Hardy Heron Alpha 4 Released

LarryBoy writes "Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) alpha 4 was released Friday and Ars Technica has a look at what's new in the latest builds of Hardy Heron. 'Although many of the significant architectural features like PulseAudio and GIO are still in transitional stages and aren't fully functional yet, Ubuntu 8.04 alpha 4 is still very impressive. I'm a big fan of D-Bus and I'm very pleased to see it being adopted throughout the entire desktop stack in core components.'"

Comments

ndiswrapper

[Finallyjoined!!!]

Still doesn't work properly.
But 8.04, it's bloody nice! I downloaded it this afternoon for a play :-) Ooops, p2p, must be illegal. Its great man!

Re:ndiswrapper

[Brian Gordon]

I'm very put off by the selective-sudo nonsense that's supposedly going to be pervasive in Hardy. That can't possibly be supported by the processor without some super-weird extra abstraction that will just slow things down.

Re:ndiswrapper

[2sheds]

You mean PolicyKit? Surely granular user privileges are a good thing in this day and age? It's a D-Bus interface anyway, hardly super weird.

Re:ndiswrapper

[cheater512]

There must be very very few things that you need ndiswrapper for these days.

To be honest, I've never needed to touch it at all.
I've been pretty lucky with wifi support (every wifi device I've bought has Linux drivers even though I didnt check before hand) but other hardware also works fine.

I consider ndiswrapper a really dirty hack which is required in certain circumstances.
I would never tell anyone to use it.

Re:ndiswrapper

[cheater512]

I have never used Ubuntu so please correct me if I'm wrong.

Is the wifi problem in Ubuntu driver related or UI related?

Its a well known fact that wifi manufacturers really hate giving away any clues so making wifi drivers is always a struggle.
A *lot* of them are currently supported though and more are on the way.

If its UI related then there arent too many excuses.
However its probably best if they did it right the first time so if they need more time, I say give it to them.

Re:ndiswrapper

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny thing is I rarely find setting up wireless networking in Windows a trouble-free experience. I'm not saying I've never had problems with Ubuntu, far from it, but I've had far more problems with Windows XP.

Re:ndiswrapper

[GIL_Dude]

I've never had any problems setting up wireless on Windows - but it is because Windows is what the vendors support. I'd heard horror stories from people about setting up wireless on Linux (and I guess it can be that way depending on your wireless chipset). But I have to say; I repartitioned a Lenovo X60s yesterday (running Vista) and added Ubuntu 7.10 to the BCD menu and fired up wireless and it worked with no "messing" with anything; just out of the box flawless. It was a pleasant surprise (I normally just run Ubuntu on a desktop machine and this was my first try on wireless). Nicely done GNU/Linux/Ubuntu team!

Re:ndiswrapper

[MMC Monster]

I suggest you try wifi on Ubuntu 7.10. Don't even install the OS. Just boot the CD and try it from their. (Firefox via a liveCD is somewhat slow, but functional.) Wireless was seamless for me. It just works, to steal a phrase from Apple. It connects to a wireless connection. Click once on the connection icon and get a list of all the wireless networks the computer can detect, including icons for which require a password and bars to show the signal strength. It's fun to hop from network to network. :-)

Re:ndiswrapper

[T-Bone-T]

Lucky you. I don't even understand the first step to getting my wireless card to work.

Re: ndiswrapper

[Dolda2000]

I may well agree that the effects of PolicyKit are a good thing, but I have to say that I am not immediately convinced of its D-Bus implementation. D-Bus may be fun and all, but I'm getting the feeling that Linux distributions are increasingly turning into D-Bus distributions. IIRC, Red Hat has even announced a project for a D-Bus based init replacement. I liked D-Bus when it was all about the desktop, and getting the occasional system level abstraction like HAL, BlueZ or possibly NetworkManager to speak to desktop programs, but now I feel it is beginning to replace core POSIX policies.

Not that a D-Bus operating system couldn't possibly be good, but all I really want, quite honestly, is a good Unix system. More D-Bus at the system level is, for me, rather an argument to switch my laptop over to Debian instead, and then if Debian becomes GNU/DBus as well, I guess I'll switch to FreeBSD instead.

Re:ndiswrapper

[stefancaunter]

I prefer Vista, which shipped with my laptop. The wifi thing is and was a total showstopper for me, and rightly so. Ubuntu 7.10 was as behind Vista as RedHat 5.x was behind Win98. Just not ready in comparison. See, I don't want to have to fight with my hardware. I work all day in a unix shell, so it's not like I can't deal with this stuff. I just don't want to. HP, and Microsoft, fixed the issue with the Broadcom wireless driver; BIOS update, driver update. It now works, perfectly. It didn't when I got the machine, so I checked out Ubuntu. I'm way past being political or a bigot or an evangelist. I need to be productive and I need a working system. End of story. I get that with Vista. I didn't with Ubuntu. Vendors support Microsoft first, and that's life. This Broadcom thing will get addressed by Linux, but it's too late (again) for me. I don't care why it didn't/doesn't work, and neither does anyone else. It just doesn't work, and that don't cut it.

Re:ndiswrapper

[Nocturnal Deviant]

sorry but this is /. if you use vista any opinion you have is hereby ignored, the last thing you want to admit to us is that your using vista...time to pull out the torches and pitchforks guys!

Re: ndiswrapper

[jd]

POSIX simply doesn't support all the facilities required for a trusted (as in "Trusted IRIX") Operating System and, let's face it, security has for a long time been moving more towards MAC and not just for Linux. POSIX got into updating security surprisingly late in the game, and although there are patches for POSIX ACLs for Linux, I can't think of a single distro or mega-patch that includes POSIX security. I seem to recall Linux is deprecating some POSIX functionality, like POSIX ttys, and the kernel has always included unPOSIX-ish code where it is clear that the official POSIX syntax or semantics are carp (sic) or where support for other standards has been useful or expedient.

D-Bus may not be the answer to everything, individual technologies rarely are, and it's not as if D-Bus was even the only user-level software bus commonly used in Linux, but it has interesting potential. Not sure how well it currently plays with clustering technology like MOSIX, or grid technology, but given the effort being poured into developing user-space software buses precisely for those, I imagine that's just a matter of time.

Personally, I'd rather have more localized limited-purpose buses in any case where a general-purpose solution is slower and/or heavier. The code can't be that maintenance-intensive and too much abstraction must eventually pessimize the resulting code. Moore's Law is worthless if code gets slower at the same rate systems get faster. Nonetheless, any general-purpose abstract IPC that is easier to implement against than traditional mechanisms (RPC, CORBA, Unix sockets, System V messages, etc) must surely be beneficial - even if those end up being the mechanisms used under the hood. In fact, the more of those implemented and the better you could switch data between them, the more portable such a software bus becomes as well as the more optimal - to a point. The whole trend in programming is towards such pluggable solutions, it's surprising IPC is so far behind almost every other mechanism out there, and unless there are specific technological reasons to not use a given generic mechanisms (such as performance costs), you're already using so many that are not following some standard or other that it's absurd to discriminate against one just because it's not specifically POSIX.

Re:ndiswrapper

[el americano]

Yeah, but you're just one guy. If it works for the vast majority, then that *does* cut it. I also object to your comparing pre-installed Vista, with a Ubuntu you set up yourself. Pre-installed Ubuntu is available, and it comes with everything working - I can tell you're shocked. When your only criticism is getting everything working for the first time, you're setting up pre-installed Vista to win the comparison.

To add my experiences with Ubuntu (and being more specific) I had troubles with Ubuntu 6.06 on my T42 ThinkPad trying to use wireless security, although connectivity and WEP worked straight off. Later, Ubuntu 7.10 had a greatly improved NetworkManager. It's everything thing I need. My hat's off to those guys. Even VPN works beautifully through the same interface.

I do hope an open source 11n driver comes out soon. It's really up to which chip vendor wants write one, and it was in this area that I had hopes for the Dell/Ubuntu laptops. If they want to ship 11n, then they'll push someone to support it. You see, your characterization was mistaken. You said:

HP, and Microsoft, fixed the issue with the Broadcom wireless driver

No they didn't. Broadcom fixed it. HP forced them too, and Microsoft did nothing. That's the way it's going to be. Once HP and Dell care, Linux support will be there before the product is shipped.

Re:ndiswrapper

[bdjacobson]

More specifically, the drivers for the Broadcomm wireless cards, like the one in my laptop. For the exact same model number (is this the term?), there are multiple hardware revisions. So some peoples' cards work; others like mine don't. I'll have to check it out again see how it is.

Re:ndiswrapper

[calebt3]

Step 1: Boot
Step 2: Click network connection icon in panel
Step 3: Select network from drop-down menu
Step 4: Enter WPA key/passphrase

Unless you have a Broadcom-based chip.

Re:ndiswrapper

[T-Bone-T]

Are you serious? WTF do you think the first thing I tried was?

Re:ndiswrapper

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

You might want to try PCLinuxOS; it was the first distro I've seen that immediately recognized and properly configured my WPA-PSK connection (intel) without me having to do /anything/ except enter the passkey the first time I was prompted.

Re:ndiswrapper

[calebt3]

Unfortunately, I am serious. Many wifi cards "just work". If it isn't working, the best I can offer is the tired mantra of "ask the forums".

Re:ndiswrapper

[xtracto]

Yeah, but you're just one guy. If it works for the vast majority, then that *does* cut it.

Only maybe within the slashdot crowd. The fact is that for the majority of people it does not cut it, Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX achieve what GP poster is saying.

There are two problems I see with Linux now, one is this late-drivers issue (it happened with modems, cameras, usb and now wireless) that prevents users from being able to use their hardware in their computer. The second problem is what someone called "incomplete drivers", and it refers to the fact that because of the nature of "scratch an itch" of open source, developers sometimes create a driver that "just works" in the sense that the developer stops programming the driver when it achieves a specific functionality. The result is that you can not do in Linux everything you can do in Windows with your hardware.

I too have the same philosophy as GP, I do not care who people blame (it is easy to play the blame game and throw the ball to another person), the hard fact is that Linux does not cut it in some conditions, and I use whatever solves my problems. Past are my University days of being idealist and having time to hack and crack (as disassembling and removing the protection of programs). Now I just want computers to work and work fine.

Re:ndiswrapper

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never had a problem with my WiFi ever in Ubuntu. I don't understand what everyone is bitching about. Dapper, Edgy, Feisty and Gusty for me have never had any problems on a Samsung R55.

Re:ndiswrapper

[Minozake]

I've heard bad things about PCLinuxOS. One: it puts all users as root. Two: nowhere does any developer recommend using limited-access accounts. But, it's just that: Heard. You could probably provide more insight. I'd just recommend people be extra-careful: Root access by default and Root privileges even to limited accounts is what makes security and Windows an oxymoron. That's why someone should install Sudo and only use it to control what they are doing on Unix-based systems.

Re:ndiswrapper

[stefancaunter]

Well I can roll my own install of anything. I just don't want to do that on a $600 laptop. I do that on servers, for other people who pay me. That's not what I want from a laptop. Preinstalled Ubuntu working on a laptop? Bring it on. Unfortunately, the $600 is no longer burning a hole in my pocket. Must have missed the "preinstalled ubuntu laptop" section at the friendly local computer store. And Broadcom fixed the 43xx _Microsoft_ driver for HP. If they had fixed it first for linux I'd still be running Ubuntu, and by the way, my hat is off to Ubuntu as well, they make a fine OS. But no wireless, no way. Linux gets nothing from hardware guys and it hurts it. I mean, having to endlessly retype your WEP2 password into Network Manager because it doesn't save WEP2 settings because driver is broken gets to you after a while. It's not about the anecdotes, or the specifics. It just doesn't work on Ubuntu, and does with Vista. Like I said, same stuff from 10 years ago. Pretty good, but the Microsoft/Apple desktop is just a bit better. Both of them are fine OSes, but I'll take the one that has correct wireless functionality that lets me be productive now, and that's Windows.

Re:ndiswrapper

[T-Bone-T]

It is the forums that I regularly refer to for answers. Unfortunately, the answer might be three steps but the first step might have 5 sub-steps that I have to look up somewhere else. I like computers and I like to look up how to get something to work but this is just too much. I want a stable system that works and looks the same way from boot to boot, Ubuntu just hasn't provided that. Vista didn't drive me to Ubuntu. If anything, Ubuntu has driven me back to Vista. I enjoy consistency and that's what Vista has given me.

Re:ndiswrapper

[MPAB]

I've got the omnipresent Broadcom chip on a Compaq Presario V5000. Upon firing up 7.10's Live CD, it not only struggled to use it in a native way (unsuccessfully), but also reprogrammed its firmware! It then wouldn't work under PCLinuxOS and ndiswrapper even after a cold reboot. After a hard reboot and XP, it didn't want to work either: I had to uninstall and reinstall it (never had to before).

I looked for answers in the forums, but to date I've got none. Don't dare using another Ubuntu editioneven if it's a Live CD, as I risk this happening again.

Re:ndiswrapper

[mspohr]

WiFi support has progressively improved in each release. As you point out, the problem is the drivers and manufacturers are reluctant to release their secrets to making their cards work. However, my experience with the latest Ubuntu (7.1) is that WiFi (as well as video, sound,etc.) all just work out of the box on all of the hardware that I have tried (mostly laptops). You can test your hardware using the 'Live CD' so you don't even need to do an install to see if it will work.

