Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) Released

SDen writes "Bang on target, the new version of Ubuntu Linux is available for our downloading pleasure. Amongst various changes it sports updates to the installer, improved networking, and a new 'Mobile USB' version geared towards the blossoming netbook market. Grab a copy from the Ubuntu website, and check out Linux Format's hands-on look at the Ibex."

Comments

Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[eldavojohn]

Grab a copy from the Ubuntu website ...

TorrentFreak has a great tutorial on using BitTorrent to upgrade to Intrepid Ibex. Odds are high that the default servers in sources.list are going to be taxed pretty heavily today so this might be useful to a lot of people.

Now if only Microsoft & Apple could harness & effectively utilize the power of p2p ... *cough* *cough*

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[pablomme]

My direct download from Canonical (releases.ubuntu.com) went at full speed for the full 11 minutes it took to download. Plus it didn't break my ssh connections, which bittorrent always does.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Max Romantschuk]

apt-p2p... Had never heard of that. Excellent idea, assuming it somehow checks your packages haven't been tampered with... :)

Shouldn't this be an checkbox-style option in Ubuntu by now?

On another note, I've been running Intrepid at home for some time now, and everything seems to work pretty smoothly. There's been some issues, but nothing major...

On the other hand, I tried upgrading my Ubuntu Studio setup to Intrepid before installing the regular beta... Baaaad idea. The upgrade messed something up so that I only got the desktop background in graphical mode. Pretty useless desktop... ;)

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[rodrigoandrade]

> Now if only Microsoft & Apple could harness & effectively utilize the power of p2p ... *cough* *cough*

The community already took care of it ages ago... *cough* Mininova/Pirate Bay *cough*

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Kjella]

apt-p2p... Had never heard of that. Excellent idea, assuming it somehow checks your packages haven't been tampered with... :)

The packages have been signed next to forever. If you install any 3rd party repository you'll notice that they usually ask you to download a gpg key and add it to the trusted list as well, otherwise apt-get (or any other package manager, I guess) will loudly complain that the authenticity can not be validated.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats probably because you are not limiting your upload bandwidth. Whatever client you are using for bittorrent sucks up all of it, shutting everything else down. Fix that, and you'll be good.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[couchslug]

"Now if only Microsoft & Apple could harness & effectively utilize the power of p2p ... *cough* *cough*"

P2P is highly effective for spreading their wares and chumming the market. :)

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[pablomme]

I limit it to 32 KiB/s in Transmission, but it seems to hog it anyway.. It looks more like a number of connections issue.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Aladrin]

I saw this elsewhere and I'll ask the same thing:

Why would I go with apt-p2p instead of debtorrent? I realize they are written by the same person, but debtorrent is already in the repositories and appears to just exactly the same thing.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[ChrisA90278]

"Odds are high that the default servers in sources.list are going to be taxed pretty heavily today."

Just in case you all need someone to hate, I'll let it be me .... My company has a local mirror and I'm connected to in with Gigabit Ethernet. I can NFS mount the mirror.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[zbharucha]

This is certainly a stupid question, but here goes: Is there any difference between doing a clean install (format and install 8.10 afresh) and upgrading from 8.04 to 8.10 as detailed in the link? Is there any advantage of doing one over the other (other than the obvious you-don't-have-to-install-apps one)?

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Plus it didn't break my ssh connections, which bittorrent always does.

I wonder if the problem is really on the client side here.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Eil]

My direct download from Canonical (releases.ubuntu.com) went at full speed for the full 11 minutes it took to download. Plus it didn't break my ssh connections, which bittorrent always does.

Counter-anecdote: My bittorrent download from users across the net went at full speed for the full 2 minutes it took to download. Plus it didn't break my SSH connections, which are never adversely affected by bittorrent anyway.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

But it still has the issue that when you ask for a patch for (say) an SSH bug, you're basically saying "Hello my IP address is 123.123.123.123 and my copy of SSH needs patching".

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[fm6]

Now if only Microsoft & Apple could harness & effectively utilize the power of p2p ... *cough* *cough*

That's funny, I've never had any trouble downloading from either Microsoft or Apple. It's not like they can't afford the bandwidth or server capacity.

I keep meaning to configure a P2P setup on my home system, but somehow never get round to it. It almost never seems to be an issue. When I'm looking to download software, there's usually enough HTTP or FTP server capacity available. When there isn't, it always seem to be a package that's so marginal, it's not worth my time anyway.

I'd be more motivated if I didn't have a huge Netflix backlog. That's because there's a movie and TV show that will probably never make it onto Region 1 DVD because of copyright issues. Really, the main reason to have P2P seems to be to bypass copyright laws, both stupid and legitimate.

P2P does have a higher technical kewlness factor than client-server. Oddly enough, few people care about that.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[pablomme]

If it's like 35Kb/s, that's why.

Nope, it's 64KiB/s; I like to set upload speeds to half my upstream bandwidth.

If your router can't keep up, limit the number of connections, transmission can probably do that.

I don't see such option in Transmission. It's not known for being rich-featured though, so maybe I should try a different client.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[wuulfgar]

The hates, it is beguns, in earnest, white-hot and seething, tending to a brooding, dark shade of green that shimmers as a ... Wait. Wha? Oh screw it. Lucky you.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[olivier69]

Oh great, you're a king, you provide links to explain how to upgrade Ubuntu with P2P... Now if you could also provide a serial and a crack !

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

*cough* *cough* *cough* *cough*

1995 called -- they want their stupid *cough* "joke" *cough* back.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[weirdcrashingnoises]

"so maybe I should try a different client."

utorrent ftw.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Tekfactory]

I've actually downloaded things from Microsoft.com as Torrents, one of them was the XNA SDK IIRC.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[silent_artichoke]

If you download the ISO, you can do a clean install and either keep the CD in case you ever want to install again on that or any other computer. You also get to clear out all the junk that accumulates and maybe try that new partitioning scheme you have been ogling in the display case.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[silent_artichoke]

Please ignore the word "either" in that post.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[mhall119]

Upgrading lets you keep all your currently installed software and settings. A clean install gives you the default collection of software with their default settings.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[mhall119]

Username: ubuntu
Password: U6aMy0wojraho

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

If everyone used the torrent cannonical could save thousands of dollars that they could invest back into development instead of wasting it on people like you who can't figure out how to use something as simple as a bittorrent client or apt-p2p

So next time you find some unresolved bug in ubuntu, remember, it's probably YOUR FAULT.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[mumrah]

I always change my all of the country codes in sources.list to de or uk while I'm dist-upgrading. Seems to speed things up considerably.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Killer Orca]

What is this junk you are referring to?

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Ihmhi]

Yep. The most I've seen uTorrent stray over its allocated 160 KB/sec up (60 KB/sec during peak hours) is 1-2 KB/sec for a brief second before getting slammed back down.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[jamstar7]

No need for either.

Yeah, I know. I'm humor-impaired.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[basotl]

If it's like 35Kb/s, that's why.

Nope, it's 64KiB/s; I like to set upload speeds to half my upstream bandwidth.

If your router can't keep up, limit the number of connections, transmission can probably do that.

I don't see such option in Transmission. It's not known for being rich-featured though, so maybe I should try a different client.

It's in the preferences for Transmission. Edit > Preferences > Network

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[DerWulf]

I think that the bit torrent protocol is great and reflects the nature of the internet quite well. On top it's very efficient so if you want to do a realistic speed test of your down link there is nothing better then grabbing a linux distro (or any other large free software package) as torrent download. Well, unless your provider uses p2p 'traffic shaping' but then you don't need a speed test ;)

Anyways, the thing about MS and apple using P2P: The main problem would be publicity, I think. Blizzard distributes their patches via torrents (with HTTP fallback, best of both worlds!) and if I recall correctly people where really upset at first. Reasoning going along the lines of "I'm paying for this so you damn well pay for the bandwidth". Personally I think that's stupid. Yes, a company should not only rely on bit torrent distribution but they should definitely offer it. It's in the best interest of every one: http downloaders have to share the bandwidth with fewer people, torrent downloaders have vastly improved download speed and the company saves money.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[pablomme]

It's in the preferences for Transmission. Edit > Preferences > Network

Not in my version... The Preferences window lets me set download/upload speed limits, but not limits on the number of connections. The "Network" section of the window lets me select the port and that's it.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[badpazzword]

I'd rather not have to use Wine to p2p, thank you very much.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Bertie]

Ktorrent absolutely rocks the house. Use that.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[wikinerd]

break my ssh connections, which bittorrent always does.

Perhaps you need to check how many connections you BT client makes and whether your router can support all these connections. Just lower the number of BT connections and I believe your SSH will stay alive.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[wikinerd]

Just lower the number of BT connections and I believe your SSH will stay alive.

or, to reply to my post, you could just buy a better router

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[bluefoxlucid]

I've been told by the Ubuntu developers that the tracker hammers the server pretty hard itself.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Just in case you all need someone to hate, I'll let it be me .... My company has a local mirror and I'm connected to in with Gigabit Ethernet. I can NFS mount the mirror.

Just in case YOU need someone to hate. My company has a 2gbit/s connection to out internet provider - which have their own mirrors. It actually is MUCH faster to download to /dev/null than to the slow hard drive! :)

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[MichaelSmith]

*cough* *cough* *cough* *cough*

1995 called -- they want their stupid *cough* "joke" *cough* back.

I have a cold you insensitive clod!

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[bondjamesbond]

NO... it's probably SEGFAULT

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[badpazzword]

For example:

1. Install program xyz
2. Uninstall program xyz
3. (optional) Purge program xyz
4. Notice the folder ~/.xyz is still there, with your preferences and maybe temporary files.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[badpazzword]

GUI way to do that:

System > Administrator > Software Sources.
From the drop down box make your choice. "Other..." has a "Select Best Server" tool.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[pablomme]

It could well be. I've a Belkin wired+wireless router between my two computers and the cable modem, and it tends to die when I transfer large file between the wired computer and the wireless one. This indicates poor stability, so I guess it could be the same sort of thing with BT.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[xdotx]

The latest deluge release is fantastic. Got the features you want but still nice and light weight.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one still on a 768k DSL connection?

I started the torrent half an hour ago, and the ETA is another 3 hours.

(yes, I still live with my mom. and she's too cheap to spend more than $15/month on internet.)

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Counter-counter anecdote - Running bittorrent does seem to (within hours sometimes) make my crappy cable modem -- require a manual restart (unplug.. plug back in).

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

NO... it's probably SEGFAULT

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

The quote might have helped...FAIL

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

disable stateful packet inspection (SPI).

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Tubal-Cain]

Good point. But non-security updates would still benefit from this.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Tubal-Cain]

How much disk space does that mirror require?

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[bhassel]

For those who are seeing slow downloads from the main ubuntu server (as I am), I suggest switching to use a local repository mirror. It can be done easily by going to:

System -> Administration -> Software Sources

and changing "Download From" from the main server to a local mirror. (There is even an option to ping them all and automatically choose the fastest.)

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[petermgreen]

from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/mirror/1

A "full archives" mirror is around 210 gigabytes and is slowly increasing. Archives mirrors are updated at least every 24 hours but no more then every 4 hours.

though you could cut that down quite a lot by using debmirror and only mirroring the releases "sections" and architectures you want

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, NFS is punishment enough.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[cibyr]

Pfft, anything less than torrentFlux is for noobs.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[drachenstern]

pfft, anything less than two serial ports, a few yards of cable, and a couple cat commands is for noobs....

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[jhol13]

Mine:

1. Download the CD image
2. Install it over the root (/) partition, leave /home untouched.

I can never understand why default installation does not make two or three separate partitions (10G root, 1G swap[1], rest for home), especially for bigger disks (>100G).

[1] Maybe the size of the memory for suspend. Maybe not at all.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[sw155kn1f3]

mind you, microsoft is using this idea for years - just look for xp torrents ;)

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[cha5on]

From the apt-p2p website [emphasis added] http://www.camrdale.org/apt-p2p/ :

Similar to DebTorrent, Apt-P2P will act as a proxy between apt requests and a debian repository server, downloading any requested files from peers (if possible), but falling back to a direct HTTP download. Unlike DebTorrent, Apt-P2P will be simple, efficient, and fast.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[mkarcher]

*cough* Mininova/Pirate Bay *cough*

That's probably the most polysyllabic cough I've ever witnessed.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[williamgrant]

Ubiquity (the desktop CD installer) will leave an existing /home on / if you tell it not to format, so there's little reinstallation benefit to having a separate partition.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably need to limit your upload bandwidth limit in order to keep your ssh-connections alive.
Otherwise the ssh connection will fail to report back to the server and lose its connectivity.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Canonical AC]

I like to set my upload limit to about a quarter of my upstream bandwidth, or else I find that any other internet activity is adversely affected.

You have to remember that if you are downloading quickly from a bunch of different connections, you are also acking each packet downloaded. I found that just the acking alone was causing my surfing to be very adversely affected by not having enought bandwidth to send out page requests (and ssh would have VERY noticeable lags for each keystroke).

Experiment with different upload speeds while downloading a fast torrent...(Ibex was good for this...my fastest speed yet 1.15 MB/s). My experimentation led me to 1/4 my upload bandwidth.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

3 letters QoS

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol I don't know what your talking about I got my copy of windows from p2p.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[serviscope_minor]

I was all about the hating until you mentioned NFS. Now I feel sorry for you :(

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Daengbo]

This thread goes almost halfway down the page, and I'm the only one who is going to point out that apt-p2p doesn't use bittorrent as the OP (and TorrentFreak) claimed?

It uses a completely new P2P protocol inspired by bittorrent. It's described right in the abstract (warning: link to PDF). Just think about it .... The mirrors are the seeds, but they don't host trackers or run BT clients.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any advantage of doing one over the other (other than the obvious you-don't-have-to-install-apps one)?

Well, this may be stating the obvious, but there's a good chance that at least some things won't work in the new release. I always install the new release seperately in its own partition, and run it with a copy of /home as a test setup dual booting with the existing release. Once I've tested it thoroughly, I just switch it to use the 'live' /home partition. I don't like any solution where you end up with a new release that doesn't quite work, restore the old release, then later reinstall the new release etc. etc.
This also means than once you're running on the new release as default you can still boot the old release to check something (like 'was this broken in the previous release as well).

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[tehcyder]

Well I'm using Windows so I've got a virus.

*rimshot*

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[Aladrin]

'Will be', but -is- it? The configuration process on debtorrent seems to be a -lot- more simple... And after configuration, you don't have to do anything with either of them. They just work.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[svank]

Upgrading lets you keep all your currently installed software and settings. A clean install gives you the default collection of software with their default settings.

When I installed Fedora 8 last year, they recommended you have a separate partition for /home, so you can wipe your other partitions and do a clean install, but keep your settings and data. When I did a clean install of Fedora 9 earlier this year, I kept my /home partition and booted into my customized Gnome desktop with all my app settings just like they were before the upgrade.

Granted, this doesn't preserve anything in /etc, but does Ubuntu not recommend this?

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[DaVince21]

Under Linux I'd rather use Deluge.

Re:Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade

[mhall119]

I have seen recommendations and instructions for doing this in Ubuntu, and I have set mine up that way as well. It is nice for exactly the reason you specified, though the same could be accomplished by backing up your home directory and restoring it after a new install.

As you said, anything configured in /etc/ will go back to the default. You'll also lose any installed applications that are not part of the default install, even if you don't lose your configuration for them.

Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect issue

[rikkards]

I have been experiencing a minor annoying bug with Heron for the last while where the wireless connection will drop randomly. Reading the logs it shows that the wireless nic hasn't talked to the AP for a while and assumes it is out of range. I have seen others with this issue but no solution. A workaround is to restart networking.

get the seeds going!

[i.r.id10t]

subject says it all...

Kubuntu and Nvidia

[John Utah]

Too bad Nvidia didn't fix their driver in time for the 8.10 release. Using VESA sucks. http://kubuntuway.net/

Re:Kubuntu and Nvidia

[Knuckles]

Too bad Nvidia didn't fix their driver in time for the 8.10 release.

Could you specify what issue you have? Because the release notes just mention that nvidia dropped support for some older cards in their new drivers (which are needed because of the new xorg), and I doubt that nvidia considers this a bug.
OTOH, I have seen nvidia issues with Geforce 6100 card on the ubuntu-users list and on Launchpad, I'd like to know more.

Re:Kubuntu and Nvidia

[thtrgremlin]

The packages are there, but my driver did not load automatically. Don't know why. But where I previously had been using nvidia-glx-new, which it says conflicts with xorg-server-foo. Turned out I needed to pick nvidia-glx-771 for my particular card, and then everything worked fine. Not sure which one you need, but if you search the packages for nvidia-glx, it explains which drivers are appropriate.

Re:Kubuntu and Nvidia

[John Utah]

I seem to be affected by this: "Known issues * Users of NVidia cards with the binary driver provided by NVidia might suffer from performance problems in window switching and resizing. We've made the NVidia engineers aware of those problems. However, no fixed NVidia driver has been released yet. You can find information on how to improve graphics performance on Techbase, although we ultimately have to rely on NVidia to fix their driver." I have Quadro NVS 140M. I've tried using the nvidia-glx and nvidia-glx-new drivers, but the problem persists.

Re:Kubuntu and Nvidia

[athakur999]

There are some graphical glitches with some Nvidia (5,6 and 7 series) processors:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/99508

I never had the problem with Hardy but I see it very frequently after upgrading to the Intrepid RC a few days ago. The workaround is to use a non-Human based theme or disable Compiz. Since the issue only affects certain themes it seems to me like it's more likely a theme or Compiz bug than an nVidia problem.

Re:Kubuntu and Nvidia

[Knuckles]

I see, many thanks. That will be helpful. Might it have something to do with this issue in the other reply I got? If so, there might be other ways than using the vesa driver. (Also, can't you use nv? That should work decently at least for 2D and on most cards)

Re:Kubuntu and Nvidia

[Knuckles]

Many thanks.

Re:Kubuntu and Nvidia

[John Utah]

It's no a Compiz issue, I have it disabled. I think it's an issue with XRender. Supposedly Nvidia is working on a fix which will be released soon. I think I'll try patience instead of a work around.

Re:Kubuntu and Nvidia

[Knuckles]

thx again. Is this info in the relevant bug reports? Otherwise it would be great if you could add it.

Re:Kubuntu and Nvidia

[Risen888]

RMS is right. People need to quit buying Nvidia hardware. I realize that doesn't help your current situation and I am sorry you're having trouble with it, but in the future it's something you should seriously consider when making your purchases. They've demonstrated time and again that they are simply not interested in releasing free drivers or opening their specs, so fuck 'em.

I've upped my standards, Nvidia. So up yours.

celebration

[Anonymous Coward]

happy release day to all \o/

Here are the torrent links

[Anonymous Coward]

Torrents:

Desktop - AMD 64
http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.10/ubuntu-8.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent

Desktop - i386
http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.10/ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso.torrent

I am downloading both of these, they are quite fast. Seeders are increasing by leaps and bounds!

Re:Here are the torrent links

[Rinisari]

All of my computers and connections combined are seeding approximately 3 MB/s. It's rocking.

Re:Here are the torrent links

[kaka.mala.vachva]

For the md5sums: http://ftp.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp/pub/linux/ubuntu/releases/8.10/MD5SUMS

Re:Here are the torrent links

[0100010001010011]

2MB/s. I still have a shell on a computer in a closet on an EDU line that I like to use for stuff like this.

Re:6th of 7th post

[Anonymous Coward]

If only you had first post, and you didn't make any mention of it being first post, you could've had +5 informative...

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[binarylarry]

I'm not sure on your issue, but the network manager has had some serious work done:

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/alpha5#Network Manager 0.7

The power of p2p?

[nurb432]

What power? I don't want to share my now limited bandwidth for some commercial company to give out updates.

This isn't 2007. P2P Has been single handedly neutered by the likes of comcast.

Re:The power of p2p?

[TechForensics]

P2P Has been single handedly neutered by the likes of comcast.

That is a huge overstatement.

Re:The power of p2p?

[TheSHAD0W]

What do you mean by "now limited"? If you don't have a quota and aren't using it, and it helps you download faster... Why not?

If you're limited by quota, or are busy serving for other purposes, then the direct download links are right there.

Re:The power of p2p?

[nurb432]

yes, i know there are direct downloads, i was commenting on the statement of 'using the power of p2p'.

Re:The power of p2p?

[nurb432]

If you use comcast ( and others ) your monthly bandwidth is limited.

