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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..."
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.
Unless you can get a package for Firefox 2.0, it isn't necessarily easier to install a browser. More people care about having Firefox 2.0 than a real-time kernel, by far. So you are in the minority.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
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
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.