Ubuntu Feisty Fawn - Desktop Linux Matured

Provataki writes "It seems that Linux on the desktop is getting there, with Ubuntu. Eugenia of OSNews fame wrote a glorifying preview about Ubuntu's next version, dubbed Feisty Fawn. The review talks up the new features, like the restricted drivers/codecs management, easier package management, and good laptop support. The review also lists some of the distro's flaws in the current beta. A good read for those who are curious about what's next for Linux on the desktop. The piece concludes: ' Ubuntu is a distro that obviously has paid attention to detail ... and has found a good middle ground between hard core Linux users and new users from the Windows/OSX land.'"

Comments

Linux Mint

[Terminus32]

Linux Mint is an Ubuntu-based distro with all the codecs & drivers you should need for desktop use, it's worth checking out!

Re:Linux Mint

[johnw]

GPL doesn't allow you to distribute closed source software with the GPL lisenced software Nonsense. Users of the GPL have no authority to make such a restriction and there is none in the GPL. Remember, the GPL is a licence not a contract, so it can't restrict what people can do with other stuff, only what they can do with the stuff covered by the licence.

(The reason why other distributions don't have codecs and drivers with them.). The reason is slightly more subtle than that. The GPL does not allow GPL-licensed code to be incorporated into a larger work where other parts of the work are under a more restrictive licence. There is much debate about whether a device driver with a closed source licence is a derivative work of the kernel, but most distributions err on the side of caution and don't distribute them.

Re:Linux Mint

[johnw]

The chunk which you're quoting you've taken out of context. It refers specifically to modified versions of the original work and describes the circumstances under which chunks of that modified version might be distributed under a different licence. It's thus not relevant to the issue under discussion.

HTH

Re:My experience with 6.10

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

decided to try Ubuntu (my first unix experience) two days ago. I spent two days trying to get it to use a proper aspect ratio for my main monitor and to use my second monitor as anything but a clone of the first monitor.

I'm presuming you have an ATI or nvidia card. I've come across this bug on my laptop also. I'm not sure what the linux community can do about software they have absolutely no control over.

I know this advice is too late now, but next time you make a hardware purchasing decision, I suggest investing your money in video hardware from a company that supports linux instead of a company that provides buggy, incomplete closed source drivers.

my experiences on a laptop

[squidinkcalligraphy]

I got an IBM r52 recently; I tried installing XP on it - initially with the supposed foolproof system restore image, then from scratch, and three or four hours later, still had no usable system. The drivers just wouldn't install or download and I couldn't find a way to transport them from my other machine. Then I put an ubuntu 6.10 disc in, and bout half an hour later, without little to no interaction, had a perfectly working system. Even wifi worked out of the box. (WPA authentication took a little bit more digging, but was surprisingly easy once I found the package to use).

Re:my experiences on a laptop

[IchBinEinPenguin]

The utter PITA that is an XP install on modern hardware is mostly attributable to Microsoft's refusal to re-issue the XP install CD with an updated driver database (*).
This, of course, it to ensure that there's at least one good reason to upgrade to Vista.

(*) Yes, I know drivers can be slipstreamed, but why should we have to do that?

OK... enough trolling for one day....

Re:If only Ubuntu weren't abandonware

[LingNoi]

Broken in Edgy.

I know your angry. I have a problem also with my Edgy Ubuntu laptop where I have to have wireless on to boot otherwise the whole thing freezes on boot (The reason for this bug is because of a closed source Intel wireless driver, not open source). This has also been fixed in Feisty but not Edgy.

BUT

Edgy is a Beta product and it is said many, many times on the Ubuntu website that if you want a stable version of Ubuntu to use Dapper Drake LTS (version 6.10... LTS=Long Term Support). I know its not what you want to hear, sorry and I hope you have better luck in the future. :D

Re:Boot up speed?

[cheater512]

On Linux it *should* be daemonizing and doing it in parallel.
dhcpcd I know for a fact does this but I havent tried the other clients.

Re:Boot up speed?

[iBod]

It is and it is a BAD idea to clear the prefetch folder.

http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000743.html

Just a minor correction, it is not beta yet

[vivaoporto]

From the Ubuntu forums:

Ubuntu 7.04 Alpha 5 CD image testing started
** FEISTY IS NOT SUITABLE FOR EVERYDAY USE RIGHT NOW IT IS ONLY IN ALPHA. **
If you are interested in helping to test CD images for the upcoming Ubuntu release you can find more information here:

Re:Boot up speed?

