Ubuntu 9.04 RC Released

Mohamed Zaian writes "The Ubuntu team has released the release candidate for Ubuntu 9.04; 'The Ubuntu team is happy to bring you the latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. This is their latest result, the Ubuntu 9.04 release candidate, which brings a host of excellent new features.' The various other Ubuntu-derived distributions, like Kubuntu, have also had their RCs released."

Comments

Anyone have a list?

[Frac O Mac]

I've tried to find a list of the new features but I can't find anywhere with what looks like a complete one. Anyone want to help me out here? All I've noticed are that things look slightly different and then a couple things here and there.

Re:Anyone have a list?

[Dreadneck]

Ubuntu 9.04 Technical Overview

Re:Anyone have a list?

[Aphoxema]

I haven't found a very comprehensive list, but I've been using the beta on my Wind for weeks. The focus seems to be mostly on free video drivers, migrating to ext4, and as always, polishing up usability. There's supposed to be some big improvement on boot time, but I haven't really noticed it. Maybe I'll have to reinstall from scratch after the final release to see it.

I want to see an LPIA LiveCD, but all there is is the alternative install. With the alt installer I can't access the USB stick I install from and I can't see my hard disk.

Re:Anyone have a list?

[Frac O Mac]

I've seen that but I'm hoping for an all-inclusive list, there are updates that I've noticed that aren't listed there so I would think there are others too.

Re:Anyone have a list?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, I'd like to see a list like this too.

Most of the benefit of upgrading to a new release for me is getting the next versions of all the application that Ubuntu choses to bundle with each version, and this is usually ignored when people talk about changes to the release.

Specifically, I'd like a site to talk about the following common applications, including what version is included in the new release as well as the changes I can expect to see from the last Ubuntu release:

1. Amarok
2. Pidgin
3. Digikam
4. GIMP
5. Firefox
6. OpenOffice
7. Deluge

Obviously, this is a list of applications that I personally like, so a more exhaustive list is probably quite desirable.

Re:Anyone have a list?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed a large improvement in boot times with ext4 on my thinkpad x21 and compaq ev0 n610. The compaq has gone from 2+ minutes to approximately 1 minute, so smiles all round for jaunty from me.

Re:Anyone have a list?

[geekboy642]

What I would dearly love to see from Ubuntu is sane webcam drivers. Migrating to V4L2 when few mainstream clients support it yet is a bone-headed decision. Not including the compatibility library by default is even more bone-headed. I finally gave up on trying to use zoneminder in Ubuntu for that very reason.
That, and maybe a default "relaunch service on segfault" setup. My mythserver needs to be checked every couple of hours to make sure it's still a server. Meanwhile I have an OpenBSD firewall that went 2+ years without needing any maintenance, and it would have a 3 year uptime if I hadn't moved.

Re:Anyone have a list?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mythtv is honestly a bit more complex than a firewall. There's a whole zoo of software running in the average Mythtv setup. In any case, I haven't ever seen my myth segfault. Maybe you have some funny hardware?

Re:Anyone have a list?

[sticky_charris]

I am glad that mono has been brought up to 2.0.1 at last. Shame its not 2.4 but at least its an improvement.

Probably not high on everyone else's list though...

Re:Anyone have a list?

[jabithew]

I've recently installed the 9.04 beta fresh with ext4 and I haven't noticed an improvement in the bootime over 8.10, despite an upgrade from a Pentium D to Q6600.

Re:Anyone have a list?

[noundi]

You can check the changelog of every own project/application if you're looking for specific features. I doubt they would compile an all-inclusive list like that. Besides I doubt you would even read it if they did, considering the size.

Re:Anyone have a list?

[drb_chimaera]

I did a clean install of the beta on my Eee 1000 over the weekend and have found the boot performance to be substantially improved.

Re:Anyone have a list?

[Aphoxema]

There's probably an improvement but I don't sit and stare when it's booting anymore. I did a bootgraph last night and it's about 20 seconds (kernel/environment), and I made a readahead profile of my logging in. Really, until it's a 4 second boot time it won't register in my head as "Holy crap, that was fast"

Re:Anyone have a list?

[saintlupus]

Same here -- I'm running Myth on Ubuntu, and the only issue I have is that once in a while mplayer (for MythVideo) won't give back the audio device properly to Mythfrontend. I don't know where the issue is, and I don't understand this new pulseaudio bullshit, so I just restart the frontend once a month or so when it happens.

The backend, though, I don't think has ever crashed on me. OP must have some hardware weirdness going on.

--saint

Re:Anyone have a list?

[unifyingtheory]

Hell yeah! I contributed to the wacom hotplugging.

Re:Anyone have a list?

[farfield]

If you want the holy crap factor, test out xpud. Download the xpud image. Shove it in /boot (or wherever your kernels/initrds live) and add this to /boot/grub/menu.lst (probably right at the bottom)

title xPUD 0.8.9
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/xpud-0.8.9-image noisapnp lang=en quiet

Then reboot and prepare to go holy crap. Then if you're me and running on 3g internet rather than wifi prepare to reboot into Ubuntu.

Re:Anyone have a list?

[geekboy642]

I have two pcHDTV-5500 cards running DVB feeds. Rarely, whether due to the incompetent provider, random burps, or phase of the moon, I get complete junk instead of a signal lock. When that happens, the backend crashes(not every time, but every crash seems related to that), with a segfault in libavcodec. Afterwards, any time the frontend tries to preview the aborted video, it also segfaults. I don't so much mind the crashes, given that it takes all of ten seconds to ssh in and restart it. The problem is, if I know I have to babysit the thing, I might as well be using a VCR.

Re:Anyone have a list?

[koiransuklaa]

Version list for those and a few other apps: http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/allpackages?format=txt.gz

First Post...

[Anonymous Coward]

and I think Ubuntu is the greatest!!!

p.s. Can someone help me with my problem please? I don't know where I can find "My Computer" anywhere. And I think my monitor is broken because all I see is a brown theme going on. Much help appreciated. ;P

Re:First Post...

[danieltdp]

Go to "places" menu. There is a LARGE computer icon with the words "COMPUTER" by the side of it. The "computer" is the same as the "my computer" you are looking for. The lack of "my" got you lost, i suppose.

Regarding the brown problem. Click with the left button on the desktop and choose the "Change Background" (it is the last one on the list). Them pick up any wallpaper you want.

I hope this will help you operating this strange thing in from of you the people call computer and make you see the internets

Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[QuantumG]

And that means rebooting.

Fuck that.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[tpgp]

And that means rebooting.

Erm? Why is a reboot a problem?

Do you run Ubuntu on your server? (In which case, why would you be considering a Release Candidate?)

Or do you never reboot your home PC? (Surely you can afford a scheduled reboot overnight when you're sleeping).

Or are you just after uptime bragging rights? (That's really a bit sad on a home computer that isn't under heavy load)

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[QuantumG]

Takes effort to startup the programs that I keep running all the time on it.

Takes more effort to script them so I don't have to spend effort starting them up on every reboot.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[linzeal]

Lol, who cares? All my computers at home hibernate after no use for 2 hours. It has saved me 30-40 bucks a month in electricity costs that is a new 24" monitor every year or 2 sushi dinners a month. I don't think I have a single computer that is on 24 hours a day anymore at home and I love it.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[tpgp]

Takes more effort to script them so I don't have to spend effort starting them up on every reboot.

You're kidding right? You're going to regret that decision if you lose power for longer than your UPS has batteries.

Honestly, it can't seriously be that much effort.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[MichaelSmith]

Takes effort to startup the programs that I keep running all the time on it.

Takes more effort to script them so I don't have to spend effort starting them up on every reboot.

Then you should run netbsd.

echo some-program=YES >> /etc/rc.conf

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[jadedoto]

Ubuntu is linux-based, not Windows. We're not used to rebooting all the time.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[tpgp]

Ubuntu is linux-based, not Windows. We're not used to rebooting all the time.

Every 18 months is not "all the time".

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[Anonymous Coward]

Takes effort to startup the programs that I keep running all the time on it.

Your Porn Torrents?

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[fractoid]

And that means rebooting.

Erm? Why is a reboot a problem?

He was making a 'joke', or humerous implication that as a Linux user, rebooting is both an extremely rare occurrence, and something inconvenient enough to avoid (which it generally is, if you have the option to avoid it).

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[QuantumG]

no, they restart automatically.. I mean, hey! I don't have any...........

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[tpgp]

echo some-program=YES >> /etc/rc.conf

What if the scripts he runs require a particular user? Or have startup dependencies? Or a million other things that can add complexity to a startup script.

netBSD has its advantages. This is not one of them.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[physicsphairy]

Takes effort to startup the programs that I keep running all the time on it. Takes more effort to script them so I don't have to spend effort starting them up on every reboot.

How did you ever get Linux on your system in the first place?

My present hypothesis is that your system crashed and the Ubuntu CD was marginally closer to your workstation than the Windows reinstall disk.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[seizurebattlerobot]

You are just being silly, right? Ubuntu 8.10 has had 5 kernel security updates in the 6 months since its release. Each one requires a reboot to be activated. Keeping a Linux installation secure requires frequent reboots.

I prefer running Linux instead of other operating systems, but I find it disheartening to read silly statements like this. Let Linux stand on its own merits; there is no need to lie on its behalf.