Are YOU going to share what you have left with others? Im not.

Re:The power of p2p?

[TheSHAD0W]

Heh. Well, I recommend you encourage others to use it. This means you'll be "using the power of p2p" to reduce the load on the direct download links, speeding up your own access. :-P

Re:The power of p2p?

[vux984]

If you use comcast ( and others ) your monthly bandwidth is limited.

Most people don't use anywhere near their quota.

Are YOU going to share what you have left with others? Im not.

If you have 3 apples and are only hungry enough for 1 apple, do you refuse to share your remaining apples simply because your apple supply is limited?

Re:The power of p2p?

[Sir_Lewk]

I put that apple in a fruit bank of course!

Re:The power of p2p?

[chill]

If you have 3 apples and are only hungry enough for 1 apple, do you refuse to share your remaining apples simply because your apple supply is limited?

If I'm going to be hungry later, and my apple supply isn't going to be refreshed until further down the road, you bet your ass I'd refuse to share.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Beardo the Bearded]

You can put your apples in the fridge and eat them later.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats still a dick move even if you bought comcast.

Re:The power of p2p?

[modecx]

I don't want to share my now limited bandwidth for some commercial company to give out updates.

And you paid how much for your copy of Ubuntu? Yeah, I thought so.

Besides, if you're on comcast, your "now limited bandwidth", isn't all that limited. For 99.99% of comcast customers, it's practically unlimited, which isn't all that much worse. If you use so much bandwidth that you routinely approach the cap, maybe you aught to upgrade to a commercial service. Also, they actually appear to be using legitimate QoS these days, to appropriately set p2p data as low priority, instead of using the retarded policy of resetting torrent connections.

Re:The power of p2p?

[0100010001010011]

If I have 3 Apples why the hell do I want Ubuntu?

Re:The power of p2p?

[andrikos]

Because brown goes well with white ;)

Re:The power of p2p?

[fishbowl]

>I don't want to share my now limited bandwidth for some commercial company to give out updates.

You don't have to. So why are you complaining?

Re:The power of p2p?

[vux984]

If I'm going to be hungry later, and my apple supply isn't going to be refreshed until further down the road, you bet your ass I'd refuse to share.

Your apple supply (ie comcast quota) refreshes monthly, ie ... presumably, in fact, the day after tomorrow.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Anonymous Coward]

This might rock the very foundations of your understanding of the world with respect to internet services, but for the majority of the planet, bandwidth limits are the norm. I live in Australia, and finding a plan that is truly unlimited is like finding a 10-leaf clover.

And yet, somehow, all of these people with bandwidth limits still manage to upload with their torrents.

Maybe you should consider reducing how much you download a little so that you can contribute to others ability to get a file? You know, "sharing", the very philosophy that underpins bittorrent.

Re:The power of p2p?

[silent_artichoke]

Are they new apples or rollover apples?

And where are my rollover Comcast bytes?

Re:The power of p2p?

[DigDuality]

i use comcast and i know i have transferred down at LEAST 50GB this month, over comcast. And that's just torrents. Get a grip on reality.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Spazztastic]

If you use comcast ( and others ) your monthly bandwidth is limited.

Most people don't use anywhere near their quota.

I consider myself a "power user" when it comes to downloading, and I've only made it to 150GB this month. I used bittorrent to grab every CD for x86 machines for MANY different distributions, including Debian and their 10+ CDs. Why? Because the tech school I support needed ISO images so the students could run VMs, and this way they aren't sucking up traffic on their dual T1's grabbing them.

I've seeded at least 1.0 for each one and I haven't had any problems, people are blowing the cap out of proportion. And don't get me wrong, I don't support it in the least, but it does cause me to think twice about grabbing that entire series of 10 seasons of that show I watched when I was 12.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have 3 Apples, why the hell are you reading this thread?

Get back to mactardsanonymous.com and be about your business.

Re:The power of p2p?

[cjb658]

I have Time Warner and run eDonkey and BitTorrent constantly, 24/7. I use DD-WRT to monitor my bandwidth, and since I installed v24 around June, I've never used more than 100GB per month. Usually it's in the 80-100 range.

250GB per month is A LOT.

(Not saying I agree with the throttle. In fact, if Time Warner throttles my connection, I'll be the first to switch to DSL Exreme. Unfortunately, a lot of Comcast subscribers don't have that option.)

Re:The power of p2p?

[cjb658]

Actually, come to think of it, I'd use a lot more if Time Warner didn't cap my uploads at a paltry 500kbps.

Re:The power of p2p?

[nurb432]

If i have 3 apples, ill eat 3. They are mine to eat.

Same with bandwidth.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Killer Orca]

If you have 3 apples and are only hungry enough for 1 apple, do you refuse to share your remaining apples simply because your apple supply is limited?

No no no, it's supposed to be a car analogy.

Re:The power of p2p?

[jonaskoelker]

If I have Ubuntu why the hell do I want 3 Apples?

Re:The power of p2p?

[nurb432]

250g and you get cut off is a limitation in my book. If you don't want to use what you paid for, more power to you. I however, want to use what i purchase.

Furthermore, the OP was talking about commercial software companies ( like Microsoft ) hijacking *others* bandwidth to distribute updates for software you pay for, not ubuntu which relies on others generosity.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if, instead of apples, we use milkshakes for this analogy?

So, say you have a milkshake. There it is. And I have a straw that reached acccrrroooooooosssss the room and starts to drink your milkshake. I. Drink. Your. MILKSHAKE. I DRINK IT UP!

That, more appropriately, is how P2P works.

Re:The power of p2p?

[theaceoffire]

"If I have 3 Apples why the hell do I want Ubuntu?"

I know, I got 2 Watermelons. Forget Vista and Ubuntu, I am set!.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, at some point you're just going to have to face the fact that logic exists. I know the marketers and politicians would have you believe otherwise, and you yourself would like look away from the unpleasantness of reality, but "limited" does not mean "unlimited". There is no "practical" equivalence, only a fantastical one that you for some reason wish to accept. 99% of Comcast customers will not be downloading Ubuntu, so your admonition is likely misplaced.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Anonymous Coward]

This might rock the very foundations of your understanding of the world with respect to internet services, but for the majority of the planet, bandwidth limits are the norm. I live in Australia, and finding a plan that is truly unlimited is like finding a 10-leaf clover.

Just like petrol in the EU cost $7.10 a gallon US. We do a lot of things wrong over here in the states, but playing providers off of each other to get a better deal (such as unlimited bandwidth) is not one of them.

Maybe you should consider reducing how much you download a little so that you can contribute to others ability to get a file? You know, "sharing", the very philosophy that underpins bittorrent.

If you're stupid enough to screw yourself over, then have it. Just don't try to come off like you're being altruistic. Firstly, few of us give a fuck. Secondly, you're gullible.

Re:The power of p2p?

[HoppyChris]

You're not a small person, are you?

Re:The power of p2p?

[uberjack]

Because you'd rather control your computer, than have your computer tell you how to control it?

Re:The power of p2p?

[shannara256]

Also, they actually appear to be using legitimate QoS these days, to appropriately set p2p data as low priority, instead of using the retarded policy of resetting torrent connections.

No, not so much. They may be using legitimate QoS now, or at least there was a press release that they were going to, but the forged connection resets are still going out, as shown by the Vuze reset detection plug-in.

Re:The power of p2p?

[bluefoxlucid]

If you have 3 apples and are only hungry enough for 1 apple, do you refuse to share your remaining apples simply because your apple supply is limited?

I try rather hard to share my beer (which is good), because I acquire beer faster than I drink it. I make 5 gallon batches, and can do 1-2 a month but make fewer than that; as it turns out, over time I collect more and more beer. By sharing my beer, I can run out; this means I have more free empty bottles, and can make another batch and bottle it without getting more bottles, which in turn means my apartment doesn't become a sea of full beer bottles.

If I had a tree with 3 apples, and only ate 1-2 a week, and over the next month it was going to produce about 30 apples, I would likely make cider. After the first 150 apples came down, I'd have 5 gallons (25 wine bottles!) of apfelwein! I can't drink that in a year! I better share it with some people. Oh, and 4 of the 6 growing months have passed.... I have 60 apples left, this won't last me!

Okay, now I've got a second tree, so at the end I have 180 more apples left (240)... and I might eat 100 a year. I have enough for a second batch of apfelwein but I've got too much of that already. I should make some apple sauce and apple pie, and I sure can't waste 140 apples doing that... I should sell these, or give them away. I definitely don't want to keep them!

Re:The power of p2p?

[BrianGMSC]

Then why did he post with reference to Bittorrenting Ubuntu? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think this article is about downloading Vista...

Re:The power of p2p?

[modecx]

250g and you get cut off is a limitation in my book. If you don't want to use what you paid for, more power to you. I however, want to use what i purchase.

Sure, it's a limitation, but it's a pretty high limitation, and for most people--even for most power users, it may as well be unlimited. Honestly, what could a residential customer be doing to move that much data? Even if I saturated upload on my home line, for offsite backup, for instance, you're only going to be moving ~100GB/month. If it's really important that you need that kind of throughput, you can certainly afford their commercial offering, and get better data rates (three times the upload, 10Mbps + dl) and no cap. You'll be paying that in hard disk, if you need to download that much.

As to MS/Apple: I guess I missed the context which you replied to, because Canocial is indeed a commercial company, which does rely on good will from many people and institutions.

Re:The power of p2p?

[BrianGMSC]

*sigh* Sorry, I missed a post. Ignore me.

Re:The power of p2p?

[ryanov]

Ah, good old American spirit.

Re:The power of p2p?

[modecx]

Well, maybe they'll get it sorted out eventually. My torrents are doing much better than they were, at least.

Re:The power of p2p?

[nurb432]

Hey, we all miss things at times :)

Re:The power of p2p?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're stupid enough to screw yourself over, then have it. Just don't try to come off like you're being altruistic. Firstly, few of us give a fuck. Secondly, you're gullible.

Some people enjoy being altruistic, there's nothing wrong with that, is there?

Posting AC since I already moderated :/

Re:The power of p2p?

[nurb432]

Start participating in this proposed 'P2P welfare' system for commercial companies auto updates in the background, and I bet that 250 goes fast even for the 'average user'. They wont even know its happening.

As far as my usage, why should i get a commercial contact when my contract now says 250? If they didn't intend on letting me use 250, then they shouldn't offer it. I paid for 250. You may think it excessive, but its in my contract, so lump it. ( just like the unlimited service, don't offer if you don't intend on letting people use it )

Original context was with the commercial companies where you have to buy the product up front. After *buying* the software I think its unreasonable to then ask you to in effect pay more to help other people get updates to your product.

I agree Canocial is commercial, but they are not demanding you pay up to get the product, and giving you the option to help out, on your terms. I see that as a far different, and reasonable request.

Re:The power of p2p?

[aussie_a]

Its unamerican to ration your three apples over a month because you know you're going to need all 3 and that you won't be getting any more apples until the following month?

Re:The power of p2p?

[aussie_a]

You're saying someone got fat by eating 3 apples within a month?

Re:The power of p2p?

[aussie_a]

I try rather hard to share my beer (which is good), because I acquire beer faster than I drink it. I make 5 gallon batches, and can do 1-2 a month but make fewer than that; as it turns out, over time I collect more and more beer. By sharing my beer, I can run out; this means I have more free empty bottles, and can make another batch and bottle it without getting more bottles, which in turn means my apartment doesn't become a sea of full beer bottles.

Why can't you make 1 batch, wait until you finish it (or are very close) and THEN make a new batch?

Or was this some analogy? Because it makes no sense.

Re:The power of p2p?

[aussie_a]

And yet, somehow, all of these people with bandwidth limits still manage to upload with their torrents.

That's because they're either:
a) Paying too much for bandwidth they don't use and so should save their money
OR
b) Have a time period in which downloads aren't included
OR
c) Have a plan where uploads aren't included in the bandwidth allocation and actually do have unlimited uploads.

Maybe you should consider reducing how much you download a little so that you can contribute to others ability to get a file? You know, "sharing", the very philosophy that underpins bittorrent.

I'm on a limited budget. I'm not going to give money away that I could put to better uses. If you can afford to give money to strangers who aren't in poverty, then kudos to you.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast is not Cingular.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you could probably sell the 3 Apples and buy 5 Ubuntus

Re:The power of p2p?

[stonedcat]

Imagine a beowolf cluster of Watermelons!

Re:The power of p2p?

[dotancohen]

If I'm going to be hungry later, and my apple supply isn't going to be refreshed until further down the road, you bet your ass I'd refuse to share.

I knew it was only a matter of time before the Apple fanbois got a hold of this thread.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll trade you for my three seashells.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Anonymous Coward]

You Fail At Funny

Re:The power of p2p?

[Kjella]

Hardware? Last I checked Ubuntu didn't run on fairie wings and pixie dust, though I haven't checked the 8.10 feature list.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Shikaku]

Except you don't know how many apples you have left, and if you try to take too many, you never get any more apples again, EVER.

American spirit indeed.

Re:The power of p2p?

[drachenstern]

No, he succeeded at Funny, you FAIL at HUMOR

Re:The power of p2p?

[bluefoxlucid]

Why can't you make 1 batch, wait until you finish it (or are very close) and THEN make a new batch?

Because one batch might be a 10% alcohol content Imperial IPA with toffee and caramel undertones; another might be a 7% ABV ginger saison with a strong bite and spicy Cascade hop aroma; another may be a thick black stout with a coffee-like backing due to Patent Black Malt; and another might be kolsch. Do you even drink beer?

Re:The power of p2p?

[aussie_a]

Do you even drink beer?

No, no I don't. All I see is someone throwing money away.

Re:The power of p2p?

[node 3]

Because one batch might be a 10% alcohol content Imperial IPA with toffee and caramel undertones; another might be a 7% ABV ginger saison with a strong bite and spicy Cascade hop aroma; another may be a thick black stout with a coffee-like backing due to Patent Black Malt; and another might be kolsch. Do you even drink beer?

Do you?

Re:The power of p2p?

[node 3]

Why can't you make 1 batch, wait until you finish it (or are very close) and THEN make a new batch?

Clearly he likes making beer.

Or was this some analogy? Because it makes no sense.

It makes a lot of sense. Some people like making a lot of beer, and sharing it, just as some people like to share their excess bandwidth.

Every family of sufficient size tends to have someone who likes to can preserves, or hunt or fish, where the product of their hobbies exceed their needs, which they share amongst friends and family.

I'm somewhat baffled by the notion that creating an excess and sharing it is somehow bad or irrational.

Re:The power of p2p?

[node 3]

I'm on a limited budget. I'm not going to give money away that I could put to better uses. If you can afford to give money to strangers who aren't in poverty, then kudos to you.

This attitude makes your life poorer than the loss of money would have made it.

I'm not saying you should give away money, or anything specific like that. Perhaps you really can't afford to (unlikely given you can afford to post on slashdot, but even so...). What I'm saying is that such a selfish attitude, with no sense of charity or sharing (even on a small or seemingly inconsequential scale, like that of bittorrent sharing), truly limits certain aspects of life.

Re:The power of p2p?

[node 3]

i was commenting on the statement of 'using the power of p2p'.

The power of p2p, in this case, is not being a dick and helping share an OS that was given to you for free.

Yes, there are direct download links, and yes, you're free to use them, and eschew p2p altogether. There are plenty of practical reasons to do so. But doing so because "the bandwidth is mine, mine, MINE!!!!" makes you a dick.

Re:The power of p2p?

[vux984]

You're saying someone got fat by eating 3 apples within a month?

That plus everything else he eats.

Remember; his criteria for eating something is not based on whether he is hungry but whether it is his to eat.

We can only hope he doesn't have a costco card. I hear they sell ketchup and mustard by the gallon.

Re:The power of p2p?

[aussie_a]

I'm somewhat baffled by the notion that creating an excess and sharing it is somehow bad or irrational.

Well I've never considered making a beer a hobby that imparts enjoyment besides drinking the stuff. But I'll give it to you.

However how the heck is buying an ISP plan that has double the bandwidth you need a hobby?

Re:The power of p2p?

[aussie_a]

unlikely given you can afford to post on slashdot, but even so...

Huh? I can afford an ISP plan that gives me enough bandwidth (but only enough), and yet this makes it impossible for me to afford posting on a free website?

What I'm saying is that such a selfish attitude, with no sense of charity or sharing (even on a small or seemingly inconsequential scale, like that of bittorrent sharing), truly limits certain aspects of life.

If someone can't afford it, they can't afford it. My parents can afford to give money to those in poverty in Africa. I can't. Does this mean I'm somehow selfish?

Re:The power of p2p?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Yep. I prefer our Aussie way. We share our apples with our mates if we can, but mercilessly torment anyone, through cruel teases and jibes, who actually gathers the courage to ask us for them.

Re:The power of p2p?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

When normal people make statements that amount to "I'm not going to send data packets in that electric current running from my house. I might want to save them for later." with a straight face and expect to be taken seriously, clearly, the culture is not particularly sane and rational.

Either that, or at least somewhat intelligent, with a basic grasp of what makes the internet feasible. What, you think electricity will just control itself and form your packets for free? You do? How very sane and rational of you.

Re:The power of p2p?

[node 3]

However how the heck is buying an ISP plan that has double the bandwidth you need a hobby?

Two things:

1. I never called it a hobby, but I'm not going to quibble over terminology. It's not the buying of the bandwidth that's the hobby, it's the running a bittorrent seeder that's the hobby. In this scenario, the extra bandwidth is like the hops and barley.

2. Most people who seed do not need to buy extra bandwidth. It's just surplus to the plan they already have (which may be the cheapest possible, or may be a premium plan that they take advantage of by stopping the seed and playing WoW or whatever).

Re:The power of p2p?

[node 3]

Huh? I can afford an ISP plan that gives me enough bandwidth (but only enough), and yet this makes it impossible for me to afford posting on a free website?

You said you couldn't afford to give people some money. If you can afford a computer, power, housing, and internet, you can almost certainly afford to donate some money. To say you cannot is a lie. To say it would be a burden would be stretching it for, perhaps, $10/month, but that's neither here nor there. The fact is you are extremely wealthy already just by being able to post here from your home.

Much poorer people than you donate their time, money and resources. Don't use "I just barely scrape by" as an excuse. I'm not saying you have to give, but your excuses ring hollow.

If someone can't afford it, they can't afford it. My parents can afford to give money to those in poverty in Africa. I can't. Does this mean I'm somehow selfish?

You can *always* afford to give away money or time or effort of some sort, unless you are literally just barely keeping alive.

I want to reiterate that I'm not saying you must give anything in particular. It's the "it's mine, and I need every little bit that I have", when you almost certainly don't, that's selfish. The problem I'm trying to highlight is not the lack of giving, but the seemingly active desire to not give.

Let's say money truly is that tight for you, and that you pay for bandwidth per megabyte, and it's rather costly. Would you be able to donate a Saturday a month in the community? It's hard to imagine you can't. That doesn't mean you have to. To the contrary, your life is yours to do with as you wish. The problem is you are seeming to react hostilely to the very idea of giving/sharing/donating/volunteering/etc.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is also appropriate that they think in terms of betting their ass - it's used to the beating.

Re:The power of p2p?

[jambox]

If it's 7% or 10% it isn't beer. It's a colonial's bad impression of something you can only buy in Britain.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Anonymous Coward]

Got to wonder if ISP's are actively shooting themselves in the foot with the limitations.

If it were unlimited, even someone as dumb as nurb here could not possibly think he could use it all, so he wouldn't even try to, now, however, he has an attainable goal, to transfer 250GB per month whether or not there is any reason for it, and will do everything in his power to strive for it.

This moron and many more like him would probably be causing a lot less traffic if it were not for the limit.

Re:The power of p2p?

[ShieldW0lf]

I try rather hard to share my beer (which is good), because I acquire beer faster than I drink it. I make 5 gallon batches, and can do 1-2 a month but make fewer than that; as it turns out, over time I collect more and more beer. By sharing my beer, I can run out; this means I have more free empty bottles, and can make another batch and bottle it without getting more bottles, which in turn means my apartment doesn't become a sea of full beer bottles.

Reminds me of first year university. I made beer to save money, 5 dozen beer a week, ready to broach every Monday. Didn't take long before I had way more than I needed and gave it away to guys in residence when they came over to our room for card night. Didn't mind, only cost me 20c a beer.