[scum-e-bag]

Start>Run>msconfig ...and stop some of those background boot time processes.

Re:Don't pat yourselves on the back yet.

[LingNoi]

Uh? One bug for one particular hardware type in a beta release and it's 'not designed for end users'?

Correction Alpha Release, Betas haven't started yet. :D

No, at least not for Ubuntu Re:no NO NO!

[GreatBunzinni]

Ubuntu will not be ready for any decent work while it still has bugs like the infamous overheating bug. I mean, I love Kubuntu and I adopted it as my main OS but seriously, it still suffers from a showstopping overheating bug which is almost 2 years old. I mean, what good is an OS for if it simply can't cope with any mildly CPU-intensive application (i.e., compiling, encoding sound files, running any 3D application, etc...) before hanging, crashing and endangering the hardware itself?

Re:REALLY!?

[drunkahol]

At least two people get the underlying issue here ;)

Can't understand a Eugenia article being linked and the majority of comments are NOT about the bias of the review or the opinionated reasoning.

To be honest - it's certainly a long way from Eugenia's worst piece on the web. Perhaps she's mellowing in her old age (says he at 35!).

Duncan

two words:

[hummassa]

"mere aggregation".
Read the GPL. Things are not black and white as you are construing them to be.

Re:Hardware problems

[drunkahol]

Good for you - stick with your PS/2 keyboard and mouse. Don't try wireless networking. Don't use a printer. For the REAL world, however, some of us like to use those things.

I've been around Linux for many years now so have seen it when you REALLY had to be picky about the hardware you bought. To offer your 3 points of advice these days is seriously wide of the mark.

1) I've not had a USB device unrecognised under Linux for a while now. And I don't EVER remember a USB keyboard or mouse failing.

2) Wireless is certainly more of a blind-spot for Linux, but maybe I'm fortunate in that 3 of the 4 different wireless devices I've used have worked straight out of the box. The 4th wasn't THAT difficult to install either - although I wouldn't be recommending a novice tried it.

3) Unbelieveable twaddle. Printer management is pretty damn good under Linux in my view. I've not yet come across a printer that Linux can't manage to talk to politely. And I'm talking about a full range of printers from deskjets, personal lasers, high volume colour lasers through to A0 plotters. Never once have I struggled to get them working.

Why I bother replying I don't know - it's only slashdot after all. And a discussion about a Eugenia article at that! At least I've got these monkeys off my back now and can sink as many Guinness as physically possible tonight.

Happy Guinness Day (sorry - did I fall for the marketing ploy there?)

Duncan

Re:Boot up speed?

[an.echte.trilingue]

I found that Ubuntu booted initially in +/- 50 seconds, but then that as I installed software and services, it slowed to around 4 minutes. The reason for this is that Ubuntu uses readahead to read all of the required files into memory in one sweep as the machine boots, but as you install stuff, files move around and it doesn't know where files are physically located any more. So, the OS needs to ask the disk to read each individual file as the boot scripts ask for them. The solution to this is very easy:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=25426 3&highlight=grub+profile+speed+boot

That alone took my boot speed back down to 80 seconds. Then you can install the package bootchart to see what is taking so long to load and tweak those services to load faster or not at all, depending on what you need. For example, I saw that fsck was taking around 25 seconds on boot, and I gained back about 15 seconds by modifying /etc/fstab so that fsck would not check the FAT32 partition that I use to share files with XP. Bootchart will help you figure out why your box takes so much longer to boot when plugged in, as well.

Now I have a laptop that boots into a usable kde desktop in 47 seconds. I am sure you can do this too. If you need more help, go to the Ubuntuforums, they are full of people who want to help.

Take care

-mat

Re:Xorg

[kripkenstein]

This is a very serious problem of Ubuntu that is overlooked by the developers. Problems with specific hardware like those in the TFA, can be common especially these days with so many different combinations of monitors and video cards. I'd like to see some sort of "safe mode" that kicks in when there are problems, and a GUI to allow proper reconfiguration.

You are correct about this problem, however, the developers are not ignoring it. In fact they were considering implementing more or less what you suggested for Feisty. This has been deferred, however, and for good reason - X.Org, in a future release (7.3, IIRC) will offer related functionality. So Ubuntu developing it themselves would be a lot of effort, for just a few months.

