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

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.

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.

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

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: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: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: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: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: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: 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: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: 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.

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: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?