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."

Comments

Questions from an 8.10 user

[hattig]

Does it preload the "Gnome" menu yet, or do you still get that annoying pause when you first click on it?

Does the lovely dark Dusk theme work with Gnome 2.26?

Will it kill off hardware VIA graphics (HP 2133 netbook) like the last kernel upgrade, or does it now handle these properly as a third party binary blob?

Will it give me free beer and hookers?

Re:Questions from an 8.10 user

[suso]

Do you make this comment everyday or something?

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1208265&cid=27678699

Re:Questions from an 8.10 user

[orkybash]

Will it give me free beer and hookers?

Free as in speech, silly.

Re:Questions from an 8.10 user

[orkybash]

You'd think for something he's planning to reuse he would at least put in the effort to proofread it...

Re:Questions from an 8.10 user

[MacColossus]

Time for someone to remove their face from Ballmer's loins and download a Ubuntu ISO. You can boot to it and become informed without removing or altering your precious Windows environment.

Re:Questions from an 8.10 user

[Mr. DOS]

If we give you free beer, we'll get your free speech, whether we want it or not ;)

      --- Mr. DOS

Re:Questions from an 8.10 user

[tuxgeek]

while he or she may believe the first sentence (and its a statement worthy of debate)

I debate this every time it comes up. I run Linux full time on all my machines as my primary desktop. Sure, I have WinXP on the laptop, but haven't booted it in months. Why bother, it no longer meets my needs, and is too much a hassle to fool with

I've recently upgraded from Lenny to Kubuntu-8.10 w/ KDE4.2.2 and love the system. As soon as I get back to my broadband connection will upgrade to 9.04

The troll's post above is merely outdated FUD. It's the same as Linux fanboyz declaring that all windoz systems are Win95 and unstable abortions of crapware. WinXP is a nice system and the best OS M$ has ever produced. If it works for you, use it. If something about it bugs you, give Ubuntu a shot. This is all about freedom of choice. Linux has come into it's own and is an eye opening experience for those looking for something more than what windoz has to offer.

Re:Questions from an 8.10 user

[Chabo]

Impossible, if you run Wubi.

Re:Questions from an 8.10 user

[Misch]

It's called "copy pasta"

Re:Questions from an 8.10 user

[Teun]

I'm sure there are many people out there who would prefer that their OS gave them free beer and hookers instead of free speech.

Here's the option you're thinking of:

http://www.microsoft.com/
The hang over and viruses are included :)

Re:Questions from an 8.10 user

[Sean0michael]

He's trying to unlock an achievement: Consecutive Days with Duplicate posts. Generally reserved for editors, also applicable to the common slashdotter.

Unfortunately, he wasn't logged in, so this won't count.

Re:Questions from an 8.10 user

[node 3]

Because "insightful" doesn't mean "literally true".

Actually, insight - the result of apprehending the inner nature of things.

Note how it doesn't say anything about being literally true.

To clarify my point, calling a poster Ballmer doesn't necessarily have to be literally true to be insightful, it just needs for the idea of calling the poster Ballmer to provide some sort of insight. I'm not saying it did, but found your objection due to "lack of evidence" to completely miss the point of what insight is. A lot of nonsensical things are insightful. And a lot of very true things lack insight.

Jaunty

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:Jaunty

[zbharucha]

Just use XFCE. You won't be sorry.

Re:Jaunty

[kazade84]

So the stability of a release is proportional to the campness of the name? Excellent, so the plan is...

1. Create a distro called Fluffy Fairy
2. ???
3. Profit!

Re:Jaunty

[SgtPepperKSU]

Jaunty Jackalope may be the poofiest name for an Ubuntu release yet

That is probably why that isn't the name of the release...

Re:Jaunty

[Kentaree]

There should be a way to tag individual posts as NSFW, not because of unsuitable content, but more because I look like a moron when I burst out laughing at comments like these in the middle of the office.

Re:Jaunty

[ameyer17]

Except XFCE is GTK+ based, so you get those libraries loaded whether you run GTK apps or not.

Re:Jaunty

[mhall119]

I already tried it and was already sorry. I run a million billion GTK+ apps so the major reason to run XFCE, not loading all those libraries, doesn't apply to me.

XFCE is GTK, so I don't quite understand what you're saying. If your apps just depend on the GTK libs, and not Gnome libs, then XFCE is a good choice for you.

Re:Jaunty

[Hurricane78]

Please NO. I hope KDE never ever ever kills that, what you call "clutter". Because we people, who tend to *really* *use* their computers, and configure them, hate one-button apps with so configurability at all, and everything at a default that is just riiiiight... for retards.

In my eyes, the only problem you (non retard, but does not want to configure every shit) users have with KDE, is that you are forced trough huge configuration menus.
I think it's very easy to make everyone happy. Just separate the settings in "user", "advanced" and "expert" in a sensible manner, and (*very important*) choose the presets very wisely for your target group. (This has to be done by the KDE developers for the general default. By the distributors for their target group. And by a company admin for the people in that company.)

Then average people like you can still use it, and be happy, because it just works.
And we power-users can tweak it until it fits like a glove.
Or everything in between.

How about that? :)

Re:Jaunty

[Clarious]

Xfce is using GTK+ too, just not GNOME library and service (bonobo or something like that)

Re:Jaunty

[xiong.chiamiov]

Kubuntu's the worst KDE distro I've ever experienced, btw. Not that I like how KDE is right now (still waiting for right-click on desktop to produce applications menu, and transparent bar without having to retheme), but 4.2's pretty polished in the distros that don't crap it up.

