Some Early Adopters Stung By Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

Norsefire writes to mention a Register piece reporting that early adopters are having a tough time with Karmic Koala, Ubuntu's latest release. "Ubuntu 9.10 is causing outrage and frustration, with early adopters wishing they'd stuck with previous versions of the Linux distro. Blank and flickering screens, failure to recognize hard drives, defaulting to the old 2.6.28 Linux kernel, and failure to get encryption running are taking their toll, as early adopters turn to the web for answers and log fresh bug reports in Ubuntu forums." What has been your experience if you've moved to Karmic?

Comments

Professionalism

[sopssa]

Just imagine the amount of bashers if the news would had read;

Windows 7 is causing outrage and frustration, with early adopters wishing they'd stuck with previous versions of the Windows. Blank and flickering screens, failure to recognize hard drives, defaulting to the old kernel, and failure to get encryption running are taking their toll, as early adopters turn to the web for answers and log fresh bug reports in Windows forums.

This again comes from the fact that both Windows and Mac OS X releases are properly tested and maintained and tend to be in more professional quality.

But why don't the Linux distros go to same lenghts? It shouldn't be impossible, unless of course, commercial projects are maintained more professionally.

Re:Professionalism

[thetoadwarrior]

A few bugs is better than a load of viruses, imo.

Re:Professionalism

[db32]

The irony is too good...

Flagging this as "Troll" for being critical of how Linux distros don't get the same levels of QA testing isn't exactly demonstrating great professionalism...

Re:Professionalism

[RichardJenkins]

Just imagine the amount of bashers if the news would had read;

There'd be almost exactly the same number of bashers that Vista had.

<\trollfeeding>

I installed Karmic from the RC, didn't upgrade though. Backup, clean install, restore. No complaints. Didn't use the disk encryption

Re:Professionalism

[jedidiah]

The original article was itself a troll worthy of comp.os.linux.advocacy and not really terribly impressive.

Old kernel? What a tragedy! Did you not pay attention to the prompts during the upgrade?

One wonders how much of this stuff is self-inflicted in some fashion or another.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

part of the reason is that community are the testers. you never should move to using a new release as soon as its out.

Re:Professionalism

[Volante3192]

Thought I remembered something about slashcode automatically tagging any first post as 'Troll' as a defense mechanism... My memory might be wrong on that though.

Re:Professionalism

[characterZer0]

But why don't the Linux distros go to same lenghts?

Debian does go through great lengths, and people complained that the time between releases was too long.

Then they switched to Ubuntu.

Re:Professionalism

[FlyingBishop]

Only if it contains the words "Windows", "Linux" and "Mac."

Re:Professionalism

[migla]

Check out Debian.

Re:Professionalism

[V!NCENT]

>This again comes from the fact that both Windows and Mac OS X releases are properly tested and maintained and tend to be in more professional quality.
That has got me thinking... How can the London stock Exchange crash twice with Windows Server in one year, but didn' t crash at all in all previous years it was running Linux? Professional quality must mean that the quality sucks...

>But why don't the Linux distros go to same lenghts?
They go beyond, mister. It' s called FLOSS and if you want to know what that is all about then you should read (about) the Cathedral and the Bazaar.

>It shouldn't be impossible, unless of course, commercial projects are maintained more professionally.
It is perfectly possible and already exceeding commercial projects. Commercial projects, you see, are "more money is more important than higher quality so RUSH IT OUT OF THE DOOR YESTERDAY!"

Re:Professionalism

[MichaelSmith]

I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 and it is quite buggy. Much more than previous releases. I have had to go back to the NDIS wrapper to use my WG511 PCMCIA wifi adapter. I haven't had to do that in years.

My observations.

Re:Professionalism

[0100010001010011]

Not only that. I'm running Debian Sid and I've had fewer problems than are listed in the article. Plus I most likely have newer packages.

Debian Rulez.

Debian kFreeBSD is going to rock your ZFS socks off.

Re:Professionalism

[CarpetShark]

But why don't the Linux distros go to same lenghts? It shouldn't be impossible, unless of course... having every kind of hardware costs a lot of money and the hardware companies don't donate samples to Linux developers/testers.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Professionalism

[period3]

Ubuntu is hardly representative of all linux distros. It is just one distribution, and there are many other better tested distributions. I use Ubuntu currently, and it is among the slowest and buggiest of all the distros I've tried.

Re:Professionalism

[Shotgun]

How much did those users pay for their copy of Karmic?

Yes, it does make a difference. If I pay for a finished product, I expect it to be finished. If someone hands me a CD and says try this, I will try it, but not get upset if it doesn't work out perfectly.

In this society that we call open source, we fully understand that Canonical doesn't have the resources to run large test labs. We also know that we get the product for free, and can ban together with a large cadre of like-minded folks to fix problems that we do find. Most Ubuntu releases are initially full of problems. They tend to dissipate much quicker than your first Service Pack that you'll get from the behemoth that HAS charged you enough to do some proper engineering and testing.

Re:Professionalism

[RiotingPacifist]

But why don't the Linux distros go to same lenghts?

Some do, some don't, you don't here about these problems RHEL or debian, hell even mint is pretty good on release, but if you choose ubuntu (or too a lesser extent fedora) then this is what you get

Re:Professionalism

[dfxk]

Professional: Engaging in a given activity as a source of livelihood or as a career: a professional writer.

Just imagine the amount of bashers if you had exchanged professional with better.

Re:Professionalism

[gilesjuk]

Depends how the upgrade is performed.

With Linux you can update the package source list and run a command to upgrade. This approach can be more hairy than a clean install. There's a million billion different combinations of packages, plus some people like to roll their own kernel.

Software variation can be greater with Linux.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to tinker!

But you're right, I do need something that works out of the box first, so I can learn how to use it, BEFORE I learn how to tinker.

Re:Professionalism

[Moridineas]

Ubuntu not hardly representative of all linux distros? Maybe not, but it IS by all accounts I can find, far and away the most popular (even more so if you included Ubuntu-derived distros)

If Ubuntu is not representative, then gentoo, slackware, etc are even more unrepresentative of linux distros as a whole, no?

Re:Professionalism

[Locke2005]

Just imaging if the news had read,
PC users upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7 have run into a variety of hair pulling problems since last Thursday when Windows 7 launched. Complaints range from endless reboots to refusals by Windows to accept Microsoft's assigned product keys. As of Monday morning, Microsoft had answered about 2600 questions that poured into support forum regarding upgrades. At last count, around 1400 questions remained unanswered.
Oh wait... it does Not to pick favorites, I'd say both the latest Windows and the latest Ubuntu are less than perfect, but both will improve over time. I would also give Microsoft credit for having spent a lot more than Ubuntu did testing their latest release.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

In the same vein, I can hand out a piece of shit to you and you would gladly accept it because it is free? Or you get free medical treatment for an illness but in the process the doc cuts of your dick but no problem, it was free so it is kind of okay.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

this is exactly why Ubuntu should cut back on the frequency of releases to once a year.

once every six months is just too often = (not enough time for testing).

Re:Professionalism

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

One wonders how much of this stuff is self-inflicted in some fashion or another.

Rule 1: blame the user.

I say this only 2/3rds jokingly. It's a problem in that it's often the first reaction we'll have upon reading something like this -- but there's also often a /reason/ it's the first reaction.

That being said, it's been long established that most people don't read prompts in software. Perhaps (in addition to realizing the users are stupid for not reading) we should design with that limitation in mind, so that it does the "right thing" by default for stupid users.

Re:Professionalism

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

Really? That's your excuse. My indication is that they have never even attempted to do any kind of widespread testing. Its not like there are that many mainstream hardware configurations out there. Ubuntu is a corporately sponsored distribution they SHOULD have the cash somewhere. Just because they choose to make money in ways other than licensing fees doesn't mean they should get a free pass for not putting out anything remotely close to a professional product. If I did my math right, based on that poll on ubuntuforums fewer than 40% of people were able to install/update successfully. That is pitiful.

Re:Professionalism

[MrSenile]

Funny, and all this time I thought the majority of the reason people use Windows is because it comes pre-installed on all the computers that they buy. The fact it 'just works' is because the people who make the systems have already prebuilt the systems with a tested and verified image that works on that specific hardware being purchased.

If they did the same with Linux, which some distributions do, then it would 'just work' as well.

I mean, get real. Can you imagine grandma getting a barebone system and installing Windows 7/Vista/Xp from cd, then having to search the internet for the drivers required for the hardware that isn't automatically recognized?

Pretty much the same headache grandma would have looking for any missing linux drivers, and funny enough, in a bare-bone install, linux is likely to support more out of the box than Windows. Go figure.

So for the 'lack of tinkering', you have to thank Microsoft and their excellent marketing division and their stranglehold on the hardware corporation.

Cheers.

Re:Professionalism

[cptnapalm]

"Rule 1: blame the user." /me sheepishly raises his hand.

I had forgotten that I had started using Grub 2 at some point. The upgrade instructions did mention that, I think, update-grub had to be run manually.

I passed right over it.

There was some audio funkiness, though. All sorted out because of something I did. I have no idea what though. I think it is PulseAudio thing... it usually is.

Re:Professionalism

[PRMan]

This is true. Ubuntu suggested an upgrade, so I went ahead. Now the computer won't boot at all.

I don't have time for this nonsense. I'm just going to install a Windows server instead. Because despite it's problems, I know that it will boot and the upgrades it suggests will be well-tested.

Re:Professionalism

[_Sprocket_]

The irony is too good...

Flagging this as "Troll" for being critical of how Linux distros don't get the same levels of QA testing isn't exactly demonstrating great professionalism...

However, flagging this as a troll since it is obviously designed to invite flames and ire is entirely spot-on. The OP pulls the hypocrisy card and then makes general statements about QA quality with weasel words like "professional." This is not discussion much less criticism.

Re:Professionalism

[jeremyp]

One wonders how much of this stuff is self-inflicted in some fashion or another.

It's all self inflicted. Nobody makes you upgrade to the latest bleeding edge of the software. That's not an attempt to excuse companies whose .0 releases are rubbish.

Re:Professionalism

[couchslug]

Ubuntu should be more direct about the LTS versions being reliable and the other releases being beta software. If you want the most reliability, use Debian. If you want ease of installation and convenience, use a Ubuntu LTS release (never forget the purpose of Ubuntu is to make Debian user friendly). If you want bleeding edge, back up your home directory and have at it.

Re:Professionalism

[Angst Badger]

Right. That's why I'm still running XP on the Windows side of the box and have no plans whatsoever -- nor really any motivation -- to upgrade to Windows 7. And the next box will likely be running XP under virtualization. Odds are that it will be quite some time before there is any significant Windows software that won't run under XP.

You can bandy the word "professionalism" around with all of its varied meanings and hope that no one here is literate enough to call you on it -- this is Slashdot, after all -- but the fact of the matter is that the only relevant aspect of professionalism here is the amount of money involved. When you're running a multi-billion dollar company, you can afford to test your software on a wide variety of machines with a large QA staff to run the whole exercise. Microsoft and Apple have the billions; Canonical does not.

All that said, there are any number of free software packages out there that are polished and refined and blow away their commercial competitors, so it plainly can be done. On the other hand, an operating system and all of its associated software is a lot more complicated than any single application, so testing it thoroughly has got to be a daunting task. Moreover, the risk and effort involved in downloading the latest Firefox beta is much less than downloading and installing an operating system beta, so there are probably a lot more testers for apps than OS distributions. Still, the last couple of Ubuntu releases have had non-trivial problems, and for a distribution that prides itself on stability, this definitely should serve as a wakeup call to the folks at Canonical.

In the end, though, I'll take a rough start on an Ubuntu point revision over the "professionalism" of Windows Vista and, for that matter, the rough start that many people have reported with Windows 7. And while I'll grant you that OS X is a polished product, several OS X releases have had noteworthy issues, and that doesn't even begin to cover the primitive suckware that passed for the MacOS pre-OS X. Modern operating system development is hard. Neither commercial nor free OS producers do it as well as we'd like. Even so, how much do you want to bet that there are fixes for the problems with Ubuntu 9.10 a good six months to a year before Microsoft issues its first service pack for Windows 7?

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu is a commercial project....

Re:Professionalism

[amicusNYCL]

You need to put that into perspective though. The market share of Windows 7 is already larger than the market share of Linux (more than 2x, according to hitslink.com). So the percentage of Windows 7 users that are experiencing problems seems to be pretty small (or else we'd be hearing about it here). Meanwhile...

They're in good company, as more than a fifth of people upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 have reported issues they can't fix, according to an Ubuntuforums.org poll here. Only around 10 per cent of those upgrading or installing reported a completely flawless experience.

So over 20% of people are reporting unfixable issues, while about 10% are reporting no issues at all, with the remaining roughly 70% reporting issues that they are able to fix.

Re:Professionalism

[Patch86]

Top story tonight- small company with small user base has more launch-day troubles than large super-rich company with billions of users.

More at 11.

Seriously, have you compared the development spending of MS and Canonical recently? MS spends more on development and testing than the national budget of some developing countries; if they weren't managing to launch more polished products than minuscule Canonical they would have serious, serious problems.

Re:Professionalism

[story645]

If I did my math right, based on that poll on ubuntuforums fewer than 40% of people were able to install/update successfully. That is pitiful.

You mean the poll on the forum someone's only likely to end up at if things go wrong? I'm surprised the number isn't lower considering the inherent sampling bias.

Granted, I had a friend attempt to install karmic and it didn't work out so well for him, but he also had some funky hardware. I didn't even attempt it 'cause I've finally gotten 9.04 working mostly sanely. At this point, most people should know to install earlier versions or the LTS if they want stability. (Ubuntu tells people to install the LTS versions for large deployments for just that reason.)

Re:Professionalism

[Stupendoussteve]

>But why don't the Linux distros go to same lenghts?
They go beyond, mister. It' s called FLOSS and if you want to know what that is all about then you should read (about) the Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Then why are people having these problems?

>It shouldn't be impossible, unless of course, commercial projects are maintained more professionally.
It is perfectly possible and already exceeding commercial projects. Commercial projects, you see, are "more money is more important than higher quality so RUSH IT OUT OF THE DOOR YESTERDAY!"

This doesn't seem to differ much from the Ubuntu release model (at least in this case). There were those advocating a week long delay to fix some issues, but this of course would have messed up the version number.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Winner ... OSX!

Re:Professionalism

[Urza9814]

Well, some distros seem to do quite well at that - Ubuntu is far from the most professional distro in any sense of the word. But it's tough, and it's tough for many reasons. First of all, people blame Linux for hardware issues quite frequently. If you install Windows and your printer doesn't work...well you go download the printer drivers. But if you install Linux and that same printer doesn't work, or is flaky, people tend to blame Linux because it worked fine on Windows, when really the problem is the printer manufacturer for releasing no (or crappy) drivers.

Secondly, it's a matter of release cycles. Microsoft took _7 years_ to get Vista out the door. They spent 6 months working on Karmic. Again, there are some distros that take the time to make sure everything works when they ship, but the more desktop-oriented ones for some reason tend to focus more on releasing quickly and getting the latest and greatest out to the users rather than heaps of quality control. Besides, it's tough to get people to test for bugs for free. If you want a well tested distro, you'll probably have to pay for it.

Re:Professionalism

[msclrhd]

There is a balance here.

There are essentially two classes of distribution:
      stable (e.g. Debian stable) -- this distribution will not upgrade components until they are settled and working; tends to lag behind on new, shiny features.
      latest-and-greatest (e.g. Debian unstable, Ubuntu) -- adds new things and the latest versions of components/drivers without knowing how good they are.

Ubuntu is trying to compete with Windows and Mac, and needs to keep up with evolving features to get the latest functionality (e.g. hot-pluggable input devices in Xorg). It is also focused on meeting requirements of users, so has the option for binary drivers (nvidia, some wifi) so that things can (or should) work.

Re:Professionalism

[Hurricane78]

You know what the difference is? About $291.99! (Or even $391.99.)

Just sayin': If you are outraged about what you get, when you get something that large for free, then you are obviously an egocentric ass, and I pity the people who try to give you gifts on Christmas.
Whether it's Linux or Windows or OS X does not matter at all. It would be just as wrong to be pissed about getting Windows 7 for free.

Perhaps if you each payed $291.99 for Ubuntu, to deliver an upgrade (that's what Win7 is), then you'd get something better.
Otherwise, just shut up or fix it yourselves!

What's next? Complaining about the low quality of your slaves? ^^

Re:Professionalism

[LordLimecat]

That has nothing to do with Linux. People use windows because it is preinstalled on computers, and has productivity software preinstalled (works, office trials), and browsers preinstalled, etc. It has nothing to do with windows vs Linux. If you had OEMs shipping linux and actually caring about it, and marketing it as strongly as windows is, people would use that. The vast majority of people dont care what is on their computer so long as they dont have to think.

TBQH I think linux is better at this because of its software repositories and centralized updates. Updating software on windows is generally a nightmare on windows, between Windows asking you to reboot every 10 minutes, to Java begging you to click next, to Skype complaining that you havent shown it enough love when you open it, to LogMeIn popping crap up on screen when youre trying to work....

Remind me again why its "easier" to use and install software on Windows? Oh thats right, youre confusing "easier" and "supported / marketed more strongly".

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a Linux specific issue at all. Try this, using your over-reaching generalization of "nobody":

Yup.

This is why nobody installs an OS on their own.

The vast majority of people just want a computer that WORKS, so they throw out their computer and buy a new one THAT ALREADY HAS an OS installed and tweaked.

There. Fixed that for you.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather have a working system that I can protect than a system I can't get running right in the first place.
 
Let's be honest, as long as you use a router and aren't downloading crap like Bonzi Buddy or Limewire from suspect sources you're pretty safe on a Windows box. If you want more protection just get AVG Free.

Re:Professionalism

[moosesocks]

Um. This does happen around the time of every major OS release, especially with Apple and Microsoft.

Apple in particular has a somewhat poor track record for 10.x.0 releases, with the notable exception of 10.6.0. Application compatibility issues aside, Snow Leopard is the first major OS release I've heard of *ever* not to have at least occasional problems during an in-place upgrade. Even Windows service packs are known to break things from time to time.

My anecdotal experience with Karmic Koala has been "so far so good." No complaints here -- nice try trolls!

Re:Professionalism

[Threni]

I clicked `upgrade` and it trashed my install. I've still not got it working, because the help I received on a forum was `boot from the cd and choose repair/fix`. Good idea, only there's no help/fix option. I want to reinstall the new one over the old one (that is , on the same partition - I don't care what happens to the old install as I've copied what I want from it onto my XP partition using the live cd), but I don't want to twat about with grub and lose XP or my windows data.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

everyone has heard this argument a thousand times. i don't see where you're going. and on slashdot. you must be trollin' TROLLING!!!!!!!!!

Re:Professionalism

[Korin43]

And then I thought Ubuntu was too slow, so I switched to Arch (rolling release) and it's more stable. That may seem strange to you, but only if you don't know how Ubuntu/Debian defines "stable". Stable on Debian and Ubuntu means old. If it was release a year ago, it's stable. Who cares if sound doesn't work on your computer, at least it's stable! Who cares if pidgin-facebookchat crashes every couple minutes, in Debian-land it's stable (this is a particularly interesting case because pidgin-facebookchat was added right after the project started, and then Ubuntu arbitrarily stopped adding new versions to the repos even though the plugin still isn't done, so every release adds to the stability). Mozilla release are remarkably stable and always contain security updates.. but sorry, Firefox 3.5 wasn't old enough until this release. Every version of the nvidia drivers add more stability, but I think we'll stick with the old versions.. you know.. because they're old.

And that's not to say that sticking with old versions is always bad, it's just that the method of deciding what's stable is literally "is it old?". Why not test things and then update, instead of arbitrarily picking a version and declaring it to be stable? Or keep track of projects that release safe code and give them 2 weeks to make sure there's no horrible bugs, and then update (like what exactly is the reason for holding back Firefox and Pidgin?).

Re:Professionalism

[MrSenile]

Yes, because this has never happened with:

Windows XP ... http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-30966-XP-boot-failure-after-using-windows-update.html

Or Windows Vista ... http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vista/769242-failure-boot-right-after-windows.html

Or Windows 7 ... http://windowsfixup.com/2009/04/latest-windows-7-updates-cause-bsod-fix/

Re:Professionalism

[nurb432]

Well, then they don't want windows either. The fact windows needs 'tinkering' as you put it is why there is an entire PC support industry in the first place.

Re:Professionalism

[munctional]

My first Linux was Gentoo (stage 1 install)... if I didn't have an irrational desire to learn Linux, I would have definitely given up after the first day of trying to get it to install. I was mesmerized by the command line, though.

It is kind of ridiculous that so much stuff is still broken out of the box on modern Linux distros. It's also ridiculous how it's also apparently the fault of the end users themselves.

Re:Professionalism

[euxneks]

Just imagine the amount of bashers if the news would had read;

Windows 7 is causing outrage and frustration, with early adopters wishing they'd stuck with previous versions of the Windows. Blank and flickering screens, failure to recognize hard drives, defaulting to the old kernel, and failure to get encryption running are taking their toll, as early adopters turn to the web for answers and log fresh bug reports in Windows forums.

This again comes from the fact that both Windows and Mac OS X releases are properly tested and maintained and tend to be in more professional quality.

But why don't the Linux distros go to same lenghts? It shouldn't be impossible, unless of course, commercial projects are maintained more professionally.

I doubt it's less professional on Linux than it is on Mac or Windows. The real fact of the matter is, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows all have hiccoughs on the first day of release. How they deal with those hiccoughs are what really matters.

Re:Professionalism

[inode_buddha]

I have a very good mind to begin creating a linux distro called "Fr0st Pist"

Re:Professionalism

[thue]

Erm - how is this not also a problem on Windows? A 2-minute Google search

Hard disk not recognized:
- http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-73640-windows-setup-cannot-detect-my-hard-disk

Flickering screen:
- http://forums.cnet.com/5208-12546_102-0.html?threadID=240410

Blank screen
- http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-vista/windows-vista-hangs-at-a-black-screen-when-booting-up/

So in short: nothing to see here, move along.

(Macs may or may not be a special case,because their hardware is relatively limited)

Re:Professionalism

[sqtab]

The Ubuntu 9.10 desktop looks so 2002.

Why does the Linux desktop still look so unpolished and unrefined? Compared to Snow Leopard and Windows 7, Ubuntu looks like crap.

I've been using Ubuntu 9.10 for several weeks now and I'm so tired of the lack of polish on the desktop. I'm also tired of the fact that Linux fanboys are so unwilling to take a good, hard, critical look at their OS to find out how it can be better and gain more widespread adoption.

Hurling insults at potential customers accomplishes nothing. Telling them to RTFA doesn't get you anywhere. People just want things to work so they can go on to doing REAL work. They don't want to tinker on a friggin' machine for hours on end.

And polish does matter. Sweating the details makes all the difference in the world. Having a PROFESSIONAL polished look attracts both developers and users.

When it comes to desktop operating systems, Mac OS X is the gold standard. Even Microsoft knows this very, very well. That's why they copy it, and that's how they've done very well. Why Linux retards don't realize this and emulate the same level of refinement is simply beyond me.

And how did Apple accomplish this? By INNOVATION. By ELEGANT DESIGN. By paying attention to the details. Sweating the details. Being their own worst critics. Everyone knows Steve Jobs is just about the most difficult person to work for. But the proof is in the pudding. Apple emphasizes elegant design and innovation. That's how they came back from near death only a few years ago.

Look at the design of a MacBook Pro. Look at Mac OS X. Look at the iPhone. Everything has the best technology. Everything is like a work of art. Everything is a Masterpiece.

KDE has a lot of ideas and they implement lots of things. Problem is they don't seem to have any focus. The desktop just has a scatterbrained feel to it. Like everything and anything goes. Everything plus the kitchen sink. No focus. No coherence. No professional polish (what the hell is "Edutainment"???). Just one big mess.

Gnome has a chance, but the LACK OF INNOVATION and LACK OF POLISH is a serious problem. It's like they're stuck in 2002. Very frustrating if you've experienced much better.

Linux needs a professional touch. It needs professional designers, professional reviewers, professional critics.

And Linux developers have to stop coding like their only users are fellow developers. I shouldn't have to look in manuals or hunt around on the web to find how to do something. Software must be clean, simple, and intuitive to use. KISS.

As for gaining more momentum in the marketplace, it's not enough for Linux to be "good enough". That won't cut it! That doesn't get you out of the 1% market share hole. You have to be BETTER than the competition if you are ever going to come from behind and win.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of this stuff was reported against the betas, but not fixed for the release because they didn't want to push the schedule.

Re:Professionalism

[harlows_monkeys]

And your excuse making is worthy of comp.os.linux.advocacy.

Re:Professionalism

[Falstius]

I have a better idea. Canonical can release every six months and you can upgrade once a year.

Re:Professionalism

[Brian Gordon]

I use Ubuntu and it's buggy

Really. What a surprise. If you want a stable system, then use a stable distro. Exempli gratia, Debian stable.

Re:Professionalism

[Hurricane78]

If you can call that "working". But I guess it's just like the users. Who themselves never ever really *used* a computer. (Where "using" means using it for what it was invented for: Automating things! Who of those so-called "users" actually automates his work? They all just do the same repetitive shit over and over. And the software even supports that behavior! It's more playing with it, than anything else. And then of course they complain, about how their computer does not even save them any time! Who woulda thunka that?)

Re:Professionalism

[Locke2005]

The people that are having problems with Windows 7 are the people that are upgrading from XP or Vista. Obviously most of Microsoft's testing has been done with clean installs, and buying a new PC with Windows 7 preinstalled should be a fairly good user experience. Karmic Koala has problems with clean installs as well as upgrades, if I understand correctly. Both Microsoft and Ubuntu appear to rely on their customers to test new OS releases for them. Given Ubuntu's budget, this should be expected for them. I still think Microsoft is relying on paying customers to essentially beta test their new software, but that is just my opinion. Usually the kinks get ironed out faster in Open Source software, it has yet to be seen if that will be the case with these two.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

New Windows releases causing frustration and failures are not news because it is the normal and expected behaviour.
This is why it also has become the norm that the professionals wait for at least one service pack before they upgrade.

Linux distros have historically had more extensive testing by the community before a release. It was called "beta versions".
Canonical is changing this pattern with Ubuntu and it's release cycle has become more like Windows where the masses are the beta testers AFTER release.

Re:Professionalism

[MichaelSmith]

But it is a surprise. Ubuntu so far has been (if not stable) then well tested and polished.

Re:Professionalism

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

I prefer Lesbian.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Well...

8.10 = Sound master 100% (distorted sound, Intel HDA Venice)
9.04 = Sound master OK Yay!
9.10 = Sound master 100% (distorted sound, Intel HDA Venice)

Apart from that issue....

All software WORKS.

And, btw,

Yup.

This is why nobody uses Linux.

The vast majority of people just want a computer that WORKS.

VERY few people are willing to tinker around *AT ALL*.

Unless you throw some water in it... I guess the computer (hardware) WORKS. Another thing is if you were requesting that software manage PROPERLY the hardware.

Re:Professionalism

[Dhalka226]

Flagging this as "Troll" for being critical of how Linux distros don't get the same levels of QA testing isn't exactly demonstrating great professionalism...

Probably because it's trolling, same as this comment. The vast majority of people here, much less the vast majority of those with mod points and the people who modded the particular post in question, are not in any way "linux professionals," whatever that would even mean. Even fewer work specifically for Canonical, which is the only group you can base ANY judgment about Linux QA on from this article. So, other than trying to score some cheap points, what exactly is the point of calling it unprofessional? All it does is confirm that you're walking into the discussion with a bias and make us want to dismiss you.

I don't use Ubuntu. I don't use this release in particular, and I have no idea what the causes of the problems in question are; I don't know if they're widespread or overblown. I use all three (Windows XP, Linux and Mac OS X) operating systems, so I don't particularly have any bias. But even if the problems are real and widespread, calling it a lack of QA is nothing more than jumping to conclusions at this point. The reality is that linux runs on vastly more hardware than Windows does, and those users are much more likely to have non-standard and otherwise more complicated configurations. It's impossible to test on all of them, much less cost-prohibitive.

Further, there are plenty of well-documented similar issues with Microsoft's releases. For starters, how about the entirety of the Vista OS? Updates that hose your system? Non-essential crap foisted on you as critical security upgrades? Pouncing on Ubuntu for problems and claiming it's because of lack of QA, while happily ignoring similar issues from Microsoft but giving them credit for their QA is hypocritical at best. Maybe "Hypocritical" would be a better mod, but in its absence it doesn't seem as though "Troll" or "Flamebait" are that far off the mark.

Yes, maybe they fucked something up royally -- frankly, that's what it sounds like right now. It's very possible. So does Microsoft. Are you going to claim it's because Microsoft doesn't QA test its products? For all the anti-Microsoft vitriol here, I don't think anybody has ever made that claim. Sometimes shit just happens.

At the very least, if we're going to criticize for it, let's make sure we actually know what "it" is first? Comments here on Slashdot are mixed as to people who have problems with the upgrades and people for whom it worked fine. Maybe it's not as simple as people want to make it out to be. Maybe, just maybe, it's horrendously premature to be assigning blame to a lack of QA and Troll mods aren't quite so undeserved as you claim?

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Flagging this as "Troll" for being critical of how Linux distros don't get the same levels of QA testing isn't exactly demonstrating great professionalism...

Yes, poor professionalism indeed. I'm amazed that they ever passed their certification exams as a professional moderator. I call for an immediate suspension of salary.

Re:Professionalism

[sergiodj]

I also had major problems, both in my personal computer as in my girlfriend's notebook. I am a Gentoo user (but have another notebook with Ubuntu installed), so I could easily look out for the solutions --- or even report bugs when applicable. However, my girlfriend didn't have the same "luck", so she had to use Windows during a whole day before I could take a look and try to fix her Ubuntu.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

But why doesn't Canonical go to [the] same lenghts?

There. FTFY.

Now, if you want a Linux distro that's been fully vetted, go here.

BTW, nice trolling.

Re:Professionalism

[TheSpoom]

I think a lot of the problems people are seeing can be traced to one of two things:

1. The new Humanity theme. They changed a lot, and it looks like they didn't test it nearly enough with third party applications.

2. The introduction of Firefox 3.5. It's actually a fairly big change; more akin to the switch from FF 2 to 3 than a subversion change. It's apparently not using the Gnome font configuration by default (causing some ugly fonts without changes), and any major upgrade to Firefox leads to extensions not quite working correctly.

I've managed to fix the issues I had with the upgrade (including the obnoxious change of removing the application icon from the upper-left of windows, which can be reverted by changing the Metacity theme file in /usr/share/themes), but it wasn't as clean as previous upgrades have been.

Re:Professionalism

[WaXHeLL]

The vast majority of people just want a computer that WORKS.

VERY few people are willing to tinker around *AT ALL*.

Actually, this is precisely why Vista (and especially Vista x64) has stumbled.

When people discovered that driver support was questionable, and a number of their old devices would no longer work (and some of which didn't even have new drivers written), there was this mass outcry of "Vista is terrible." That along with the fact that they needed hardware upgrades in order to run it...

Oh yeah, how about the poor native driver support for printers in Windows? I've actually only used one printer in Windows that didn't require a driver download from a 3rd party (and some of those 3rd party driver packages are horribly bloated, especially with HP printers). Oddly, the only printer that worked with the built in driver package from Windows was an Apple Laserwriter.

I think it's more along the lines of: "People want a computer that just works, out of the box, with minimal setup." If there were good computers that came pre-installed with Linux and everything worked properly (and people had their Microsoft equivalent applications all setup and easily accessed) the reception might be a little bit better. You know, the Asus eee netbooks with Linux had a pretty warm reception...

Re:Professionalism

[Ash-Fox]

Ubuntu stable is the LTS versions. Current LTS is 8.04. The other ones are 'bleeding edge' releases.

Re:Professionalism

[dissy]

Yup.

This is why nobody uses Linux.

The vast majority of people just want a computer that WORKS.

VERY few people are willing to tinker around *AT ALL*.

Repeat after us.. Ubuntu is not all of linux.

There are plenty of linux distros where the goal is stability.

If you want to randomly pick one known for being on the bleeding edge and not supposed to be stable, then we get to do the same for "Windows".

My choice is Windows 95.
This is why no one runs windows. 20 reboots before you have a usable system, have to drop to dos to configure stuff, must make many registry edits for a usable system.

No one would want to go through all that right? Except they did. And there are alternatives (now) for that, such as XP or newer (well maybe not Vista pre-sp)

I currently have a Linux machine with a 1400+ day uptime. It is debian, which has the goal of stability.
Try Windows 2003 or 2008 server. Those too are made for stability. Hell, if it wasn't for the fact windows updates still need reboots at times, those machines most likely could reach the same uptimes.

You need to be more careful when lumping a whole WHOLE lot of very different things into one group, then flaming that group when what you say only really applies to a small subset.

Re:Professionalism

[Tetsujin]

Just imagine the amount of bashers if the news would had read;

Windows 7 is causing outrage and frustration, with early adopters wishing they'd stuck with previous versions of the Windows. Blank and flickering screens, failure to recognize hard drives, defaulting to the old kernel, and failure to get encryption running are taking their toll, as early adopters turn to the web for answers and log fresh bug reports in Windows forums.

People would be bashing Slashdot and its editors for following "Slashdot groupthink" (that is, adhering to the traditional preferences of the local culture) by saying something negative about Microsoft! Poor, defenseless, put-upon Microsoft!

I don't get it. Slashdot is, at least by reputation, composed largely of people who support Linux, right? And yet, here we have an unflinching look at a case where a new release of one of the best current distributions has resulted in a lot of problems... And it hasn't been particularly sugar-coated or downplayed... It seems to me we're dealing ourselves a healthy dose of reality here.

Re:Professionalism

[Stebalien]

The main problem is NOT professionalism. Most bugs in Ubuntu releases are hardware related. These bugs are avoided on Macs because Apple controls the hardware. On Windows PCs, manufacturers (Dell, HP, etc.) test Windows on them before they sell them. These companies often include their own custom drivers on their machines. For example, the installation of Windows on many HP laptops with the default CD will fail miserably. I know many people who have tried to upgrade (i.e. downgrade) to vista but were unable to get much of their hardware working (sound cards, etc.). With Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, it is up to the developers and beta tester to test the OS on all available hardware. While developers and alpha/beta tester test Ubuntu on as much hardware as possible, it is impossible to test everything.