Re:ndiswrapper

[Daengbo]

Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX achieve what GP poster is saying.

MS achieves virtually nothing. The hardware vendors to elaborate testing and fiddling to make sure the pre-installed OS works when you get it.

Apple does a bit more: it checks for its own (limited) hardware compatability.

But pre-installed Ubuntu from Dell ... and it all works. Buy a EeePC and ... it all works.

Try installing XP or Vista on a computer you built yourself sometime. It rarely all just works out of the box. It requires hours of installing drivers, made easier because the part manufacturers supply those drivers for you.

Compare like to like, please.

Re:ndiswrapper

[JuliaNZ]

Ubuntu 7.10 boots to the LiveCD on my main (Dell) laptop, with the attached LCD running at 1920x1200. Great! Install to a partition, reboot, the attached screen no longer runs at anything greater than 1600-ish, even after I poke around in xorg.conf. No idea why.

I tried it on a Compaq laptop (which runs FreeBSD perfectly, including my wifi card). The wifi doesn't work at all, and the installer dies silently (or sometimes with a Python error) right at the end of the install, also freezing the live X environment as soon as you move the mouse. Just to be sure, I tried it with Kubuntu and Xubuntu as well, with the same results.

For now I've gone with a straight Debian install and that's working great. But it's definitely put me off playing with Ubuntu again for a while.

Re:ndiswrapper

[JayAEU]

I've installed PCLinuxOS 2007 as a replacement for Windows XP on my wife's 6 year old laptop some 7 months ago. What shall I say, it's an absolute blessing! Boot times of 30 seconds instead of several minutes, no crashes and - best of all - everything just works, including the wireless PCMCIA card.

My wife couldn't be happier.

And you can rest your mind, PCLinuxOS 2007 doesn't put all users into root. If something requires administrative privileges, it will ask for the root password, which is where I come in, if it happens to my wife.

Anyway, in terms of ease-of-use, PCLOS is still much ahead of Ubuntu. I wouldn't run PCLOS on a server, but on desktop and mobile systems, it's top notch.

Re:ndiswrapper

[kabz]

I've had very good results from Marvell and Intel cards.

I'm really sick of the tired old trolls that plague these pages, and I'm sure the coming plethora of low-end GNU/Linux boxes such as the OLPC, EeePC etc., will finally sweep this crap away.

Re:ndiswrapper

[Knuckles]

Dude, this software was a gift to you. Use it if you have a need for it, or leave it if you don't, but stop insulting the givers. It's not optimal that some chipsets are not supported, but only the manufacturers can change that (by releasing specifications or drivers), so go complain to them. Meanwhile, behave rationally and research your hardware before buying, thus supporting those vendors that cater to you. It's not as if the choice was limited: as mentioned, Intel and Atheros (whose chipsets are in many good brand cards, like D-Link) work just dandy.

Re:ndiswrapper

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, even if you were stupid enough to do as suggested, you'd find that something that worked fine in Ubuntu now doesn't work in the other distro. Out of any moderately large set of requirements, at least one of them will be downright broken on any distro you care to name.

Re:ndiswrapper

[Man Eating Duck]

Try installing XP or Vista on a computer you built yourself sometime.

I fully agree with your post, and will even go a bit further. In my experience Windows' hardware detection has been far worse than Linux' for quite some time now.
I was flabbergasted the first time I tried to install XP at work on a box with sata drives. That's pretty much a no-go with the stock install CD. Luckily the computer had a floppy drive, so that problem got solved. I know that you can slipstream in the sata drivers prior to installing, but seriously, WTF?

Also I have an old sound card (SB Live) and ditto TV tuner card (PCTV Studio) which has never had driver support included in Windows. For some years Linux (Suse, Mandrake, Redhat and now, Ubuntu) have happily detected and used them without any hassle at all. I do feel the pain of those with hardware with poor driver support, but that is hardly Linux' fault. I do get the feeling that, as Linux becomes more popular, hardware manufacturers are more diligent with their Linux drivers as well.

Anyone who says that Linux is time consuming and difficult to install have probably never tried installing Windows from scratch. This is not even mentioning commodity software such as an office package and IM software, which most Linuxes now supply in a default install.

Re:ndiswrapper

[T-Bone-T]

You sound as bad a Apple fanboys. A gift? Oh please. There you go with that "buy more shit" bullshit. I got a free OS so I wouldn't have to spend money, dumbass. What good would it do to whine to the manufacturers? They won't listen, they already have my money. Why should they spend their money to give me free drivers for an OS that few people use?

    I want to use Ubuntu but it is too much of a hassle. I put in my time, which is not free, and for all that I have an OS that only mostly works. At this point, Vista is more economical, at least it just works and I don't have to cobble together solutions that may or may not work.

Re:ndiswrapper

[Knuckles]

A gift? Oh please.

You think these millions of lines of code appeared from thin air? Whatever, bye, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Re:ndiswrapper

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

What is it with Linux users and bad suggestions? I've struggled through getting one distro to work, a distro that is know for its ease of use, and now you want me to try a different one? Why the fuck do you think I would want to put myself through all that again? What is it with people who shit in the faces of those who try to offer what help they are able? Clearly one distro is not working for you. It will take you download time + 5 minutes to boot to a livecd, to see if pclinuxos works better for you. But I suppose it takes much less effort to simply be a prick. Good on ya.

Re:ndiswrapper

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

It actually does not put all users as root. FOr root-operations you still need to provide a separate root password. The user account you create at startup is limited access.

Re:ndiswrapper

[that this is not und]

I guess I am one of the people who has read your comments here and is wondering why you're not just using Vista. Aren't there Vista support forums you could be trolling?

Re:ndiswrapper

[Anonymous Coward]

Complaining that Ubuntu doesn't have driver support for an ugly card surrounded by closed minds and locked down drivers is just like complaining that Windows will not read a peanut-butter sandwich. best. analogy. ever.

Re:ndiswrapper

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, then don't. I know you're trolling, but it does get annoying that people like you assume that everyone who uses linux really really wants to convert you away from some OS that you seem to be happy with (though maybe a bit insecure about).

I mean really, it's just an operating system. Get over it.

Besides, it's not really that stupid a suggestion. If you're interested in painlessly trying out another operating system, then maybe the next time you buy a computer, hardware compatibility will be more of a priority for you.

Or not. shrug.

Re:ndiswrapper

[that this is not und]

You keep posing as an earnest potential Linux-user in comment after comment in this discussion. I, uh, call bull-shit on you. You have little or no interest in installing Linux or any other free OS. You're shilling for Microsoft off a list of bullet points.

I mean, really. Let's not buy this crap, people. This guy is a shill.

Re:ndiswrapper

[stefancaunter]

Hey now. I used to collect ne2000 nic cards from thrift store computers to get networking running on 486s with RedHat 5 through 6.2.

I guess if
http://www.google.com/search?q=caunter%20linux
and
http://www.google.com/search?q=caunter%20microsoft
aren't instructive, maybe
http://lynx.isc.org/current/lynx2-8-7/docs/README.sslcerts and http://www.google.com/search?q=nsupdate will. My little nsupdate howto gets a lot of love for some reason. I use, support, contribute to, and advocate for open source. I'm good at writing, so that's where I contribute. I also am not an operating system bigot. I use what is best for a given job. Sometimes that's linux, sometimes that's BSD, and yeah, sometimes, on an HP laptop, that's Vista. I don't have anything to prove to anyone, but I mean, I've got some credibility. Anyway, I don't mind giving MS credit for a nice OS that seems to get beat up on for reasons that I can't understand.
/bye
http://caunter.ca/contact.html

Re:ndiswrapper

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off and use Vista then. I'm sure Ubuntu won't any the less for your departure.

Re:ndiswrapper

[pxc]

Eh... kind of both. I've had certain chipsets that network manager couldn't deal with, but worked fine if operated manually. If you think you might be in that situation:

iwlist wlan0 scan
iwconfig wlan0 essid "Some ESSID You Just Located in Your Scan"
dhclient wlan0

If you don't have dhclient, use whatever your distro's dhcp client is.

Re:ndiswrapper

[meiao]

ndiswrapper isn't supposed to run properly.
Get proper drivers.

Re:ndiswrapper

[mark72005]

I dual boot between XP and Ubuntu and I agree with these statements. I'm a Linux noob, I totally support the idea of open source. But it just sucks balls that XP works with my self-assembled system with no problems at all, but Ubuntu wouldn't even install for me. The installer hung and I'm not even sure how I got it to install now. After that, it was a weeklong fight with Ubuntu to get wireless working - like I said, I'm a noob. Eventually I figured it out, and it could just be me but it seem slower than it does in XP - maybe a driver issue, who knows. I still don't have any sound which I understand is Creative's fault, but to an end user, I just have sound in Windows but not in Ubuntu. I installed some packages just from browsing for applications I wanted to try, and particularly with media players, some of them don't even open/open briefly and crash immediately. I fought for a while on DVD playback too. Video clips embedded in webpages don't seem to be working either. Maybe these things are obvious to Linux experts but they weren't to me. After a month or so, I'm using and learning, but it's still not as functional as XP is. I still have to switch back to do things. And it was a knock down drag out to get it to where it is right now. I'm totally a supporter of open source, but this didn't do anything to dispel perceptions that it's only for experts.

Re:ndiswrapper

[martalli]

I'm sorry, but you sound like you are describing sudo. Isn't that what the *buntus are already doing?

Re:ndiswrapper

[el americano]

I won't question your motives, but I thought it should be characterized as an issue of support. When I had my wireless problems over a year ago, I updated my NetworkManager myself. So it's wrong to say it isn't currently working in Linux. Windows drivers have their problems too, but when you buy from a vendor they've ironed these problems out for you. I certainly appreciate not having to deal with these issues, so that is a legitimate buying decision.

On the other hand, a friend of mine wonders why her keyboard becomes unresponsive sometimes and why she always has to reboot to get video conferencing working in Vista. So you're never completely safe.

Did anybody else

[Anonymous Coward]

read this as Hairy Hard-on?

Re:Did anybody else

[PCeye]

No. I quickly read it as "hearty herring", but I guess I was hungry at the time

Re:Did anybody else

[ScrewMaster]

Holy mackerel, how could you have made that mistake?

Re:Did anybody else

[Anonymous Coward]

You're lucky. I read it as "Hearty Hard-on".

Re:Did anybody else

[PCeye]

Yeah, I know...sorry. My thinking seemed little fishy today

(Score: 5, Corny)

PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[crush]

PulseAudio works great in Fedora 8. That's not really surprizing as the primary developer is a Red Hat employee (see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Interviews/LennartPoettering ). It's weird the way Ubuntu advocacy pieces rarely mention that most of the software which is touted as being part of the Ubuntu experience is usually programmed by Debian or Red Hat or Novell developers.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[cbart387]

Business sense most like. It doesn't really matter where it originated as long as Ubuntu does it well. If they put emphasis that PulseAudio was originally developed for Fedora wouldn't that make it more likely that people would try out Fedora instead of Ubuntu. I'm sure more knowledgeable slashdotters could name packages for Fedora that were originally developed in Ubuntu or other distros. It's all a matter of perception but perception is important.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[crush]

Well, yeah, I agree that it's marketing. My objection is that it's verging on the dishonest and that seems to permeate much of the enthusiasm behind Ubuntu. For instance their parent company Canonical still has not released the sourcecode to Launchpad! How absolutely hypocritical is that? A company which makes free use (as they should be able to) of FL/OSS software and then sits on top of the one thing which their developers did apparently create on their own. Do Ubuntu developers do anything besides tweak color palettes and write bullshit press releases which fail to give credit to the actual producers of the software which they parasitize? Other stuff not-coded-by-the-Canonical-parasites: NetworkManager, PolicyKit, the kernel, Nautilus, drivers, aptitude ...

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[cbart387]

Point taken. I wasn't aware fully of what you were implying. I have no problem with using a distro that takes a lot of the software from other ditros. I don't even have a problem if the developers are doing mostly tweaks. However saying that it is your own work is quite different. If what you say is true I'm very disheartened.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[pipatron]

So what you're saying is that Debian fucking sucks because they take like, Linus' kernel and GNU compilers and Theo's ssh server instead of developing their own things?

I think you need to take a deep breath and read the GPL and BSD license again. ;)

Sharing is caring.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[alexborges]

Who ARE you? Bill Gates? Man, i thought I had heard everything when I looked at his old "Open Letter to Hobbyists", but you come even in this day and age.

If you dont want your software to be freely used and redistributed, DO NOT OPEN IT. Period. Canonical is doing what they can with what is available and has no obligation, either moral, ethical or legal, to do anything for or against the producers of the FOSS they use. About they not opening software of their own, in that very speciffic case, im right besides you: release, cannonical bastards, SLES did it for yast (although thankfully that didnt take off for the rest of the distros), redhat did it for the Netscape Directory and gfs (and that cost them a bundle) so yeah, play fair and dont use proprietary software.... or is this right?