Re:Jaunty

[MikeBabcock]

I'm a power-user and a developer. I use the command-line for anything requiring *real* using of my computer. You can't beat command-lines with piping and scripting for *real* power-use, period.

For my GUI usage, I use Gnome because it looks nice and works well by default. There are certain KDE applications I use because they are better designed than their Gnome counterparts or have been around longer and have better functionality (Kopete and Amarok come to mind), but my desktop is Gnome with several Eterm windows running at any time.

Re:Jaunty

[Hurricane78]

Ok, I can see that.

I on the other hand, see the following as the ideal user interface:
A mainly keyboard drive, command-line-like GUI system. Something where you have all the power, and can see the available options before selecting one (the major flaw of the command line). And with good (learning?) presets, so you only have to define non-default settings.

I would like to see something like that. No matter if it's called Gnome or KDE.
But having many concurring groups almost always has many benefits.

Everything is relative. Without your counterparts you would no know how to define yourself. :)

Oh, and I hope I did not insult anyone with my GP comment. It's a bit harsh on the Gnome users. I hope you can stand over it, because I did not mean to attack anyone. There is no wrong or right, right? ;)

Re:Jaunty

[Radhruin]

The whole logging in/out/shutting down process in Ubuntu (Gnome, I guess) needs some major improvements, that's for sure.

If you share a computer with multiple people, what's the most common task you'll be doing in this arena? Well, suspending the session and logging in. Those options are not at all clear in Gnome. Not even close. Log out will close all of my applications (thankfully I know that, but a novice user from Windows will definitely be frustrated). The only thing I can do is "lock screen", but then someone else in my household wants to use the computer, they're first prompted with a password dialog for my user.

The whole damn thing is confusing, I think. Which is weird considering that Gnome is supposed to be all about usability... there are so many usability problems with 9.04 I couldn't even list them all. I don't know whose grand vision Gnome is, but man, someone's gotta take the reign and really look at a lot of this stuff from actual users' perspectives.

Re:Jaunty

[plasticsquirrel]

Wow, I could almost cut the smugness in your post with a knife. Apparently people who *really* use computers like to configure everything about them. These people are "advanced" or "power users", while everyone else is a retard or just a normal "user".

There are many people such as myself who have used plenty of window managers and desktop environments, and who like them to mostly stay out of the way. I don't want to endlessly configure my shiny little windows. If I want to do "real work", then I'll open up a terminal window and use Bash or Python. I'm sure there are plenty of other Slashdotters who take this same approach, judging by the relative popularity here of Ubuntu vs. Kubuntu.

And really, if you're obsessing about features in your GUI, are you really doing "real work"? The people I see who really care so much about that stuff are often just geeks who like to sit in their rooms and tinker with Linux, not people who are actually doing programming or sysadmin work on it.

Re:Jaunty

[ShieldW0lf]

One man's "power user" is another man's "too much free time on their hands".

Any time spent configuring the tool prior to use is overhead that reduces the productivity of the tool.

I remember when I first switched to Ubuntu and Gnome from Windows. I sat down at my computer, mindless slave to routine that I am, and started looking for housekeeping tasks to do, like I was used to. And I was kind of disjointed, because I was so used to dumping a half hour into screwing about with Windows and accomplishing nothing productive on a regular basis that I did it obsessively so things would be ready to go when I had work that was urgent. But there was nothing like that to do. I just stared at a computer which no longer needed me.

It felt really weird to just walk away from the machine and go for a walk in the park, like I was doing something sneaky that I would pay for later. Took weeks to really adjust to all that extra free time that I had because I didn't need to keep screwing about with my machine to keep it properly functioning.

If you want to tweak things, try planting a garden.

Re:Jaunty

[drinkypoo]

Sorry, I meant to say GNOME apps, which would have made the whole thing much clearer. If you want the big high-profile applications they depend on more than just GTK+. Since I already have to use those libraries they might as well load at login time. I have removed gnome-panel which is one of the big drags on startup anyway; I replaced it with avant-window-navigator. You have to go fuck with the gconf in like three places in order to do this... GNOME sometimes makes me think it's an attempt to turn Linux into Windows. Hint: Stop abusing your registry-like functionality!

Re:Jaunty

[drinkypoo]

The Gnome devs are working to move much of libgnome into GTK, so things will get better.

I just wish they'd work on making a nm-applet that works right (e.g. stays running) or a network config tool that's useful. We keep getting new network tools from GNOME instead of incremental improvements which actually help the user, and they always suck.

Re:Jaunty

[Blakey Rat]

Eh, as an old-school Mac user, I don't buy any of that.

Whether you use a CLI or a GUI program has absolutely nothing to do with whether you are a power user or not.

Our database expert here at work is definitely a power user, and she uses a GUI program to manage databases-- gasp! Horror! The digital film editor mentioned originally is more likely than not pushing his hardware to the absolute limit-- he's a power user, doing a job that can't be done on the CLI. Or consider a 3D modeler for a video game, or movie studio-- same deal.

I think the reason Linux users think you "need" the CLI to be a power user is that most Linux GUIs kind of suck. Mencoder, though a GUI, would probably be just as powerful as the CLI version, if the GUI was good. Hell, at the bare minimum it could have help text to remind you what the hundreds of options are all for. Apple had GUI script-ability mastered back in System 7. (Although like a lot of good things Apple came up with in the last, they've flushed it down the shitter to be more compatible with other systems.)

