Slashdot Mirror
Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" Is Out
Many readers are sending the news that Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon has been released. Download options include mirrors and torrents. Wired has a review based on the release candidate: "Gamers and hardcore media hounds may still feel left out... but we found playing music and watching movies in the new Ubuntu to be every bit as pleasant as it is under OS X or Windows... Wi-Fi, printing, my digital camera and even my iPod all worked immediately after installation — no drivers or other software required... I did have to install additional codecs to get MP3 and Windows Media Audio support."
Indiana University's mirror is still going strong:
ftp://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/pub/linux/ubuntu-releases/7.10
- or -
http://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/linux/ubuntu-releases/ (separate server)
Ubuntu release days are fun for mirror operators. It lets us test our hardware and bandwidth.
(Internet2 connected)
As always people... Don't use the download link from the main page. spend the extra time to get a .torrent like [URL:http://ubuntu.gds.tuwien.ac.at/cdimage/releases/gutsy/ubuntu-7.10-desktop-i386.iso.torrent]
Currently: 1938 seeds, 4389 peers. and it's going *very* quickly.
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
I would just cite emacs, but since you seem to be interested in something more...graphical...I'll just list these three:
* Eclipse
* KDevelop
* Netbeans
Palm trees and 8
What still is an issue is DVD encryption. Sadly DeCSS can't be legally obtained in the US. Much as I am opposed to software patents, some practical solution needs to be given, while we continue to struggle to change the patent system. Paying a few bucks for legal DVD playback in the US seems the only feasible option at this point, and Ubuntu should facilitate this somehow, if only by providing links to third parties that provide this service (e.g. Fluendo I believe were working on this).
We've just tried this one out as soon as it was released, and there was quite some differences in installation on our modern laptop hardware compared to 7.04 at least. Proprietary graphics driver installation couldn't really be much easier from what I can see -- besides by making it automatic, but I suppose there are reasons other than technological ones behind that.
...) really seem to be picking up some pace lately. And we're just months away from KDE 4. This is exciting times to follow for sure, and for the first time I'm starting to become a believer in "Linux on the desktop".
:-)
After the few guided clicks to get that done, a reboot later and suddenly Compiz was also activated without any user actions needed. Hmm, so how do you configure those 3D effects then? No way we could find, but from reading an online computer magazine, we found out that the Compiz Config Settings Manager wasn't included. We installed that one, and it then integrated nicely into the Desktop Settings as a new "Custom effects" option. Why that one wasn't part of the distro by default is still unknown to us though. It seemed like an obvious choice to let the user customize the window effects?
Otherwise, I think Compiz didn't lag or anything even once when maximizing windows or rotating the desktop, etc, and this was on a laptop without a *that* hot graphics card. So we were impressed about how smooth the UI was. No interruptions from some service suddenly kicking in to work a bit like every user of Vista has no doubt grown used to take for granted by now with the SuperFetch, System Restore, Search Indexer etc services. They seem to kick in at the most inappropriate times -- not even when the computer is idle! Come on! Maybe Ubuntu's new desktop search indexer make it suffer too, but nothing we could see anyway.
After doing this, we unplugged the network card, and voila, it automatically discovered our WLAN. We didn't have to do anything, really.
So let's try open the (already mounted and ready) NTFS drive with Windows Vista on it? Oh, we can simply drag a file there now too -- cool! NTFS-3g apparently installed and ready.
We seemed to have to install Windows Media Audio support though and as we're still quite some Linux amateurs, we have still not got around that part as the work day is over. It's been fun experimenting though, and getting up to date with what a modern "desktop Linux" distro can offer. Looking at the feature list of Ubuntu 7.10, and summing that one up with the new features of GNOME 2.20 gives one a mighty impressive list of new features compared to just 6 months ago.
Linux desktop development (GNOME, KDE, desktop distros,
I have some pretty high demands of novice usability though, which makes me hesitate still as for some distros. E.g. SUSE Linux 10.3 had a few quirks on my home stationary computer. Its NVIDIA driver install having me to use the command prompt and special "SUSE for NVIDIA" instructions is unacceptable for amateur usage IMHO, although I finally got it done. It also even failed to install the distro to the hard drive the first time around, because it couldn't mount the SATA drive it had just formatted (??). A reboot, and then it could do it like it was no problem at all. *shrug* That also gave an early feeling of "still aimed for geeks" that I'd so much like it to see it move away from.
But back to Ubuntu 7.10 -- so far no problems here, and I was left with an excitement to play with it more after the day.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
OK, you know how you are prompted to install updates from time to time, right? Usually for security or bug fixes or whatever?
This is essentially the same thing, except you're installing newer versions of packages rather than just ones with fixes applied to them. You won't need to edit or format partitions or anything like that. It's just another package update, really, but a BIG one that will take a long time, and which will occasionally ask you "do you want to replace such-and-such configuration file, which appears to have been altered, with the new one", and unless you recognize the file you'll just want to say "yes, I want the new one" to all of those.
Video drivers: not sure, but Gutsy prompts you to install restricted drivers with a little icon up by the clock (in Gnome, don't know about KDE). So, if the upgrade breaks your restricted video drivers (I suspect that it will, as I doubt that the Ubuntu folks feel comfortable including non-free drivers in a mostly-automated major update) then it should just prompt you to re-install them the first time you log in, after a reboot.
As for the resolution thing: if you manually edited any files (probably
If you did not manually edit a configuration file to get your resolution how you want it, then my advice is to either stick with what you have, or just give Gutsy a go and take the risk. It might mess it up, it might not. Probably not, in fact, but it's possible. In any case, the forums and IRC support will still be there if you need them, and should be able to help you get things back in order should the upgrade cause any breakage of any kind.
My feisty's update manager shows that there's a new distro release and it provides a button to "upgrade" and it's upgrading as I type this.
Res publica non dominetur
Cedega is getting more and more behind plain Wine lately. They used to have better D3D support, but Wine has it better for the last year at least. The fact that they stole the codebase originally and kept it locked, and now can't properly maintain it, shows.