For example, redhats RHN proxy/satellite stuff uses oracle as backing and is quite proprietary as far as i know. Novell hasnt released the code for their support portal either, is that ethically right or wrong?.... im not sure where you want to stand on this issues, but its getting more complicated to pass judgment on this stuff the more I think about it.

Now... im waiting to see if lightning strikes me. Your slashdot id gets you quite close to the very begining. I mean, you gotta be old in this game. I was about to cite the Open Source Definition but then again, maybe you're one of the authors or something and will retaliate to this strongly.... aw, hell, here it goes:

Dont you think your position goes against the spirit of the OS definition and the GPL?

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[RiotingPacifist]

Im a ubuntu user, but i completely agree! its shocking how much support a bunch of freeloaders can get, I get the impression that they get their fixes into Debian but that's about it. I get particularly pissed off when Shuttleworth slags off other distros like novell ( which gave him compiz, which was probably the biggest peak in Ununtu adoption ).

There community was thier strongest asset, but unfortunately either ive reach expert level in about 2 years or more likely the influx of new users has really reduced the effectiveness of the community to the point your more likely to get bad help than good help ( and that's if you even get bad help instead of being told to do something else )*.

The only good thing is thier marketing and ease of use, they do contribute users back to linux, i just hope that these user go on to more productive distros ( i intend to switch to gentoo (not a productive distro i know but im sure they contribute more than canonical) & maybe a RedHat/Novell distro, when i have the time )!

*here is a thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=684739, where i asked for something i know is possible i just need to get it right 1st time ( im more a 3rd/4th time guy when i try stuff ), i got told 1) it was imposible 2) to buy a piece of hardware!

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that the beauty of open source? Why shouldn't they use it if Novell, Debian or Red Hat have delevoped it?

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Mahjub Sa'aden]

Can I be honest with you? You sound like a whiny bitch about Canonical. I don't know if you're angry your favourite distro isn't getting more press and users, or if Canonical sent someone to kill your dog, but this is what open source is. They complied with the license, but they don't have an extensive list of thank-yous to Fedora and whoever else in every press release they send out.

Canonical has, no matter how you may dislike it, taken Linux and made a distribution that quite a few people use and like. Which is a good thing. Whether or not they shake your hand and pat you on the back and rub salve all over your poor, damaged soul.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[tehBoris]

Well, I don't intend to be a Canonical apologist, but they do make some stuff... Bazaar and Storm (on top of which Launchpad sits) as well as upstart.

As for Launchpad... they have been saying it will be fully open source Real Soon Now(TM) for ages, and who knows if/when they'll release it —after all, they're not legally obliged to do so.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[RiotingPacifist]

While i agree with what your saying theres a big difference between, canonical, who have done as close to zero as possible, yet slag off novell and RedHat who have been behind alot of core software.

As far as i can tell all canonical have done is throw some money at KDE and make some pretty meaninless software (stuff like envy and a few gui tools that they dont even bother giving to 1/2 the supported 'distros').

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Anonymous Coward]

How absolutely hypocritical is that?

seeing as you're suggesting that Ubuntu using code developed elsewhere under the gpl is "stealing" I think it's pretty hypocritical to moan about launchpad while at the same time getting pissed when gpled code is actually shared and used. in that case wtf is the point of gpling something if you don't want anyone else to make use of it????

Do Ubuntu developers do anything besides tweak color palettes and write bullshit press releases which fail to give credit to the actual producers of the softwate which they parasitize?

like I said before, even if they did do nothing more than aggregate software in one place, use sudo by default, a decent network setup [closed ports etc..] considering there is literally nothing preventing other distros from competing on the same level [the code is all free after all] it just seems like your post is nothing but flamebait.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Matt Perry]

My objection is that it's verging on the dishonest and that seems to permeate much of the enthusiasm behind Ubuntu.

Get over yourself already. It's not like Ubuntu developers are removing credits or the "About" menu item from programs. I haven't seen a free-software or open-source license that says one must trumpet the names of developers. Have you?

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Enrique1218]

There is nothing in the GPL that say by using one piece of open source software requires a company to release all its software under GPL. GPL allows software developers to create and maintain for a much smaller monetary investment than would otherwise be needed. By Canonical integrating Policy Kit, aptitude, Nautilus,etc. into Ubuntu, Canonical is actually helping the original developers even if they don't contribute any code back. Investment in open source projects is directly related to how widespread it is used. The non-trivial of taking a program from redhat based distro and bring it to a debian-derived distro increases its userbase. Ubuntu definitely helps the Debian project by making the distribution easy to install and used. I don't think Dell and others would have ever considered Debian without the efforts of Canonical. The door swings both ways.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[andersa]

Never heard of it before.. Audio framework of the week, as far as I am concerned. Next up? Phonon?

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Do Ubuntu developers do anything besides tweak color palettes

I sure hope so.

16.7 million colours to choose from and they choose the exact shade of shit.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Telvin_3d]

I think that is the point. Debian and the other releases build on what is out there, incorporate other work into their own and release what they make themselves. The GPs objection to Ubuntu is that while they build on what other people have done, they don't release their own contributions back tot he community. No one is sugesting that they are violating the GPL or any other license, but they are perhaps violating the spirit of the community that they depend on for their own wellbeing.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Matt Perry]

However saying that it is your own work is quite different.

No Ubuntu developers have claimed someone else's work as their own. The GP is just upset for some strange reason that Ubuntu, like all other distros, incorporates code from other distributions into its own. All distros do this, and most companies that release Linux distros employ developers to work on existing and new projects.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Matt Perry]

The GPs objection to Ubuntu is that while they build on what other people have done, they don't release their own contributions back tot he community.

Ubuntu is closed-source? That's news to everyone. Source?

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[mike_sucks]

Well, the original BSD licence did - the one with the advertising clause, but that's why it's called "obnoxious". /Mike

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[cbart387]

Good. I should have used Occam's Razor test on his posts, since that was the first time I've heard of that about Ubuntu. It only makes sense to incorporate code, there's no reason to duplicate work. By the way, your signature is way too true.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[leenks]

Launchpad. Show me the source!

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you 100%. I mean who the hell does Canonical think they are, Apple?

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the Ubuntu developers' doing; indeed, many of them are furious with Canonical for keeping the source proprietary. The Launchpad development team has little to do with Ubuntu, apart from being from the company that is Ubuntu's main sponsor.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[jmcnaught]

I have a lot of respect for Debian, and I wish they would get much more time in the spotlight than they do. I use Debian on servers, but for desktops I use Ubuntu because it's easy and they do a good job. That might change though, because I'm getting tired of Gnome, want to switch back to KDE and Kubuntu just isn't polished to the same level as Ubuntu.

Back when Xandros was first released my father was really excited about it. It was the first GNU/Linux distro he'd managed to install and configure by himself, and he loved how easy everything was. I tried talking him out of using it because I didn't like how they wouldn't release the source to their file manager (XFM?) which I thought was counter to the spirit of Free Software even if it didn't break technically break the rules. 6 months later he got a Mac.

I don't really like how Canonical won't release the code to Launchpad, but I see it as a different situation because Launchpad isn't a core component of their distro. With Xandros, their file manager was proprietary. With Ubuntu, they use a proprietary portal for development and bug reporting for their distro but the entire distro itself is free and/or open source. Except for the restricted drivers, but I like how they implemented that by making it optional.

P.S. I looked at that thread on ubuntuforums.org and it definitely is laughable. I also replied to it with instructions on what I'd do. Good luck!

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Anonymous Coward]

a review by arstechnica is an ubuntu press release? ubuntu's policy is to contribute code upstream first. its stated pretty clearly on their site. http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/debian

Do Ubuntu developers do anything besides tweak color palettes and write bullshit press releases https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Matt Perry]

Touché.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Matt Perry]

Launchpad. Show me the source!

On what basis do you feel they are obligated to show you the source to Launchpad?

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[webmaster404]

You totally miss the point of distros. A distro is just the Linux kernel (or BSD if its BSD or Hurd if it is GNU Hurd, ETC) and a collection of software packages. Ubuntu doesn't offer anything really more then Debian your right, however it seems to have one thing that no other distro has and that is ease and customization. For example, Gentoo is very customizable, on the other hand, it can be downright scary if you are new to Linux or computers in general, Ubuntu has an easy-to-use GUI and a graphical install program. The biggest thing though for Ubuntu is hardware detection, for me if my wireless card works or not determines whether or not I have a connection as I don't have close to an easy wired connection, if a distro such as Debian that might be "better" then Ubuntu doesn't detect my wireless card what advantage is that to switch over to Linux when XP works fine? It doesn't help that unless I have a connection I cannot just apt-get *insert package here* to fix my problems nor can I easily post for help, it is truly a make-or-break situation. I like my code to be open-source and free-software, that is one of the main reasons I switched to Linux, however freedom doesn't come before functionality when that functionality is non-trivial, Ubuntu recognizes this and provides restricted drivers that (although it might not be coming from Ubuntu and probably some other developer came up with it) can make the distro easy to use to set up and get going. Also, even though in press releases they don't give credit to everyone (I have yet to see a company that says "yes we made it but *insert software here* did *insert what the software did here*") but their branding is rather slim, about the only noticeable change (to the end-user) from standard Gnome/Debian and Gnome/Ubuntu is that the foot of the Gnome desktop is replaced by a small Ubuntu logo and in a generation that thinks that the GUI==The OS it is necessary to avoid confusion with people thinking that Gnome==Linux==Ubuntu. Really even though Launchpad is proprietary system currently parts of it are open-sourced and I think that after a few code cleanups it will all be released as free software. Overall I think you criticize Ubuntu for being a distribution, something that Debian and Gentoo also are however your criticism is based on how because Ubuntu takes all the packages and unifies them that makes it a bad distro. Ubuntu fills a much needed gap, an easy to use Linux OS that will work with your hardware regardless something that Gentoo and Debian can't exactly claim.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[krmt]

Then why doesn't the Ubuntu community set themselves up on a totally free infrastructure? Every other major distro has one these days.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[DiLLeMaN]

So you get your dad to use Linux (not sure about that, but that's how I read it), but you have such objections to the openness of a part of a distro that he enjoys, that you've effectively scared him into a closed system? I'm a Machead, so I rejoice with the new family member, but really, did that achieve what you wanted it to achieve? The Finder isn't exactly FOSS either, you know.

(Sure, mod me down. You know I'm right)

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[RiotingPacifist]

thx, you saved me a whole load of stumbling about my system aimlessly. And proved my point that what i aimed to do wasnt that hard.
Its a real shame back when i started using ubuntu i think it was 6.04, almost all my problems got fixed almost instantly, and the irc was a bit more libral than its current incarnation too!

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Zarniwoot]

Launchpad. Show me the source!

Is Launchpad even released to the public? It doesn't make much sense to discuss the license if it isn't distributed. Do you require Google to release source for its search engine?

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[SwingGeek]

I don't think it's dishonest or hypocritical.

A Linux distribution is like a collage--it's not expected that the "artist" created all the pieces that go into it, because that's not what a collage is. Nobody who knows how distros work would read the article and think that Ubuntu coded those new services.

What Ubuntu does deserve credit for is putting all the pieces together into a coherent package that "just works" most of the time. That takes a lot of work; it's a significant achievement.

Now, as for Launchpad, the FAQ (https://help.launchpad.net/FAQ) says that it is _going to be_ open source, it just hasn't been released yet since it's still early in development.

"...we have committed to making Launchpad Free Software."

And then explains why they haven't yet:
"With Launchpad, distributors and upstream developers can share bug reports, translations, and code. Until there are standards and APIs that let standalone sites send these things to each other, having a single Launchpad instance is the most practical way of maximizing the collaboration that Launchpad is designed to achieve. It also helps in funding Launchpad development in the short term."

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[gigne]

I tend to agree with your assesment. The IRC channel is terrible. I had an issue with the libstdc++ libs being all screwed up when I upgraded to gutsy (it kept installing the 32 bit one on my 64 bit system) and the forum help was pathetic. The upgrade broke nearly everything on my system this time around, and it took me a couple of days to fix it. The last time I did an upgrade I ended up reinstalling because all the deps were completely screwed. Once again, no help on the forums other than reinstall, or other non starter answers. I consider myself a veteran of Linux as I have been using it for over 8 years, but some suggestions in the forums make we want to change distro to a group with more competent forum posters.

(PS Replied to your ubuntu query as ginge... good luck!)

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu is a distribution aimed at novice users that surely aren't aware of the "intricacies" of the open-source development process (and BTW Canonical has put effort into explaining them in terms even the computer-illiterate can understand). That said, don't you think that their reasoning is that mentioning every individual author can prompt an adverse reaction from most newcomers, who can get overly confused and decide not to give Linux a chance?

It's not like they're removing the copyright notices FFS, you're making this a far bigger deal than it actually is.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Anonymous Coward]

And Launchpad is part of Ubuntu how, exactly?

More to the point, though Launchpad isn't yet open source, Canonical have made a commitment to open sourcing it. The reasons for it not being done yet are well documented - Shuttleworth himself explained things at length in a blog post some time back. They've already open sourced Storm.

So Launchpad isn't open source, but using that to level an accusation of Ubuntu being closed source is a fairly radical interpretation of the facts.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Braino420]

Do Ubuntu developers do anything besides tweak color palettes and write bullshit press releases which fail to give credit to the actual producers of the software which they parasitize?

