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Internet Devices Get Their Own Ubuntu Version
Barence writes "A version of Ubuntu targeted specifically towards mobile internet devices (MIDs) has been released by Canonical, although there is presently only one product on the market which can use it. According to the company, the pithily titled Mobile Internet Device Edition 8.04 has been optimized for use with handheld internet platforms, and designed to run smoothly on Intel's Atom chips as well as with small touchscreen displays. This follows Canonical's announcement earlier this month that it would be creating a version of Ubuntu for netbook devices such as the Asus Eee PC and the Acer Aspire One called Netbook Remix."
In fairness......Leopard - an incremental upgrade. Apple tend to release them (comparatively) frequently.
Vista - worst OS since Windows ME? There has been one release between ME & Vista (not counting 64 bit versions). So...worst out of 2 OS'? Eh.
Hardy Heron - I've not personally come across many bugs, YMMV there I suppose.
No good operating systems in 8 or 9 months? Man, they should be releasing new versions weekly!
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
These things come in waves. Give it time. Snow Leopard may prove to be a great improvement, updates to Hardy will fix the initial problems.
I'm afraid we're just going to have to wait until Windows 7 for a better Microsoft OS
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First of all, Windows Server 08 is rock solid and fast. So you're already wrong. Hardy is a sloppy release but includes upgrades for LOTS of packages trying to get into LTS so that's to be expected. Leopard and Vista were both kind of crappy, but so were their predecessors. Vista's better than the playskool stressfest that was XP.
one release? which is that? 2000? XP? server 2003? try again...
Canonical are one of the big movers and shakers in the OSS world, and that they are putting so much effort into putting OSS on as many devices is possible is good to see. Of course it could be a futile effort IF Nokia buy out Symbian and open up it's source.
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
ZOMG, they're working on their next version, this one must have sucked! "Leopard=fail, Apple is already working on 10.6" Since when is working on the next version of your OS a sign of failure, and not a sign of good business sense and continual development?
I was referring to consumer OS releases only, and to XP specifically. I pulled the release dates from here, so if I'm wrong, I blame the source :)
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
If you're going to run the latest OS then of course you're going to get problems. That's what service packs/updates are for. They're working on Ubuntu 8.04.1, if you're so concerned about the bugs on Ubuntu you could have stayed with Gutsy for a bit. Vista's bad but it could be a whole lot worse.
Besides, there are loads of other operating systems out there, along with different distros of Linux. If three releases have been less than satisfactory does that mean all seventy bajillion different releases in the year have been equally disappointing?
yes because there are only 3 operating systems in existence. There is obviously only one linux distro, and all the other ones on distrowatch are fakes
8.04 is an odd release.
On 3 computers I have tried it on it runs relatively fine, including one which is getting rather old.
OTOH on a Dell, that is almost completely Intel based, and so should have completely open kernel modules, it is constantly crashing. 1 in 5 boots I have to sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart just to get the internet to work. Firefox is constantly crashing, as is X. The weirdest thing is there seems to be a problem that is either X based or Gnome based that results in applications like pidgin, gedit, the gnome-games from just blanking out when started. Restarting services doesn't really help and only a complete reboot actually works (so far).
So while 8.04 works absolutely perfectly on 3 computers, on the other it is a hunk of shit. On the oldest machine it works better than any distribution since Mandrake 10.
I still hold that I like Windows ME, at least a user had a lot of control over what it did and did not do.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
How about Ubuntu: Toaster edition?
Time to test your RAM.
No good OS release? What are you talking about? Emacs 22.2 came out in March!
Absolute hogwash. I bought a vista notebook, which now has Hardy on it, and it was slow to do anything. Not only is IO slow, but the way they have laid things out in the UI is slow too. The number of clicks it takes to do any system configuration stuff is painful. Combine that with digital restriction management and the whole experience sucks.
If I was interested in running windows, I would prefer XP. Even better would be 2000, if they had bothered to maintain it and provide updates. Vista is an absolute joke which I found unusable and given that I was only ever exposed to ME for about half an hour, I think it's the worst OS since Windows 1.0. Vista is more of a playskool stressfest - it looks all plasticy and colourful, but it's made entirely of big, bloated clunky pieces that, while they may choke the hardware, won't choke the silly little kiddies that play with them and it is unusable for the task it looks like it should perform. It's so playskool.
I don't therefore I'm not.
You got some hardware probs on that Dell it sounds more like.
That's not been my experience, bloated and slow come to mind.