Except, eventually it reached a point where my beer was running out by Friday night. If I had told them they couldn't have a 20c beer anymore, they would have thought I was a cheap bastard. If I had sold the stuff, aside from it being work and responsibility I didn't want, I would have gotten kicked out of school or worse. So, I just started adding more hops to the mix until it was bitter enough for my personal taste, but too bitter for most people to drink. Then, when friends came on card night with beer, I'd ask why they were buying the things for a buck each when I had them for free. People started explaining that they didn't like my beer, so I told them hey, if you don't like the way I make it, you can buy a bucket and a carboy, borrow my thermometers and hydrometers and whatnot, I'll teach you how to make it, and you can make your own.

By the end of the year, there were 14 of us on my floor in residence brewing off my equipment, making 70 dozen beer a week. And damn, did we throw the best parties on campus. Much better result than selling it or cutting production.

Re:The power of p2p?

[bluefoxlucid]

What if it's 21%? Or 18%?

Re:The power of p2p?

[bluefoxlucid]

Why pay $3/bottle when you can pay 50 cents? I just have a lot to share with friends, that's not throwing money away, not any more than all the bottles of soda I drink ;) (which ring up to a cost higher than the beer...)

Re:The power of p2p?

[Espinas217]

250g and you get cut off is a limitation in my book. If you don't want to use what you paid for, more power to you. I however, want to use what i purchase.

You could be using what you are paing for to contribute to a project which you (and many others) benefit from.

Re:The power of p2p?

[SoulRider]

If I have 3 apples and ubuntu what the hell do I need with you?

Re:The power of p2p?

[DarkEmpath]

Here in Australia we've had limits on most accounts since the beginning, and I still share.

Obviously, not everyone is quite as... narrow as you. Think outside the box, dude.

Re:The power of p2p?

[jambox]

Appalling.

Re:The power of p2p?

[Brieeyebarr]

Fuck, I wish I still had mod points. Mod this funny. This is funny.

This isn't feeling very intrepid to me

[Hasney]

Please could you provide details of where to refund my bandwidth?

but what about...

[TheSHAD0W]

...BitTorrent links to the full install CDs?

That'd take a huge load off their servers...

Bang on Target?

[segedunum]

Well of course it's bang on target. They have a six month release cycle where they release come-what-may without a feature list.

Re:Bang on Target?

[Knuckles]

they release come-what-may without a feature list.

That's just not true, at least the part about "without a feature list".

Re:Bang on Target?

[MadKeithV]

Still, getting a stable release out on the dot is a pretty interesting feat. Microsoft sure didn't manage it with Vista though they kept scrapping announced features.

Re:Bang on Target?

[Paradigm_Complex]

Not true. Ubuntu doesn't take quite as long as Debian does to make sure each release is flawless, but Canonical has been willing to extend deadlines when it found it necessary (eg Dapper Drake).

Re:Bang on Target?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. If you want to call what they released as Intrepid (8.10(, stable. I wouldn't exactly call it that.

I have been using Intrepid for about a month (and am completely up to date as I write this and still experiencing the many crashes of firefox and evolution) I would highly suggest y'all wait for 8.10.1.

Evolution 2.24.0 was a total stinker and 2.24.1 didn't fix what it was supposed to unfortunately.

I have filed the bugs, sent the stack traces and so on and nothing. Zilch.

Do yourself a favor and wait.

Re:Bang on Target?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's hardly a fair comparison. Microsoft write their own software, whereas Canonical take other peoples work and slap a shitty brown theme on it.

Re:Bang on Target?

[zig007]

That's hardly a fair comparison. Microsoft write their own software, whereas Canonical take other peoples work and slap a shitty brown theme on it.

Which, in turn, must be one of the most unfair valuations of Canonicals efforts i have seen to date..
You do have a point, though. That theme of theirs is awfully shitty. :-)

(Go Kubuntu)

Re:Bang on Target?

[essdodson]

Mark patted himself on the back for the last release nailing the release date. From all accounts I've read it was a horrible release and took weeks to shape up into something that people could trust. Reading the comments in this post so far it seems that they've done the same with this release.

Ibex?

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

I guess Iguana was too obvious.

Re:Ibex?

[nacturation]

Indecent Iteration was voted out early on.

Re:Ibex?

[mabhatter654]

They have to live on the Isle of Man or South Africa to make the Ubuntu list of names. Besides Iguana was already used by O'Reilly for something.

Re:Ibex?

[WebCowboy]

I guess Iguana was too obvious.

Perhaps Novel would take issue with a moniker similar to the one used on their distribution for many years now.

Re:Ibex?

[torry_loon]

Where on the Isle of Man will I find a Jackalope?

Re:Ibex?

[camperdave]

Maybe in and around its burrows, in the rocky crags of the southern plains, approximately 60Km from the western shore.

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[mmkkbb]

I have seen others with this issue, and it seems to be related to the driver for a particular wireless chipset. I was able to fix it by setting a cron job to restart the wireless driver every half hour, because the prescribed fix by anonymous internet strangers was to use the latest CVS copy of the rt2500 driver, and that failed.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

But will wifi work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will an AR5007 wireless card work with 8.10 right out of the box? Because I'm a complete beginner trying to switch from Vista to Ubuntu and I've been trying to set up my wireless card in 8.04 but have failed for the past 2 weeks and at least 5-10 attempts.

Most user-friendly Linux distribution my ***...

Re:But will wifi work?

[Blice]

Yes.

There's a brand new atheros driver with the new kernel that has certainly been working it's magic with wireless cards.

Eeepc Netbook Support

[johnsie]

This version of Ubuntu works better on the EEEPC than Hardy did. They have included alot of eeepc modules so less tweaking is needed. If you have a 701 with 4gb, compressing /usr will give you a at least 1gb free space, possibly 2gb. I used this tutorial too do it: http://po-ru.com/diary/linux-liposuction-or-xubuntu-in-under-a-gig-on-the-eee-pc/ The tutorial works on Xubuntu and Ubuntu, possibly Kubuntu but I haven't tried that. Read the comments on that page for extra help.

New features

[apathy maybe]

Personally, despite some wonderful new features, I'm going to stick with 8.04 for a bit, at least until they work out the bugs. Of course, I won't ever be prompted to upgrade to 8.10, because 8.04 is a long term support release. Having a look at the release notes, at least one unacceptable (for me) bug is:

On laptops with Intel 3945 or Intel 4965 wireless chipsets and a killswitch for the wireless antenna, starting the system with the killswitch enabled (i.e., with wireless disabled) will prevent re-enabling the wireless by toggling the killswitch. As a workaround, users should boot the system with the killswitch disabled. A future kernel update is expected to address this issue.

Considering the regression from 7.10 with the wireless lights (it used to be a light would flash when transmitting data, now the light never even shows (known bug)), maybe they should have a long look at their wireless system.

Oh, and the CD eject bug...

Yeah, I would like to have the latest GNOME, and OOo 3 without installing backports, but honestly, I don't think I'll bother.

Re:New features

[Chris Pimlott]

Personally, despite some wonderful new features, I'm going to stick with 8.04 for a bit, at least until they work out the bugs. Of course, I won't ever be prompted to upgrade to 8.10, because 8.04 is a long term support release. Having a look at the release notes, at least one unacceptable (for me) bug is:

On laptops with Intel 3945 or Intel 4965 wireless chipsets and a killswitch for the wireless antenna, starting the system with the killswitch enabled (i.e., with wireless disabled) will prevent re-enabling the wireless by toggling the killswitch. As a workaround, users should boot the system with the killswitch disabled. A future kernel update is expected to address this issue.

This is not a new bug in 8.10 by any means, it's been present since 8.04.

Re:New features

[Knuckles]

Just FYI, you can change the setting to be prompted for all new releases, not just LTS, by changing the setting in Software Sources.

Re the wireless light, this was "fixed" in the new kernel at least for the iwl3945 module. Unfortunately, it is now worse: the light will now indicate traffic, and so will flash all the time for me, which is very annoying (bug filed)

Re:New features

[rantingkitten]

Considering the regression from 7.10 with the wireless lights (it used to be a light would flash when transmitting data, now the light never even shows (known bug)), maybe they should have a long look at their wireless system.

Heh, I didn't know about that. When I switched to 7.04, the blinking light drove me crazy but I learned to deal with it. Now on 8.04 the light isn't on at all, as you said, but I just said "Whatever" and moved along. The wireless light on my laptop is this godawful bright blue LED positioned to shine right in my face anyway, so I'm not crying about its loss, but it's nice to know it's not just my hardware.

Re:New features

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I would like to have the latest GNOME, and OOo 3 without installing backports, but honestly, I don't think I'll bother.

The last time I checked OOo3 isn't included in Intrepid anyways due to it being released to late.

Re:New features

[apathy maybe]

Umm, maybe I misremembered my Intel Wireless chipset number. Either way, I'm not going to upgrade any time soon.

Re:New features

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, despite some wonderful new features, I'm going to stick with 8.04 for a bit

Apathy, maybe?

ps. OOo 3 is not included

Re:New features

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for sharing.

Re:New features

[ryanov]

It's just been fixed, BTW, in 2.6.24-21 I think it was. It doesn't flash like it used to though to correspond to amount of data being sent, it just flashes at a constant rate when data is being sent.

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[skeptikos]

The same happened to me when I upgraded from kernel 2.6.24-19 to 2.6.24-21. I kept the old one, and I boot using the grub menu. The changelog does not show changes in the network driver I use (my card is a Ralink RT2500), so I don't know what the real cause is.

Excellent on Acer One Netbook

[SlashdotOgre]

I initially tried 8.04 on my Acer One and found a lot of basic features required some ugly workarounds. Before I gave up on Ubuntu (was going to do a binary version of Gentoo using my desktop as a build server), I gave 8.10 beta a shot and everything (wifi with ath5k, sound with snd-intel-had, etc.) works out of the box. I'm very satisfied with the 2.6.27 kernel.

Re:Excellent on Acer One Netbook

[Abreu]

Thanks for that info, I have been looking into purchasing an Acer AspireOne.

Re:Excellent on Acer One Netbook

[int19h]

Thanks, nice to know. ArchLinux also works on the Acer Aspire One. Great little machine. :)

Re:Excellent on Acer One Netbook

[aztektum]

Other than having to do a little jiggering with the atheros wifi chip my newly purchased T400 is running it great and has been since the alpha releases.

Re:Excellent on Acer One Netbook

[British]

I just bought one after having too many problems with my EEE PC 701. It blows the EEE out of the water. Great price too. I haven't tried linux on it, but overall, it's a wonderful computer.

Re:Excellent on Acer One Netbook

[Mafia$oft]

Oh it does?

Why then does my Acer One A110L (oh, look, that's the same machine even! Unless you've got 150L...) have issues on 8.10 with permanently non-working internal microphone (no matter what you try) and spotty ath5k wifi (it sorta works, but then sometime later you experience weird connection delays or Even OOPSes or so) and very, very, very problematic SD card reader support (resume may kill your SD partition table even on kernels as new as 2.6.27, and God Help You if you dared putting a swap partition on it even) and sharply reduced SSD performance after resume? (UDMA/33 instead of 66)??

_Usable_ sound support consists of both output _and_ input, you know... (so many people in the Acer One league seem to forget this). And especially given a nice builtin webcam...

I'm going to try ALSA source using module-assistant (that one is said to improve sound situation, but if it isn't fully fixed then I guess I'm going to take the valuable time to augment the realtek-specific patch file for intel-hda to properly support the seemingly unusual Acer One sound peripheral setup).

OK, the situation could certainly be much worse (especially considering an actually usable WLAN), but it's far, FAR from perfect.

Several issues listed here aren't Acer One specific actually (and I expect them to be fixed relatively soon), and the A110L actually is a very nice machine (minus stupid LCD display coating and somewhat lame performance of an SSD, especially in combination with relatively insufficient 512MB).

Re:Excellent on Acer One Netbook

[Mafia$oft]

Microphone support possibly now working: http://git.alsa-project.org/?p=alsa-kernel.git;a=commitdiff;h=8ef355da64ff087b6f26c4c28a14753861e83e4b

An ALC268_ACER_ASPIRE_ONE entry is available in 2.6.28-rc2 patch_realtek.c, too, IOW ALSA git pull request obviously has been handled and I'll now have to test 2.6.28-rc2 to see whether it really works.

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[mcelrath]

This seems to be a problem with 802.11b itself and some base stations, and is usually due to interference. The base station and/or the card drops the connection for ~minutes on a regular basis. I've seen it on windows too. I doubt NetworkManager updates will be able to fix it.

You can try switching to a different channel. Use iwlist eth1 scan to get a list of visible AP's, and select a channel that is not used. Remember that the frequencies overlap so in reality there are only 3 usable channels: 1, 6, and 11.

I would love it if other people had more/better information. It's infuriating that the base station/card drops the connection. It should re-establish it as soon as the interference is gone. It would also be nice to be able to figure out what's going on in the relevant frequency ranges...

"clocks went back last weekend"

[chad.koehler]

The article states that the "clocks went back last weekend". That is not true.

Re:"clocks went back last weekend"

[6Yankee]

What a delightfully US-centric viewpoint...

Re:"clocks went back last weekend"

[Des Herriott]

Linux Format is a UK publication. The clocks did indeed go back last weekend in the UK.

Re:"clocks went back last weekend"

[gsmalleus]

Actually they changed the date the clocks roll back in the US and it isn't until this upcoming weekend.

Re:"clocks went back last weekend"

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux Format is actually a new utility from Microsoft to pre-install Vista.

Re:"clocks went back last weekend"

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually you don't understand what he's talking about. "The clocks went back last weekend" in the UK, where linuxformat.co.uk is based. The US has nothing to do with it. The rest of the world exists. Film at 11.

Re:"clocks went back last weekend"

[Gothmolly]

Slashdot is run by Americans, visited by Americans, often discussing things related to, you guessed it, America.

Sounds like someone is bitter.

Re:"clocks went back last weekend"

[6Yankee]

Not in the slightest - your country sucks just as much as mine :)

Default wallpaper?

[kermit1221]

Based off the screenshots, the desktop looks to me like a bloody faceprint on a cave wall.

Or is it significant of "Bang Head Here" when configuration works like 8.04?

Re:Default wallpaper?

[Abreu]

It is supposed to be a cave painting of an ibex

Re:Default wallpaper?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bang Head Here"

That's what she said.

Re:Default wallpaper?

[Anonymous Coward]

Based off the screenshots, the desktop looks to me like a bloody faceprint on a cave wall.

Periodically, you'll hear Tom Hanks shout "Willlllsonnn!" as you work.

Re:Default wallpaper?

[Taxman415a]

Well I actually like the new wallpaper and I'm not one of the people that is bothered by the brown theme. After all I'm never really looking at my desktop background since I have some application or another open if I'm using the computer.

But someone made the comment that the new wallpaper looks like poo smeared on a cave wall, and I can't help but find that funnily appropriate especially considering all the poop jokes about the Ubuntu color scheme.

BitTorrent links

[TheSHAD0W]

Ah, found the answer, thanks AC. Unfortunately Ubuntu put the torrent files on their releases server, which is slow. Here are mirrors:

ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso.torrent
ubuntu-8.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent

Re:BitTorrent links

[TheSHAD0W]

Heh. Found some copies of the torrent files elsewhere on their servers. If you prefer your torrents straight from the horse's mouth...

Re:BitTorrent links

[kokoko1]

Thanks these are the fast mirrors.

Re:GNU?

[nsheppar]

It's because it uses GNU coreutils. Linux is a kernel, not a full OS distribution. You need other tools to actually use it. Those tools are (almost always) GNU coreutils.

It's pedantic, but credit should be given where credit is due. It used to piss me off too until I realized this.

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[Rik Sweeney]

wicd is your friend, I think it's in the Intrepid Repos now*, but if it isn't you can get it from here

http://wicd.sourceforge.net/

*I'm still using Gutsy for some reason...

But will the wifi work?

[Yarcofin]

I'm a beginner trying to make the switch from Vista to Ubuntu, but for the past two weeks and about 5-10 failed attempts, I've been trying to get my AR5007 wireless card to work in Ubuntu 8.04 to no avail. Will an AR5007 card work with 8.10 right out of the box? Or else I'm not going to bother with it if I can't even get a internet connection. Most user-friendly distribution of Linux my ***...

Re:But will the wifi work?

[Knuckles]

Will an AR5007 card work with 8.10 right out of the box? Or else I'm not going to bother with it if I can't even get a internet connection.

Yes: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EeePC/Fixes

Most user-friendly distribution of Linux my ***...

What can Ubuntu do it the kernel did not support it in earlier versions? Go complain to your hardware manufacturer.

Re:But will the wifi work?

[Trelane]

Most user-friendly distribution of Linux my ***...

You were doing quite well up until this point. Generally, blanket insults (particularly one that blithely ignores highly salient details relevant to the situation) will turn people away from giving you help with the project you're insulting. If you want help, please be nice. Otherwise, you will only spark a flamewar.

Re:But will the wifi work?

[Yarcofin]

Sorry... I guess what I meant is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of information or support for complete beginners who are trying to switch from windows to linux. Maybe I'm wrong, or it just isn't "dumbed down enough". I'm just frustrated that I tried installing ndiswrapper, madwifi and get nothing but errors (although I'm likely doing something incorrectly, even when following instructions in the below links detail-for-detail...) http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=766169 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=766529 http://madwifi.org/ticket/1679 http://blog.linuxoss.com/2008/05/ubuntu-804-enabling-atheros-ar5007-based-wireless/ http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=680209 None of those worked.

Re:But will the wifi work?

[Trelane]

Is OK. I'm just glad you're not intentionally trolling. :)

Going over the relevant bug (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/intrepid/+source/linux-restricted-modules-2.6.24/+bug/182489) it looks like the answer is "yes, but there's a twist". The driver was included, but turned out to cause more problems than it solved, but the release window closed too soon. So the solution is to install the 'linux-backport-modules' package for intrepid (http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=linux-backports-modules-intrepid). If you can't connect to the 'net to get the package, you can download it manually at http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/i386/linux-backports-modules-2.6.27-7-generic/download by clicking on one of the mirror links. This page was found from http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=linux-backports-modules-intrepid by making assumptions about your system, namely that it was a desktop system (click on "intrepid" in "intrepid (devel): Backported drivers for generic kernel image"), that it was 32-bit system instead of AMD 64-bit (the "i386" link). You'll need to go through the selection process again if you use a different system than what I assumed, or if you wait too long and there's a kernel update (because you'd end up downloading the package for the old kernel instead of the package for the new kernel, and it would fail to install). HTH.

Re:But will the wifi work?

[Yarcofin]

Your assumptions were right, I have an AR50007 wireless card, Compaq Presario A900 laptop running 32-bit version of Ubuntu 8.04 that I installed using Wubi. But I don't understand what you said either :P. Not sure where I need to put the linux backport modules or what I do with them, but thanks for your help... I'll save all the links and take my laptop to my computer-savvy programmer friend once I get back to my hometown and let him sort through it. I think most of my problems is because I don't have something called "build essential", and that's what is preventing things from installing. I'm going to go find a copy of that and try to get it installed and see if it helps.

Re:But will the wifi work?

[Trelane]

But I don't understand what you said either :P. Not sure where I need to put the linux backport modules or what I do with them, but thanks for your help

Sorry, my bad.

Once Intrepid is installed, you will need to go into System -> Administration and select 'Synaptic Package Manager'. Once synaptic has started, search (Ctrl+f or Edit -> Search) for "linux-backports-modules-intrepid". Mark "linux-backports-modules" for installation by double-clicking on it, and it should automatically select the correct packages for you to install. Then click the check mark on the toolbar to accept the changes and install. If you don't have network access, you'll have to download the correct package manually, and then perform the above procedure to ensure you keep the package up-to-date.

I'll save all the links and take my laptop to my computer-savvy programmer friend once I get back to my hometown and let him sort through it.

This is likely a good idea; it's usually easier to help when you have the computer right in front of you. :)

I think most of my problems is because I don't have something called "build essential", and that's what is preventing things from installing

http://packages.ubuntu.com/nl/intrepid/build-essential says "This package contains an informational list of packages which are considered essential for building Debian packages. This package also depends on the packages on that list, to make it easy to have the build-essential packages installed." It's unlikely that installing this package will be of immediate use to you. Rather, it would help if you have to compile a driver yourself (iirc, this is the situation prior to Intrepid).

It seems to me that the easiest way to get the AR5007 to work is to install Intrepid and then install the linux-backports-modules through Synaptic, as I outlined above.