Hilarious. Might I then suggest that Fedora do the same to win their market share back?

I'm not sure I quite understand this infighting; surely you must realize that what is good for Ubuntu (or any Linux distro) is good for Linux? I know one thing that makes Linux less attractive to the outside world: petty fighting over this senseless bullshit.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Joe Tie.]

I'd agree that it's what a distro is now. But I think a lot of us are still a bit trapped in the past as far as our expectations. I remember when all the desktop managers were pretty full of missing features, and every distro would construct their own unique programs to compensate and fix them. Now, it's pretty much just whether a distro uses rpm or dpkg and the size of their repositories that distinguishes it.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[It'sYerMam]

How is it dishonest to incorporate and integrate a new technology into the distro? It's just the same as using ALSA, or Jack, or whatever. Someone else developed it, Ubuntu incorporates it.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[crush]

Nah, Debian definitely does not suck. Every piece of Debian infrastructure is Free Software. Debian devlopers contribute heavily to the kernel and a myriad of other important projects. Again, remind me what software Ubuntu contributes to the "community"?

Sharing is caring.
I guess Ubuntu doesn't care very much then.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[LingNoi]

Why do you need source code to a bug tracker? Just re-skin mantis if it's such a big deal to you.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Ubuntu community aren't a load of whining little bitches who want to steal launchpad. Does that answer you're question?

You've obviously never been an OSS developer, only users ever whine about this kind of stuff.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[thePsychologist]

"Well, yeah, I agree that it's marketing. My objection is that it's verging on the dishonest and that seems to permeate much of the enthusiasm behind Ubuntu. For instance their parent company Canonical still has not released the sourcecode to Launchpad! How absolutely hypocritical is that?"

How is that hypocritical? It's not because Canonical is helping the spread of open source. It's helping the popularity of Linux. Perhaps one of the best things any company can give to the open source community is more users, and Canonical is doing that. Of course they didn't make most of the components themselves - they put them together and advertised it right.

Launchpad is their product; what's wrong with their doing with it what they think is best for it? Whether or not it's best for the community is not the issue; it's their business. Besides, they have already open sourced one component of Launchpad, namely, Storm.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Cato]

This is complete crap - not only is Ubuntu 100% open source, with standard source packages, it is the root of many other distributions and almost encourages people to fork Ubuntu - e.g. Mythbuntu, Ubuntu Studio, Linux Mint, Fluxbuntu, and more. They do release their own contributions and actively merge them upstream into Debian, so they are also helping every other Debian-based distro (e.g. Sidux, Knoppix, SimplyMEPIS and many others).

How did this get moderated insightful?

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[kripkenstein]

Launchpad. Show me the source! It would be nice to have the source to Launchpad. However,

• Lauchpad is not part of Ubuntu. So this does not make Ubuntu non-free in any way
• Does Red Hat release the source code to RHN and everything else they run on their servers? Does Novell? I don't think so. I'm not saying this is the right thing to do, just that Canonical aren't special. The issue is that server code isn't in the same category as code that runs on your PC. That code should be FOSS, most of us here will agree. Code that I merely access from a server, that's another issue altogether, and worthy of discussion, which the FOSS community is just now starting to get around to (see the Affero GPL).

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Cato]

I've not had any problems upgrading from Feisty to Gutsy on laptop, and generally the Ubuntu forums are amazing - I've not had to post questions yet, simply because the volume of traffic and useful answers means there is almost always a good answer findable using Google.

The one thing that would help is making the Ubuntu wiki more search engine friendly, and more actively integrating the wiki and forums - why can't a HOWTO post seamlessly turn into a Wiki page while also remaining the top post of the HOWTO thread? There's a lot of good content on the Wiki but it rarely turns up in Google, perhaps because they use SSL for all pages. If only they used TWiki as a base, which even includes AJAX-based Google searching within the TWiki site as well as WYSIWYG editing, revision control, 400 plugins...

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Kjella]

Why? One thing is (non-obfuscated) code and build system, technically documentation isn't required but that should be included since it's all part of the product. Another thing are all the systems that they use to come up with that code. I don't think you have any claim on their time tracking or project management or financial tracking or collaboration tool or IM system or whatever, they're all internal Canonical tools. Did you somehow think the kernel was non-free when it was stored in BitKeeper? Do you think you should get the source of whatever internal systems Sun (OpenOffice), MySQL, Trolltech or whomever use? If you somehow think that being open source should somehow be viral to all the support tools they use, you're making it far more viral than even the worst of Microsoft FUD.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Kjella]

No Ubuntu developers have claimed someone else's work as their own. The GP is just upset for some strange reason that Ubuntu, like all other distros, incorporates code from other distributions into its own. All distros do this, and most companies that release Linux distros employ developers to work on existing and new projects. That said, it's hardly the first time I've heard people getting a bit pissed over who's doing the "real" work and who's getting the credit. I do remember something very similar when it came to mplayer and xine, it was something like "We spend all the time reverse engineering codecs, and you just copy and announce that your player can now play these codecs" though I don't remember which was which.

To use the oh so popular car analogy, if a distro does nothing but interior design, wax and polish the other distros would get a little antsy and say "Hey, are you going to contribute something to the engine or transmission or brakes or safety, or are you just going to copy everything we do?". And that's not including the general tension between application developers and distros, where the application may be kick-ass but the distros get the cash for service and support - only a few server applications have their own support agreement.

None of this is against the license in any way, it's just that often it works like this:
Closed source, application: Cash and credit
Closed source, backend: Cash, but no credit
Open source, distro: Cash and credit
Open source, application: Credit, but no cash
Open source, backend: No cash or credit

The last one is rather a sucky deal, but a polished turd is still a turd. So the distros and applications do it anyway so they have something to show, but there's always a tension about who's going to do it and who's not participating.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[VON-MAN]

"Who ARE you? Bill Gates?"
Really, that is totaly uncalled for.

"Canonical is doing what they can with what is available and has no obligation, either moral, ethical or legal, to do anything for or against the producers of the FOSS they use."

Aah, so that's why they're not doing ANY kernel development. http://lwn.net/Articles/264440/. As opposed to everybody else.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[leenks]

I don't. I was merely clarifying the concern of grandparent.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[cjwatson]

Canonical is still a small company, and so we certainly do a lot more integration at Ubuntu than we do from-scratch software development; however, anyone who equates integration work with parasitism has clearly never done any of it themselves. An obsession with creating things on one's own is a rather curious one in the free software community. Most of the work put in by Canonical-employed Ubuntu developers is on improving existing software.

Anyhow, some things just off the top of my head that (variously) Canonical, Ubuntu developers on contract to Canonical, and community Ubuntu developers have been entirely or largely responsible for:

• Upstart (event-driven init replacement)
• significant work on improving suspend/resume support all over the place (kernel, acpi-support, hotkey-setup, etc.)
• package management improvements, e.g. Breaks field, triggers, and various graphical tools (you mentioned aptitude; take a look at the apt changelog and investigate how many people there are involved with Ubuntu)
• large amounts of GNOME and KDE packaging work
• casper (live CD build infrastructure)
• initramfs-tools
• substantial improvements to most areas of the Debian installer, e.g. proper progress reporting for package installation, rescue mode, much of udev support, Kickstart compatibility, etc.
• much of what became LTSP 5
• much of the initial X.org modular tree packaging, and xresprobe
• usplash

This is probably biased to things I've been near, and I'm certainly not going to try to enumerate everything as I'd like to do something else with my week, so I've certainly left out a number of interesting projects. Company-wide, our staff are in the Maintainer or Uploaders fields of nearly 5% of the source packages in the Debian archive, which is not too shabby for a small company, and in many cases they do work on those packages on work time. Aside from that, if you want to know what Ubuntu developers do all day, you could always do some genuine research and look through the mail archives of the various *-changes lists!

I don't think the milestone release announcement (which, BTW, was sent to the developer announcement list and was not a "press release") particularly misrepresents anything as being Ubuntu's work when it isn't; right up at the top it talks about "the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer". Bearing in mind that the intended audience for milestone releases is developers and enthusiastic testers, I don't think this is particularly unreasonable - the people preparing these notes are more interested in describing major things that need to be tested than anything else. However, anyone who feels they are short of acknowledgements should feel entirely free to add them, as the release notes are in wiki-mode while they're being prepared.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[crush]

No, I'm upset that Ubuntu contributes so little back to the community. As clearly stated in my post they have the right to use Free Software (duh!), what's irritating is that the Ubuntu community give back so little to the community at large. An ideal ecosystem sees all participants taking and giving in equal measure. Is that so hard for you to understand?

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Cyberax]

Quoting https://help.launchpad.net/FAQ#head-34295746b9c12bbe42eee4a9bd5e2656306fd796:

=========
Is Launchpad Free Software/open source? If not, why not?

Like Sourceforge and Google Code Hosting Launchpad is not open source. Unlike those other services, we have committed to making Launchpad Free Software.

Launchpad exists not just to make development easier within projects, but also to encourage collaboration between projects. With Launchpad, distributors and upstream developers can share bug reports, translations, and code. Until there are standards and APIs that let standalone sites send these things to each other, having a single Launchpad instance is the most practical way of maximizing the collaboration that Launchpad is designed to achieve. It also helps in funding Launchpad development in the short term.

We have released the code for [WWW] CSCVS, which Launchpad uses to mirror CVS/Subversion trees to Bazaar. We also make many contributions to other Free Software components we use, including [WWW] Zope, [WWW] Bazaar, [WWW] SQLObject, and [WWW] Twisted.
=========

By the way, they can gladly send you Launchpad source if you sign NDA/non-compete.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have the source of the website powering fedoraproject.org?

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Hucko]

You may need to change your diet, or consult a doctor....

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[croddy]

Every night I pray that Linux will be as attractive to the outside world as it was two years ago. Sometimes I even ask for three years.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Braino420]

Every night I pray that Linux will be as attractive to the outside world as it was two years ago. Sometimes I even ask for three years.

Oh ya, definitely. You're no sell-out; you were on the Linux train before it was cool.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Braino420]

why can't a HOWTO post seamlessly turn into a Wiki page while also remaining the top post of the HOWTO thread?

A solution created by a few ubuntuforums.org people was to create there own repository of knowledge from the HOWTO posts. It can be found here.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[Braino420]

Aah, so that's why they're not doing ANY kernel development. http://lwn.net/Articles/264440/. As opposed to everybody else.

You do realize that list only shows the "top" or "most active" contributors, correct? It is definitely far from all-encompassing; Debian is not even on that list, for example (please do not take this as your cue to start bitching about Debian). Not only this, but I don't really trust those stats too much, a few of the problems are mentioned in replies to the LWN article (I know I know, reading is so overrated). Now, if you had taken the additional 2 seconds, and gone ahead and searched the Linux Kernel Mailing List, you would see why your statement is so foolish. Here's a start. Or even do a search for Ben Collins. Ya, I think it's weird that Ubuntu has a kernel lead when they aren't doing ANY kernel development too /sarcasm.

Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8

[VON-MAN]

Actually, I don't really care Debian and Ubuntu hardly contribute to kernel development (and Debian contributes to a lot of other development), but this little factoid was really needed in the discussion. I have no problems whatsoever with both of them and often use Debian (although I dislike the fanboy mentality that surrounds Ubuntu). As for your critique of my reading powers and Jonathan Corbet's statistics, it doesn't impress me much. I read my articles, take statistics for what they are, and Ubuntu's contributions to kernel development don't really jump out, now do they?

Yet to be impressed

[bogaboga]

I am yet to be impressed because I cannot copy an Internet URL, paste it in a native GNOME application and have the application in question open the link. If the link points to a PDF document, some error is returned, even with the default PDF application installed. The only way out of this misery is to save the document onto the hard-disk. This is an non-starter GNOME folks, something MUST be done.

Re:Yet to be impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because Gnome is garbage. If you know anything at all about software, just try reading some of the code in the core libs *shudder*

Re:Yet to be impressed

[Spokehedz]

Why not just click on the link?

Seriously. I would like to know, how copy&paste is faster/better than just clicking on the link.

Re:Yet to be impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

I am yet to be impressed because sftp STILL doesn't have an ASCII transfer mode, unlike the ftp it replaces. What is the deal with this? What would it take, like 10 lines of extra code? Everyone complains about it (google sftp and ascii) and wastes time with workarounds, but after years and years nothing is done.

Re:Yet to be impressed

[bogaboga]

Welcome to GNOME's way of doing things! Remember they are after total customer/user satisfaction.

Re:Yet to be impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

Something should have been done to fix the completely broken ncpfs that rolled out in 7.0.4. It was completely broken in the release of 7.10 and remains broke as fuck to this day. And by broke as fuck I mean you can't mount ncp volumes. This has been documented and bug reported to Mars but they won't commit fixes, the bastards.

Re:Yet to be impressed

[mike_sucks]

Check your facts, it has been doing this for years.

I click on a PDF link in Epiphany and it downloads the PDF and opens it in Evince (or whatever is registered as the primary PDF handler). If the website annoyingly opens a new window to show the PDF in (as if you have the plugin installed), Epy even helpfully closes the empty window for you.

