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Ubuntu 9.04 Released
Mohamed Zaian writes "Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, announced today that Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition is free to download from Thursday 23 April. Also announced were the simultaneous releases of Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition and Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (UNR). Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition delivers a range of feature enhancements to improve the user experience. Shorter boot speeds, some as short as 25 seconds, ensure faster access to a full computing environment on most desktop, laptop and netbook models. Enhanced suspend-and-resume features also give users more time between charges along with immediate access after hibernation. Intelligent switching between Wi-Fi and 3G environments has been broadened to support more wireless devices and 3G cards, resulting in a smoother experience for most users."
Jaunty Jackalope may be the poofiest name for an Ubuntu release yet, but this is the first one since the Dapper Drake (Also quite poofish) to actually improve Ubuntu's stability. Unfortunately GNOME has boned the network manager (well, we got this one in Intrepid, it was extremely nonintuitive then and it's the same now, and it's still too retarded to handle bridging) and the gnome-panel which is now a mandatory application. Also the logout panel is now stupid, you can have logout options or shutdown options but you can't have both at once. Let's all hear it for Ubuntu for making the system more stable, and let's all give GNOME a big raspberry for their constant attempts to take GUIs into the last century. (KDE still looks like the kitchen sink exploded on my desktop... but anyway.) I do have one gripe, though: Will you guys please decide on a strategy for audio? I'm getting tired of having to follow PulseAudio's PerfectSetup document, why don't y'all try reading it sometime? Not that pulseaudio came with Jaunty; too bad audio didn't work right without it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Can it boot persistently from the SD of my Eee PC 900 and will the wifi just work out of the box? Have never been able to get any of the earlier releases to do these two things.
I installed the release candidate last week, and it lasted for all of 25 minutes before it ate my desktop. I love being on the bleeding edge, but it doesn't make life easier or more productive, just more interesting.
Is there a torrent anywhere of the netbook remix? I'm downloading that from Canonical UK at the moment and it's not exactly quick. There seem to be torrents for every other release, but not that one. Oversight?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I've been using Linux on integrated Intel chipsets since the i810 driver came out and I have no complaints.
I had no complaints with the i810, the i815, the i915, the G33, or the G45 that I currently use. There was one Ubuntu release where the resolution setting didn't match the documentation, so I had to enter some manual stuff into xorg.conf, but before and since then, things have been gravy.
A lot of these bugs look like they're for things that I can't give good marks to -any- drivers, like switching displays on laptops, enabling compositing on ancient chips (really?! why bother!) and other foolishness.
Really, Intel doesn't make great 3D graphics chips, everyone knows that. If you actually want fast 3D, pick someone who fabs hardware that can handle it. The Intel -drivers- on the other hand, are hands-down the most supported and functional open-source drivers that I've used.
Intel not only releases the specs for their hardware, they sponsor the development of the drivers in a totally open-source-friendly way.
If you have complaints about 3D in Linux on integrated Intel graphics chipsets, you'll probably have the same complaints about 3D in Windows on Integrated Intel chipsets. Intel isn't in the mid-to-high-end market, they make excellent 2D chipsets that do 3D 'well enough' for casual non-gaming use.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
At least in my country and LATAM in general, I think the Server Edition only could thrive if Oracle Server can be certified at some time. As each day pass on, this looks more difficult.
In general, I fail to understand the Canonical offering of Ubuntu Server compared to CentOS/RedHat Servers (or even Suse).
Annoyed as I've been at the incompleteness of the various distros' KDE offerings lately, I will dutifully try each release, including Jaunty, if only to see whether anything is horribly broken, and whether I can reliably work with a KDE 4 desktop.
Last time a Kubuntu came out they broke metadata, at least for JPEG images, so all the photos I manipulated in the shiny new Gwenview lost their dates, orientations, and so on. Not the end of the world, but it was an annoying bug.
I'm endlessly impressed by KDE's efforts, but the distros totally jumped the gun on the new architecture. The community (even most people in this crowd) totally grokked the idea of "4.0-as-API-freeze" but the distros throught 4.0 meant time to upgrade, and frankly they should have kept 3.5 as the default until the 4 series was truly ready. But again, I'll try it out. Amarok 2 is supposed to be a fantastic music player.
The funny thing is, once you step outside the bubble that is slashdot, people are generally happy with Vista. I run Vista at home and work, and considering how often I reboot, it could take 5 minutes and I wouldn't care. The boot time issues and other Vista issues is greatly exasperated here on slashdot, in almost equal proportion that which Linux shortcomings are overlooked.
Similes are like metaphors
I agree with you that this issue seems to have been thoroughly ignored by the release engineers, who pushed the 2.6 driver through despite its downfalls. (apparently to gain support for some newer chipsets, which could've been simply backported by adding PCI ID's to the 2.4 driver)
Compositing and 3D performance are horrid and even non-composited 2D is slow when EXA is used. Apparently, if you're lucky you can switch to UXA, but it is non-functional on my systems. (G35: no modes found & i915: DRI disabled)
The issue can be improved (but not fixed) by using a backport of the version 2.4 intel driver available from the "http://ppa.launchpad.net/siretart/ppa/ubuntu" PPA of siretart. This provides minor performance enhancements but is still slower than intrepid.
> Love the encrypted home folder option.
Haven't tried it yet. Is the login pass phrase also unlocking your encrypted home dir? If so, isn't it annoying to type the 128-bit pass phrase in every ten minutes your desktop screen saver lock kicks in? Any workarounds (separate pass phrases for home dir and login/desktop lock)?
If you open up the menu editor there should be a hidden preferences applet in there that lets you configure the notifications. I found it on my system which I installed fresh from Beta.
Beware if you have an older ATI card you might run into problems.
"Older," in this case, defined as anything prior to the HD3x00 series. My experience with 9.04 and a 2600XT is less than ideal.
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
I just installed the RC the other day, and unfortunately I've seen several crashes and freezes - mainly when switching users and when trying to run Boxee and Sauerbraten.
Interesting. I downloaded ubuntu-9.04-desktop-i386.iso via the link you gave, but my md5sum doesn't match the md5sum given in the table.
ubuntu-9.04-desktop-i386.iso -- their md5sum: 60d5d82328b4547511fdeac9bf4d0112daa0ce00
my md5sum after downloading via the link:
66fa77789c7b8ff63130e5d5a272d67b
Even stranger is that googling my "wrong" md5sum gives results.
Remove all Mono-based applications and install MonoNoNo to keep the MS-backed trojan horses out. http://boycottnovell.com/wiki/index.php?title=Mono_Applications
I just recently switched from Kubuntu to Arch and while Arch could use a little polish (while still being lean & mean) I'm liking it a lot right now. Bear in mind that while I was using Kubuntu, I used to do kernel development on Gentoo so I had enough of a skillset to handle Arch. So far I like that Arch has a fast package management system that works, allows me to compile my own packages without forcing me to do so (unlike Gentoo) and generally does not force me to install & run crap I don't want (Ubuntu: making me run wpa_supplicant... on a desktop that has no wireless card!!??!?!) .vimrc files so I had to blow-away the system defaults which made vim unusable for me, and it took more hacking to get ssh-agent working than it did with Ubuntu which set it up automatically. So: Arch wins on the core, loses on some of the polish, but I think it strikes a better balance for me than Kubuntu was doing... plus Arch's KDE 4.2 packages seem somewhat better behaved.
Arch does have some problems, like missing packages for wine in 64 bit (fortunately it is not too hard to build via AUR), the default vim installation would not recognize my
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
I'm a nerd, and I have no idea what "remix" is, beyond a music industry term. And no, I won't justf'ngoogleit.