There's nothing inherent in the CLI that makes it better for your tasks, and there's nothing stopping somebody from making a GUI application that would do just as well.

Re:Jaunty

[Jake Griffin]

Except that there is no "Switch User" option to go to the main screen unless you first select a user to switch to. It's an extra step. Correct me if this was changed in Jaunty, but that's how it works in Intrepid.

Re:Jaunty

[Locutus]

It would be tempting to try the Netbook Remix as an alternate desktop( session type ). Putting all that wasted space in the title bar to use is a great idea. Using Kubuntu, you'd gain another 40*(screen width) pixels across the bottom of the screen and twice that if you were using standard Gnome-based Ubuntu.

Anyone tried `sudo apt-get install ubuntu-netbook-remix` yet?

LoB

Re:Jaunty

[DaleGlass]

That'd be the hell of a GUI. According to a quick check, mencoder has about 385 possible options. A GUI that presents all those options would be incredibly complex.

At that point, IMO, a CLI interface wins by far. Why?

1. In a GUI with 20 pages of configuration with 20 options on each it's very difficult to find the current configuration state. Meanwhile on the commandline it's obvious which of the 400 options are being used.

2. Regardless of how pretty you make it, the fact is that mencoder is a low level tool, which requires understanding video concepts to use effectively. A GUI for all its features isn't going to clarify things by much.

3. Scripts are easier in a CLI environment. Telling people to check this and that option is very tedious for something with such an amount of options, and following the instructions is equally bothersome. Plain text that can be copy/pasted is a lot more convenient.

4. Why put a GUI on a tool that can be used for batch processing work? What if somebody wants to encode videos on a server, with no GUI installed?

5. Who would use a full GUI adaption of mencoder anyway? It wouldn't make it much easier for normal people. Now a GUI with a more limited purpose, such as a GUI to transcode video to the format portable players want is a lot more limited in scope, needs much fewer options, and in fact has been done already.

6. This seems like a pointless discussion anyway, since we have the best of both worlds already. For those who want scriptability, there's mencoder. For those who want a GUI there are multiple frontends for it. It's the same as burning CDs, K3B is a frontent for cdrecord, and that seems to work just fine.

Re:Jaunty

[The Warlock]

There's a panel applet that adds a menu to select what user should be logged in. If you've been updating an existing install since before this applet existed, then it might not be there, but by default on new installs it's in the upper left corner. You just click it, pick a different user, and then they type in their password.

(of course, I don't bother with separate user accounts on my systems, but the feature is there).

Re:Jaunty

[williamgrant]

The "Switch User" option isn't necessary, as the menu acts as a user switcher itself - it lists the local users, and you can click on one of them to start or change to that user's session.

Re:Jaunty

[Requiem18th]

This is a good argument against "customize only" desktops (if there are such things). Sane defaults and minimalist interfaces don't exclude highly customizable software.

  I love freedom and competition but I think KDE vs GNOME vs XCFE is a net negative for the FOSS comunity, fortunately you can mix and match.

Obligitory

[Rik Sweeney]

Don't forget Kubuntu! It's got KDE 4.2 now!

Re:Obligitory

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah no one cares.

Re:Obligitory

[TurboNed]

Torrents is illegal [sic]! Didn't the [MP|RI]AA teach you anything?

Re:Obligitory

[Random BedHead Ed]

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.

Re:Obligitory

[ultrabot]

Yeah, with Qt 4.5 (which is snappier than Qt 4.4, the "official" Qt for Kde 4.2).

Re:Obligitory

[plawsy]

Don't forget Kubuntu [kubuntu.org]! It's got KDE 4.2 now!

Really? I was all excited when 8.10 came out, installed it ... then had to go back to 8.04 after a few days. Why? Simple. My existing desktop environment was unavailable in the "new" KDE (Keramic? Crystal? Which actually tells you the name?)

Sure, KDE 4 is all new, super-duper coding, but if I can't get my desktop to behave the way it has for years it's useless to me. I can't afford to spend a day or three learning a totally new desktop environment and customizing it to my needs. And when I say years, I mean back to the first release SuSE under the then-not-evil Novell bought it.

I don't care what the devs do behind the scenes as long as I can work.

/bleah

Re:Obligitory

[muckracer]

> 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.

You could always use Slackware, which did it right (KDE 4.x to be released with the next Slackware version sometime this year. Slackware 12.2 still shipped with KDE 3.x).

Re:Obligitory

[_Sprocket_]

I've been toying around with KDE 4.2 and I've ended up with mixed feelings about it. It seems like a usable environment - far better than the 4.x version that Ubuntu infamously shipped earlier. And there's certainly a nice sheen of polish and flash. But I also get a feeling of "clunkiness" with this new release that wasn't there on my olde KDE 3.x environment. And I can't say that I'm a fan of the direction the Konqueror filemanager has taken (seems like Nautilus for KDE).

What ultimately had me going back to Gnome (and Compiz) was playing WoW. For some reason, WoW (and Ventrilo) will lock up with a repeating loud sound at seemingly random intervals. This happened on KDE3.5 on very rare occasions in the past - I suspect when I had Flash running in another desktop. But with KDE4.2 it happens a lot more often. No clue why. But it's not happening in Gnome.

KDE is going in an interesting direction. I'm a fan of flash and change so this has some appeal to me (otherwise I'd use one of these minimalist windows managers that keep getting mentioned in these types of stories). But it strikes me that the KDE folks are taking one of those bold steps that tends to risk everything. I hope it works out.