This works for all registered content types, not just PDFs. If on some occasions it does not work, it is because the server is misconfigured and is sending the wrong MIME content type. /Mike

Re:Yet to be impressed

[pizzach]

Oh! Oh! Oh! This in the gnome complaints thread isn't it!? Hey Gnome, why don't you do something about the foot? It stinks! No, I mean literally dammit!

I did good, didn't I?

Re:Yet to be impressed

[nurb432]

Not to start a flame war, but i can do that in KDE just fine. I would imagine GNOME can too, and perhaps your configuration is hosed?

Re:Yet to be impressed

[orra]

I presume you're talking about GNOME 2.21.x. Because it certainly works for me in 2.20.

Obviously, the GIO transition can mess things up. But according to the Evince changelog, as of version 2.21.90 it has been ported to GIO. So if you're running the latest release, then maybe you need to file a bug report.

Do you have the gvfs-backends package installed? In case you don't know, GIO is the input/output API. On its own, GIO only supports normal files. But with GVFS (the virtual file system), loadable backends can be loaded to provide GIO users "protocols" like trash, smb and http.

Re:Yet to be impressed

[Enahs]

Try the Kubuntu release.

Re:Yet to be impressed

[shellbeach]

Clicking on the link will not help either! You will be prompted to save the file...what I'd like to happen is for GNOME to call the appropriate application and have the application open the link. This does not happen. I suspect your system is fscked -- what you are describing is not normal behaviour. Try using the live CD, and I think you'll find everything works fine. Also, try using a different browser (e.g. Firefox if you're using the GNOME default browser).

Re:Yet to be impressed

[baadger]

I believe he is talking about remote protocol and access abstraction in whatever library is used to access the filesystem (gnome-vfs), rather than calling your PDF viewer from your browser by name. It is a subtle but important difference, network transparency in all apps.

Perhaps this will change now gnome-vfs has been replaced by "GIO" and moved into glib.

Re:Yet to be impressed

[plnrtrvlr]

I've actually noticed a similar behavior, but not exactly as he described. If i click a download link in my yahoo mail, it behaves as it should, offering to open the document with the appropriate app or let me download it. I've messed up before and canceled and had to click the "download" again. Suddenly Ubuntu has no idea what to open the file with: I have to either search for the appropriate app myself or save the file and click from there. a bit weird, but something I can live with.

Re:Yet to be impressed

[TheQuantumShift]

You are absolutely right. I just tried to open a pdf link (open location->paste address) in gedit and it gave some kind of error about me being an idiot and trying to open a pdf in a text editor...

Seriously, it sounds like you were browsing he web and came accross a link to a pdf. If you want it to open in a pdf viewer, you might want to try clicking on it. Or if you must paste, paste it into the addressbar. Either way gnome will open it.

Re:Yet to be impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

No, chances are his system is fine. THis happens to me once in a while, like after I've played with a liveCD distro and I'm guessing that the ISP was trying to decide who this freeloader is =)

When I get back to my main desktop, it prompts to save EVERY link or page I want to visit. My solution was to unplug the dsl modem (and router for my wireless because the same symptom happens to my laptop browser) and give it a few seconds, then plug it back in. Once I bring the network back up, the hiccup is gone and I'm okay surfing.

To the others who responded to the parent, I think he was referring to a link that appeared outside of a browser, e.g. if I was checking my mail using mutt, and a URL was provided in said email.

Re:Yet to be impressed

[shellbeach]

I've actually noticed a similar behavior, but not exactly as he described. If i click a download link in my yahoo mail, it behaves as it should, offering to open the document with the appropriate app or let me download it. I've messed up before and canceled and had to click the "download" again. Suddenly Ubuntu has no idea what to open the file with: I have to either search for the appropriate app myself or save the file and click from there. a bit weird, but something I can live with. I've just tried clicking on a link in Gnome Terminal on a generic 7.10 install, and it opens up firefox (and the link location) like a charm ... I don't think this is normal behaviour.

Re:Yet to be impressed

[Daengbo]

This is an important reason why Epiphany should be the default for Ubuntu and not Firefox. FF isn't integrated into Gnome. Period.

Re:Yet to be impressed

[pizzach]

I believe that happens on Mac OS X too...with Firefox was it? I can't remember it has been a while. So I don't even know if it is still true.

Re:Yet to be impressed

[mike_sucks]

That's always been the case however - Epiphany does not implement this itself. Granted, the code to do this was scattered over the place - gnome-vfs for the non-local file access and libgnomeui(?) for activation - i.e. actually opening the apps, but it is definitely all there.

You're right, gio/gvfs will make this nicer/easier/available to non-GNOME apps, but it's not something new.

/Mike

Must try & make sense, Must try & make sen

[Finallyjoined!!!]

Sorry, will try harder. Honest :-)

Who cares?

[snarfies]

Call me back when you have at least a beta. Even then I wouldn't think that front-page worthy. Save that for the final release.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would we? What makes you think we give a damn if you know or not?

Re:Who cares?

[markdavis]

I have to agree. Give me a break! I don't see Mandriva, Fedora, or Suse postings for every freaking Alpha and Beta. Really, Ubuntu isn't THAT special.

Re:Who cares?

[flynns]

Because we're a motley bunch of geeks, and we like this kind of news. I, for one, was rather excited to know alpha4 came out.

Re:Who cares?

[bdjacobson]

Why would we? What makes you think we give a damn if you know or not? Timeout for you! Seriously, why do people always escalate things into fisticuffs? He simply said he thinks this story is not /. newsworthy; and I for one and I think several others agree with him. What next? Alpha 5? Then lets have an article on Beta 1, 2, and 3, so that we can all have the same discussion again.

Redundancy and articles aside, is there any reason to be so nasty about it? He sure did inconvenience you with that comment. /. would benefit from less PMS.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

There were a lot of Vista alpha release posts.

Another Look Available Here

[Anonymous Coward]

This was on slashdot for a while: Hardy Heron Alpha4: A Glimpse into the Future of Ubuntu; it gives a better look into the new applications included with HH, and mentions some other changes not included in the Ars Technica rewview.

Congratulations!

[BeeBeard]

Big congratulations goes to the Ubuntu team for sticking to their release schedules, and getting their fairly solid alphas and betas out there for users to bang on well in advance. Like many others, I thought that Ubuntu Linux was just another flavor-of-the-month distribution, but the tenacity, reliability, and graciousness of the Ubuntu community has proved us all wrong.

-A Longtime Gentoo User

Re:Congratulations!

[ajayrockrock]

Yes, I'm a longtime gentoo user too and have recently switched my desktop (home) and workstation (office) to Ubuntu.

It's not to say that Ubuntu is better then Gentoo or anything else. It's just that I think my day to day goals have changed. Where as before I had more time to tinker and play, Gentoo was so much fun. But now I've switched jobs and life is getting in the way, I need to get "work" done and pass on the tinkering.

After switching to Ubuntu, it's nice to just have little things "work". Not like a Mac, but better then Gentoo. Opening attachments in thunderbird prompt the *right* app. yes, I know I can fix it by opening up some files and preferences but it's all done without me having to mess with it.

Ubuntu allows me to get work done on linux, Gentoo forced me to work on linux.

--Ajay

Re:Congratulations!

[caluml]

Like many others, I thought that Ubuntu Linux was just another flavor-of-the-month distribution, but the tenacity, reliability, and graciousness of the Ubuntu community has proved us all wrong. Or maybe, it's just the billionaire who runs Ubuntu.

Re:Congratulations!

[shellbeach]

Would anyone care if RedHat disappeared up its own fedora these days?? RedHat stopped being a powerhouse the day they included a broken version of gcc in RedHat 7.0.

Re:Congratulations!

[0racle]

I believe there are a number of Enterprise users that would be quite put out.

Re:Congratulations!

[shellbeach]

I believe there are a number of Enterprise users that would be quite put out. Oh, I'm sure they'd get over it!

My point is that there are now numerous alternatives -- both for businesses and desktop users -- which have superior stability or superior features to RHEL/Fedora. (And also, that this diversification was a direct result of the abomination that was "gcc-2.96", which still haunts many of us who installed RH 7 back in 2000 ... *shudders at the memory*)

I'm waiting for the next one...

[ari_j]

Insubordinate Ibis

Re:I'm waiting for the next one...

[daniel23]

jealous jellyfish

Re:I'm waiting for the next one...

[mfnickster]

Irritable Ichthyosaur?

Jovial Jaguar?

Kaptain Kangaroo?

Myself, I'm still disappointed that this release wasn't the expected 'Horny Hamster.' :)

Re:I'm waiting for the next one...

[jd]

Yes, but what do they do after Zoroastrian Zebra?

Re:I'm waiting for the next one...

[Sparckus]

I'm waiting until they release Ramoant Rabbit myself.

Re:I'm waiting for the next one...

[shellbeach]

Yes, but what do they do after Zoroastrian Zebra? Well, there was never an "A" release, so they can still have the Ambivalent Aardvark ... And besides, they've clearly got nothing against re-using letters, since Hearty Heron is using the same letter as Hoary Hedgehog ...

(The idea of stepping through the alphabet seems to have started with Edgy, which followed Dapper. Previously it was random: Warty, Hoary, Breezy, Dapper ...)

Re:I'm waiting for the next one...

[mfnickster]

> I'm waiting until they release Ramoant Rabbit myself.

But first you need:

* Noxious Narwhal
* Ornery Ocelot
* Plucky Parrot
* Quiescent Quagga

Re:I'm waiting for the next one...

[jo42]

Word in the tubes has the next one being called "Gracious Goatse".

I don't like the name

[Minwee]

I still think that calling this the Happy Harry Hard-On edition of Ubuntu would have been a much better move.

Re:I don't like the name

[bobbuck]

Why, do you think that would give it more female penetration?

Re:I don't like the name

[Nerdfest]

You've got to admit it's a pretty easy slip of the tongue to say "Hairy Hard-on" instead of "Hardy Heron". IN the long run, if Ubuntu is looking for better corporate penetration, perhaps they should look for better release names in the future. Perhaps a poll of the users would yield some suggestions.

Re:I don't like the name

[Nimey]

IN the long run, if Ubuntu is looking for better corporate penetration, perhaps they should look for better release names in the future. I dunno, I think "Hairy Hardon" practically screams long-term penetration.

Re:I don't like the name

[Pogdranaut]

The next version will be better. It's going to be called Insolent Ibis.

Re:An ALPHA release?

[Rik Sweeney]

I do actually. It may be only be an alpha release but it shows what we can look forward to look for in the next release of Kubuntu.

Actually on second thoughts I've just checked the article and it's only about Gnome, there's not once mention about KDE in it at all.

So yes, who gives a shit :)

nautilus is undergoing big changes

[sayfawa]

The warning to not use alpha releases on production machines is a bit more severe this time. So watch out.

Snipped from the release notes:
Nautilus can behave erratically, especially in trash operations. Refrain from operating on valuable files with this version. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/185756

Re:nautilus is undergoing big changes

[harry666t]

I hate it when I go for funny and get insightful. I'm not insightful.

+3, Insightful

Re:nautilus is undergoing big changes

[Kjella]

The warning to not use alpha releases on production machines is a bit more severe this time. I'd like to reply to this with a varation on the bash quote:
The problem with [companies] is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be [an instant bankrupcy] for stupidity, but why don't we just take the [alpha warning] labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?

Seriously, if you're even seriously considering using alpha releases on a production machine (early "what new features can we use" testing doesn't count) then you deserve everything you get. Hell, I think people that put full-on releases in production without testing do. Modern companies live off computers, even if they have work that could have been done offline they'd have to get the background material online. Plus with so many goofing off ineviatably those that have work will be caught in watercooler chatter. And don't get me started if you're doing some sort of B2B or B2C work where your customers will see your downtime. Any system administrator fresh out of high school will learn that lesson fast or find a different job.

Queued file operations -- finally?!

[eddy]

In particular, Nautilus will now queue up long file transfer operations and display them in a single window rather than spawning a separate window for each file transfer operation.

Please tell me this means that file operations will actually queue to be run in sequence, saving us from disk and cache trashing slowing things down? With "run", "pause", "cancel" on each individual transfer? Pretty please?

Re:Queued file operations -- finally?!

[eddy]

QTFA:

I'm looking forward to [...] support for pausing file transfers that we should get when GIO is more mature.

Promises, promises.

Re:Queued file operations -- finally?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just thinking that, too. It needs more control and information features about each transfer, similar to the Downloads manager in Firefox, or the Firefox downloading extension, DownThemAll.

Re:Queued file operations -- finally?!

[owlstead]

If you look at the screen shot you see two different threads running in parallel, so I guess we are currently out of luck. It would be great if they could make them run in sequence indeed. Nothing breaks down hard disk speeds and responsiveness like two simultaneous copies. Of course, you might want to check which devices are being used by a copy. If you have a copy reading/writing /dev/hda and another copy reading/writing /dev/hdb, you might still want to run those in parallel. But even if they cannot do that, pretty please give me a choice to do those copies in sequence.

Re:Queued file operations -- finally?!