Re:But will the wifi work?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can always try it..

And, it is free, meaning that you can't expect "everything" to work fine.

Re:But will the wifi work?

[Airborne-ng]

I suggest you give it a try. I wiped the 8.04 Dell version of Ubuntu that came with my Mini last night and when I reinstalled my own image of 8.04 the wireless card wouldnt work. I connected it to my home connection and upgraded to 8.10 and it worked right away and saw all connections within range.
Hope this helps.

Re:But will the wifi work?

[aquatone282]

Brother, I feel your pain. I tried to get several wireless cards to work to no avail. The Ubuntu forums are flooded with requests for help to get various wireless cards working.

Instead I loaded Ubuntu 8.04 onto a desktop machine, plugged it into my wireless router, and use NoMachine's free server and client (like Remote Desktop for Linux) to connect to the desktop from an old laptop running Windows XP Home edition.

Of course, YMMV.

Re:But will the wifi work?

[u38cg]

Heh. I think OP was just venting. I know how he feels. An 8.04 update a month ago broke noapic on my install. If I try to boot noapic, kernel panic. If I boot without it, my mouse doesn't work and my wireless is dead. Despite lots of help from the forums and IRC, nobody has gotten to the bottom of it, and after a month I am feeling OP's pain.

Re:But will the wifi work?

[nem75]

Will an AR5007 card work with 8.10 right out of the box?

Again: Live. CD. Just find it out.

Re:But will the wifi work?

[DerWulf]

troll? Yeah, I'd be sad too if my fav operating system didn't support these basic functions :)

Re:But will the wifi work?

[westyvw]

Ill give you a suggestion. Skip Ubuntu and try something else, Mepis, Sidux, Pure Debian, etc. Ubuntu has always been the slow, works sorta today may or may not work tomorrow distro for me.

Re:But will the wifi work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will an AR5007 card work with 8.10 right out of the box? Or else I'm not going to bother with it if I can't even get a internet connection.

Try these instructions, it worked for me . . . http://www.shantanubhadoria.com/techno-blab/69-setup-wi-fi-on-compaq-presario-c700-c770tu-atheros-ar242x-with-ubuntu.html

Re:But will the wifi work?

[Aaron5367]

I'm going to remove all my mod points here to answer what I had to do, to get my AR5007 to work on multiple Linux distributions.

What I did (this might be over your head, but I don't have time to explain every bit of it) was get the latest madwifi build from the svn. I don't know if Ubuntu keeps those modules in their repos, but you might want to check unstable for them. The latest ones support my AR5007, so I'd assume they would work for you.

And really now, before we throw slander lets see how 'easy' it is to install Vista on my Acer Aspire 5520. The one time I reinstalled it I had to download every driver from the manufacturer's website (on a different computer, as Vista didn't recognize the chipset, which is nearly everything). So my Linux installs have been VERY easy compared to my Windows installs (XP wasn't any fun either).

Re:But will the wifi work?

[DerWulf]

Yes, more down moderation please: Wireless support in linux sucks! 3D graphics support sucks! Sound support on linux sucks! Those are facts and if you don't tell new users who are looking at linux for desktop use this you should be ashamed of yourself ...

Re:But will the wifi work?

[fxkr]

I recommend you try the Live-CD.

Re:But will the wifi work?

[ryanov]

Is there some good reason for erasing the thing that the manufacturer had worked on to make sure it functioned and then erasing it to replace it with the same thing NOT tweaked for your hardware? I'd love to move TO the Dell image if I could... but the Latitude D620 never had one.

Re:But will the wifi work?

[Airborne-ng]

Yea there is a good reason, all the flaws that the dell image had. First off, it would not see all 16GB of the SSD, only 3.4GB. Talked to tech support for hours and they confirmed this is a problem they have had with other customers but the only resolution is they would send me a discounted external CD drive to wipe their image. Another issue I had was when I wanted to try out the 8.10 build I couldn't even load it from terminal with update-manager -d because they had a custom update manager that would only search for new updates....not developer updates. In the end I was all too happy to get that POS OS off my laptop and get true ubuntu on there. It's working great now.

noooooooooo

[pato101]

Thanks, Slashdot, now I see why my upgrade process has speed down from 200KB/s to 15KB/s and going down :((
Seriously, I knew this would happen :P
I should consider cleaning up my packages, since my download is up to 2Gb!!!!

Re:noooooooooo

[Aladrin]

Or you could considering going with a torrent instead. Apparently the new CDs have an upgrade feature to speed things along.

Re:noooooooooo

[chill]

As opposed to those of us using a torrent, who saw the speed to UP significantly. Nothing like a lot of seeders to saturate your download bandwidth.

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[Knuckles]

Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect issue

Um, how are we supposed to know about what issues you have? Did you file a bug? Then check its status. Otherwise, well, pray.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[mortonda]

I'm sorry that you had such a bad experience, but I really find stories like this to be odd. I haven't had an install of any distro fail to recognize hardware since... oh I think about 1998. Maybe 2000. And that was due to a buggy 3com card that had problems in windows too.

The last version or two of ubuntu have even gone beyond what I expected - my HP 7310 network printer even works with the scanner and card reader features - Ubuntu just found it automatically.

If we're going to be putting anecdotal evidence out here, I have to toss in a vote for "I had no driver problems at all"

OTOH, I have had quite a few instances of windows drivers not working, particularly printers and video card drivers.

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[thtrgremlin]

You might not be experiencing the same bug I was, but if you are, this is what I figured out.

Looking through dmesg, I noticed what appeared to be authentication requests. It appeared to be coming from me. Doing a little hunting, it appears that a lot of routers do not support ipv6 in addition to a few wireless drivers not fully supporting ipv6. Either way, browsing would be fine, until an ipv6 connection was attempted. This would return a "connection not found" type error, and resulted in deauthentication, technically the right course of action.

Long story short, and from reading about other people having similar problems, opened up /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and add the line 'blacklist ipv6'. My wireless worked fine after this, when previously it would disconnect somewhere instantly, and rarely staying up as long as 2 minutes. Hope this helps.

Re:GNU?

[Knuckles]

GNU/Linux

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[Anonymous Coward]

Or how about the "I know the SSID and the WPA key, but I'm going to refuse to connect to the non-broadcasting AP anyway" bug. There's nothing quite like having to type in a 64-character WPA key every single time the laptop boots.

Yes, the wireless network is listed in the saved list. No, you can't get it to connect from that list, you have to create a manual connection and reenter everything. No, you can't copy-paste the WPA key in, that doesn't work for some reason.

Of course, the laptop could boot a lot less frequently if only suspend or hibernate worked. Sadly, while Ubuntu is quite capable of shutting the machine off, it can't quite get the hang of resuming.

Tracker indexes the torrents.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://torrent.ubuntu.com:6969

download torrent of your choice from the tracker itself. It will be a lot faster.

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel your pain. chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf should not be necessary but it insists on overriding the regular file permissions :-(

Nvidia works now?

[MMC Monster]

Anyone know if the nvidia proprietary drivers work now? They weren't working as of Monday of this week. (I got burnt with installing the release candidate on my testing machine. Go figure.)

Re:Nvidia works now?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are talking about the legacy drivers, they were released in beta by Nvidia just yesterday. According to Nvidia they have "preliminary support" for Xorg server 1.5, so they should work with Intrepid, though I don't know how well. They'll probably be included in the first round of intrepid updates if they're stable enough.

Re:Nvidia works now?

[tlacuache]

Guess it depends on which driver you're talking about. I upgraded to the RC last week and mine never stopped working. From my glxinfo: OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation OpenGL renderer string: Quadro FX 1600M/PCI/SSE2 OpenGL version string: 2.1.2 NVIDIA 177.80

No ethernet card detected?

[nicks,nicks,nicks!]

Isn't that exactly the kind of situation something called the "Live CD" was invented?So that you could check out whether all your hardware works before you install.Or was that too newbie for you?

Re:No ethernet card detected?

[blazerw11]

I didn't do a LiveCD because I did not overwrite my Windows partition, just tried to install on a separate partition

As a quick test (nobody answer for him), how did you do the install without booting the LiveCD?

Re:No ethernet card detected?

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Isn't that exactly the kind of situation something called the "Live CD" was invented?So that you could check out whether all your hardware works before you install.Or was that too newbie for you?

That doesn't (or didn't) always work, strangely. I can't remember which version it was, but I booted the LiveCD of Ubuntu and I could browse the Internet just fine, but when I actually installed it... nothing.

Re:No ethernet card detected?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that newbish. Previous Ubuntu LiveCDs have detected ethernet fine and then required configuration after install. Also Ibex drops 3D support for Geforce4 and under, and AMD chips without SSE - meaning you don't know your Ibex won't run GoogleEarth until after install, even though it worked fine in Heron. A LiveCD is not a complete test of hardware.

They could warn people about the 3D issue on the LiveCD with a script involving 'lshw' and 'grep -o sse /proc/cpuinfo', but they don't. Also this isn't listed in System Requirements. It's buried in the release notes.

With Ibex, a whole lot of people with older equipment will do a full install, then spend some time on the forums until they finally find out they have to forget it and install Heron all over again. Bit of a poor show on Ubuntu's part, though I do understand the technical reasons they have for moving on.

Re:No ethernet card detected?

[eennaarbrak]

I'm sure using a Live CD would have helped him understand the problems better, but his central point is that even Ubuntu still has compatibility issues, and the primary reason for this is because the Linux community is splintered into different communities, none of which has enough of the market share to justify the resources (by vendours) to fix these problems.

Re:No ethernet card detected?

[Doctor O]

how did you do the install without booting the LiveCD?

Using the Alternate Install CD which has a text installer.

On old hardware, that saves the 5-10 minutes you spend listening to the ages-old CD-ROM while the machine loads and loads and loads to bring up the GUI you don't need for an installation.

You fail it. (Unless you were solely aiming for a +1, Funny, of course.)

Which one for a netbook?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am currently on an EEE 900A as my only machine (year abroad and saving on money), so I am looking for something "real" to put onto this as I have some Issues with Xandros (lack of repositories, ssh not working, lots of non-standard packages, ...).

Currently I have Mandriva 2009.0 in my sights - is there a reason why I should consider Ubuntu?

The machine is used to do quite a diverse set of tasks from compiling FORTRAN 90 to getting photos off my Canon 590 IS

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[Jaysyn]

How the hell is this offtopic? Stupid mods...

Sorry, I don't know the answer to your question, rikkards. I probably will whenever my laptop gets back from Acer.

The biggest most awesome change in Intrepid!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that GTK bug where if your mouse cursor is on a button and the button becomes greyed out so you can't click it and then it becomes normal again but your mouse cursor has been in it the whole time but now you can't click the button even though it's normal now so you have to move your mouse pointer OUT of the button and then back into it again to get the button to work? You know that bug? The one that makes you want to rip out your hair and scream?

Well it's fixed. Whoever is the awesome person who fixed that is my hero. Someone give that person a fucking cookie.

Re:The biggest most awesome change in Intrepid!!!

[siDDis]

Finally, that bug has annoyed me for a long time, especially when I tried to search with the synaptic package manager.

Re:The biggest most awesome change in Intrepid!!!

[ericrost]

OK, that one is sadly enough to make me start rethinking my LTS strategy.... grr.. stupid bugfixes.

Re:The biggest most awesome change in Intrepid!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm partial to oatmeal raisin, but a decent chocolate chip will do. Thanks!

Re:The biggest most awesome change in Intrepid!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen

Re:The biggest most awesome change in Intrepid!!!

[NereusRen]

You were modded funny, but this may be the most interesting change I've read so far. I would have described that bug in exactly the same way... I can't believe how silly some of the button, toolbar, and other interaction semantics in GTK are, compared to Qt. If they're changing them, I'm interested!

Re:The biggest most awesome change in Intrepid!!!

[Michael Wardle]

I assume it's the same as this bug: Red Hat bug 468107 - gdm buttons don't work at first.

Do you know the upstream bug number?

Re:The biggest most awesome change in Intrepid!!!

[emj]

The GTK button bug was killed at just seven years old.

Re:The biggest most awesome change in Intrepid!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha ... I know that bug exactly. I hated it so much! Glad it is fixed now :)

Re:The biggest most awesome change in Intrepid!!!

[spaceman375]

THIS, Oh SO this.
(Does a "Me too!" count as a virtual mode point?)

Re:GNU?

[incripshin]

I understand that, but this is an RMS vs the world issue. He was on OpenBSD talk a year ago or so, and he claimed that he couldn't recommend OpenBSD as a free operating system because it contained non-free software. The real issue, it turned out, was that if you install the ports system (a manual process), then you can install things like Opera. Non-free software is restricted to the ports system and is not available via the CD or FTP. He didn't know any of this, because he only heard it from somebody else (who probably didn't know what they were talking about), and subsequently blew it out of proportion. I really like a quote from Dramatica:

Now, RMS seems to spend his time avoiding soap and bitching that Linux should be called 'GNU/Linux' since it 'uses GNU software, and Linux is just the kernel.' If RMS had actually spent more time working on projects like HURD instead of writing the GNU Software Manifesto he may have a right to bitch.

Also, see the italic text here. Bottom line: don't listen to this guy.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Jeng]

Without knowing what equipment you were loading it on its hard to say whether it was the software or the hardware.

Often times the bottom of the barrel manufactures do not follow standards to shave some bucks off the price, when they do that they only test on windows. Also, was the network card enabled in the BIOS?

Now though, if you were installing windows on the computer you would not have the network drivers at all which would leave you in the same boat. Ubuntu will at least provide drivers that work on almost all network adapters, windows not so much.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Jaysyn]

Just curious.

Did you try running MemTestx86 on the PC that failed to boot? The two times I've had any issue with Ubuntu, I was running buggy memory modules. Windows would load & run (for a while) on them but Ubuntu hated them.

Is PulseAudio still there?

[malevolentjelly]

Are the timidity packages still broken in amd64?

How about Wine?

Will my cardreaders be detected as CD-ROMs and fail to mount because they're not ISO 9660 formatted?

Have they sorted out their issues with DAAP and iTunes 7 yet?

Does networkmanager still corrupt its own configuration files?

Is their compositing layer still ugly and shaky on middle-end modern hardware? ...if not, doesn't seem like News to me.

Bottom line: Are they still advertising features that don't really work properly?

Someone let me know when this platform grows up. I'll stick with Vista in the interim.

Re:Is PulseAudio still there?

[DittoBox]

I know you're trolling but I run the compositor with no issues on my Dell Mini 9. Yes, with shitty integrated graphics. That's on 8.04, to boot.

Maybe you have shitty card readers because all of mine are detected as, well, usb drives when something gets plugged in. In fact it detects them as CF, SD etc.

Re:Is PulseAudio still there?

[malevolentjelly]

Are you seriously blaming my hardware for problems with Ubuntu? Like Ubuntu is perfect, but my standard desktop hardware is just flawed? Boy I'd love to hear that from Canonical.

They were integrated card readers in an HP Desktop, for one. Windows didn't seem to have any issues understanding it. Furthermore, I'm comparing the ubuntu compositor performance on my GeForce 6200 LE to how it ran in Vista and Mac OS X. I mean, if it runs better in Vista, what is their excuse?

Re:Is PulseAudio still there?

[PastaAnta]

Have you tried timidity in the new AMD64 live CD?

Yes, how about Wine?

Have you tried how your cardreaders will be mounted in the new live CD?

Have you tried to search for DAAP and iTunes on https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu ?

Have you reported any bugs for networkmanager on https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug and made people aware of the problem?

How do you define ugly, shaky and middle-end modern? ...if not, doesn't seem possible to answer to me.

Bottom line: What have you done to help to get the features work properly?

Someone let me know when malevolentjelly grows up. I'll stick to reading other comments in the interim.

Re:Is PulseAudio still there?

[malevolentjelly]

Bottom line: What have you done to help to get the features work properly?

So I have to take an active role in finishing the operating system I am supposed to be productive on? This product is clearly not yet ready for end-users.

Re:Is PulseAudio still there?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a laptop with ATI x1100 integrated graphics. Compositing on Vista is smooth and fast, no tearing (hugely important to me), slow downs or ugly artifacts. Compiz on the same hardware can't get the refresh rate right and will not use vsync so moving windows causes massive tearing. Windows turn completely black when minimizing/maximizing until they reach full screen. The smoothness and consistency isn't as good as Vista. When I try and scroll down the front page of slashdot I get a good 2-3 seconds of lag between when I move the scroll wheel and when the page moves down. If I move the wheel up and down quickly for a few second and then stop the page keeps moving for 5-10 seconds.

I have other problems but if the desktop composition worked as well as Vista I'd like Ubuntu enough to use it.

Re:Is PulseAudio still there?

[domatic]

I'm going to kick myself for responding to someone like you but the compositor problem is an Nvidia issue. NVidia has long had problems properly implementing the RENDER X extension. They claim to have fixed it in the latest version of their driver (heard that before) but it came out too late for Intrepid. If you're going to hurl venom then at least have enough clue to hurl it at the correct targets.

Re:Is PulseAudio still there?

[domatic]

So I have to take an active role in finishing the operating system I am supposed to be productive on?

Well if it wouldn't bother you terribly. It's called "community". Now nobody expects patches from non-coders but I've submitted bugreports (now that is a "bugreport" not an expletive or insult ridden "flame". There is a difference.) to various projects and actually seen fixes not so long after.

Re:Is PulseAudio still there?

[LarsG]

Just like people hurling venom at Vista should hurl it at NVidia/Creative/etc instead? Yup, I can definitely see people making that error being marked as troll/flamebait on /.

Installing updated 3rd party drivers in Linux is also often more difficult than in Windows, so I hope Linux distributions would get better at including updated drivers in the standard distro repositories.

Re:Is PulseAudio still there?

[malevolentjelly]

Well if it wouldn't bother you terribly. It's called "community". Now nobody expects patches from non-coders but I've submitted bugreports (now that is a "bugreport" not an expletive or insult ridden "flame". There is a difference.) to various projects and actually seen fixes not so long after.

You can do the same thing with Windows. The difference is that it started out in a more working state. The system was productive when I got it, whereas most issues were with third party applications or drivers. In the case of ubuntu, they are central to the basic desktop.

Re:Is PulseAudio still there?

[malevolentjelly]

An icon appears in the corner of the screen informing me that there are proprietary drivers available. I need these drivers to get the full functionality of my graphics card, otherwise I have no 3d graphics, thus no compositing.

At what point does it tell me that my compositing performance will be retarded when using Nvidia drivers? Aren't these graphics cards common enough? I found my compositing performance to be better in opensolaris with the same system.

The point is this is not my responsibility as an end user-- it's functioning but the performance is poor and overall lacks polish. When things only work 80% of the way, my response is not to write a bug but to feel like I am using a low quality system.

For those of you who might be involved in the open source community pushing products like this out with "RELEASE" written on them, you deserve all the venom that comes your way. In the real software world, these sorts of problems garner complaints or "feedback", the correct response is not to be defensive, but to apologize for your oversight and give us a timeline for when it will be working.

Now when can I expect a working PulseAudio and decent compositing?... ...or are we not competing in the same league as Windows and Mac here? I thought Ubuntu wanted to be the big #3.

Re:Is PulseAudio still there?

[domatic]

Just like people hurling venom at Vista should hurl it at NVidia/Creative/etc instead? Yup, I can definitely see people making that error being marked as troll/flamebait on /.

How is that an error? Vista's main problem these days is being a pig rather than being crashy. Sure it runs more or less acceptably if you have one of the spendier ATI or NVidia cards, a newer SATA drive, and 4GB of ram. The cute thing is that XP flies on a machine that chugs along with Vista.

As for Linux drivers, in-tree drivers mostly Just Work. I see little reason to withhold the necessary specs to create a driver even if the vendor doesn't want to open source the one they already have. Come to think of it, NVidia is problematical there too.

Re:Is PulseAudio still there?

[domatic]

The much maligned Intel drivers support the necessary infrastructure properly and even the almost as maligned ATI drivers are better at it. I solved the problem for myself by just doing away with the eyecandy (I do this on Windows systems too). I never noticed that it made windows open, close, and minimize and so forth any better. It just looks really cool when it works and I just disable PulseAudio and use dmix. That little step isn't any worse than some of the things I've had to do get Windows boxes working.

As for FOSS being especially deserving of venom, I spend more of my time than I want to think about helping Windows and Mac users with their issues in my day job. Winmodems and some AC'97 chipsets are especially cute to deal with. They can even be cuter to deal with than video drivers in Linux. But then Windows is the epitome of polish now isn't it? And those driver vendors have no blame now do they?