I'd definitely recommend people give it a try; see if it works for them. Unless you have a KDE3.x desktop that you're really happy with and cringe at Gnome's apparent design philosophy.

Re:Obligitory

[Gnavpot]

Yeah no one cares.

No one Kares.

Re:Obligitory

[Dragonslicer]

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.

I think Kubuntu got stuck a bit with the KDE versions. Kubuntu 8.04 couldn't be LTS, because KDE 4 was definitely not ready, and the KDE developers couldn't promise 3 years of support on KDE 3. I think Kubuntu 8.10 may have been in a similar situation, where the KDE developers didn't plan on supporting KDE 3 for the time that Kubuntu 8.10 is supported by Canonical. With KDE 4.2 working well, Kubuntu 9.04 should be in much better shape.

Just installed ...

[sygin]

Love the encrypted home folder option. Default disk burning application has improved. Faster boot, seems faster overall (newer GCC?). Well done to all involved.

Re:Just installed ...

[Rik Sweeney]

newer GCC?

Nope, they just added -O3 to the compile options :)

Re:Just installed ...

[muckracer]

> 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)?

Re:Just installed ...

[FrankDrebin]

Gentoobuntu?

Re:Just installed ...

[sygin]

It works a treat.

Totally transparent to the user, no typing in 128bit pass phrases. The user's password unwraps the 128-bit pass phrase at login.

The user's password can change, this just re-wraps the 128-bit pass phrase using the new user password.

It is a good idea to make a note of the 128-bit pass phrase by using the command:

ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase ~/.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase

I think the option for encrypted home folders is only available using the alternate installer.

There is also support for adding other users with their own encrypted folders.

Netbook Remix 4 EeePC 900?

[BayaWeaver]

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.

Re:Netbook Remix 4 EeePC 900?

[uncle slacky]

Use eeebuntu instead - no problems at all with wifi (unlike with the stock Xandros POS).

Apparently they're working on a new version based on 9.04.

http://www.eeebuntu.com/

Re:Netbook Remix 4 EeePC 900?

[mtm_king]

Did you mean http://www.eeebuntu.org/ ??

Anyone else try this with an Eee PC 901?

Re:Netbook Remix 4 EeePC 900?

[AdamWill]

"Other thing I love is how the 3G support is amazing. No more messing around with ppp or weird vodafone apps, just plug the dongle in, pick your network and go. Really smooth."

Brought to you mostly by the fine Dan Williams of Red Hat: http://blogs.gnome.org/dcbw/ , http://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/log/ .

(disclaimer: I work at RH too).

Happy Ubuntu-Day, everyone!

[troll8901]

I just came from IRC (irc.freenode.net #ubuntu-release-party). It's like the Times Square New Year Party in there.

On the clock at about 1 pm GMT, the Ubuntu website was updated, and the servers at ubuntu.com were immediately IRCdotted.
And now, we're going to Slashdot Ubuntu.com as well!

Get your torrents at
http://torrent.ubuntu.com:6969/

Re:Happy Ubuntu-Day, everyone!

[xmason]

Intratube Police: A .torrent? Why, this must be a pirated version of "ooh-bun-too", whatever that is. You, sir or madam, are a CRIMINAL and will be put in jail with RAPISTS and BABY KILLERS!

Re:Happy Ubuntu-Day, everyone!

[meringuoid]

Get your torrents at http://torrent.ubuntu.com:6969/

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?

Re:Happy Ubuntu-Day, everyone!

[sygin]

I am seeding at the moment, time to see what unlimited broadband really means.

Please....

[kazade84]

Firstly, can we get an Ubuntu icon yet?

This release is awesome, I've been running it on my laptop, desktop and work PC for some time and it's been rock solid.

That said. There is one VERY VERY annoying thing that changed in this release. The update notification icon is no longer there unless you fiddle around with gconf. Instead you are treated to an automated "pop-under" launch of the full update manager window once a week unless it's a security update in which case it's 2 days. I dunno if this behavior has changed recently but that was the design a few weeks ago.

So that means:
a.) You probably wont know about feature/bug updates for a week.
b.) You probably wont know about security fixes for 2 days (even if it's urgent)
c.) You will get a window appear out of nowhere behind all your current windows launched seemingly by itself (yeh coz that's not gonna scare Windows migrants)

What a great idea! NOT!

P.S if you wanna revert to the old behavior, run gconf-editor. Go to apps->update-notifier and uncheck "auto-launch".

Re:Still the same color scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

They announced they're changing the color scheme in the Jaunty+1 release.

Better luck next time.

[senorpoco]

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.

Fix the intel graphics bugs yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize it's mostly the fault of Intel, but it would be nice if the modern (2 years old) Intel chips worked well with Linux.

I went with Intel instead of Nvidia in my laptop so I would have a more stable computer than using the binary blog nvidia provides. (and I don't game) Boy, had I known Intel would totally drop the ball I would have went with Nvidia. Ubuntu doesn't seem to be interested in pushing the issue at all, saying 'it's an upstream problem'. I got burned the same way with the g400 and it's so called open source drivers a decade ago. It took them almost 4 years to get them out the door, and they sucked when they were out.

It's a real sad the best video support on linux is from closed source nvidia drivers and their competitors don't even care.

Check out the list: https://bugs.launchpad.net/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bugs

So, back on topic, does anybody know how horrid Intel video is in this final release? I need to decide if I'm going to upgrade or not, last I heard it's even worse and locks up after a few minutes. I have an x3100/GM965.