About 5GB for the install of the base OS alone. With the increase in popularity of the VM, where hardrive space is limited (particularly for Web servers) Windows Server 2008 will never fly. Pay for the license and the extra resources, just for .NET? No thanks, I'd rather use Mono on Debian.
That's without even starting on the CPU and RAM resources, it looks all impressive when you first start it (using less than 500MB of RAM IIRC), but as soon as you start some services the Vista-esque RAM gobbling kicks in. Come to think of it: Windows Server 2008 won't even install on less the 512MB of RAM, compared to Linux, that sucks (see VM point above).
Did a quick compare with my Debian server, which usually has a load of around 10 concurrent connections. Serving pages from Drupal, with a PHP Opcode cache and MySQL caching. Debian uses ~500MB of RAM, Windows Server 2008 loaded with a similar feature set (under zero load) used 1.5GB and constantly churned the CPU.
It might as well be named VistaServe Shite Edition '08 in my opinion. Posted as AC as this is totally off-topic, but I just had to debunk the shilling done by the OP.
What bugs? I've never had a problem -- and that was since Ubuntu Alpha 5.
signature is pants
What about Freebsd 7.0, they did a wonderful job of that.
What you just did is disgusting. I hope someday someone does that to you, you little troll.
Caveat Utilitor
Not sure if Windows 2008 is rock solid, but I like it because ... it's a free download, so I run it as a KVM virtual machine. Add to that Visual C++ Express Edition, and I don't have to purchase any MS software when I need it for teaching. Pretty cool.
Nice homepage, by the way!
to hear from someone with a bit more understanding of the reason the builds posted for MID are specific to Menlow and McCaslin and whether / why these builds would or wouldn't work on more generic intel hardware such as present in the current eeePCs not to mention how difficult would it be to get it to run properly (just install the generic i386 kernel?).
Anonymous Coward? Everybody knows it's you Col. Fitts.
If only Emacs came with a decent text editor...
Windows 2000 still has one update or another from time to time. It's totally off the update map, but my Win2000 workstation still announce me of some update or another once a month or so (true, they are critical security updates and might only be for IE, Media Player, and other Microsoft applications, not to the operating system proper)
Sure there's some googlebombing going on there but he also has some valid points sprinkled in too. You could have responded by refutation, but instead chose moral outrage.
Your post is actually below even troll standards and is merely a flame.
I agree with you and I have seen this kind of input all around: Ubuntu 8.04 it's great on old hardware, specially laptops.. so, getting on topic, An Ubuntu release for PID's/NETBooks should be a killer. Anyone know If this release works on old laptops or it's just intended for NEW specific machines?
Maybe that it's what I like about Ubuntu, it's Linux, it's mostly FOSS but they manage to do it in a commercial and asertive way, I mean, they release specific version that works on a variety of platforms, it's easy on Joe Beigebox and teaches to develop the community way of thinking, so you know somewhere on the intertubes theres an answer or some dude ready to help, also it teaches you that computing it's way more than start button and Ctrl+Z.
Don't bash Ubuntu for being so user friendly or the "bloat" in the GUI.. think that most of the people starting on Ubuntu will move forward to another distros as they advance in their knowledge, someday I will make the step to Slackware I love it, but I just don't feel ready, but hey! I'm loving learning this stuff as many people out there. No one of them are 1337s, maybe some will become.. lend a hand to the little brothers, you just don't know what ta13nts are coming in the way.
Brian Gorden payed ...
Brian Gorden is ...
Can you spell 'fail'?
You just got troll'd!
Hardy is a sloppy release but includes upgrades for LOTS of packages trying to get into LTS so that's to be expected
This is the exact reason that I ran from Ubuntu this release after four years of trying to work with them and promoting them. Did no one get the memo that an LTS version should have been more stable. That it was sloppy was not "to be expected" -- it was a disaster.
Once Shuttleworth came out crowing about how great the six-month release cycle was and how everyone should be on it, I threw up in my lap then quickly reformatted everything in my house/cubicle back to Debian the way it was in 2004.
Yeah, Etch is ancient in Desktop Linux terms, but Lenny won't come out until they feel it's ready. I can count on something stable working for several years after that.
Put identity in the browser.
Not tried it on new hardware, but I was really impressed last night when I put it on a 3 year old Toshiba Sat Pro - it just worked(tm). Even let me disable trackpad clicking without faffing about. Played AVI and MP4/H.264 with minimal fuss. Wifi will be the next step.
I love tinkering but sometimes just want a distro to work - 8.04, whatever bugs aside, seems to fit the bill, to the point where I can finally recommend it to friends and co-workers.
My 0.02.