Yeah there are things about some FOSS software that suck. You know what? Windows can and does suck at least as badly and nobody is making you use anything.

Re:Is PulseAudio still there?

[malevolentjelly]

But then Windows is the epitome of polish now isn't it? And those driver vendors have no blame now do they?

Oh, ha-ha! Yes! Very funny. Windows is awful and all that. But here we've got Windows Media Foundation in place of pulse audio- which is working fine- a wireless/networking system that has no major complaints, a compositing layer that works with all graphics cards of the DirectX 9 variety, proper handling of card reader devices, and what's more- compatibility with all the major F/OSS included in Ubuntu, from OpenOffice to Pidgin.

So it's not really funny, is it? It's just sad. Most issues with Windows come up when abusive third party software or drivers are applied. With the linux system, I can find issues with just what comes on the Canonical-supported LiveCD! Wow!

So, if one has a clean copy of Windows and enough self control not to download every single application that is advertised to them in a banner ad, they might find a far more put together and professional system than this, Ubuntu, which is supposed to topple the Microsoft empire.

I can see why Apple is making more progress in that.

Is there a torrent of the torrent?

[pturpin]

I can't seem to even get through to download the torrent.

Re:GNU?

[incripshin]

Icon.

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Good luck with that

[SleptThroughClass]

I wish you luck. My upgrade doesn't recognize my sound card, Pidgin starts but displays nothing, and Totem hangs (MPlayer does work). And the network configuration tool shows both wired and Bluetooth links, but it doesn't seem to actually use the Bluetooth link for data (even if I disconnect the wired LAN cable). Sure do look purty, though.

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Works for me!

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Telling us this is kind of useless without letting us know what system specs you have. Did you at least file a bug report?

Re:Good luck with that

[Fnyar]

Make sure it's being invoked like so:

pidgin --display :0.0

Or at least that's what I discovered works under 8.04 (and probably 8.10 - upgrading now).

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Always wait until the first round of updates comes around before updating :)

Re:Good luck with that

[cr_nucleus]

I for one never ever liked the idea of a direct upgrade, whatever the OS.
What i do for linux is a parallel install on another parition.
I do keep some unpartionned space to be able to do it. I also have my home folder on a partition of its own.

If anything goes wrong, i just get back to my previous install.

Re:Good luck with that

[Jayjay2]

I'm just going to take a stab in the dark with your Pidgin problem since I experienced something similar. I'd start Pidgin, it seem to do something by the looks of the hard drive light, and then nothing would appear on-screen. Turns out the app had started in a minimised mode, and a little icon had actually appeared on my toolbar. I think it was the green circle. Anyway, not sure if that's your problem but I hope it is that simple.

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

GDM doesn't start with the correct runlevel, half the hardware is broken and it starts up slow as beans.

so what does ubuntu server have over debian

[systematical]

I've been a Debian user since 2005 and have used it for running various servers. I have been pleased with its performance etc. So why would I switch to Ubuntu server edition? Does it give me a nice GUI to manage more difficult things like using samba as a domain controller? Easier management of email? How about apache, do I get a GUI that will allow me to forget about mod-rewrite rules? Just wondering, cause if so then I'd be willing to give it a shot, otherwise I'll stuck to managing my Debian servers via the shell.

Re:so what does ubuntu server have over debian

[wikinerd]

I'm also a Debian user, both for laptops/desktops and servers, and I love it, and I see absolutely no reason to use Ubuntu, even on the laptops and desktops. Debian works perfectly on all of my machines. Plus, I prefer to administer all of my machines via the shell rather than a GUI, especially the servers. When I want to change something I just emacs its config textfile, and for a few things I have written some bash scripts to help me. To me this is much easier than trying to decide where to click my trackball on a bloated fscking graphical menu (yeah even GNOME is bloated in some places). By the way I also prefer textfiles over interactive textmode administrative "helpers" that in the end they only make your life difficult rather than helping you.

Re:so what does ubuntu server have over debian

[bbn]

Ubuntu and Debian are related siblings. I consider Ubuntu to be what Debian stable should have been.

The answer is no. Anything Ubuntu creates will be backported to Debian. Go with Debian if you want all the new stuff faster. Go with Ubuntu if you want a stable system, yet updated more often than Debian stable.

I also believe Ubuntu brings more QA to the table. They put considerable resources into making sure each release is good.

Re:so what does ubuntu server have over debian

[aok]

The only reason I am slowly converting my Debian servers to Ubuntu LTS releases is because they are supported longer.

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if they fixed your problem, but my wireless started getting dropped as soon as I updated and rebooted. Did some digging, and it's likely the new kernel version, and not anything with Network Manager, but that doesn't change how annoying it is. It usually only happens with a hidden ESSID, but even when it's in the middle of an active transfer.

KDE vs Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it why Ubuntu is so populair, Kubuntu (with KDE as window manager and not Gnome) is faster/stabler/more mature imho.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[mean0machine]

I second that! I keep hearing people complaining about bugs in Ubuntu, bugs which have been fixed eons ago or that were not there in the first place in Kubuntu (KDE). Hooray for Kubuntu and KDE!

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Xtifr]

A. neither KDE nor Gnome is a window manager.
B. I'd try Kubuntu myself, if it weren't for the unfortunate fact that it uses KDE, the absolute worst desktop environment it has ever been my displeasure to encounter. :)

Not that Gnome is going to win any awards from me. It's got a pretty heavy dose of awfulness too, in my opinion. But at least its developers seem to understand that configuration and options are two different things. KDE, IMO, is for the just-enough-knowledge-to-be-dangerous crowd, while Gnome is better for both the newbies and the experts, neither of whom want to be distracted with a thousand options at every step.

In the mean time, I'm still proudly maintaining my .fvwmrc files, which I have to tweak every few years or so. :)

In real news Ultimate Edition 2 for Inrepid is out

[shareme]

In real news Ultimate Edition 2 for Intrepid is out... GAMES!

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[account_deleted]

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Re:GNU?

[nsheppar]

Oh, I'm not in any way advocating listening to him on a general scale. I was just providing reasoning why people say GNU/Linux. I didn't actually mention RMS in my previous post.

Drifting further away from the unix ideology

[Theril]

Again Intrepid seems to take the progression of and Linux desktops in general: abandon the traditional and well proven unix ideology, where simple tools do well defined tasks well. Instead things "Just work" meaning that when they don't work, they "Just don't work" and the only solution is to wait for new release. Yes yes, you have the source, but hacking around all of the "Just works" bugs isn't isn't very feasible even if one had the programming knowledge.

I've been using the prerelease versions of Intrepid for about a month and have witnessed again few cases of the new bloat-methodology.

For example the NetworkManager has been around for a while destroying an architecture that could be comfortably tweaked in command line and config files. Of course I don't have anything against GUIs that simplify this, but in the same time the command line usage has been stripped.

A great example is the new touted 3G automation, which does work quite nicely. However, for more experienced user it seems quite weird as there's no options to set up the network interface or serial device to use. Of course it turns out that this only works on USB devices that are somehow autoprobed probably by HAL (which itself has configurations that few mortals can edit by hand). And this leading the system not supporting 3G over Bluetooth, even if I'd set up the rfcomm serial device myself.

Another amazing way for "Just works" methodology is to write them in the DE itself, not as separate programs. For example in GNOME there's a applet to kill a misbehaving GUI program by clicking it's window (ie a xkill replacement). But of course it runs as part of gnome-panel process (or something like that). Well, when the kill cursor is on it prevents switching VTs (WHY!?) and also jams the whole screen in the process. Now of course the solution is to SSH to the box (because VT switch is prevented) and kill the offending process from command line. But with the new way to do things, there's no single process to kill.

And other great thing is the gconf. Sure it's nice to use from programmer's point of view, but of course it's practically unusable otherwise. With the GUI-editor there's change to find the proper configuration field in reasonable time, but using CLI is nearly impossible. Sure it uses ASCII files to store the data, but these are in some horrible illegible non-commented XML format nesting several directories deep with some "overlaying" stuff so that the offending parameter can be where ever.

It's a fun way to spend time trying to config your screen through gconf when Gnome has decided to screw up your display using XRandr.

These kinds of situations are already everywhere and getting more common by every distribution and DE release. In no time the big open desktop distros reach the "Just doesn't work" level of Windows and OSX.

Please don't get me wrong. I like the new stuff that makes computers simple to use (like automatic networking setup etc). But it really shouldn't be done in expense of flexibility and ability to fix things manually _when_ the automated stuff breaks.

Re:Drifting further away from the unix ideology

[Pebby]

Mod parent up!

Network-Manager pretty much was the huge, gigantic piece of lumber that broke the camel's back for me and generally points out the problem when everything becomes automated: I spent all my time trying to get it to STOP doing what it wanted to automagically do since I didn't want that at all. It made a bunch of automated decisions for me, but I didn't like nor want those decisions.

Things that 'just work' automatically is great when they actually make it work properly or will stop being so automated when the user wants control back. Car analogy time: this is why even cars with automatic transmission have 1st, 2nd, and neutral gears on the shifter in addition to plain old 'Drive.' Computer-assisted anything should be there until we grab the steering wheel, and it should never get in the way of us grabbing the wheel.

Re:Drifting further away from the unix ideology

[Torodung]

Ubuntu is designed with the novice user in mind. It's supposed to "just work."

It's based on Debian, and for a user who's interested in the "UNIX ideology," whatever that is, Debian is your distro. Everything is optional, and *you* make it work.

Ubuntu is doing wonders for Linux desktop usability, unfortunately, usability always means bloat.

--
Toro

Re:Drifting further away from the unix ideology

[westyvw]

Here Here. Ubuntu quickly automates itself to breakage. I am always wondering what surprise is awaiting around the corner, with an odd "I havent seen that before" moment.

Re:Drifting further away from the unix ideology

[Canonical AC]

I'm just going to address your Network Manager comments...

Evidently you are not using a wireless network, or else you would realize that the "architecture that could be comfortably tweaked in command line and config files" is totally useless when you change networks daily, and have to enter wireless passwords.

I used to have 2 shell scripts on my desktop (and my girlfriends laptop), one that would be used to configure the system to use my home network, and one that would be used to configure to use a non-password enabled wireless network. Yeah...that worked well. Hey honey, when you go to the coffee shop, just click on this script here, and when you get home, click on this one.

Network Manager was written for a reason. There was not any other tool that handled networking as well as it does. Trust me, I tried them all, until it was released. Why don't you try uninstalling Network Manager and see how well your laptop works with wireless networks? It can be done, and I did it for years, but I'm glad I don't have to use iwlist anymore, and hand configure /etc/network/interfaces. You want flexibility to do it by hand? Go ahead. It still works.

I'll take the ability to see wireless networks and connect to them in 30 seconds, instead of tweaking 2-3 different configuration files everytime I go to a different wireless access point.

I just don't see how having a proper working network management tool is a bad thing.

Re:Drifting further away from the unix ideology

[Theril]

I am using wireless networks and I'm using NetworkManager to manage them. I also have used them in times when they had to be manually configured using wireless-tools.

The problem here isn't NetworkManager when it, and everything it depends on (eg the Gnome applet), works as needed. I also know that it doesn't prevent confguring using iwlist, iwconfig and dhclient.

The problem is that NetworkManager works mostly as a black box behind a quite simplistic GUI. Why can't it be done the good old way of having a command line tools which NetworkManager uses? D-BUS is nice to program IPC with and allows good interaction between _programs_, but usually at the same time the UI (generally meaning there's only GUI, no flexible CLI as before) is dumbed down. So the actual problem is that I'd like to use the nice features of NetworkManager with control of command line tools and human editable configurations. The jumps in levels of abstraction (in UI) are too large.

The situation is a bit like skipping a tool like dhclient and only having a GUI which would do the magic of reading the DHCP configuration and configuring the interface and on command line one would have to really hack around to configure a network interface using DHCP.

The situation with NetworkManager is still tolerable with ifconfig, wireless-tools and such around and I'm not ranting specifically about NetworkManager. I'm ranting about the trend to skip the flexibility, control and scriptability of command line tools altogether and having the GUI as only interaction and forcing the usage only to the situation that the GUI developer had in mind.

Re:Drifting further away from the unix ideology

[Theril]

I did use Debian for years and updated to Ubuntu at Hoary just to get stuff "Just working". I like when the stuff "Just works". But what I really hate is the "Just doesn't work".

For some reason when stuff is made to "Just work", it's almost always at expense of flexibility and control. Why can't it be implemented so that the default configuration "Just works", but it's still hackable by hand. In fact when Ubuntu started, it was mostly a "Just works" default configuration for Debian.

Re:Drifting further away from the unix ideology

[ericrost]

Yes, but your argument wears thin given that this is simply the DEFAULT config. Want command line tools? USE THEM, as the GP said, they are still there! It's Debian at its base and stripping off bloat is a simple sudo apt-get remove foo away.

I like that the default bunch of apps tends to just work and if I want something leaner, I'm free to tweak away, that's what has always drawn me to Ubuntu (away from Gentoo where all I did was tweak instead of use my computer).

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[int19h]

I know at least three pieces of hardware that now work with Ubuntu 8.10, that didn't with 8.04:
- Wacom Bamboo One ("wacom")
- Radeon HD3850 ("fglrx")
- WD 150 GB Raptor

And with that, Intrepid solves all hardware

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[account_deleted]

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Strange question from an Ubuntu user

[ericrost]

Why upgrade an existing system to this release? I have a working, nicely functional laptop that has support for the next three years for security updates, why should I hop on the update treadmill again and deal with upgrade headaches every six months? I like where I got Hardy (after waiting through 4 releases to get to another LTS).

Re:Strange question from an Ubuntu user

[Anonymous Coward]

For the challenge... i thought everybody new it by now..

Windows break down over time...even if you just use IE and watch some movies/listen music...so you need to reformat to bring everything back to functional...

Apple is working fine (of course mainly because you are using hw and sw from the same company on almost one/two different hw configurations ...only a couple of drivers to worry..so it works) and then a "new" os version or hardware is out there... then you are not cool anymore...you have to do sth to maintain your coolness factor... so you upgrade and you buy again your acceptance among the fanboys.

Linux you set up everything (after some pain and search in crazy forums) and it is working great... and then you are BORED... it is sth like simcity..you make everything work and then you use a disaster to try you city....so...you install a new version of ubuntu and start everything over....

Just that simple

Re:Strange question from an Ubuntu user

[Anonymous Coward]

Why upgrade an existing system to this release?

There's no reason to if you're happy with Hardy. I'm still running Gutsy, and I'm still not sure whether I'll uprade to Intrepid because everything works fine with my machines. Anytime that I want an updated program, I usually grab the updated source and debdiffs from either Debian or Ubuntu and build my own packages for Gutsy. Or if debdiffs arent' available, I'll just compile from source and use checkinstall to build a package. Works great for me.

Of course, Gutsy's EOL will roll around in 6 months so I'll be forced to upgrade then as I don't want to have to stay on top of every security update that comes out. But for Hardy users that's not a problem. If everything works, I'd stick with Hardy.

Re:Strange question from an Ubuntu user

[edmicman]

Personally I'm upgrading from 8.04 to get newer software releases. A handful of programs I use regularly (Filezilla, Pidgin, Deluge, Firefox) are woefully behind in the Hardy version compared to what is released on those programs' sites. I'm hoping 8.10 upgrades some or most of them. One of the biggest pluses I read for Ubuntu is the package management and not having to maintain and upgrade software yourself. But then the packages aren't updated at all and here I am multiple point versions behind the ones I use on Windows at work, where I upgdate it myself!

Re:Strange question from an Ubuntu user

[Martin Soto]

Why upgrade an existing system to this release?

To live in the bleeding edge, of course. If you don't want to, just keep the LTS release, which is there to provide the stability many people need/want.

Re:Strange question from an Ubuntu user

[martinw89]

No one's suggesting you do. In fact, your LTS release won't even notify you that there's a new version available until the next LTS. That's the whole point.

Re:Strange question from an Ubuntu user

[Anonymous Coward]

One reason: tabs in Nautilus.

Re:Strange question from an Ubuntu user

[Nimey]

I'll upgrade my 8.04 system at some point, maybe in a month once they've gotten the worst bugs worked out. I'd consider waiting for 8.10, but that's not a supported upgrade path.

Re:Strange question from an Ubuntu user

[blazerw11]

A handful of programs I use regularly (Filezilla, Pidgin, Deluge, Firefox) are woefully behind in the Hardy version

Both 8.04 (Hardy) and 8.10 (Intrepid) have Firefox 3.0.3.

Re:Strange question from an Ubuntu user

[edmicman]

Maybe Firefox was a bad example - I had to wrestle to get the 3.1beta1 to work in 8.04. Trying out betas and nightlies in Ubuntu has been much more difficult than installing/uninstalling them in XP. And I don't think 8.04 will get 3.1 eventually, right? I think 8.10 will, though, if I remember the package searches I was doing. Mainly I know Filezilla, Pidgin, and Deluge are all point releases behind in Hardy compared to their current versions.

Re:Strange question from an Ubuntu user

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I have several machines in my house all running Ubuntu 8.04 and for the most part they just work. The one or two that have trouble I'm considering Intrepid for, but really, their last release seems to be (finally) really, truly functional enough to not *require* upgrading.

Re:Strange question from an Ubuntu user

[williamgrant]

Neither Ubuntu 8.04 nor 8.10 will ever get Firefox 3.1.

EEE?

[Taibhsear]

Anyone know if the EEE version of 8.10 is out as well? Has it fixed the wireless problem that 8.04.1 has? I just got a 1000 40G yesterday and already had to fix the automount for the 32 GB drive, USB drives, and try to troubleshoot the wireless (which appears is set up for the wireless card on the previous EEE PCs and not the current one). Oh and is this the full release version of 8.10 or a beta?

Re:EEE?

[mean0machine]

To answer the last question first: it is the final version, not a beta (although I foresee that some (inherent) bugs will still have to be ironed out in the next weeks or so).
And instead of the EEE version of 8.10, I suggest you install the full (K)(X)Ubuntu and add Adamm's kernel packages for Ubuntu 8.10, which add support for all the problematic devices on the EEE (on top of this they also remove some kernel modules not needed on the EEE, resulting in much shorter boot times).
Here is the link where you can read more about the needed packages: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=46649

How about fixing CUPS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't work with an HP 1100. Video was "VESA" on my laptop. Yesterday, I was trying to get inkjets working on two machines with "intermittent" results. Spent an hour on the web last night reading that intermittent results with older inkjets and inkjet/scanner combos is apparently common.

Screw it. First Ubuntu I tried years ago hung in the CD boot. Second try didn't look like it had anything that would make switching worth it. I was taken by the GUI appearance of Gutsy and Hardy for the new user experience. I even wanted to like Ubuntu because I think it's cool that there are a couple high-profile SA ex-pats in Shuttleworth and Musk, but I just don't feel I can trust what will work from one Ubuntu distribution to another.

So I've got three machines simultaneously installing Lenny R5 as I type this morning. Debian works just fine with all our hardware on our other two machines -- as it has for years before and after it was Lenny. Just a superior parent distribution in my experience as long as Ubuntu breaks things that work when they add other things.
       

...and Vista

[cefek]

Still, it breaks the default boot loader (and yes, I use Vista's) by installing grub even if you tell the setup not to. Maybe that's because of me using two disks in RAID mode, however it fails to detect such configuration. Now I know that all those onboard RAID chipsets are "fake", but still I'd love the installer to leave my MBR alone.

BTW, Vista on RAID-0 and Ubuntu on my old 7200rpm barracuda is a stunning performance win for Ubuntu. If I had tu use a laptop, I certainly would choose this Linux distribution as it is really, really fast. But me, I grew up on slackware, I could manage to fix the non-working extra keys or sound or webcam issues. Casual dual booters can't be expected to know how to fiddle around.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Lord Ender]

Nobody "expects" people to have to search forums to find the special trick you have to perform to make certain pieces of hardware work. If something doesn't work automatically, it's because there aren't enough human resources available to polish everything to a shine.

It's pretty silly of you to criticize people for bad design when in fact the problem is not having enough resources to fully implement what is actually a really good design.

Volunteer to fix the software yourself or submit bug reports so others can do so. Just don't whine. That doesn't help anything.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[pato101]

Yet look at how many forums you can find with users having hardware problems with Linux. There's an incredible amount of them. Sure, there are some hardware issues in forums for Windows users as well, but it's lightyears away from anywhere that looks proportional to the windows/linux market share.