Re:Professionalism

[DadLeopard]

Yep! Tried to upgrade instead of clean install got grub2 working, the switched to EXT4 then did the upgrade with the Alternate install disk, It set my Video synch rate too high for my monitor and that disk has no recovery bot option! I am crap at CLI, so bit the bullet and did a clean install after repartitioning and making a separate /home partition, this time all went well! As usually sound was muted by default, then had crackling noise had to go to sound preferences and chose analog output LFE, then perfect! Oh and pulse audio is stereo by default you need to use the same sound preferences applet only the hardware tab this time and choose 5.1 surround, better than 9.04 since you don't have to hand edit the config file now! A couple of things are missing from the default installation, the compiz config setting manager has to be installed and gparted isn't installed by default either! No bugs that I have found so far though! All in all happy with it and it does seem just a bit zippier!

Re:Professionalism

[ColdWetDog]

Sorry to disappoint, but Snow Leopard is having the same kinds of issues that every other 10.x.0 (and even 10.x.x) releases have had. Lost data, borked booting - just wander down to MacFixit and see the pain.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

With Windows, the people would buy new computers with everything already installed. If you want to hear some funny stuff just listen to the average Windows users talk about actually upgrading and how many troubles they run in to. Most I know end up buying a new computer after going through too much frustrations trying to do an upgrade.

Re:Professionalism

[deek]

A friend of mine upgraded to 9.10, and had wireless issues as well. He uses a USB wireless adaptor, and every time it tried to connect, it would spit out the following message in dmesg:

wlan0: disassociating by local choice (reason 3)

It's a pretty obscure message. Anyway, after much playing around, it was fixed by removing the gnome-network-monitor package. Of all fixes, I didn't see that one coming!

The machine hasn't had another hiccup since then, so my friend is happy with it.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the reason Ubuntu is unstable is:
1-
Linux kernel updates go downstream with no testing whatsoever. "It builds on my machine and doesn't break my employers' Beowulf cluster, ship!"
As distros don't have any more knowledge of kernels than 2.26.4 > 2.26.3, users are left to their own devices(pun intended).
2-
this

Re:Professionalism

[Daengbo]

LTS was bleeding edge and broken on release, too:

1. Beta version of Firefox
2. Pulse was introduced and was flakey, introducing all Ubuntu users to pulseaudio -k && pulseaudio.
3. Flash sound interfered with Pulse, so libflashsupport was introduces, but wouldn't work for more than an hour, so was dropped a day before the final release, leaving Flash to tie up ALSA.
4. F-Spot (the default photo manager) didn't launch on 64-bit due to a late change in Mono.

Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Don't pretend that the LTS gets any more love than the regular releases do. It just gets supported longer.

p.s. I think Canonical made its only sane choice in years by announcing that 10.10LTS will be based on GNOME 2, and not the then-to-be brand new GNOME 3.0.

Re:Professionalism

[mujugaba]

To whom it may concern,
I have installed many Linux operating systems over the past 4 years. I also have worked with Windows-based machines as well since it is my job to support them. It seems you have forgotten the entire procedure of these operating systems. These are created by various entities from all backgrounds and are put into something they typically refer to as "Beta" releases (you can liken these to Windows official releases). During this phase, users are encouraged to install the OS for testing and troubleshooting purposes. The system can be no better than the community using and testing it. This is part of the reason you usually have the ability to use the OS free.

On another note, professionalism is something rarely exhibited by those you reference, despite the fact they each charge enough to afford it.

Lastly, I'm currently using this release on my IBM T41 and have had fewer issues than the prior 3 releases- none.

Re:Professionalism

[Jezza]

I've had Windows Servers blow up after installing patches... No matter what OS, test patches before deployment (if you can).

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are running a "stable" distro in the Debian/Ubuntu sense, then you have requested that you do not get any new features (only security/stability bug fixes). Personally, I don't see why a desktop user would want that... but then again, I run Debian unstable (Sid).

Re:Professionalism

[Ash-Fox]

Beta version of Firefox

Which almost everyone considered it polished, it wasn't like they decided to include something unpolished.

Pulse was introduced and was flakey, introducing all Ubuntu users to pulseaudio -k && pulseaudio.

Pulse audio actually worked quite well for me, it was just retarded stuff like adobe flash (packaged, but not considered supported) that gave me problems, since it wanted to use OSS which hasn't been apart of Linux in over decade and everyone knows the ALSA compatability layer doesn't like doing mixing with it.

Flash sound interfered with Pulse, so libflashsupport was introduces, but wouldn't work for more than an hour, so was dropped a day before the final release, leaving Flash to tie up ALSA.

Amusingly I replied to this point before even getting to read it.

F-Spot (the default photo manager) didn't launch on 64-bit due to a late change in Mono.

My experience on 64bit is limited admittedly. Never saw the point in using it when I didn't have the RAM to make using 64bit worthwhile.

Don't pretend that the LTS gets any more love than the regular releases do.

Download a recent rebuild of LTS iso, you will find that it works quite well and has had the very few rough edges that that I first encountered, fixed. Certainly a lot more love than the non-LTS releases.

Re:Professionalism

[kikito]

You can allways ask Cannonical for a refund.

Re:Professionalism

[w0mprat]

This again comes from the fact that both Windows and Mac OS X releases are properly tested and maintained and tend to be in more professional quality.

But why don't the Linux distros go to same lenghts? It shouldn't be impossible, unless of course, commercial projects are maintained more professionally.

Linux distros tend to ride the bleeding edge, and therefore come bug ridden as a unintended feature.

Many people were running Windows 7 BETA stably and many are indeed RC full time even now, I can't say I've ever had the same experience, ever, with a major linux distro beta or release canidate.

Re:Professionalism

[kikito]

sorry, but you did not do your math right.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

And then I thought Ubuntu was too slow, so I switched to Arch (rolling release) and it's more stable.

Give it time. I ran Arch for almost a year and about 1 update in 6 would break something major (ie- X wouldn't start, sound would no longer work, some other major loss of function). Granted, that was around three years ago and things may be better now. YMMV, etc.

Re:Professionalism

[Stele]

But why don't the Linux distros go to same lenghts? It shouldn't be impossible, unless of course, commercial projects are maintained more professionally.

I assume that since we have the source, we can just "fix it ourselves"? That's the whole point, isn't it?

Re:Professionalism

[ralphbecket]

Hmm. At home I have machines running Vista and they do, simply, just work. They are home built machines and in each case I just put the Vista DVD in the drive and twenty minutes later had a fully working system. Vista even automatically downloaded the drivers for all the odd bits of hardware I have. So, yes, I can imagine my grandmother successfully installing Vista.

My office machines run recent versions of Debian/Ubuntu. They do not just work. They require stupid amounts of voodoo to create even a distinctly second rate user experience. Based on my experience, I cannot imagine Ubuntu passing the grandmother test.

By the way, MS doesn't have a stranglehold on hardware manufacturers. Rather, hardware manufacturers obviously want to target the largest sales base first: Windows. Linux simply doesn't cut it in that regard.

[Having said good things about Windows and bad things about Ubuntu, let the modding-down begin.]

Re:Professionalism

[geminidomino]

Don't forget the misguided notion that LTS essentially means that version numbers for software can apparently never ever ever increase.

Yahoo and AOL break compatibility with pidgin? Fixed three days later? Tough rocks, the version in LTS worked when LTS was released.

Re:Professionalism

[Kjella]

How much did those users pay for their copy of Karmic? Yes, it does make a difference. If I pay for a finished product, I expect it to be finished. If someone hands me a CD and says try this, I will try it, but not get upset if it doesn't work out perfectly

You pay, but as usual people don't see it the same way when it's not cash. Talk to any software company, volunteer to be a beta tester and most of them will love you. They give discounts and lots of other perks for being early adopters of their software. Why? Because you're their QA department, you're the one headbutting against all the wtfs they put in the latest release. If you just want to use their stablest and best product, you pay top dollar. To the degree that Canonical is making money, it's mostly on the server side. These six month releases are their way of getting a known and stable server/workstation distro. They'll call it a release but you're a beta tester for their moneymaker. But it's ok, it's a win for me too because I want the news they're bringing. There was nothing that really said I HAD to upgrade now, but I wanted to. Maybe I'm just lucky but my hardware seems all-around Linux friendly...

Re:Professionalism

[dov_0]

The first time I did an install of Karmic, I saw the ads during the install and thought, "what! it's XP!" Well, windows versions seem to be just as buggy when they come out. Ubuntu seems to have one great, smooth version earlier in the year and a bleeding edge but buggier version later in the year. Perhaps that's just how it works out, not sure.

I've been using Ubuntu for about 5 years now, but it's getting a bit polished and smooth for my own machines. I want something I can hack easily and GRUB2, autoconfig on bloody everything and upstart are just making things annoying for me. Great for the average user though!. One of the reasons that Windows often sucks is that everything is graphical and if the options of the frontend are bad, or the execution of the simplified frontend options sucks, well there's not much you can do but wait for the developers to fix it. Good old-fashioned X11 with a nice xorg.conf that you can configure manually and not have it over-write on boot. Good old GRUB menu.lst that you can configure on the fly. GRUB options that you could edit on boot. All disappearing. Soon they'll say you can't edit your fstab file manually or your hosts.allow/deny files. Does everything need to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator?

Is Linux (especially distros like Ubuntu) making the same kind of mistakes that Microsoft did?

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

This again comes from the fact that both Windows and Mac OS X releases are properly tested and maintained and tend to be in more professional quality.

Yes, the quality of Vista was awesome at launch....

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

All that said, there are any number of free software packages out there that are polished and refined and blow away their commercial competitors, so it plainly can be done.

Any number, really? Ok, how about five. Name five and their commercial competitors.

-Anony Coward.

P.S. Remember, you said polished, refined, and blows away the competition. GIMP/Photoshop would not count in this exercise.

Re:Professionalism

[BikeHelmet]

Just imagine the amount of bashers if the news would had read;

I bash everything. I bash Windows, OSX, and Linux. But whenever I bash Linux, I get modded flamebait. Apparently bashing OSX and Windows is okay.

Oh well - this newest release is really messed up. I've had issues since 8.10, but now everyone else gets to share in the experience. :P

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

How much did those users pay

The last refuge of the open source scoundrel.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to be more careful when lumping a whole WHOLE lot of very different things into one group, then flaming that group when what you say only really applies to a small subset.

In other words, don't burn the strawman.

Re:Professionalism

[turbidostato]

"Flagging this as "Troll" for being critical of how Linux distros don't get the same levels of QA testing isn't exactly demonstrating great professionalism..."

Thinking that completly different projects that just happen to share some code base are the same with regards their internal procedures (Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Fedora, Slackware, SUSE...) is what demonstrates lack of professionalism -or a trollish behaviour. Since there's no "-1 unprofessional" mod...

Re:Professionalism

[turbidostato]

"Beta version of Firefox
Which almost everyone considered it polished"

Except, of course, its very developers but, oh! what would they know.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu should be more direct about the LTS versions being reliable and the other releases being beta software.

Have you actually noticed a difference in stability between an LTS and a non-LTS release? I haven't. Same buggy shit, only supported longer.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

give them 2 weeks to make sure there's no horrible bugs, and then update

Why not just use Debian Testing then? That seems to be exactly what you want,

Re:Professionalism

[Gerzel]

Indeed. The thing is Ubuntu has releases that are "Stable" and some that are "Not Stable" well I think they have switched to the "Long-Term Support or LTS version, which is 8.04.

Then again how properly tested was Vista? I've upgraded to 9.10 and had no problems with it at all so far, but others with other systems have had lots of problems, all using systems that "Should" work with the software. In fact Windows gave out explicit guarantees that the software would work, little case stickers and everything. Ubuntu never made such promises.

So I ask you *WHO* is the more professional?

Re:Professionalism

[turbidostato]

"Ubuntu not hardly representative of all linux distros? Maybe not, but it IS by all accounts I can find, far and away the most popular (even more so if you included Ubuntu-derived distros)"

Well, Windows is even more popular than Ubuntu, by an order of magnitude; it's even the most popular OS over there. Should we conclude that Windows represents all OS producers' love for quality assurance?

"If Ubuntu is not representative, then gentoo, slackware, etc are even more unrepresentative of linux distros as a whole, no?"

Regarding what it's been talked here, they are as much representative as Ubuntu: nothing, that is. The parent was trying to associate some group culture aspects (like their interest in proper QA) to a source code base (Linux). It has as much sense saying that since Ubuntu (may) lack QA then all other distributions (probably) lack of it too as saying that since I met a stupid black guy then all black men are (probably) stupid.

Re:Professionalism

[tweek]

NetworkManager is a piece of shit w.r.t wireless. I've read every fucking thread out on various mailing lists and the author simply says "It's the driver's fault" despite the same problem happening across the board to multiple users of different cards.

The biggest problem is the stupid fucking background scanning it does. What happens is that when NetworkManager gets a wild hair up its ass and decides it time to scan for more networks, your wireless NIC will disassociate from the current AP until the scanning is over. God forbid there happens to be one shitty AP somewhere at the edge of your range and it takes too long to respond. Your connection is toast and you have to re-associate but meanwhile you've just lost connectivity for 2 minutes. Hope you didn't need that download anytime soon or that you remembered to screen that SSH session to a production server. Any machine I use that has wireless, is running WICD now instead of NetworkManager ( http://wicd.sourceforge.net/ )

I love Ubuntu. Honestly the only problems I've ever had were with the switch to PulseAudio. I grew out of tinkering with my distros a LONG time ago. I need my machine to work so I can work. I did a fresh install of Karmic and moved my home partition stuff around this time. The ONLY problem I had was with PulseAudio and my Audigy card ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/467732 ).

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

However, my girlfriend didn't have the same "luck", so she had to use Windows during a whole day before I could take a look and try to fix her Ubuntu.

The horror! The horror!

Re:Professionalism

[FatdogHaiku]

This again comes from the fact that both Windows and Mac OS X releases are properly tested and maintained and tend to be in more professional quality.

But why don't the Linux distros go to same lenghts? It shouldn't be impossible, unless of course, commercial projects are maintained more professionally.

Yes, that plunking down hundreds of dollars for an OS does tend to create some expectations. But it's also true that any Windows user that has been around the block more than once knows better than to upgrade (you could stop the sentence there...) without having a disk image of the old system ready to slap back on the drive. Everyday users are not early adopters and wouldn't know a disk image from an image of Mary in french toast, so they don't count. Likewise if you jump on the latest release of anything that is not running on a controlled (i.e. locked down) hardware platform (hmmm, who does that, anyway? Oh, Hey Mac!) then you can expect to hit some turbulence every now and again.

The early adopters take it in the teeth on many things and they take it in the wallet on most things.

I could go on, but the real point is that when you hang out at the bleeding edge, the blood has to come from somewhere... Right?

Re:Professionalism

[CFBMoo1]

"How much did those users pay for their copy of Karmic?"

Actually when 9.04 came out I bought 20 CD's from them to give to people. I'm a little hesitant this time given the black screen of boot death some people have gotten. I myself have gotten this screen from a USB installer I made. It wasn't until the distro update came over the updater that I did upgrade and that worked fine.

I would love to be able to go and buy 20 more CDs from them and give those to people. I'm putting that off for now till things settle down.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the big difference is that if a Linux distro sends out a broken release, it'll get fixed in a couple of weeks, tops -- if MS releases a broken OS, you wait six months for System Pack 1.

Re:Professionalism

[CopaceticOpus]

Linux distros face a key disadvantage. When a new version of Windows is coming out, the individual hardware makers will do a good deal of testing with the new OS, and will report back any issues. This is because Windows is their bread and butter. If Linux distros ever approached 50% of the home market share, the hardware makers would pay much more attention to iy. Until then, the burden for making hardware work is mostly on the Linux devs. Considering this, I think they do a pretty amazing job, but I can't fault anyone for feeling more comfortable with Windows.

Re:Professionalism

[ShieldW0lf]

Stable in this context means that you can build your business around custom software that runs on that version of Ubuntu and have that software continue to run properly. For example, if you build an Intranet application that runs on a LTS version of Ubuntu, it doesn't matter if the database you're using goes through significant changes in it's newer versions that would break your application, because you can continue to use the older version for 5 years with support.

Re:Professionalism

[rnelsonee]

>Pretty much the same headache grandma would have looking for any missing linux drivers, and funny enough, in a bare-bone install, linux is likely to support more out of the box than Windows. Go figure.

That's still not true yet. You can install drivers in Windows with just the GUI - you go to a website, find the driver, hit 'Run' and then hit 'Next' a few times. When I last installed Kubuntu this year, I had to use the broken apt-get programs, and then had to resort to the console. And on the (few) drivers I found for Linux on websites, it was a .tar.gz file. With zero indication on how to use them. Even after I figured out how to untar them (or whatever it's called) I was just left with a bunch of files. I think I'm computer-savvy (just ignorant of Linux) but I couldn't figure that out.

Installing drivers isn't super-easy on any OS, but Linux vs Windows is no comparison. Until Linux supports all peripherals on newer laptops - which it doesn't - it will never take the desktop market.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to realize that stable in the Debian and Ubuntu context means "it doesn't change". That's actually quite the literal English definition of stable. If it is broken, it stays broken. But more importantly: if it works, it continues working. Ubuntu has some regressions in each release. Imagine what it would be like if those regressions happened not only during releases, but also during normal updates! You couldn't trust the Update Manager anymore. Any update could break your sound, or your network, or whatever. Ubuntu's and Debian's definitions of stable make you confident in installing updates.

Re:Professionalism

[shutdown -p now]

Debian does go through great lengths, and people complained that the time between releases was too long.

From personal experience, Debian unstable with daily evening `apt-get update && apt-get upgrade` is more stable than recent Ubuntu releases. Go figure.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot. Arch is a pos. I haven't a clue why people like it. The packages are poorly built, and the system itself constantly breaks (probably because of the piss-poor community packages). Rolling release distros are inherently less stable, and generally less usable than a proper system. With Slackware or Red Hat, you have a cohesive release, and all the software within the release is known to work properly, and work properly with the other software. You know "app X (version X)" works w/ this release. You don't have various pieces constantly being updating (mostly unnecessarily) and introducing incompatibilities to your system. No _real_ operating system is rolling release, because it is impossible to maintain and support. Arch is nothing more than an amateur project.

Re:Professionalism

[n2rjt]

The immediate parent post was modded flamebait, but the point is nevertheless valid.
The grandparent post makes it sound like we shouldn't complain about bugs and issues because we're getting a handout. But a Linux distribution should be professional, it should be of the highest quality, regardless of the price tag. When it comes to Linux specifically and Open Source in general, Free as in beer does not mean cheap as in crappy.

Oh, I've done a fresh install on EeePC, with one hiccup. The netbook remix that I installed first didn't let me switch to the standard user interface, so I reinstalled with standard Ubuntu.

I did an upgrade of a desktop HP from 9.04 to KK, with no problems whatsoever.
Is the kernel old and I didn't notice? Maybe. I didn't notice. As long as it does everything I ask of it, I couldn't care less what the kernel version is.

Re:Professionalism

[n2rjt]

Wow that sounds like a great idea. Let me tweak it a bit.
How about if Canonical releases every six months, but every other release is one they focus on making really solid? They can offer longer support for that version than the other, and people who are cautious would get adequate warning to only upgrade once a year.

But, wait ... that's exactly what they are doing. ;-)

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

"I would also give Microsoft credit for having spent a lot more than Ubuntu did testing their latest release."

W.T.F.?

And I would give Ubuntu alot more credit having their users spend alot LESS(ZERO) money than their Microsoft counterparts had to.

Re:Professionalism

[anotheranothernick]

How do I vote you up! :)

Re:Professionalism

[ldj]

And I've had had no problems with installation of most of the Ubuntu releases on my hardware and have friends who encountered problems installing Vista on their systems a while back. So I guess our anecdotes cancel each other, eh? Funny how individual data points don't necessarily mean squat when talking statistics. ;)

I think grandma's success rate will depend more on her specific hardware than on whether she's installing MS or Linux. Also, it's little unfair to compare a typical Linux installation (which includes a multitude of applications) with a typical MS Windows install (which includes practically no significant applications).

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. I couldn't have said it better. The way Debian and Ubuntu release actually forces you to decide between one set of unstable code and another. Yay?

I'm about to make the switch to Arch myself.

Re:Professionalism

[Hansu]

What's next? Complaining about the low quality of your slaves? ^^

Well,

Now that you mention it...

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I really like Debian, I would glady still be using it directly(instead of distro thats built on it) if it wasnt for two problems.

1) Wanna know how I found out about ubuntu? When I use to install debian there was a huge fleet of packages that I would upgrade to the latest upstream stable version so I could use some of the newer features. debian was lagging so far behind with 2 years or so between releases that often whatever version shipped was often not only not the latest released stable a lot of times it was no longer supported upstream. I started noticing a lot my packages were coming from a distribution called Ubuntu and eventually i decided to try out ubuntu to avoid all the manual package installing i was doing with debian. I wasnt looking for bleeding edge just features that had been released as stable often a year or two ago.

2) ever tried posting for help on the debian mailing list? I did a couple of times. It was kind of ammusing. The first time, I described a problem i was having installing on a particular laptop and asked for help. I got a fairly helpful response rather quickly. Then there was a post from someone else flaming the first poster and suggesting another solution. I never posted anything else but I continued to read the thread for a while. It had degenerated into a flamefest and I had quickly given up on getting anything useful out of it. my other postings on debian mailing lists pretty much went the same and the archiive is full of more of the same. To be fair most linux mailing lists/forums ive ran across arent any better. However thats one thing that really impressed me about ubuntu is ubuntuforums.org.yeah sometimes dont find what im looking for or i have to do a lot of digging but Its the first place I usually go if I need help w/ something ubuntu cause usually its quicker for me to search the forums first than to rtfm.

Re:Professionalism

[Moridineas]

Well, Windows is even more popular than Ubuntu, by an order of magnitude; it's even the most popular OS over there. Should we conclude that Windows represents all OS producers' love for quality assurance?

I don't think that's germane.

Regarding what it's been talked here, they are as much representative as Ubuntu: nothing, that is

Disagree. The gp DID attribute a lack of QA to both Ubuntu AND linux in general. The point made was a distinction between commercial and non-commercial projects. That point can be argued--I don't actually agree with the point. FreeBSD (or perhaps even more so, OpenBSD) for instance is an example of projects which go to GREAT lengths for QA.

Anyway, the gp asking why ubuntu and "linux distros" don't go to the same lengths in terms of QA is not disproven by saying "Ubuntu != all distros." Additionally, any linux distro is genetically more similar to another than to Mac or Windows. w

Re:Professionalism

[kbielefe]

Linux distros tend to ride the bleeding edge, and therefore come bug ridden as a unintended feature.

It's possible to make extremely stable Linux distros, just not very popular. Users end up trying all sorts of hacks they don't really understand to get the latest feature in their favorite app, so distros evolved to the current balance. There's a fundamental trade off between stability and new features, and by voting with their distro choices, Linux users have made their voices clear that in general they stand farther toward the latter end of the continuum than Windows users. That doesn't mean users who crave stability don't have good options, just that stability isn't always the overriding goal.

Many people were running Windows 7 BETA stably and many are indeed RC full time even now, I can't say I've ever had the same experience, ever, with a major linux distro beta or release canidate.

Funny, I was thinking I can't say I've ever had the same experience with a Windows beta. Of course, I can honestly say that even though I've never actually run a Windows beta :-)

I guess I'm the one person whose experience actually improved with the karmic beta. I upgraded a month early in the hope of fixing a specific X bug and it has been a great improvement for me. I did have a problem with my nvidia driver upgrading, but I knew how to fix it. Worked so great on my desktop that I upgraded my laptop early too and it upgraded without a hitch.

Re:Professionalism

[dissy]

In other words, don't burn the strawman.

In hindsight, yes.

The comment I replied to however was modded +5 insightful at the time I replied. It seems to be down to 0 Troll now thou.

I guess I was had.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Pet peeve here, but, please, stop deriding a good and solid distribution because, I would argue, you misunderstand what stable means. Sound support has nothing to do with a stable release.

That may seem strange to you, but only if you don't know how Ubuntu/Debian defines "stable". Stable on Debian and Ubuntu means old. If it was release a year ago, it's stable. Who cares if sound doesn't work on your computer, at least it's stable!

The point of "stable" is to keep what is working, working, and with security issues fixed. It isn't even to make what isn't working well get fixed; it's first and foremost by FAR to keep what is working still working. Bug fixes which are not regressions are, I would argue, ancillary. This requires use of releases that have been heavily tested, which, lacking anyone funding huge amounts of expensive testing quickly, REQUIRES older releases. It is not defined by "old", but generally does require it.

This is, for example, exactly what you want for servers in production usage, or other systems you want to just keep working with a minimum of maintenance time forever (I'd recommend it for clueless relatives, for example - sure, they'll appreciate the shiny of new things, but not as much as they and you will appreciate it never breaking).

This is not what you want on your desktop system. Stability and new features are conflicting desires, and on your desktop, taking either to extremes is probably not what you want.

I would argue if sound never worked on your computer, then it's rather foolish to stay on "stable" and hope it's suddenly added, or to complain that they should develop it. New hardware support is a feature, which is not the point of or part of stability.

And that's not to say that sticking with old versions is always bad, it's just that the method of deciding what's stable is literally "is it old?". Why not test things and then update, instead of arbitrarily picking a version and declaring it to be stable?

As I covered above, the first half isn't true; it's just required by the method of testing stability. Debian, interestingly, does take your preferred approach for one repository; the method you outlined is basically the definition of Debian Testing. New stuff spends a fixed time in Debian Unstable before reaching it. If that's what you consider a good process to ensure stability, you should probably look there. I use it on my desktop, for example, where I want new features and such at a good rate with some testing, rather than stability over all.

It takes a lot longer than you seem to think to get things prepared for stable release. There are no "projects that release safe code" which can be assumed to Just Work in conjunction with everything else on the system. Not Firefox or Pidgin, for sure. Making sure there are no obvious "horrible bugs" is woefully insufficient for a properly stable system. Sure, the new versions MIGHT be less buggy overall... but you can't know for sure. And the real priority is on not breaking what already works, not on making things that don't work work better.

For your system, you don't really WANT stable. As you've said in your post; you want new hardware support, new shinier versions of software, and similar upgrades quickly. You want what DOESN'T work well to start working well. Preferably with some testing, but not the kind that makes it out of date.

These things are not part of stability, and complaining that stable releases aren't because they lack these things is incorrect. They're perfectly stable. They're just not suitable for your use case; you need a compromise. Stable releases are best used elsewhere.

Re:Professionalism

[Blakey Rat]

I love Ubuntu.

Really? Even though they default to a wireless manager that you call, and I quote, "a piece of shit"?

If NetworkManager is a piece of shit, and if it's part of Ubuntu, how can you love Ubuntu? I don't understand this love/hate relationship thing you got going here.

(BTW, I agree with you entirely. I commute on a train with incredibly spotty wifi connection, and there are numerous apps on OS X, Windows, and Linux that simply can't cope. I stopped using OS X because of it's habit of locking-up Finder for 5-10 *minutes* at a time when it had issues with wifi. Live Sync (not really part of Windows, but eh) throws a total spasm when it fails to log in correctly, and is moronic about reconnecting.

Developers working on Internet applications/protocols should be forced at gunpoint to test their application on my commuter train.)

Re:Professionalism

[PNutts]

a bare-bone install, linux is likely to support more out of the box than Windows.

Thanks for that. It's been a long day and I needed a good laugh.

Re:Professionalism

[Draek]

Flagging this as "Troll" for being critical of how Linux distros don't get the same levels of QA testing isn't exactly demonstrating great professionalism...

It is, if you don't produce proof of Linux distros in general, and Ubuntu in particular, not getting the same levels of QA testing as Windows and OSX.

Name any version of Windows and I'll readily provide you with anecdotes of obscure errors, troublesome bugs and missing functionality, so if the bugs of TFA are your only proof behind your statement, it'll be quite insuficient.

Re:Professionalism

[symbolset]

Is Linux (especially distros like Ubuntu) making the same kind of mistakes that Microsoft did?

Some yes, some no. The Mono/Moonlight default is a dangerous game. It's going to burn them in the end.

As for removing the controls we're used to, I'm afraid that's what goes with dishing Linux to grandma. My grandma doesn't edit her fstab, and that's a good thing. She browses the Internet, plays her online games and posts her digital images to Facebook after she edits them with Picasa. She's happy and that's what counts. Her son (God help me) can still browse his anime porn all night without corrupting her computer so bad it doesn't work which was a serious problem when she had Windows (1 day per wipe and reinstall once she got broadband).

You can still get up in your Ubuntu and muck around, but if you're that sort of person you're better off with Debian - as am I. Right now I only use the Ubuntu Server Alternate version because it does a passable job of providing an LTSP platform I can add boot images to for things like imaging (clonezilla), disk wiping (DBAN), and provides thin client access to user accounts on the main server for guest environments (when we have the cousins over they like to download stuff and edit their MySpace, but I don't dare let them have local machine access).

I'll probably try out the new Ubuntu on several platforms to see if it works, but unless it's woohoo good I'm not likely to go back to it myself. Not that it matters - there are now so many great Linux platforms that it's become an embarassment of riches.

Re:Professionalism

[Draek]

Stable:
1. The ability for software to do its function continually without crashing or otherwise producing an error.
2. Software whose workings does not change throughout its lifetime.

You're using the first definition, as does most 'regular' people when talking about stability, Debian and Ubuntu are using the second one, as do most businesses. Most large enterprises would rather learn how to work around a little calculation bug in Excel 2003 than having all their users confronted by 2007's Ribbon interface after the last 'patch', and that's the definition of stability Ubuntu and Debian follow: you learn it once, you don't have to learn it again until you, willingly and deliberately, switch to a newer version, and in the mean time you're provided with security updates for the one you do have.

In fact, that's precisely why I stopped using Arch and switched to Ubuntu in the first place: I was tired of having them switch the format for configuration files every fucking week. I love UNIX, I love Linux, but I have better things to do on my weekends than running a diff against half of the crap in /etc and spend an entire evening looking at config files 'porting' my settings over.

Re:Professionalism

[VanGarrett]

I believe that it is worth noting that the vast majority of Windows and OS X users will be completely and totally put out by the entire circumstance. The first apparent malfunction makes them turn immediately to their preferred subset of superstitions, be they gremlins, aliens, bad karma or just plain treacherous corporate programmers. When a large portion of the world's total population of Linux users encounters that sort of problem, however, they see the problem, and either understand that these things happen, or become anxious to engage the challenge of fixing it for themselves. You'll still get the occasional Linux user that whines when something doesn't work, and you'll still get the occasional Windows user that dives in, when something doesn't work-- but there's a significant difference in the inherent natures of the different products' audiences.

Re:Professionalism

[GPLHost-Thomas]

Or keep track of projects that release safe code and give them 2 weeks to make sure there's no horrible bugs, and then update
Nice post, until this sentence. Do you have any idea how packages are going from SID (Debian Unstable) to Testing? Well, exactly the way you say. It stays in SID for 10 days, and if no bug reports have been sent, then it's migrated to Testing. That being said, some packages are still going to Testing with bugs included. Why? Simply because people DO NOT test things until they are released as "stable". That sounds like the snake biting its tail, AND IT IS. So, all your post is valid, except your solution...

Re:Professionalism

[blackgod]

I agree to your points. But I don't consider the *six month release cycle* for non-techies who don't want bleeding edge apps and features. For them there is a LTS release. When a user face such issue during LTS 2 LTS upgrade, it should be considered in par with Windows, whose release cycle is too long. But the internet media hype about "Windows 7 vs Ubuntu 9.10" kind of stupid comparison just to boost their hits.

Re:Professionalism

[GPLHost-Thomas]

Being the most popular doesn't prove anything. Otherwise, we'd all be replying to you using some products from MS. What is the point you are trying to make here, I don't get it. Ubuntu is not more or less representative of Linux distributions in general, it's just one distribution and there are many more with various quality...

Re:Professionalism

[Korin43]

I really like how Arch packages work for one simple reason: Anyone can make them. In Ubuntu if you need a package that isn't included or is too old, you can request it (yeah right) or build it yourself (if you're willing to spend two days packaging it so it doesn't break other things). In Arch, it's probably already in the AUR, and if it's not, the packages are one obvious file with name, version number, url, hash, and what you have to do to build and install it (usually "make install" will do it). I have a huge list of problems with the Debian packaging system as well, but suffice it to say, it's a huge waste of time, but if you don't then you lose the whole point of having a package-based distro.

Re:Professionalism

[Korin43]

I hadn't considered that. I assumed that since Debian's version of "stable" is two years older than Ubuntu's that their "unstable" would be just as useless as Ubuntu's backports (I seriously think the entire repo doesn't contain a single package). I'll check it out though.

I hate how "stable" is targeted at home users though. Some of us want new software.

Re:Professionalism

[Korin43]

I think Ubuntu and Debian are the reason the myth that "Linux doesn't support new hardware" still exists. I have a laptop I got almost a year ago and I could never get the sound working. The funny thing about how it "just works" in Arch is that support for my soundcard was added to ALSA before I bought the laptop, Ubuntu is just way behind.

Re:Professionalism

[vipw]

Firefox has an open development model. You can log into their bugzilla, list the open blocker bugs for Linux and make a decision as to whether it was ready enough.

Ubuntu made the right choice there. It would be stupid to provide long term support to the FF 2.0 branch.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

You truly are an idiot to throw away the debian packaging system like that. You must have never used slackware back in the days when the only way to install some pieces of software was from sources and you do "make install" and discover a week later some other package broke suddenly because the "make install" you did a week ago overwrote some bundled library with an older version. Come one now, take a hike and leave it to the people who know that they are doing.

Re:Professionalism

[Vovk]

?!

The theme is your biggest problem? wtf are you smoking?

What about the adoption of upstart? The new ubuntu software center? The fact that the repos aren't fully updated yet? Update programs without updated plugins (Exaile, VLC, etc), Programs not recognizing the newly updated kernel (ATI drivers?)

Hell... if the theme is your biggest problem, then I call that a painless upgrade :P

PS: I still love the new release ^_^ I've managed to work around all my problems and I have to admit, Karmic is pretty slick

Re:Professionalism

[Vovk]

if you sudo apt-get install wicd on an ubuntu system, it will remove the network manager and start the wicd daemon for you ^_^

I haven't personally had your issues with networkmanager, but my school requires us to use wicd for their authentication system.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been running Kubuntu 9.10 for a few days now, after switching from Gentoo, which also has a rolling release system. That caused important parts of my system to stopped working, at first just the OSD in mplayer, but a week ago the drivers for my videocard and xorg decided they didn't like eachother anymore... So much for more stable. And to your second point, I now have the 2.6.31 kernel, the latest firefox and several other packages which aren't that much older than the ones used in Gentoo.