Here's that list in case you're curious:
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-751-1
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-715-1
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-679-1
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-662-1
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-661-1

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[jadedoto]

Slashdot ate my [/sarcasm] tag ;)

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[Gavagai80]

When I go to bed I usually have a dozen untitled kwrite windows with short notes in them, several browsers whose auto-reloading of tabs I don't 100% trust to keep half-typed forum posts and the like (though FF seems better lately), and various programs like korganizer which I've been too lazy to figure out how to schedule to automatically join the system tray at startup. So rebooting is a pain, yes.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[Gavagai80]

Yes, the reboot prompts are quite annoying. I like my odds better running an insecure linux delaying the reboot for a couple weeks than running an insecure windows doing the same, though, thanks to market share.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[emj]

Actually, for me it was: Windows crashes I try to install it again but Windows fails to activate correctly and I can't use my license key anymore without calling support. That made me return to Linux, I should always be able to use my computer even if I can't get onto the net for a month of two.

Ubuntu being usable as a desktop by default was a strong argument as well.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[noundi]

And that means rebooting.

Erm? Why is a reboot a problem?

Do you run Ubuntu on your server? (In which case, why would you be considering a Release Candidate?)

Or do you never reboot your home PC? (Surely you can afford a scheduled reboot overnight when you're sleeping).

Or are you just after uptime bragging rights? (That's really a bit sad on a home computer that isn't under heavy load)

I guess the parent just likes to have the choice to choose freely. But I understand your point of view, my guess is for you rebooting your PC is synonymous to fixing your PC. Some of us moved away from such operating systems many years ago.

Oh yeah, bragging about having uptime is like bragging about having two legs. We don't make fun of the crippled but we embrace what we have.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[noundi]

Ubuntu is linux-based, not Windows. We're not used to rebooting all the time.

Every 18 months is not "all the time".

18 months running Windows!? Such torture is even prohibited by the Geneva convention.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're using KDE (and I can assume you are, since you use KWrite) and you're using 4.x, try using the "notes" plasmoid. The good thing about it is that it remembers your notes, and they're always within easy access. The bad thing is of course that they suck at resizing and moving (is this fixed in 4.2?), and probably aren't as kind to your computers' resources as KWrite. Still, it works without hassle on my 2 year old Sony Vaio, so you should be OK.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[Jamamala]

If you're really determined though, you can always use ksplice to patch, and avoid rebooting.
One more thing Linux has on Windows.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[Walles]

IMO not having to reboot for kernel upgrades would be peachy! If the distros could start including Ksplice or something like it I'd be a happy camper!

Some people seem to like forced reboots (see other replies to the parent comment), but I'm not one of them.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[pmarini]

you mean that you cannot start a new process pointing to the new libraries and then safely signal the "old" one to stop ?
in addition, I thought that you could easily restart the Linux Kernel without having to restart the physical hardware... surely that's what I would call a plug&play OS, not the other one... :-)
don't let your limitations impose themselves on other things...

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[Anonymous Coward]

The Jaunty beta included the ability to kexec into a new kernel - so technically not a reboot, but it does still stop all your processes ;-)

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[ozphx]

Yeah thats why I tend to keep all my notes in OneNote. *ducks*

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[xaxa]

+1. I'm not sure why so many geeks like to brag about how much electricity they use.

I shut down my PC when I'm not using it. Sometimes I shut it down immediately, but usually at night I listen to some music, and tell the PC to shut down when it's done.

I have a function:
musicshutdowninminutes () {
                sleep ${1}m && \
                dcop amarok MainApplication-Interface quit;
                sleep 15; sudo shutdown -h now
}
which lets Amarok remember the playlist (I'm sure it could be improved).

It also means I don't have to sleep with the noise of a PC in my room. Leaving one on 24/7 presumably sucks more dust inside too, and wears out the fans.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[dotancohen]

Basket is not quite a OneNote clone, but it's got most of OneNote's features. I personally hate Basket, but many people love it. I have never used OneNote, though.
http://basket.kde.org/

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[andrewd18]

One more thing Linux has on Windows that few people will bother to implement.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[RiotingPacifist]

I hate to be involved in my DE is better than yours pissing competitions but if you were on kubuntu there is a tickbox to restart all your programs when your reboot :P

I'm sure there is something you can install to get gnome to do that too.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[RiotingPacifist]

Instant security updates are a pretty good thing, if ksplice is as good as it sounds, it won't take long for distros to integrate it into their update system. It's not limited to the kernel either so webservers can also be instantly patched with no downtime.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[Abreu]

Keeping a Linux installation secure requires frequent reboots.

We have different values of "frequent"

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[rgo]

I'm gonna try that at home. I normally don't use KDE programs, but I'll do it anyway because OneNote fucking rocks.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[danieltdp]

You know there is an option were you can tell ubuntu what to start during bootup, right?! ;-) No script required. Just click on the program and bam. Its done. :-)

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[danieltdp]

Starting it up on vmware! And if you ask how did he get the other Linux were vmware runs, He start it on another vmware. Iterate util hell freezes

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[danieltdp]

5 reboots in 18 months is not "all the time" either!

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[andrewd18]

Not saying it's a bad thing or something people wouldn't want. But if it requires manual patching of the application and the update system, very few are going to want to do it themselves. The distros themselves are going to have to add it, like you mentioned.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[jones_supa]

Well, that sounds familiar, especially for the "short notes" part. :D I think that suspend (or hibernate) is a good middle ground here.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[koiransuklaa]

Sure, there is a checkbox... and if you try it in current Ubuntu release:

> ** (gnome-session-properties:27389): DEBUG:
> Session saving is not implemented yet

It's still half-broken, AFAIK.

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[danieltdp]

Not this option. Go to administration (or preferences, can't remember). There is an option called "processes" (or "services"). Click on add and choose your app. It will be started automatically.

Sorry for being vague. No ubuntu at work. If you think its necessary, I can check it at home

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[Thundersnatch]

Erm? Why is a reboot a problem?

On Vista I didn't have to reboot after the last patch Tuesday. 10 patches to Office and Windows installed, no reboot required.

Suck it, Trebek!

Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first

[Thundersnatch]

If you're really determined though, you can always use ksplice to patch, and avoid rebooting. One more thing Linux has on Windows.

Umm... no. Microsoft has had hot-patching available for several years. Not many people use it, because most critical Windows systems that can't tolerate downtime are clustered. But it works. I think some Windows Server 2008 patches are actually distributed through Windows Update with hot-patching enabled by default; I have had many patches on 2008 not require any reboots.

Nice, but...

[DavidChristopher]

Remember, this is "pre-release" software.

Looks like there's lot of good stuff in there though - X.Org 1.6, Gnome 2.26, a kernel based on 2.6.28, ext4 support... (I'm especially interested in wacom hotplug tablet support in a mainstream distro


This won't be the year of the linux desktop- but we'll see how it goes on my laptop :)

Re:Nice, but...

[Ivlis]

kernel based on 2.6.28, ext4 support...

I see you don't like KDE configuration files.

blah

[nrgy]

Eclipse 3.2.2 still? When do they plan on upgrading it? I mean they upgraded to PulseAudio and we all know how stable that thing is. *sigh*

I've tried running Eclipse builds from other repositories and seem to always have issues with them. It would be nice if they updated to a later version.

Re:blah

[setagllib]

Nobody I know uses the Ubuntu Eclipse package anyway. Just unpack Eclipse from eclipse.org somewhere and make a launcher for it. I also prefer to use the real JDK rather than OpenJDK, at least as long as OpenJDK has Swing bugs.

Re:blah

[BlackCreek]

I second that. Eclipse can be a mess, downloading and installing it directly is, by far, the best option.

I have a bunch of co-workers using Eclipse and Ubuntu. Nobody even considers using the Ubuntu distributed version. The age of this bug should make it clear how much attention Eclipse gets in Ubuntu https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/eclipse/+bug/81900

I was going to say that for Java development you are normally better off by downloading and setting up everything yourself, but I guess that is also true for all other programming languages. At least I did that also when developing with Python.

Re:blah

[Matt Perry]

Nobody I know uses the Ubuntu Eclipse package anyway.

Then what's the point of packaging software for distros if you can't rely on it working?

Re:blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Same for Netbeans, Azureus and a couple of other apps that I forgot.

Re:blah

[setagllib]

You can't please everyone. Programmers in particular can be *really* picky about how their development environment and tools are set up. Anyone experienced enough with Eclipse to care about which version they use is virtually guaranteed to prefer a custom install anyway. Anyone inexperienced enough won't notice what version they're using.

Second to that, Eclipse 3.2 was the last version to support a visual editor for GUIs, so I can imagine the package maintainers wanting to stay with that until 3.4 has a working alternative. However that's not an excuse for not providing an alternative package for the 99% of people who don't care about a visual editor.

Re:blah

[ricegf]

So what IDE do you use for Python? I've used Eclipse and SPE with good success; we most frequently use Komodo at work. At PyCon last month, though, I won a 3-OS license for Wing, and have been really impressed at its introspection (much more challenging on a dynamic language than mere Java). Of course, it's not open source, but I'm not a purist.

upgraded yesterday

[wizardforce]

So far so good, bootime looks good, speed seems reasonable. No problems with stability to speak of yet.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[jd]

I've had problems with Firefox 3.0.8 and 3.5 installed at the same time, but that's not strictly a Ubuntu problem unless you consider the failure to de-install the old version when there's a clash a distro issue.