Which is not surprising since windows users are given a CD with an exe which does all the magic for every hardware they buy.
How many of those issues at windows forums are related to old hardware they are trying to make it work in newer windows OS?

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly what I ended up doing, too. (After trying the new driver...) Kind of kludgy, but it works...

Exchange 2007

[rallymatte]

Unfortunately it seems as there still isn't any proper support for using Evolution with Exchange 2007 like SuSE have.
It would be very useful.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Ugly Backgrounds

[scorp1us]

Sadly, the background is probably the most important part of the initial user experience. So why are all these backgrounds ass-ugly? They might have been cool in 1994 with the release of NIN's Downward Spiral, but this is 2008. Everything is glossy black and blue.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Anonymous Coward]

The main reason why Linux doesn't build a solid desktop base among home users is because:
1- Lack of standard, reducing support available and compatibility consensus.
2- Linux Geeks expecting average joe to spend time (which he doesn't have) browsing at forums for his answers, often "on his 2nd computer" (which he doesn't have either).

and people never go on forums for windows problems?, I'm sick of people acting like people never have any problems with windows. I see average joes all the time asking windows questions on the various forums I go on. Even so, you can buy support for just about any popular distro

Apple/MS don't want/need P2P

[Ralish]

Reasons being two-fold:
1. Apple/MS I believe both have corporate policies of only allowing their files to be downloaded directly from their servers, I presume primarily for security/authenticity reasons. That's not to say Torrent is insecure; it's not, but there could conceivably be security issues with using it as a distribution mechanism. And:

2. Why bother? Microsoft has some of the largest datacenters and fattest pipes on the planet. Apple, relative to their customer base, is probably comparable. Microsoft's ability to push out bits is probably rivaled only by Google. Bluntly, you'd probably get a far slower download on average using P2P than downloading direct from MS. The biggest benefit would be to MS in dollars saved through bandwidth bills, not to the end-user.

What Microsoft (and Apple?) really need is to post some damn md5/sha1 sums for all their downloads. It would be nice if I could actually verify that the gigantuan service pack I just downloaded is not corrupt.

Re:Apple/MS don't want/need P2P

[Tekfactory]

As I replied to Parent Post. I have downloaded p2p files directly from Microsoft, so far this has been support or developer packages, not regular updates, but they are learning.

Re:Apple/MS don't want/need P2P

[supernova_hq]

I have downloaded p2p files directly from Microsoft...

Umm, I think you misunderstand the definition of P2P...

Re:Apple/MS don't want/need P2P

[Tekfactory]

As opposed to files from Microsoft seeded at Piratebay, these torrent trackers were hosted at Microsoft.

To correct my previous statements though now that I'm at home, I downloaded XP SP2 and Photosynth from MS via torrent.

Re:Community?

[Hasney]

Sorry, it was a lame joke on the name being terrible IMO :( I love Ubuntu and I dual-boot with XP

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[foobsr]

Volunteer to fix the software yourself or submit bug reports so others can do so. Just don't whine. That doesn't help anything.

This statement from above does not help much either.

CC.

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[VdG]

Sadly, while Ubuntu is quite capable of shutting the machine off, it can't quite get the hang of resuming.

Ah! Not just me then.
It seemed to work OK with 7.10 but not 8.04. I only upgraded fairly recently so I haven't had a chance to poke at it but so far I haven't gotten it to succesfully resume. :-(

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[rantingkitten]

Well, it sucks that you had that experience. Next time, try the live CD and make sure things are working -- if it works there, you know it can work with the full install.

As for your commentary, let me point out two things.

1- Lack of standard, reducing support available and compatibility consensus.

I'd argue there's far more standards and compatability in Gnome and Ubuntu than for Windows. From a user perspective, Windows allows any executable installer to basically vomit anywhere it wants -- sure, go ahead and muck with the registry, install three systray icons, a quicklaunch shortcut, a desktop shortcut, and two start menu entries. Which might be named after the manufacturer, or maybe the product, or maybe the parent company. Who knows? There's no standard way of doing it -- it's just that users have been trained to accept it. In Gnome, basically everything gets filed so it's never more than one click away, and it's always under a sane, general heading. "Internet", "Games", "Graphics", "Office", whatever.

Same with installation of new stuff. Want a CD burner for Windows? Google "cd burner software" or similar, tromp through eight or nine results looking for one that doesn't look sketchy, isn't crippled trialware, and that you're reasonable sure won't install some spyware or other. Download it, run the installer, agree to weird EULAs and maybe it'll work. Maybe not -- maybe it was XP only and you have Vista, or vice versa. And unless you really know what you're doing, you can't be sure it didn't stealthily install some crapware alongside it. Finally, clean up the mess it left behind when installing (extraneous icons, shortcuts, start menu entries, etc).

Ubuntu? Open Synaptic and click whatever you want. Then ignore it. It'll download, configure, and install without any further interaction, and there's accountability for who made it and where it is coming from. You're done.

2- Linux Geeks expecting average joe to spend time (which he doesn't have) browsing at forums for his answers, often "on his 2nd computer" (which he doesn't have either).

No one expects this. And honestly I have never, ever had trouble with drivers on any machine, on any distro -- including random ones like DSL, Puppy, or other ones I just want to use for experiments. The sole exception has been wireless Broadcom stuff...and that headache stopped over a year ago with the Restricted Drivers manager.

Compare this to Windows, where I've never gotten an install to work the first time. A clean install of Windows will not have drivers for your wireless or ethernet, sound card, video card, and probably a few other things. You either have to have some sort of recovery CD, which Joe User doesn't have lying around, or you have to have...a second computer, so you can go to dell.com or whatever, and download the drivers. Then install them one at a time, by hand. And clean up the mess they leave behind, again. :)

I guess my point is that Linux in general and Ubuntu does a much, much better job at hardware detection and driver handling. Windows is essentially incapable of it, and either way, if you're Joe User, you don't know how to fix Windows problems any more effectively than Linux problems, so it's kind of a null point.

No, I think the real reason Ubuntu doesn't have a solid base of home users is because the overwhelming majority of users just buy a computer that has Windows already on it, and stop thinking about it right then. They see no reason to switch because to most people, "Windows" IS a computer, and the only other option is to buy a Mac. So they put up with Windows' endless annoyances and nagging because it's what they're used to, and are blissful in their ignorance.

"Linux Geeks expecting average joe to spend time"

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not expect anything. If you are too stupid then don't use it. I do not care.

For those who can't use torrents, try metalinks

[ant_tmwx]

Not everyone can use torrents, so try out the metalinks. These are XML files that list mirrors & checksums, helping you find a server, and verifying that the download didn't have errors.

You can use DownThemAll! (Firefox extension), KGet in KDE4, GGet in GNOME, aria2, or metalink-checker (among many other Windows/OS X/Linux download clients).

The official .metalink files are available at
http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.10/
http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/kubuntu/intrepid/

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[WebCowboy]

However, when I upgraded to a non-OEM machine of my own, and tried to install 8.04, I wasn't so lucky.

I think this is not an issue with Ubuntu 8.04 specifically, but instead with your new hardware.

I got a new system with an Intel motherboard that was introduced only this summer, after the release of 8.04. That version--and 7.10 before it--gave me no joy. There was no support for the new Intel graphics chipset and there were some other problems too. Not much blame can be put on Intel though; they had Linux drivers out publicly before the motherboards based upon the chipset were even available to the public! Linux being a more...errr...diverse ecosystem means it is a bit more challenging to package and distribute such divers (alas, my board did not include binary packages suitable for Ubuntu with the appropriate modules backported to the kernel in 8.04).

So, I've been running 8.10alpha5 (and upgrading as alphas and betas became available) and had more luck (still no digital audio out, but I may need to tune my system--and for a couple weeks I had to disable onboard NIC and use a cheapo spare to keep the e1000e driver from bricking it--ubuntu blacklisted it anyways and has since fixed it and I am using my onboard 1000bT again--but considering it is pre-release quality I cannot complain).

Trouble is, I spent way too much time messing with Linux before, and now I no longer have that patience.

Honestly, aside from using alpha and beta distros, it has been YEARS since I've had to "mess around" with Linux. As a matter of fact it is faster and easier to set up a "bare" PC with Ubuntu (or Fedora or SuSE for that matter) than it is with Windows. Ubuntu install is done faster, I can run a 3-D desktop just as well on literally half the machine Vista requires, updates and upgrades are easier and faster, there is NOTHING like "software repositories" for Windows--you always have to insert a damn disk or explicitly google and download an EXE or MSI and you cannot install applications with MSFT update--only upgrade. when I do a fresh install of Windows I ALWAYS need to run Windows update and reboot 2 or 3 times, and with new hardware you still need vendor drivers, sometimes event to get out of the initial install phase! Hell, I hardly have the patience for WINDOWS anymore!

As to your assertions about barriers to Linux adoption:

1 - there is no lack of standards, just resistance to universal adoption. There are many Debian-derived distros that use the same package format and can work against the same repositories. There is Fedors, RHEL, SuSE,Mandriva, etc that all use the same "standard" in RPM and related apt/synaptic style management and update tools, and above that is the LSB that not only specifies standard packaging and deployment practices, it outlines a cross-distro binary compatibility standard!

For some reason, for every complaint about lack of a single standard there is a chorus of calls against any and all attempt at establishing a formal or de-facto standard! Perhaps it is because in the MSFT and Apple worlds there is no choice because standards are so entrenched--to the point of lock-in. People that move to Linux right now LIKE the choice and don't want to lose it in the process of creating standards.

2 - I fail to see the point here. When people have problems with Windows the exact same thing happens--some Windows guru saying to do something way above a beginner's head, useless tech support, etc. The average joe still has to rely on forums (which are relatively useless for windows compared to Linux), second computers, or an expert friend or coworker. In fact, I think your argument here is quite false: If an average Joe user starts off with an Ubuntu system that is working, it continues to work and is LESS likely to just break with everyday use. Windows, however, seems to break much easier with normal use--installing and uninstalling, various upgrades that break other things and above all VIRUSES.

KDE v3?

[VincenzoRomano]

I hope I'll have the KDE3 option as the KDE4 is still missing a number of key features from v3 and also stability seems weak.

Re:KDE v3?

[Zantetsuken]

While I agree that KDE 4.0 sucks - installing that and then updating to 4.1 is fantastic (on my Gateway Centrino laptop anyway) Intel gpu means the purty KWin effects work, and they actually have some Plasma widgets, along with themes - the nice part of which is that by changing a universal plasma theme, all the widgets and taskbar change...

Re:KDE v3?

[blackpaw]

While I agree that KDE 4.0 sucks - installing that and then updating to 4.1 is fantastic

Kubuntu 8.10 only has KDE 4.1.2

Re:KDE v3?

[westyvw]

As i said before this post, move on to a distro that takes KDE seriously. Debian, Sidux, Mepis, etc. You will be much happier then messing around with the ugly red haired step child that is Kubuntu.

Not bad

[klui]

I installed the beta and have been regularly updating the system via Update Manager and it has slowly updated each component to what appears to be the release version. I noticed the kernel went from development to non-dev a couple of weeks ago.

A couple of glitches:
1. My Atheros based wireless doesn't connect to my AP 90% of the time. I have to keep reconnecting and maybe on the 3rd or 4th try does it associate. I turned on my system today and it associated on the first try 2x in a row (after another round of updates)!
2. Sleep doesn't work quite right when it wakes up. Borders around windows have technicolor in place of shadows.
3. The Synaptics touchpad is much more sensitive than when running Windows. Driver adjustment doesn't seem to help. Probably due to old hardware, but sometimes, I would get the effect of a right-button click in Terminal (really weird).
4. Partition manager during install didn't allow me to use an empty partition. I remember the choices were use the entire active partition (Windows) or use a part of the current active partition. I had to choose custom.

Some surprises:
Sound works. Hibernation works. Lock button recognized and works. Screensaver lock "shakes" the dialog box if the wrong password is entered is reminiscent of NeXTstep--too bad the main login screen doesn't do this.

Re:Not bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Sleep doesn't work quite right when it wakes up. Borders around windows have technicolor in place of shadows.

This is a feature. Have you not heard of the 'technicolor yawn' ?

Re:Not bad

[quantumphaze]

3. The Synaptics touchpad is much more sensitive than when running Windows. Driver adjustment doesn't seem to help. Probably due to old hardware, but sometimes, I would get the effect of a right-button click in Terminal (really weird).

Xorg has a nice feature with touchpads enabled by default. Just like in Windows the right and bottom edge is used for scrolling, however the top right corner acts like a middle click when you tap it and the lower right acts like the right click. (Unfortunately you have to hack the xorg.conf to change the corners around)

Try it out now, tap the lower right corner. It's very handy if you want to be quiet without the loud clicking (meeting/funeral/etc).

Re:Not bad

[klui]

That's interesting. The trouble is I just place my palms on the palmrest and don't touch any keys or trackpad. I just tried it and tapping any of my corners do nothing.

Ubuntu !linux.

[ilikenwf]

Everyone outside of people like those here in the know have the issue of associating Ubuntu with Linux, as Microsoft is trying to associate Windoze with PC's.

There are other better, faster, more customizable distros...Ubuntu is just a stepping stone between Windoze and Linux.

Next comes Archlinux or a similar distro, followed by possibly Gentoo or Slack.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[pato101]

Note that it is not MS who creates the CD with the drivers for a given specific hardware, it is the manufacturer who does.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I'm still on Feisty (Kubuntu)

[gosand]

For several reasons...

1. It works, all my apps work.

2. I have a dual-monitor setup with an NVIDIA card... I want to avoid that reconfiguration hell.

3. I still fear the upgrade. I've never had a flawless upgrade on Linux, and I've been trying various distros since Redhat 5.2.

I'll get to the latest Kubuntu someday... maybe this will be the release.

Re:I'm still on Feisty (Kubuntu)

[williamgrant]

That's very dangerous; Ubuntu 7.04 is no longer supported with security updates. I strongly advise that you upgrade ASAP.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Anonymous Coward]

dividing the userbase into alternate Ubuntu-like projects like Mandrivia or SuSE

Both of those distributions have been around much longer than Ubuntu, and moreover, both of those are at least as far along in the "it just works" department, if not more. Regardless, competition and choice are good things, not bad things as you tried to imply. All of the linux distributions are advancing steadily, and it's up to you to pick the one you like best.

The main reason why Linux doesn't build a solid desktop base among home users is because ...

Lack of pre-installs on OEM computers. Sorry to rain on your parade, but that is by far the biggest reason. Do you think the average Joe can install windows from scratch and configure it to the same level of functionality provided by the OEM? Do you think he even wants to try? Have you ever tried installing vanilla XP and configuring it to the same level of functionality as the OEM install, or even the OEM-provided "recovery" cd?

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[AmaranthineNight]

Strange, because when I installed Windows, my internet worked without any configuration whatsoever.

And on windows, mine never has. There are very popular network cards with no built-in drivers on windows. I've found hardware detection on linux, with everything but video cards and printers, to be much better on Linux than Windows, but obviously your mileage will vary.

Re:GNU?

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw him speak at Rice University.
He kept telling all of us students and professors that we were committing moral grievances akin to murder by using any form of linux.

This guy needs to understand that there is a whole world out there full of injustices more important than whether or not a free as in beer operating system is completely free as in speech.

Re:GNU?

[Fri13]

http://www.topology.org/human/?a=/linux/lingl.html

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[Vancorps]

Good thing too, it was completely useless for me so I went with WICD. Heron seems to have a lot of little glitches although a lot of it is admittedly caused by third parties like the ATI firegl driver and VMWare Server messing with the keyboard. I have a button I have to click on the panel which resets the keyboard so I can use shift and control again as something about VMWare quick switch doesn't release properly or some such. Never had that problem in the past though.

Er, sorry, waiting for 9.04, that is.

[Nimey]

yeah

Austin Texas distribution tonight 6:30pm, party

[RoundSparrow]

Austin Texas we are having a release party tonight at 6:30pm. http://twitter.com/AustinLinux for latest details. We will have all the downloads available to share at the party. Free pizza.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Lord Ender]

I'm sorry, what? It communicates useful, actionable information to an appropriate audience. What don't you get? Or are you trying to be funny, and I missed it?

Re:GNU?

[skeeto]

He didn't know any of this, because he only heard it from somebody else (who probably didn't know what they were talking about), and subsequently blew it out of proportion.

Actually, it sounds like you only heard this from somebody else (who probably didn't know what they were talking about), and subsequently blew it out of proportion. He doesn't claim it contains non-free software, but that it suggests non-free software, which is true. To quote from his e-mail to the OpenBSD-misc mailing list,

From what I have heard, OpenBSD does not contain non-free software (though I am not sure whether it contains any non-free firmware blobs). However, its ports system does suggest non-free programs, or at least so I was told when I looked for some BSD variant that I could recommend. I therefore exercise my freedom of speech by not including OpenBSD in the list of systems that I recommend to the public.

Sounds like he understood the issue well, and if you know about his philosophy, its extremely clear why he won't recommend OpenBSD. By doing so, he would recommend the ports system that suggests the use of non-free software, and by recommending it he will implicitly also suggest the non-free software.

And to clear things up, OpenBSD does not contain non-free blobs in the kernel, and they even themed their 3.9 release on this issue. Because the emphasis is on security, they did so for primarily for security reasons. In a sense, the OpenBSD kernel really is more free than the Linux kernel you get with most distributions, as many distributions include non-free binary blobs with the kernel (including Ubuntu). To push this point through,

The fact that OpenBSD is not a variant of GNU is not ethically important. If OpenBSD did not suggest non-free programs, I would recommend it along with the free GNU/Linux distros.

It is entirely about the ports system. Other than that, he's all for it. In fact, I doubt you will find him telling people not to use OpenBSD, but rather warning them to be careful with the ports system.

You don't have to agree with him, but at least get the facts right about his argument.

New 'Mobile USB' version

[Anonymous Coward]

I was excited about having an OS in my pocket.

Then I tried to find out how to do it, and could only find this

https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/installation-guide/i386/boot-usb-files.html

Surely there is an easier way.

Re:GNU?

[incripshin]

I have the facts right, as I have listened to the podcast and read the subsequent set of emails. You really should listen to the podcast.

Is the disk thrashing addressed?

[spitzak]

I have the problem that caused a huge amount of discussion here before, where the disk in the laptop repeatedly parks and then wakes a few seconds later to write something. I have used up about 1/3 of the lifetime limit on the disk for these parks. I have updated from Feisty to Gibbon and Hardy and it is still there.

I have a script to turn off the disk timeout to fix this. However I have to run it manually every time I unsleep the machine. I have followed the instructions to install it in init.d and power on/off but it appears to have no effect. Either it is not run or it's changes are undone after it is run. This is very frustrating and I see absoltely zero information about this.

I heard there was some analysis about why Windows does not have this problem, and it was determined that Windows reads the disk *continuously* until it sleeps. This led the manuafacturers to adjust the timeout very small so it is, in effect, a fast "Windows is sleeping" detector. Now it appears that Linux is using the disk far less often, but not zero, so the result is worse for the disk. It would be really cool if Linux actually stopped reading the disk at all when nothing is happening, but I realize this is difficult, so I think an acceptable solution is to replicate how Windows acts.

In any case, despite all the yakking about this earlier, I see no comments. Have they addressed this or not? Is it ever going to be fixed? Or can somebody tell me how to debug the init stuff and find out why my script has to be run manually?

Re:Is the disk thrashing addressed?

[Anonymous Coward]

No offence intended but imitating inefficient Windows behaviour would be a step backwards.

Rather just put a link to your script under /etc/init.d in run level 2 or 3, E.g.:

cd /etc/rc2.d
ln -s /etc/init.d/hdparm S90hdparm

Note the capital 'S'.

Re:Is the disk thrashing addressed?

[Fruit]

Can't help you with the disk t(h)rashing itself, but I found that Ubuntu runs /usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/laptop-tools whenever it wakes up to set some proc-stuff with hardcoded values. You may want to consider changing that file (after a quick dpkg-divert --rename).

