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

[orkybash]

Will it give me free beer and hookers?

Free as in speech, silly.

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

[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 :)

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

[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

[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.

Obligitory

[Rik Sweeney]

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

Re:Obligitory

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah no one cares.

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.

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!

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".

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.

I'm holding out for Ubuntu 10.10

[Anonymous Coward]

Which will undoubtedly be named Masturbating Monkey.

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

[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.

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.

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."