Re:Professionalism

[Vovk]

mint is ubuntu O.o

Re:Professionalism

[Vovk]

also, fedora is CRAZY more unstable than ubuntu is. Fedora is RHEL's playground, all the stuff that works in fedora is rolled into RHEL. Ubuntu ONLY has Ubuntu, so there's a bigger incentive to be a bit more stable (it's why they didn't just jump to things like OpenOffice 3 when it came out near their release schedule)

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use Debian unstable also. E.g. when we make a release of our app, it is often in the unstable on the same day, sometimes the next day. Or use Testing and you will get 10 day old stuff, except when they freeze it when preparing for the next release.

Re:Professionalism

[RiotingPacifist]

They have a different release cycle though, usually a few months after ubuntu after all the bugs have been ironed out. I mean ubuntu is essentially debian with a different cycle and it shows.

Re:Professionalism

[Homburg]

I had to use the broken apt-get programs, and then had to resort to the console.

No, you didn't. You could have used "Add/Remove Programs" (now the "Ubuntu Software Center"), or clicked on the
"Driver Manager" that pops up automatically when Ubuntu notices there are drivers available for your hardware that are not installed. But you probably don't have to do either, because Ubuntu comes with most drivers already installed.

You're right that it's a weakness of Linux that it doesn't support as much hardware as Windows does; but the problem isn't the difficulty of installing drivers, because installing drivers on Linux is incredibly easy. The problem is that (and this is perhaps more serious) sometimes there are no drivers at all.

Re:Professionalism

[TheLink]

LTS is just what Ubuntu claim they will support for a few years (with good intentions blahblahblah).

However in practice they can't since not all of the relevant developers work for them. So in many cases Ubuntu or you can't do much if developers decide to move to something new, and refuse to fix the old stuff (report a bug to them and they'll tell you to upgrade to the latest stuff first). This is especially true for Desktop Linux since it involves more software and thus a wider range of developers.

Some users can fix it themselves. But for most users it's just about as practical as fixing Windows 2000 for themselves.

So with a typical Desktop Linux release, I find stuff gets gradually unsupported as the years go by - the distro will backport some drivers and security fixes but they can't do everything. So eventually you upgrade and some stuff breaks and some stuff is much better.

In contrast with Windows, stuff stays fairly well supported. Windows 2000 got more and more stable - only now are some manufacturers dropping support for it - and after how many years? I think WinXP is going to be around for quite sometime since many large companies have only recently switched to it (waiting was not dumb since Win XP SP2 and SP3 were so much more stable than Win XP original release).

Re:Professionalism

[IrquiM]

But why don't the Linux distros go to same lengths? It shouldn't be impossible, unless of course, commercial projects are maintained more professionally.

They do - just not Ubuntu. If you look at Slackware, they only release when the system is at least as good as a Microsoft release SP3. They are actually superior to Debian as well.

Oh, and by the way, if you change Windows 7 with Windows Vista, you're not far from what happened the last time. And my bet is that with all these news reports, the next Ubuntu version (10.04) will be a lot better, and more thoroughly tested than the current one.

Re:Professionalism

[Anne Thwacks]

I have switched my machines to Karmic, and they all "just work", even the Fujitsu-Siemens that was a bit wierd with jaunty (sound system would play out of the PC's internal speaker, and no way to stop it). I have no problems.

Yes I did try Vista first, but given the learning curve for users, I figured Ubuntu was just as easy, and massively cheaper cos it avoided the need for hardware upgrades.

When I was concerned about stability, I used *BSD, but Karmic is fine for my desktop machines, (Not using it on my Sun Enterprise Servers yet though).

Re:Professionalism

[smash]

Sadly, your comment will fall on deaf ears. For what its worth, I agree 100% with what you said. OS X, with all its faults, is the best OS I have ever used. And that includes Linux, BSDs, every version of Windows since 3.1, AmigaOS 1.3 through 3.1, MacOS 7-9, and others.

Why is it good? Because apple have taken strong protocols, strong ideas, and open source, and actually made it pleasant to use, both aesthetically and in terms of how it fits together.

I just wish someone in the linux camp would extend gnustep in similar ways.

Re:Professionalism

[TheLink]

Hey Ubuntu doesn't hit him. And even if it does it doesn't leave any bruises and it's not your business anyway ;).

FWIW, I do use Ubuntu. But it's just a way of getting "Linux things" done (I was using suse before that but I got tired of yast being slow and bloated- it used almost as much memory as an entire Win2K virtual machine just to do package management and software updates - and they kept being in denial about it despite other users also complaining). I use Windows to get the "windows stuff" done.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the reason its in stable is it passed debians testing processes and internal procedures to maintain dependency stability etc. The unstable ones may be, and usually are, quite stable and all, but still have to go thru the hoops to make sure it wont break the rest of the system.

Re:Professionalism

[DangerFace]

I'm running Debian Sid and I've had fewer problems than are listed in the article.

Really? Because I'm running Ubuntu 9.10, and I have had no problems whatsoever. It took less time than on Windows to get streaming DivX working, flash works full screen without caning my GPU or processor, most of my settings were imported quite happily from Jaunty and XP, and the thing I spent the most time on (two hours or so) was setting up Compiz to be just the way I like it, and that's just because it takes me one and three quarters of an hour to make my mind up. My HDDs mounted fine, my graphics look great, wireless works a treat, no sound issues - massive improvement there - and all is good on my laptop.

People with problems complain, because they can't do whatever it was that they wanted to do that the problem stopped them doing. People without problems just get on with what they're doing, rather than spending their time on forums looking for ways of saying "This distro's great!"

Re:Professionalism

[Yvanhoe]

I didn't pay for Karmic Koala.

Re:Professionalism

[FooBarWidget]

Your NIC disassociates from the current AP while scanning? Definitely sounds like a bug in your NIC or driver. On my Broadcom card I can scan all I want and not disconnect from the current AP.

Re:Professionalism

[Random Person 1372]

And that's not to say that sticking with old versions is always bad, it's just that the method of deciding what's stable is literally "is it old?". Why not test things and then update, instead of arbitrarily picking a version and declaring it to be stable? Or keep track of projects that release safe code and give them 2 weeks to make sure there's no horrible bugs, and then update (like what exactly is the reason for holding back Firefox and Pidgin?).

Because it is hard to do so. You cannot assure that there are no regressions as you can only test very few configurations, then somebody has to spend the resources to do the actual testing, and so on.

A stable (i.e. static) release means that at least no *new* regressions are introduced. Sometimes an exception has to be made (e.g. security updates), but these fixes are often backported to the version supplied in the release to avoid changes in behaviour as much as possible, but sometimes there are still regressions (see the security updates Debian provides, sometimes there are follow-ups due to regressions *not* noticed during testing). How many more regressions would there be when *new* upstream releases are included in the stable release?

Re:Professionalism

[Random Person 1372]

That has got me thinking... How can the London stock Exchange crash twice with Windows Server in one year, but didn' t crash at all in all previous years it was running Linux? Professional quality must mean that the quality sucks...

Umm, didn't the London Stock Exchange run Solaris or some other commercial unix/unix-like system before switching to Microsoft Windows? Even now they switched (or still plan to switch? I don't know) to a heterogenos environment running both Solaris and Linux.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

True, true but how can you compare a free OS with a commercial OS?

Re:Professionalism

[chanio]

Yeah, Ubuntu should pay some reporters for speaking well of it...

Re:Professionalism

[dov_0]

Thanks symbolset. I've been looking at Debian for some of my boxes where I want to be able to play around with the system and not have it broken by upgrades too often.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used Ubuntu since version 7, initially it was ok but then I found each update something major would go wrong, missing NVIDIA drivers on one upgrade. Slow and jittery performance after updates and now I have upgraded 9.04 to 9.10 I have crackly, choppy sound. Each 'home' fix in Linux takes hours sometimes to decrypt the garbage and endless forum threads, compile this and upload that 100 lines of code that the developer and programmer should do, I understand that certain commands require this but for drivers and configuration it can be tricky. I have dumped Ubuntu and have Debian Lenny which is rock solid and everything works really well, I will leave Ubuntu installed and see how it develops. Windows and Mac OSs are polished and released when fully tested over and over, why use a bleeding edge OS when it falls over so often? I think they need to take one step back and test more thoroughly first, just a bit! @Computer Tech

Re:Professionalism

[ericrost]

Yeah, great, except you're wrong. The "LTS" version of Ubuntu was the worst version I used (was a user since 7.04) and drove me to seek out another distro. I landed on Fedora, which has great development environment support (Eclipse packages), working sound (sorry, until I hacked and hacked the sound setup on Mythbuntu 8.04 didn't work right, nor did stock Ubuntu 8.04), and a general overall polish and QA that Ubuntu lacks. Everything worked well out of the box with no tweaking, no howto's, no saying "well its almost right", it was refreshing.

Ubuntu has shown its true colors as wanting to monetize with BS add-ons that shove crapware down users throats. From Multisearch in Firefox to their built in "monitoring" software to use their third party pay for play site. Thanks Canonical, but it leaves a bad taste. I'll deal with RedHat who is upfront about a paid version and a community version. I'm well aware where the money to run the company comes from at least.

Re:Professionalism

[pinkushun]

Commercial projects *are* maintained more professionally, since they have the dollars to throw at testers. For gawd's sake man, Microsoft even bought Steven Spielberg for their XBox Project Natal promo.

Re:Professionalism

[characterZer0]

When something breaks in testing, it may take a few days or a week for the fixes to get moved from unstable to testing. If something brakes in unstable, the fix will be in when it compiles.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

And then I thought Ubuntu was too slow, so I switched to Arch (rolling release) and it's more stable. That may seem strange to you, but only if you don't know how Ubuntu/Debian defines "stable". Stable on Debian and Ubuntu means old. If it was release a year ago, it's stable.

No, stable means that the code does not change very much (the code is stable), except for security issues and critical issues. And that's not even true for Ubuntu, where many bugfixes are added during a stable release and official backports exist.

[...] Mozilla release are remarkably stable and always contain security updates.. but sorry, Firefox 3.5 wasn't old enough until this release. Every version of the nvidia drivers add more stability, but I think we'll stick with the old versions.. you know.. because they're old.

Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 was included in Ubuntu 9.04 "universe" and updated in jaunty-updates to 3.5.4, the same version shipped in Karmic. Nvidia drivers are problematic because they are closed source; you simply cannot judge how much code changed and whether it could break systems; therefore it's safer to live with known issues instead of creating new ones. If you need a new one, you can request a backport (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports)

And that's not to say that sticking with old versions is always bad, it's just that the method of deciding what's stable is literally "is it old?". Why not test things and then update, instead of arbitrarily picking a version and declaring it to be stable? Or keep track of projects that release safe code and give them 2 weeks to make sure there's no horrible bugs, and then update (like what exactly is the reason for holding back Firefox and Pidgin?).

Updates can break existing things, that's why Debian only does security updates in a release; and critical bugs are fixed in point releases. Fixing a bug that affects a minority of users and risking a new bug affecting more users is no good idea. In contrast to this, Ubuntu even offers bugfixes for their stable releases (in -updates). Ubuntu also offers feature updates (in -backports) and something similar is available for Debian at backports.org.

Who cares if sound doesn't work on your computer, at least it's stable! Who cares if pidgin-facebookchat crashes every couple minutes, in Debian-land it's stable (this is a particularly interesting case because pidgin-facebookchat was added right after the project started, and then Ubuntu arbitrarily stopped adding new versions to the repos even though the plugin still isn't done, so every release adds to the stability).

About pidgin-facebookchat: I can not see any unhandled bug reports in Ubuntu's bug tracker about crashes. There was a bug in Jaunty (#358043), which has been fixed in karmic. I can see that it was nominated for Jaunty, but the procedure from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdate was not followed and thus no action was taken (as the ubuntu-sru team was not even subscribed to the bug). There is #357495 for which no solution exists at the moment. All in all, I don't see any problem here.

Re:Professionalism

[stevey]

I assumed that since Debian's version of "stable" is two years older than Ubuntu's ..

Debian's current stable release was issued on February 14th 2009 - so its not even a year old at this point.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

uhm...have you remembered what vista was like? (shutter) before you bash Linux in favor of "stable" windows, why don't you do some research? Have you ever compared the up-time expectancy of a Windows server vs Linux server? Also, while Ubuntu is Linux, Linux is not Ubuntu. If you want stability check out Debian, or (my favorite) Slackware. I've noticed that with all of the testing that Windows has gone through, it is still the buggiest OS out there.

Re:Professionalism

[bigpat]

The major open source projects like Ubuntu have many professionals working on them. But unlike Windows Vista, it probably won't take the ubuntu folks 2 years to work out the kinks.

But people are bitter at Microsoft for their monopolistic business practices: vendor lock-in with proprietary document formats, market manipulation through licensing deals that conspire to block competition. All of which negatively effects their customers by driving up the cost of computing. No one should be paying $500 for Microsoft Office. It is insanely overpriced. Same with Windows. I paid $30 for Windows 7 because I am a grad student now, but that is all anyone should ever be expected to pay.

And when MS does come out with a crappy OS like Windows Vista it puts progress in computing on hold for two years while they get around to replacing it.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Will 2010 be the year of the Linux Desktop? ...

New Ubuntu release buggy and amateurish.
"How much did it cost you?"

Hmmm.

Re:Professionalism

[tuppe666]

Just imagine the amount of bashers if it read

"Ubuntu 9.10 is causing outrage and frustration, with early adopters wishing they'd stuck with previous versions of the Linux distro. Blank and flickering screens, failure to recognize hard drives, defaulting to the old 2.6.28 Linux kernel, and failure to get encryption running are taking their toll, as early adopters turn to the web for answers and log fresh bug reports in Ubuntu forums."

Oh you then go on to bash Karmic.

I've moved from Slackware to Gentoo to Ubuntu and my experiences with all of them are excellent

To be fair up until Vista/Windows 7 both of witch underwhelm on features terrifyingly so considering the timeframe I've enjoyed all of Microsoft Updates none have been as smooth as my experiences of Linux based Distributions, but that was part of their charm

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

How much did those users pay for their copy of Karmic?

Yes, it does make a difference. If I pay for a finished product, I expect it to be finished.

Tell that to Adobe.

Re:Professionalism

[True Grit]

The Mono/Moonlight default is a dangerous game. It's going to burn them in the end.

Does Ubuntu *require* Mono? I knew that Novell's distro did (no surprise), but Ubuntu too?

I thought it was still possible to install a 'limited' Gnome that didn't require Mono. Not true?

(Obviously I'm neither a Gnome user nor an Ubuntu user...)

Re:Professionalism

[V!NCENT]

>Then why are people having these problems?

People have problems with any OS on the planet. Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, ReactOS, BeOS, Haiku, *BSD and everything else...

>This doesn't seem to differ much from the Ubuntu release model (at least in this case).

Ubuntu releases every 6 months and it's development model is according... Windows and Mac OS X are not bound by planned testing schedules and Windows of all OS's doesn't get a lot of testing time. It just ships whenever it is installable and runnable. Read about the days of Windows 9.x from employees who resigned and wrote books about it. It's not like "Windows 7 is released! Shit! Ship Ubuntu Karma NOW!"

Re:Professionalism

[True Grit]

The immediate parent post was modded flamebait, but the point is nevertheless valid.

No it isn't.

But a Linux distribution should be professional, it should be of the highest quality, regardless of the price tag.

If Canonical had the kind of money that an MS or Apple has to spend on QA testing before release, then you and the GP would have a point. Except they don't.

When it comes to Linux specifically and Open Source in general, Free as in beer does not mean cheap as in crappy.

No it doesn't, but the 'free' part of this equation does mean users of FOSS (or at least early adopters) have to help with the QA testing since the devs simply can't do it all themselves.

Seriously, do you have any idea how hard QA is? Or how much money MS/Apple spends on it?

Re:Professionalism

[V!NCENT]

No they ran Linux, or at least before the switch to Windows was made. Microsoft made a major add compain about it: http://tipotheday.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/reliabletimes.jpg

Re:Professionalism

[mdm-adph]

Or, especially with Ubuntu, stick with the LTS versions. I'm still running 8.04 LTS, and don't plan to update until a month after 10.4 comes out.

Re:Professionalism

[ZarathustraDK]

Yep, because you always have the option of discarding the shit for another shit that works better for you, or get your dick magically stitched back on with no scarring by choosing another doctor, again without forking over money.

What you're looking for, kind sir, is the paid right to bitch about stuff that doesn't work. You don't get that in Open Source, unless you find a third-party support-company that deals in these services.

Re:Professionalism

[larpon]

Upgraded mine from 9.04 on an Thinkpad T500 and have had no problems at all

Re:Professionalism

[rxan]

But even if the problems are real and widespread, calling it a lack of QA is nothing more than jumping to conclusions at this point.

Proper QA would have caught the problems and prevented such an unstable release.

The reality is that linux runs on vastly more hardware than Windows does, and those users are much more likely to have non-standard and otherwise more complicated configurations. It's impossible to test on all of them, much less cost-prohibitive.

You can't just excuse Linux because it runs on a greater variety of hardware. If variety of hardware becomes a problem then you need to either limit the allowable hardware or let the users know what is stable and what may not be.

Pouncing on Ubuntu for problems and claiming it's because of lack of QA, while happily ignoring similar issues from Microsoft but giving them credit for their QA is hypocritical at best. Maybe "Hypocritical" would be a better mod, but in its absence it doesn't seem as though "Troll" or "Flamebait" are that far off the mark.

Where exactly do you get the idea that people ignore these issues with Microsoft? Microsoft got hosed for Vista since its release and nearly caused a generation-long boycott of the OS by the public. If you ask me, this release of Ubuntu should face the same criticism.

Re:Professionalism

[Severian37]

Simple - Because Linux distros aren't commercial products - they are supported and tested by a community of people who want to use Linux. It has nothing to do with professionalism, but a matter of choice.

Re:Professionalism

[petermgreen]

Funny, and all this time I thought the majority of the reason people use Windows is because it comes pre-installed on all the computers that they buy. The fact it 'just works' is because the people who make the systems have already prebuilt the systems with a tested and verified image that works on that specific hardware being purchased.

If they did the same with Linux, which some distributions do, then it would 'just work' as well.
Lets assume they install the current release of ubuntu LTS (and in reality they won't always do that, it takes time for OEMs to adopt a new release of an OS). That means you have 1-3 years of security updates before you have to upgrade to a new release (either by upgrading in place or by reinstalling).

If we assume the typical lifecycle of a desktop PC is three years (which is conservative) then most machines will either have to be upgraded to a new release of ubuntu during thier lifetime or will be left without security updates (which I do not consider acceptable for machines that will be used for general use online).

Security updates for desktop stuff on ubuntu 10.04 LTS (which hasn't been released yet) will end in april 2013. Security updates for windows XP (which is now two versions behind current) will end in april 2014.

Heck MS offers more security update overlap on service packs than ubuntu offers on complete releases.

I mean, get real. Can you imagine grandma getting a barebone system and installing Windows 7/Vista/Xp from cd, then having to search the internet for the drivers required for the hardware that isn't automatically recognized?>

My experiance is that linux supports more out of the box than windows but when it doesn't things are a lot more painfull.

On windows I go to the hardware manufacturers site, look up my peice of hardware, grab the drivers (or grab the CD that came with the haand install them through a nice simple GUI. On linux I have to either replace the kernel (and hope the new version gets on with the rest of the distro and doesn't break any other hardware) or try to find a version of the driver that works with the kernel I have (often very difficult).

Re:Professionalism

[DaVince21]

Just imagine the amount of bashers if the news would had read;

Windows 7 is causing outrage and frustration, with early adopters wishing they'd stuck with previous versions of the Windows. Blank and flickering screens, failure to recognize hard drives, defaulting to the old kernel, and failure to get encryption running are taking their toll, as early adopters turn to the web for answers and log fresh bug reports in Windows forums.

This again comes from the fact that both Windows and Mac OS X releases are properly tested and maintained and tend to be in more professional quality.

But why don't the Linux distros go to same lenghts?

Actually, the major distros (including Ubuntu) do. Why do you think there were a bunch of release candidates? The problem here is that Ubuntu is able to run on many more systems than Windows 7 or Mac OSX, and thus there's a lot more hardware that will have to work with it.

Re:Professionalism

[Darundal]

Same here, I installed Karmic and it has been, at least for me, a big improvement over Jaunty, from performance to giving me the option to install a PAE-enabled kernel without having to use the server kernel or recompile it myself.

Re:Professionalism

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I had forgotten that I had started using Grub 2 at some point. The upgrade instructions did mention that, I think, update-grub had to be run manually.

I had similar issues, so happily include myself in the "stupid user" category. It's a tough blow, really, since I have such a high opinion of myself...

Re:Professionalism

[MrSenile]

Thanks I guess for the sarcasm on the +5.

As for the Dell selling, let's reread part of my post that you intended to slaughter...

--> If they did the same with Linux, which some distributions do, then it would 'just work' as well.

That would be Dell. Some other small time companies also sell Linux installed systems or bare-bone systems.

Now, a counter to your point. Can a family enter Bestbuy and get a large selection of systems with Linux installed? No? Hum.
How about Frys? No? hum.
Oh wait, maybe Target or Walmart? No again? hum.

People 'like Windows' because they are 'used to windows'. Again, because of Microsoft's excellent marketing and being able to corner the market on them.

Mac has a larger window than Linux because they have dedicated storefronts with Macs as well as pushing some systems to Bestbuy and other chains. Their marketing is also quite nice, they're just playing a huge game of catchup.

I have no intention of modding you anyway you want. What others do is their own business. But if you're going to say the Truth, at least get it right.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Those bashers were very vocal at the release of the "professionally" produced, tested, and maintained Windows Vista.

Checkmate.

Re:Professionalism

[MrSenile]

Microsoft also had 20ish years to build out their marketing model.

Corporate America, nay, the world is entrenched into Microsoft. And it makes sense because it's what you can guarentee business X that you will work with will have. You can't guarentee they'll have Solaris, Mac, Linux, BSD, Other.

As for the updates and drivers automatically installed? Redhat does that. CentOS does that. Debian does this. SuSE does this.

There is even models for Zen and other built-in packages for remote desktop solutions, auto building/mirroring, and pretty much everything else that Microsoft currently does.

I'll grant you however that Microsoft has a great lead on Linux, Mac, Sun Solaris, and many other systems. That's in their (again) marketing, and support. They have a multibillion dollar model around it afterall.

And while Vista failed miserably, they still sold significant amounts of them soley based on the fact when you bought new computers you rarely had a choice. Corporate america had a bit more leeway because of support contracts, but walking into a store, when you bought PC's, it came preinstalled with Vista. Most people, being lazy, bought these systems. So while Vista 'sucked', it was still used because it was 'available'.

It's all about fighting an upstream battle.

When you take the bare OS, and cut out the marketing crap, the support crap, and everything else, frankly, while one has pluses the other does not, and visa versa, they are, at the core, similiar to what they can do.

What Linux doesn't have that Windows does have is:

1) A huge budget on Support contracts
2) Corporate america buying into them on workstations
3) An existing business model with existing centered applications that you're guarenteed other corporations will have.
4) A phone number you can bitch at someone if a driver you downloaded or a piece of hardware you installed won't work.
5) A large supporting group of software, including games, photo/video editing, and authoring tools that are considered a corporate standard.
6) A single environment that you know if you go next door to cousin Vinny's your software will work 'out of the box' on his system.

Linux has a long way to go, I'm not debating that point at all.

What I am getting into is that the reason Windows is at the current point is because of Marketing and a stranglehold. That was my original comment, which frankly is the truth. The fact that Linux does not have the marketing or a stranglehold is rather obvious :)

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

If I pay for a finished product, I expect it to be finished.

... and yet, a lot of people will wait for Windows 7 SP1 before installing that version...

Re:Professionalism

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. While testing and being free of bugs is nice, not many people want to be stuck running KDE 2.x, Firefox 1.x, OpenOffice 1.x, etc. while users of other distros are all using KDE 4.x with compositing, OpenOffice 3.x, Firefox 3.5, etc.

Re:Professionalism

[realityimpaired]

It's been my experience that Slackware and its derivatives are far and away stabler and faster than Debian... If you want one that's particularly nice, IMO, try out Zenwalk.

But people will continue to use what's easy, and what's familiar. That's about the only reason I can see for Ubuntu's continued popularity... people use it because it's what they're familiar with, and because the learning curve isn't as steep as it is for some other distributions. Compared to Windows, it's far stabler and faster. When they're ready, they'll try something else, and realize that, for desktop use, switching from Ubuntu to something like Gentoo or Slackware will feel like it did when you switched from Windows to Ubuntu.

Re:Professionalism

[xclay]

This again comes from the fact that both Windows and Mac OS X releases are properly tested and maintained and tend to be in more professional quality.

But why don't the Linux distros go to same lenghts? It shouldn't be impossible, unless of course, commercial projects are maintained more professionally.

I wonder if it'd be possible to create a testing platform utilizing virtual machines with user-submitted images of ROM or a soft-snapshot of their hardwares. This way we could have a global "virtual" test lab that would surpass Microsoft's or Apple's. I'm sure there is already a process model for testing among few users, but I think if we could simplify the actual testing process and widen the test user base, it would significantly help to reduce heart burns during initial rollouts.

Re:Professionalism

[Ash-Fox]

The "LTS" version of Ubuntu was the worst version I used (was a user since 7.04) and drove me to seek out another distro.

Best version for me. I'm not generalizing the entire thing, but I'm pretty sure for the majority it was fine. Of course, a few people will always have the opposite sway with the majority.

working sound (sorry, until I hacked and hacked the sound setup on Mythbuntu 8.04 didn't work right, nor did stock Ubuntu 8.04)Worked for me.

Ubuntu has shown its true colors as wanting to monetize with BS add-ons that shove crapware down users throats.

Yes, because that's the first thing you see when you install or do anything on Ubuntu.. Oh wait, the only place it does this is for the patent and licensing encumbered dvd playback in the USA only. Well shit, they must be out there to steal all your monies. This couldn't possibly be due to anything else at all, could it?

Re:Professionalism

[Ash-Fox]

Except, of course, its very developers but, oh! what would they know.

There was a large discussion between the Ubuntu devs and Firefox devs and the Firefox devs suggested they stay with the 3.x branch over supporting 2.x. It's buried deep in a mailing list somewhere which is taking me longer than five minutes to find - I can't be bothered putting more effort into locating the thread.

So yes, the FF developers were consulted.

Re:Professionalism

[amicusNYCL]

Both Microsoft and Ubuntu appear to rely on their customers to test new OS releases for them.

Right, the Windows 7 beta has been out for almost a year, so that's about 6 months of good beta testing that Microsoft got before they released it to the manufacturer in July, and then they had another 3 months to work on patches or whatever before it got released in October.

It seems a little weird that an upgrade from version 9.04 to 9.10 would have so many issues though. Maybe they try to conserve version numbers over at Canonical, but how much really changed between those versions?

Re:Professionalism

[Jonner]

I used Gentoo exclusively for several years before switching to Ubuntu. Though Arch's package management may be better than Gentoo's and certainly has the advantage over Debian's in easily creating packages from scratch, I am still firmly convinced that Debian/Ubuntu are better for most people most of the time. Since Debian has been around forever and far more people use it and its derivatives than Gentoo or Arch, there are packages for just about everything already.

I install packages from Ubuntu PPAs all the time. When there's not a binary in a PPA, I can almost always find an Ubuntu or Debian source package that compiles with little trouble and I can modify if needed. I don't need to carefully maintain different Ubuntu build environments since I can just upload a source package to my PPA and binary packages for several architectures and releases can be built automatically, allowing me not only to use it on all of my machines, but also share it with any other Ubuntu users.

As others have already pointed out, the main advantage of a release-oriented distribution like Ubuntu is that I can count on very little breaking as long as I don't upgrade to the next release. I just upgraded my laptop to Karmic, which turned out to be a mistake since it now freezes at random points. I think the instability is related to the new 2.6.31 kernel, but I'm not sure and Karmic's Xorg doesn't work right with the older 2.6.28 kernel.

Though this is a bad regression, if I would have tried the Karmic LiveCD first, I would have seen the problem and known not to upgrade the entire system yet. I also can now reinstall Jaunty and restore my /home from backup and I know the system will work just as well as it did before. If I'd been using a rolling distribution like Gentoo or Arch, reverting to and staying at a known working configuration wouldn't be nearly as straightforward.

When I was using Gentoo, I had to spend a lot of time just keeping up with package updates, most of which I didn't need. However, I couldn't easily choose to just get security updates, as I can using an Ubuntu LTS release for example.

Re:Professionalism

[ericrost]

Hmm... Let's see:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/410343

My whole point is them monetizing through SPYWARE. I understand you don't enter a cc #, that doesn't mean they aren't tracking and selling user info.

Your sound system response is prototypical of the exact problem. "Works for me".. do you have every possible configuration of sound card? Do you use Ubuntu to output a optical spdif signal to your home theater? The devs having exactly that attitude is why Ubuntu as a distro has moved into the crap pile in my house.

Re:Professionalism

[ericrost]

And on the server side, FYI, the first thing you DO see after login is a pitch for landscape as a service.

Re:Professionalism

[tweek]

Mainly because my main environment is a wired desktop. For that, NetworkManager is fine. I can deal with a single component in an entire distro being problematic because I can easily replace that single component where it makes sense.

And in the interest of full disclosure, I don't actually run the stock ubuntu desktop. I switched to openbox+tint2 about 4 or 5 months back and prefer that combination.

Re:Professionalism

[tweek]

If I could easily find the bug reports in multiple distros I would. This happened on multiple Broadcom cards against various AP vendors. The NIC doesn't disassociate unless the scan takes longer than a given period. In any given environment, I can count 10-15 networks in range and scanning each of those takes time. While scanning I suffer reduced throughput and if the scan takes too long, the connection is terminated and has to be reestablished.

I don't claim to be a hardware engineer. I don't know what the IETF says about how background scanning should be handled but the inability to disable the background scanning, the fact that it doesn't scale to larger numbers of available networks AND the fact that it causes reduced throughput while scanning is bothersome to me. The same problem doesn't happen under Windows on the same machines.

I've been running linux for a LONG time (Yggdrassil anyone?). The fact that something works under Windows and doesn't under Linux only has one thing to blame - the software. That can be driver or user space but unless it's something like the winmodems of yore, it's quite obvious that background scanning does work with the hardware.

Re:Professionalism

[skiman1979]

The original article was itself a troll worthy of comp.os.linux.advocacy and not really terribly impressive.

Old kernel? What a tragedy! Did you not pay attention to the prompts during the upgrade?

One wonders how much of this stuff is self-inflicted in some fashion or another.

I've often seen error messages come up during upgrades of various distros. The problem is, often times those errors are on a text console and they scroll WAY off the screen faster than any human can read them. This is certainly the case with Gentoo. Ubuntu often seems to have these console messages, but sometimes hidden behind a "details" link that shows a small console window when clicked. Doesn't make for easy reading. Even if it did, the average user might not even understand the errors.

I've certainly seen some pop-up error messages occur during an Ubuntu (or Mandrake or Red Hat or... ) upgrade, but often times there is no error, or at least not one that is apparent to the user. I think it was when I was running Ubuntu 8.x, I had to put a 'pci=nomsi' into the kernel line in Grub so it would boot my SATA hard drive properly. I only did that because a forum suggested it. Several months later, a regular 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade' (via the GUI, not sure what they actually call it) included an update to my grub.conf file. I didn't remember about the pci=nomsi thing. The update removed that, and the OS failed to reboot. An average or new user would be stumped with something like that.

Case in point, I am completely unfamiliar with OpenSolaris. I installed it at home a few days ago. Install went fine, except my network driver was not detected. It gave me a URL to download the driver. I downloaded it, followed the instructions to install it, and was able to ping various websites. I rebooted the system, and it dumped me to a text console (no GUI). When I tried to log in as a normal user, it told me I didn't have a home directory, and defaulted to use / as my home. There were no errors or anything before I rebooted to warn me of this. Why would a network driver installation cause this? So I reinstalled Kubuntu and everything works fine :)

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded to 9.10. It actually fixed quite a few bugs that I experienced under 9.04 including this annoying screen flicker that happened while watching flash movies in full screen .

The only problem I am having is with my Virtual Box. I sometimes run XP inside Virtual Box to watch Netflix. It worked fine under 9.04, but under 9.10 the video rendering in virtual box has dramatically slowed to the point I can no longer watch Netflix or any other streaming content for that matter. At first I thought 9.10 was just hogging more resources, but when I looked at the resource usage of Ubuntu, I still had around 2 gigs of ram free and was only maxing out one cpu core. I haven't changed any of the settings for the virtual machine instance. I always give it 768 megs of ram and 128 video ram. Anyone else seen this?

Other than that the transition went well for me.

Re:Professionalism

[aix tom]

The key are "early adopters", I think.

I believe there is no way a even medium-complicated software will "just run" these days. Too many different parts need to interact. That goes both for commercial and free open source software. For example, we are currently running into Windows/Citrix/Wireless problems that just seem to occur under VERY specific circumstances. I think there is no way for a software company to simulate all the different circumstances that the software will run under.

The solution is simple: Don't early adopt on critical systems. I would never dream of installing a pre-servicepack 1 Windows, or a .1 Oracle release, or a fresh-out-of-the press new Linux distro on anything I *need* to be running.

OTOH *someone* has to early-adopt, so that the bugs are actually found, so if you have an un-critical system where it is no big loss if you lose any data on it, by all means, get software early and start testing.

Re:Professionalism

[symbolset]

http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_General#Mono_and_GNOME

Much critical development for Gnome appears to be happening in Mono. If you don't want Mono, stick with KDE.

Re:Professionalism

[xkcdFan1011011101111]

I have these NetworkManager problems. I work with a team of thirty that also have the same NetworkManager problems. Its usually the chief complaint of new Ubuntu users (and veterans as well!). Why doesn't Canonical get a few more people to try to clean up some of NetworkManager's problems?

Re:Professionalism

[leereyno]

You almost have a point.

The point you almost make is that the open source community holds Microsoft and other vendors to a different standard than it holds itself.

Vista was a dog. Everyone complained. The open source guys snickered and sneered.

Karmic is a dog. Everyone complains. The open source guys make excuses.

Commercial projects are maintained according to the standards (and corporate culture) within the company that produces the code. The same is true of open source projects.

Some commercial code is gawd awful crap. Some is of outstanding quality. The same is true of code produced by open source projects.

Blanket statements about one being better than the other simply don't apply.

Re:Professionalism

[Ash-Fox]

And on the server side, FYI, the first thing you DO see after login is a pitch for landscape as a service.

Odd, never saw that.