Serious regressions

[Unsung Bovine Herd]

I've experienced serious regressions with Intrepid Ibex. Among them is bad audio due largely I suspect to the new False, I mean, Pulse Audio system. Wine games are largely unplayable unless I disable sound. Then there's the confirmed "won't fix" bug concerning Gnome session (https link to Ubuntu bug tracker here). Now every time I log out I have to manually restart all my applications. I'm not talking about the usual background system stuff but the important end-user programs like Pidgin, Firefox and Gnome Terminal. All in all, this is the most troubling Linux upgrade I've experienced since I switched to a Debian derivative. The last time something like this broke was when I couldn't play Crack Attack because of a Mesa incompatibility in Debian Unstable! And that was fixed within weeks.

Re:Serious regressions

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't a problem specific to Ubuntu, but to upstream Gnome. Any distro that's going to include Gnome 2.24.1 is going to have this issue. Frankly, Gnome shouldn't have released 2.24 as this is a fairly major regression.

Using it on my Eee 1000HA

[timothy]

So far, I'm very impressed with the combination -- I think it would take a pretty stubborn Windows defender to say that Ubuntu is not a nicer fit on such machines, barring the (not usual, but specific) need to run particular pieces of Windows-limited software.

So far, only two real frustrations, both of which have been cleared up:

1) Wireless, though it's supposed to work "out of the box," did not work until a lot of shot-in-the-dark meandering down the twisty hallway of online advice. See related journal entry: https://slashdot.org/~timothy/journal/215545

Now that it *is* working, it picks up far more base stations than does the wireless system in my MacBook Pro, which surprises me. Works well at local coffee shops, WPA-secured home network, etc.

2) Enabling the cube. It's been a while since I last got the famous cube going (on a desktop I don't have handy to inspect / remember how I did it). Again, there's plenty of online advice, some of it well written, some of it less so. By trying enough things, though, after several search terms like "getting the cursed cube to work in Ubuntu for complete klutzes," I finally prevailed.

I've installed some of my favorite apps (like Inkscape and VLC). Installed some of my less-favorite software, like the official Flash plug-in, which makes the mind-rot of YouTube available to me.

All in all, this seems like a great release -- I even like the brown background pic this time around. (Clever abstraction, a company forte it seems.)

timothy

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm...

As the majority of Windows users have a windows pre-installed computer it is not that strange hm? The majority of Linux users have to install their OS themselves, so the chance of running into problems is much higer.

If Windows was not sold pre-installed on any computer, I am sure you would see all Windows forums flooded with hardware related problems.

Really?

[Amiralul]

"Ubuntu Linux is available for our downloading pleasure. Amongst various changes it sports updates to the installer, improved networking[...]"

Well, I personally find this a little ironic since I've tested Kubuntu a few days ago and since I have a non-DHCP, manually IP set-up, I found it to be almost impossible to get a working Internet connection. The KNetwork applet (or whatever its name is) will not open. I tried setting it up manually by, yes, using Konsole. Internet connection worked for a few seconds after that it automatically tried detecting my IP. Setting it again manually worked. For another few seconds. A friend advise me to get rid of avahi, I did with no use.

But again, it was Kubuntu and it was a beta version, I'm sure they fixed it by now.

64 or 32?

[CaptainNerdCave]

with my ar5007, i've been browsing wirelessly in the 64bit version, thanks to this http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=816780&highlight=atheros+ar5007+64bit

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[chekk4]

While Windows (XP) will not have drivers for everything with the base install, it has never failed to install on whatever machine I've tried. It also BOOTS.

Ubuntu, unfortunately, will not start on my main system (because of SATA DVD?) without adding "irqpoll" to the boot params and it did take me a second computer and a while to find that crucial bit of info.

This is exactly the sort of thing that gives most people the screaming heebie jeebies.

Apparently Usenet IS Dead...

[BigAssRat]

This is /. and I would have expected, by now, that at least one person mentioned that the ISO's are also on Usenet right now.

Re:Apparently Usenet IS Dead...

[badpazzword]

It could be me, but those banners and those 'sponsored links' on torrent sites about file sharing on USENET make the whole affair sound very very pesky.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Falstius]

Well if Ubuntu wants to compete with Windows, it has to find a way to make it just as simple for Ubuntu users.

I hope drivers for Linux are never as bad as drivers for Windows. Sure, you can use that .exe that came on the CD but it is probably about 5 revisions back. So you pop onto the HW manufacturers website to find an update and have to sort through 50 different versions (do I have rev 1A01 or 1A02?) and then the driver is still buggy so that your system crashes half the time. And a few years down the road when it is time to reinstall/update, those disks are not to be found or are incompatible with your neww OS and the company discontinued support so you dive into the depths of drivers.com hell to find a generic replacement.

I like Linux, where most things 'Just Work' and if they don't there is usually a viable recourse, even if it takes some time. Linux drivers still need work, but Windows is NOT the model to follow.

not impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

i installed the RC 2 days ago. i found a new program called "system cleaner". i tried it out to see what it was. needless to say, it crashed, locked up apt-get, and when i restarted X was gone and i was greeted with a command prompt.

not impressed how easy it was to break...

Re:not impressed

[williamgrant]

system-cleaner is no longer installed by default, but for other less sinister reasons.

What Type of Connection Are You Using?

[BigAssRat]

What connection are you using to get a 650+MB file in 2 minutes?

Re:What Type of Connection Are You Using?

[twistedcubic]

He's probably camped out in Canonical's basement, with his laptop connected to their LAN.

Re:What Type of Connection Are You Using?

[kwabbles]

I have a 15mbit connection at home - my torrent downloaded at around 3.5mb/s... I think it took a total of 4 minutes to download. To take 2 minutes he would have been downloading at around 5-5.5mb/s which is not uncommon.

Re:What Type of Connection Are You Using?

[bursch-X]

Yes, why not?
That's the analogue action to people queueing up in front of the Apple Store in order to buy an iPhone.

Does Kubuntu have Long-Term Support yet?

[KWTm]

Here's another question: does Kubuntu have a LTS (Long-Term Support) version yet? Ubuntu 8.04 (GNOME version) was LTS, but because the KDE developers decided to drop everything KDE3-related and go running after the KDE4 Holy Grail, Kubuntu 8.04 was not LTS. So now it's October, the next version of Ubuntu is out, and KDE4 has been upgraded to KDE4.1 , do we have LTS yet? Or will we have to wait 4 more version still Ubuntu 10.4 (Muckraking Manatee) before we get a LTS?

Personally, I don't want to upgrade to KDE4 because I just want my computer DE to help me get things done and stay out of the way. I don't want to learn a new way of doing things. I hope Kubuntu8.10 comes with a KDE3 version.

Re:Does Kubuntu have Long-Term Support yet?

[westyvw]

I would go with a distro that stands behind KDE. kubuntu is never taken seriously, and just like Ubuntu is fragile, only worse. How about Debian pure, or Sidux for easy migration along with Sid? Sure is a whole lot faster, and Debian is still updating KDE3 with KDE4 as an option (or mix).

Re:Does Kubuntu have Long-Term Support yet?

[ryanov]

It won't come with a KDE3 version, unless someone remixes one. The release is KDE4.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:GNU?

[Knuckles]

I just tried to make him pissed off. The mod didn't get it either though, so don't worry ;)

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[rikkards]

Call me a masochist, but that is too much like the Windows "you have issues with you server? Have you rebooted it lately" type of fix.

BTW the actual message that I think is causing it is:
No ProbeResp from current AP 00:40:10:10:00:03 - assume out of range

Of course I have broadcasting disabled on my AP so I wonder if it is related to that?

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[rikkards]

I don't necessarily think it is the driver as my wireless is identified as a bcm4306 by lspci. Yep Broadcom.

Probably so

[Just Some Guy]

I'm using the stock 8.10 kernel on my Eee PC with wireless. In my case, I had to blacklist the "ath-pci" module because it tries to attach to my WiFi chip before the correct working driver gets to.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they improved compatibility / hardware detection for the sake of all the newbies out there.

Danger Will Robinson: you have to read the Release Notes on this one. Ubuntu has dropped support for a lot of otherwise functional ageing hardware:

3D does not work for Nvidia's GeForce4 & older, and does not work for older AMD CPUs -- for Duron you need at least Morgan or Applebred, and for Athlon at least Palomino or Thoroughbred. No 3D means no games, no GoogleEarth.

3D works fine for this hardware under Heron 8.04 and WinXP.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810

nVidia "legacy" video support

The 71 and 96 series of proprietary nVidia drivers, as provided by the nvidia-glx-legacy and nvidia-glx packages in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, are not compatible with the X.Org included in Ubuntu 8.10. Users with the nVidia TNT, TNT2, TNT Ultra, GeForce, GeForce2, GeForce3, and GeForce4 chipsets are affected and will be transitioned on upgrade to the free nv driver instead. This driver does not support 3D acceleration.

Users of other nVidia chipsets that are supported by the 173 or 177 driver series will be transitioned to the nvidia-glx-173 or nvidia-glx-177 package instead. However, unlike drivers 96 and 71, drivers 173 and 177 are only compatible with CPUs that support SSE (e.g. Intel Pentium III, AMD Athlon XP or higher). Systems with older CPUs will also be transitioned to the nv driver on upgrade.

That's not easy to find from the current download pages, and it really ought to be emphasized under System Requirements, along with instructions to find out what your hardware is.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements

Really the LiveCD should have a check for this, because Joe-user doesn't find out until after trying to install/upgrade. It just requires 'lshw' and 'grep -o sse /proc/cpuinfo'.

I'm waiting for Jiggy Jackalope

[unassimilatible]

Supposedly a better bittorrent implimentation on that release.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Anonymous Coward]

The machine was built from scratch. Do you know what that means? It means you get to pick what went into it. Do you know what that means? It means that you could have searched for known issues before buying. So, frankly, I have no sympathy whatsoever for somebody who wants to run Linux but can't be bothered to take the most basic precautions.

Counter anecdote: I have 3 machines here running Ubuntu, all of which I built myself. All of them use nVidia graphics, Intel CPU's and Intel chipsets. None of them have any issues whatsoever under Ubuntu 8.04, except for an onboard Realtek network card misdetection bug that has been prevalent for some time, and which I hope has been fixed this time around because, while it's fixable, it's a pain.

As for "working great on your OEM Machine" - frankly, that's weird. That it worked better on the more unusual hardware, but didn't work on the commodity hardware you bought later, tells me that what you bought later was crap. It's that simple.

Love this release

[motang]

Just when I though it wouldn't get better it did! Ibex started out shaky and I was planning on skipping it and sticking with Hardy but really made the difference for me was the Beta, and I really like what Canonical did with this release, good job guys!

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[LarsG]

Since we're into network horror stories. One particular version of windows (think it was the original Win2K) would bluescreen during install if the machine had an Intel eepro network card.

That is not to say that Linux is perfect (wifi and getting full functionality from multifunction printers are the current points of pain, in my experience), but Windows is not always a dance on roses either.

Windows does have one up Linux in the area of installing 3rd party drivers though. For Windows it involves downloading a driver disk from the manufacturer and pointing the hardware assistant at the driver directory. In Linux you often have to build a driver from source, which involves more (and often different) steps, not to mention that you have to rebuild the driver if you change/upgrade the kernel version.

Re:GNU?

[harry666t]

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/RMS

YOU MADE ME WASTE 4 HOURS READING THIS SHIT

I HATE YOU ...

it was fun

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[Anonymous Coward]

Suspend and resume works just fine on my eee running hardy. Your bad luck, or you're a troll.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[cr_nucleus]

While Windows (XP) will not have drivers for everything with the base install, it has never failed to install on whatever machine I've tried. It also BOOTS.

Man, you certainly didn't try to install XP on a SATA only machine.
Don't know how SP3 goes but SP2 is a MAJOR PITA in this respect. Finding which SATA driver actually works for the windows installer can be quite a challenge.

After failing to install XP, i did try installing ubuntu and it installed without a hitch.
That's when i realized that life can actually be easier by using linux. Quite a shocker when you haven't really made the jump yet.

That was like a year & a half ago.
Today the linux side is even better, as installing from usb thumb drive is like a thousand time faster than from a CD. Still possible with xp, but much more complicated than the 2 or 3 clicks required for the just released intrepid ibex (and for previous releases/other distros, there's still unetbootin: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/).

But then again, i'm writing this from my macbook :)
Only time i had to install osx was when i upgraded my HDD.
Still sucks that installing from USB isn't an easy process though.

Re:GNU?

[bonch]

What's annoying is that you know what people are referring to when they say Linux--you're just being anal in order to feel more educated about how Linux is set up. We know how it's set up. It's just easier to call it Linux. The need for attribution on the part of RMS has more to do with his ego than accuracy.

Is FreeBSD actually GNU/FreeBSD because they use gcc? It gets silly after a point.

slashvertisment

[Arimus]

If this had been any other OS other than Linux this would have been tagged as a slashvert...

And stop with the sodding story tag on stories - kind of redundant

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[mortonda]

As for "working great on your OEM Machine" - frankly, that's weird. That it worked better on the more unusual hardware, but didn't work on the commodity hardware you bought later, tells me that what you bought later was crap. It's that simple.

Indeed, that's what I thought too. Most of the time I build computers myself, and though I don't research every part to verify compatibility, I've never really had much trouble. Ubuntu also ran just fine on the one OEM system I bought, a Dell.

My brother just had to return a printer because the drivers for Win2k would freeze during installation. OTOH, the Linux support for HP printers is awesome.

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[Chris Burke]

Yes, the wireless network is listed in the saved list. No, you can't get it to connect from that list, you have to create a manual connection and reenter everything. No, you can't copy-paste the WPA key in, that doesn't work for some reason.

Well I've never been able to get wireless working under Ubuntu without manually editing /etc/network/interfaces, but once I've done that it works -perfectly-.

Desktop Wallpaper = Skull

[Yuioup]

Is it me or does the wallpaper look like it's a pre-historic finger painting of a freaky bony creature with a gaping mouth and an open skull.

No, I'm not stoned, depressed or on medication.

Y

seriously, you people call yourself geeks?!

[Tumbleweed]

TorrentFlux. Look into it.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Kjella]

Under Windows, if you have a problem with crappy drivers you usually get "That's the latest driver version so you're SOL, kthxbye!". If you have an equally crappy experience under Linux, there's usually ten pages of discussing hacks to make it work or work better. That alone is probably a lot of the reason it looks like Linux users have more hardware problems. This process is also a fundamental part of how Linux gets support for more hardware, and there's nothing really inherently wrong about there being much more such posts on Linux since the driver development process is also to a large part open. Everything that happens on internal corporate mailing lists for closed source drivers happen out in the open on Linux.

The problem is that average end users have about as much business there as on the kernel developer mailing list. If you want to simply use Linux, get supported hardware. Really supported hardware that gets all green, works perfectly, in kernel drivers. What I found is that you'll find a model with the features and the price range you want, it's just that some brands suck and linux support and others are great. It's not like you have to pay twice as much or anything, it's exactly the same but maybe not your favorite brand. There's really no other option, the other option would be to have instant flawless drivers for all hardware that is released, and it's just not going to happen. Many companies aren't interested, many are plain old lukewarm, there's a limited number of people to reverse engineer and they can't get started before they actually have the product in hand. So again, buy supported hardware.

Re:GNU?

[Matt Perry]

Why don't you listen Stallman talk about this in his own words. He starts talking about operating systems including non-free programs at 20:30 and BSD specifically at 22:01.

the bug is 7 years old

[emj]

We should all thank: Cody Rusell, Ed Catmur, Matthias Clasen, and everyone else who did something should have a big thank you.

Re:GNU?

[The Analog Kid]

When I speak about Linux I am talking about either

1) The kernel

2) An OS based on the kernel (ie Red Hat Linux)

In either case, it's perfectly proper to just say Linux, not GNU/Linux as Stallman would want us to do. Just because he wants to ride Linux's popularity too, doesn't mean we have to let him.

Re:GNU?

[Anonymous Coward]

The italic text makes no sense. They start going on about Stallman demanding to be let off the plane but don't say the reason. It's like they made the whole story up.

I'd like to hear the end not baseless acusations.. but then that's never stopped the BSD trolls before I guess. I consider myself quite neutral on this gpl stuff but it's difficult to take anything BSD users say seriously when all they do is troll slashdot about how un-free GPL is compared to BSD.

Here's something you never hear from a BSD user.. What features does a BSD operating system have compared to Linux? I suspect you always hear the great GPL debate to hide the fact that BSD OS sucks dick.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[rantingkitten]

While Windows (XP) will not have drivers for everything with the base install, it has never failed to install on whatever machine I've tried. It also BOOTS.

The same has been my experience with Ubuntu and Debian. Not so with XP. I've repeatedly had XP installs just fail after loading all the drivers with some totally meaningless error message about "Setup could not continue." I realise it's anecdotal, but so is your statement. To be fair I've not yet had that problem with Vista but I haven't done very many Vista installs.

Furthermore, if you don't have a second computer, then it doesn't much matter if the thing installs and boots or not if there aren't any drivers, unless all you want to do with your shiny new XP install is use Wordpad at 800x600. Every time I've installed XP in the past two years -- every time, and I say this without exaggeration or hyperbole -- I've had to use my Ubuntu laptop to go find drivers from various manufacturer's websites. Maybe this one's from Dell, maybe that one's from Intel. Device Manager sure ain't gonna tell you, either -- I've had to look up the specs on the machine to even get that far.

Yeah, yeah, "recovery CDs" from the OEM. That's great if you bothered keeping it around, but most people don't have any idea where they put that thing, even in a corporate environment. And even then you're going to face another hour while that loads, then another hour of cleanup. Though I grant that in a corporate environment you're probably loading disc images and not installing it from CDs, the same would be true of a Linux distro.

And finally,

This is exactly the sort of thing that gives most people the screaming heebie jeebies.

"Most people" are no more able to fix Windows problems than Linux problems, so it doesn't matter. Personally I think Linux should do better than Windows here, and I stand behind a firm belief that it does -- I'd feel much more comfortable giving my mother an Ubuntu CD than an XP CD. But even if you don't agree with me that Linux handles this much better than Windows, it's absurd to use the "most people" argument, because XP does have a multitude of problems, especially with drivers, as you've admitted above -- and the average yob has no idea what to do to fix it, so why would that scare them off? It's like saying they won't switch from Ford to Chevy because they don't know how to deal with Chevy engines...not that they have any idea how to work on engines at all.

Frankly it's just pathetic that Windows can't deal with drivers. Linux at least has the excuse that manufacturers won't open the source and APIs, and half the stuff has to be reverse-engineered. Windows? Every manufacturer in the world writes Windows drivers, and they are easily accessible but Windows just doesn't load them.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably stopped reading at "Volunteer to fix the software yourself"

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[The Infamous Grimace]

Glad you've had such luck. Myself, it was a PITA to install 7.10 on my laptop. The Restricted Drivers manager did nothing for me; I had to download and compile ndis-wrapper so I could use Atheros binary drivers, my video card didn't work (can't recall what I did, but it's ATi), and I can't adjust the monitor brightness. Since then, I've updated to 8.04; I still can't adjust the brightness, and compiz-fusion is a complete no-go.

So I disagree. I think most people would gladly say 'Keep Windows and give me the $$$, I'll install something free that's just as good' if it was as easy as you claim. Quite simply, it's not. That's why I'm the only one in my family with a Linux desktop; everyone else uses Windows and OS X.

-Peter

mod parent insightful

[daniel23]

unfortunately I spent all my mod points already

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying Ubuntu (or Linux distros in general) has better hardware detection, driver support and software library than Windows?

Excuse me but, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You ARE delusional.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair the new guy dont know half of the stuff you just said things like Restricted Drivers all he knows is it aint working.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[rantingkitten]

Weird. A friend gave me an Atheros card that was supposed to be a lot more powerful than the one my machine had built in. I plugged it into the pcmcia slot and it came up no problem. I didn't have to do anything.

On 7.04 I did have to manually apt-get the ati xorg drivers, but that only took a minute. That's on a machine I don't use much anymore, though, so I haven't put 8.04 on it. I will say that once I did that, things worked beautifully including Beryl (which is what it was at the time).

So I disagree. I think most people would gladly say 'Keep Windows and give me the $$$, I'll install something free that's just as good' if it was as easy as you claim.

Obviously, I can speak only for myself, but I have installed various versions of Debian and Ubuntu on about a dozen different machines (I keep recycling the same ones over and over for test installs) and haven't had any major issues beyond what I've described -- having to get the ati xorg stuff, and the Broadcom crap which isn't an issue anymore. Regardless of your experience, though, the argument doesn't make a lot of sense -- people don't keep Windows because it's "easy". The truth is, "Your mom" has no idea what to do if her wireless driver isn't installed in Windows, so it's not like Windows is easier for her than Linux. She's going to call you either way.

