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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."
I'm actually really excited about this. We've got a demo running here. We installed it on a two year old notebook and everything just worked. Pointed Evolution to our Exchange server, and it just worked. Which IMHO is key, I love to hack things just as much as the next guy, but if I have to hack things just to get them to work the first time, its a major turn off.
It's got a slick UI and the package manager is well done.
Add in support from Dell.
All that is missing now is a really awesome developer environment.
While Ubuntu on the desktop is the bee's knees, server leaves me unimpressed. While I'm not expecting a "big-iron" capable monster with every service imaginable, what I would expect is the "Ubuntu touch"; The most useful, advanced and friendly services at the "administrator's" fingertips, easily managed, configured, etc. LAMP is a nice start, but how about a full sweet of ready to go "stuff". XMPP, SIP, VPN, Doc Mgt, etc. If Ubuntu could do for servers what they've done for desktops, well, that would be really good. ;) In the interim, I'll stick with CentOS (no, I'm not comparing CentOS to Ubuntu).
A partial, eventual solution to this is to support Linux and independent gaming. For example the expansion to Dominions3 came out today and is for sale at Gamer's Front. Dominions is a fantastic strategy game, I can play it in Linux (or Mac & Windows), it's from a small independent game company, and it's for sale by Gamer's Front (who support independent games).
Win, win, win, win...
It's a bit pricey retail ($54), but comes with a 300 page manual, and the coupon "DOM3-STARDOCK" will get you 20% off until November 15th, making it quite reasonable..
I'm not affiliated with them, it's just pretty much the only game I bother to play these days.
The television will not be revolutionized.
You underestimate the progress Wine has been making. I too am currently playing Company of Heroes and Supreme Commander, and they run better on my Gentoo install than they do with many of my friends' XP systems. Admittedly, they've been in a playable state for only about two months now, but for example C&C 3 worked great the day it was released. Also, Wine has already started it's DX10 implementation, and as that progresses, it'll make linux "instantly" a superior platform for gaming when compared to XP. If you want to play games on linux, than try them with wine, see what doesn't work and post a bug report. Until linux gains enough market share to attract developers, that's the best thing you can do.
Why would you buy an iPod and expect it to work with something else? Look at Apple's website, look at the box, google "iPod linux".
Tech specs on Apple's site:
Mac system requirements
* Mac OS X v10.4.8 or later
* iTunes 7.4 or later5
Windows s
* Windows Vista or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later
* iTunes 7.4 or later
I don't see a Linux option.
I don't see a "non iTunes" option.
And apple sells the whole package as they do with everything they sell.
Off topic----
Note: I am an Apple user. I have both a MacBookPro and a Debian server. I tried for the longest time to get stuff onto my iPod from the debian server since that's where my music resides. I couldn't find any command line programs to do it. I even had conceptualized a nice little bash script that after I plugged my iPod in, I'd run it and it'd sync everything. I gave up and just use iTunes over an NFS share over Wireless, sure it takes a while but I set it before I go to bed. (Initial sync was over ethernet).
Where are all the linux developers making nice stable non 'flair' programs? Why can't someone make a nice stable cli interface to the iPod and then write a GUI wrapper around that? I've been looking *forever* for CLI RSS torrent grabber. It doesn't even have to be a program, just a simple script will due. OS X has a nice program called TVShows.app, it's just a nice GUI wrapped around a ruby script that reads an XML file. I tried but the script doesn't run under Debian. Shiny programs are nice to keep up with the OSX/Vista crowd but what happened to the developers that make good dependable programs for the command line?
I sympathize, and up until Feisty I had such a difficult time getting Linux up and running that I never got far enough to consider using it as a viable gaming platform, but over the past week I've had a total change of heart. I use my computer to check email, browse the web, write, store and play music and video (of multiple formats), stream video and music over a LAN, and play games. Lots of games. In fact, I'd say that games account for 80% of my usage time.
I'd been running Vista and it was a disaster. I have an Nvidia Geforce 7800 GTX, which doesn't support DX10, so even when I got Bioshock I never really benefitted from that aspect of Vista. Long story short, Vista turned me off so much that I now dual boot XP and Ubuntu, with the idea that I'd use Ubuntu as sort of a project to noodle around with, getting used to Linux in anticipation of XP's future abandonment.