Hopefully with the next X.Org and the next (after Feisty) Ubuntu we will see many of the typical X problems disappear.

It is being worked on.

[an.echte.trilingue]

They are working on it. I don't know if it will be in this release, but it is on the way. https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/bull et-proof-x/

Re:More desktop - yay?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I run blackbox on my windows machine. Though, I can do have other options, too, such as Xoblite (a blackbox fork), LiteStep, or Aston, which I find consumes even less memory (abouy 3-4 mb worth), while giving me fancy plugins, transparency, and all that fun stuff. Hell, even GNUstep/Etoile does windows. And I'm pretty sure I've seen WindowMaker ports, as well.

Oh, yes, and you can also strip down windows by either hacking up the registry, or using fancy third-party Frontends. I recall sliming 9x to a 45mb install, and XP to about 1-200mb, by stripping out unecessary components and services (e.g. Outlook, Mediaplayer, explorer, etc). I haven't tried Vista as of yet, nor do I intend to in the near future, but I know that many of the alternate WMs havebeen ported.

Really, I'm trying hard, but I can't quite seem to get your point. Windows has had the option to swap outthe default explorer shell in favour of another, since NT4, and the process is painless. So, with that in mind, if your criticism is a fair one, would it not be just as fair to argue that Ubuntu is bloated because it installs Gnome by default?

Of course it isn't, you can't, however, have it both ways.

FWI: I'm not fanboying, but I do use a Windows desktop alongside my Unix boxen boxen, and I realise that each has their strengths and weaknesses, each their uses, and not one is unilaterally "better" than the other in all respects.

An easier way

[an.echte.trilingue]

An easier way would be to install bootchart, boot a couple or three times plugged in, boot a couple or three times from battery, and then compare the charts to see what is taking longer to load (assuming that there is still a difference).

Re:My experience with 6.10

[FauxPasIII]

> Having ruled out ATI and Nvidia, that would be who, exactly?

Intel.

http://intellinuxgraphics.org/

Re:ubuntu missing APT pdiff??

[Anonymous Coward]

pdiff is not needed for development versions of ubuntu, since you have to download like 400MB of updates per week anyway if you want to stay uptodate. And releaseversions only download the update-packagelists which are like ~300K.

So, in other words, those pre-release version are unsuitable for non-broadband users.

Re:If only Ubuntu weren't abandonware

[N7DR]

He's got a point though - Dapper is supposed to be the big "supported for years" release.

This "Long Term Support" thing is almost universally misunderstood by users. I agree that any normal person interprets "LTS" to mean that the distro (dapper) will be kept up to date. But that's not what it means :-( As has been explained several times (and not doubt will be explained many more) on various ubuntu reflectors and fora, Canonical says that "LTS" means that they will continue to provide security patches for a long time, not that they will update any apps.

They should make this much clearer than they do, because the natural interpretation is the one you suggest, not theirs. Someone on one reflector defines "LTS" to mean "Long Term Stagnation", which does unfortunately seem to be a defensible expansion of the term. It's not that simply applying security patches is bad or evil or wrong -- it's just not what the typical user expects "Long Term Support" to mean.

FWIW, I have some hopes that cnr.com will fix this, IMO one of the biggest failings of Linux distros: the inability to keep current with applications without being forced quite quickly to update the entire distro to the most recent version.

Solution: Share an ext3 partition like /home

[Jeff Carr]

I used to have that issue as well. Not to mention disk space issues on my laptop due to 5 partions (swap,/,/home,/mnt/shared/,windows,).

Now instead of sharing a fat32 partion, I share my /home partion using FS Driver an EXT2 file system driver for windows. (naturally compatible of course with ext3)

Solved many, many annoyances for me. I highly recommend it.

Re:no NO NO!

[Matt Perry]

No need to defrag your system.

Unless you are using FAT you should not be defragging your filesystem at all. NTFS is pretty efficient about how it stores files on the hard drive. Modern filesystems do a pretty good job at storing files and preventing fragmenting. They spread the files out over the hard drive and leave space between so they can easily be expanded. Once you defrag and compact all your data to the beginning of your drive, the filesystem will have to write data elsewhere if you expand a file. You'll suddenly find yourself needing to defrag often just to maintain the efficiency that you would have had had you let the filesystem do its job in the first place.