Re:Fix the intel graphics bugs yet?

[MarcQuadra]

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.

Re:Fix the intel graphics bugs yet?

[denominateur]

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.

I'm holding out for Ubuntu 10.10

[Anonymous Coward]

Which will undoubtedly be named Masturbating Monkey.

Still Brown?

[Henry V .009]

Weren't they going to ditch the brown already? I thought I read a Slashdot story about Ubuntu getting a new theme that doesn't attempt to inspire retching subliminally.

Re:Still the same color scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

You're probably referring to Dust, which isn't really a dark theme. There's also the Darkroom theme, but it's been around for a few versions now and it looks like ass.

Notifications

[CrispBH]

Seems generally more stable, I've been running the RC for a couple of days now. Not many immediately noticeable changes but lots of improved under the hood support. Beware if you have an older ATI card you might run into problems.

Anyway, the thing I'm really not sure of is the notifications system. Just about the only option with them seems to be to change their positioning via gconf-editor (and even that seems to be broken). I understand the philosophy behind them (see http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/253) but they seem to be a little too unconfigurable, even for Gnome. Their black appearance would suit the KDE default theme, but it certainly doesn't fit in well with my much lighter Clearlooks theme in Gnome and there's no way to change that. One of the things I like about Gnome is the integrated look and feel of the entire system, whereas these stand out oddly. There is no way to dismiss them, so things get irritating when I want to use the search bar in Firefox and there's a notification covering it (these things could well be click transparent but it's still irritating). There is no way to configure what gets displayed as a notification either; I don't think I need each and every Pidgin message to be displayed as a notification for reasons of both privacy and distraction. To me, the notifications system seems a little too much like an answer looking for a problem. I may well disable them soon, after giving them a fair trial. The only sane way to do that seems to be to remove the notify-osd daemon. So much for ease of use!

That all said, it's my only major gripe with the upgrade, and that system was always going to be controversial. Hopefully it grows and improves. If not, I'm not forced to run it. Overall, this seems to be a steady incremental release that smoothes over a few rough patches and should hopefully do me well for another 6 months. Ubuntu is still the only distribution that I have not had very regular problems with on the desktop.

Re:Notifications

[hattig]

I think they need to look at Growl on Mac OS X to see how to implement a notifications system. At least Growl has an adjustable look and feel and configuration settings.

Re:Notifications

[Gibbs-Duhem]

FWIW, I figured out how to fix this for pidgin specifically. I kind of like it popping up a message when someone says something and the window doesn't have focus, but I don't need a notification every time someone comes online -- you can change this behavior in Pidgin's Tools->Plugins->Libnotify Popups->Configure Plugin.

Once it stopped doing that, I found that I mind much less, and having coherency between the volume control, email notification, etc, etc is sort of nice. I expect that the customizability will improve in the future, because otherwise the feature seems very sane; it's silly for every application to have their own way of displaying messages.

Re:Notifications

[blackest_k]

I don't think I need each and every Pidgin message to be displayed as a notification for reasons of both privacy and distraction.

.
Probably needs a way to configure that. but in use it's not that bad at least it only sends you messages that are addressed at you.

If your browsing and in an Irc Chat or looking something up it's easy to miss something aimed for your attention and that pop up gets your attention for a couple of seconds, I found it quite useful. BTW if you don't want to talk, you could log out or mark yourself busy or something.
Actually thats a good point. if user has marked himself unavailable don't show the notification, for extra points show the notifications that occurred whilst unavailable when the user decides to be available again.

If any pidgin devs read this, here's another idea, silently ignore people who send urls to you without being on your contacts list. Bot-Sentry has its heart in the right place but tends to insist on telling you it failed to deliver a message to a spambot. thus providing all the annoyance without the porn scam links.
If instead you could filter out unknown contacts sending urls that would probably eliminate 95% + of all bot messaging. blocking all unknown contacts messaging isn't an ideal solution either.

 

Re:Notifications

[tolan-b]

> Does it preload the "Gnome" menu yet, or do you
> still get that annoying pause when you first
> click on it?

Not sure it's preloading but I've not been noticing the delay this time round. Certainly seems much faster

> Does the lovely dark Dusk theme work with Gnome 2.26?

Do you mean Dust? If so it seems ok, though I've not run it for very long.

> Will it kill off hardware VIA graphics (HP 2133
> netbook) like the last kernel upgrade, or does
> it now handle these properly as a third party
> binary blob?

Don't know sorry.

> Will it give me free beer and hookers?

Yes

There's not a huge amount of shiny new toys but this release seems *much* more stable. Can't think of any regressions I've noticed this time round, which was very much not the case with Intrepid which was bloody awful (and Hardy which wasn't much better).

Looks like someone finally listened on the stability front. I was close to dumping Ubuntu personally.

Re:Notifications

[Ian Alexander]

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.

Re:Notifications

[Oxy the moron]

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.

Re:Notifications

[Radhruin]

I was skeptical about the usefulness of those notifications when Shuttleworth first blogged about them, and after a couple weeks with them, I can safely say they need a lot of improvements.

For one, they are way too obtrusive. They are so frequent (I agree that there is no reason to have every IM, every contact sign-in/out broadcast up on the screen), and there is no way to dismiss them. Yes, I can hover "under" them and they fade away, but sometimes I just want the distraction to go away entirely.