Two weeks in I've been pleasantly surprised by how well Ubuntu works and how much I don't need XP. Everything non-game related works great, and I've even made inroads towards weaning my girlfriend off of iTunes. Wine runs EVE well after some mucking about with settings. I still need XP for Bioshock, but HL2 seems to work fine. I have yet to try BF2142 and I have some older games I'd like to try out but so far I'd characterize it as a net success.
So yeah, I agree wholeheartedly that games are important, but people who ask me for recommendations as to software tend to be friends/family that will subsequently ask me to install and maintain said software, and on that basis I'd much rather set them up with Ubuntu than XP or Vista. With my admittedly limited experience with Linux, I still like that when things go wrong in Linux they seem to go wrong for obvious reasons and be relatively straightforward to fix, where Windows does so much mysterious crap in the background it seems like problems just arise out of the ether. I get the impression that extended use is not intended use, unlike with Windows.
As it stands now, I no longer consider XP to be my main os. I basically consider Ubuntu my "serious" os, and the XP partition as essentially the same as my Wii: a console for a few specific games.
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What would you recomend as a replacement for the iPod?
Check out Cowon's iAudio line. I have an 60GB iAudio X5, and after a year and a half I am still absolutely thrilled with it. It beats the piss out of iPod for functionality (FLAC/OGG/WMA/MP3 compatibility, video, an interface that doesn't suck ass, text file reading, FM radio, audio in/out, recording from radio/audio in/internal mic, and on and on and on), and is substantially cheaper than an iPod of comparable size. I didn't see the X5 on their website, maybe they're phasing it out for the newer models, but check them out. Anecdote: I dropped it in a pile of melting snow one drunk night in my front yard and didn't find it until the next afternoon. Turned right on, no water under the screen or anything, good as new. True story.
the touch round scroller appears to me to be unmatched
I hate them. There is no tactile feedback, so I can't operate it without looking at it, which is a total dealbreaker for me. I bike a lot, I can't be pulling the thing out and trying to look at it in traffic. With my X5 (which has a mini-joystick), I can navigate the whole thing without looking at it.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
You certainly have your troll hat on today! Some comparisons with XP:
.doc or a .ppt? In ubuntu, OpenOffice is installed by default. In XP, you have to go buy a retail box of Office 2003/2007/etc.
* plug in a USB memory stick, make some changes, rady to take it out. In Ubuntu, "Safely remove" is one click away in the context menu, and does exactly what you would expect. XP pops up some unintelligble menu of USB root devices and it's 3 clicks until you get to remove it.
* plug in a USB printer. In Ubuntu 7.10, it appears in your printer list automatically. In XP, you have to find the drivers, install the drivers, finish the "new hardware wizard"...
* need more multimedia codecs? In ubuntu, it'll prompt you to install them, then do so. In XP, you have to search the web for them, install some third-party software, repeat until you find some that work.
* want to edit a
* install/update/remove thousands of third party applications. In ubuntu, it's all in the package manager, there's a "new updates notifier", and there's no reboot unless you upgrade to the newest version of the OS. In windows, you only get updates for Microsoft products, and those all require a reboot (and upgrading to the latest OS requires $400 and yet more CDs).
* 3d desktop effects - ubuntu 7.10 has 3d desktop effects enabled by default, where your virtual desktops are on a spinning cube, windows can be consumed by flames when you close them, and there's 3 or 4 alternatives to boring old alt-tab. Windows Vista can give you an orthographic view of your windows when you hit alt-tab and that's about it. XP doesn't have such effects(a small percentage of which improve productivity) and it never will.
* migration - Ubuntu can find and import many settings and files from your windows drive during install. XP just barely acknowledges that other OSes exist, and will blow away other partitions unless you've partitioned in a very particular way.
For all purposes other than games, Ubuntu has long since been surpass XP in usability and user friendliness. "Average users" are not doing those things that require XP; average users surf the net, send email, and write word documents.