There have been a few other minor glitches here and there, but nothing I'd call substantial. Certainly nothing unexpected for a pre-release.

Some packages long-overdue for updating still haven't been. (A trivial example: ATLAS is at 3.6.0, the official stable version is 3.8.3 and the development version is 3.9.11.) However, that's not going to happen at this stage in the game and it's largely downstream packagers not packaging that's to blame.

Some bugs in the beta (including an odd one that caused the System menu option to sometimes think it was Firefox) have been ironed out and it looks pretty decent.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[Threni]

I'm still looking for a cd/dvd burning app which works. Neither brasero or that kde one (k3d or something) does the verify step - they just freeze. The disks seem ok, but that's not good enough so I'm currently burning (and verifying) in windows. It used to work, so it's not my hardware. I've raised a bug report but that's not helped.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[batkiwi]

Did you install both of those firefoxes from official debs from ubuntu, debs you "found" somewhere, or just from the dfault firefox installer?

ALL that ubuntu knows about is what's in dpkg. If you roll your own you should roll a deb so that it at least knows which files are effected.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[rite_m]

Love the new notification system (NotifyOSD)

Re:upgraded yesterday

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you use default panel layout and you have a single display. For the rest of us who have customized their ubuntu looks, notify-osd sucks because it is not possible to change the position of the notification bubbles, or their color to contrast them from background and window theme. And with the gnome mentality of the developers, not having an option is actually a feature. Currently I miss all notifications that I don't expect, because they blend with my background and window theme. The only good news is that they included the indicator applet, which collects some of the missed notifications.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like Growl.

Fucking hippie scumbag pirate open source users.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[MasterOfMagic]

I was wondering when someone would do a Growl-like piece of software for *NIX without all of the nice themes and without per-application settings.

Chalk up another one for free software innovation.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah. A very nasty though overlooked Xorg bug locks up completely my Thinkpad T42 With Ati Mobile Radeon 7500 whatever configuration or driver is used, radeon or even vesa :-(

Only way to have it work is to revert to an early april alpha version of /usr/lib/xorg/modules.

For the rest assuming we all disregard how horribly buggy and slow KDE 4.3 is, even in the GNOME version the system looks to me still average so buggy to resemble the worst Fedora ever :-(

Not ready, not now. Sorry.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[drinkypoo]

ALL that ubuntu knows about is what's in dpkg. If you roll your own you should roll a deb so that it at least knows which files are effected.

I can't tell if you meant effected or affected; on reflection, the deb file tells the system both.

In case anyone is wondering, it's pretty fucking easy to make deb packages and your system will thank you. It seems difficult, but it really ain't. Maybe someday someone should write a friendly guide to the subject. There are many guides; I found none of them straightforward. In particular having you download the hello-debhelper (or whatever) package to start with is overkill and complicates the issue.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[Knuckles]

Or you can simply use checkinstall.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[drinkypoo]

Well, for Ubuntu users, you can become an Ubuntero (so gay, so gay) which gets you a PPA (personal package archive) and others can benefit as well. I made a package for qgtkstyle for hardy and intrepid, but in theory it's integrated into the new Qt and we don't need it any more so I didn't make one for Jaunty.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[Knuckles]

Doesn't notification-properties do what you need? It is in System > Settings, but hidden by default, you need to make it visible with the menu editor or run it from CLI.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[drinkypoo]

It doesn't do what I need; no matter what corner I ask it to go to, it's always in the top-right (which actually is where I want it, so I'm lying just a bit — but the bug is real.)

Re:upgraded yesterday

[Knuckles]

Sure, I just referred to the dependency issue re firefox that was discussed.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[drinkypoo]

I hear you, all I'm saying is that I'm trying to promote a method that is "better" for "the community" (in my opinion.) If you are a Debian user, it behooves you to know how to make a deb package. For that matter, you ought to know how to make a package for any operating system you're using, if you muck about with sources. With that said, I'm careful to build non-managed programs such that all their files, including etc files, end up under /usr/local.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[Knuckles]

You are right - same for me on a simple single-screen.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[Knuckles]

I understood, and I fully agree :)

Re:upgraded yesterday

[jd]

Yes, installed both from Ubuntu's official site, same distro version, nothing fancy. :) Burned myself with mixing packages with vanilla installers and external repos a few times ion the distant past, so this time did things "properly". Clean install, official methods of doing everything, official packages, the lot. Still barfed.

Re:upgraded yesterday

[rantingkitten]

I'm not sold on it yet, but it does look interesting, and seemed okay when I tried out the beta a few weeks ago. As long as the notifications stay out of my face I'll be okay, but animated things appearing and disappearing is very distracting to me.

ubuntu gets best practices paradigms-as-a-service!

[gandhi_2]

FeatureList-> here

Among the features are "cloud computing" and "turn-key" email servers. *groan*. You guys have been saying "linux needs an advertising dept"...well this is what happens.

Beauty is still wanting

[bogaboga]

Although it is said that "beauty lies in the hands of the beholder", I must mention that at first look, Ubuntu's interface looks dated whose icons are rather big.

When compared to Apple's OSX, KDE 4.2.2 or even Windows 7, Ubuntu's default interface does not inspire that much. Is this the best they could do?

I am aware that I will get tones of flak for this...I am ready so go right ahead.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only a matter of opinion, I still think the default look isn't too bad at all... however I may be the only one. While I think the look is ok, they _have_ had the same look for quite some time now. Last time I checked they seemed to be saying that a new look would be coming with 9.10... but I think they said the same thing for the last three releases.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[wizardforce]

http://www.gnome-look.org/

http://www.kde-look.org/

no matter what the ubuntu devs choose for the default theme, someone is going to be unhappy and that is why we have whole domains devoted to hosting various shiny things to put on your *nix box to customize to your liking.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[tpgp]

I am aware that I will get tones of flak for this...I am ready so go right ahead.

I'll bet you're ready!

After all, you've had plenty of practice trolling linux users haven't you?

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[Anonymous Coward]

Kubunu 9.04 sports KDE 4.2.1 and looks pretty good. But you know what's cool, I'm running it now as a liveCD from the iso image off the hard disk. You just need to get patcher.sh and run it on your iso file. It'll extract the kernel and initrd image, patch them, and then tell you what's needed in your /boot/grub/menu.lst file to create a boot menu item to boot the iso image off the hard disk.

here's the forum entry where you get patcher.sh

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6813226&postcount=25

I almost forgot, once you boot Kubuntu, open the "About Kubuntu" help item on the desktop and you'll get a little intro to Kubuntu and KDE.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[Hangin10]

Speaking of comparisons, anyone have some links
about memory usage?

Some simulations/virtualizations of Win7 I've
been present for seem to show it using less RAM
idling than WinXP, albeit the Win7 is a clean
install, and the XP is Scotty style rigged
holding together after 6 years or so.

However my laptop with Ubuntu 8.10 seems to use
about half the available 464MB RAM. With Win7
idling at 40% used, should I average everything
and call it about even?

But then what about not having to use Anti-Virus
on Linux? Speed boost, eh? I'm not concerned with
look and feel. I just want my computer to run
optimally. My XP install is old. I don't even
know how I managed to fix the broken MSI install
capability.

My only other concern is drivers. If I have an
old enough ATI card, will there by some kind of
accelerated driver for it? I'm guessing the
answer to this is going to be use-the-live-cd and
find-out.

My CPU is an early Pentium 4 and a recent upgrade
to 1.5GB from 512MB of RDRAM.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[jrothwell97]

Well, at least it now comes with some nice themes installed (but not activated) by default, and the new usplash and GDM are much better than before.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[value_added]

[N]o matter what the ubuntu devs choose for the default theme, someone is going to be unhappy and that is why we have whole domains devoted to hosting various shiny things to put on your *nix box to customize to your liking.

I'm no Gnome or KDE expert, but how exactly does opting for a different theme change, in the OP's words, an "interface ... whose icons are rather big"? Every screenshot or desktop I've seen uses large icons.

Dunno about everyone else, but I'd think that large icons should be considered a waste of real estate and a distraction. Assuming, of course, that you don't have a Very Large Monitor, or otherwise have little real work to do.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not the only one

I personally prefer the bit spartan look of gnome to KDE or Vista. I Think it makes UI easier to read and understand.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[Umangme]

I think most people will accept that the default theme and interface is not great by any standards. The theme can be changed, though I have some issues with that too. Most of the themes available are copies of Vista and Apple. But I am hoping for an improvement in the coming months.

Karmic Koala promises to have a better theme. Mark Shuttleworth said:

The desktop will have a designer's fingerprints all over it - we're now beginning the serious push to a new look. Brown has served us well but the Koala is considering other options.

Gnome 3.0 (GNOME 2.30 = GNOME 3.0) also looks very interesting, but that isn't coming very soon... I do remember seeing some nice ideas for GNOME 3.0, but can't find the "screenshots" right now.