-- "...I'm a bad guy because I, well, I sing some rock-and-roll songs." M. Manson
GP is the ultimate Apple fanboi.
Leopard is less than perfect, and the ultimate Apple fanboi expects nothing less than perfection from Apple. Therefore, Leopard == fail.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Ok, let me point out a few I've experienced. Some of these are outright inexcusable, I think. I've filed bugs for some of them, or found them already in the bug database; none of them seem to be handled very well. My overall impression is that Ubuntu is grossly understaffed for solid quality control.
What i want to see, is an OS which is compiled specifically for the Atom CPUs...
As i understand it, these processors are in-order processors, and therefore rely on the compiler to schedule execution correctly for their internal resources, as opposed to a full blown core2 which will reorder the instruction stream on the fly and thus compensate for less optimal compilers.
Doing this should yield quite significant performance improvements on the Atom processors...
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Although certainly nothing amazing, I have found Ubuntu Hardy to be far better than Gutsy. Gutsy made my wireless, sound, hibernate & sleep all fail, they worked in Feisty. I was about to reinstall Feisty when I tried Hardy and everything worked again!
Sound not working properly (stutters). Maybe related to the fact that pulseaudio was rushed into the release...
Pulseaudio sucks bigtime. Got a new PC and as a result had to upgrade from Fedora 7 to Fedora 8 to support the hardware, and this bought in Pulseaudio and the 'stutter'. I tried various how-to instructions to first get it working, then remove it but couldn't get it sorted and ended up switching to Ubuntu Gutsy, which worked perfectly (no pulseaudio). But the next release of Ubuntu (Hardy) has pulseaudio, so I'm going to wait until next year and hope it's useable by then...
It's one thing Fedora using pulseaudio; it's supposed to be bleeding edge. But I think it was a big mistake putting it into Ubuntu well before it was ready.
On one hand they have a windows vista which is a large resource hog and just can't be crammed inside a small device.
On the other hand they have WinCE/Pocket PC which, well has *windows* in the name, and has some related elements in its API, but well, is just an entirely different beast which : both doesn't give the advantage that a derivative of an OS has in terms of features and is a descendant of a handheld system which limits its possibility of evolution.
Linux' best advantage is its hackability and its scalability. /. trolls, Joe Six-pack and grand ma Tillie don't need to recompile their kernel each other day, just to get WiFi working.
Yes, granted, as regularly mentioned on
On the other hand, industry will like the possibility to take linux and hack it to fit some very specific and unusual needs, that conventional OS couldn't fit. And the best part : at the end it's still Linux and still related to the full blown system running on the desktop.
Cannonical with this kind of Ubuntu flavors is doing exactly what is best to enable more of such things to happen.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It's pretty clear that there would be some bugs. (Personally I haven't seen any bug to date in my Ubuntu 8.04 system - but I use it right now only sparsely.)
On other side it is important for LTS release to get software as fresh as possible - because users are going to use it for quite some time.
It is some fancy mix of Debian support concept and Ubuntu's strive to do often releases. I think what does Ubuntu for such LTS releases is pretty good idea.
If you really want super stable desktop, I can recommend to buy workstation version of SuSE - SLED - with support. It costs not that much after all and software on average works well, since SuSE does invest some resources into actual testing before releasing something.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
LTS means "Will be supported for a long time", that is, be receiving bug fixes and other updates for a while. It does not mean "First version works perfectly". Yes, people will be using Hardy for a long time, but they will not be using the version as released in April 2008, they'll be using the most recent version.
It works the opposite way to what you're suggesting: obviously, all bugs need to be avoided. But bugs in 7.10 are of considerably more concern because there's only a relatively short timescale in which fixes will come down the pipe. If you're using 7.10 next year, it's safe to say you're going to have to live with any bugs in the distribution.
This is not the same as 8.04 LTS. Not only are Canonical going to do what they can to squeeze the important bugs out of the system in the next few months, but will continue to do so for all of the other problems over the next three years.
My advice with any version of Ubuntu is never upgrade when it comes out anyway, unless you have a drop-dead issue you really must upgrade for. I'm running 7.10 on my work PC and home shared PC. I'll upgrade both once I'm comfortable 8.04 LTS is more stable than the generally excellent 7.10. There have been several times in the last month where I've considered doing that, and held of largely because I want to be doubly sure rather than because of any specific bug I'm running into.
