding the driver.
There's also another bug in the 6.06 ATI driver just discovered a week ago where with xorg.conf RenderAccel="yes" it can corrupt drawing in some circumstances (themes that use Cairo).
Does anyone know if either or both of the fixes for these made it into 6.10 ?
Does it support WPA without me having to download other packages? (wpa_supplicant, most likely)
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I ask this seriously: what OSes have you been using that makes you think a clean install is the only "safe" upgrade?
I believe that if you upgrade Ubuntu from release to release you'll be fine. However, I didn't do that. I upgraded Dapper to Edgy Knot 2. It worked, but over time as the bug fixes came in, it became difficult for X to start. I often had to power cycle 5 or more times before it worked. I even went so far as to enter a bug in Ubuntu's launchpad for it. Well, I did a clean install of the RC and it's all fixed now. My best guess at the problem is a remnant configuration file or something that didn't get appropriately upgraded or removed in the initial Knot 2 dist-upgrade.
So, in other words, for patient people, you should never have to do a clean install. For us impatient freaks, well, I guess we should know what we're getting into.
On a side note, my crappy Celeron 2.4ghz laptop with an even crappier old Intel graphics chip can run the AIGLX and Beryl Window Manager pretty nicely. Cool (possibly excessive) 3d and transparency FX on a computer that Vista's install program laughs at.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
997 upgraded, 158 newly installed, 26 to remove and 31 not upgraded.
Need to get 659MB of archives.
After unpacking 238MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
looks like it will be a while. has torrent sources been thought about for apt?
Why UNIX?
I had similar "not ready yet" experiences with 6.04, including bugs that had been known for months, but hadn't been fixed yet (this was on PowerPC, by the way). It's sad, really, considering that Ubuntu's main selling point for me has been the "no hassle" part. I guess this is yet another piece of evidence for releasing on schedule being incompatible with good quality realeases.
Fortunately, I run Debian stable on my machines that must Just Work.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I ask this seriously and also in jest. Why not just have give you the latest and greatest? There has already been discussion of the "best" way to go about upgrading (dist-update, whatever). If instead of having repositories that were "version" specific, why not just have "current" repositories. Then as *everything* progresses, it all gets updated along the way?
Is it just the dependencies issue? Or am I missing something more? Just seems like since Ubuntu is aimed at making it the most user-friendly distro, "version" updates could follow suit.
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
After a week I wiped the WinXP partition off my computer and I haven't looked back since. I have even talked my friends and family into giving it a try. So far I have converted 3 people and 2 or 3 more are using the live CD to try it out. I have tried a few different Linux flavors over the years but none of them clicked so well with me as Ubuntu has.
Well done Ubuntu crew!
I am not a very experienced or proficient Linux user, but I run Ubuntu Dapper and have been doing so since switching (out of curiosity) from OpenSuSE.
The distro is fantastic, save for one thing that I really, really hope will be cured in 6.10. The problem is so huge, so head-slappingly weird and strange, and so bizarrely counter to the usability of the OS that I am forced, when asked whether I would reccommend it to newbies, to say that I would not. The reason is that Ubuntu (and most other Linux distros AFAIK) mounts all external devices as root.
Plug in your Memorystick: read only.
Plug in your FireWire video camera and use Kino: permission denied.
Plug in your USB still camera and use GThumb to import pictures: read only.
Will Ubuntu 6.10 - as the leading and most devastingly cool Linux distro on earth - cure this for me?
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"