Re:Professionalism

[Ash-Fox]

Hmm... Let's see:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/410343

My whole point is them monetizing through SPYWARE. I understand you don't enter a cc #, that doesn't mean they aren't tracking and selling user info.

I had already gone through this extension's source at one point in the past, admittedly a long time ago and I did not really understand the complaints of how it was acting as spyware (as some people complained in #kubuntu at the time), so if you do know how, feel free to inform me.

Here is a response as to what it is:
http://www.asoftsite.org/s9y/archives/162-What-is-this-Multisearch-thing-in-my-Firefox-about.html - contained in the information that bug was marked a duplicate of.

Your sound system response is prototypical of the exact problem. "Works for me".. do you have every possible configuration of sound card?

No, but I have 31 of the most common chipsets which are all fully supported. In the past I had a lot of problems with Intel HDA on various Linux distributions, but not had any since the last LTS release.

I hear a lot of non-sense from people saying X doesn't work on Linux and I'm using at that moment they state it and all it was, was installing the package normally to stupid stories about how Google doesn't render correctly in Firefox on Linux but works on windows. I've noticed people who are being honest are able to backup their information with a lot more than a what is contained in a tiny bug report that doesn't even provide any information on how it is what they claim it is.

The devs having exactly that attitude is why Ubuntu as a distro has moved into the crap pile in my house.

I'm not a dev, nor a helper on Slashdot. I'm a poster and if you don't even provide any information to back up your cases, I will go with my own knowledge and experience to help asses the information you are stating.

Re:Professionalism

[Moridineas]

What's the point? I thought it quite obvious -- it's been said several times now. If Ubuntu makes up the vast majority of linux users, and Ubuntu has crappy QA, then that says something about the general linux experience. True, a criticism of Ubuntu may or may not apply to slack, but I think Ubuntu--as the main representative of linux!--represents a lot of linux users' experiences.

Re:Professionalism

[ralphbecket]

I wasn't trying to make a statistical argument. I was offering evidence to counter the suggestion that Windows is especially sensitive to the hardware you have (moreso than Ubuntu). Moreover, I was pointing out that Windows does not typically require you to hunt the internet for drivers - in my experience I haven't even needed to use the driver CDs that came with the hardware I have installed. I would put good money on Grandma having an easier time of installing Windows simply because Windows is used on a much larger range of home machines than Ubuntu (or any other flavour of Linux).

Regarding software that comes with an OS, I'd say the number one program for domestic users is the web browser. IE works out of the box and lets you view everything on the web pretty much without having to install anything else. Not so under Ubuntu, in my experience. For example, only some of the Ubuntu machines in the office where I work can do such exotic things as reliably view web pages with JavaScript or Flash, the experience of surfing the web is different on each, and don't even get me started on sound support.

I've been using Linux since the first Slackware release and it has been a fantastic workhorse. However, it's been increasingly obvious to me that Windows has for some time provided a dependably superior, simpler experience for just about everything that I don't run from bash. For example: printing, sound, web surfing, networking, hardware support. I could go on.

Re:Professionalism

[pugugly]

Umm - what?

You, ah, *have* used Vista pre-SP1? OR even XP pre SP1? And from some sources it's looking like Win7 users will be better waiting for SP1 as well frankly.

I will concede 9.10 is not as rock solid immediately as my last upgrades, with some minor glitches - FF 3.5 is slightly crash-prone, had a couple other minor issues that look bad in comparison to the track record of ignoring basic precautions with absolutely no consequence that has been my Ubuntu experience for the last couple years.

But - well, philosophically I like open-source but I'm not particularly vehement about it, and I've used windows for years, fairly happily. But let's not pretend that this glitchiness I'll be happy to see go away, or even the fairly major problems reported in the article, are par for the course - at worst, Ubuntu has for once had the same issues that are standard with the average windows upgrade.

I mean, let's have a reality check here. Make your back-ups, always separate your home partition from the OS, don't assume the upgrade will be perfect, et al - but let's keep a sense of perspective too.

Pug

Re:Professionalism

[farble1670]

When you're running a multi-billion dollar company, you can afford to test your software on a wide variety of machines with a large QA staff to run the whole exercise. Microsoft and Apple have the billions; Canonical does not.

right, except apple doesn't need billions. they have a well-defined, well controlled set of hardware they need to test. they have it easy compared to windows and linux that must (try) to run on nearly infinite combination of hardware.

and that partly answers why apple will never release OSX on non-apple hardware. they'd need to charge enough to cover the cost of supporting those infinite hardware combinations. not to mention covering the loss in hardware sales due to some % of people choosing to run OSX on non-apple hardware.

Re:Professionalism

[ldj]

I guess we have had much different experiences. I've been using Linux for at least as long as you (started in '93) and have had no significant problems in the last 5 years or so. I've set up dozens of friends, relatives, and coworkers with various Linux distros, all of them coming from a Windows background (and looking for something different because of various problems with Windows). Other than coworkers, practically none of them are overly computer savvy and none of them had Linux/Unix experience. Except for the occasional assist with a distribution upgrade or help identifying and installing an app for a particular purpose, I rarely get calls for help from any of them after the first month or so on Linux. And I'm no light computer user. I do plenty of multimedia creation and editing (audio and video) as well as software development, etc.. As you say, "I could go on." ;)

Sorry to hear that you've had such poor experiences with Linux.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 and it is quite buggy.

That's because Ubuntu is shit. Nothing but patched Debian Sid patched by devs outside the Debian camp. What do people expect? DamnSmallLinux is better and more reliable. I would recommend WinME over the latest shitware from Ubuntu. Ubuntu is the main reason I use Debian. It sucks.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, dealing with Windows bugs all day will do that to you.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Fedora is still the most popular Linux distro. As of the Fedora 11 release, Fedora had about 12 million users and Ubuntu had about 9 million. And that gap appears to be growing. The Ubuntu fans make the most noise, while Fedora settles for being the quiet plurality.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Who should listen to you when you got spanked by an ac here today right here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1429510&cid=29979500 , and here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1429510&cid=29980114 twice in a row? You're obviously no expert and anyone can take a read in those links, the second one mostly, and at how badly you messed up on your comments on a se windows moron.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD (or perhaps even more so, OpenBSD) for instance is an example of projects which go to GREAT lengths for QA.

Sorry, but FreeBSd 5.x was absolutely buggy as hell. I've had far better luck with Linux than with FreeBSD.

Re:Professionalism

[New_Guy_Here]

I dropped KK on an old Dell Inspiron 1200 yesterday, because the XP on it had finally given up the ghost. Seemed pretty good, except as you note the system doesnt seem to like wireless. It doesnt register my Dell 1350 WLAN card. It seems to see it being inserted, but doesnt power it up. Not really sure how to fix this, looking in old forums. Otherwise, IMHO, nice job out of the box. Wired LAN worked fine, as did all other hardware.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Who should listen to you when you got spanked by an ac here today right here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1429510&cid=29979500 , and here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1429510&cid=29980114 twice in a row? You're obviously no expert and anyone can take a read in those links, the second one mostly, and at how badly you messed up on your comments on a se windows moron.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded and everything worked better; so it does go both ways. I installed it on a USB stick and now I have Ubuntu everywhere.

Re:Professionalism

[Korin43]

Yes but Debian releases every 2 years, Ubuntu releases every 6 months.

Re:Professionalism

[ericrost]

Well, then why are there so many threads like this:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1130384

if the sound setup is done so well? There are four or five different conflicting threads for how to make stuff work... seems pretty clear. Also seems pretty clear cut that they rolled out a half baked sound setup in a LTS release. That's the main issue that did it for me.

Re:Professionalism

[Ash-Fox]

Well, then why are there so many threads like this:

For the same reason there are so many things like this:
Windows
OS X

Ask a stupid question...

if the sound setup is done so well? There are four or five different conflicting threads for how to make stuff work... seems pretty clear. Also seems pretty clear cut that they rolled out a half baked sound setup in a LTS release. That's the main issue that did it for me.

If Windows/OS X setup is down so well? There are a billion conflicting results for how to make stuff work... seems pretty clear. Also seems pretty clear cut that they rolled out a half baked sound setup in every OS release.

Re:Professionalism

[Moridineas]

Any link for this information?

Re:Professionalism

[Reservoir Penguin]

So basically you're saying that if you have money to pay for a commercial OS then stay away from Ubuntu and CO?

Re:Professionalism

[Daengbo]

Above all the myriad claims of failure to work on some hardware (sound and X issues), 8.04LTS released with a default application which didn't run on a supported arch. There's no excuse for that.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't pay a dime for my copy of Mandriva Linux 2010.0 Adélie (Mandriva One CD) and it IS a finished product. I can hand anyone a CD of that, and they are unlikely to have any trouble. Moreover, they are shipping with KDE, something that Ubuntu can't do since Feisty Fawn.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

"Even so, how much do you want to bet that there are fixes for the problems with Ubuntu 9.10 a good six months to a year before Microsoft issues its first service pack for Windows 7?"

-----

That's true to a certain extent, but only if you don't take into account that Microsoft does indeed release hotfixes both before and inbetween Service Packs. So Microsoft also fixes problems with their products a good six months to a year before it issues its first Service Pack.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

What's Slackware got to do with it. Unlike Slackware, Arch has got a very good package manager. Debian's package manager may be good, but it is a lot harder to create packages for it than it is for Arch.

What I can tell from your comment is that you haven't used Arch, it really does have a good package management system. If you don't know what you're talking about, maybe you shouldn't comment. And that means, if two package management systems are being compared, you need to know both of them to make an informed comment.

Re:Professionalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard plenty of people erroneously state that windows has better hardware support than linux. My partner's Dell Precision laptop has both 9.04 and Windows 7 (newly) installed on it. I had to find the website for the nvidia graphics card and install the driver. Not a big problem, but that driver would be there if I'd bought the laptop with Windows 7 preinstalled.

On the other hand, 9.04 has never had a problem or skipped a beat on the laptop, and it is now months since we booted into Windows.

Re:Professionalism

[Shotgun]

Nope. I'm saying that if you're going to pay for a finished product, get a finished product.

Please read the original post. The original post says that OSX and Windows releases are more professional (a debatable point, but we'll let it slide for arguments sake). My point is, "You damn straight!!" If I'm going to pay the sort of money they're asking, it better be a professional product.

If I buy a $1000(US) used car, I can expect it to have a couple dings. If I buy a $250(US) used car, I can expect it to have bald tires. If someone GIVES me a car, I can expect to to have $50(US) of scrap metal. If someone GIVES me a new car, how do I complain that one of the seats are missing?

Bad Karma

[johnthuss]

It's Karma - your deeds are finally coming back to haunt you!

Re:Bad Karma

[oldhack]

Fools with their heresy.

There is no God but FSM and Debian is her OS.

Re:Bad Karma

[SlashV]

Where are my mod points when I need them. Right on and very funny :)

Re:Bad Karma

[geminidomino]

I am authorized to extend to you a special, one-time-only offer for one year of certified, "Bob"-approved Subgenius-Jihad protection, for only $14.95/mo.

Re:Bad Karma

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't be to bad, if it weren't for those marsupial stingers, just be glad they're not venomous.

Re:Bad Karma

[nerdbert]

Good Karmic to me. I had a BIOSTAR TA790GXB motherboard with built-in Radeon HD 3300 graphics I was using as a HTPC. I never could get graphics to be smooth under Jaunty, and DVD playback was a nightmare.

I did an install of Karmic (not an upgrade) and it went cleanly and the graphics worked flawlessly. I'm a strong believer in reinstalls and not upgrades, but considering I started at Slackware 1.0 I've been trained to never believe a company when they claim that an in-place upgrade will be trouble free.

Re:Bad Karma

[Anonymous Coward]

It is bad karma for Ubuntu. When I arrived on the ubuntu bugs irc channel no one would even acknowledge me. I waited 2 hours for them to answer a simple question for th URL of the bug database, which they never acknowledged or answered and when I left irc I left a slightly scathing message aimed at relating this sad experience and maybe causing officials among the group to suggest that maybe these volunteers could be a bit more helpful. Instead they subscribed me to a number of unwanted mailing lists, which were all filtered with a simple blacklist addition for known mailing lists, but these were the guys running their bug triage program. It's definitely karma.

Re:Bad Karma

[icannotthinkofaname]

So maybe Ubuntu had some bad Karma, but the next version will be Lucid.

1.) Easily understood; completely intelligible or comprehensible
2.) Characterized by a clear perception or understanding; rational or sane
3.) Shining or bright
4.) Clear; pellucid; transparent

Sounds to me like 10.04's gonna be a real winner, if the adjectives describe the distros.

Re:Bad Karma

[Eli Gottlieb]

So it seems I've been a great person over the past year and was written for Good Karma (Koala) in the Book of Life.

The upgrade made huge improvements for me. My netbook's battery life has rocketed up by about an hour, I can now control Bluetooth, the interface looks much smoother and shinier, volume controls have become finer-grained, and my wireless signals have even gotten stronger.

Re:Bad Karma

[Anonymous Coward]

This Anonymous Coward had an almost perfect upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10. (I needed to press the "set default colors" button in the totem video player)

Wow!

[fat_mike]

I'm impressed that this actually made it to the front page.

Re:Wow!

[munctional]

Why?

Serious problems with the most widely-used Linux distribution isn't "news for nerds"?

Re:Wow!

[smash]

No, not really - its standard operational procedure. Anyone who isn't used to dealing with quirks in Linux distributions upon release isn't a nerd.

indeed

[pele]

me being one of the early adopters that got stung
I haven't seen so many bugs and reboots since the days of windows 95

Re:indeed

[TJamieson]

What problem(s) did you have? I have an old HP P3-866 that happily accepted 9.04, but when trying to do anything to the hard drive, it errors out with problems creating a new ext4 partition. I can't figure out why it's happening.

Re:indeed

[V!NCENT]

Upgrades to Kubuntu 9.10 crashes KDE. Clean installs do not. I am perfectly happy. But maybe I am one of those lucky bastards that do not experience these bugs. I got my system running for 9 hours now and so far so good.

Re:indeed

[pele]

try and transfer a 100+ meg file across the network. also put your laptop into standby and then wake it up. see if it doesn't produce an error. also try and play a video (with pretty much any player) for longer than 2 minutes without issues arising. shall I go on?

Re:indeed

[V!NCENT]

>try and transfer a 100+ meg file across the network.

Works?

>also put your laptop into standby and then wake it up.

Actually works?

>also try and play a video (with pretty much any player) for longer than 2 minutes without issues arising.

Works...

>shall I go on?

Yes.

Re:indeed

[ircmaxell]

I've been using Karmic since Alpha 5 (Still running on RC code right now actually, havn't had time to reinstall)... I'm on a Thinkpad T61p, so it's got decent hardware. I've yet to see ANY of the aforementioned issues... I've transfered around 300 gb of files (smallest 5 mb, largest 10 gb, average 1gb) flawlessly (both over wifi 802.11n and Ethernet). Videos work quite fine, as does flash. And compiz SCREAMS

Some people will have issues. Others won't. Personally, I'd never go back. The boot improvements and added functionality are awesome. This is subjective, but it feels faster. Oh, and the laptop has been up for over a week, with no instability. If the release has fundamental issues, I've failed to see them.

Re:indeed

[SiChemist]

I've done three upgrades (from Kubuntu Jaunty). Two went flawlessly, and the third had the "old kernel" problem. (I did leave it installing overnight so it might have had problems that I didn't see.) I did a clean install on that machine and it's working perfectly now too.

So far, I really like Karmic.

Re:indeed

[V!NCENT]

>(Still running on RC code right now actually, havn't had time to reinstall).

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo aptitude dist-upgrade

Re:indeed

[amicusNYCL]

Works?

Is that a question, were you not sure whether or not it worked?

Actually works?

I don't know, does it? Why are you asking me? It's your computer!

Works...

Ah, a statement, but something seems to be left out...

Re:indeed

[ircmaxell]

Yes, I know that, but I've been burned by dist-upgrades before. So, since this is a personal laptop, and I have a sizable NAS at home, I tend to wipe the computer each time...

Re:indeed

[Zzootnik]

Really? I upgraded my kubuntu from 9.04 to 9.10 without a single hitch... ...Of course I'm also currently backing up and re-installing from scratch a system I just finished building 2 weeks ago for a friend... the upgrade from 9.04 Ubuntu to 9.10 wouldn't even boot....

It shouldn't take too long, but there's considerable embarrassment on my Part about it. ("No REALLY- Its Normally a LOT more graceful than that!")
Stumbling really hurts-

Re:indeed

[gomezfreak]

x video issues here as well. all i get is a blinking cursor on the screen after the reboot when the installation finishes. It won't fall back to the generic drivers. FWIW, puppy linux runs just fine on the same hardware. So does open Suse.

Re:indeed

[frisket]

I installed Karmic on my old Dell desktop the other day and it's been remarkably free of problems. It got my vNivia Geforce4 screen working properly first shot, which neither of the two previous releases could do at all (they just hung). Two critical (for me) packages were omitted (KPDF and KDVI) but that's not Ubuntu's fault: KDE changed the game. The only serious flaw was an apparently buggy GTK that led to Emacs22's dynamic menus failing to update (there's a simple workaround). Otherwise it's been trouble-free, and faster than 8.04, so I just installed it on a Dell laptop, and it's fine there too. But both of these were complete wipe-and-installs, not upgrades. I got bitten by an upgrade once: never again. I just watched a colleague installing Windows 7, which caused more trouble than it is worth.

Re:indeed

[munctional]

The plural form of "anecdote" is not "data".

That said, the poll stating that less than 40% of people were successfully able to upgrade isn't totally accurate either. It's a self-selected sample.

Re:indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

The forthcoming release of Mandriva 2010.0 will ship with "Quickboot" enabled. It has caused a lot of problems with USB devices. How long before people start complaining their USB devices don't work properly, and their USB sticks can't be mounted. The "fix" will be to download a proposed update to disable quickboot, no roll-out before release.

Re:indeed

[Rick17JJ]

I did a clean install of Kunbuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala and it seems to be working good. I kept my old copy of Debian 5.0, which uses KDE 3.5, on another partition, so I would have the option of going back to that, if necessary. I put Kubuntu 9.10 on another new partition on the same hard disk.

My computer is a several year old AMD 64. I used the alternate install version of the 64-bit version of Kubuntu. I also chose the option of doing my partitioning manually.

The only minor issue that I ran into, relates to the fact that my computer has two different Ethernet ports. When booting up, it is varies each time, as to which one is eth0 and which is eth1. That unpredictability creates a problem for my Firestarter firewall, because it expects me to be consistently connecting to the Internet through through the same port each time. I plan to solve that problem by removing the extra unneeded Ethernet card.

I am very pleased that Kubuntu is now once again possible to have separate wallpaper for each virtual terminal. I have an attractive girl in shorts as my background in one, an outer space scene in another, an outdoor scene in another, and a world map in another. The ability to do that had existed in KDE 3.5, but was lost with KDE 4.0, but is now possible once again. Re-enabling that capability is easy, but could hardly be less obvious.

Re:indeed

[Eil]

*sigh* We see these kinds of articles on every major new release of Ubuntu/Fedora/Windows/OSX. This is NOT news. When you're swapping out major parts of your OS and applications, things are bound to break. I'm not an Ubuntu fanboy or anything, but this kind of stuff gets on my nerves. To everyone who claims they were "stung" by this update, I have two questions:

1) Did you bother to test the new release at any point during its 6-month development cycle? The alpha and beta builds are available as a Live CD well ahead of the final release, it's a trivial matter to burn a copy, stick it in your machine, and give it a test run.

2) If stability is important to you (and I assume it is by the use of the word "stung"), why did you upgrade anyway? If I'm not mistaken, Karmic is not even an LTS release.

To provide a counter-example, I have 5 machines under my control that have been running Ubuntu for years. Out of those, NONE have ever had a problem upgrading to any version of Ubuntu, even Karmic.

Re:indeed

[jmv]

Ouch. I thought Jaunty was already pretty bad. I guess I'll give Fedora another try.

Re:indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience since 5.04 and subsequent upgrades has been that upgrades suck. I do fresh installs all the time and since my /home is on a different partition the process is quite smooth:
- copy all files in a backup subdir on /home/myname
- install
- copy back only data and needed configuration files (not much really)

The whole process (install + restore) takes about 2 hours maybe.

I've been running Karmic since beta and no real problem (except GDM which cannot be changed easily, but that's a GDM issue).

This way you also get all the latest and default config for each application avoid conflicts in older ones.

Re:indeed

[Spykk]

Speaking of anecdotes, 9.10 has been a huge upgrade for my Eee 1000 netbook. 720p h.264 encoded videos that used to get choppy when there was a lot going on now run flawlessly. Boot time has been cut down to ~10 seconds. Everything feels snappier and more responsive. Best of all I don't have to run some Eee specific distro that won't survive a dist upgrade.
Every major operating system is going to cause some problems for a subset of the upgraders. Just because those of us who are happy with the new release aren't shouting it from the rooftops doesn't mean we don't exist.

Re:indeed

[BikeHelmet]

I haven't seen so many bugs and reboots since the days of windows 95

Yeah, same here. It somehow confused a VIA-based 4-port SATA PCI card as an nVidia RAID array. (it's not even a raid card - just ports!)

Had to downgrade to 9.04 to get access to my HDDs.

Re:indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

It must be hit or miss as I haven't had a single problem... in fact, Karmic is the best release yet. Granted I'm using Kubuntu and not Ubuntu so I wonder if the issue is something having to do with Gnome?

Re:indeed

[adam.ec]

I haven't seen so many bugs and reboots since the days of windows 95

You obviously never got suckered into Windows ME then. In all seriousness I had lots of bugs with 8.10 and 9.04. My clean install of 9.10 has gone remarkably well. Initially I was a bit dubious as to whether it had worked properly because the install was like lightning. Three days use now and the only bug I've had is I cannot seem to get Synaptic to show me all the available packages, just the ones that are installed. I don't seem to have suffered with Windows 7 either. The desktop looks crap but the whole thing works.

Re:indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm having the same problem I ALWAYS have when I upgrade Ubuntu: Sound disappears. Then I screw with it for a week and get it working. You'd think I'd wise up and stop upgrading.

Re:indeed

[RAMMS EIN]

``*sigh* We see these kinds of articles on every major new release of Ubuntu/Fedora/Windows/OSX. This is NOT news.''

Perhaps you are right, but then I contend that it _should_ be. If I am a happy user of some product, and the vendor comes and says "hey, we have a shiny new version out", I want to be able to switch to the new version and actually be happier with it than I was with the old version. Otherwise, what's the point?

I am not saying that Ubuntu should be the one providing this experience. If they want to release new versions without providing a smooth upgrade from the previous version, that is fine. But, in general, I think that breaking things that were working before should be the exception, not the norm.

Re:indeed

[Rick17JJ]

I meant to say virtual desktops instead of virtual terminals. I was happy to be able to install separate wallpaper for each virtual desktop (not a terminal). The article about KDE 4.3 in the current November 2009 issue of Linux Format magazine briefly describes how to do that on page 22. It is the current issue, with the rocket powered penguin on the cover.

Windows users probably have absolutely no idea what multiple virtual terminals are.

So far, I am quite happy with the Karmic Koala version of Kubuntu. However, setting it up on my several year old desktop computer was probably slightly easier than on a notebook or laptop computer. For instance, I do not use wireless networking and my hardware is old enough to be well supported (but not obsolete). If my extra Ethernet port is a problem, I can just open the cover and remove my PCI Ethernet card.

This several year old 2.4 GHz AMD 64 computer still feels like a fast stable new computer, when running the Karmic Koala version of Kubuntu. The varied selection of my favorite wallpaper, in each of the virtual terminals, looks great on my 20-inch flat screen monitor. I am happy.

Being somewhat cautious, I chose to format my new Kubuntu partition as an EXT3 partition instead of the default choice of making it an EXT4 partition. My thinking, is that EXT3 is an older more proven technology, which was working just fine for me.

Re:indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

I should note that you have a five-digit Slashdot number. Of *course* you don't have any problems with it.

Re:indeed

[Vovk]

I watched an entire 2 seasons of a TV show on karmic running on a dell Latitude e5500. I suspend it all the time and I get more errors from my 9.04 than from my laptop (9.04 requires me to killall gnome-panel on every login as well as change the clock to daylight savings time).

Re:indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

I updated to Karmic and everything works better than ever. Maybe its because I use a Intel-based Thinkpad, but Suspend works in seconds, wifi is stable, no flickering, no old kernels to boot (maybe a problem of grub 2?)

Re:indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh* We see these kinds of articles on every major new release of Ubuntu/Fedora/Windows/OSX. This is NOT news. When you're swapping out major parts of your OS and applications, things are bound to break. I'm not an Ubuntu fanboy or anything, but this kind of stuff gets on my nerves. To everyone who claims they were "stung" by this update, I have two questions:

1) Did you bother to test the new release at any point during its 6-month development cycle? The alpha and beta builds are available as a Live CD well ahead of the final release, it's a trivial matter to burn a copy, stick it in your machine, and give it a test run.

2) If stability is important to you (and I assume it is by the use of the word "stung"), why did you upgrade anyway? If I'm not mistaken, Karmic is not even an LTS release.

To provide a counter-example, I have 5 machines under my control that have been running Ubuntu for years. Out of those, NONE have ever had a problem upgrading to any version of Ubuntu, even Karmic.

I installed and tested alpha 1, alpha 2, alpha 3, alpha 4, alpha 5 and alpha 6, then beta and the rc. I turned in 60 trouble reports. I still have a problem with a flickering screen anytime I use full screen video. I cannot use advanced graphics or the taskbar disappears on everything.

You strike me as being just a bit arrogant in your position. If a number of us are still reporting problems who the hell are you to tell us we are all stupid? The thing is broken and they are having trouble fixing it.

Re:indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Straight to the point... my experience was very good, upgrade went smoothly with only some small glitches (reset of compiz settings and few icons missing in menu).

I don't understand people who upgrade to brand new version of operating system and expect that every thing will be ok, IT'S NEW CODE! it can't be stable.

And if you want to be sure that you've done everything you could on your end than INSTALL FROM SCRATCH!

Re:indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

No, people should not have to download the beta version of a software to be allowed to say what is wrong in the final version of a product.

Not everyone is a beta-tester, even in a community product like Ubuntu Linux.

As for LTS, current version is 8.04, 18 month old. LTS just means Canonicall sells 3 year support on it. Should not mean a difference in quality level.

Re:indeed

[Lodarage]

Not to mention that before every upgrade one should make a backup of the whole system.

Re:indeed

[smash]

Different nic order each time? I remember back in the early 2000s when i was installing linux firewalls everywhere, i'd use 2 different brands of NIC and manually insert kernel modules to force order, as sometimes it would vary when switching from one kernel to another kernel (but was consistent on teh same kernel) when using non-modular drivers.

Having the NICs get a different order every time is a MAJOR bug and makes the box completely useless for any sort of firewall job.

I'm quite shocked at this behavior - especially seeing as its a problem I ran into (in a lesser form) about 10-12 years ago, and something FreeBSD has "just worked" with since I've been using it in about 2000 or so.

Fuck shiny desktops, this is the sort of shit that NEEDS to work properly.

Re:indeed

[thatblackguy]

Y'know what this kind of bitching, hey download and test the beta builds, contribute to debugging; is fine for the technically inclined out there but you release it to the general public they won't even know what the hell you're talking about. Btw, why are there so many regressions anyway? Wifi worked in 8.04, I didn't expect to *break* in a clean install of 8.10 among numerous other issues. If you can really say "well expect things to break that already work, tough shit" you're a tool of unimaginable magnitude.

Re:indeed

[pinkushun]

I love new releases, but restrict them to test rigs or virtual machines; this goes for other OS's too.

Re:indeed

[makomk]

Persistent NIC ordering should Just Work, unless Ubuntu has majorly screwed something up. Has done for a while; udev records the MAC address and what name has been assigned, then reassigns the same name on every boot.

Re:indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh* We see these kinds of articles on every major new release of Ubuntu/Fedora/Windows/OSX. This is NOT news. When you're swapping out major parts of your OS and applications, things are bound to break. I'm not an Ubuntu fanboy or anything, but this kind of stuff gets on my nerves. To everyone who claims they were "stung" by this update, I have two questions:

1) Did you bother to test the new release at any point during its 6-month development cycle? The alpha and beta builds are available as a Live CD well ahead of the final release, it's a trivial matter to burn a copy, stick it in your machine, and give it a test run.

2) If stability is important to you (and I assume it is by the use of the word "stung"), why did you upgrade anyway? If I'm not mistaken, Karmic is not even an LTS release.

To provide a counter-example, I have 5 machines under my control that have been running Ubuntu for years. Out of those, NONE have ever had a problem upgrading to any version of Ubuntu, even Karmic.

I have been a long time fan of Ubuntu. This release was unusable for me. On two different machines, we couldn't get it to boot after install. We had to retrench and go back to 9.04. This issue is due to an issue that was known a month before release, re: https://bugs.launchpad.net/wubi/+bug/443107

In answer to your two questions:

1) Why, yes we did. We used the live CD's to test the systems with the new OS. Worked fine. However, the bug referenced above does not manifest itself using the live CD.
2) Stability? I don't think that's the issue here. Why would you release a package with a known show stopper? Runable is all that was desired. After an entire weekend, we could not get it to work on either of two different brands of laptops.

And, up to this release, I too have never had a single problem upgrading a system. This release was a great disappointment.

Re:indeed

[V!NCENT]

Kind of like a rhetorical question. Must be the Dutch culture. It all means that it fully works.

Re:indeed

[untold]

True, I upgraded two machines remotely via 'do release-upgrade' and had no issues but did when upgrading my laptop. People with a clue backup before they upgrade, I lost nothing, one thing you should add to your tips ;)

Re:indeed

[PastaLover]

1) Did you bother to test the new release at any point during its 6-month development cycle? The alpha and beta builds are available as a Live CD well ahead of the final release, it's a trivial matter to burn a copy, stick it in your machine, and give it a test run.

2) If stability is important to you (and I assume it is by the use of the word "stung"), why did you upgrade anyway? If I'm not mistaken, Karmic is not even an LTS release.

From the point of view of someone that noticed a lot of annoying bugs in the new release. No, I did not run the alpha/beta but I did run the previous version and reported a bunch of bugs that didn't get fixed. Second, when I went to launchpad to report the bugs (mostly regressions, mind you, which is what annoys me) in this version, they were already reported, from before release. So it's not like nobody noticed, they just decided to roll with it.

I think karmic will be one of those releases that ends up being fixed a lot after the fact. I just saw a whole load of bug fixes in empathy hit the repos for instance (empathy can't hold a candle next to pidgin, btw). Some bugs are more annoying, like the GDK changes that developers must have known would break many apps (including flash). So yeah, I am starting to question this 6 month release cycle thing.

And don't get me started on gnome 2.28. I personally think that's moving in way the wrong direction. But that's a flamewar for another story. :-)

To provide a counter-example, I have 5 machines under my control that have been running Ubuntu for years. Out of those, NONE have ever had a problem upgrading to any version of Ubuntu, even Karmic.

I didn't think we were talking about problems with the upgrade process itself. Rather, it's the build quality that is a bit off this time.

All right, except for GRUB2

[Kopachris]

My upgrade has been quite painless, though that might be because I simply did a fresh install. My hardware is fairly old (Athlon XP processor, 1GB RAM) and Karmic is running quite well. Conky works, OpenGL works, Flash works, etc. The only thing that tripped me up was the switch to GRUB2, which left me, like many others, wondering where "menu.lst" went.

Re:All right, except for GRUB2

[isama]

I've been using 9.10 since the beta, and it's had it's problems, but now it runs quite smoothly :)

Re:All right, except for GRUB2

[d3ac0n]

Upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 the day after release on a dual-boot Ubuntu - Win7 laptop (Thinkpad T60). Upgrade went smooth as silk, I had one reboot to complete the process and bammo, working Ubuntu.

Yes, the dual-boot still worked. The only change I made was to modify the menu to comment out the old kernel so I have a shorter neater list.

I honestly don't understand how people can have such trouble. It's not like I'm some kind of Linux guru, I barely qualify as "power user".

Re:All right, except for GRUB2

[suisui]

Similar story here. I remember tearing my hair with all the bugs when Hardy came out, but Karmic hasn't done anything like that.

Re:All right, except for GRUB2

[PRMan]

Ran the upgrade. It crashed with a blinking text screen.

I am a 20-year Windows developer, but I have been using Ubuntu since 2006.

Understand that you were lucky.

Re:All right, except for GRUB2

[gerddie]

Instead of uncommenting the old kernels, you should probably uninstall them if you don't want to use them anymore.

Re:All right, except for GRUB2

[Anonymous Coward]

grub2 works great here. i don't understand why they trashed the vi-like editor for a emacs-like one. that was a BAAD decision

Re:All right, except for GRUB2

[Anonymous Coward]

my experience was identical to yours (except i'm on a dual-booting winxp-ubuntu netbook), quick and painless. i'm a linux n00b, so by no means an expert or guru, and this netbook is my first regular experience with ubuntu (and linux generally). i'd dabbled with various distros in the past, out of curiosity mainly, but never found things quite "easy" or smooth enough for my taste. i'd always run into some deal-breaking issue (networking, usually, or video drivers), so i'd abandon whatever flavor of linux i was trying within a few days and return to what i was familiar with. i've found ubuntu 9.04 a welcome change to what i'd experienced in the past. installing it in the first place was reasonably easy (i did have to install some backports to get networking going the way i liked, but there was ample information online about how to do that and it turned out to be dead simple). when the 9.10 update was announced, i ran "update manager" just to see if it would turn up and, to my pleasant surprise, it did. upgrading took some time, but required minimal interaction from me. after reboot, everything worked as before, even networking (and it did remove the old packages i had installed to make that work under 9.04). i'm pretty pleased, to be honest. ubuntu, at this stage, is something i think i'd feel comfortable using regularly and feel i can recommend it to other n00bs with some confidence.

Re:All right, except for GRUB2

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes I did the same, I had 9.04 installed but did a fresh install of 9.10 instead of an upgrade.
Booted up ok but every time I shutdown and restart grub2 hangs at the grub loading stage.
I boot off a live cd, run a repair and it works ok next boot but then hangs after next shutdown.
I tried uninstalling grub2 and installing grub but that failed with a different error.
So I have gone back to 9.04 for now and might try an apt-get upgrade in the future.

Re:All right, except for GRUB2

[retchdog]

Why?

Re:All right, except for GRUB2

[SpinyNorman]

What GRUB2 left me wondering, like many other 9.10 installers, was why the fuck is it so slow to boot now?! stuck on the "GRUB loading" prompt for a long time before bringing up the boot menu. It turns out to be an acknowledged GRUB2 bug when booting to a different hard drive than the one the MBR is on. I've got what must be a common setup with Windows on my 1st drive and Linux on the 2nd. What's sad it that the bug has been known for a couple of months now. It was enough to make me revert to 9.04 for now since it seems indicative of a lack of testing.