[Cato]

Actually it's pretty complex for a GUI tool to figure out actual disk impact of its operations - it needs to consider

- which volumes are mounted under which mount points (quite easy, but then calculate that for all files transferred, not just root of each transfer)

- which volumes are really LVM2 logical volumes, and how those are mapped to volume groups and then physical volumes (LVM is default in Fedora and maybe also Ubuntu, I always install it explicitly)

- is RAID in use, at level of software RAID (Linux only), fake RAID (hardware assist + Linux) or hardware RAID, and if so are you using RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, etc, and which blocks might be on which disks given different RAID striping models and which disks are in which group. (And once we get ZFS-FUSE to be stable, that has its own version of RAID...)

- is this disk actually mapped at block level onto a network block device (e.g. iSCSI, ATA over Ethernet, etc - or even ElasticDrive which is really an Amazon S3 based storage service)

Given LVM and RAID in particular, I can't see how any GUI tool can figure this out easily - it would really need to poke the kernel to get some hints if you want to do this, or perhaps hint to the kernel 'these 5 operations are a group, please schedule them sequentially if that will improve performance' - still very complex however you do it.

One interesting feature here, to set priorities for I/O between processes although not threads, is 'ionice' - it's available in Ubuntu from repositories and let's you set the priority for I/O of a process - great for disk-bound transfers, e.g. set your K3B disk burning to high priority, or backup process to low. Useful blog posting at http://friedcpu.wordpress.com/2007/07/17/why-arent-you-using-ionice-yet/

Incidentally Vista added I/O priority to Windows, but XP doesn't have it, which is why I need to suspend some processes altogether when they are churning the disk on my Windows laptop.

I would like to see the various GUI system monitor tools make it easy to see how much I/O is going on, like Windows' Process Explorer (from the great Sysinternals team, far better than Task Manager) and to view and change the I/O priority interactively.

Having said all that - I think Nautilus is going to include a Pause transfer feature in next iteration, so you could simply use that to stop something that may be slowing things down.

Re:Queued file operations -- finally?!

[mvdwege]

These are all good points, but to have the GUI tool consider all these is breaking the application/kernel barrier. It is better IMO to just not let the application worry about this, and have the kernel devs worry about getting the I/O scheduler up to speed to deal with applications that do massive amounts of parallel I/O.

Not to mention of course that this kind of disk contention was solved decades ago in the SCSI spec. Perhaps offloading disk I/O to a dedicated controller wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Mart

Re:Queued file operations -- finally?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it's pretty complex for a GUI tool to figure out actual disk impact of its operations - it needs to consider

[...long list of technical details...] Or you could take the easy way and make it operate like a typical download manager. Options menu in the transfer window where you can select the default number of threads. When you change the default, all queued transfer operations use the new default. You could get fancy and allow selecting a few consecutive transfers to run in parallel. 20% of the work and covers 80% of the typical cases.

Someone tell me please...

[AuraOfDeath]

how the hell is this newsworthy? Shouldn't this be off on Distrowatch, or some other relevant website? Goody *buntu is releasing another alpha that will bork my machine... It's Front page news... I mean Congrats for their dev team... but honestly this doesn't belong on slashdot Let alone making it THROUGH the firehose.

Re:Someone tell me please...

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. Geez, come on editors. What is this site, Slashdot or something?!

What about KDE integration?

[Billly Gates]

I love the integration and simplicity of the gnome interface on Ubuntu and have turned into a gnome user over the years when I run Linux.

However with the fiasco with Suse, Micorosoft, patents, .NET, and Miguel supporting ooxml over ODF I am begining to feel uncomfortable running Gnome and wonder about ulterior motives. Doesn't Miguel work for SuSE? Didn't SuSE just cripple their own Samba version in order to sell more copies of Windows as an AD controller?

Kde 4.0 supposed to be a rapid improvement and Kubuntu is supposed to be alot more polished and integrated as Ubuntu according to comnpany officials as planned by Hardy. I wonder if this is going to be the case?

I want a choice of Gnome but still have everything just work well. I found KDE in ubuntu to be not integrated and rather a poor implementation compared to the polished version of Gnome.

Also Dbus is not friendly on laptops as the event model prevents many models from going to a power saving mode wasting battery power. I wonder if this has been resolved.

Re:What about KDE integration?

[Breakfast Pants]

>Also Dbus is not friendly on laptops as the event model prevents many models from going to a power saving mode wasting battery power. I wonder if this has been resolved.

I can't find any mention of that anywhere; care to expand on this?

Re:What about KDE integration?

[ricegf]

Kde 4.0 supposed to be a rapid improvement and Kubuntu is supposed to be alot more polished and integrated

Actually, KDE 4.0 is more of a beta quality release (like Mac OS/X 10.0 or pre-SP1 Vista) - it's 4.1 or so that'll really be ready for daily use by normal users. Unfortunately, Hardy falls at an awkward time with respect to 4.0 (or vice versa) - 4.0 isn't ready for long term support, but 3.5 isn't likely to be relevant for 3 long years. As a result, while Ubuntu 8.04 will be a Long Term Support (LTS) release, Kubuntu 8.04 will not be.

I agree with your opinion of Gnome (I use it myself), and with your assessment of KDE 4 (I look forward to trying it out - looks great so far!). And I'm very suspicious that Mono contains Microsoft-patented technology, and believe free software developers should avoid it until the title is clear. But that's just my $0.02 worth (and it seems to be worth less every day...) I don't believe any critical part of Gnome is dependent on Mono, however.

Re:What about KDE integration?

[Randle_Revar]

SuSE != Gnome

Miguel is a Gnome dev, but he is not the leader or even a leader of Gnome.

Mono is not a core component of Gnome. Some of the most well known programs that use Mono are Banshee (Music player, not the default), Beagle (desktop search, there are several others), and F-Spot (Photo Manager, gthumb and Digikam are possible replacements). You can have a fully functional Gnome desktop without Mono.

As far as d-bus issues, unless those are actually fixed, KDE 4 will not be an improvement over Gnome, as it abandons dcop in favor of d-bus.

Re:What about KDE integration?

[segedunum]

Unfortunately, Hardy falls at an awkward time with respect to 4.0 (or vice versa) - 4.0 isn't ready for long term support, but 3.5 isn't likely to be relevant for 3 long years. As a result, while Ubuntu 8.04 will be a Long Term Support (LTS) release, Kubuntu 8.04 will not be.

This is complete rubbish, and is a poor decision from Canonical (not the first, I might add). The desktop that should have been in 8.04 is KDE 3.5.x, and many KDE developers have stated that KDE 3.5 will continue to be supported. Canonical never even sought a dialogue with KDE developers and just assumed that KDE 3.5 would be left without any fixes up until 2011:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kubuntu-devel/2007-December/002099.html

"The KDE upstream position appears clear, KDE 4 is the focus of developer attention; KDE 3.5 will be supported as long as KDE 4 isn't suitable for support."

This is not the position of KDE that I have seen, and is merely an assumption. Like everything in the open source word, if there is demand then it will continue to be maintained and looked after. KDE 3.5 doesn't need much of that. You would have thought that Canonical could have at least provided one or two people to help with that, especially if people are forking out for support contracts.

Re:What about KDE integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

SuSE != Gnome

Miguel is a Gnome dev, but he is not the leader or even a leader of Gnome

Thats not why wikipedia says.

Also why does Gnumeric support ooxml but not opendoc?

Re:What about KDE integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's just my $0.02 worth (and it seems to be worth less every day...)

I call it inflamtion.

Re:What about KDE integration?

[radimvice]

Also Dbus is not friendly on laptops as the event model prevents many models from going to a power saving mode wasting battery power. I wonder if this has been resolved.

Hmm, so that explains why power-saving mode worked correctly on my laptop in Gutsy but broke when I updated to the Hardy alpha...I guess the answer then would be no, it hasn't been resolved.

Re:What about KDE integration?

[dbIII]

And I'm very suspicious that Mono contains Microsoft-patented technology, and believe free software developers should avoid it until the title is clear

Outside of the USA this silly software patent idea does not apply and copyright is not a problem if it is original work. It's not really worth worrying about it. Personally I don't think much of gnome but it is improving as the rather stupid mess that was gconf is being replaced. It is their strong ideological opposition to decent documentation that is my biggest problem with the project now. At least with the gnu stuff they provide info pages instead of manuals - gnome got the idea mixed up and give you almost nothing.

Re:What about KDE integration?

[Markos]

I like how you reference a random opinion on another discussion site as fact. Nice.

Re:What about KDE integration?

[Cato]

I'd imagine that the Desktop Team in Canonical asked the KDE developers about 3.5.x support when deciding this. Since Ubuntu is primarily GNOME-focused, I'd guess that the volume of KDE-based support contracts is not as high, which will tend to determine whether they can fund KDE-only developers to focus on 3.5.x support, or at least do it part time along with KDE 4.0 work. Personally, I use Kubuntu, but I don't need a support contract so it mostly affects LTS for commercial users.

In any case, 8.04 will include 3.5.x, but the Kubuntu 8.04 release as a whole won't be LTS since it will change to KDE 4.0 or 4.1 (I'd guess in 8.10).

From what I've seen of KDE 4.0 using the Kubuntu Live CD, it has some great ideas and features but is nowhere ready for prime time in various areas, so I'd prefer for 8.10 to be the LTS with KDE 4.x.

Re:What about KDE integration?

[ricegf]

silly software patent idea

I would cherish the day that software patents could be dismissed as a silly idea not worth worrying about. Unfortunately, they are the law of the land where I live, which also happens to be the largest economy in the world at the moment, so as a software professional I have to worry about them. If you underestimate Microsoft's ability to make them the law of the land where you live by dismissing them with

It's not really worth worrying about it

then you may wake up one day to find them the law of the land where you live as well.

I would encourage a somewhat more proactive stance against software patents - and meanwhile, a very conservative attitude toward software that is likely to infringe on dearly held (US) patents central to the strategy of the largest and one of the most aggressive corporations in the world. And by "aggressive", I don't mean anything positive in the slightest. :-/

Re:What about KDE integration?

[Kjella]

Actually, KDE 4.0 is more of a beta quality release (like Mac OS/X 10.0 or pre-SP1 Vista) - it's 4.1 or so that'll really be ready for daily use by normal users. Unfortunately, Hardy falls at an awkward time with respect to 4.0 (or vice versa) - 4.0 isn't ready for long term support, but 3.5 isn't likely to be relevant for 3 long years. As a result, while Ubuntu 8.04 will be a Long Term Support (LTS) release, Kubuntu 8.04 will not be. I'm hoping, and this is just out of thin air, that KDE4 will reach a LTS supportable quality by october so they can grandfather it in together with Kubuntu 8.10 and support 8.04/KDE4.1 for 2.5 years on the same KDE version as 8.10/KDE4.1, it would be sad if there wasn't a LTS KDE release before end of 2009...

Re:What about KDE integration?

[dbIII]

The US not only has a unique software patent system they also have a unique lobby system as far as things go in first world countries so it is not likely to spread for the moment. The fact that MS is a large and influential US company actually generates some mistrust with some governments especially if they have a small software industry of their own. The odd patent laws can only really be changed from within, those of us on the outside can only offer sympathy.

What I meant above about not worrying too much is that major free software projects are international efforts so a submarine patent is not going to sink gnome for example. Personally I'm not sure what technical grounds there are for putting the thing in there, I can't see a single advantage just like I didn't see the advantage of an obfiscated registry clone or allowing files on the desktop to execute when the filesytem permissions say that it should not be executable. They like to do new things in gnome and some of them turn out to be good ideas - while sometimes it really looks like somebody just wants to implement the latest MS fad on linux (gnome is cross platform now but that usually comes later).

Re:What about KDE integration?

[ricegf]

I like how you reference a random opinion on another discussion site as fact. Nice.

OK, fair enough. Let's see what Aaron J Seigo, "one of KDE's lead developers, and best known personality", has to say.

With the 4.0.0 release we were addressing three audiences:

• The device integrators like ASUS;
• third-party application developers who won't do anything until there is a stable release; and
• our user base that is into bleeding-edge technology.

That's the classic role of a beta release, no? I trust this is an adequate source, and suitable support rather than my first, admittedly non-authoritative link?

I didn't take the time in the first post to find a better link because I thought KDE 4's current state of development would be well-known to /. readers. And again, I wasn't attempting to denigrate KDE 4 in any way - I have great admiration for the technology, and look forward to trying it out at the 4.1 release.

Impressed by stupidity?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need to read a web page, why not open a web browser and load the url? If you need to read a PDF file, why not start a PDF viewer and load it up? Instead, people like you demand to have all functionality available from every application, wasting not only resources, but also developer time duplicating functionality.

The only thing that MUST be done is to untrain simpletons who think the Windows way of doing things is the best way.

Re:Impressed by stupidity?

[bogaboga]

If you need to read a PDF file, why not start a PDF viewer and load it up?

GNOME does not know how to handle this! If you knew what you were talking about, you'd have asked the question: "If you need to read a PDF file, why not save the PDF file, start a PDF viewer and load it up?"

It's people like you who are contributing to GNOMES apparent playing catchup to other desktop environments.

Re:Impressed by stupidity?

[Daengbo]

Epiphany (the default Gnome browser) will download a file link automatically and open the default app. Gnome does this. Ubuntu doesn't, aparently.