And, that fading behavior is pretty worthless too. It's completely unintuitive. I am always moving my mouse over to the notification to interact with it (dismiss it, or whatever) only to have it completely disappear.

It's such a wasted opportunity too. If I get an IM, wouldn't it be sweet if I could click on the notification to bring up the window? Or, better yet, wouldn't it be sweet if I could send a quick reply in the notification bubble itself? Digsby on windows does this and it's pretty fantastic. But no. Instead I have to hunt through my task bar/docky to find the application providing the notification and click on it in order to respond to the notification. Why can't the notification system make it easier to deal with notifications?

To me, it feels like Shuttleworth thought some growl-like notifications would help spruce up the system and implemented it half-assedly without really considering how people want to use the thing.

Re:Notifications

[myz24]

Growl works how you describe. It's one of the reasons I like mac so much and I'm really happy to see it in 9.04. I'm sure with time the notification system will be improved.

Re:Notifications

[xenocide2]

Except if you test it, it doesn't appear to work, which is probably why it was hidden.

Re:Notifications

[levell]

> >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.

One of Fedora's recent test days (in preparation for Fedora 11 which is due out soon) found a number of problems with ATI cards. Hopefully by the time F11 ships (in about a month) a number of the issues will be sorted.

Fixes made for Fedora will eventually benefit Ubuntu users using the OSS ATI drivers too

Re:Notifications

[geminidomino]

Don't forget putting said shitted-up implementation into an LTS just to make sure anything using 8.04 for the fact that it IS an LTS will have to suffer with it for the next three-to-five...

Re:Notifications

[CajunArson]

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!!??!?!)
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 .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.

Re:Notifications

[blackest_k]

It doesn't really matter what I think, but if it's easy to do and effective someone might pick it up, costs me nothing to suggest it.
if i felt that strongly i'd do something more than post on slashdot. look what happened coz of that printer driver RMS couldn't hack :)

What's new - the usefull and the not so usefull

[Umangme]

Major changes:

• Improved boot performance. It may just breach 20s on newer systems.
• GNOME 2.26. (I don't think there are many changes to look out for)
• OpenOffice 3.0. Hopfully this has a better interface than 2.4.
• New notification system. Looks good in Shuttleworth's video. This is possibly the biggest improvement in the average user's eyes. I'm looking forward to seeing it in practice, but I have a feeling that they'll actually work well only in Karmic.
• Ext4 Support. It will be the default in Karmic. Filesystem support should affect the average user, so nothing new for the average user here. Many people are still on ext2, and may still be when Karmic comes.

The Jaunty overview should be put on the main page of Ubuntu.com. It really is pointless making that page otherwise. Instead an Ubuntu tour for 9.04 is the main link from the website. That tour really doesn't make Ubuntu sound like a very advanced OS.

Though I haven't upgraded to Jaunty as yet, I don't believe it is something the average user should get excited about. Karmic may.

WHAT!!! Ubuntu 9.04 Released?

[Philip K Dickhead]

You mean the charges didn't stick?

The courts are rigged!

Call me old but...

[clickclickdrone]

Having 'Remix' in an operating system's name is a big turnoff. It immedietely marks it as nerdware and is going to cause most 'normal' users to balk at the idea of going near it. Sometimes Linux really does shoot itself in the foot.

Re:Call me old but...

[British]

And just about every "remix" of every good 80s song I've heard just slaughters it. Let's studder the vocals, make the intro about 3 times longer, and generally make it sound worse than the original. Then let's make it 100 times easier to find than the original track as well.

Re:Call me old but...

[Culture20]

I'm a nerd, and I have no idea what "remix" is, beyond a music industry term. And no, I won't justf'ngoogleit.

Microsoft snatches publicity crown from Ubuntu

[David Gerard]

In a stunning public relations coup, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MNPLY) has successfully overshadowed today's release of Ubuntu Linux 9.04 "Jaunty Jubblies" by announcing its failed financials for a fourth quarter in a row and laying even more people off.

Microsoft announced new and expanded roles for remaining key executives as another several lesser, losing quitters deserted upper management. "It shows the fantastic opportunity available to everyone at Microsoft to climb seven or eight reporting levels up the org chart," said marketing marketer Steve Ballmer to pitchfork-wielding Wall Street analysts today. "If we haven't laid them off for making too much money or not kissing enough ass."

The Yahoo! deal is expected to go ahead. "We figure they'll go broke before we do. Probably." Mr Ballmer also plans to run the Yahoo! servers on Windows NT rather than FreeBSD after a similar change worked so well at Hotmail. "Some say synergy's another word for two plus two equals one, but you just have to make the value of one work for you."

Windows 7 betas have been greeted with remarkable positive press. "Of course, the betas preview the 'champagne and hookers' edition, which would be way too much for netbooks and explode users' brains. Imagine thinking those little things are computers! So we're releasing what we call Windows 7 Dumbass Edition. It lets you log in and look at the shiny. Even Spider Solitaire has the ribbon toolbar! And you can buy an upgrade to the version that runs programs! It lets you do that!" Dumbass Edition comes with pre-installed viruses to make the computer part of the Storm, Conficker and FBI botnets. "If you can't beat ’em, join ’em."

However, Microsoft has indicated to its press corps, Microsoft Completely Enderlependent Analysts, to ixnay on the evensay and highlight the job openings for work on Windows 8, firmly penciled in for a 2012 release. Windows 8 will be optimised for low-end 32-core systems with a mere 16 gigabytes of memory — 28 cores for the interface, 3 cores for the DRM and one core for everything else. "Seven is just so this year. I hear they'll get $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM done next release for sure!" said ZDNet marketing marketer Mary-Jo Enderle. "It'll be awesome!"

