Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Drawing Near

daria42 writes "Ubuntu developers are finalizing preparations for the release of the next version — dubbed Feisty Fawn — of the popular Linux distribution in mid-April. Overnight, Ubuntu developer Tollef Fog Heen announced Ubuntu's main software repository had been frozen — with no changes allowed to the code — as developers got ready to issue a fifth major test version ("Herd 5") of the next version of Ubuntu."

Comments

X.org 7.2 will (perhaps) be in feisty

[MrvFD]

Actually Xorg 7.2 is currently on its way to feisty, thanks to efforts by a community member, working together with Debian and helped by some Ubuntu core developers: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/200 7-February/023252.html

The xserver-xorg-core is already version at 7.2 (or "1.2") now, with the rest of the modules going in gradually. With the modularity of X.org nowadays, it's not certain that all the newest driver work will be in, though. For example the ati driver has seen only some important patches backported to feisty, while there has been a lot of development and reworking without a proper release of xserver-xorg-video-ati lately.

Been using it for about a month...

[physicsnick]

I've been beta-testing Kubuntu Feisty for about a month now, and it's amazing. It's already a huge improvement over Edgy. Everything is so intuitive and easy to use; Feisty is going to kick ass.

Some of the new stuff they've added are a new wireless network manager by default, big improvements to the package installation system, easy codec/flash installation, lots of user interface tweaks... It looks so polished now, I love it.

Here are the Herd release announcements, containing a subset of the changes Feisty brings:
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/FeistyFawn/Herd1/Kubuntu
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/FeistyFawn/Herd2/Kubuntu
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/FeistyFawn/Herd3/Kubuntu
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/FeistyFawn/Herd4/Kubuntu

Re:Why Xorg 7.2 is so important?

[jeevesbond]

There are some details on the release page on the Freedesktop wiki.

From that page:

X11R7.2 supports Linux, BSD, Solaris, Microsoft Windows and GNU Hurd systems. It incorporates significant stability and correctness fixes, including improved autoconfiguration heuristics, enhanced support for GL-based compositing managers such as Compiz and Beryl, and improved support for PCI systems with multiple domains. It also incorporates the new, more extensible XACE security policy framework.

Release notes should be on the download page, they're marked 'forthcoming' at the moment, but wait a day or two and they should appear.

Re:Fast going cold on Ubuntu

[pato101]

Do not need to try Kubuntu instead: you can just install the kubuntu packages in your ubuntu install, by doing just this:

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

Alternatively, you may play with xfce if you like by adding xfce packages as follows:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

Re:how about WoW?

[physicsnick]

Actually, WoW really does work right out of the box with Wine. It has entirely Gold or Platinum status on WineHQ:
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=648 2

On that page there's a hugely overcomplicated guide on getting it working; Feisty will tremendously simplify things, especially since it comes with Wine 0.9.30. Here's how you'd install WoW in Feisty:

1) Install your video card drivers. This involves clicking Applications->Add Applications, clicking Advanced, and choosing nvidia-glx for NVidia cards or xorg-driver-fglrx for ATI. Much simpler than on Windows.
2) Restart X (press CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE).
3) Put the WoW install CD in the drive.
4) Browse to your CD-rom (/media/cdrom) and double-click Installer.exe
5) Do the Next-Next-Finish dance
6) Double click the icon on your desktop to launch the game.

So it's pretty much identical to Windows, except the CD won't autorun. :/