Re:An ALPHA release?

[ricegf]

I've just checked the article and it's only about Gnome

Rather oddly, the Kubuntu Alpha 4 site talks only about Gnome applications as well. Go figure.

Getting tired of Ubuntu

[geek]

3 version ago Ubuntu worked flawlessly on my laptop. Lacked some features etc but it worked. Now with 7.10 wireless is flakey, video craps out all the time and I can't suspend or hibernate without it crashing on resume. This is the only distro I have ever seen that gets worse in terms of stability with each release. Fedora on the other hand works brilliantly except that wireless on Fedora is a nightmare. I just don't see why people can't combine resources to make stuff work and once it works, don't freaking break it afterwards.

Re:Getting tired of Ubuntu

[ricegf]

This is the only distro I have ever seen that gets worse in terms of stability with each release.

I understand why that would frustrate you. My experiences were mixed - it's as stable as always on my desktop with Compiz disabled, but crashes about once a week with Compiz enabled. I enable it anyway - there's just something about people's reaction the first time I close a window and it burns up that makes me more tolerant. :-)

On the other hand, 7.10 is the first version that worked perfectly on my laptop with no tweaking (unless you count clicking on the network control and selecting my local network from the drop-down list). It was literally easier than setting up my daughter's new Vista-based laptop - and Vista was pre-installed. Go figure.

Re:Getting tired of Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you filed (and followed up on) bugs? Just complaining on Slashdot that it doesn't work on your specific hardware (without even saying what it is, I must add) isn't going to help.

Re:Getting tired of Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

crashes once a week is suppose to be good? fuck. i work in an environment where we have windows 2k and xp machines that go without reboots for months with no crashes. infact, it's been well over 5 years since i've last seen a blue screen that hasn't been caused by hardware failure. linux must really suck anymore. i always thought this was suppose to be the other way around.

Re:Getting tired of Ubuntu

[domatic]

2K and XP don't implement all singing all dancing 3D desktops. Compiz and Vista do. As the parent post said, all is well if the uber 3D desktop is avoided. It appears that the 3D drivers aren't good enough anywhere that running everything through them is a good move. I've tried out Compiz a few times myself. Each time I've thought, "Wow! that looks cool!" and then went back to stuff that didn't blow up everytime I turned around.

Re:Getting tired of Ubuntu

[ricegf]

Precisely. My wife doesn't use Compiz, and has experienced zero crashes in the past 9 months. I use Compiz in spite of its instability relative to the rest of Linux, which is rock solid.

I've worked in the computer industry for 30 years, and have never encountered a desktop Windows machine that survived a month (under heavy load) without a crash, although most desktop Linux machines I've seen stay up for many months with no crashes. Current desktop Windows XP seems to be good for about a week at a time under heavy load, which I consider acceptable - but the AC is right, Linux is just expected to be more stable than Windows - and in my experience it always is. Well, except with Compiz enabled. ;-)

As always, YMMV - and especially your definition of "heavy load"!

Re:An ALPHA release?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be because the Kubuntu wiki uses the same data as the Ubuntu one; it's just a different theme.

X-Fi Support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it support Creative's X-Fi on the 64-Bit version of Hardy Heron? After all, a 64-bit driver is in beta testing right now.

Re:X-Fi Support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you read the fucking article fucktard or at least use your fucking common sense. The fucking drivers are closed-source so it wouldn't be on any fucking release of Hardy Heron. Why don't go back to your precious M$ Windoze and join the rest of the fucktarded Windoze luzers who are simply too fucking stupid to even exist let alone use a fucking computer. Better yet, why don't you perform the same fucking act your fellow fucktarded Windoze luzers try to tell us, go slit your fucking wirsts fucktard as you are too fucking stupid to even exist let alone use a fucking computer.

GO AHEAD FUCKING FLAME AWAY FUCKTARDED M$ WINDOZE LUZERS!
___________________________________________
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

Re:X-Fi Support?

[jwilcox154]

Twitter or some twitter imitator wrote -

Why don't you read the fucking article fucktard or at least use your fucking common sense. The fucking drivers are closed-source so it wouldn't be on any fucking release of Hardy Heron. Why don't go back to your precious M$ Windoze and join the rest of the fucktarded Windoze luzers who are simply too fucking stupid to even exist let alone use a fucking computer. Better yet, why don't you perform the same fucking act your fellow fucktarded Windoze luzers try to tell us, go slit your fucking wirsts fucktard as you are too fucking stupid to even exist let alone use a fucking computer.

GO AHEAD FUCKING FLAME AWAY FUCKTARDED M$ WINDOZE LUZERS!
___________________________________________
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk. I think the post become illegible after the first dollar sign and the sixth f-bomb. I mean wow; all the original poster did was asked if the driver would be included in with the 64-Bit edition of Hard Heron. He or she didn't think the world would end by asking a simple question.

Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to Canonical actually contributing to many projects and thus having legitimate claim to some hooray, the fact is that Ubuntu's marketing demonstrations are a very valuable contribution, in and of themselves, to all the other Linux distributions which have much to learn in that area.

Re:Congratulations?

[arse maker]

What does hitting release dates matter anyhow? Why does the entire industry seem to harp on about them. They are estimates, its not a cure for cancer, it doesnt matter when it comes out. The only people who should really care are shareholders of public companies or if contracts are in place. To base hitting guessing dates for releases as a sign of quality makes no sense to me. The quality of the product should be the sign of the quality. You can be the most on time peice of shit ever made, that doesn't mean much. Sure you can argue that missing dates indicates people are poorly managing the project and that will reflect on the quality of work. However, anyone who has worked in development should know that you can just as easily have poor software being made on time. Everyone hates to wait for something we are looking forward to, or click our tounges when a company we dont like slips on dates, but can't we stop this obsession with release dates and judge a product on how it works?

New Fulltime user of Ubuntu

[kramulous]

Sick! But I'll wait for the stable release.

Anyone try the latest totem?

[Sark666]

I read totem in the next gnome has the ability to act as a mythtv frontend. It mentioned watching recordings and even live tv. I'm wondering how it works exactly. Does one see the full gui?

Re:Anyone try the latest totem?

[mikelieman]

What's wrong with 'mythfrontend' that Totem needs to get involved?

Re:Anyone try the latest totem?

[CnlPepper]

How about the fact that mythfontend, stupidly doesn't have a "run-in-window" option. I'd like to watch TV in a small, movable window that I can put in the corner while working/reading. Mythfrontend doesn't do this nicely.

Re:Anyone try the latest totem?

[kidcharles]

What's wrong with 'mythfrontend' that Totem needs to get involved? It does a terrible job of playing back high-definition video. I have a two-tuner Mythtv box with a standard-def and high-def tuner. I know my system is powerful enough to playback high-definition video because there are no problems using xine, mplayer, and totem. When playing back HD content in mythfrontend on the same machine however, there are frequent pauses in the video playback. This is a widely reported problem. Being able to use Totem as a form of frontend would be nice, as I currently have to open HD shows manually with xine, and have to figure out which file is the one I want based on the Mythtv file naming scheme (which is logical but does not include the program name). It's a small hassle but count me in as being interested in Mythtv integration in Totem. Ideally the mythfrontend player would be improved so that this wouldn't be necessary, but I'll take whatever I can get.

Re:Anyone try the latest totem?

[CnlPepper]

I reccomend you install and setup mythweb. It can be used to control mythtv, display the listings and recorded programs, etc.. It also has this wonderful little feature - if you set up a network share to the recordings directory you can click on the recording you want in mythweb and the appropriate file link is given to you. If you setup your browser correctly you can get it to open the file directly. No more faffing about. :)

Re:Anyone try the latest totem?

[MadUndergrad]

So when are they going to make a version of Totem that doesn't suck? Seriously, I've never used a worse media player. Is there a media player on Linux that's similar to, or at least as easy to use/reliable, as MPC on windows?

Re:Anyone try the latest totem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it does, it is in the appearance section of the setup options. Granted it doesn't do it nicely and you have to go into the options whenever you want to change the window size or switch between window and fullscreen playback, but the option is there.

Re:Anyone try the latest totem?

[_Hellfire_]

Yes, Totem is awful. A few months ago I moved from MPlayer to VLC. If you use the skin that comes with VLC (not on by default for some reason), you get very close to WMP functionality. I've never used Media Centre so I can't comment.

apt-get install vlc

LTS

[brunoacf]

A very important thing to say is that it comes with LTS: "Ubuntu 8.04 will be the second long-term support (LTS) release, which means that it will be supported on the desktop for three years and on the server for five years." Awesome for those who want a stable environment and don't like to dist-upgrade frequently.

Maybe they'll fix the broken releases?

[Vellmont]

I've seen Ubuntu break itself to an unbootable state three separate times on three different systems. I've never seen that on any distribution. I still use it.. but much more of this and I'll be looking elsewhere.

Also, the latest release seems to have broken wireless, at least for the Intel IPW 3945 chipset in my laptop. I had to downgrade to 7.04, and all is well again.

Re:Maybe they'll fix the broken releases?

[robzon]

Please file a bug report if you haven't already.

Re:Maybe they'll fix the broken releases?

[plnrtrvlr]

My OS experiences always seem to run counter to everyone elses..... I've run Redhat, Fedora and SuSe, and now Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon) and it's the most stable and easiest to configure OS I've used. Better yet, I've STILL got my Windows 98 install on the other partition on this computer -I play some old strategy games on it- and it's never even sneezed at me. Of course, for the last 4 years, zone alarm has been set to disable all internet connectivity on that partition..... And yeah, I'm running old hardware, but with Linux, I'm still faster than my wife's XP machine that's less than a year old. I had some issues with Firefox being glacial in its speed at first with this install, but I switched to the latest beta and all that went away. Best of all is the available documentation: this is the best documented distro I've ever used.

Re:Maybe they'll fix the broken releases?

[Cato]

I've never found Ubuntu failing to boot at all over several systems and releases since 2005. I've also burnt CDs for several friends and they found it worked perfectly out of the box. Hardware support is variable, and I really wish Ubuntu would steal the great hardware *detection* from Knoppix, but generally Ubuntu is pretty good - some distros will do better on some machines, others worse, as you'd expect.

I do find Ubuntu is not good at handling machines with two video cards, with the motherboard card having no monitor attached - requires alternate installer and some tweaking. However that may be my fault for not disabling on-board video in the BIOS.

Define contribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure Canonical may not have added a lot to the pool of code available. Still I wouldn't say that they're piggybacking or taking undue credit for anything, as their contribution, in my eyes, lie more in the way they have brought linux to the masses. My first flavor of linux was Ubuntu, and a surprisingly lot of my less than technical friends have often taken me aback asking if they should switch, not to linux, but to Ubuntu specifically.

All I can say is, as long as Ubuntu stays true to its name, I wont have any qualms about using it.

Absolutely true, through and through

[empaler]

There's hardly anything that is actually Ubuntu-developed. (I think that the previous statement might release a shitstorm, I hope not)
What they do is wrap it all up in a neat little package. Why not? If they're the wedge needed to widen the market for Linux-distributors, then that's great. I even got my father onto xUbuntu. Is the xfce implementation in Ubuntu anything but marginally different than other xfce implementations? (I don't even believe xUbuntu is on the official tree, but replace "xfce" with "Gnome" or "KDE").
At the moment, I'd actually rather like to use Ubuntu for my base system because there's less hassle involved with getting graphics acceleration working on my nvidia board, but seeing as getting to install Ubuntu on my RAID set is actually a bigger hassle, I'll do without for now.

Hmmm.

[jd]

Huh. Aardvark is actually very good, as it's aa, which is the convention the Linux kernel used after producing 0.99z. We'd still need an 'aa' word at the start, though, if we did that. Would Aambivalent Aardvark be considered cheating, though?

Re:Hmmm.

[shellbeach]

Huh. Aardvark is actually very good, as it's aa, which is the convention the Linux kernel used after producing 0.99z. We'd still need an 'aa' word at the start, though, if we did that. Would Aambivalent Aardvark be considered cheating, though? Aaronic Aardvark would do the trick. They'll have to start using Welsh dictionaries for the release after that one, though ...

Its just a distribution...

[thtrgremlin]

Ubuntu seems to have been great at attracting non-computer people to linux. All but 1 mac in my classroom (of 9 computers) is running ubuntu, and students love it. Ubuntu isn't even an open source project, but a repository and a list of preffered applications that are meant to work together. Beyond that, the only thing that makes it different from other distros is Shuttleworth's $30 million dollar backing in the case that a necessary component doesn't get made (so far none of which has been spent) and the advertising / publicity. It is like what Amazon has said about its own patent trolling, it is sick but just the way our crappy system works. Cannonical keeps linux in the news, no matter how irrelevant the news is which is necessary to get people to the community. Getting people to develop with Ubuntu in mind is really just developing with X/glibc/gtk/gnome/kernel2.6/whatever in mind versus a million other options that usually work every other distro. Remember, vendors (and other sheeple) like one one bad choice over many good choices most days because it is simple. M$ has proved this over and over again. Ubuntu is trying to set a standard for one good choice that will be portable to other distros. Also, I am certain Shuttlesworth would be happier to see 5 new fedora developers than 1 new ubuntu developer / user / whatever to promote linux, FSF, FreeCulture movement. I really think it is stupid anyone can actually argue over the distribution of 8/10th%.