I agree that the interface is not good (people will disagree) but I am still optimistic for the future. :)

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running Kubuntu 9.04 running fluxbox with Firefox, Akregator, and an instance of urxvt open.
(Output of free -m edited due to the darn lameness filter)
$ free -m
                          total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3861 3123 738 0 95 2247
-/+ buffers/cache: 780 3080
Swap: 7632 18 7613
Though, running the 64 bit version probably doesn't help memory usage.
And it's not like X is trying to use 700 MB of RAM (*glares at the debian install on his EEEPC*)

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[wizardforce]

you can change the size of icons in the prefs. I don't know where anyone gets this idea that icons are somehow one size fits all...

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[Erikderzweite]

>But then what about not having to use Anti-Virus
on Linux? Speed boost, eh?

Well, antivirus tends to trash the hard disk which is the performance bottleneck of most PCs. Speaking of which, ext4 is rather nice and fast IMO.

>I'm not concerned with look and feel. I just want my computer to run optimally.

Why ubuntu then, you may want to try xubuntu perhaps?

>My CPU is an early Pentium 4 and a recent upgrade to 1.5GB from 512MB of RDRAM.

That should be more than enough for Ubuntu, my aunt has Linux (albeit not Ubuntu, but it shouldn't be much slower) running on a 1.4 Pentium 4 with 640 mb ram and Nvidia GeForce2 440 MMX with basic compiz effects enabled.

>My only other concern is drivers. If I have an
old enough ATI card, will there by some kind of
accelerated driver for it? I'm guessing the
answer to this is going to be use-the-live-cd and
find-out.

Apparently you'll be using open-source ati driver. It has 3d acceleration and it should be enough for compiz. My gf has an old ATI card, with no proprietary driver available. Compiz is a bit slow but still usable.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[bain_online]

Actually they have just realized yet again that this not The Year of The Linux Desktop.

We will just have to wait.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[Anonymous Coward]

I am aware that I will get tones of flak for this

OK, here you go:

beep beeep beeeeeeeep barp beeep

There, that told you.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[gandhi_2]

You know that "just works" meme? How about the USER just getting work done, not "enjoying the inspirational GUI". Writing a paper? Doing research? Coding? How about you STFU about how the GUI looks and get your fucking work done? Like your productivity is better with Aero turned on? Wasted HDD, RAM, and Cycles. And that goes triple for every Apple OS.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[Swizec]

Desktops need big big icons. And only three or four of them, ten-ish if you're on a double large screen setup. Otherwise it just looks all too cluttered and annoying.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[Ash-Fox]

I am aware that I will get tones of flak for this

OK, here you go:

beep beeep beeeeeeeep barp beeep

There, that told you.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[Anonymous Coward]

This proves how retarded non Linux users are. Who the fuck cares about default? Do whatever you want, it's your OS. You don't lease it as with Windows. On second thought, stick to Windows. You people tend to flood our forums with retardation anyway.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Ubuntu running on a system with 256MB Ram and an AMD Sempron CPU(don't remember what performance numbers it had)

It works quite well for all my needs, even fire up blender on it sometimes.

It isn't optimal, but it gets the job done.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[ciderVisor]

My only other concern is drivers. If I have an old enough ATI card, will there by some kind of accelerated driver for it?

Using the Beta of 9.04, I could only get 640x480 or 800x600 on my ATI chipset. Booting from the Live CD will tell you all you need to know about your specific system.

If I have to manually edit xorg.conf to get decent resolutions then 2009 is NOT the year of Ubuntu on the desktop.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[ciderVisor]

The desktop will have a designer's fingerprints all over it.

Like this ?

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[Anonymous Coward]

I am aware that I will get tones of flak

It's tonnes (metric) or tons (imperial).

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[Abreu]

That was a strange poem...

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[value_added]

you can change the size of icons in the prefs.

Try looking at the toolbar of any GUI app, or anything that offers file management functions, (for example) and explain how exactly one can "change the size of icons in the prefs" or how your "change themes" comment is relevant? If I could change any of this, I would, but am forced to (in the case of toolbars, for example), configure each app (on a per-app basis) to hide the toolbar.

Thankfully, I don't use many GUI apps, but fucking hell, the days of giant Volume Control knobs on our stereos disappeared decades ago. Do we really need their screen equivalents? And then, do you see Microsoft inserting 24 and 32 pixel icons where they're uncessary or inappropriate?

I don't know where anyone gets this idea that icons are somehow one size fits all.

Like I said, those with oversized screens or who don't have to do any real work probaby won't notice or mind the state of things.

Re:Beauty is still wanting

[AndGodSed]

Which old ATI card?

I as because I am using an old dell laptop (work machine - techs seem to be bottom of the pile for now hardware) and although I have 3accell it is mesa accelerated and I could not find the correct drivers for it.

The card is an ATI Radeon Mobility with 32mb ram. I wont be using Compiz but I'd like some decent performance out of it.

Any ideas?

Ath5k wifi issues

[kmahan]

Any chance that the ath5k driver will be fixed for the Acer Aspire One (8.9")? It's getting better -- the machine no longer hangs with the capslock led flashing.. :) But updating to the RC and attempting to do large transfers still results in the occasional buffer corruption (invalid CRCs).

Re:Ath5k wifi issues

[Anonymous Coward]

But updating to the RC and attempting to do large transfers still results in the occasional buffer corruption (invalid CRCs).

I've been running (K)ubuntu 9.04 on Aspire One since the Beta was released and applied latest updates daily over wifi using ath5k, but haven't noticed any corruptions in transfers. I'm kind of worried now though. Is there a launchpad bug report for the issue?

eyes...eyes

[choseph]

Isn't that "beauty lies in the cockles of the beholder" or "beauty lies to the beholder to escape its paralyzing glare"? Oh, eyes of the beholder, that's it.

Re:eyes...eyes

[Daswolfen]

Sorry... I made my save :)

Let's have some fun with this

[77Punker]

I'm in the mood to get reckless and use experimental software to handle my upgrade. I know I'm not the only one using apt-p2p tonight!

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6058308

Re:Let's have some fun with this

[drinkypoo]

I used apt-p2p to upgrade to the beta a day or two ago. So far everything is great except that Ubuntu still hasn't figured out audio. I had to install Pulseaudio and follow PerfectSetup to get audio working. The nVidia 180.44 driver is working great for me, and your problem with it is almost guaranteed to be nVidia's fault.

Re:Let's have some fun with this

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know the procedure to use apt-p2p along with apt-cacher-ng? I think it should be setup like apt -> apt-cacher-ng -> apt-p2p -> internet so that the cache contains the files even when downloaded from p2p. I not sure how to plugin apt-p2p into the chain, as i think apt-cacher-ng has a feature to treat all mirrors of a repository as one source and automatically switch between them and The apt-cacher-ng on intrepid comes configured with all ubuntu mirrors.

Re:Let's have some fun with this

[Locklin]

Apt uses checksums and digital signing, if apt-p2p downloads a bad package, apt shouldn't install it.

Linux is becoming beautiful!

[mcrbids]

I upgraded a while ago to Fedora Core 10, running KDE with the HW accelerated desktop, Compiz and effects turned on. It almost never ceases to draw a surprise when I'm working while on display and casually turn the whole desktop into a cube, rotate it to a blank side, and put it back down!

It's damned good looking and makes even OSX 10.5 look dated! I use OSX and didn't really notice it until I went to buy a new screen and saw OSX on display.

Windows is about as exciting as watching bread turn green, but even MacOS looked kinda plain compared to my sexy new laptop display!

And I'm talking about simple looks, here. To be honest, it still has some stability issues that annoy the ?@?!/ out of me. Fedora 9 was painfully bad - worst distro I've ever used - but 10 is a good step in the right direction. KDE 4.2.x is the best 4 so far but it's still not functionally anywhere near 3.5.

Re:Linux is becoming beautiful!

[nawcom]

Sorry man, don't ever link anything X11, especially compiz or DEs like KDE4 to a Linux kernel. There's only a ton more OSs that use compiz, KDE and X11 as well. I can list off the BSDs and Open and retail Solaris, that's enough to prove the point.

Re:Linux is becoming beautiful!

[dotancohen]

KDE 4.2.x is the best 4 so far but it's still not functionally anywhere near 3.5.

What's missing for you? I have a list of features missing in KDE 4.x that were present in KDE 3.x and I've filed bugs on everything that people have complained about. If you have something new, I'd like to know about it. If you are interested in a feature that other people are interested in, then I'll post the bug number here so that you can comment and vote on it.

Thanks!

Re:Linux is becoming beautiful!

[mcrbids]

Here are a few shortcomings:

1) Can't drag a submenu directly on the task bar, only menu items.

2) Cross-desktop task list is (apparently) nowhere to be found. So when I have 2,3,4 desktops with tasks on them, I have to hunt through the desktops to find a particular one. Worse, the task bar at the bottom doesn't follow Compiz cube desktop, so I have to go to each desktop, select, wait for the task bar to update, and then go to the next one. (sigh) Perhaps this is because I only like tasks from the current desktop, but when does it make sense to mix tasks from 3 busy desktops into one little task bar? (confusing as he11!)

3) Control-Shift-Tab to "go back" a task doesn't work.

4) Control-Shit-Meta to "go back" a desktop doesn't work.