OTOH, I also did a 9.04 to 9.10 upgrade via "System Update" in a VirtualBox VM, and that went flawlessly.

Re:All right, except for GRUB2

[marvy666]

yeah nice known bug, why didn't they list this in the 9.10 release notes :/

Great

[Trebawa]

I just upgraded from Jaunty, and it's been great for me. The only major differences I've noticed so far are the updated boot screen (which is beautiful) and the Ubuntu Software Center; I have no doubt, though, that there are plenty of under-the-hood improvements I'm not noticing, especially since I'm an upgrade.

Re:Great

[VirusEqualsVeryYes]

I immediately found a very large irritant after upgrading. Previously, I had line-in set to play through to the speakers. There was a simple slider in sound preferences that existed back since at least 6.06. The same option exists under Windows. But suddenly, 9.10 removed this option. Line-in no longer plays through, and the option has been completely removed from the revamped (and somewhat disorganized) sound preference panels. I appreciate the effort to "modernize" the sound options like per-application tuning, but not at the cost of tossing simple, basic options that have existed since the invention of the sound card.

Also, regarding the bootup animations, they've changed for three or four consecutive upgrades now. I don't mind a refresher when appropriate, but "refreshing" every six months tells me that some priorities need some reordering.

Re:Great

[MichaelSmith]

The two boot screens look sparse and cold to me. I wondered if Mark Shuttleworth was paying people back for the complaints about his "human" color scheme. The GDM window looks ugly to me. I definitely want the old one back.

Re:Great

[mikehoskins]

I have had a great experience, so far, and I shouldn't....

Starting around midnight, this morning, I upgraded from 64 bit Jaunty Studio, which was setup like this:
    Jaunty Studio was "upgraded" to Kubuntu
    Used Intel graphics -- the kind of card Jaunty particularly hates
    64-bit Flash, 64-bit Java, 64-bit Firefox
    MythTV with all the add-ons I could throw in...

I *should* be a poster child for problems.

I only had 3 minor issues:
    ~/.ICEAuthority permissions issues (easily corrected)
    An issue when switching to text mode using Ctrl+Alt+F{1,2,3,4,5} (should be easily correctable in grub)
    Mythtv-status no longer knows how to calculate drive totals (I think that's easily fixed, but haven't looked)

Everything is so much snappier, but that could be due to Jaunty vs. Intel Graphics wars or it could be due to a mem leak on Jaunty (I can't prove that one but I swapped heavily until the upgrade).

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

The options your looking for are, and have always been, part of `alsamixer`.

Re:Great

[sammydee]

I'm very surprised this was an exposed option before Karmic, you must have had one of the very rare sound cards with a hardware loopback in it or something similar.

Either way, pulseaudio has this functionality now. It isn't exposed in a gui option, but pactl load-module module-loopback will do what you want. If you want it to load every time put it in /etc/pulse/default.pa.

I know this sucks compared to having a gui option, but hopefully a gui option will be added for this in the next release. You can probably still enable your hardware loopback if you have one by running alsamixer -c X where X is your card number, probably 0 if you only have one card. You can find out what cards you have with aplay -l.

I know cli utilities suck but trust me, this is being worked on even if the work is going very slowly.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, regarding the bootup animations, they've changed for three or four consecutive upgrades now. I don't mind a refresher when appropriate, but "refreshing" every six months tells me that some priorities need some reordering.

This is a common misconception about software development. There is no rule of conservation of features. Just because they add one feature doesn't mean that another feature had to fall off the list.

It isn't true that all that time they spent on a bootup animation would have been put to use in writing more code.

Re:Great

[greg1104]

I ran into the same class of sound issues, in my case the primary one was trouble getting all of the output in the right mode. The sound card was convinced that the regular audio output was actually the coax one, and it was hard to figure out how to tell it otherwise (even though the problem and the solution were quite obvious). Just like old times, when everything broke after merging PulseAudio.

I was eventually able to dig into the sound issues using tools like alsamixer and manually tweaking what driver I was using to get things working again on the sacrificial test system. The contortions required made the new setup seemed really fragile, and I'm not sure exactly what fixed the issue. That means I might have to do this again after some future system update. While the Jaunty Sound Preferences panel was never elegant, it did at least work most of the time. As you point out, it looks like all of the GUI-based tools you used to be able to do troubleshooting and easily try alternative configs with are either gone or not in an obvious place anymore in Karmic. Given how problematic Linux sound has been over the years, it takes a very peculiar form of arrogance to presume it's finally fixed now all of the sudden, and therefore it's fine to seriously deprecate alternatives that (while not the preferred approach) were sometimes the only thing that did work in earlier releases.

Since there were some other really annoying bits in this release (the awful and so ubiquitous it's difficult to turn off new Notify OSD comes to mind), so far it looks like I'll be skipping this release. I skipped 7.10, 8.04, and the first few months of 8.10 due to quality control issues too, so this isn't that surprising. Ubuntu may put out a new release every six months, but I only seem to find one worth upgrading to every two years anyway. Seems pretty clear to me the 6-month release cycle is faster than Canonical and the community can really deliver stable software in. And that's regardless of LTS tagging, 8.04 was the worst of the bunch and its backported bug fixes were minimal for the problems I ran into; all the awful bugs were marked "fixed in Intrepid" and that was the end of it. I feel lucky that the LTS 9.04 release is the good one now, am hoping things work out similarly to how 7.04 kept me going for a long time before I needed to update. Of course, audio problems with Skype are still looming...

Re:Great

[TheSpoom]

And if you think that telling people to access a command line application will win you users, you are incorrect.

RE: Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Fresh install of 9.10 UNR on an eeePC 1000HD

Smooth install, encryption and all. Wireless working flawlessly even when sleeping. Fixed 9.04 sound issues (finally!). All in all, i'm very happy i made the move. The sleek UI is the cherry to top it off!

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, issues like your volume thing are due to GNOME, not Ubuntu. Those GNOME people are some crazy fuckers. They keep removing stuff that people use.

The one that got me is they changed the Login administration panel and removed options like being able to turn off that damn bongo sound that plays when gdm starts (at the login screen). So now it's impossible to turn off without some serious hacking (I killed it by physically removing the sound file). Why they removed this, I have no idea. Those settings aren't typically messed with my your average folk unless they have some specific reason to (like disabling the stupid sounds). Dumbing down the administration panels makes no sense because they aren't typically used by common folk anyway and when they actually do need to do something they will find that's it's really, really much harder than it needs to be.

Re:Great

[xav12]

The boot screens, and particularly the login screens, from both Karmic and Jaunty look too dark and imposing to me - like the sort of login screens they use in Hollywood films to flag that the computer is technical and complex. It might suit a programmer, but I think Joe Public needs something a bit lighter and less oppressive. Unfortunately they've moved to the latest version of GDM in Karmic, which not only removes the ability to change the login theme easily, but also removes the handy XDMCP support in the GUI.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly I've come to the conclusion that audio under Linux is utter rubbish. Unless your setup is totally trivial nothing ever works properly without massive configuration effort (involving accessing multiple tools scattered all over the place and almost always eventually having to hand edit config files) and, as you so rightly point out, the simple things like a "one stop" place to set audio device and volume etc. are simply missing.

Linux audio sucks big time. It's a total, utter mess.

Re:Great

[godrik]

AC! Don't dare speak the name of alsa. Alsa is the past ! CAN'T YOU SEE! You have to use PulseAudio for sound. Alsa is so old fashioned. You know it even work !

I'd say the KARMIC name speaks for itself:

[Anonymous Coward]

It has gathered karma on its voyage thus far.

Rhythmbox

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been pretty happy with it. The only problem I've run into so far is Rhythmbox has trouble playing music off my Firefly daapd server.

Release cycles?

[feranick]

It seems canonical is more interested to show they can deliver something on time, rather than delivering something good when it's ready or delaying the release until proper QA is done.

Re:Release cycles?

[V!NCENT]

Canonical is interested in rushing out bleeding edge versions of Ubuntu twice a year. Canonical is also interrested in stable, long term release versions, called LTS. Mod parent Troll.

Re:Release cycles?

[ozmanjusri]

they can deliver something on time, rather than delivering something good

I'm using Karmic on three computers, one fresh install and two upgrades from Jaunty.

All of them are good - one is Xubuntu on a lower-specced laptop and it feels quicker, both booting up and in use. The biggest problem was the current MythStream not working with V0.22 of MythTV.

Re:Release cycles?

[nine-times]

There are a couple things that I'm inclined to point out. First, the article is basically saying, "some people had trouble, some people were unimpressed." It's hardly a scientific study of the quality of the OS. Sometimes the complainers are the most vocal, and the people who are happy sit quietly.

But more important, just a bit of advice for anyone who got burned by the upgrade and are upset: if your computer is important to you, don't be an early adopter. Just because a new version of your OS comes out doesn't mean you need to upgrade right away. Sit and wait to hear what people say about it, and wait for some of the kinks to get ironed out.

I'm not making excuses. Yeah, sure, it'd be better if Canonical would make sure that every release was perfect right out of the gate, but still, exercise some common sense. If you've been doing this for any amount of time, you should know better by now, especially since it has happened with pretty much every single OS. When Vista was released, it was a buggy POS. Yes, I used it. They cleaned it up well enough, but it wasn't any good when it was released. I forget which release of OSX it was (maybe 10.3?), but one of them erased your external hard drives if they were connected when you installed the new OS. That made it really fun if you had just backed up your data to an external hard drive in preparation for the upgrade. And I think it was FreeBSD 5 where everyone was complaining about how crappy it was for months after release.

Whatever system it is, you just can't trust blindly that they'll have it in perfect working order on day 1. If you want to be an early adopter, great, you get to help work out the kinks. Otherwise, give it at least a month or two.

Re:Release cycles?

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

Why do people insist on trotting out their own experiences of success on a limited subset of hardware as if they somehow negate the fact that people are suffering because of the Ubuntu developer's subservience to the tyranny of the "Six Month Release Cycle (OMG)." Even your example fails since you are having difficulties but are willing to brush them off.

Re:Release cycles?

[WoLpH]

Guess you were lucky, I was less fortunate.

I've upgraded 2 machines from Jaunty to Karmic and both stopped rebooting/shutting down (they hang when trying to). But even besides that, loads of my settings got reset/removed. For example, I've lost all of my wifi profiles which is turning out to be quite a PITA.

Re:Release cycles?

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Why do people refuse to understand that you can not possibly test for every frecking hardware combo out there with the budget canonical has? Fact of the matter is, shit happens, all thing considered Canonical does a good job.

Want a flawless running linux system? Get a distro that has certified hardware.

Re:Release cycles?

[cmdr_tofu]

I wish I could mod you up. For the record, I love Ubuntu, but I tend to run only the LTS releases. They are the ones that Canonical and the community put all their effort into for running production systems. I have never had a problem upgrading dapper (6.06 LTS) to Hardy (8.04 LTS), but I have had small problems with some of the intermediate releases.

I had been playing with Karmic-server on VMs for about a month now, but nothing production. Finally I popped a liveCD onto my laptop, played around in Karmic, realized everything worked beautifully, and bit the bullet and a few dist upgrades from Hardy to Karmic. I have not regretted it, but if someone does have problems with the newer possibly less-stable software, they should be sticking with the LTS releases. If you want to push the limit, try new software, you can run the newest release whether or not it's LTS. If you would like to try before you mess with your production system, use the liveCD or make a BACKUP that you know how to restore from. Sheesh....

Sorry to the people who have problems, but I'd have to say my system feels a lot faster now. Boots faster, and compiz with all its 3d effects are a lot smoother with on my builtin intel card than they ever were with previous releases. I am a happy karmic user :)

Re:Release cycles?

[msclrhd]

Exactly. I have been using Karmic from a clean install without major issues, but upgrade killed my sound. Note that I did have OSS4 configured on 9.04 before the upgrade.

One thing I have noticed (and I haven't used other distros to see if this is a common phenomena) is that upgrading Ubuntu is temperamental when it comes to non-standard configurations/customisations (e.g. removing pulseaudio or totem).

Windows: Don't adopt until Service Pack 1
Ubuntu: Don't adopt until 1-2 months after release

Microsoft, Canonical, et. al. are in an interesting position. You need a large number of testers running on a wide variety of hardware (intel, nvidia, ati, ...) with a wide variety of configurations (gnome, KDE, modified sound configurations, heavily modified/customised), needs and requirements (a DJ/sound studio will have different requirements to someone who just wants email). If people don't use the OS because it is 'buggy', the bugs are not found and no fixes are released. Hopefully, they will get good coverage over the alpha and beta phases, then a wider adoption with the enthusiasts and early adopters, followed later by your "average" "novice" user.

Plus, Karmic and other Linux distros are not equivalent to Windows; they are equivalent to Windows, Office, Photoshop and a whole host of other applications, all updated and packaged every 6 months (for karmic, main is about 6.7 GiB and universe is in the 25 GiB mark, not sure about multiverse). That's a lot of stuff to ensure is working on everyones machines.

Re:Release cycles?

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

Upgrade success poll
35% success rate in running 9.10? That is not a good job.

Re:Release cycles?

[ozmanjusri]

Why do people insist on trotting out their own experiences of success

Because my experiences match that of the vast majority of Ubuntu users.

Just as the people who are caught up in the "endless reboot" problem with Windows 7 are a tiny minority, so are those having trouble with Karmic.

Even your example fails since you are having difficulties but are willing to brush them off.

My "difficulties" are that a single plugin for a single program hasn't been updated yet. The author of the plugin has been notified and has provided a beta updatebeta update. I have no doubt that I'll be seeing the release version in my update manager soon.

Re:Release cycles?

[munctional]

By "bleeding edge versions of Ubuntu" you mean "bleeding edge versions of Debian Unstable", right?

I'll remain with Debian Stable for all my machines for now.

Re:Release cycles?

[Weslee]

On the very poll you linked to it says this -

  *** Disclaimer for those willing to analyse this poll ***
  Most of users voting here are users with issues.
  Users with painless experience are not likely to come here.
  If you want to compare Karmic release with other releases based on this poll anyway here are the previous polls :

Re:Release cycles?

[Chaos Incarnate]

People with failures are more likely to be on the forum to see the poll in the first place.

Re:Release cycles?

[Falstius]

That poll is not scientific (people who find the poll are more likely to be people with problems), and out of people who upgraded the success rate is 68%. It is listed as 35% because they count successful installs separately from upgrades. Checking the polls for previous releases, the numbers are pretty much the same as this one.

I still don't use a new Ubuntu release for at least a few weeks though. There is always a flood of package upgrades for a few weeks after a release.

Re:Release cycles?

[LordLimecat]

Is that why the last LTS had Firefox 3.0 beta 4 installed on it, as well as an unstable and poorly supported soundsystem? Im a fan of ubuntu too, but lets not try to claim that ANY of their releases are anything other than bleeding edge beta quality releases. Ubuntu tends to be most stable several months after the release, even moreso than other distros / OSes.

Re:Release cycles?

[reallocate]

>>". Canonical is also interrested in stable, long term release versions, called LTS."

And why should anyone in the real world know this?

Re:Release cycles?

[somersault]

Vista had some really pathetic issues for *months* after it was released. I expect at least these issues will be cleared up pretty quickly. And as others have pointed out, this isn't an LTS release.

People are justified in trotting out their own experience because the summary asks for it.

For me KK is awesome, because I finally have accelerated graphics on my Dell Mini 9. I tried setting it up on jaunty a couple of times before but just assumed that my netbook didn't have the right chipset or enough graphics memory to run compiz. Now my netbook has all the benefits of the Ubuntu installation on my MBP (avant window navigator being one of my favourite things about it, 3D desktop cube and wibbly windows next), and more.

The only backwards step I've noticed so far is that the battery app in the system tray now just gives charge level as a percentage, with no time remaining or time to charge info. I don't think I had to install a custom app for that before. Strange.

Re:Release cycles?

[Brian Gordon]

Because you're installing Linux. It's not a tea party.

Re:Release cycles?

[bsims]

I did an upgrade from Jaunty... I had three issues...

1) I lost the system bell. (turns out its now blacklisted, a notice in the upgrade notes would have been nice)
2) Caps lock led no longer lights up (Bug in console-setup, affects Debian as well)
3) Num lock and scroll lock led's no longer light up.

That's the only things I noticed

Re:Release cycles?

[maugle]

if your computer is important to you, don't be an early adopter

Absolute truth. Be it Windows, Linux, or Mac, stay the hell away from a new release if you want to be assured your computer will still do what you need it to do.
My laptop I can afford to play around with, hence it got Karmic back when it was still in beta. My desktop that I need to do actual work on? Still using Hardy.

Re:Release cycles?

[dakameleon]

You've got to factor in the bias of the poll - the people likely to be looking around on the forums and especially at items related to the upgrade are likely to be those who have issues. A user who has updated without any hitches is likely to get on with whatever they want to do with the computer, not go to the forums and respond to a poll.

Re:Release cycles?

[styrotech]

Why do people insist on trotting out their own experiences of success on a limited subset of hardware as if they somehow negate the fact that people are suffering because of the Ubuntu developer's subservience to the tyranny of the "Six Month Release Cycle (OMG)." Even your example fails since you are having difficulties but are willing to brush them off.

Jumping to conclusions about their motivations? Maybe that persons experience was trotted out purely because the story summary itself asked for peoples experiences.

And here is mine: Two clean installs (no upgrades yet), and no apparent problems.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1) Read poll
Step 2) Misunderstand statistics
Step 3) Go watch Fox News.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

fail.

Fail?

It's got most of Microsoft's marketing department reading and quoting a Linux tech support form. That's full of win!

Re:Release cycles?

[gandhi_2]

Because when you go to download it, it asks you which version you want. It even explains the LTS thing.

Re:Release cycles?

[catchblue22]

I installed the beta of Kubuntu 9.10 a few days before the final release. It won't mount my windows hard drives. Samba is flakey. Grub takes a long time to load. I'm really close to jumping back to Debian stable, instead of downloading the proper 9.10 version.

Re:Release cycles?

[pizzap]

[...] but upgrade killed my sound. Note that I did have OSS4 configured on 9.04 before the upgrade.

"but upgrade killed my sound. Note that I did have OSS4 configured on 9.04 before the upgrade."

Well, maybe you should configure OSS4 after the upgrade as well? I mean with OSS4 not officially supported by Ubuntu and all... the updater has no crystal ball.

Re:Release cycles?

[Jezza]

Mine is a disaster. Now am I dropping Ubuntu? No, I'll drop back to 9.04 (I have all the data - I've been around the block enough times to not make that mistake). However, I might look at Red Hat if the problems aren't resolved quickly.

And here's the advantage of Linux - I can move to another supplier, I'm not locked in.

Re:Release cycles?

[reallocate]

So... Linux is not ready for the real world?

Re:Release cycles?

[Jezza]

Ditto, clean install just plain fails. Going back to 9.04 and I'll regroup from there.

Of course, as a Linux I could also look at a different distro.

For what it's worth it looks like the problem is about hardware - as I said the clean install fails (doesn't find a hard disk). If you want to upgrade it might be worth booting the live CD and seeing if it can see the hard disk before proceeding (the problem is apparent before it would write to the disk). If that helps. Otherwise, my advice - sit this out for a while, if you have 9.04 working you don't need to take the risk.

Re:Release cycles?

[Runaway1956]

Just in case you didn't see the first reply, I'll echo it:

*** Disclaimer for those willing to analyse this poll ***
Most of users voting here are users with issues.
Users with painless experience are not likely to come here.

I haven't upgraded yet, but, seriously, if it works painlessly, I'm unlikely to look for a poll to post that information in. I'll only go looking to find information if it's NOT painless.

Re:Release cycles?

[Daengbo]

I've been saying since 8.04 (when they released with default applications that wouldn't launch) that Ubuntu is a "wait for SP1" distribution.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason I switched to Karmic beta is that some other problems that weren't there in the release of Jaunty were already biting my ass.
Truth is, Linux is completely unstable in regards to basic things like hardware support. Minor kernel versions fix and destroy support for millions of desktop machines. Extend that to parts of Linux that are not really Linux, like PulseAudio, and you have Ubuntu.
I have never had OpenBSD break working hardware or software even in versions pulled from CVS because they do that newfangled thing called t-e-s-t-i-n-g.
Still, do you know what's worse than Ubuntu? All other distros.
Anonymous to avoid the karma rollercoaster.

Re:Release cycles?

[shutdown -p now]

Speaking of Ubuntu and sound - I've hit an annoying bug in Karmic where if you have two audio-out jacks, one for speakers and another for headphones, and you plug in headphones, your speakers will keep playing. The desired effect is to have sound play via speakers normally, and via headphones when they're plugged in (and then back via speakers when headphones are unplugged). This is a known confirmed bug. There are a lot of recipes floating around, most having to do with mucking around in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf, with specific changes depending on your audio chipset; but, judging by the forums, they don't cover all possible cases, so this is still not fully fixed as of today.

Re:Release cycles?

[evil9000]

I'm not sure what to say to your comment. Lets see the score I have kept track of from the last 2 months:

Upgrading 3 slackware 12.0 boxes to 13.0 - worked perfectly (about an hour each)
Upgrade from MacOS 10.5.8 to 10.6.x - worked perfectly (50 mins total time)
Upgrade from Windoze Vista64 to Windoze7 - worked perfectly (2.2 hours)
Upgrade 4 Ubuntu/Kbuntu installs (phyiscal PC's and VM's) from 9.04 to 9.10 - Every single one failed.

Not only did the *buntu installs fail, they're using experimental bleeding edge code and services. For example I cant use my nVidia settings program to maintain several *buntu computers to setup dual/tri-screens. No xorg.conf means no way to set this up and forget it.

Based off my personal experiences this is a problem of poor design and lack of testing.

Re:Release cycles?

[Sonic McTails]

The release behind shipping the LTS with Firefox 3.0b4 was simply that Firefox 2 would not have been maintainable for the next five years. It was decided that as soon as firefox 3.0 final was released, it would be placed both in the updates and security tree. If your running an up to date Hardy system, you have the latest version of firefox 3.

Re:Release cycles?

[xiong.chiamiov]

By "bleeding edge versions of Ubuntu" you mean "bleeding edge versions of Debian Unstable", right?

Actually, he meant "already out of date, but altered so that it's unstable when mashed together with all the other software". Vanilla bleeding-edge packages keep my computer much more stable than it was with Ubuntu on it.

Re:Release cycles?

[fredjh]

Up to 9.10, I've been happy with Ubuntu since 8.04... 8.04 is what made finally switch to Linux for the desktop, and I haven't looked back.

I can't even tell you my experience with 9.10 because it's not 9.10 that is my problem, it's grub2.

But, having partitioned things well, it only took me 30 minutes to get back to 9.04. So now I'll wait and see.

Re:Release cycles?

[nametaken]

If you want a Debian that stable, use Debian. :)

Re:Release cycles?

[blind biker]

Are you saying that Karmic Koala is the Vista of the Linux world?

Re:Release cycles?

[Tarlus]

". Canonical is also interrested in stable, long term release versions, called LTS."

And why should anyone in the real world know this?

Because it's not uncommon knowledge, its extremely relevant to Ubuntu's philosophy, and because any responsible person who would spend fifteen minutes researching something as major as the operating system they plan to install on their computer would be aware of it.

Those who choose to be ignorant about the major components of their computers have no business altering them.

Re:Release cycles?

[fredjh]

Ahhh... my computer is extremely important, but if you partition well it's not an issue... it only took 30 minutes to go back to 9.04 without losing any personal data (although, it's true I had to install a lot of apps I had previously installed).

But I was ready for it.

Re:Release cycles?

[Tarlus]

So... Linux is not ready for the real world?

I'm guessing that based on the way you've been using the phrase "real world", you're referring to people who are not computer literate.

In which case, the answer to your question is no.

Re:Release cycles?

[smchris]

I guess what I've never understood about LTS is that if it's broken on release, it won't be fixed so make sure all your hardware works on install before you commit to using it. I've never gotten CUPS on 8.04 to work with my HP Laserjet through a Hawking print server and I know I'm not alone with CUPS problems. (Where it works fine when I dual-boot the machine to straight Debian and has for years.) Last I followed the thread it was closed because it was "fixed in the next release." I guess that's what LTS means -- upgrade.

Which is to conclude -- Frankly, I don't trust Ubuntu, and when you lose trust....

Re:Release cycles?

[w0mprat]

+1 to you, the plural of Anecdote is not Data.

Re:Release cycles?

[walshy007]

Ubuntu is not bleeding edge - Fedora is bleeding edge, hell they had ext4 functioning without issue six months before ubuntu introduced it.. with a few massive bugs

First distro with kde 4, first distro with ext4, etc. That ubuntu cannot get things going properly six months after everyone else is a little shameful.

Re:Release cycles?

[NeoTron]

Wait - you say you had 4 failures?

So, you decided to go KK on all 4 installations - fair enough, BUT, 1) You should have known what you were installing before doing so, 2) After the first failure, you subsequently decided to go through it an ADDITIONAL 3 times - even on your VM's! 3) Perhaps test driving it - either on a Live edition of KK on a spare machine, and/or even installing it on a spare machine - to see how it is BEFORE installing it on your 4 systems might be a good idea.

Seriously, dude, STEP AWAY FROM TECHNOLOGY because you fail at it. :)

Incidentally, I made fresh installs on my HP dv8000ea - works flawlessy (had to use fwcutter to nab the horrible Broadcom wlan firmware but that's not Canonical's fault), installed it fresh on my new shiny Asus N10J - works beautifully. And finally, have been using KK on my "production" box through gradual updates ever since KK began to exist - works flawlessly.

Re:Release cycles?

[darkpixel2k]

I guess what I've never understood about LTS is that if it's broken on release, it won't be fixed so make sure all your hardware works on install before you commit to using it.

I'm annoyed by that too. A lot of bugs sit unfixed, then finally some bug triager (or a bot) comes around and says something like 'have you tried the alpha version of angry alligator to see if this solves your problem?".

Having worked with linux for a long time, I eventually upgrade to an alpha or beta release and find that it's not fixed. Reporting it back to the bug causes it to sit idle until the next release has reached alpha quality.

It's annoying that loads of bugs are "upgrade to the alpha and see if it's fixed".
But on the other hand, I wouldn't want to take time away from releasing the next version...because they are already so far behind with bugs.

Re:Release cycles?

[RenQuanta]

What is this 35% of which you speak?

Let's take a full look of that poll as of 8:30 tonight...

Upgrade - 15.06% - worked flawlessly
Upgrade - 20.19% - worked but had few things to fix, nothing serious though
Upgrade - 19.31% - got many problems that i've not been able to solve
Install - 12.56% - worked flawlessly
Install - 13.56% - worked but had few things to fix, nothing serious though
Install - 19.31% - got many problems that i've not been able to solve

So, if we count "got many problems that I've not been able to solve" as failed upgrades (a reasonable thing to say) then 39% of the users who went to that forum have had unsuccessful upgrades.

By simple subtraction then, 61% of the users who went and voted in that poll had a working upgrade (I mean really ...who really upgrades their computer and doesn't expect at least 1 or 2 little issues? ;)

It's worth noting that this post was made from a laptop running an upgraded Ubuntu 9.10 from 9.04 - with 0 issues. It was actually the smoothest and easiest FOSS upgrade I've ever gone through in 10 years. That includes upgrades through the FreeBSD 3.x line (phear make world ;), Redhat, Gentoo (emerge world - gah!), as well as from Ubuntu 6.x through now.

Props to Canonical, Ubuntu is about the cleanest, easiest to use Linux I've ever seen. Keep those releases rolling! :)

Re:Release cycles?

[feranick]

No. LTS releases are supported for longer, that's all. 9.10 is production ready even if it's not LTS. It's not a beta or a pre-release. In fact there is no sign of saying: "Use with caution because it may bork your system". It's prominently featured in the front page as the best of the latest stable. And even LTS have their issues too. The current "stable" version of LTS (8.04) had a great deal of beta software when it came out (including Firefox).

So my point still stands, as proven by many other comments below. I understand it's nice and all to bash Microsoft when it's delivering sub-par uncooked software (Vista anyone?). But this doesn't mean that Linux should be not judged by the same standards.

Disclaimer: I am an Ubuntu user since 5.10. Currently running 9.04 in my laptops and 8.04 in my netbook.

Re:Release cycles?

[jeffstar]

you have just convinced me to upgrade from hardy to karmic. I will be making a partimage first though.

Re:Release cycles?

[couchslug]

"By "bleeding edge versions of Ubuntu" you mean "bleeding edge versions of Debian Unstable", right?"

What is this "Debian" of which you speak?

Re:Release cycles?

[fwarren]

And why should anyone in the real world know this?

So... Linux is not ready for the real world?

I don't know, which of the six versions of windows 7 are you going to run?

Re:Release cycles?

[mattcasters]

It was as I've been using it for 3 years now.

Re:Release cycles?

[Mitchell314]

Interesting. I had this problem with a somewhat older version of Ubuntu (Hardy Heron), where if I pressed mute, then unmuted, sound would go through both speakers and earphones. That problem seems to have been solved when I upgraded to Karmic. Before then, simple fix was to replug jack. I didn't know that anybody else had the problem.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

That poll is not scientific (people who find the poll are more likely to be people with problems)...

The same is true for the polls about the XBOX failure rate.

Re:Release cycles?

[RicktheBrick]

I am writing this reply on a Ubuntu 9:10 OS computer. I am using firefox which is running under wine. I am using a vnc program to view this computer as it is in another room. I am using a windows xp computer for the viewing computer but the computer that will upload these remarks is the Ubuntu one. I did have problem with 9:04 and 8:10 but those problems disappeared within a month of upgrading. I have two quad computers both running Ubuntu 9:10 and both are doing fine as I can view and control both of them from my windows computer.

Re:Release cycles?

[RockoTDF]

Mod parent up. Canonical needs to cut this twice a year crap. What is the point? What are they trying to prove? Could you imagine the flack MS or Apple would take if they put out two versions of their OS every year and half the time they did crap like this?

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right click the charge level and choose "Preferences". Make sure "Expanded View" is chosen as well as "Show Time Remaining".

Re:Release cycles?

[Cybie]

On your mini 9, did you upgrade from an existing install or did you do a wipe/reinstall? Any issues with sound or networking? I ask because my mini 9 is running 9.04 and I'm deciding if I should upgrade now or wait a few weeks until any major bugs are fixed.

Re:Release cycles?

[arashi no garou]

Certified hardware?? Hell I may as well buy a Mac then, isn't Apple the expert on marrying hardware and software after all? I didn't know Canonical was certifying anything; if so please show me the list.

My system is made up of extremely common hardware. It's an AM2+ board with onboard GeForce graphics that has worked flawlessly with Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04. Apart from having to enable the binary-only Nvidia driver, using the above versions of Ubuntu is as good as having a Mac when it comes to hardware support.

However, 9.10 appears to be a huge step backwards. First, the so-called "Grub 2" bootloader is actually Grub 1.97-beta, and instead of booting into my OS it drops me to a grub command prompt. I have to load up the liveCD to fix it. Once in, my wired ethernet adapter won't turn on no matter what I do. Because I have no internet, I have to download the Nvidia driver on another machine and install it manually. It won't install correctly and now X11 won't load unless I use the open source driver. Lest anyone think I'm a clueless newbie, I've been using Linux and BSD since around 2000, mostly FreeBSD, Slackware and Debian. Trust me, I know a bad distro when I see one.

Anyway, at this point I've given up on it. How in the hell does Ubuntu go from a truly flawless OS for three releases to a bug infested nightmare on the same hardware? Who in their right mind would purposely drop support for some of the most common hardware in existence? Who fell asleep at the keyboard over there???

Re:Release cycles?

[gabec]

FWIW, I've been using Ubuntu since 6.10 and Karmic Koala has been by far my easiest and most care-free install. Every six months since 6.10 I've installed the new Ubuntu and it generally takes me about a week to get my OS going to full speed. Sometimes the damn dual monitor thing doesn't want to work. Sometimes my network shares stop being accessible by name and have to be hit by IP... whatever, it's all piddly one-off stuff.

Karmic Koala installed everything perfectly this time. I didn't have to custom compile Pidgin to get Microsoft Communicator functional at work. The OTR plugin worked too without custom compiling, unlike previous times.

My setup for my laptop, for the first time ever, doesn't need switchconf to load one xorg.conf for stand-alone mode and another for dual monitor docked mode. Heck, I don't even have a xorg.conf! I deleted it alltogether and let the system figure it out!

Wireless worked, the network worked, the printers worked.

Everything has been smooth smooth smooth.

So, for me at least, Koala is my favorite release yet. Kudos to the Ubuntu team, keep going!

Re:Release cycles?

[sootman]

I think the problem you are thinking of was an iTunes update that would erase hard drives due to an error in the install script.
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/OSX/itunes2_erased_drives.html

Re:Release cycles?

[jjbenz]

I had graphics issues on my toshiba tecra A2 laptop with 9.04, but v9.10 is working great, sound, video, wireless all work fine.

Re:Release cycles?

[Abreu]

From the first comment on the poll you quoted:

*** Disclaimer for those willing to analyse this poll ***
Most of users voting here are users with issues.
Users with painless experience are not likely to come here.

See the previous polls on that series, for comparison (hint: they show similar numbers, and if Ubuntu really had 35% success rate, it would not be the most popular Linux distro)

Re:Release cycles?

[Abreu]

Read before you quote:

*** Disclaimer for those willing to analyse this poll ***
Most of users voting here are users with issues.
Users with painless experience are not likely to come here.

Reading comprehension FAIL

Re:Release cycles?

[matt_hs]

We have a Toshiba laptop. The pattern I noticed is when my daughter is playing games on it and the headphones were plugged in from bootup, the sound came out the speakers. Unplugging and replugging the headphones changes the output to headphones only. We had a few other issues with the laptop, so I figured it was related to the laptop's hardware and didn't investigate it.

BTW, this is on Hardy Heron. I haven't tried KK on it yet.

Re:Release cycles?

[tuxgeek]

Thank you for that insightful post
Karmic is a bleeding edge release
It is also very stable on my HP dv7 laptop, and an improvement over 9.04
I'm loving it, although I'm running the Kubuntu version! Very nice indeed!!! Two thumbs up to the Ubuntu and KDE teams

Re:Release cycles?

[jpate]

bleeding edge? please

some of us use Arch ^_^

Re:Release cycles?