For what it's worth, I'd put 8.04 right now as more stable than 7.04 was when I upgraded to 8.04 (May, I think.) Your mileage may vary depending upon your hardware factors and other similar stuff.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I'd have liked ME if MS hadn't disabled real mode driver support for no better reason than "just because". I had lots of hardware at the time that required stuff to be loaded from CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, and none worked in ME, not to mention having to boot from a floppy to play DOS games.
Other than this, it seemed to be a 98SE with better icons, and I'd have enjoyed using it if it had been at all possible.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
I've taught the toaster to love!
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Oh, no, no, no. Linux completely blows at I/O. The amount of iowait I deal with on anything less than pure SCSI disks is insane for any operating system, and it is handily beaten by FreeBSD, Solaris, and Windows.
- oZ
// i am here.
You misspelled my name anyway :)
Oh I don't dispute that out of the box, vista is absolutely terrible. In order for it to be remotely usable after a reinstall, I have to:
-Disable the indexing service
-Disable all the other crap services I don't need like the diagnostic service
-Turn off slow Aero transparency and just use opaque Aero
-Run the registry tweaks to get sane folder type identification (make EVERYTHING "all items" by default)
-Disable all MRU features and make my start menu all pins
-Disable IE and WMP.
-Disable sidebar.
I don't know about how it performs as a server, but without any server roles and configured as a workstation it's an excellent environment.
I'm going to disagree with you here. Pulse Audio was a big improvement for me. Jack sensing started working on my laptop and overall consistency of performance across applications improved.
But I suppose inconsistency in user experience is going to happen until hardware manufacturers start opening up their code.
Our bugs are smarter than your test scripts.
Do you have a link to those registry tweaks?
I'm sick and tired of all folders wanting to sort after "Date Taken" instead of "Date Modified"
you forgot the /sarcasm tag....ME was the worst till Vista
People underestimate how hard it is to pull an OS release together. Ubuntu is big enough to get some testers, but still it's difficult to put all that open source stuff together and keep up on security as well as stability.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
When apple can't fix it and they have to move on completely. Authenticating with LDAP is a nightmare on 10.5. I've been trying to upgrade a lab to leopard, and it's very painful. I wouldn't even consider migrating servers yet. Most of the NeXT guys retired. This was their first big release out of that and it shows. I know how they feel because I've had problems with releases too. The difference is that I don't charge for my work.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
The devs just wanted half-naked women calendars on as many mobile devices as possible.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
... you're not really in a situation to complain about ubuntu, being free an' all.
I have a strong suspicion this is going to get flamebaited, but seriously, although I use Ubuntu every day, and have enormous respect for Mark Shuttleworth (he appeared on our podcast: http://zatechshow.co.za/episode-14), I don't think Ubuntu is ready for mobile environments.
You can blame the lack of hardware support and other vendors if you like, but the fact remains that the user experience for Linux laptops is pretty damned iffy. Power management isn't, hibernate and suspend sometimes works, sometimes doesn't and sometimes breaks other pieces of the OS seemingly at random, WiFi support is hit and miss...the list just goes on.
Linux on servers is almost a given now. Linux on desktops is, arguably, a better default option than Windows - I've found gaming under Wine to work faster and better than under Windows natively. But Linux in general on laptops and ultraportables? My experience says no. Not with a generic distro. It can work for locked down platforms like the Asus EEE and Acer Aspire One because the hardware is, like a Mac, predefined and the distro is built to fit, but not for broader use. If you happen get lucky and all your mobile hardware works, then terrific - you're in the same position as a desktop user was ten years ago. But that's not me: Linux on my laptops is very hard work (so a fun hobby), but not something I feel I can trust for any real work.
Which is not to say I don't respect how incredibly far Linux has evolved on laptops. It's come a long way and the community will surely iron out the remaining bugs in due course. But realistically, it's not there yet. I'm impressed that there's a dedicated Ubuntu package for ultraportables and I wouldn't for a moment suggest that team is wasting its time, but I could not in all conscience recommend it to anyone until I've seen some major progress on those big mobile-related issues.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I wasn't being sarcastic
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
No. No. And no. Canonical stated at the beginning of the Hardy cycle that this release needed to be more stable and bug-free than any other release to date. Instead, they shipped an OS which had default apps (F-Spot for one) which didn't even launch on the 64-bit version. Utter crap.
Ubuntu is now an "I'll wait for the first service pack" OS.
Put identity in the browser.
You forgot to one:
-Install it inside VirtualBox on Linux. It's much easier to manage that way and the performance is about the same on VBox 1.6.x as native, at least subjectively on my hardware.
I don't therefore I'm not.
For what it's worth, I'd put 8.04 right now as more stable than 7.04 was
7.06
Try this