5) Can't put icons on the desktop. There's a widget where you can stick stuff that looks like a file explore window with the background faded, but it's distracting, what with the settings bar popping out everytime I hover over it. (ugh)

Re:Linux is becoming beautiful!

[mcrbids]

Another one:

System Settings / Display is very Mac-like and very pretty, but doesn't support dual-head configurations. At all. I have to hack up xorg.conf (and that isn't pretty!)

Re:Linux is becoming beautiful!

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Mandriva Power Pack 2009. It's just click-click-click and you get Compiz + all the codecs you need.

Re:Linux is becoming beautiful!

[w000t]

I can answer most of those...
2) You can configure the task manager to show task from current or all desktops (right click on it and select "Task Manager Settings"). I'm not sure about the Compiz issue but it works fine with KWin.
3/4) The default shorcuts for those actions are Alt-Shift-Tab and Meta-Shift-Tab. You can also change them in System Setting -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Global Keyboard Shorcuts -> KWin
5) Right click on the desktop and choose "Desktop Settings". Change the Desktop Activity type to "Desktop" and you'll have your old style desktop back. BTW, the settings bar will stop popping out on hover if you lock the widgets. Click the little icon on the top right corner and select "Lock Widgets".
KDE4 might still be missing a few things from KDE3 but you're greatly exaggerating things. Most things are not only present, but are where normal users would expect them. Maybe you're not really trying?
On an unrelated topic, I have an NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT and up until KDE4.2.1 had experienced pretty appalling performance but, with the latest upgrade this week, thing have improved noticeably. I'm not sure if this is due to the KDE update (4.2.1 to 4.2.2), the NVIDIA driver update (180.41 to 180.44) or something else entirely but, finally, the last KDE4 issue really annoying me has vanished as well, so it looks like there's only happy times ahead.

Re:Linux is becoming beautiful!

[w000t]

Sorry, I've made a few mistakes in 5). To get an old style desktop you have to select "Folder View" activity type not "Desktop" (which is the default). To change it you have to right click on the desktop and select "Appearance Settings" (there's no "Desktop Settings" entry)

Re:Linux is becoming beautiful!

[mcrbids]

2) You can configure the task manager to show task from current or all desktops (right click on it and select "Task Manager Settings"). I'm not sure about the Compiz issue but it works fine with KWin.

It doesn't work with Compiz until I select the desktop. Notice that in Kwin, when you switch desktops, there's a small delay before the task manager updates with the hot keys for *that* desktop? Programmatically, there probably should be a different task manager widget for each desktop?

3/4) The default shorcuts for those actions are Alt-Shift-Tab and Meta-Shift-Tab. You can also change them in System Setting -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Global Keyboard Shorcuts -> KWin

It's when I change them that I have this problem. While I have no problem with Meta-Tab, Ctl-Tab, or Alt-Tab as a combination, the addition of the shift button breaks any of these. I can go forward, never backward.

5) Right click on the desktop and choose "Desktop Settings". Change the Desktop Activity type to "Desktop" and you'll have your old style desktop back. BTW, the settings bar will stop popping out on hover if you lock the widgets. Click the little icon on the top right corner and select "Lock Widgets".

Thanks! Finally, a desktop that is a... desktop!

Re:Linux is becoming beautiful!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course there are some shortcomings... but a couple of points:

2) I'm not sure I understand you correctly, but you can configure the task manager to show apps from all desktops or just from the current one.

3) go back a task? you mean alt-shift-tab?

5) right click your desktop, choose desktop settings, and choose folderview as your containment type. also, you could lock your widgets and have no handles pop out of widgets when hovering over them.

Oh, and btw, if you're using kde, I'd recommend trying kwin for all your compositing needs. It seriously rocks :)

The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usage

[Pausanias]

I've been running 9.04 on my Dell laptop for a few weeks now. Like every new release, it's a mixed bag.
Pluses:

• Really, super, extra fast boot (10 seconds on my newish Dell)
• Fixes a lot of bugs (in GNOME mainly) from the previous release, Intrepid, which was their worst ever
• Includes the ext4 file system---having upgraded to ext4, I'm really noticing the performance upgrade.

Minuses:

• Evolution suckage continues. This version of the mail client crashed on me on startup, plus the "remove duplicate email" plugin no longer works with it. I've had it with Evolution. I've migrated to Thunderbird, and am vastly more happy. I continue to use Evolution's calendaring system, but only as a way to get my google calendar onto the GNOME panel.
• Broken NVIDIA binary blob drivers. Yet again. The intrepid drivers were OK, but now there's something toxic about the combination of either 173 or 180 and the Jaunty kernel. On 173 twinview locks up on me, and on 180 I get random hard lockups once a week. I have really had it with this nvidia binary blob garbage---I am anxiously awaiting some kind of dual monitor support in Nouveau, so I can ditch this piece of rubbish---a goblin that keeps on breaking Linux for many more people than just me, and always will, as long as the binary blob keeps on going.

Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag

[spasm]

The 'Lightning' add-on for Thunderbird lets you subscribe to multiple Google calendars & shows them as a sidebar to Thunderbird's mail window. Not quite the same as having it in Gnome panel, but I thought you might be curious to check it out if you weren't already aware of it.

Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag

[Darkk]

You can actually install the Lightning add-on for Thunderbird which will give you calender functions. I totally agree Evolution suck a$$ and do wish they make Thunderbird de facto standard just like Firefox.

What is really nice about Thunderbird the fact there are Linux and Windows versions which can both read the SAME data files without any kind of conversion. Really slick. I was doing that for awhile until I finally weaned myself off of WinXP for good.

Oh man.. not this week...

[Daswolfen]

Now I got to upgrade... World of Warcraft 3.1 dropped Tuesday.. my fragile little psyche can only handle one upgrade at a time! Couldn't they have waited a week? I mean, come on.. think of the kittens.

Re:Oh man.. not this week...

[dotancohen]

Now I got to upgrade... World of Warcraft 3.1 dropped Tuesday.. my fragile little psyche can only handle one upgrade at a time! Couldn't they have waited a week? I mean, come on.. think of the kittens.

You do in fact have another week. This is only the release candidate.

Intel video drivers suck!

[MindlessAutomata]

Woe to anyone using an intel video card! Right now we're experiencing random lockups, and performance has generally been subpar for a lot of people. I'm not sure how stable UXA is yet, earlier it was causing a lot of lockups.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[mark_anon]

Also, woe to anyone using an ATI card. Oh yeah, and god help you if you're using 64 bit. Basically, woe to anyone who isn't using a 3 year old nVidia card with 32 bit OS.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[Kjella]

Yeah, those damn binary blobs. Nothing but unstable pieces of shit, can't wait to get rid of them and install some op... Intel? Waaaaaaaait a minute, this rant needs work.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[ameyer17]

My G45-based system's not too bad. There are some weird graphical glitches, but it's been stable ever since alpha 6 or so.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[wrook]

Just because it's open source doesn't mean it doesn't suck. The Intel drivers have always had serious performance problems. Now this. I wish there was someplace else to turn. On the other hand the binary blobs suck precisely because they are binary blobs.

What this rant needs is: "I should get off my butt and fix the damn Intel drivers".

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess I should consider myself lucky since I only get the random lockups while playing 3D-accelerated games. Other than that no problems for me so far. This with the Intel chip on Acer Aspire One netbook.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[Zebedeu]

No problems whatsoever in my NC10 netbook (Intel 945GSE).

The Intel drivers have been a breath of fresh air, coming from a previous NVidia-based laptop.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[Computershack]

Typical Ubuntu release then - breaking things which used to work just fine.

The problem with a rigid set in stone 6 month release schedule is that quality control increasingly goes down the shitter as release date gets closer. No other distribution is stupid enough to say that they will definitely release version x.xx in 12 months to the very day while releasing another version in that time. Doing so means that glaring bugs, such as the windows passworded share one, get released.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[andy.ruddock]

I'm running 64-bits with an ATI card, works for me.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[Oxy the moron]

What Intel chipset are you using? I have a laptop (Vostro 1700) with X3100, and I have Compiz enabled with lots of shiny effects. Thus far I have seen no such lockups or slowdowns. In fact, I was quite pleased (and surprised) with the speed both in the visual effects and in 3D games like Sauerbraten.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[gbarules2999]

Please stop hurting yourself. This was an upstream issue, and you can bet that Fedora's going to run into the same problem unless somebody fixes it.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[ReinoutS]

Maybe you should look at what the guys at Mandriva have done to fix those drivers first.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[drinkypoo]

I'm using a Quadro 2700M on Ubuntu 64-bit and so far it's been flawless, except when I updated my kernel to -rt and forgot to install the restricted modules. Whoops! In other words, Ubuntu is working precisely as advertised on my current computer (EliteBook 8730w) which does have recent nVidia but is not running in 32 bit mode. (I intend to upgrade memory soon...) I didn't have to play any stupid games to get flash 10 or Java working, either.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[Anonymous Coward]

it works, but not in combination with compiz. Video output with compiz flickers and is un-even, and 3d programs are pretty un-playable.