[tuxgeek]

Oh, and I didn't upgrade. This is a fresh install w/ ext4 as filesystem. The install went smooth. boot times are dramatically improved over all other systems I run. Shutdown happens in seconds. very sweet

Re:Release cycles?

[symbolset]

Why do people insist on trotting out their own experiences of success on a limited subset of hardware

With Vista these anecdotes added up to a Windows that never beat 20% share.

Re:Release cycles?

[symbolset]

Use clonezilla. I've had good results. It has partimage but it's automated and can back up to a USB drive or a share. Also, it's pen-bootable which is handy. It also makes good images of the odd Windows box. I liked it so much I installed it in my LTSP as a network boot image option along with Darik's Boot And Nuke, the standard Linux VDI and the other usual suspects.

Re:Release cycles?

[tuxgeek]

My friend, you're arguing with windoz trolls. there is nothing you can say that will make them think instead of blathering stupid shit

On topic, I would imagine the trouble people are having with karmic is that they are performing upgrades instead of a clean install. Everyone knows when you upgrade to a new OS, perform a clean install to a different drive than your primary. If you like it, transfer your data to it and go. If it sucks, nothings lost.

Re:Release cycles?

[tuxgeek]

Your problem is that you upgraded. I considered it but chose to perform a clean install to a spare drive instead in order to take advantage of the ext4 fs, among other new features you don't get w/ an upgrade.
An upgrade always leaves unwanted old feces scattered about. Old settings that are incompatible with upgraded features. Even windoz turns to crap when upgraded. Never upgrade. Save your data, fresh install, reinstall data, enjoy your new system.

Don't be discouraged, karmic is worth it.
Grub got an upgrade. It saw vista and 9.04 on the other drive and gave me working menu entries for them. But the menu.lst file is no longer there. It is now a grub.cfg script and is a little weird but can be edited to customize and reorder the boot menu

Re:Release cycles?

[smash]

Whichever one you like, you can shift from one to the other after installation.

Re:Release cycles?

[smash]

It was 1996 if i recall. I've been waiting since about then, anyway. You can use it as a desktop, just like you can drive nails into your balls. Its not necessarily a good idea though. I gave up waiting for reliable 3d support, games, and multi-channel sound several years back.

Re:Release cycles?

[Draek]

As a wise man once said, "Perfect is the enemy of good". If they delayed their releases until every last problem was sorted out, we'd have no release at all.

For what is worth, Karmic worked perfectly on both my laptop and my desktop, whereas Windows 7 decided last night to deny me any sound from my speakers without a single error message about it, and restored said functionality this morning again without giving me reason. Guess Microsoft needed to do more QA before release, huh?

Re:Release cycles?

[TeXMaster]

Windows: Don't adopt until Service Pack 1 Ubuntu: Don't adopt until 1-2 months after release

Even better, why not try the beta before it's released, and report any issues found? I get the impression that a number of the exposed issues might have been found by running the LiveCD of the beta on those same systems. (Of course, it would be even more interesting if Ubuntu has a way to 'install to try', with an option to rever to the previous state in case of failure.)

Re:Release cycles?

[Vintermann]

Do you use the upgrade function or just reinstall and keep your home directories? I admit I've often done the latter in the past, since it's so easy to install packages as you need them anyway, and packages lying around from the old system have caused me trouble in the past.

But this time it was a bit more serious. I tried to upgrade just using the handy little upgrade button, figuring, what's the worst that can happen, I can just do a full reinstall if it fails.

Then the upgrade program met a package it couldn't uninstall (broken uninstall script returning an error, I think), panicked, and gave up. System was not very usable, so I rebooted.

Or I tried to reboot. The boot process barfed at mounting the file system. Early enough that Ubuntu's "recovery mode" program didn't even get a chance to run.

Let's just say fixing the mess was not something I would want to guide my mother through.

Now that I've done it, though, I'd say the system itself is very nice. Encrypted home directory just works, as do a number of other little things you had to do manually two cycles ago (and yes, those manual changes were the kind that wreaked havoc on the automatic update process).
Ubuntu is progressing nicely, but they need to do more testing on the update function. It just should not, never! leave the system in an unbootable state.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people insist on trotting out their own experiences of success on a limited subset of hardware ...

Because they've been asked the direct question, "What has been your experience if you've moved to Karmic?"

Re:Release cycles?

[wisty]

Time boxed iterations are an essential part of agile development. Face it, if they waited for the OS to be ready , it would never be released.

They could set more specific goals, and use that to drive release schedules, but that would lead to bickering over what goals should be met, and generally suck the life out of the project.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people insist on trotting out their own experiences of success

Because my experiences match that of the vast majority of Ubuntu users.

"The vast majority of Ubuntu users" probably hasn't upgraded yet.

Re:Release cycles?

[msclrhd]

I ended up installing alsa. It would have been nice if it detected that I wouldn't have the sound driver for alsa installed when it overwrote the modprobe configuration, though.

I should really create an oss4 metapackage to help with configuration. However, I have since done a clean install and pulseaudio and the alsa sound drivers are working reasonably well (a lot better than in previous releases).

There are still some issues (e.g. sound in flash disappears after a while, using Adobe's plugin), but as I understand Ubuntu's configuration of pulse is not correct yet; here's hoping that they finally get it right in Lucid.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anarchduke]

I guess I should wait for the Vista service pack?

err...wrong OS... sorry

Re:Release cycles?

[msclrhd]

Hence the paragraph after this in my post. The average user is not going to install bleeding-edge use-at-your-own-risk here-be-dragons beta software just so they can find bugs, and if they do then how many of them will report bugs.

The same is true for Windows. Windows 7 was tested largely by the enthusiasts (and some reporters/reviewers as well). Issues *were* found in this process, and a lot of smooth edges were ironed out.

But what was the hardware coverage for this? Software? Deviations from the base configuration?

The distros and upstream developers need as much coverage as possible to identify bugs and fix the issues. They also need people who are willing to be patient and file bugs, and help the distros and upstream track down the bugs.

Users may also get burned when filing bugs if they don't see any action on the bugs they are interested in, or have filed. But if they don't file them, the developers won't know about them and can't possibly fix them (unless the developers and/or other testers hit a similar issue).

Re:Release cycles?

[azior]

For me KK is awesome, because I finally have accelerated graphics on my Dell Mini 9. I tried setting it up on jaunty a couple of times before but just assumed that my netbook didn't have the right chipset or enough graphics memory to run compiz. Now my netbook has all the benefits of the Ubuntu installation on my MBP (avant window navigator being one of my favourite things about it, 3D desktop cube and wibbly windows next), and more.

Same here. On previous versions my Toshiba laptop needed at least 25% of CPU for X alone, everything was stuttering. With the Koala it's all silk and smooth and it looks nice. It's slower in comparison to XP, but I had a lot more trouble getting XP to work right on the laptop. Koala works out of the box, even with the crappy atheros wlan card that never worked on previous versions.

Re:Release cycles?

[JustinRLynn]

The poll above is a very good example of the self selection bias. Most users that have successfully upgraded are unlikely to take a poll related to how the upgrade has had problems for them or even search out such a poll.

Re:Release cycles?

[dgatwood]

Speaking of karma, I can't believe there are this many posts and nobody has made the obvious "Karma's a bitch" joke yet.

Just saying.

Re:Release cycles?

[somersault]

I just did a complete reinstall, since I was having a couple of weird issues on my 9.04 install.. things like the update manager being set to update every day, but all that would happen is once a week I'd get a little notification in my system tray. The sound was also a little messed up and I had to uninstall pulse. I still was getting stuttering with my startup noise but everything was fine after that.

9.10 has sorted everything out, no issues at all so far. Music playback is fine, flash plugin working fine in Firefox. Evolution seems to be working better too, though I don't know how much that has to do with Canonical. If it all stays stable (and if I can run VPN successfully, I haven't tested it out yet in 9.10) I'll finally feel able to seriously recommend Ubuntu as a viable alternative for our offshore workers and even a few office positions where Windows specific apps (3D CAD and the like) aren't required.

Re:Release cycles?

[TheLink]

5 years? LTS is just for 3 years.

And even then it's still just a gamble by Ubuntu and the users. Or should I say a hopeless dream.

Because not all the developers involved in building the software in the LTS release work for Ubuntu. Ubuntu can't force them to fix bugs even if they are critical, and worse it's even harder to convince them to _backport_ fixes to some old version.

So what actually happens with "LTS" (or most Linux Distros) is it gradually gets less and less supported over the years. The developers just say "Bug? Try the latest version and get back to me"[1], and if the latest version just doesn't quite fit with "LTS" you're stuck with the options of living with the bug or heading to uncharted territory.

With a server system it's usually not such a big problem since you don't tend to change the software and hardware much. But for a desktop system - you might wish to change your vidcard, soundcard, printer, network card or harddrive (to SSD with TRIM for example) within that 3 years. And if the support happens to only be in the latest and greatest Linux kernel, good luck getting it backported to your "LTS" kernel.

Or say the developer totally revamps the architecture of something lets call it XYZ - you could end up with a split - old XYZ for old stuff new XYZ for the latest stuff - but your LTS GUI might not be fully compatible with the latest XYZ for some stupid reason. You grumble and the GUI developers say "try the latest version". So now you have new XYZ and new GUI on your "LTS" distro, which kind of defeats the purpose right?

In contrast, Windows 2000 and XP have actually got better and better supported over the years - more and more drivers were released that wouldn't BSOD the system, more and more software released that didn't require Administator privileges to run (or even install - many games and apps nowadays install fine without requiring admin). Yes support for Win2K is dropping, but that's after way more than 3 measly years.

[1] In my experience the developers too often say "WONTFIX" or "WORKSFORME" even if the behavior is broken. Good luck spending a fair bit of time convincing the developer that its broken and should be fixed. Yeah it's free software, so I'm happy that it mostly works as it is, but still...

I think too many of the bug reports are going directly to a developer. I think they should go to someone like a project manager (with a clue). The project manager can then coerce the developer to "fix this", or just ignore the bug (dupe or user error) and not have the developer even know of the report. Or group a bunch of reports into one bug, or split a report into a bunch of bugs.

Re:Release cycles?

[somersault]

Not really, it seems more like going from 2000->XP in this case. It seems like more of the same, but with a slightly prettier interface.

I just pointed out the Vista fiasco because either through poor memory, ignorance or pure trolling, some posters were already acting like commercial OSes never have any serious issues in their final builds. Another high profile case is PS3 firmware updates, there have been a couple of them that ended up bricking or at least requiring a reformat of some PS3s. And there is a LOT more variation in Ubuntu software and hardware than across the PS3 range.

Re:Release cycles?

[Yetiszaf]

Then you got lucky. My Mythbuntu-box is borked right after the upgrade. The Pulse-Audio-alsa-sink-module does not load, mysql-server was deinstalled and udev is missing the rules neccessary for mythtv to find the dvb-devices. It worked ootb with 9.04, with 9.10 it's broken.

Re:Release cycles?

[somersault]

Unfortunately there is no such option in the power preferences at the moment. You can only choose whether to display the icon or not in different situations (battery present, battery charging/discharging, etc)

Re:Release cycles?

[DangerFace]

This.

Seriously, I've just skimmed down the page trying to find examples of people saying their Karmic upgrade sucked, and there aren't many. However, there are a hell of a lot of people saying it was fine. I'd like to add that the only problem I had was that it took about fifteen minutes from booting the computer with the disk in to being a usable system, because I was at my parents' house and they have a crappy internet connection. Seriously, this is the kind of place people bitch when stuff doesn't work and big it up when it does, and very few people here have been critical of the install that they did.

Re:Release cycles?

[Lord Bitman]

How does partitioning have any effect on your ability to upgrade/downgrade, unless your distribution's installer is utterly, beyond-all-hope, broken-as-fuck?

Re:Release cycles?

[js_sebastian]

Sorry to the people who have problems, but I'd have to say my system feels a lot faster now. Boots faster, and compiz with all its 3d effects are a lot smoother with on my builtin intel card than they ever were with previous releases. I am a happy karmic user :)

Same experience here. I have only upgraded a laptop so far that has an intel graphics chipset, that was pretty slow on jaunty. Intel support has been massively improved.

Re:Release cycles?

[cheesybagel]

I waited until Nvidia mostly fixed their Vista driver issues and it works mostly ok. I still sometimes get weird issues though e.g. I have to disable shadows in Dawn of War II or else the game crashes Windows.

Re:Release cycles?

[Pvt_Ryan]

Just for the record I upgraded one machine from 9.04 and did a fresh install on another, both work fine.

One thing to watch with the server versions is that if you use a non LTS release you may have problems in the future doing upgrades. We had a 7.04 system running and decided to bring it up to date to 9.04 there was no upgrade path, we had to manually upgrade off the CD to each interm version as the older repositories had be moved, in the end we stopped on 8.04 as it was an LTS so when 9.10 comes out we should be able to jump straight to that.

This upgrade path "bug" may not affect more recent releases but still you need to be careful with the server versions you run.

I know someone will reply and mention it so "Yes I am away that 7.04 was no longer getting updates and I have no right to complain that an unsupported release couldn't be upgraded to the most recent version".

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

5 years? LTS is just for 3 years.

5 years for server version, 3 years for desktop.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

I belive "sudo update-grub" would help many people. If you run an obsolete kernel it is waste of time to try debugging sound, wifi and what not.

Re:Release cycles?

[rotorbudd]

Had the same problem ..... not finding a SATA disk. Tried option nodmraid, loaded system then sudo apt_get remove dmraid. All wonderful now!

Re:Release cycles?

[raistlinwolf]

It's running GCC4.4.2 & linux-2.6.31. That's pretty hardcore.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the fuck up you whiny wanker.

Re:Release cycles?

[Laurence0]

I ran a clean install (mostly because I was replacing the hard drive) on my HP nx7300 laptop and it works perfectly (just to add another anecdote to the data!) - the part which took the longest was copying the data from the old drive to the new one - but then 50 gig over a USB link takes a while.

The reason I'm replying to your post though is the battery issue. I've just checked, and I do get an estimated time remaining when I unplug. I suspect it might be that the OS has to get an idea of how quickly it uses the battery up and how quickly it charges before it can start to estimate time, so you might find that it spontaneously starts working in a day or two.

Oh, actually, I have seen a couple of bugs... One is that the Facebook Chat plugin for Pidgin seems to now be really unreliable, the other is that the battery monitor in Gnome-Do's dock doesn't seem to work properly - it claims I don't have a battery at all. Otherwise, rock solid. :-)

Re:Release cycles?

[jonadab]

> lets not try to claim that ANY of their releases are
> anything other than bleeding edge beta quality releases

Ubuntu is what it is because of the circumstances of its birth.

At the time, Debian stable had not been meaningfully updated in, approximately, forever. The cool kids were trying out Linux 2.6, and meanwhile Debian stable offered you the choice of the "new and experimental" Linux 2.2, or the tried and true Linux 2.0. What? Linux 2.4? We can't put that in stable, it's only six years old!

Ubuntu, or at least a large part of its popularity, was born out of frustration with this situation. The official Debian line at the time was that "stable" means "doesn't change often", but people were starting to think a new version would not come out *ever*. A lot of people started playing around with testing and/or unstable, but those are really a bit *too* bleeding-edge for most purposes.

Something intermediate was needed, something safer and saner than running off the testing repository (an actual *release*, in other words), but built out of software released in the current decade. Warty was built out of that would eventually become Sarge, but it was built as an actual *release*. This was sorely needed at the time, so it instantly became popular, and the rest is history.

So if you think Ubuntu is less stable than Debian stable, ... that's kind of the point.

Of course, Debian releases have been coming out a little more frequently since sarge. Etch for instance came out practically overnight, by Debian standards. So the disadvantages of using Debian stable are somewhat less now. But Ubuntu remains an intermediate distribution, more current than Debian stable but an actual stable release unlike Debian testing. That's its niche. That's its role. And the next time a Debian release takes half as long to come out as sarge did, I'll be very glad Ubuntu is around as an option.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

But more important, just a bit of advice for anyone who got burned by the upgrade and are upset: if your computer is important to you, don't be an early adopter. Just because a new version of your OS comes out doesn't mean you need to upgrade right away. Sit and wait to hear what people say about it, and wait for some of the kinks to get ironed out.

No, start testing early, before the release. This way, your problems will be solved when it is released and not only you, but all the others who have the same issue now get a working release. Trying a release and complaining that something does not work is not the right way; you should complain before the release.

Re:Release cycles?

[Dustie]

No, what Canonical is doing is releasing stable releases comparable and competing with Microsoft and Apple and then providing long time support like Debian om their LTS releases. Unfortunately the non-LTS releases is more like unstable or testing. I have been using Ubuntu on and off since Ubuntu 6 (Dapper Drake) and with every release the feel of being a beta tester have gotten worse and worse. This time I really think they have shot themselves in the foot by releasing Karmic with the new GRUB which is not only a beta version but also had known problems before they released it. Many who dual boot installs Windows on the primary drive sine that is what Windows like best and then change the drive with Ubuntu (and GRUB) to being primary drive afterwards. This causes GRUB to take from ~1 minute to load the menu (56 seconds and up in my case). Users in the forum report up to 3 minutes load time. Also it seems many in the forum agree that Ubuntu can no longer be upgraded and is comparable to Windows in that area forcing users to reinstall. I my opinion Ubuntu is a great distro but it is in no way a beginners distro. Beginners should stay one or even two releases behind the release schedule if they want to be sure to have sound, video and a reasonable performance.

Re:Release cycles?

[TractorBarry]

Well I've got 3 Ubuntu machines too. So far I tried upgrading 2 and the first now has no sound through HDMI (despite me reconfiguring it to what was working under 9.04) and the second gets GRUB error 25 when it tries to boot. Probably fixable but annoying. The other machine has been left well alone.

So for me personally this has been the worst Ubuntu upgrade so far.

YMMV.

Re:Release cycles?

[Dustie]

A tiny minority?? Unlike me it seems you haven't been helping out the masses on the forums.

Re:Release cycles?

[jimicus]

you can drive nails into your balls. Its not necessarily a good idea though.

It isn't? Damn, I knew I was doing something wrong.

Re:Release cycles?

[Hal_Porter]

How many of those claiming it did not work are agents of Microsoft opposed to Chairman Stallman's revolutionary 4 Freedom's of Software?

Many people complained about Comrade Stalin's reforms too. New research by the Stalin Memorial Foundation found that most of them were class enemies, Kulaks or agents of Foreign Imperialist powers.

Re:Release cycles?

[Hal_Porter]

whiny wanker.

I think we're just found the name for the next Ubuntu.

Re:Release cycles?

[orasio]

It seems canonical is more interested to show they can deliver something on time, rather than delivering something good when it's ready or delaying the release until proper QA is done.

That is kind of dumb.
Ubuntu releases polished LTS versions every two years, with good QA, so you can deploy them in an enterprise environment, with paid support available, and a sensible upgrade path.
In between, they release other versions for users for whom new software is more important than QA, and we like it.
They do deliver what we expect, and on time too.

Re:Release cycles?

[slashsloth]

There is at least one difference between uncooked flaky Linux distro releases versus Microsoft disasters like vista: the average unsuspecting user does not get the Linux junk pushed down their neck when they try to buy a new machine. Since Microsoft are the de facto pre-installed OS for the PC market it's understandable that they receive a lot of criticism for screwing up. On top of this they are a for profit company putting out a product. However any distro that messes up Debian's good name for reliability by introducing a load of untested flakeware also deserves a thrashing ;o)

Re:Release cycles?

[counterplex]

I've been using Ubuntu since 8.04 and have always upgraded using the "Upgrade" button without any issues. Upgrading to Karmic Koala was just as simple. I'm sure there's some crud left over from Jaunty but I did run apt-get autoremove so most of that should be gone.

Re:Release cycles?

[reallocate]

Common knowledge only among a certain segment of Linux fans, not among the general public where Ubuntu ought to be focusing its efforts. When was the last time Ubuntu ran some ads targetting the folks at Bet Buy and Walmart?

Few members of the general public have any interest at all in Ubuntu's philosophy, no more interest than in their philosophy of the company that made their toaster. Virtuous thoughts do not compensate for software shortcomings, real or perceived.

And, sure, people ought to spend some time researching an OS, but that isn't going to happen. People don't understand tech specs or language about technical capabilities. They want an OS that runs the software and hardware they already own, looks better than their current OS, is subjectively fast, and doesn't crash.

Re:Release cycles?

[tuppe666]

I think its poor when there is flag waving from one distribution against another one. When Ubuntu by providing Cutting edge packages that worked, rather than older packages that lacked the features to work faded. Especially since Conical has become more interested in giving real support to Debian its kind of sick.

Re:Release cycles?

[tuppe666]

Why do people insist on trotting out their own experiences of success on a limited subset of hardware as if they somehow negate the fact that people are suffering because of the Ubuntu developer's subservience to the tyranny of the "Six Month Release Cycle (OMG)." Even your example fails since you are having difficulties but are willing to brush them off.

Actually that is what the main post is about, check the original FORUM posts

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please take a look at the Jaunty poll linked in that post, it was 17% and Jaunty was one of the best versions since Feisty.

Re:Release cycles?

[tuppe666]

I have 100% success rate on six machines, 2 which use ADD2 cards tha simply did not work on previous releases of any Distribution...and nione of these machines can run Vista/Windows7

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

"And here's the advantage of Linux - I can move to another supplier, I'm not locked in."

And here's the advantage of Windows/MacOS X - The releases aren't so bad that I'd need to move to another supplier.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why a group of arrogant jerks who think they are smarter than everyone else can't see the difference between HOME, PROFESSIONAL, and ULTIMATE when it's in a nice little grid with checkmarks and such. The other three aren't even options if you want to purchase a single copy of Windows.

Re:Release cycles?

[V!NCENT]

Well, if you press the download button on www.ubuntu.com you get the choice between LTS and a normal release, with an explenation?

Lol? You never even tried the LiveCD and you are already complaining about what you do not even know...

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

I could not agree more.

I remember reading the upgrade notes. They recommend to disable third-party software sources prior to running the upgrade. And I cannot find the reference right now but I also remember reading somewhere to disable restricted drivers as well (Nvidia, etc.)

How many people who got burnt did that?

I upgraded an IBM M-series desktop from 9.04 to 9.10 without any issues by disabling restricted drivers and disabling the third-party sources. In 9.04 I could not enable the desktop effects for an Intel 915 integrated graphics controller but in 9.10 they work fine. I got burned upgrading this system from 8.10 to 9.04, but the 9.04 to 9.10 upgrade worked well.

If your system has a lot of custom wizardry, e.g. encrypted partitions, LVM, etc., I'd recommend backing up your data and doing a clean installation anyway because there is no way Canonical can test everything. I'm planning on upgrading my Acer 6920G laptop running 8.04LTS with a clean install soon since many issues I have with 8.04LTS appear to work with 9.10, most of these issues are with sound.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

"For me KK is awesome, because I finally have accelerated graphics on my Dell Mini 9."

OMG OMG. Really amazing.

Re:Release cycles?

[Jezza]

So why are so many people still running XP? (And I'm not suggesting Vista isn't a great OS - but if you have a computer to run a particular program, and it doesn't - well all the technical advantages in the world won't make it useful)

Re:Release cycles?

[abirdd]

In the end, the answer is, it does not matter, Windows 7 will just work. When I try my annual "lets try linux again" I go to distrowatch and try to pick one of the 300+ flavours of linux to install.

Re:Release cycles?

[somersault]

Isn't it though? Thanks for your support, youtube commenter impressionist dude.

Re:Release cycles?

[petermgreen]

I still don't use a new Ubuntu release for at least a few weeks though. There is always a flood of package upgrades for a few weeks after a release.
What this screams to me is INADEQUATE BETA TESTING.

One of the good things about debian is that there are a lot of people who run testing all the time and there is a relatively long period between freeze and release which is essentially beta testing time (though debian don't use that name for it). Debian spent longer on thier last freeze than ubuntu spends on a whole release cycle.

Re:Release cycles?

[KaLeVR1]

I participated in an interesting Ubuntu forum discussion about a data corruption in the ext4 file system and Canonical's decision to deploy the OS despite some misgivings of some of its engineers. I gave a link where bug chasers trying to build the final release suggested that they install ext3 as default since there were some unresolved bugs allegedly in ext4 when transferring large files. One engineer took over responsibility of the bug and said it was not conclusive enough to change their plans.

It was very obvious that the priority was sticking to the schedule and the published feature set at all costs. You can find the post here: http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?26,18172
The reference cited contains the entire text from which the excerpt was taken. I think it gives a clear example of why these problems persist. Canonical won't be accused of vaporware like Microsoft is when it is late delivering RTM versions. What it is being accused of is far worse I think and may have a long term cost. Especially if this is not a one time thing.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine is excellent ...

I upgraded my Kubuntu and everything work lovely jobly ;)

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but Canonical biggest mistake is that they try to control all open source software development what they includes to release software on Canonicals schedule, not when the software is ready. Other distributors are ready to move the release date if needed. And they really follow the alpha-beta-RC processing so the distribution goes RC until the bugs have ironed out. Canonical makes big changed even for last RC releases what makes the distribution suck, even the LTS releases as well. The point releases for LTS fixes installation bugs, not just include latest updates so people does not need to download so much after install.

Even the Canonical has a good point to have static schedule to develop software, it does not fit to open source community where many developers does it on their spare time. The software is ready when it is ready and it gets released when it is ready, not when one lousy chief of one company say when they need it.

Re:Release cycles?

[fredjh]

Different partitions for different types of data... the system was on one partition. When it failed, I reinstalled the system on that partition. All my user data was intact; no restoring required.

The other response you got (from Lorenzo) is how I plan on doing things in the future, but I didn't have a large spare partition this time.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure that only grousers line up to complete polls. Here's my experience: two upgrades, one as smooth as glass and the other (unfortunately on my primary computer) a disaster. Issues in the disaster include:

* Initially booted to wrong kernel and hung. Got that fixed but not without an error message still plaguing me on boot-up.
* Video Driver - hooped. Usual fix not working
* Sound Card - lost. Nowhere to be found.
* Virtualbox dead and the usual fix not working
* File associations lost

And I could go on. Some of this I expect. I've been down this road before. But the total loss of the sound card baffles me. I've had all kinds of issues with the pulse audio in the past; I'm no fan. But I can't even blame this on pulse.

Even the LiveCD is goofy. Firefox crashes on any attempt to run it, which makes debugging in LiveCD mode a real challenge

So for me, my poll results are 50-50. But the problems aren't pretty, and problems make news.

Re:Release cycles?

[danieltdp]

Because it is being asked on the article:

What has been your experience if you've moved to Karmic?

Re:Release cycles?

[Tarlus]

Common knowledge only among a certain segment of Linux fans, not among the general public where Ubuntu ought to be focusing its efforts. When was the last time Ubuntu ran some ads targetting the folks at Bet Buy and Walmart?

They describe it on their website to help you determine which ISO to download. I don't know if Canonical has ever pushed advertisement through retail very hard, but it's my opinion that it would be disastrous if they push it too hard into the general populace.

Few members of the general public have any interest at all in Ubuntu's philosophy, no more interest than in their philosophy of the company that made their toaster. Virtuous thoughts do not compensate for software shortcomings, real or perceived.

If people aren't attracted to Ubuntu's philosophy of being user and hardware-friendly, or their ideas of being as community-involved as possible, then what's to stop a person from choosing a more technically-involved distro like Gentoo or Slackware instead? In which case, they either know what they're doing (and would understand Ubuntu's LTS concept), or are about to face a steeply-curved learning experience (which is how many people first get their hands wet with *nix).

And, sure, people ought to spend some time researching an OS, but that isn't going to happen. People don't understand tech specs or language about technical capabilities. They want an OS that runs the software and hardware they already own, looks better than their current OS, is subjectively fast, and doesn't crash.

That's an unfortunate truth. Most people who just want a computer to run some programs without all the gritty details are going to end up with a Windows PC at any rate. If they want a shinier OS then they'll upgrade to a newer version of Windows, because it's easy and because that's what they know. But note that these people will likely never know what Ubuntu (or Linux in general) is, thus rendering the whole dilemma moot.

Re:Release cycles?

[TClevenger]

In contrast, Windows 2000 and XP have actually got better and better supported over the years - more and more drivers were released that wouldn't BSOD the system, more and more software released that didn't require Administator privileges to run (or even install - many games and apps nowadays install fine without requiring admin). Yes support for Win2K is dropping, but that's after way more than 3 measly years.

Really? Last time I checked, Microsoft has said that it won't be patching known serious bugs in TCP/IP in Windows XP, even though they claim XP will be supported until 2014.

That's okay, I can just hire a developer to backport those patches... oh, wait.

Re:Release cycles?

[lightning_queen]

Let's not forget the "endless reboot" problem experienced by many Vista users that stemmed from an update that was originally marked as required.

Re:Release cycles?

[GnuAge]

I'm not your mother, Vinterman (AFAIK). Can you give me some hint about what you did to retrieve your install? I didn't use the button but did a vi ":%s/jaunty/karmic/g" on sources.list and a 'apt-get dist-upgrade' after commenting out 3rd party repositories. Maybe I should have commented out contrib, universe, multiverse, upgrades & backports as well, The upgrade choked on some packages, a few rounds of removes and purges of various things wouldn't go through, rebooting stopped at mounting the file system. I'm waiting for a mandriva-linux-free-2010.0-i586 torrent to finish before blowing away Ubuntu altogether.

Linux upgrades are a difficult ho to road. Most Ubuntu upgrades have given me a bit of grief, but this is the first time I've totally broken the system. I have one box that I upgraded every 6 months from 5.04 to 8.04 that is still happily running Hardy LTS a lot more crisply than a heavily used 3.5 year old Windows install. Fedora & Mandriva upgrades are even rougher, Debian is better. My systems tend to be bloated & heavily customized, running multiple DEs and lots of non-standard packages, which doesn't help. I just deleted a couple of GB of games I never play to bring my /usr partition below 80% yesterday on the 2.5 year old Debian sid system on which I'm typing. 25 GB, that is a big-ass Linux install.

/dev/sda2 ext3 18G 14G 3.5G 79% /usr
/dev/sda3 ext3 20G 9.9G 8.4G 55% /
/dev/sda6 ext3 297G 55G 227G 20% /home

Re:Release cycles?

[CAIMLAS]

Eh, I've been using Ubuntu since April of '07 or so (from Debian). Even still, I've had quite a few "simply should not happen" agitations:

* A new USB 2.0 based card reader (USB, CF, SD, etc.) I bought in 4-09 worked (8.04), didn't work (8.04), worked(8.10), and then didn't work again (8.10), only to work again (9.04). It showed up in lsusb but wouldn't display/allow access to any plugged-in devices (via dmesg or otherwise).
* A built-in riohs CF reader in my X30 Thinkpad would not work unless I booted with a card in the bay. If it worked, the built-in miniPCI card and the PCMCIA port would not work. This is something which worked for a long time back on Debian, and for a release or two of Ubuntu, and is no longer working last I tried with 8.10. Supposedly it's brokenness is due to a rebuild/restructure/rewrite of the PCMCIA subsystem, but it hasn't worked for well over a year.
* pulse_audio has sucked and, for me, been completely unusable since its inception. I've disabled it and resorted to using something else. It appears to work fine on OpenSUSE (I think OS uses it as well, at least), so I don't know what Ubuntu's problem is.
* I've been unable to put a non-system, non-mounted, IDE disk to sleep via hdparm since 8.10 (upgrading to 9.04 in the hopes that the new version would fix things). The hdparm -S, -y, and -Y options would spin down the disk only to spin it up immediately.

And that's the short list; there are other little agitations (somewhat related to the kernel itself, like no sensors support for K10 CPUs or the most common/popular early Asus Phenom II board yet).

I would not put Ubuntu's server release on my servers. Honestly, I'm hesitant to recommend or use debian for my servers these days, because many of the packages are transitory, with the same package maintainers who don't give a damn about bugs as in Ubuntu. (Note, I was an "all debian, all day" kind of guy since around early 2001.) Yes, some are good, but even debian's samba/cups integration (not sure what's the problem) has had a high-CPU-utilization bug for the better part of a year that isn't being fixed.

Re:Release cycles?

[reallocate]

>>"That's an unfortunate truth."

That's a common sentiment. But, why is it so unfortunate? What does a typical computer user gain from detailed technical knowledge? For most, that amounts to be able to work around the shortcomings of the OS. E.g., if a new peripheral doesn't work as advertised when plugged in, maybe they can do something about it.

I used Linux -- mostly Slackware --consistently for ten years on my desktop and as a server. A few years ago I switched to Apple after I ran through 3 wireless cards all touted -- by Ubuntu and/or Slackware -- as compatible. Now, I haven't written a script or pulled out vi in a long time, but I haven't completely forgotten everything I learned in those 10 years with Linux. But, and it's an important exception, I don't need that knowledge to successfully and happily use my Mac. That knowledge doesn't benefit me.

An OS that carries with it an expectation of shaky hardware support and a need for a steep user learning curve will always be confined to a tiny niche of the market. It's my impression that Ubuntu is aiming for more than that, that it very much wants "real world" users who don't, and won't, have any technical expertise.

Re:Release cycles?

[TheLink]

That's still 8 years. Longer than Ubuntu LTS.

If you're willing to pay you might still be able to hire someone to patch that Windows XP bug. I believe at least one person in the past has released patches for bugs in Microsoft's stuff and he didn't have the source code. There are people who are quite good at reverse engineering Windows internals and inserting code of their own.

Anyway, to me that just shows how desperate Microsoft is to force people on to Vista and later. They need to get everyone off XP before stuff like Wine and ReactOS get "good enough".

Otherwise Microsoft will be in big trouble. They'd be like Intel trying to get people to jump on board the Itanic and AMD suddenly releases AMD64, and everyone says - hey we now don't need to go through all that pain!

The market will be like the switch from there only being "IBM PC BIOS" to a market with Award, AMI, Phoenix etc. Microsoft is well aware that PC BIOS vendors don't make monopoly profits.

Lastly, I've seen too many WONTFIXes and WORKSFORMEs on OSS bug sites to believe that the OSS stuff is really better than Microsoft's stuff. They're just crap at different things ;). I know someone who was using something that's deprecated and documented (IPQUEUE) but he was getting slow performance when there are many VLAN interfaces. His option was to try something that's not deprecated (NFQUEUE?) but poorly documented (at that time).

Re:Release cycles?

[Dustie]

Yes it would seem so but running update-grub does not add the new kernel for many users for some reason. Check in the forum. They would either have to delete the file and get a new one created or add the new kernel manually.

Re:Release cycles?

[Dustie]

I have 100 % failure rate on my machines. Or rather problems that needed to be fixed manually afterwards. Numbers from such a small source is worth nothing. Read the forums. They tell a different story.