"I'm sure it'll be fine, fine," said Bill Gates, upping his hours at his charitable foundation and scheduling the sale of several more packages of Microsoft stock.

Larry Ellison of Oracle, who recently purchased Sun Microsystems, merely snickered, muttered "Java. OpenOffice." and let out a long and resounding laugh.

Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical, speaking from his castle on a crag high on a mountaintop in west London, was sanguine at Ubuntu's news being overshadowed. "I lost ten million dollars on Ubuntu last year. I'm losing ten million dollars on Ubuntu this year. I expect to lose ten million dollars on Ubuntu next year. At this rate, I'll be broke in ... sixty years."

I've been using this for a month

[revjtanton]

Jaunty Jackelope is certainly worth a download. I've been using it on my eeePC 900 with the Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) for a month and while its got its shortcomings, overall its the best OS I'v used with my netbook.

The greatest plus is Ext4. I know that isn't an Ubuntu exclusive upgrade or anything (Fedora 11 is going to offer the option of installing to a Ext4 partition) but combine that w/ my SSD and I boot in like 23 seconds flat...I don't even bother "putting the pc to sleep" since I boot so quick, I just shut down.

The downfall that I found with this release, and Intrepid Ibex, is w/ the eeePC hardware and graphics tiling. Basically the kernal being used in the release candidate has some issues threading the graphics processing and you get signifigant and annoying lag in the UNR interface...but only there. If you open any app it runs as normal, but the UNR interface lags like a son of a bitch. A patched kernal update did fix this however that fix was reverted due to other issues and as of yet a new kernal patch addressing all issues has not been released. You and review the details of the bug here. The .41 kernal is what is shipping and the .40 kernel is what works w/ the eeePC. If you want to install your own kernel you can get the .40 here.

The use of Ext4 makes this a true upgrade and a reason to install a new build. Enjoy!

Why a Server Edition?

[DiegoBravo]

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).

Anyone else having trouble booting?

[bcrowell]

I tested the waters a couple of weeks ago by downloading the prerelease version of Jaunty as an iso and burning it to a live cd. My machine wouldn't boot from the live cd (started to boot, didn't complete the process). I don't have any trouble booting from a live cd of other versions of Ubuntu, and this machine currently has intrepid, which works fine. It's an x64 box.

Is anyone else having problems like this? I'm definitely chicken to upgrade if there's a risk of making my system unbootable. I'm all in favor of shorter boot times, but it does have to boot.

The impression I generally get is that it's a good idea to wait at least a few weeks before upgrading to a newly released version of ubuntu.

Re:Anyone else having trouble booting?

[Locklin]

Mount the cdrom on a running system, cd to that directory and run:

$ md5sum -c md5sum.txt

It will check the md5sum of each file on the cdrom and report if anything is corrupted.

Re:Sweet

[not already in use]

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.

Re:Ubuntu is unusable garbage

[cptnapalm]

"If you like it better than Windows I'll eat my own ass."

I like it better than Windows. Do you need a napkin?

Re:Torrents

[drizek]

The Swedes have a lot of extra bandwidth now that they aren't pirating all day long.

Re:You need an adjective, not a verb.

[owlstead]

What about Misspelled Milipede instead?

Re:Still the same color scheme

[Risen888]

Yeah, too bad they don't include any other themes, or any way to change it. Someone should look into that.

Just installed the RC the other day

[dbc001]

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.

Re:But will it upgrade?

[Taimat]

hmm..... multiple versions of ubuntu - all upgraded by the same user - and always ends up bad... wonder which is the actual problem.....

Too Much RAM for My PC

[Doc Ruby]

I've been using Ubuntu on my Inspiron i8000 notebook since v6.04. But starting v8.10, the minimum RAM requirements nearly exceeded the 512 max RAM the notebook can hold. With a small app or two running it's right at 512MB used. Running Evolution or especially Firefox puts it far over, grinding the whole machine to a halt as it constantly swaps. To make matters worse, the nVidia GeForce2Go GPU doesn't seem supported by compvis, so the GPU doesn't offload the CPU for lots of graphics.

I'm hoping the 9.04 release now might possibly have some upgrade that relieves the RAM pressure. But I expect it will just get worse. Is there any simple way to trim the minimum RAM requirements of Ubuntu down below say 300MB (without losing GNOME)? Maybe if there's a simple way to convert the machine into just an X server to a separate faster box across the LAN, without saturating the LAN. Or maybe I finally have to kiss goodbye my 7 year old notebook and its fabulous 1600x1200 LCD.

Re:Too Much RAM for My PC

[Doc Ruby]

It's funny how you answered my question "Is there any simple way to trim the minimum RAM requirements of Ubuntu down below say 300MB (without losing GNOME)?" with "lose GNOME".

You're different from me. I use a computer solely in order to use the apps I want/need to use. If I have to choose between keeping a 7 year old computer or keeping the apps I use, I'm keeping the apps. Even if it costs me $500+ for a new notebook that's as good as or better than my 7 year old one.

Re:Sweet

[freeweed]

The funny thing is, once you step outside the bubble that is slashdot, people are generally happy with Vista.

No, really, they're not. Try looking into the Enterprise world sometime, and take a look at just how many large organizations are migrating to Vista. I'll wait for you. Don't worry, you have enough fingers. At best people TOLERATE Vista. I've yet to meet anyone who's happy with it - most people's kindest praise amounts to "well, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting".