That's with a 3870 and the fglrx driver. It's been like this since I started using Ubuntu 6.10.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[mark_anon]

Yeah, the nVidia drivers have been really good to me. Very stable, and work well with Compiz. ATI on the other hand.... ugh. AMD, what's UP???!!! Basically I won't buy ati on any computer that I think might eventually use Linux. Which is unfortunate.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[drinkypoo]

The good news is that Now up to radeon r5xx users can use the ati driver instead of fglrx... IIRC anyway. But yes, it's true that ATI still can't code their way out of a nutsack, and that they just need to stop trying, and let the community do it all.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Linux since 1998. First, Red Hat, then Debian, then Ubuntu.

Believe me when I say Mandriva ("mandreeva") is the best Linux out there for the desktop user who wants a functional machine (just like a "normal" computer). If you buy the version with the proprietary codecs - which is quite affordable - and orders of magnitude less the Microsoft.

I don't know what's up with all the Ubuntu hype. Yeah, it's good, but it's not the best for the common user.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[andy.ruddock]

The free drivers work well for me with compiz, I don't have a great need for 3D acceleration which is where other people have voiced their dissatisfaction with the free driver.
The flickering in various media players is still an issue - apparently this is a bug in X which the nvidia driver works around somehow, although I can't remember where I read this.
All in all, for me, I'm now glad I made the decision to buy the ATI card over the Nvidia, YMMV.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[styrotech]

The problem with a rigid set in stone 6 month release schedule is that quality control increasingly goes down the shitter as release date gets closer.

Yeah that's why I prefer to use a rock solid OS like OpenBSD... oh wait...

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[ameyer17]

Well, I mean X/the kernel has been mostly stable, with a couple issues related to resuming from hibernation. PulseAudio's still a bit stability-challenged, though.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[ZosX]

huh? are you saying that I don't have to use the kind of crappy open source drivers for my 9250 anymore? that new open source drivers that were built on the newly opened architecture are released now? The problem was that the closed source drivers didn't support anything below 9800 or so, making the lackluster open source drivers the only way to go. Is this situation now not the same? And the new drivers come with 9.04???

I know I could like buy another video card, but why? It displays all my software just like any other video card and I can even play a bunch of games on it. I could care less about Crysis... :P

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[drinkypoo]

Is this situation now not the same? And the new drivers come with 9.04???

This is the situation with 9.04 and ati. Don't know if this helps you or not; I hope it does.

Re:Intel video drivers suck!

[rklrkl]

I downloaded the 64-bit desktop ISO for 9.04 RC and I have an ATI 2600 XT card (which is pretty low-end nowadays). The graphical installer dismally fails (blank screen though you do get the Ubuntu desktop theme sound) in "normal" graphics mode, so I tried "safe graphics mode" instead. Although this did indeed fire up a viewable X, the last few hundred horizontal pixels were off-screen, making it impossible to confirm OK/cancel on each screen (yes, I could guess how many tabs to activate and then press Return, but this varies too).

Annoyingly, the desktop install CD doesn't include the (far superior) text-mode installer for no real good reason (this is a major weakness of Ubuntu compared to Fedora) and since I didn't want to download another 700MB of alternate installer CD, I did eventually work out how to get the X up and running OK.

Basically, I took an xorg.conf from another partition (Fedora 8) that used the "radeon" driver and copied it over the one in Ubuntu (Shift-Ctrl-F2 got me a text prompt to let me do this) and then killed X, which restarted correctly. A shame Ubuntu 9.04 RC is broken and the lack of a text installer in the desktop ISO is unforgivable because the only easy fallback is missing!

CentOS 5.3 is out, too!

[HouseOfMisterE]

I didn't notice until earlier tonight, but CentOS 5.3 has been released!

http://www.centos.org/

Re:CentOS 5.3 is out, too!

[rklrkl]

April 1st has called and wants its release announcement back :-)

On a slightly more serious note, CentOS 5.2 users that are upgrading to 5.3 should do "yum update glibc" first before a "yum update" because of a yum locking issue. For us at work, CentOS 5.2 broke nss_ldap (and it's still broken with 5.3) and 5.3 has broken sound support in the kernel (about 1 in every 4 boots, the sound modules crash and fail to load properly). Easily fixed by keeping older RPMs on the system, but a bit annoying for a clone of an enterprise distro (I suspect RHEL 5 would have identical issues).

Re:CentOS 5.3 is out, too!

[Nevyn]

On a slightly more serious note, CentOS 5.2 users that are upgrading to 5.3 should do "yum update glibc" first before a "yum update" because of a yum locking issue.

If it's the issue I think you are talking about, it's an rpm/glibc locking issue ... and only happens when you run rpm inside the scriptlets of packages (basically glibc upgraded the pthread locking, so you can't have old and new users at the same time). You're not wrong in the solution, but there's nothing yum could have done differently.

For us at work, CentOS 5.2 broke nss_ldap (and it's still broken with 5.3)

If it's been broken, for you, for that long. Then you really need to either fix it yourself, or pay RH for support and open a ticket with them.

Seems pretty rough

[Radhruin]

I just upgraded, and I gotta say, it's been pretty painful.

• Had to reinstall sound drivers and get them working again (involves choosing a few settings here and there) and figure I need to restart to see any changes. Not the end of the world, but quite annoying, but then the fun began.
• My System menu lacks a "Quit" option (no kidding).
• During shutdown, my system speaker blared very quick (and LOUD) beeps during the entire shutdown process. When the final screen showed up, it changed to a constant tone for a couple seconds before dying away.
• Booting up is very slow as it pauses at one place for 10 or more seconds, then the load screen bails. It says something about an IO error. Eventually it boots normally.
• The monitor will not go to sleep. Instead the entire screen turns pure white. Thankfully the login box is there, you just can't see it, so it's possible to log in and clear the issue.

There's also been a million smaller gripes here and there, and this is only after an hour or so. Basically, the user experience could use a major amount of work in my estimation :(

Re:Seems pretty rough

[dotancohen]

Those sound like show-stoppers, especially the beeping. Please link to the bugs that you filed so that I could triage them on my equipment. Thanks.

Re:Seems pretty rough

[dotancohen]

You can download the source code and FIX IT YOUR SELF!!!!! Or just why don't you SHUT UP if you can't!

Why should he fix it himself? All he has to do is report the problem at this address and Canonical will fix it.

Re:Seems pretty rough

[andy.ruddock]

The missing quit option is by design - look in the user-switcher menu. (I think it's stupid too.)

Re:Seems pretty rough

[Anonymous Coward]

Why on Earth would you need an option to shut down your own computer? It's confusing for newcomers, and experienced Linux users never shut down anyway.

In the unlikely event that you need a reboot, the GNOME guys will make that decision for you.

Let *them* decide, control freaks!

Re:Seems pretty rough

[gbarules2999]

I guess I'm the guy who has to post this...*sigh*...did you file bug reports yet?

Re:Seems pretty rough

[wobedraggled]

I've done two upgrades that were flawless, sounds like you have hardware issues more than anything else.

Re:Seems pretty rough

[Joe Snipe]

I have had all of the above issues since 8.10 with the addition of the following:

Screwed up login screen (due to dual monitor)

Support for my HP remote (in any capacity) is virtually nonexistant.

No sound through HDMI (and no working fixes for the Nvidia 9600)

Running Konversation in the taskbar will randomly kill my ability to click on things with the mouse.

Re:Seems pretty rough

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of those problems may be kernel-related. I've had those system beeps on the past two kernel updates, and I'm still on Intrepid

Re:Seems pretty rough

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that KDE you're using? Had the same and it stopped when I switched to gnome. Just a few commandlines and it's fixed.

Re:Seems pretty rough

[ais523]

I'm having the same beeping bug, and I did report it (just now): https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/363532. Unfortunately, I don't have much of an idea of what's going on; clarifying it with information would certainly be helpful...

Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag

[iammani]

Includes the ext4 file system---having upgraded to ext4, I'm really noticing the performance upgrade.

Be warned that the ext4 implementation in the RC is buggy. See Known Issues. It is expected to be fixed in the final release. So, stay will ext3, and upgrade to ext4 once the final release comes out.

xorg problem

[Anonymous Coward]

X seems to lock up the computer. I just get some weird pixellation. Can't switch to a console window. I'm using an onboard Radeon 690G. it happened a couple versions ago. On the bright side, I learned how to use wpa_supplicant with dhclient to connect to my router from the command line. On the other hand, does nobody realise how annoyingly complicated that is for the average person? on the negative side, still can't get into X. Do they want me to reinstall from scratch? very odd that this happens in an upgrade.

Re:xorg problem

[Ash-Fox]

Everything worked for me with no tweaking. Drivers, X, wireless, everything!

Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag

[Tubal-Cain]

Other minus: Updates killed my sound (on both a laptop and a desktop) not long after it went beta. Fortunately, it works in a fresh install. I guess a config file got clobbered somewhere.

Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag

[sakdoctor]

That's not what it said.

...is expected that a fix for this problem will be made available as a post-release update

Even the final release will be affected by this bug.

Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag

[Anonymous Coward]

As a replacement mail client you may want to try this - http://blogs.gnome.org/sragavan/2009/03/18/announcing-anjal-the-new-mail-for-netbooks/

The project is very young but looks promising. Somewhere in comments you will also find that it is packaged for jaunty by one of the community members.

What about the audio...?

[serviscope_minor]

This is not a troll. I'm a Linux user (occasional foray in to OpenBSD) and intend on staying that way. I also like the way Linux is going (including audio) moving complex features out of the kernel in to userspace. Yay for xorg, libusb, fuse, audio in principle and so on.