All I know is, I have had very few issues with drivers or hardware detection under Linux in general and Ubuntu specifically. At the very least my ethernet gets loaded so I can go figure out the problem -- Windows can't make that claim, ever, unless you have a recovery CD, but then you may as well say you already have the ndiswrapper stuff saved for Linux, if you're going to have to resort to external media.

I'm not saying Ubuntu is perfect -- I am saying that for the average user installing it, it will get them to a usable point far, far faster and with much, much less effort than Windows. And I haven't even gotten into the part where I compare how annoying Windows versus Linux is once it's properly installed and set up. In Windows, everything is always installing and connecting and updating and out-of-date and scanning and it has to tell you all of this RIGHT NOW. Linux leaves you the hell alone. With Windows I spend more time closing asinine balloon tips than I do getting anything useful done. Everyone knows this, but everyone's also been trained to think this is "normal" and sort of dismiss it. It takes a monumental effort to turn all that stuff off and keep it turned off.

One of these days, I am going to bring a blanked laptop to my mother's house, and have her install and use Ubuntu for everyday tasks, just to see how well it goes. I think it'd be an interesting experiment, but I just don't want to listen to her nagging. :P

Here's my "why doesn't it work?" story

[Anonymous Coward]

I just bought an Eee PC 701, second hand, the original owner bumped the RAM to 2GB. Otherwise, no oddball 3rd party hardware. One of my plans is to use it to foray into Linux land.

I was excited to learn there's an eee version of Ubuntu. So I grabbed it and proceeded to follow the instructions to install it off a
USB Stick.

It didn't work. I don't recall the error (this was maybe 2 weeks ago.) But I followed the instructions to a T, the instructions off the ubuntu-eee site, and it didn't work.

Fortunately since it's an iso that I downloaded, I burned it to disc. I installed off the CD without problem, and looking forward to a different Linux experience, I rebooted. Started up without a hitch, then I tried to do a wireless connection. Didn't work. Every time I activated the wireless, it would switch itself off five seconds later. After clicking around to see what the provided apps were, I eventually went back to the Xandros install that the Eee came with.

I admit I wasn't a good geek and didn't search too deep into a solution for my problem. I searched for as long as my short attention span lasted. But you'd think something called Ubuntu-eee would work right out of the box no?

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[rantingkitten]

A fine argument, sir! You have convinced me with your persuasive series of valid points, and backed it with your name and reputation!

Anyone ?

[daveime]

Anyone finding these naming conventions a little strained now ?

What's next ?

Suicidal Salamander
Manic-depressive Mole
Tourette Tortoise
Hypertensive Hippo

Re:Anyone ?

[trongey]

I thought the names were pretty pointless to start with. Who came up with the idea that the parenthetical name was necessary? Doesn't "Ubuntu 8.10" tell us all we need to know?

Re:Anyone ?

[meringuoid]

What's next ?

Jaunty Jackalope.

Re:Anyone ?

[Cro Magnon]

Damn! I was looking forward to Jerky Jackass!

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[mr_3ntropy]

Yep. BCM4306, Hardy, same issue. Have to restart networking every time I use the laptop, or return from standby, or even after idling a few minutes. Totally frustrated.

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[Greyor]

Alright, I thought I posted earlier on this but I guess it didn't go through.

I just finished installing Intrepid on my Dell Inspiron 1525n, and it seems great so far. Will install it on my AMD64 OEM desktop tomorrow most likely.

The bottom line is, I was hoping Intrepid would fix my hibernation problems with my 1525, and it did indeed -- hibernate worked flawlessly on the first try. We'll see how resume goes later, though. All in all, I'm quite happy with it thus far.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't have time to learn something new, what the heck where you thinking installing Linux? If you want something exactly the same as what you already know, your only choice is to stick with the same thing you already know. Heck, upgrading from Office 2003 to Office 2007 requires a lot more wasted time relearning than switching to Linux does.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[foobsr]

volunteer

Naively, I am thinking that 'open source software' is for everybody, not just people qualified to develop software.

appropriate audience

Besides 'appropriate' being a 'fuzzy' term at best, I find it difficult to infer a profile regards qualification from posts here these days.

submit bug reports

I have a hard time to submit a bug report if the issue is not resolved (for years) after the thing was working on an "old" distribution (e.g. Synaptics touchpad on Acer Extensa not properly working since Edgy). Besides, I have the feeling that an average user is going to fail in doing so, on top of that at the same time running the risk to be disqualified in some way if trying anyway.

The tenet 'It is free, thus contribute or keep your mouth shut' will not help much to finally have the year of the Linux desktop.

CC.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have to convince you, dumbass. Despite your highly public, non-anonymous name "rantingkitten" and pristine e-rep from all of those publications you've been featured in, it's common knowledge that what you stated is complete bullshit.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Anonymous Coward]

No ehthernet card was detected. If I didn't have a 2nd computer, how was I supposed to search a solution for that one?

Err... Boot from a Live CD (or Live CD USB stick copy)? If you only have one PC you should *always* have one at hand, in case your hard drive gets corrupted etc.

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[VdG]

Thanks for that. I only just upgraded to 8.04 and hadn't planned to upgrade to 8.10 for a while, but since I'm soon to be out of work I should have some time on my hands. :-/

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I don't know about hardware, but for software there's a wide range of very easy programs to run old DOS/Windows95 games into XP/Vista, like DoomLegacy or D2X-XL for DescentII.
In comparison, the only program I managed to run well in Wine was Notepad. Yay!

Those are not at all comparable to wine, they don't "run old dos/windows95 games into xp/vista", they're ports of those same games to different OS's.

Not to mention, both of the apps you mention run in Linux (natively, no wine involved)! If your intent was to persuade us into believing there's nothing similar out there, well, try cherry picking some more next time.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Lord Ender]

If a person has a bug which he can't fix, his next best course of action is to report it to the people who can. If that confuses you, you are a lost cause.

But, uTorrent does not support UDP trackers

[cciRRus]

As much as I like uTorrent, I don't really think it can be considered as "FTW" because it doesn't support UDP trackers.

The use of UDP trackers is a great way to relieve the load on popular tracker servers, because they are bogged down by the large number of stateful TCP connections. Btw, The Pirate Bay supports UDP tracking.

Ekiga 3.0 not included

[Anonymous Coward]

Althought GNOME 2.24 includes Ekiga 3.0, Ubuntu Intrepid does not!

Another six months of waiting?!? Quite disappointing, if I may express an opinion!

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[The Infamous Grimace]

The truth is, "Your mom" has no idea what to do if her wireless driver isn't installed in Windows, so it's not like Windows is easier for her than Linux. She's going to call you either way.

No, my mom is going to call whatever store from which she bought the computer; I don't do Vista. As for any Macs, I've found OS X to require little if any effort to maintain, and I'm comfortable with both it's GUI and CLI. Don't presume to know what anybody's mom other than your own is going to do; it looks, well, presumptuous ;-)

Personally, I ended up installing Kubuntu, as I found Gnome to be deficient (something about the network manager, as I recall, it's been a several months), but I'm also going to take a look at the latest Kalyway and Leo4All images, and see if I can install OS X.

In Windows, everything is always installing and connecting and updating and out-of-date and scanning and it has to tell you all of this RIGHT NOW. Linux leaves you the hell alone.

Adept Updater has appeared in my taskbar 3 or 4 times in the last couple of weeks. In fact, I've found Kubuntu to have far more updates, far more often, then either Windows or OS X. This is not necessarily a bad thing; don't get me wrong. But you seem to imply that it's bad to update often, and that Linux distros, specifically Ubuntu, doesn't. Ubuntu not only updates often, it upgrades every 6 months. This seems neither good nor bad, just different when compared to the policies and life cycles of other OSes.

Have you ever tried to enable internet connection sharing? Not that easy. Maybe it's easier in Intrepid (read: GUI), I honestly don't know, but a quick google doesn't bring up anything to suggest it has.

Anyways, it sounds as though you've had better luck in general than I when installing a Linux distro. That's great, and it's certainly promising for the platform as a whole. However, I've run into quite a few problems. Maybe it's just the hardware; I'm not installing on desktops, only laptops. But laptops are a crucial segment; if you want to get onto business desktops, you're going to have to be able to install on laptops as well.

Just my $.0225 (dollar's on the rise again, doncha know :-)

-Peter

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[foobsr]

If a person has a bug which he can't fix, his next best course of action is to report it to the people who can. If that confuses you, you are a lost cause.

Yes, Sir, I always knew that I was too stupid to properly express myself. If I only could be a genius like you.

CC.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Lord Ender]

As the only party to this thread who has posted useful information, as opposed to angry ranting, I think a third party may be able to infer something about our relative intellects.

Good day, sir. I hope you find a more constructive outlet for your frustrations than flaming strangers on the internet.

decreasing quality trend finally reversed?

[ypctx]

Sure, over time, with Ubuntu releases, there are new features added and many things improve.
But my general feeling is that the distro is slowly falling apart.
I'm 64-bit user and Feisty definitelly looks worse to me than Gutsy used to.
I'm talking mainly about broken application packages (Semantik, Gxine, etc.), also video support worsened, but that's more of ATI issue.
Also, I'm not too bothered by always ending up downloading a kernel from kernel.org, but the distro quality seems to be going down over time.
Anyone else feels the same?
I've heard rumors that Ibex should be "better" again, and I definitelly will be looking to Bugzilla and ububntuforums before trying it..

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[foobsr]

http://wiki.killuglyradio.com/index.php/The_Talking_Asshole

CC.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[rantingkitten]

No, my mom is going to call whatever store from which she bought the computer; I don't do Vista.

Fine, whatever, but the point was she's going to call someone because she has no idea how to handle it herself, right? By the way, "your mom" is, y'know, a metaphor for any average user who doesn't know anything about computers and doesn't care -- they just want to surf the web, check email, write a letter, etc.

So saying "Well in Linux you have to blah blah, the average user can't do that," might be true in some cases, but it's not like the average user is more adept at handling Windows problems either. And I will still argue that cases where the user encounters a major problem are far less frequent in Ubuntu than XP or Vista.

But you seem to imply that it's bad to update often, and that Linux distros, specifically Ubuntu, doesn't. Ubuntu not only updates often, it upgrades every 6 months.

No no, you misunderstood, or I wasn't clear. Yes, Ubuntu pops up a little thinger that says updates are available -- fine, well and dandy. So does XP and Vista. Also fine and dandy.

The difference is that's all Ubuntu will do to bother you, and it'll update not only the OS but the applications thanks to repos. And it'll do this all in one go.

XP and Vista have no repositories or standard way of doing things, so every application you have has its own little updater, all running in the systray, all of which are constantly jumping up and down, throwing balloons or windows in your face about how they need to update this and connect to that and sync with the other. Show me someone who hasn't experienced this and I'll show you someone who spent three hours turning off all that crap.

And of course, Windows just loves to make you reboot after these updates. Ubuntu will remind you that you have to reboot after a kernel update, but you can dismiss it and it will not bother you again. Windows will nag you about it every ten minutes, literally, and if you don't answer it, it will reboot itself. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to my computer in the morning to find it rebooted overnight due to some stupid update. Thanks guys! There go all my downloads or rendering or number-crunching or whatever else I may have been doing! But at least Windows Movie Maker is updated...!

Have you ever tried to enable internet connection sharing? Not that easy.

In Linux? Honestly, no. It's not something I've ever needed to do. But are you implying that Joe Everyuser is doing this? Most people dont' even know what ICS is or why they'd ever want it. They plug into the router or connect to the wireless and away they go.

By the way, almost all of my installs have been on laptops as well. I use Vista on my desktop for gaming, and Ubuntu or Debian on all my other machines, which are laptops. I have honestly never tried the sleep/suspend stuff because I personally don't care, so I can't comment on that, but everything else has always worked flawlessly, out of the box, with the Broadcom exception I mentioned before.

To come full circle, my point is that on the whole Linux has been much, much easier for me and basically everyone I've gotten to use it. For occasional driver issues, I'm not going to pretend they dont' exist, but considering that every single XP install I've ever done has failed to load drivers for critical hardware, pointing the finger at Linux and saying XP is easier is silly.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Keith_Beef]

Now, I was much less lucky with a newer non-OEM machine that a local store built from scratch for me.

I think I've probably built about four x86 computers for myself over the last twelve years, and have salvaged, run, or administered another six during that time...

Of those, a few have had minor hardware problems, or a bit of hardware that would simply not work at all but didn't prevent me from making use of the system as a whole (eg a WinModems, an MCA token-ring network card in a PS/2).

Since I started to take the job of building my computers more seriously, researching the hardware more fully, I have had almost not problem at all with bad hardware.

In fact, the worst-performing hardware I currently have would be the Optimus Mini-3 and the SpaceNavigator. Both work, sort of, but not yet at 100% of manfacturers'claimed performance.

I suspect that either you or the local store did a bad job of choosing the components for your computer. And that the other users on forums are probably doing the same... after years of "buy it, plug it in, run setup.exe to load the dlls and cross your fingers".

K.

Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is

[shellbeach]

I'm not sure on your issue, but the network manager has had some serious work done:

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/alpha5#Network Manager 0.7

And yet it still sucks. Why on earth network manager insists on protecting wireless network keys in the user's gnome keyring database, I have no idea (if a cracker can read your files, the auth password on your network is going to be the very least of your worries). The end result is a request for gnome keyring authorisation every time you resume from suspend. There's a crazy work-around in 0.7 that involves publishing the network keys system-wide to work around this ... but that runs into problems with my network, which uses a hidden SSID.

Wicd happily eschews Gnome Keyring, copes with hidden SSIDs and works much better in my hands (and is thankfully part of the Intrepid repositories ...)

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[The Infamous Grimace]

So saying "Well in Linux you have to blah blah, the average user can't do that," might be true in some cases, but it's not like the average user is more adept at handling Windows problems either. And I will still argue that cases where the user encounters a major problem are far less frequent in Ubuntu than XP or Vista.

Absolutely true. But I would argue it's far, far easier to get help for Windows than it is for Linux. Unfortunately, the greatest strength of Linux is also is greatest weakness - too many options, too many variations, too easy for 'Joe Everyuser' to get confused. I know, Vista has a bunch of different variations, but they are all developed and maintained by the same company.

But are you implying that Joe Everyuser is doing this? Most people dont' even know what ICS is or why they'd ever want it. They plug into the router or connect to the wireless and away they go.

True. I think it'd be a good thing to fix, though, as I've had my wife call me when I'm on the road and tell me the wireless router is broken. All I had to do was tell her to unplug the white cord from the router, plug it into the iMac, go to System Preferences->Sharing->Internet, and click 'Turn On'. I unearthed the directions for Ubuntu last year at Christmas when we were staying at a Marriot that only offered wired connections. I hooked my laptop up, and then shared the connection so my wife could use hers. This is a real-world situation. Even though most hotels offer wireless, not all do.

By the way, almost all of my installs have been on laptops as well. I use Vista on my desktop for gaming, and Ubuntu or Debian on all my other machines, which are laptops.

What brands? I'm using a Toshiba, and I'm wondering if I wouldn't be better off with something better supported.

I have honestly never tried the sleep/suspend stuff

This actually is a big problem for me. I have to run a Windows environment (2KPro on VMWare) because of certain software that I have to use that won't run under Wine. I don't like having to reboot my computer, then reboot/resume the vm, just to do what I need done, so I suspend. Only this kills the sound completely. I've looked into it, and tried the recommended fixes, to no avail.

considering that every single XP install I've ever done has failed to load drivers for critical hardware, pointing the finger at Linux and saying XP is easier is silly.

I've never had XP fail to load a critical driver on install, while I've tried and rejected different Linux distros due to hardware incompatibilities and such. The only Linux distro that ever installed clean out of the gate for me was SuSE 6 on a hand-built machine; Mandriva, Fedora, Ubuntu, later SuSE releases - all have been problematic for me. I would say it's silly to project your experiences on others; I'm glad you've had such ease, but I don't think it's typical.

-Peter

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Linux you often have to build a driver from source, which involves more (and often different) steps, not to mention that you have to rebuild the driver if you change/upgrade the kernel version.

There's a tool to automate this. Sadly, I installed it on one server (and old SCSI card) and it just works, so I've forgotten the name. It was in the default Enterprise Linux repository and I just had to tell it the directory for my driver source and it automatically recompiles the driver with every kernel update. None of my other hardware requires source drivers, so it's only that one server that uses it.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[DarkEmpath]

Trouble is, I spent way too much time messing with Linux before, and now I no longer have that patience. I didn't feel like going through the whole process again. Either it works, or it doesn't.

Oh thank god! I thought it was just me!

Debian cured me of Linux back in 2002, but after hearing everyone carry on about how good Ubuntu was, I figured I give Linux another shot. (I didn't want to be like one of those Linux zealots still making BSOD jokes.)

Blank screen. The boot screen would show up, but then the monitor would switch off as Ubuntu's video driver failed. Windows works fine on the hardware, PC-BSD works fine on the hardware, Ubuntu wouldn't even give me the "black DOS-ish screen" you got.

That was Ubuntu 7 point something. For me, the year Linux on the desktop is still a long way off.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[DarkEmpath]

I'd argue there's far more standards and compatability in Gnome and Ubuntu than for Windows.

Standards do you no good if nothing works. Windows works, Linux doesn't, but it's standards compliant!

And honestly I have never, ever had trouble with drivers on any machine, on any distro -- including random ones like DSL, Puppy, or other ones I just want to use for experiments.

You are the exception, really. I have never seen anyone install Linux without some level of messing around. I'm guessing you probably do some messing around, but because it's stuff you know, you don't even think about or remember it.

Compare this to Windows, where I've never gotten an install to work the first time.

Again, you're the exception. Windows does automatically detect devices and update drivers, and Windows still has better driver support than Linux.

One thing I didn't realise about drivers is that just because Linux has a driver, that doesn't mean it'll do what you think it does. For example, I installed a printer on my Debian box (this was about 2002) and was horrified at the quality of the print. The printer was a 600x600 dpi printer (supported on Windows, of course), but the Linux driver allowed a maximum of 300x300 dpi! A quarter of the resolution!

Ubuntu doesn't have a solid base of home users because there are too many supporters like you fooling yourself about the quality and usability of the software. I tried Ubuntu and was disgusted by the experience. Nothing worked, and when I tried to get help I was fobbed off by people like you.

I won't be recommending Ubuntu to anyone, if they don't want Windows, they can try a Mac.

Re:I hope the improved compability.

[LarsG]

There are solutions to this problem, the most promising is DKMS. Still, it requires that Linux distributions include it and that 3rd party drivers are packaged in a format that DKMS can use.

Here is the horrifyingly bad fix

[spitzak]

Note that this hardly seems to be a techincal issue. It appears to be entirely caused by bad communication and excessive complexity. Anyway here is what you do. There are some indications that Ibex fixed this but these steps fixed my Hardy version:

1. Edit /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf and change correct line to
read: CONTROL_HD_POWERMGMT=1
(this makes laptop_mode call hdparm)

2. Edit /etc/default/acpi-support and change correct line to read:
ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=true
(this makes power.sh run)

3. Edit /etc/acpi/power.sh
Comment out or delete the 4 for...done loops containing $HDPARM
commands.
(this stops power-on from messing with the disks)
And change the arguments to $LAPTOP_MODE from start/stop
to "auto" in both cases.
(this makes it run the laptop_mode command correctly rather than
forcing the mode on and off)

4. Create /etc/pm/power.d/laptop-tools and make it read "exit 0" and
then "chmod +x" it.
(this stops suspend/resume from messing with hdparm settings)

5. Create /etc/pm/sleep.d/10laptop_mode_restart and make it contain
the following:
<pre>
  #!/bin/bash
  case $1 in
    hibernate)
        /etc/init.d/laptop-mode stop
        ;;
    suspend)
        /etc/init.d/laptop-mode stop
        ;;
    thaw)
        /etc/init.d/laptop-mode start
        ;;
    resume)
        /etc/init.d/laptop-mode start
        ;;
    *)
        echo Something is not right.
        ;;
  esac
</pre>

Chmod +x this file.
(this makes suspend/resume run the laptop tools)

HOW TO TEST:

This command will tell you how your disk is set:

  sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep "Adv"

The correct results to stop disk thrashing are 254 or 255.
When laptop_mode is *really* on then the correct value is 1.
If you see 128 then things are not working, this is the setting
the disk resets to on suspend/sleep/power off.