If anything, posts like your own remind me of just how much the average Slashdotter LIKES Vista compared to the outside world.

Vista is a steaming pile that's on par with ME, and it's not Slashdot that's prompting Microsoft to rush 7 out the door. Kid yourself all you want, but CmdrTaco and his legions are not why you keep hearing horror stories about it.

You just don't see much beyond "my house", "my work", and "Slashdot". Otherwise known as "the plural of anecdote is not data".

First things first

[ThatsNotPudding]

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

Re:First things first

[Matt Perry]

Could you please explain why we should do this? Are you so opposed to a particular programming language that you would remove software that was written in this language? Do you also not install programs that were written in C++, preferring only to use programs written in C?

Fortran 77 Support?

[clong83]

So, someone who has tried it out... Does it have support for g77? I have a bunch of legacy code that requires some of the old fortran 77 libraries and these are unavailable in 8.10. Gfortran is not an option for me... I love ubuntu, but if they keep it out I might have to switch distros... Honest question.

Kubuntu is KDE4.2? Thanks for the warning!

[KWTm]

So, I'm a die-hard KDE user. I'm all excited about the new release! I can't wait to upgrade to a KDE that's actually useful as opposed to the get-lost-this-is-for-developers-only version. So I check out the release web page, and I see that there are a few known issues here:

1. Connection to non-broadcasting (hidden SSID) wireless networks with the network-manager widget isn't possible Bug 330811
2. Network Manager does not connect to some networks Bug 339313
3. Network Manager is not added to the panel on upgrades Bug 349066
4. KPackageKit (which is now the default package manager for Kubuntu Jaunty) doesn't support installations which require a removal or updates which require additional software. The packages to be removed / installed will be shown as blocked. Bug 342671
5. Kmail sieve functionality is buggy and causes CPU hang. You shouldn't use it at the moment.

WTF?? Wireless doesn't work? Package manager doesn't work!? Kmail doesn't work!??
Okay, you may be saying, "It's not that it doesn't work, it's that certain functions with certain applications in certain circumstances don't work." Umm, but it worked before, and now with the newer version it stops working? Okay, network manager only fails to connect to some networks. I mean, who cares, right? As long as your network is not one of those "some". It only fails if the network is hidden. I mean, what's the infinitesimal chance that you would actually hide your network SSID, right? KPackageKit works some of the time!? I don't care if it's "most" of the time. How would you like it if you bought a product that worked "most" of the time?
It's not as if this is some bleeding edge version. It's KDE 4.2 already. And, sitting right next to it is a perfectly functional KDE 3.5 that people have been using for ages. Why Kubuntu being released with so many issues?
What were those Kubuntu distro managers thinking!? In an effort to find out, I browsed some bug discussion pages.
One person said:
"Maybe we should switch back to knetworkmanager as the default network manager because I don't think this problem will be fixed shortly. knetworkmanager doesn't look as nice as the plasma widget, but can handle hidden aps and works fine with kubuntu."
But another one says,
"This won't be possible for two reasons. First, the final release is only weeks away. It is way to late to make an intrusive change like that. Second, I have heard the developers say that there is no room on the CD left for the KDE3 libraries that would be necessary to run NetworkManager. Hopefully, KNetworkManager4 will have been released and/or the bugs in the plasmoid will have been fixed in time for Karmic."
Umm, so, translation: we have to use software that works "most" of the time instead of a perfectly functioning networking piece of software, whose only disadvantage is that it is not as aesthetically pleasing, because

1. it's too late for us to realize that our aesthetically pleasing software is actually dysfunctional. Gotta release EARLY, release OFTEN, release ANYTHING EVEN IF IT DOESN'T WORK!
2. Our not-so-perfectly working system takes up too much room to fit the system that's been working fine for the past 2 release cycles while we were working on this KDE4 mess.
3. Our solution is to HOPE that MAYBE in the next release, things will be fixed.

This attitude of "yeah, it's buggy --we'll just get it out there, get some users to beta-test it for us (Surprise! YOU'VE been selected to beta-test OUR buggy software!) and just tell people to upgrade" makes me wonder whether the KDE developers are trying to update their resumes for a job hunt at Microsoft. "My software engineering skills include: successfully releasing piece-of-crap software and fo

And still no Eclipse update...

[shutdown -p now]

It is very unfortunate that the Eclipse package has been stuck at 3.2 in Ubuntu repos for several major releases already (the most recent version of Eclipse is currently 3.4.2). Given that Eclipse is one of the best FOSS IDEs out there (with only NetBeans being comparable - better in some things, worse in others), it is surprising that the effectively "#1 desktop Linux" can afford to alienate developers like that.

Re:Nuked my install

[batkiwi]

Are you saying you just changed "intrepid" to "Jaunty" in your sources.list and did a dist-upgrade?

If so:
You are an idiot.

Ubuntu understands that there are fundamental system changes that can cause an unbootable computer when you swap out core system libraries, and thus give you their upgrade manager. It handholds the system while it's in an unstable state.

Has problems with VMware 6.5

[Fatalis]

I'm not sure how they managed to achieve that, but package management doesn't work with VMware Workstation 6.5. I tried both Ubuntu and Kubuntu 9.04, and I could neither list nor do anything else with packages. It's so strange that I suspect VMware might have actively broken something in the installation. I can't imagine why else would something like packages not work in any virtual machine.