But what is the state of audio daemons in ubuntu?

As a non-ubuntu point, does anyone know if there is a simple kernel module which accepts the standard ioctls and so on on /dev/dsp and /dev/mixer and forwards them back to a userspace sound daemon?

Re:What about the audio...?

[mcelrath]

The current audio daemon being distributed by Ubuntu is pulseaudio. This has, for the last several releases, been a horrible pain in the ass. After the pain that was esd and artsd, I don't know why anyone decided to try another one. It appears the pulseaudio developers released an unfinished codebase into the world, and managed to get it into ubuntu. So for the last several releases (8.04 and 8.10 at least) audio has been a massive pain. Apps would crash, pulseaudio would crash, sound would not be present or wouldn't mix properly between apps. Flash video was particularly bad at taking down both firefox and pulseaudio. Skype was unusable.

However I must say that with 9.04 the situation is substantially better. (I upgraded to the Jaunty alpha specifically for the pulseaudio updates because 8.10 was unusable for certain combinations of audio-producing apps). I now reliably have music (rhythmbox) occasional browser noises (flash), wine games, video (vlc/miro/mplayer) and system sounds properly mixed with no crashing of the apps or the pulseaudio daemon. The pavucontrol control panel properly displays all the audio-producing apps and lets you individually mute them or control their volume.

A drawback to putting everything in userspace is that if your system becomes loaded or starts to swap, the audio will skip. Fortunately this doesn't cause any apps to crash, but is pretty annoying. It should be possible to eliminate this using real-time priorities, but I haven't investigated that yet. As far as I can tell there's no command line 'renice' program for realtime priorities. (I had one a long time ago, 'setrealtime' but it was a small piece of code I compiled myself)

So the summary is...the situation is better than it has been for several releases (more than a year, at least). But still worse than using the ALSA's built-in software mixing (which runs in kernel mode, I believe, and doesn't skip).

To answer your final question, I believe these daemons intercept calls before they get to the kernel. There is a library which can be LD_PRELOAD'ed which intercepts kernel calls (padsp). But since most apps these days are aware of two or more of {pulse, alsa, oss, esd, arts, jack}, configuring audio is rather a pain. All apps needed to be rewritten to take advantage of pulse. But at this point the important ones have (gnome apps) and some important ones that haven't (wine,skype) work.

The situation is improving, but ubuntu needs to configure realtime priorities for pulse by default, and we need to start killing off legacy sound daemons and interfaces. Linux audio is a mess.

Re:What about the audio...?

[DaleGlass]

Look in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf, there are priority and realtime settings there.

Re:What about the audio...?

[drinkypoo]

From the pulse-daemon.conf manpage, if you set realtime (which BTW probably is not going to be fruitful without a -rt kernel installed) and pulseaudio goes into an endless loop, your system will hang. I'm going to try it anyway, because I'm tired of audio choking, and I can't remember the last time pulseaudio did that (and I've been using it and loving it since about Ubuntu 8.04.)

Re:What about the audio...?

[DaleGlass]

Realtime priority != realtime patch.

Realtime priority means it's got priority over anything else in the system. If it wants to run, then everything else stops.

The realtime patch is a patch to reduce kernel latency, which is good for audio or a computer that needs to react consistently and quickly to external events. But it's not related to realtime priority.

If you've got at least a dual core CPU, a stuck RT process shouldn't bring the system down. It'll use up one core, but you'll still have another to kill it.

Re:What about the audio...?

[drinkypoo]

Realtime priority != realtime patch.

Yes, that's true. However, realtime priority without realtime patch is pretty damned non-realtime. Otherwise, we wouldn't need a realtime patch.

If you've got at least a dual core CPU, a stuck RT process shouldn't bring the system down. It'll use up one core, but you'll still have another to kill it.

Well, why don't you go test it? In the meantime you can read more about the issue.

Re:What about the audio...?

[mcelrath]

Default linux now has realtime priorities (SCHED_FIFO, SCHED_RR) which apply to the scheduler, and bypass the normal "nice" system for allocating CPU time. It doesn't require a -rt kernel. That's something different. -rt is related to reducing *kernel* latency, which will certainly help, but the skipping happening now is due to userspace contention for the CPU, not kernel interrupts.

Re:What about the audio...?

[mcelrath]

It looks like it's also necessary to add a line to /etc/security/limits.conf otherwise you still won't be able to grab realtime priority.

Thanks! I'm running real-time now. Now to do something dumb and make it swap...or I'll just wait a couple days until firefox goes over 2GB memory usage. (yes!)

Re:What about the audio...?

[DaleGlass]

Yes, that's true. However, realtime priority without realtime patch is pretty damned non-realtime. Otherwise, we wouldn't need a realtime patch.

No, not really. Realtime priority and the -rt patch do different things.

Realtime priority ensures that the pulse daemon always comes first when it comes to CPU time. This ensures that it can't happen that for instance a CPU intensive process, like a game, gcc, povray, etc doesn't let the daemon have enough CPU time to do its mixing in time. In a conflict between pulseaudio and a game wanting CPU time, pulseaudio will always win, ensuring the audio doesn't skip at the cost of the game's performance.

The -rt patch, on the other hand, reduces kernel latency. By doing that it minimizes the time the daemon has to wait, and makes it possible to use a smaller buffer. If the kernel can take say, 100ms to give control back to user space in some cases, then you must have at least a 100ms audio buffer, and that means that any audio played will always be delayed by 100ms.

Well, why don't you go test it? In the meantime you can read more about the issue.

I did. Did you?

#include <stdio.h>
#include <sched.h>
#include <sys/mman.h>
 
int main(void) {
        struct sched_param sp;
        int priority;
 
        priority = sched_get_priority_max(SCHED_FIFO);
 
        sp.sched_priority = priority;
 
        if ( sched_setscheduler(getpid(), SCHED_FIFO, &sp) ) {
                printf("Realtime priority set\n");
        }
 
        mlockall(MCL_FUTURE | MCL_CURRENT);
 
        for(;;) {}
}

I tried this a few minutes ago. top shows this as "RT" so it indeed has realtime priority. The system remains perfectly responsive, and I had no problem using "top" to check its priority, or killing it.

I first tested this years ago when I got a dual Athlon MP. Initially I booted with only one CPU, then added the second. A very noticeable difference I found was that at the time I had a buggy artsd that locked up sometimes. With one CPU, the box locked up and I could go for a coffee. After a few minutes it finally died for some reason, making it possible to use again without a reboot. Once I installed the second CPU I reproduced the bug. And absolutely no problem this time, the system remained perfectly functional.

Note that the article you linked talks about CPU affinity. Processes aren't normally locked to a single CPU, and if they are, they're usually very specific ones, like important daemons. It makes very little sense to set affinity on for instance a terminal emulator, so even if a bad RT process kills your database performance, that still shouldn't stop you from fixing the problem.

no remote attacks

[emj]

Now while agreeing they are silly, since you have to restart applications with remote attacks (like, Firefox, Pidgeon etc). You are never secure on the local machine anyways. I think there were two remote attacks in those notices, SCTP and ndiswrapper neither should be common practice.

Can you give an example?

[Sits]

What type of extra detail are you looking for?

Re:Can you give an example?

[trick-knee]

smells like a troll to me. don't feed it.

PulseAudio

[emanem]

Hi all, I was playing WoW, and when I installed 8.10 and used PA my FPS droppped about 33%. I then removed PA, killed the process and everything was back normal.

Is situation better with 9.04? I don't want to criticize PA too much but (even as PA developers admitted) when it went out in 8.10 was an immature and slow piece of ... software.

How is the situation now? Which version of PA will be in Ubuntu 9.04? Any WoW player around trying 9.04?

Cheers,

Re:PulseAudio

[sygin]

Yes seems to be much better, just remove any script you added to kill pulse audio.

Re:PulseAudio

[emanem]

I just killed the process and uninstalled the package... Just upgrading should do it isn't it? Btw, shall I do a clean format or not?

Re:PulseAudio

[sygin]

An update should work fine. I have my home folder on a separate partition which allows for an easy fresh install. When doing a fresh install I partition my drive so that there are 2 partitions for Linux. The Ubuntu installer allows you to specify which partition should be mounted as root i.e. / and which should be mounted as /home - this will contain you user home folders. When doing a reinstall, I re-specify the same locations again, but do not format the /home partition. Set the installer to use the same user name as the old install. After you have finished the install, you will then login to you new install but with all your old settings. I then install all the applications you normally use and all is done. It helps to create any extra users in the same order as before, this prevents permissions issues. If you do have permissions issues they are easily fixed, google or use the Ubuntu forums. Best of luck, Sygin

Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag

[Zebedeu]

Even the final release will be affected by this bug.

I checked the page and it says:

When using the ext4 filesystem, accessing large files can trigger a kernel panic and filesystem corruption. The fix for this problem will be included in the final 9.04 release. Users installing from the Ubuntu 9.04 Release Candidate may wish to avoid this problem by using the default ext3 filesystem and converting it to ext4 after release.

Maybe that page changed meanwhile.

What is a turn-key email server ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Returns all email to sender ?