Re:Release cycles?

[Lord Bitman]

And you can do all of that from different /directories/ without worrying about what partition something is on (you know, that's one of those things about unix: it pretty much _never_ cares how a directory is stored, unless you tell it to)

I suppose if you have an abysmally broken installer which clobbers things without asking, and only installs to the root of a mountpoint(seriously?), and deletes random files it doesn't even know about, then it might matter.

Otherwise, you probably just read a guide from 1970 about how to partition your hard drives, or something copied from a copy of a copy of one, and never actually thought about it or tried it.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista had some really pathetic issues for *months* after it was released. I expect at least these issues will be cleared up pretty quickly. And as others have pointed out, this isn't an LTS release.

People are justified in trotting out their own experience because the summary asks for it.

For me KK is awesome, because I finally have accelerated graphics on my Dell Mini 9. I tried setting it up on jaunty a couple of times before but just assumed that my netbook didn't have the right chipset or enough graphics memory to run compiz. Now my netbook has all the benefits of the Ubuntu installation on my MBP (avant window navigator being one of my favourite things about it, 3D desktop cube and wibbly windows next), and more.

The only backwards step I've noticed so far is that the battery app in the system tray now just gives charge level as a percentage, with no time remaining or time to charge info. I don't think I had to install a custom app for that before. Strange.

Yep I'm finding Karmic Koala awesome no problems that I can think of :D, it's a great release

Re:Release cycles?

[jeffstar]

thanks

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who should listen to you when you got spanked by an ac here today right here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1429510&cid=29979500 , and here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1429510&cid=29980114 twice in a row? You're obviously no expert.

Re:Release cycles?

[holgie]

And here's the advantage of Linux - I can move to another supplier, I'm not locked in.

I fail to see your logic. Logic would be: "And here's the advantage of PCs - I can move to another OS, I'm not locked in". Moving from one distro to another require just as much of a complete reinstall as would any OSX, windoze, whatever... I'm not an MS fanboy and I know that installing most Linux distros is much easier, but please keep your logic straight -- I'm not a native english speaker so please see if you can control yourselves, gramma nazies ;-)

Re:Release cycles?

[Jezza]

You're forgetting your investment in applications and expertise, those things are far more important than you've suggested. Also Linux runs on a lot more than "PCs".

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who should listen to you when you got spanked by an ac here today right here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1429510&cid=29979500 , and here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1429510&cid=29980114 twice in a row? You're obviously no expert and anyone can take a read in those links, the second one mostly, and at how badly you messed up on your comments on a se windows moron.

Re:Release cycles?

[mhall119]

Lets see, I am a computer Professional, who needs an OS for his Home computer. Which should I choose? And who need Ultimate anyway?

Re:Release cycles?

[mhall119]

Wireless cards aren't supported, only chipsets. Vendors often use entirely different chipsets in cards of the same model.

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

well, there are those time where a kernel developer comes out and say whops! we have corrupted 20% of ext4/reiserfs/fsoftheday out there!

when shit comes, I'd like my partition away from bugged kernels.

Re:Release cycles?

[reallocate]

That's just a rewording of the problem.

Besides, I knew that and bought cards with the allegedly correct chipsets.

But, the larger point is that two popular Linux distributions made false compatibility claims. I doubt it was deliberate. Most likely, someone tested one card with a chipset and issued a verdict that all cards with that chipset were compatible.

Just another example of how Linux often expects people to change their behavior in order to use the OS, rather than the other way around.

Re:Release cycles?

[fredjh]

Yeah, because I want all the junk left over from the last install... and I'd certainly never want to try a different file system or anything.

Re:Release cycles?

[Lord Bitman]

you can mount a loopback device, this is pretty much the only sane way to try out another filesystem

Re:Release cycles?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had a number of problems including Ubuntu now not recognising my wireless broadband ( a bug that was known about prior to release of 9.10). I personally do not like Windows and have been using Ubuntu since Dapper...I'm considering forking out the $170 for Windows 7 so I can at least have internet connectivity and bluetooth.

Wifi works

[Dwedit]

I found that the Edimax WiFi card finally survives sleep mode without breaking.

Re:Wifi works

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever tried this??

$ su
# echo 'SUSPEND_MODULES="$SUSPEND_MODULES edimax-driver-name-here' > /etc/pm/config.d/edimax-fix

That's the way to fix the ath_hal (aka MadWifi) drivers that aren't suspend-aware.

Re:Wifi works

[sheepweevil]

Wifi works after sleeping. Microphone boost is in my sound settings now. Eclipse isn't a 3 year old version anymore. Firefox 3.5 by default. OpenOffice 3.1. New Software Center is better than the old Add/Remove programs. Ubuntu one is cool - 2 GB online backup for everyone. This has been the best version of Ubuntu I have used (and I started at Edgy).

Re:Wifi works

[dr_dank]

Sleep! That's where I'm a viking.

Karmic Koala - mostly Karmic

[kawabago]

I'm using amd64 9.10 with dual monitors and it is relatively self configuring. So far no big problems that would lead me to regret upgrading.

Re:Karmic Koala - mostly Karmic

[Anonymous Coward]

ditto. amd64 9.10. I performed a new install vs upgrade, found that the xconf.org was corrupt preventing my 2nd monitor from working, but with a little help from the community, got it resolved without much todo.

Re:Karmic Koala - mostly Karmic

[Nerdfest]

Problems plugging in an external monitor on my netbook. Workarounds are available, so it's tolerable. On the upside, it seems a bit better on batter life. Strangely, I'm not seeing any improvement in boot times, which people seem so obsessed with. Until it's under 10 seconds for my netbook, I'm sticking with suspend/hibernate.

The new disk utility picked up the informed me that my laptop disk is in serious need of replacing, which is a nice thing to know before it fails. Overall, not as smooth an upgrade as Jaunty, but not bad.

Re:Karmic Koala - mostly Karmic

[Anonymous Coward]

I changed to Fedora 11 when amd64 9.06 failed to support 3d graphics on my GMA 4500 chipset. It now runs well, hasn't given any hangs and handles dual monitors beautifully. I have had fewer problems (practically none) than I had with Ubuntu the last two releases. Not turning back anytime soon until Canonical pick up their act.

I seriously think they have slipped at Canonical - maybe they have lost some expertise?

Re:Karmic Koala - mostly Karmic

[zach_the_lizard]

On my Dell laptop, which is a couple of years old now (2006 or 2007, IIRC), I've gotten better boot times. Shutting down, on the other hand, takes forever. The best boot times it ever achieved were under Gentoo, and I don't currently have the time to play with that. It also shut down very quickly.

Re:Karmic Koala - mostly Karmic

[Anonymous Coward]

Palimpsest (the disk utility) is defective by design. The developer second guessed the threshold parameters recommended by the disk manufacturers so gives false positives for (e.g.) Seagate and Hitachi drives. [What a wanker.]

Re:Karmic Koala - mostly Karmic

[Anonymous Coward]

On the upside, it seems a bit better on batter life.

To be fair, you probably shouldn't be counting on your batter more than a day. There's raw eggs in there, man!

Ubuntu dev's response

[Anonymous Coward]

From earlier today: http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2009/11/register-bloodied-by-lack-of-research.html

I installed Karmic on my Acer Aspire AS1410 the day of release. I had to switch the SATA drive from AHCI to IDE, but other than that, it runs beautifully and I love it. Definitely going to upgrade my desktop this weekend.

My experience

[Kjella]

Blank and flickering screens: No
Failure to recognize hard drives: No
Defaulting to the old 2.6.28 Linux kernel: No
Failure to get encryption running:
Sorta, but only because my computer took a dive in the middle of the live upgrade. I had to remount / read-write from an emergency console and run apt-get again. Or actually it told me to run "dpkg --configure -a" to correct it. That installed most things, but I had to reboot into the normal recovery console and run last updates. Rebooted and...

Working flawlessly with full disk encryption and everything. No problems with anything so far, that's my anecdotal evidence at least.

I've upgraded....

[tirk]

Against my better judgement I upgraded early on - I'm usually the type to wait awhile and see what people find. However, I have to say, I've not had any issues other then a 4.5 hour download for the updated packages. I've been running it a couple days now and not once has anything crashed or given me a problem. Perhaps it's the fact I'm using a nearly 4 year old laptop though, so all the drivers are fairly stable now.

Re:I've upgraded....

[noob749]

I've not had any problems either. My machine is a Dell box over a year old, and I upgraded from 9.04 which had some nasty problems (black squares flickering across the screen at random all the time!).

Koalas > Jackalopes

Re:I've upgraded....

[PincushionMan]

You should try one of the mirrors. I cut my download time down from 4 hours to 45 minutes. I like that they are classified by location and speed. Find them here. Source.

Fairly painless upgrade...

[Patman]

I've had a fairly painless upgrade from Jaunty on two laptops and a desktop. What is weird for me is how it interacted with VirtualBox; after the upgrade, my username was missing from the vboxusers group and my XP VMs no longer saw the USB hub; easy to fix once I figured it out, but really frustrating.

Re:Fairly painless upgrade...

[PaKL]

I have had a very easy time also. One on a fairly new PC (Intel Dual Core, nVidia graphics card and 2GB of RAM) and then a Toshiba Tecra A7 laptop (Intel Dual core, ATI graphics card, and 2GB of RAM).

My only gripe was the failure that still occurs in the Toshiba laptop with the Bluetooth card not functioning. I was able to get it to work with 9.04 but the same trick is not working now.
Everything else is functioning well.

Re:Fairly painless upgrade...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had a fairly painless, but really frustrating, upgrade from Jaunty.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Fairly painless upgrade...

[fwice]

I'll second that. My upgrade [48 hours after release] was seamless.

The only thing that could only be considered a problem was that the login screen automatically made itself the 'list all users' version instead of the 'enter user name:' version. Only a slight annoyance to fix that one.

The best? VLC returns to the all-in-one version, instead of the two window [one for controller, one for player] version...

Re:Fairly painless upgrade...

[Techman83]

I've installed on 4 different machines (including one I've always had trouble with because of the cheap KVM) and it's been the least effort I've ever had to put in. No custom scripts to fix the screen up on my work notebook (dual screen just works and it detects when I'm not at work and goes back to single). My Desktop at home runs exceptionally smoothly (nvidia card). I seem to be able to watch flash on my Notebook again, pulse seems to be behaving nicely (no slow, jitter or ultra fast). My Fiance is voluntarily using the Netbook Remix I installed on her machine (XP Home is the default, no point forcing her into anything else), which was also pretty seamless. So three fresh installs and an Upgrade. 3 desktop/1 Remix.

I did read that a lot of people were having troubles with 64bit + the closed source binary nvidia drivers, but can we really hold Ubuntu responsible for that? There is a big warning when installing the Binary drivers, so maybe Nvidia need to get there shit together.

Re:Fairly painless upgrade...

[gravos]

I get a full-up kernel panic when trying to resume from suspend and have some troubles with VirtualBox too, but everything else is working ok.

Re:Fairly painless upgrade...

[tqft]

Bluetooth worked in Hardy & intrepid for me. Stopped and started again in Intrepid. Then failed.

Worked for about a week in Jaunty.

Still dead in karmic - hci timeout

Latest bug
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bluez/+bug/453885

Original bug
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/268502

Re:Fairly painless upgrade...

[Anonymous Coward]

Interessting, I had no issues with my VirtualBox and XP Pro installed after the upgrade, but I do feel as if the performance is worse than 9.04, at least of VirtualBox. Do you feel the same?

Bias

[Bratmon]

Obviously, if you try an OS within 2-3 days after release, there's going to be somebody with problems. There are tons of people who it works fine, so they didn't bother to post anywhere. For me, the upgrade worked perfectly, and now my sound card works.

My experience

[punzada]

In jaunty my wireless card would cause kernel panics while writing to ext3 (known issue, bug report filed). Also needed to use a custom repo/manually install nvidia drivers as the one provided by the OS were unstable to say it nicely, and a giant massive headache to say it not so nicely. In karmic my wireless card will not connect to WPA encrypted networks (known issue, bug report filed, still no fix). Lesson Learned: Wireless hardware support is still garbage even with mostly generic Intel wireless chips in linux. That being said, otherwise I've enjoyed Karmic quite a bit and haven't had any of the other issues others are claiming. If only my wireless could work 100% I would be in love.

I've installed it on...

[aztektum]

My primary desktop at home, a 2nd desktop at work, and before release, I had the beta and then RC running in VM's for a few weeks. None of these had problems. Then again most of this is on older hardware (p4's with similar era video cards, etc).

Ubuntu needs to put a YMMV disclaimer :P

Re:I've installed it on...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, though I'd increase it's CYA-ness to all OS's need a YMMV disclaimer.

Re:I've installed it on...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an eeePC 1000. I had the netbook flavor of the 9.10 beta installed and had no problems. Lots of updates but then it was a beta. i noticed that theres an ubuntu 9.10 moblin flavor so I had to try it out. I liked the look and feel of the ui but missing features suck as bookmarks and no packages for generic evolution(didnt like the moblinized evolution client ui) and no firefox(for bookmarks and addons) and general flakiness( web browser crashing to desktop, random mutter crashes and booting to login) kept me from keeping it for every day use. after i got tired of moblin, I installed the desktop flavor of the 9.10 RC and havent had any problems since.

through all these installations I have used the user home directory encryption option in the installer. My primary activities on this machine are web browsing, ie slashdot post whoring, and watching movies on hulu. Cant say I have had any new problems w/ flash or anything else for that matter with this installation. everything has just worked great. battery life has seemed a little better with 9.10 over 9.04.

Works Fine for Me

[Anonymous Coward]

The upgrade failed miserably, but a fresh installworks fine on my EEE 901. I can even type /. comments on it!

Re:works fine for me

[Rick17JJ]

Kubuntu 9.10 is working fine for me. I did a fresh clean install of Kubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10 onto another partition, several days ago. I kept my old copy of Debian 5.0 on the other partition, so that I can dual-boot between either Linux distro, while deciding which one I like best. Actually, I can triple boot, because I also have Slamd64 12.2 Linux on yet another partition on the same hard drive.

I have a several year old desktop socket 939 type AMD-64 X2 4200+ computer which runs at 2.4 GHz and has 2 GB of RAM. The motherboard uses the older nVidia nForce3 chipset. My video card is a rather ordinary old fanless AGP type video card which uses the nVidia GeForce FX 5200 chipset.

I used the alternate install version of the 64-bit version of Kubuntu 9.10. I chose to format the partition as EXT3, instead of EXT4, which would have been the default choice.

KDE 4.3 probably uses significantly more resources than the Xubuntu, which you use. But, despite that the computer still feels like a fast stable new computer. The only slight performance issue that I have noticed is an occasional rare, approximately 10 second delay, when when asking Firefox to try to open an HTML file on the hard disk or save something to the hard disk. That annoying hesitation does not happen most of the time, it just does so occasionally.

Earlier tonight, I removed the PCI card which provided an extra Ethernet port, which I do not actually use. When booting up, Kubuntu 9.10 was not consistent about which Ethernet port to designate as eth0, and which to designate as eth1. That inconsistency was confusing the Firestarter firewall which I had installed, so I solved the problem by removing the PCI card. I also mentioned that minor problem in another post.

netbook remix

[feranick]

I was looking to replace the default 8.04 in my dell mini 9 with the 9.10 netbook remix. I found out that the desktop-switcher is not included in the distro. So I need to stick with the default single windows window manager, instead of the full GNOME. Why you may ask? Well, the desktop-switcher application was too buggy on release time, and they decided to remove it from the distro instead of fixing it. So nobody can complain and more important, there is nothing to be fixed if it's not there in first place. I'll stick to the old but reliable 8.04, for the time being.

Re:netbook remix

[Anonymous Coward]

It is included, i am using it.
And your argument doesn't make sense, why would they leave it in the full if it was buggy?

Re:netbook remix

[Anonymous Coward]

I use karmic Koala on a Lenovo 10 and it is great. First I used 9.04 Netbook-Remix, but then also installed ordinary GNOME (I am more used to it, and one can do more). I jumped to Alpha5 of 9.10 (and all the updates) and use it daily.
Clearly my OS of choice for this machine...

Re:netbook remix

[EponymousCustard]

i almost didn't believe you...but it's true: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unr-meta/+bug/443298 however i will be upgrading to karmic after (release date + 1 month) to take advantage of the improved intel graphics drivers and full screen flash without flicker (at least when i try the karmic livecd it works well)

Re:netbook remix

[Anonymous Coward]

I am on the Ubuntu bug squad and I am familiar with the reasons why they got rid of the desktop switcher. The original application worked fine until a change happened to Gnome upstream and broke many of the assumptions that desktop switcher made. After analyzing the design and considering alternatives, it was decided (at the last minute) that it would be better to take it out before the distro is officially released and endure the brunt of bug reports.

The entire concept of doing a switch to a live desktop session was determined to be too risky. Lucid and possibly Karmic will eventually get the ability to choose between a normal Gnome session and an Netbook session at login using the normal methods.

I got a bit stung

[Brietech]

I upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10, and everything went smoothly except for the following: 1. My sound hardware is no longer recognized for some reason. I have a Dell Dimension computer with integrated audio, and it had worked fine after installing 9.04, but stopped working when I upgraded. It now claims I have no sound hardware installed, and I'm not entirely sure how to correct it. 2. After rebooting, the screen now goes blank (video card stops outputting) when X should start and bring up the login screen. I'm also not sure what caused this. I dropped down to a console, tried to kill the running X process, and then things seemed to miraculously work. I actually had to get something done, so I just went with it, but I'm not sure exactly what happened (or what I did to fix it). Maybe this is related to the proprietary Nvidia drivers I'm using? Everything else seemed to work just fine as far as I can tell. When I have a few hours to dig through forums, I'll try to fix the sound and the screen blanking thing.

Re:I got a bit stung

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be something dumb like gdm is starting before a pre-required module or daemon has completely started.

Re:I got a bit stung

[diamondsw]

Wait, did you say everything went smoothly except you didn't have sound or video ?

That right there is why Linux hasn't gone mainstream.

Re:I got a bit stung

[shelterit]

My upgrade went fine, except that I used OSS instead of ALSA. I had *no* problems whatsofever. I *then* chose to go back to ALSA to see if they had improved support for Intel embedded sound chips, and -after stuffing around a bit, as usual, with the crappy asound / modprobe options - indeed they had, even the microphone seems to be alive. I like the Karmic Koala, it's all coming together very nicely. There's been a slight flurry of updates the last few days, which is good as they sort out the kinks, but all in all this beats Windows down the pants; I was a Windows user since version 2.0 (!!!) and a DOS users for years and years before that. I switched to Ubuntu about 9 months ago, and I am *blown*away* with it, and ashamed I didn't do it earlier.

Re:I got a bit stung

[Anonymous Coward]

This fixed my no sound devices detected issue. Looks like it's because grub is using the wrong kernel.
http://mondotech.blogspot.com/2009/10/ubuntu-910-karmic-koala-upgrade-no.html

Re:I got a bit stung

[hufman]

Make sure your GRUB shows the new 2.6.31 kernel. When I upgraded, the kernel installed, but it didn't run update-grub, and so my GRUB menu didn't show the new kernel. When it booted into the old kernel, I had the same problem as you, where it showed that no audio devices were installed. Merely booting into the proper new kernel fixed it.

Re:I got a bit stung

[TheSpoom]

Haha, I was about to post something like that. For the vast majority of users it isn't that bad, but there does seem to be a certain acceptance among devs of the idea that something that worked before may not work now, which I think is a really odd way of thinking.

Re:I got a bit stung

[FallinWithStyle]

In Brietech's defense, he did have a functioning internal speaker. His desktop environment of choice uses the mobo speaker to paint a picture of the desktop-- all you need is a keyboard ;-)

Re:I got a bit stung

[sternn64]

My upgrade was fine, aside from the fact that the installer found that I'd killed PulseAudio with a lead pipe and stuffed it into the fridge with "chmod -x /usr/bin/pulseaudio; chattr +i /usr/bin/pulseaudio". It threw a fit about a couple broken packages as a result. PulseAudio screws up my audio horribly on both my work box (Optiplex 755) and my home box (custom AM3 system). Killing it deader than dead made sound work perfectly (and kept it from reviving on package upgrades).

Unfortunately, 9.10 is dependent on PulseAudio to the point that you can't adjust the volume in Gnome without it. I switched to KDE, and I was happy.

To be safe, I decided to do a new install on my netbook, as the upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04 resulted in a nasty gconf bug that took me a month to track down (leftover 8.10 gconf breaks 9.04). They did finally fix the annoying rt2860 WPA bug. It was a recurring issue on my Eee.

Re:I got a bit stung

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the exact problem in 2000 when I installed Linux (Mandrake) for the first and only time. No kidding. Dell commodity hardware too.

Re:I got a bit stung

[OFnow]

"I upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10, and everything went smoothly except for the following: 1. My sound hardware is no longer recognized for some reason. I have a Dell Dimension computer with integrated audio, and it had worked fine after installing 9.04, but stopped working when I upgraded. It now claims I have no sound hardware installed, and I'm not entirely sure how to correct it. "

Wierdly, my experience was the reverse. My microphone (using built-in sound on a new-to-me
ASUS P5Q3 Deluxe/Wifi) did not work with 9.04 (nor did sound even play till I fiddled
with sound settings, one defaulted off). But with 9.10 it did all work out-of-the-box -- great for me.

Now if the ATI Radeon HD 4350 (newly out this year) worked better with the open-source drivers
it would be great. But I get ugly speckles in menu bars.

Regardless, it's all better than Fedora Core 9 (which I had on older motherboard plus PCI sound card).
I do get it though: lots of different experiences out there.

Re:I got a bit stung

[Rozine]

I had a similar video issue until I switched to the generic kernel branch. I guess the 386 version doesn't like the nvidia driver. Maybe that will work for you?

Re:I got a bit stung

[racasper]

I lost sound after upgrading. Found this fix on a forum, and it worked..

Open this menu: System/ Administration/ Hardware Drivers
Remove the Software Modem driver. For some reason it interferes with alsa.

Re:I got a bit stung

[apoc.famine]

Ditto to problem 1 here. I have an old SB live card, onboard sound, and a USB headset. Nothing worked after the update. I was running Alsa before, and this update installed Pulse Audio. I purged that with fire, but still have some audio issues. System audio works, Flash audio doesn't, Kmix crashes and locks up all the time, and alsamixer fails with some error. If I wasn't putting in 16 hr days in grad school right now, I would probably have it straightened out. As it is, I'm living with partial sound until the weekend.
 
I think I need to purge all my sound and selectively reinstall. However, it's cute that purging alsa still removes kubuntu-desktop as well. That's a sweet bug that's been around for at least 2 years now. If I recall correctly, I did this same thing six months ago....

Re:I got a bit stung

[ELitwin]

Are you a Buddhist monk by any chance? You seem very unfazed by something that would make me want to put my fist through my laptop screen.

Re:I got a bit stung

[walshy007]

regressions happen, they are pretty much unavoidable for a project of a large enough size. All you can do is learn to deal with them well and fix them at the next (hopefully soon) release

Re:I got a bit stung

[homm2]

I can confirm this; I also didn't have sound until I ran update-grub and rebooted.

Re:I got a bit stung

[Anonymous Coward]

I had your same symptoms.
Those were caused by Ubuntu 9.10 failing to update /boot/grub/menu.lst to boot from the new kernel 2.6.31 instead of the old one 2.6.28 of the 9.04.
Just update /boot/grub/menu.lst to boot from the right kernel and everything will work again.

Stupid problem, simple solution. Nevertheless I am appalled by this episode.

Re:I got a bit stung

[lsolano]

Wait, did you say everything went smoothly except you didn't have sound or video ?

he he, you've just express the opinion of everybody after reading that post.

I do use linux (Mandriva) but I've never being able to understand the religious thing about it.

How on planet earth someone can think that everything is fine with an OS when you got neither sound nor video?

That is not what 'smooth' means at all. The correct thing to say is that Ubuntu just turn your computer into a useless piece of hardware, beacase you can not anything on it now.

Oh well, not exactly nothing at all, you can play with ls, cd, top, grep, more, less, df, du, ping...ping... forget ping, I don't think your network card is yet working.

Re:I got a bit stung

[Anonymous Coward]

Upgraded an ASUS Netbook with the Netbook Remix - no problems. In fact it goes really well. Better user inteface, well prettier and it seems faster. Shutdown is super fast.

  Updated my desktop with a Nvidia graphics card and I get the screen go blank - actually no output from the graphics port (monitor says "No Signal") shortly after startup. Somewhat painful after all the previous successful updates. I fould that if I started in recovery mode and at a command line did a startx I didn't get the problem. Haven't tested any further after that to see if it fixed it.

Oh, re all the rubbish about "thats why linux hasn't". I have never done a Window upgrade that worked. I have always had to resort to re-installing Windows, re-installing the apps etc. One reason I like Linux is that even if you have to get desperate and totally re-install it your applications still work. They don't need re-installing. The other reason I tolerate the occasional hiccup is - what do you want for free! I get the same problems with Windows but I have to pay for that.

Re:I got a bit stung

[Veroxii]

Not sure about the sound issue, but I had the video issue too this morning. It's because I installed the proprietary Nvidia drivers. Simply rerun the installer and it should recompile and build the driver from scratch and install it properly.

This is not really a 9.04 to 9.10 issue though, it happens whenever you upgrade the kernel - happened to me twice with normal Jaunty updates.

Re:I got a bit stung

[apoc.famine]

+2 to this post.
 
I blame my 16hr grad school days for the fact that I didn't notice that grub failed to update. Once I booted to the new kernel, sound is back and working.
 
Thanks a bunch to you and the AC above.
 
Incidentally, this is why I like open source software, and why I like slashdot. We get posts with issues, and we get posts with fixes.

Re:I got a bit stung

[Anonymous Coward]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=981

"The Leopard Upgrade went well except for the nagging blue screen"

Wharglbargl

Last I checked Macs were pretty mainstream, so was Windows 7, and both of them seem to have similar issues.

Check please!

Re:I got a bit stung

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running UNR 9.10 on my Dell A90. It technically IS possible to have multiple windows on screen at the same time. What you have to do is "unmaximize" the windows and resize them. At this point you'll only see the last one you resized. Next, click the icon of the other one(s) you want to see and they will show up. Cumbersome, yes, but technically possible.

BTW, I have two issues with UNR 9.10. One, wifi drivers did not install out of the box. That was an easy fix and it works flawlessly now. Two, if I leave my SD card in the slot, the OS freezes when I try to put it to sleep. If I remove the SD card, it sleeps fine.

Those are the ONLY two issues I have right now.

Re:I got a bit stung

[Anonymous Coward]

Check if yr menu.lst got updated..with the new kernel..had the same problem updating the grub menu.lst fixed it.

Re:I got a bit stung

[RAMMS EIN]

``there does seem to be a certain acceptance among devs of the idea that something that worked before may not work now''

It has long been this way with Ubuntu, which is why I've shunned it since the 6.xx days.

On the other hand, I'm actually posting this from a pre-release version of karmic ... because that includes the 2.6.31 kernel which has drivers for my motherboard's fan controller. If it were up to me, I'd run something more stable, but the upgrade threadmill imposed by hardwase manufacturers constantly changing interfaces to the same functions has forced my hand.

Besides, I don't know where to turn. Even the last Debian update I did went bonkers. Folks in the data center had to physically access the machine to pick the right kernel to boot, and after that, a lot of things turned out not to be working anymore in userspace, including the mail server.

Please, people. I just want the things that were working yesterday to still be working today. There are enough distros that focus on bringing the latest and greatest shiny features. Where is the distro that focuses on stability and quality?

Re:I got a bit stung

[Anonymous Coward]

...but there does seem to be a certain acceptance among devs of the idea that something that worked before may not work now, which I think is a really odd way of thinking.

Funny, that's why I stopped using Windows.

Re:I got a bit stung

[Blakey Rat]

No, you should be getting angry. You should be demanding quality. Where's the QA?

Demand better and you'll get better. If you're ok with "nothing works," then nothing will work.

Re:I got a bit stung

[walshy007]

Demand better and you'll get better.

For a given definition of better, most people want new features, new features are not conductive to no breakages and few bugs

If your definition of quality is no/few bugs, then just don't get any new features.. ever, maintain a bug fix release only.

here you want the best of both worlds, you just can't.

Re:I got a bit stung

[Blakey Rat]

I would argue that Microsoft and Apple both manage it better than Ubuntu does, at least if you measure by usable features. Linux has a kajillion features, but the majority of them are completely unusable by the average person.

Re:I got a bit stung

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Which part of MS do you work for again?

Pretty smooth

[SkankinMonkey]

I upgraded my wife's system - which is on a Japanese laptop and everything seems to have gone fairly smoothly. I was concerned when it asked me for the keyboard settings, but it seems to have respected my original settings nonetheless. Boot times seem a bit nicer and she hasn't complained of any stability issues. It's definitely gone a lot smoother than past upgrades which were extremely unstable on her system, X often crashing, windows becoming unresponsive, or the arty completely bombing out for no reason.

Re:Pretty smooth

[ELitwin]

Good idea - I'll use my wife's laptop as a guinea pig too. I'll just blame any problems on her lack of computer knowledge. She won't know the difference.

Re:Pretty smooth

[SkankinMonkey]

I actually used her laptop because her windows partition crapped out and I didn't have a copy of japanese windows-xp laying around....Oh, and she didn't care as long as she can check her mail and play flash games.

A whole different story with Kubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually for Kubuntu it's a whole different story, since the upgrade fixed some graphic issues with my Intel 82945G (GX) card. And the KDE 4.3.2 has a lots of improvements!!!

works fine for me

[Alron]

Started running 9.10 during its beta via an upgrade from 9.04 with no problems. Since release I haven't seen any issues either. I'm running the xubuntu build on a C2D E6600 with 4G ram and a nVidia 8800GTX768M. Boot times seem to be a touch faster and going from gdm to the xfce session is prettier now.

Re:my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG the SAME thing happened to me! If operating system install times can't be shortened, not only is it going to become yet another meme for the "anything but Linux" crowd to use as another reason why Linux "isn't ready for the desktop," (which, of course, is nonsense -- I've been running various distros as my primary desktop OS for years now), but it's likely to result in a dramatic rise in homosexual sexual assault among FOSS users.

Encrypted home folders, a balanced look...

[solevita]

In fairness, it does sound like the failure of a single individual to get their home folder encryption running was picked up by El Reg and blown up out of all proportion. Flickering screens? Yes, I saw that, but it was fixed by a fresh install rather than an upgrade.

There are some niggling bugs and lack of polish, but this isn't anything like Canonical Vista, despite what some people are hyping.

Re:Encrypted home folders, a balanced look...

[Vancorps]

It's also important to note the difference between LTS and 10 release. If you want stable you stick with LTS. This has been the case for at least as long as I've been an Ubuntu user. The thing that pisses me off to no end is that pain you have to go through to get a xen kernel on Ubuntu which makes it a pain in the ass to install in VM on XenServer. Ended up creating PV VM, using a Debian kernel, and then creating a VM template. So when I create a new VM I resize the disk to be what I need. Of course there are other errors, tcpdump and dhclient on my Ubuntu server installs seems to error on bootup with Debian but fortunately for me, it's a server so I just removed dhclient. Probably just going to remove AppArmor too since that seems to be causing the tcpdump error. A lot of effort just for a PV setup when it all works by default with Windows. Of course SUSE, Fedora, CentOS all work fine with their regular installers.

Re:Encrypted home folders, a balanced look...

[solevita]

That seems to be a problem with using Xen and Ubuntu, rather than a problem with Ubuntu; Xen makes you run a modified kernel, so you're not, technically, running the Ubuntu LTS. It seems a little unfair, therefore, to blame Ubuntu for your problems ;-)

If you ran KVM as your virtualisation platform, however, you could run stock Ubuntu LTS and suffer no drawbacks at all.

Re:Encrypted home folders, a balanced look...

[Vancorps]

Ubuntu 8.04 came with a Xen kernel, they dropped Xen support after that however in favor of KVM. With the renewed backing by Citrix and subsequent explosion in users I feel this was a very poor decision as us XenServer users are forced to either use Ubuntu 8.04 or we have to create a PV VM and use a Debian kernel. The solution works just fine with very little performance penalty but I suspect it will become a problem given that I have to manually update the kernel when there are updates. So I'll wait for several releases before upgrading a kernel. Fortunately I can snapshot the VM first so I don't risk any permanent damage.

This seems to happen a lot with Ubuntu though. I remember a kernel update broke wired networking on a laptop I had. I had patch the kernel to get it to work. It was working before, new kernel, now it doesn't work, another new kernel a month later and now it works again, magic! Their QA leaves much to be desired but that's what we grow to expect from our workings with Ubuntu. If it didn't have a great community supporting each-others efforts people wouldn't still be dealing with the BS that they have to deal on the Ubuntu side. Debian gives you a lot of the same stuff, just a few generations behind. Slackware, Fedora, CentOS all give you the latest and greatest however and have far fewer issues like these but again, their support communities are not as helpful as the Ubuntu side of the fence.

It all comes down to, want to do something funky with Linux? Okay, here's how you do it on Ubuntu.

Re:Encrypted home folders, a balanced look...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'm just too stupid to run into this problem, but a special Xen kernel? The thought didn't even occur to me. I just downloaded a stock ISO, pointed XenCenter to it, booted a new VM into the installer, and ran like normal. The machine seems to work just fine. Am I missing something by not having a special kernel?

Also, I just upgraded that machine to 9.10 using the Upgrade Manager today and it seems to have worked perfectly fine. I'm upgrading my home machine now.

Re:Encrypted home folders, a balanced look...

[Vancorps]

Yes, you're missing a lot in terms of performance. Linux in HVM mode is not fast by any stretch. In PV mode however it's near native speed. You get by it in Windows because you install in HVM and the Xen tools will install PV drivers for all your devices. None of this happens on the Linux side. If you don't install then tools then you can't monitor and manage the VM centrally either.

The plural of anecdote isn't data

[quanticle]

As long as we're trading unsubstantiated anecdotes, let me say that my experience with Karmic Koala has been perfectly smooth. I have it running natively on one machine and inside a VirtualBox VM on another, and in both instances both the install process and the system as a whole have worked very satisfyingly.

Re:The plural of anecdote isn't data

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 to the "perfectly smooth upgrade" group. I clicked the "Upgrade" button and went through a couple simple dialogs, and an hour and a half later had a happy Koala-powered laptop humming along faster than ever before. Piece of cake.

Re:The plural of anecdote isn't data

[wintrmute]

And likewise, I've upgraded two desktops and two servers and installed two fresh desktops, and they've all gone smoothly.