I am equally delighted any time I see someone open their eyes to GNU/Linux for ANY reason, or ANY distribution. I think the old community is going to need to worry more about the influx of noobs to the community as market share rises, and try to remember why we are all here in the first place.

It's still not the advertised

[Lewrker]

Linux for regular people. Call me when there's good support for winmodems. Written, sadly, on Windows Vista, since any flavor of Linux becomes useless for anything other than office work without broadband.

Re:An ALPHA release?

[Anonymous Coward]

Woohoo! Finally something to load onto my AXP!

Re:Good name!

[LingNoi]

or maybe you could stop whining about the smallest details and just call it Ubuntu or Ubuntu 8.04 if it's SUCH a big deal to you.

Yay, another sound daemon...

[multi io]

...and while nobody is going to use its native interface, maybe we can use it to get rid of the Alsa Mess[tm] by burying it under a hopefully less messy stack of 5 userspace modules that may introduce 2 seconds of latency, but provide an emulated /dev/dsp on top! Sure, you have to run the OSS-using app under an obscure wrapper named "padsp", which probably means you'll have to run the whole X session under padsp and hope it doesn't crash too often, but oh well... :-P

cart before the horse

[clarkn0va]

I need to be productive and I need a working system. End of story.

Many people will sympathise with your frustration of hardware not working properly/having full support in non-Windows systems. Many of us, however, balk at your solution, which in my view, represents a compromise on so many levels.

You see, if I'm looking at purchasing a laptop with Broadcom wireless and I happen to know that Broadcom Don't Work That Great(TM) in linux, then rather than switch to an OS that is in my eyes inferior, insulting, buggy and patronising, not to mention the fruit of a hostile predatory monopolist, I'll just find another laptop, one that has good open hardware. They abound, at least in this market.

Now you may accuse me of being political, bigotted, or evangelist, but I've used every significant version of Windows since 3.11 for Workgroups frankly they all grate my nerves.

And I'm done screwing away hours just to get this soundcard or that wireless or video hardware to work. Yeah, most people here will agree with you, but choosing Vista over Ubuntu when there are perfectly good hardware options out there is, in my view, shooting yourself in the foot, putting the cart before the horse, and throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

db

Re:cart before the horse

[Evanisincontrol]

Yeah, most people here will agree with you, but choosing Vista over Ubuntu when there are perfectly good hardware options out there is, in my view, shooting yourself in the foot, putting the cart before the horse, and throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I agree. When picking an OS, you really need to throw your hat into the ring. You've got to get your hands dirty and get your feet wet. I know they say the grass is always greener on the other side, but moving to Vista is just getting out of the frying pan and into the fire. You can't cut off your nose just to spite your face. I'd say just let the chips fall where they may, and don't cry over spilt milk. This topic is really just beating a dead horse; after all, what goes around, comes around.

Needle in a haystack. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Re:cart before the horse

[Kjella]

It's not easy to find a perfect OS. If we can hit that bullseye, the rest of those dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.

Re:cart before the horse

[smookumy]

The OS wars are like Chess. You should never let your advesary see your pieces.

Re:cart before the horse

[Kjella]

The OS wars are like Chess. You should never let your advesary see your pieces. Getting way off topic but given a choice, I'd rather play blind chess. Yes, I suck at it but it's even worse for most people. You try to plan ahead and at the same time not forget where the 20 pieces are at this moment. Even grandmasters make ridiculous mistakes at that, I remember one fun game in particular where they both seemed to believe a rook was where it wasn't...

What about BZR?

[LingNoi]

They released Bazaar with a promise to release Launchpad later.

Why are you so upset? Launchpad is their private code, it disgusts me that you seem to think you have some god given right to take anything anyone writes on top of Linux.

Instead of praise for what they have done with sharing bug reports, translations, bzr and attempting to contribute back as much as possible.. no instead you scorn them because you didn't get your free lunch with launchpad.

Re:Good name!

[Keyper7]

And would you take names like "Windows Chicago", "Windows Detroit", "Windows Whistler" or "Windows Longhorn" seriously? I'm guessing no. But that doesn't care because those were not actual names of Windows releases, but CODENAMES of Windows releases.

That's exactly what "Hardy Heron" is: JUST A CODENAME. The latest version has the codename "Gutsy Gibbon", but go www.ubuntu.com and tell me how exposed this codename is. The download page says "Ubuntu 7.10". The features page says "Ubuntu 7.10".

If a so-called "serious adult" doesn't like names like "Hardy Heron", you can simply say "Ubuntu 8.04" because that's its actual name. Of course, I'd have a hard time calling someone who judges an operating system just by its name a "serious adult".

I wouldn't be surprised if I was modded redundant after this... It seems someone has to explain this to an AC every single time an Ubuntu release appears on /.

Re:ndiswrapper? Phooeeey!

[aqk]

Huh! You must be referring to Windows Vista.

That's exactly what I did. My Windows Vista Wifi connected immediately!

Oh! Sorry! You were referring to Ubuntu! Well, my Ubuntu partition somehow never could get the 802.11g working.
And that's with Feisty Fux, and later, Grumpy Gibbon or whatever...
And please don't suggest that I (or my Auntie) do a bunch of Sudo ndiswrapper crap either.
We don't have the time.
My Ubuntu partitions now sit here, whirring around with Vista at 5400rpm...
Sooner or later I'll re-format its partitions, when Vista AVIs and Jpegs need the room.

Suggestion: Someone tell Shuttleworth he has to put more pressure on driver-writers.

Re:ndiswrapper? Phooeeey!

[calebt3]

That's exactly what I did. My Windows Vista Wifi connected immediately! Was this on a preinstalled system or a fresh install?

Re:ndiswrapper? Phooeeey!

[aqk]

That's exactly what I did. My Windows Vista Wifi connected immediately!

Was this on a preinstalled system or a fresh install?

Preinstalled. Why do you ask?

Alas, unlike the several installs and re-installs of various incantations of Ubuntu that I have done, my Vista has now been humming along flawlessly for about 8 months.

I'm looking forward (although I don't know why!) to installing the SP1 soon...

Re:Good name!

[Zann]

If you choose to decide an OS's capabilities by the name and not what it can do, there's something wrong with you. Seriously.

Don't judge a book by it's cover. Ring a bell?

Re:ndiswrapper? Phooeeey!

[T-Bone-T]

That's how I feel. Vista easily recognizes my hardware and monitors and adjusts accordingly. Ubuntu 7.10, not so much. I think I might have finally gotten Ubuntu to work properly with my monitors but the last time I said that it stopped working. Vista readily detects if I have one or two monitors going and adjusts accordingly. I want to like Ubuntu, the DIVX playback is far superior, but I just can't handle the constant hassles.

Re:An ALPHA release?

[Cato]

That's the wrong link - you are on the Kubuntu site (where wiki.kubuntu.org maps to wiki.ubuntu.org it seems) but on the Ubuntu Hardy Alpha 4 page. Try https://wiki.kubuntu.org/HardyHeron/Alpha4/Kubuntu instead which talks about new KDE stuff in Alpha 4.

Mod parent UP

[Burz]

This is very informative. With the /dev/dsp IO blocking in place, I know not to bother with the Yet-Another-Boondoggle sound daemon. IO blocking for audio output = BROKEN.

System architects need to make a decision: Either fix OSS so it mixes instead of blocks by default, or strictly deprecate it and remove it from the system. It is better to have an app fail outright when you begin to use it, rather than intermittently sit mute when it should be playing alarms for important calendar appointments or incoming phone calls; Oh, but DO tell the user they were stupid to leave a Flash audio web page running in the background...

Oh wait... Do Linux distros even have system architects??

Ubuntu contributions?

[Per Abrahamsen]

I'm sure more knowledgeable slashdotters could name packages for Fedora that were originally developed in Ubuntu or other distros. Nobody seemed to answer that one.

I don't care about specific distributions, but I respect companies like Red Hat who develop a lot of code that constitute the common GNU/Linux base. Does Ubuntu (or whatever organization is behind it) also contribute significant amount of code that is used outside the Ubuntu distributions? If so, what?

Re:Ubuntu contributions?

[cbart387]

I did some reading and Canonical (Ubuntu's backer) puts a lot of effort into improving Debian ... (patches/hiring Debian Developers to work on Debian). Ubuntu's primary goal, it seems (besides being a user-friendly distro), is to select a subset of Debian , do a great job of maintaining them and pass the benefits back to Debian. I couldn't find any mention of contributions to core packages like Redhat/Fedora does.

I feel the same way about Redhat that you do (I am currently on Fedora). I also feel good about Ubuntu, but for a different reason. They do a great job of providing an easy-to-use distro[1] that non-linux geeks can get their feet wet on, and thereby become linux geeks. While it's important to contribute to the core packages that everyone can use; Ubuntu fits the need of getting the word out. If that's their main focus (besides what directly helps them and Debian) then I can see that doing as much as writing pieces of code.

[1]Fedora 8 by the way has a great installer. It seemed no harder then Ubuntu to me.

Horny Horse

[pinkfloydhomer]

I suggested Horny Horse in the official #ubuntu channel on irc.freenode.org, and got kicked... :(

Re:ndiswrapper? Phooeeey!

[JohnFluxx]

If you buy a machine with Ubuntu pre-installed, then presumably the wireless should 'just work' on that too.

Re:An ALPHA release?

[ricegf]

You're right - thanks for the improved link! Although the changes listed even there seem rather sparse (new wallpaper, a new printer dialog, GPL 3 licensing, "improved integration" and "many updated, new, and exciting applications". Since I haven't used KDE since September 2005, I'd appreciate a link with a little more detail in those last two categories if available.

Why not use the Jack Sound Server?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that already the standard for musicians?
From what I read it does about the same stuff as PulseAudio?

Screen brightness

[tensop]

I'm not kidding when i say this, but every time i run the ubuntu installer cd+xorg enviro, the brightness on my laptop screen dims another fraction... With the next install i'll probably be needing some night vision goggles :)

hopefuly ze goggles do something

Re:Screen brightness

[Martin Soto]

Did you already make a bug report about this?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:ndiswrapper? Phooeeey!

[aqk]

If you buy a machine with Ubuntu pre-installed, then presumably the wireless should 'just work' on that too.

Yes, but if I installed a fresh Vista on a blank machine, I bet Vista wouldn't have any problems recognizing the device and configuring itself to work quickly.
In all fairness, I know these wireless (and other) device manufacturers provide their drivers to work with Windows- that's where their bread&butter is.
It would be nice for Atheros and others to provide at least SOME support for Linux users!
But who knows... perhaps Gates&co. peridically twist their arm, or more likely, provide $incentive$...
Ah well, perhaps there will be Atheros support for 8.04 Hapy Heron or whatever...

Re:ndiswrapper? Phooeeey!

[aqk]

I want to like Ubuntu, the DIVX playback is far superior, but I just can't handle the constant hassles.

Yup. Eggzactly!
And meanwhile the Gnomes of Redmond chuckle fiendishly... ;-)

Re:Good name!

[NotZed]

I actually dislike the naming a lot. I'm always confused about what version I have and what is a newer version. Do I have a hedgehog or a platypus? Is there a fix for my package or not? I'd rather just have 1, 2, 3, etc. Even the 7.10, 8.04 stuff is more confusing that it needs to be.

The thing is, windows uses code names internally but they're dropped once it gets to the outside world. Ubuntu forums and the bug system are full of references to curmudgeonly animals for new and old versions - which is very confusing to anyone who isn't a full-time developer or dedicated fan. And many fan sites use the code-names all the time. Sure the front page might not reference it but I don't think I've ever visited that in anger anyway - it's just easier to go to mirrors for download iso's and google for problem solving.

I just want a box that works and I can keep up to date. I don't want to have to learn and interpret a whole lexicon of unique language and non-standard version numbering in the process.

I'm also a bit peeved at them doing shit like turning on stack protection by default in gcc. When you start having to patch sources or use custom configure lines for them to work on a linux distro it gets a bit tiring. Sure if they want to build security-sensitive apps with it turned on go for it, but it's my computer I should be in charge of policies like that on my own code.

Re:ndiswrapper? Phooeeey!

[cheater512]

Monitors is one thing there isn't really a fancy UI for yet.
I'm a Gentoo user so I'm probably more tolerant than most (and lazy :).
I just have two xorg.conf's and swap between them for dual and single monitors. Fairly simple.

You will find however that Vista has absolutely shocking hardware support however.
Until you install the drivers from your motherboard's cd, Windows doesnt know half your hardware exists.
Compared to Linux where virtually every driver is already on the install disk.

The thing is that once your hardware is configured, you never have to touch it again.
So Linux wins in that department.

Re:ndiswrapper? Phooeeey!

[Jeruvy]

What do you bet? I got 500 bucks say's your wrong.

Re:ndiswrapper? Phooeeey!

[aqk]

Oh, fuck off, you little Macintosh weenie whiner.

  And while you're at it, take a grammar lesson.

Re:ndiswrapper? Phooeeey!

[Jeruvy]

Why don't you go fuck off you little dickless wonder. And take your grammar with you nazi!