Re:What is a turn-key email server ?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a widespread and misunderstood typo. It is supposed to be "turkey".

majikall

[Anonymous Coward]

could someone confirm for me if getting audio to work over hdmi is any less painful with this release, does it detect nvidia latest driver for a nvidia 8200 onboard hdmi port? i did manage to get it working on intrepid however only works for 10seconds before system freezes?

Just upgraded!

[radimvice]

I just finished my upgrade. Everything seems to be running great, stability is rock solid, no probl

Re:Just upgraded!

[ciderVisor]

Mod +1 Funny.

Well, it made me LOL.

Python, Pulseaudio and things

[Haiyadragon]

Python updated to 2.6.*, I've been waiting for that. Especially the backported Python 3 functionality is interesting; it'll also make porting to 3 easier.

Pulseaudio is still very buggy. It eats my CPU cycles, and I need those for several things, not just Pulseaudio. Removing it takes care of that issue as usual. I'll try again in six months. The same for KDE 4, I'll seriously try it when I don't run into several bugs before the desktop is completely loaded.

The new Nvidia drivers add support for vdpau, which means hardware video decoding for x264, VC-1 and WMV. It'll require you to compile Mplayer from SVN but if you're lucky enough to have a card that supports it, it's well worth it. The only method, that I know of, to run 1080p with decent quality and performance on Linux.

That, and this release actually seems stable. The last several final releases I waited a few weeks before upgrading, it seems that won't be necessary this time. Linux is really turning into a thing, it would appear.

Everything works for me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another flawless upgrade, i've been testing this since the first alpha. Thumbs up from me!

Fonts mess after upgrade..

[jchandra]

I got an unreadable desktop after the upgrade.

Finally fixed it by changing the anti-aliasing set up in the System Settings/Appearance.

Otherwise looking good....

Re:Fonts mess after upgrade..

[DarKnyht]

Been using it since Alpha 5, and the only complaint I have is that Flash no longer works properly (especially in fullscreen). I used to be able to watch hulu.com or use picnik.com without issue, but these days it sucks.

And before anyone posts it, yes I have filed bug reports. However, they are all ignored, marked duplicate for a bug that doesn't really relate (flash plugin missing), or marked fixed for the wrong reasons (it works on Intregrated Intel now with a hack, but everyone else is screwed).

Personally, I think this is a pretty bad bug to ship with since a large portion of the web is dependent on Flash.

ROFLAMO

[Anonymous Coward]

"... An updated -fglrx proprietary driver is available for R6xx/R7xx users WHO NEED 3D SUPPORT. ..."

ROFLAMO

Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag

[Anonymous Coward]

"So, stay will ext3"

is that you Yoda?

Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu looks and feels great, but it's hyped up too much as THE linux that Just Works, and that ain't really true. You gotta tweak it too much if you're Joe Sixpack, and chances are you'll never watch MSNBC on your Ubuntu laptop.

However, a "normal" user should choose Mandriva ("mandreeva") Power Pack. It comes with all proprietary codecs and has hassle-free tools, and kde 4.1.

You have to pay up some 59â for the subscription which is not expansive at all. Free software crazy people/advocates should shut up and work on codecs (hey, all you Electrical Engineering people, where are you?) instead of bothering granny or pops because they want their machine to work like normal Windows or Macs.

Major release updates are once a year, so that's hassle-free too.

Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag

[gbarules2999]

I read the thing when it was first released (I was online when they sent the e-mails through the mailing lists) and it has always read what you quoted, so I'm not sure what that parent is talking about.

Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag

[gbarules2999]

I've been using the thing since Alpha 6. They've ironed out a lot of bugs since then, and the Beta was really rather stable.

I haven't had or seen any nVidia card issues; is this a known bug? what card are you running?

Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't go in for Schanedfreude but it is comforting to know that the Linux crowd is having Nvidia problems too. I live in FreeBSD land and intend to stay there (Netcraft will confirm it) and Nvidia "says" they "want" to make a native BSD driver but need some more of something from the BSD folks. I don't know what, and I don't know if they haven't given it to them, don't want them to have it or just don't have either the time or resources to do it right now. In any event it hasn't happened and I too have to run Linux binary blob drivers. They're really fine for my needs and they might be a damn sight better than that except I don't game and have only one monitor so I don't push the video layer that much.

Thanks for the word that it's not always sweetness and roses over there; sometimes it's discouraging not having the big developer base or all the press coverage and groupies and such, but I rarely have any issues with my small network so I'm not constantly reminded how far behind are my OS and its accoutrements. Nvidia blobs have made us brothers in suffering, yes? It will all work out though, it always does.

Good Luck,

Over Here

ATI restricted drivers no longer support X600

[zoward]

I'm running the Jaunty beta right now, and will probably regress to 8.10 soon because of the ATI drivers. The problem, AFAIK, is that the version of X.org 9.04 is shipping with will only support Catalyst 9.4 (currently in beta for linux). Catalyst 9.4 dropped support for a large number of older chipsets, basically anything earlier than R600, deferring to the always-improving open source ati drivers to support these. The open source driver is wonderful for 2D acceleration. It seems to handle all of the desktop effects with ease. The problem is that it's miles behind the fglrx (proprietary/Catalyst) drivers for 3D support. The reports I was able to scrounge online seem to indicate that open source ati 3D support is a good year away from general availability.

Re:ATI restricted drivers no longer support X600

[ciderVisor]

Mod +3: Informative

Thanks for that info. I've been looking for solid reasons for broken ATI drivers over the past few days and came up empty.

Re:ATI restricted drivers no longer support X600

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 3D going on Radeon HD 4850. Used the help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonHD and just played a round of BZFlag without crashing

doesn't even boot

[speedtux]

9.04 doesn't even boot on my laptop (an HP DV2, some kind of SATA driver problem).

Furthermore, I can't figure out where to report this. What's the point of having a beta or an RC if it's difficult for users to give feedback?

Re:doesn't even boot

[drinkypoo]

Furthermore, I can't figure out where to report this. What's the point of having a beta or an RC if it's difficult for users to give feedback?

I believe there's a bug report process through Ubuntu Brainstorm now; in any case you can just report it in the wrong place and someone will probably move it to the right one, if enough people do that they'll make it easier to find the right place. Heh heh. I'm going to hell.

Try looking around the HP stuff on the Linux Laptop Wiki, and see which other models there are sufficiently to your machine. Odds are they have the same or a derivative motherboard and similar BIOS, and their fixes might work for you.

In particular, I had to disable "Fan always on when running on AC power" on my machine. Some SATA users might have to do their first boot with the SATA adapter set to compatibility/ATAPI/whateverthefuckitsaysintheBIOS mode.

Re:doesn't even boot

[Knuckles]

http://www.google.de/search?q=ubuntu+bug
First hit.

Re:doesn't even boot

[tmarthal]

if you have driver problems with the desktop LiveCD... you should use the alternate install CD, it's what it is used for.

From https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation

"If your computer is not able to run the standard Desktop installation CD, you can use an Alternate installation CD instead. The Alternate CD also allows more advanced installation options which are not available with the Desktop CD. "

Flokass

[Flokass]

great!

What about the -rt kernel?

[drinkypoo]

This problem has allegedly been fixed but there is no mention anywhere of whether it affects linux-rt as well. Can anyone shed some light? I haven't had my coffee yet, late start today.

Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag

[Anonymous Coward]

"-I am anxiously awaiting some kind of dual monitor support in Nouveau"

Nouveau has supported dual monitors since Intrepid.

Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Of the Linux families, Ubuntu was the hardest to install. Works great on a Shuttlex with a dual boot FreeDOS. Jiggly window borders was entertaining for like 10 minutes.

My .02

Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag

[xenocide2]

I'm reasonably certain nouveau supports dual monitors. I may need to test on my laptop again, but it's been working quite nicely for the most part.

...and I need to upgrade again.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just installed 8.10 this morning, which automatically caused the newer version to be released.

You're welcome.

Also: if I buy stocks or a lottery ticket, make the exact opposite choices.

Release Candidates for alternative architectures

[walter_f]

There are Release Candidates for alternative architectures (non-x86/non-AMD64) available as well, such as for

Mac (PowerPC) and IBM-PPC (POWER5)
Playstation 3
SPARC (including Niagara)
HP PA-RISC

Ubuntu 9.04 RC
(Desktop CD i.e. Live CD w/ install option, Server Install CD, Alternate Install CD)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/jaunty/rc/

Kubuntu 9.04 RC
(Desktop CD i.e. Live CD w/ install option, Alternate Install CD)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/ports/releases/jaunty/rc/

Xubuntu 9.04 RC (no SPARC, no PA-RISC version here)
(Desktop CD i.e. Live CD w/ install option, Alternate Install CD)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/ports/releases/jaunty/rc/

As to the Ubuntu and Kubuntu RCs, there's a version for the Low-Power Intel Architecture (which includes the Intel Atom platform), too.

Make sure to utilize the jigdo or torrent methodologies if possible, to save bandwidth.

Walter.

Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag

[jinxi]

hmm... I had problems with the restricted drivers in 8.10 too. But could also be a problem of the Wows new graficengine, because with 7.10 I could play on screen an look tv on the other.. Hope too that twinview will get a better support.

Ah

[Sits]

Phew! Thanks for the save...