Not only did the upgrades go well, but they resolved several outstanding issues (ie. Dreadful performance with Intel gfx chipsets; a pci-express wifi chipset that crashed often on "noise floor calibration" and a realtek gigabit ethernet chipset which crashed whenever you transferred more than 10-20 mbyte of data.)

Re:The plural of anecdote isn't data

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a seemingly witty phrase generally used to discount the value of anecdotal evidence. It means that a single report or story is irrelevant in the face of scientifically-collected data. Usually, in fact, people who say, "the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'," would mistakenly believe the term 'anecdotal evidence' to be oxymoronic. But it's not.
The word anecdote comes to English from the Greek anekdota, meaning "unpublished items".1 Evidence which is anecdotal, therefore, is distinguished from scientific evidence by the fact that anecdotal evidence has not been vetted, is not variable-controlled, and does not undergo peer review.

There are two implications of, "The plural of anecdote is not data," that need addressing:

The first is that personal, remembered, and other unpublished accounts are useless in refuting published data, and entirely irrelevant to a contested assertion. That's simply wrong; data is usually collected in the first place because anecdotal evidence flagged something as worthy of investigation. Anecdotes are not data, but they play an important role in contributing to knowledge. An anecdote is a form of information. It is a form of evidence, to be given its due weight.

The second implication of the phrase is that data alone can prove something as true, while anecdotes cannot. Absurd! (But specious, I admit.) The truth is that neither data nor anecdotes prove anything. Scientific theories are never, ever, ever proven. They can only be disproven. A good scientific theory is merely one which best fits, interprets and explains available scientific data. "Scientific proof" is a misnomer, as this writeup by pimephalis explains well. Uninterpreted data, all by itself, is actually worth less than anecdotal evidence; anecdotes at least offer an explanation for a given case, while uninterpreted data, alone, is meaningless.
With that said, I must concede that information derived from scientific data may rightly be given more weight than anecdotal information. And refuting data-backed information with anecdote-backed information is usually pointless. A theory for which data is not available is not as convincing as one that is backed by data. The strongest theories are convincing because they are backed by a lot of data; but they can never be considered 'proven'.

The best retort to the statement, "The plural of anecdote is not data," is, "And the plural of 'datum' is not 'proof'!"

Or if you're feeling silly, you might just say, "Oh yeah? Well the plural of data is!"

Re:The plural of anecdote isn't data

[TangoMargarine]

Good thing TFS didn't ask for data, then.

Re:The plural of anecdote isn't data

[eddy the lip]

I had two extremely minor issues - some language packs were not found during the upgrade (this fixed itself the very next time synaptic kicked in), and my network adapter didn't connect until I rebooted. Aside from that, my anecdotal experience has been that I noticed very little change (nice), and everything seems noticeably faster (very nice.)

I don't have time, unfortunately, to keep track of everything that changes each release anymore, and fuss with various things to try them out. To a large extent I've become Joe User - my machine is for work, and not playing around to make things go. My experience with Ubuntu has been extremely positive in that regard. I've had more annoying issues with Vista (same hardware - dual boot), like my speakers suddenly not working anymore. Ubuntu's not perfect, but I have far fewer annoyances with it.

Perhaps most importantly, if something does break, I can still drop to a command line and get it fixed. No, that's not for everyone. For me it beats the heck out of the way Windows tucks everything away from me and I have rely on uninstalling and reinstalling and general blind screwing around if something goes south.

Re:The plural of anecdote isn't data

[ancientt]

Adding fuel to the anecdotal fire: I run Ubuntu on my primary workstation (not on my servers, are you insane?) and would normally wait a couple weeks before this kind of upgrade but there is this lady that I like who I gave a Ubuntu workstation to... so, yeah, I clicked the shiny button as soon as it came up figuring it would be best to know what I was likely to get a call about. It worked very well for me, no problems. My new printer still doesn't like Linux, but it is listed as "paperweight" in the lists I checked so I'm not exactly surprised. Sure enough, a couple hours later I was able to say "yes, it will probably be okay, it worked fine for me" and describe what she would likely see. I also got a chance to lecture on the wisdom of waiting a bit before doing major upgrades. Fortunately, her upgrade went smoothly as well even though her computer is older than my school age child. (Yes, the one I gave her is old, but it was free and she didn't have Internet access, couldn't have that could we?)

Re:The plural of anecdote isn't data

[kavin]

: As long as we're trading unsubstantiated anecdotes, let me say that my experience with Karmic Koala has been perfectly smooth. I have it running natively on one machine and inside a VirtualBox VM on another, and in both instances both the install process and the system as a whole have worked very satisfyingly.

not so lucky with mac parallels. fresh install crashes with being unable to detect optical drive (on which it is booting). not too sure whose's at fault here (appears to be an old kernel problem resurfacing), but mac parallels has a history of delayed ubuntu support. it took 4 months (2 months before the karmic arrived) before jaunty had parallel tools support.

parallels desktop 4.0 already supports win7 - and that speaks volumes since microsoft's release cycle is rather haphazard while ubuntu's is regular at 6 month intervals. it seems support for arguably the largest/most popular linux distribution[1] is being sidelined - and not for any technical reasons. why is it that they're able to keep up with:

~ freeBSD 7
~ solaris 10

but ubuntu is a second class citizen?

my anecdotal evidence++

There's a shocker...

[geminidomino]

Canonical has made no secret of the fact that deadlines are more important to them than milestones. They shoot (ostensibly) for "usability", not stability.

Re:There's a shocker...

[Trogre]

Though that's not always the case. The 6.06 release was originally meant to be 6.04.

Of course that's LTS so...

Re:There's a shocker...

[Anonymous Coward]

My machine wasn't very "usable" when X didn't work, forcing me to a terminal that blinked like a strobe light. It didn't help matters that my keyboard input was being dropped. I could have probably tolerated the flashing until I installed sshd and configured X remotely, but the keyboard problem made it tough to log in (when I couldn't see if the keyboard registered my password characters).

Then again, I reinstalled the OS, making no changes in configuration (both were fresh installs, as this machine was previously using Arch), and it worked fine.

- An Ubuntu user since 5.04, typing on 9.10

Re:There's a shocker...

[Killshot]

The only problem I had is kernaloops giving me an error constantly that was really a non-error about ECC not being enabled on my bios.. But I think that was fixed today. It does bother me that they really seem to push the 6 month cycle. If they have a good stable release out, it's ok to take some extra time to make sure that the next release will be just as good.

Re:There's a shocker...

[DarkEmpath]

You can't have "usability" without stability. When Ubuntu crashes and drops me back to the logon screen every time I try to do something useful, Canonical is showing it doesn't care about "usability" any more than it cares about stability.

Unbuntu 9.10 better than...

[jackb_guppy]

It runs better than 9.04 on this machine that I am using. This is a K6-3D/400 with 256M and 10G drive. It was upgraded from 7.04 - 16 hours per release.

Issues since 9.10...

Failure during boot get Xwindows/gnome to start. On new log on screen is now a choice of gnome and safe gnome. Just change to the other one and boots OK.

During first boot Netscape kept kicking errors about xorg. Those when a way on second full boot.

Do not like new update apt just showing up with a click. Liked better the icon in tool bar.

Re:Unbuntu 9.10 better than...

[atari2600]

People use Netscape? I upgrade only if I see features useful to me (or support). Used Dapper Drake for 2 years before I switched to Feisty Fawn and switched to Jaunty two months ago. This is all on really decent hardware. Installing the latest and greatest of distributions on ancient hardware just because you can doesn't sound like a remarkably good idea to me.

Re:Unbuntu 9.10 better than...

[BikeHelmet]

I have Ubuntu running on a VIA-C7 Nano-ITX board. First thing I noticed - desktop was way way faster feeling over VNC.

My issues:
-my VIA PCI 4-port SATA card detects as an nVidia RAID Array.
-Whatever kernel they are using has IO errors for my board's shitty PATA controller. DVD drive doesn't detect, although my PATA HDD seems okay. (I was booting off it, after all)
-xorg.conf was being ignored, so my VNC was limited to 800x600.

Back on 9.04 now.

Re:Unbuntu 9.10 better than...

[Anonymous Coward]

It was upgraded from 7.04 - 16 hours per release.

So you spent 80 hours upgrading the machine? Why not just backup then install fresh from the latest, then reconfigure. Surely that would take a hell of a lot less time than 80 hours. Plus you're 100% guaranteed not to have any upgrade gotchas.

Re:Unbuntu 9.10 better than...

[Linuxmonger]

Netscape??? Really?

Re:Unbuntu 9.10 better than...

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape

I am 12 and what is this?

Re:Unbuntu 9.10 better than...

[Anonymous Coward]

Run this: gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false

This is in the release notes release notes.

Re:Unbuntu 9.10 better than...

[woongbin]

By the way, I am sure you can find better machines in dumpsters... ;P

Re:Unbuntu 9.10 better than...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Do not like new update apt just showing up with a click. Liked better the icon in tool bar.
There is an entry in gconf which changes this

openSUSE 11.2

[Anonymous Coward]

openSUSE 11.2 : 8 days to go.

Re:openSUSE 11.2

[StuffedFrogYK]

Fedora 12: 14 days to go.

Re:openSUSE 11.2

[thatkid_2002]

Fedora 12: 14 Days to go.

Re:openSUSE 11.2

[thatkid_2002]

Fedora 12: 14 days to go

Re:openSUSE 11.2

[Anonymous Coward]

And Mandriva 2010 is out now. Why to stick with Ubuntu while you can use Mandriva or openSUSE?

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Karmic since beta 1, which to me means I'm an "early adopter", and I haven't had any real problems. My volume bar doesn't work perfectly but thats the only bug I've found. Encryption works perfectly, virtualbox and chromium work fine, flash and java are working fine (in x86_64! horray!), watching movies from a remote server works fine with vlc, and that was all true with an upgrade from Jaunty. I finally did a full reinstall to get grub2 and full disk encryption, and its has an even faster boot. It appears that my computer (Dell Inspiron E1505) isn't on the list of bad upgrades though, so who knows.

Mixed results

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded one machine across ssh which is never a great idea when you won't have physical access ot the machine for a while.

I'm not sure what happened exactly but it had a hard system hang. I restarted the machine and it wouldn't boot but in maintenance mode it was able to read everything. I remounted the drives read/write and did dpkg -a --configure and it picked back up and finished the install.

The machine isn't perfect, I get some strange hardware errors during bootup that I haven't had time to troubleshoot but it's functional. I can do all of the same tasks I was doing before.

It's working for me!

[Tteddo]

I have been running it on an Acer Aspire 5050 laptop since alpha 4 and it's been great. They fixed all the problems that I had with previous versions on that laptop. Last time I had a machine that ran that smooth was my eMac G4 way back when.

Re:It's working for me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Aspire is an intel atom integrated graphics thingy, right? Do you run firefox?

Have a look at your ~/.xsession-errors file. Mine is shock full of these lines:

(firefox:1278): Gdk-WARNING **: XID collision, trouble ahead

I'm wondering if this is a common thing or just me.

Re:It's working for me!

[Tteddo]

No, it's an AMD X2. A regular laptop from, I want to say, 4 years ago. It really runs way better that any other Ubunto back to 8.04.

There's a saying:

[Anonymous Coward]

Pioneers get the arrows

Re:There's a saying:

[brentonboy]

Pioneers get the arrows

Is there a way for "second wave" settlers to move in after the arrows are mostly used up, still getting the benefit of the new territory, but with less frontier dangers? Don't say that the solution is just to use an older LTS Ubuntu distro, because while they're a little more refined, they haven't had continual attention and refinement going into them to improve them. All the effort is put into exploring new territory, but the already explored territory doesn't seem to improve much past the state it is in when first explored.

Talking about stability...

[Anonymous Coward]

...works like a charm since alpha 5!

Works for me

[vtcat]

Upgraded an old Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop from Jaunty to Karmic, and it's been great so far. (Technically, it was a new install without touching /home rather than a distribution upgrade.) In fact the network manager actually worked out of the box, but never did work right in Jaunty.

Hate to say it but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't want to admit it but Windows 7 seems to be the most stable, best OS release of this year. Considering the last two renditions of ubuntu to have been nothing less than shit, and the lackluster vista-like release of snow leopard which did nothing but slow my computer down. In it's favor linux is much more than just ubuntu but publicly, ubuntu is still one of the most user-friendly versions distributions of linux.

*note I have installed 9.10 on two machines and had to rollback both installations due to multiple failures on both machines.

Re:Hate to say it but...

[kosh]

I find OpenBSD releases to be the most stable of each year. Twice each year actually... To me they are the "best" as well but that is just personal preference :)

Only Use LTS

[peterindistantland]

Both Intrepid and a brief trial of Jaunty hurt me badly, now I just stick with 8.04 LTS, the only Ubuntu version that can be trusted. Fortunately backports are plenty out there. 6 months releasing cycles are a joke. Just look at how long Windows 7 has been tested before release.

Re:Only Use LTS

[avatar4d]

I actually just installed 9.10 as my first experience with Ubuntu. Of course after the install S.M.A.R.T. indicated the drive was failing so I cannot confirm if any issues were related to that or the OS. I guess I will find out when the new drive comes.

Regarding your comment about 6 month release cycles... I have been running OpenBSD for years on the same initial install. I have upgraded with every upgrade at their regular 6 month release period and it has performed as spectacular as expected.

Re:Only Use LTS

[vigour]

...6 months releasing cycles are a joke. Just look at how long Windows 7 has been tested before release.

Then use Debian.

Re:Only Use LTS

[LordLimecat]

6 month release cycles have their place. Ubuntu is a useful testing ground for beta software, and it evolves very rapidly. It sacrifices stability, but when you look at how far it has come in 3 years it is very impressive.

Re:Only Use LTS

[IrquiM]

Or if Debian is not good enough, use Slackware

Re:Only Use LTS

[vigour]

Or if Debian is not good enough, use Slackware

hehe, the mighty Slack, very true.

I actually went the other way a year ago and use ArchLinux. It's bleeding edge but I've never had upgrade grief.

Re:Only Use LTS

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but remember. Windows 7 was a ground up change 9.04 to 9.10 is more the same than it is different. shorter tiime interval means less can change. Then again. the problems in Karmic still are less than in 7. My Karmic upgrades are all working. (about 15 so far) the Windows division has yet to complete a working upgrade to 7 (they have given up upgrades and gone to wipe and install.) Give it a week and Karmic will be 100% .... can you say the same for Win7?

Re:My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience was exactly the same as yours, down to the detail. Took a bit to figure out the right commands to run in recovery console, but other than that it wasn't too bad. Someone less experienced that I would have had some trouble, but now it's all good.

We should all

[Jonasx]

Insist on a full, immediate refund!

My problems with 9.1

[flyboy974]

Blank and flickering screens: Yes. I was running NVIDIA 180.29. The new kernel, being GCC 4.4 barfed. In fact, it caused screen flickers, which caused strangely Hard Disk read errors, keyboard input failures, and would lock up my computer if I couldnt' SSH in from another machien to do a "sudo service gdm stop"

Failure to recognize hard drives: No

Defaulting to the old 2.6.28 Linux kernel: Yep. Does not set the new 2.6.30-14-generic as default. So I have to keep arrowing up in grub. I'll reset this myself.

I also am having a problem with X-Plane 9.40. I use to get 60FPS no problem. I get 20 now. Notably I upgraded to NVIDIA 190.42 as a result of the 180.29 issues. But, it doesn't matter on the NVIDIA version. Strangely I found a work around. If I go to Preferences/Rendering and exit out, about 1/3 of the time I get back to 60FPS. My guess is the OpenAL or pulseaudio as it's reinitialized.

Re:My problems with 9.1

[Anonymous Coward]

The kernel is not GCC 4.4.
Ubuntu users. ... :P

Re:My problems with 9.1

[flyboy974]

I normally custom compile my kernels, but, this article was related to the upgrade to Karmic, which is compiled with 4.4. My older modules were compiled with 4.3, which caused conflicts.

Re:My problems with 9.1

[Anonymous Coward]

Blank and flickering screens ... nvidia ... keyboard input failures ...

Same here. I also had a bad automount because a network fs was down at the time. This made it switch to the character screen and flash about twice per second. Sometimes it would eat characters from the keyboard so it was impossible to enter a password (no feedback on if the keypress 'took' or not).

I solved it by booting 2.6.28, editing the boot line to take off everything except single user mode, then when the repair menu comes up type 'r' (?) for root console. If I cursor'd down instead of typing in the 'r' then it would get an error message and then any key I pressed would be interpreted as a return, which of course makes it impossible to enter the root password... after that aptitude charcter mode fixed the problem and next boot was perfect.

Also dpkg and apt-get couldn't fix the problem. There was some invalid setup. I had installed from the 'alternate cd' since I did not get a 'new release' button (couldn't detect a new release from behind a proxy for some reason). I neglected to have it download updates from the internet, instead figuring on upgrading from cd then doing an update, but synaptic just crashed after upgrading from the cd. I think this was the root problem for me... fuck'in thing sucks, next time I'll do it live.

Re:My problems with 9.1

[Corporate Troll]

I had the same problem, but I knew the reason. 9.04 didn't support my NVidia card with the provided binary drivers. So, I installed the drivers provided by NVidia on their website.

When I started the upgrade, it dawned to me that I should have uninstalled those and then do the upgrade, but it was too late. After the upgrade: flickering, etc... I simply booted in recovery mode, started a shell, reinstalled the NVidia binary drivers manually rebooted and everything was fixed.

Now granted, I would rather use the Ubuntu provided binary drivers, but if they don't work I just do it the above way. I still think this problem is caused by the fact that I already did install the drivers manually and Ubuntu upgrade was confused. For kicks, I should just reinstall 9.10 from scratch to see what happens.

FUD? On my slashdot?

[Dunbal]

Have had Karmic Koala since release and have not had any problems, unlike 8.04 which broke my sound drivers. This release has been flawless.

Re:FUD? On my slashdot?

[shutdown -p now]

Have had Karmic Koala since release and have not had any problems, unlike 8.04 which broke my sound drivers. This release has been flawless.

You forgot to add "for myself". A brief read through comments on this very /. article will tell you that the story is quite different for many people.

Re:FUD? On my slashdot?

[Techman83]

Indeed, that's how I tagged the Article. I mean if they were going to attack any release, why didn't they attack 9.04, it almost made me switch Distro's. As long as I've been using Ubuntu (since 5.10), the .10 releases always felt like testing grounds and the .04 always felt stable. They seem to have switched this time around and I hope the few little bits of Polish required will make 10.04 LTS a serious option for our corporate SOE.

Re:FUD? On my slashdot?

[joe_frisch]

Upgraded 3 machines. (one newish with AMD quad-core, one old IBM thinkpad x60, one ancient PC), only problem was a minor display issue with the ubuntu-satanic themes. Overall, very smooth - for me.

Re:FUD? On my slashdot?

[Dunbal]

A brief read through comments on this very /. article will tell you that the story is quite different for many people.

      Actually if you check the time I posted and read the articles posted before mine, you'll notice that the overwhelming majority of comments are along the lines of "problems, WHAT problems?". Sure, people have had trouble. No, I'm not going to read 900+ comments posted AFTER mine to make you happy. However I certainly feel that, despite a few users having problems, the headline: "Early adopters stung" is unjustified and inflammatory.

I love these stories...

[CannonballHead]

... because all the bugs bugs that nobody ever mention finally come out when people say "[something] was finally fixed in this release." Things like wireless, video, sleep mode/laptop functions, etc.

And yet we claim Linux is already ready for most users, all the basic stuff works. I guess "works" has a lot of exceptions.

Oh well. I'm glad they get fixed eventually. :)

Re:I love these stories...

[jedidiah]

What part of "most" don't you comprehend?

You are making a rather Trollish leap in logic.

Re:I love these stories...

[CannonballHead]

Depends who is saying "most."

When Linux vs. other OS's comes up on /. the typical answer is that Linux is ready: wireless works, video works, sound works, and it's easy to use (many go so far as to say that it's easier and more intuitive to use). It has fewer bugs because of the open source development model and it is much better designed (lower hardware requirements, less bloat, etc).

But what doesn't get mention are the problems that come up when new versions come out... like wireless being flaky, video being unstable, or sound (ALSA/Pulse/OSS) being persnickety.

Re:I love these stories...

[LordLimecat]

Windows 7 doesnt work with my Rage 128 graphics card, or my HP 1100 parallel printer. Clearly Windows is not ready for most users.

Am I doing it right?

Re:I love these stories...

[True Grit]

Depends who is saying "most."

Nevermind 'most', the more important question is who did you mean by 'we' in your OP?

When Linux vs. other OS's comes up on /. the typical answer is that Linux is ready

Really? All the jokes about Linux's 'Year on the Desktop' strongly suggest otherwise, nevermind the 900+ posts here about TFA...

Are you reading the same /. that I am?

Leap of logic, indeed.

Re:I love these stories...

[CannonballHead]

I may not be reading the same /. that you are. Or maybe I'm reading the wrong comments on /. :)

I include myself in the I-like/love-Linux crowd. I use it when I "can" (but am tied to for one program that is a "major part of my life" - Sibelius ... have tried free alternatives but I work slower on them), I've gotten some other people to use it, I've had computer-illiterate people try it, etc.

Yes, there are plenty of jokes about Year of Linux on the Desktop. There are also plenty of up-modded vehement posts that Linux is ready, but Microsoft has such a strangehold on the market that Linux has no chance, even though it is a superior OS in every way... and, in fact, it is more intuitive and people that "don't like it" obviously haven't tried it...

I am one of the early adopters

[sir lox elroy]

I did an in-place upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10. Some of the problems I have seen. k8temp module not working. Random crashing applets. Stability wise those are my only complaints. I have other functionality complaints, but that is for another day.

Upgrading on an ASUS EEE 901

[chill]

My experience upgrading 9.04 to 9.10 Kubuntu:

I needed to make room to upgrade, because the 4 Gb SSD in the EEE was close to full. I have my /home partition on the 12 Gb SSD, so I needed to clean out things like the apt cache. Eventually, I had to remove some bigger packages like Picasa (with Wine) and Open Office to free up enough space on /.

With 50 Mb more than it claims it wanted, it finally started.

Halfway thru the upgrade, it froze and I had to reboot. Packages had been downloaded, but not all installed.

I had to reboot using a rescue USB stick and chroot over to the main disk. I tried an apt-get dist-upgrade and it said the system was hosed, and suggested a dpkg -a something rescue command. I did that and it finished processing the files it had. I then rebooted into "recovery mode" on that version, and did the dist-upgrade again and it finished. Another reboot and it was successfully in a normal login.

I logged in and immediately did and apt-get update, apt-get upgrade, apt-get autoremove to get the half-dozen updates and clean things up. I then added back in Open Office and a few other missing packages that I cleaned out to make space.

The only thing I can say is in the end, it worked. I've had upgrade horrors like this before with Slackware -- which I have *NEVER* successfully upgraded. They *ALL* had to be re-installs, which is one of the big reasons why I no longer use Slackware. In the past, upgrades have gone smoothly with (K)Ubuntu, as well as my CentOS, Fedora and Red Hat systems. This one was one of the worst.

It is nice, one running. Very slick, and I am mostly quite happy with the way it operates. The only bug I've bumped into that is new is if I'm running on battery, and the battery gets low enough for the system to issue a warning, kicker dies. No, I haven't reported it, yet. Probably later tonight I'll see if I can get a backtrace and send it over.

My experience would have really stumped a Linux noob. There needs to be a bit more Q&A. I got the feeling there was a bit of "let's push out on the Windows 7 day, no matter what" going on.

Re:Upgrading on an ASUS EEE 901

[diamondsw]

So... you ran out of diskspace during the install. Certainly the installer should be far more robust and avoid such "partial installs" in the first place, but ultimately it's a very simple root cause.

This does give me pause about upgrading my own Eee though, as I'd completely forgotten that my OS drive was 4GB.

Re:Upgrading on an ASUS EEE 901

[daffmeister]

Hardly "let's push out on the Windows 7 day, no matter what". That date (certainly the month) has been set since Ubuntu began. With only one exception (if I recall correctly) they've released on schedule.

Now, whether being beholden so tightly to a schedule is a good idea is another matter, but it definitely was nothing to do with the Windows launch.

Re:Upgrading on an ASUS EEE 901

[ChrisMaple]

Wireless is broken on kubuntu 9.10, this appears to be an acknowledged bug. Alas, I was unable to revert, having deleted old packages, and on this netbook I was no longer able to access the internet. With this and other problems with kubuntu, I gave up. I loaded Fedora 11 on a usb flashdrive, repartitioned the drive, and loaded Fedora. I like it a lot better, even if it is harder to get some software.

Re:Upgrading on an ASUS EEE 901

[chill]

Interesting. Wi-Fi works for me, using WPA2-PSK. So does wired networking and bluetooth (mouse). I haven't gotten around to trying the built-in webcam, yet.

Re:Upgrading on an ASUS EEE 901

[PCM2]

This does give me pause about upgrading my own Eee though, as I'd completely forgotten that my OS drive was 4GB.

I run XP on my 901. I'm reminded every few Patch Tuesdays, when Windows Update fails for lack of drive space.

Re:Upgrading on an ASUS EEE 901

[Anonymous Coward]

eee 701 here...it seems to have trouble with the battery meter, and the card reader was glitchy but seems okay now. On the plus side, the wifi hotkey worked from the start.

I also did a fresh install of 9.1...9.04 did not leave enough space on the 4 Gb hd.

Overall, can't complain, but I also don't use the eee pc for much other than web surfing and word processing.

Re:Upgrading on an ASUS EEE 901

[IrquiM]

Just upgraded Slackware from 13 to current on the same machine - updated the package list, and told it to upgrade everything - then it asked me if which config files I wanted to overwrite, booted it, and it all worked as it was supposed to.

I had more problems with the 2 weeks I tried running Ubuntu then the last 5 years with Slackware on my desktop.
(Not going to talk about my Slackware 3.5 and ISDN issues back in the 90s!)

Re:Upgrading on an ASUS EEE 901

[Anonymous Coward]

This does give me pause about upgrading my own Eee though, as I'd completely forgotten that my OS drive was 4GB.

Surely you're better off backing up your partitions to some sort of external USB device and reinstalling from scratch, with this limited space?

Re:Upgrading on an ASUS EEE 901

[chill]

I don't know what to say. I've never had any luck upgrading Slackware. Every time (4 of them) it borked out and left me in an unusable, unbootable state. Just bad luck, I guess.

Re:Upgrading on an ASUS EEE 901

[shic]

My experience upgrading 9.04 to 9.10 Kubuntu:

I needed to make room to upgrade, because the 4 Gb SSD in the EEE was close to full.

Ditto... I spannered my 9.04 and then decided to swap the 16GB and 4GB partitions - since I'll likely only ever need a few megs for my own documents. It took several attempts - but, eventually it worked... (and I'm not sure what went wrong when the re-install failed... it might have been my fault)

That said, I'm fairly impressed. I love PAN support for 3G via a bluetooth phone in NetworkManager - but I am frustrated that VPN support seems intermittently buggy. I've had to start my VPN up-to a dozen times... it's not clear what's the problem - but there's an open ticket that seems to describe my issue.

Very impressed with the release in general...

I'm curious about "Ubuntu One"... on the surface it looks incredibly useful - but, conversely, I definitely do not want to put my personal documents (perhaps including banking details, say) into the cloud unencrypted.

Re:Upgrading on an ASUS EEE 901

[petermgreen]

I doubt it had anything to do with win7, the fact is that ubuntu has made itself a slave to the 6 month release cycle, especially with the way they make the LTS releases part of the normal cycle (so if the normal cycle slips it causes problems for the LTS).

At least it's possible for someone who knows what they are doing to recover from a failed upgrade which is more than can be said of many systems.

Gotta love VMWare 2.0.1

[magsol]

The Karmic Koala upgrade worked flawlessly on its VM.

Re:Gotta love VMWare 2.0.1

[CarpetShark]

Also, my desk rocks because I upgraded my desktop on it, and nothing broke. Of course, my desktop doesn't actually sit on the desk, so that might be entirely unrelated.

Re:Gotta love VMWare 2.0.1

[magsol]

Glad to see someone appreciates my humor :P

Rhythmbox started skipping...

[ShopMgr]

Don't know if this was due to the upgrade or to my Virtualbox usage. Anyway, tried Amarok, still can't make sense of the settings, so I went with Banshee. Seems to be fine. Did have one instance where the system went to sleep or it ignored the fancy apple keyboard and wouldn't wake up. So I rebooted.

I run it on a Macbook

[selven]

The upgrade was a bit rough - the GUI system update tools are very prone to breaking, often freezing to the point that only a forcequit can put things back to normal (I almost always use the command line because of that). Unfortunately the only way I knew of to update to 9.10 was using a GUI tool, which naturally broke, forcing me to restart the upgrade (although it was called a "partial upgrade". As for the finished product, booting time is abysmal, pushing past 100 sec. and the wireless doesn't work without a driver (it worked flawlessly in 9.04), and even with the driver whenever I move around any new wireless networks I come across aren't recognized - I need to suspend/unsuspend to restart the wireless system and get the new access points recognized. And the monitor randomly shuts off once in a while. And the mouse (trackpad) moves erratically sometimes.

Either I should switch to some other distro or I need better hardware.

Re:I run it on a Macbook

[bsims]

The upgrade was a bit rough - the GUI system update tools are very prone to breaking, often freezing to the point that only a forcequit can put things back to normal (I almost always use the command line because of that). Unfortunately the only way I knew of to update to 9.10 was using a GUI tool, which naturally broke, forcing me to restart the upgrade (although it was called a "partial upgrade".

I have never once gotten the GUI system update tools to work properly.
Use the CLI version like the Omnissiah intended.
1) Install update-manager-core if it is not already installed:
sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
2) Launch the upgrade tool:
sudo do-release-upgrade
3) Follow the on-screen instructions.

Re:I run it on a Macbook

[Deanalator]

Installed 8.10 last night. So far I have found that my macbook won't suspend, and brightness controls are completely broken. Also all attempts to install full disk crypto ended up with botched grub installs that failed to boot. The frustrating thing is that this all worked out of the box 2 years ago, so I really don't know what the problem is.

I also find it very annoying that they switched the middle and right click on the touchpad, and in 9.04 they disabled update notifications in the tray (huge security risk imo).

Re:I run it on a Macbook

[apoc.famine]

Or a wipe and a clean install. Really, if your update broke a couple times, it's quite possible you have lots of shit semi-broken now.
 
For most of history, an OS upgrade was a wipe and a reinstall. Windows almost always requires this, in my experience. It's only been in the last few years that Apple and to some extent Linux has been able to do true upgrades. Even now, they don't always work really well.
 
If you're seeing that many issues, do a clean install. I keep my /home directory on a separate partition from / for that very reason. I've had the same /home and /media directories through 2 different distros, and probably 5 versions of Kubuntu.
When shit really goes badly, there are three steps to try:
 
1) Make sure you're on the newest kernel. Kubuntu didnt' do that for me this time, and caused all sorts of issues.
2) Whack your desktop config folder. I generally move .kde to .kde.old Sometimes, your previous config settings kill the new ones. Start fresh.
3) Complete wipe and reinstall. No upgrade is perfect, as no system is "stock". Everyone adds stuff, moves stuff, etc. To make 100% sure it's an OS issue and not an upgrade issue, wipe it and reinstall.
 
My 866mhz EEE doesn't take that long to boot. Hit those three steps, and if you still have the issues, throw full blame at the distro or the hardware.

Re:I run it on a Macbook

[Filgy]

I can also confirm that I have experienced the mouse jumping around erratically sometimes with Karmic. I also feel the boot time was slower until I disabled usplash, although I never actually timed it.

Re:I run it on a Macbook

[geschild]

Well, I seem to have the exact same trouble with a KK 64-bit upgrade from JJ, on a dell Latitude E6500. I'm guessing all the Intel changes in the new kernel and the use of advanced features in that kernel by Karmic might have something to do with it. My desktop machine, on the other hand, is fine. Exact same upgrade but AMD/Nvidia hardware.

Another two useless data-points :)

Re:I run it on a Macbook

[selven]

I timed it, and I got mine down from ~103 to ~93 by rewriting the readahead and disabling a few services.

Re:I run it on a Macbook

[Anonymous Coward]

I run karmic on a macbook air 1,1, upgraded from jaunty and have had only one major issue with it: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/458469
Wireless works, only hardware that doesn't is built in isight mic, which was already a problem in jaunty. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/268301
All in all a good upgrade, which went very smoothly.

My AMD media center box did have the issue with the old kernel being the default boot option selected in grub after upgrade. Not good.

Karma will run over your Dogma

[Phlatline_ATL]

I upgraded and promptly broke a couple of things .. the gdk/gtk pixbuf is going to be the biggest pain in the rear. That took out Eclipse 3.5.1 & Lotus Notes 8.5 (trust me ... I'd rather use something else but that's what we use @ work).

There are a couple of other annoyances which I'm sure will be worked out in the near future.

Biggest gripe I have is GDM with the user picker like WinXP/Vista ... I'm not real keen on exposing who's a valid user on the system.

Re:Karma will run over your Dogma

[cmdr_tofu]

I think you can replace the string:

Browser=True

with

Browser=False

in your /etc/gdm/gdm.conf to disable that. Or "apt-get install xdm"! Cheers

Re:Karma will run over your Dogma

[A Numinous Cohort]

I installed the beta of Karmic UNR, and it imported users from the existing Win XP partition. Even set up a profile photo on the gdm picker -- but the photo it associated with my profile was my wife's photo, not mine. I really wonder how that happened.

Then, I couldn't see how to change the photo. After googling around I saw a mention of gdmphotosetup. Trying to run that in an xterm, the system informed me that I needed gdm-2.20 or some such. Apt-getting that, there was a warning about package dependencies -- then when I rebooted graphical log-on was not working at all.

I can still log on to the console and run startx so to me it's not that bad. At least it's a funny bug 8^).

Re:Professionalism - two way road

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 is already having issues for those upgrading. Not surprised with that or with those upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10

I haven't had any issues myself and the upgrade to Kubuntu 9.10 - there will always be fringe cases that aren't covered completely, I think.

Stung by Ubuntu?....and Kubuntu is no better!

[bogaboga]

While I am no fan of Ubuntu with its Gnome environment, I am sorry to mention that Kubuntu is no better.

You might wonder why: -

The menus and text are too big, and its help system is wanting big time! I wonder when we in the Ubuntu/Kubuntu world will have a crisp beautiful and functional desktop by default.

Re:Stung by Ubuntu?....and Kubuntu is no better!

[dargaud]

The menus and text are too big

This may depend on the resolution defined for your monitor in your xorg.conf file. You can more simply change the font resolution in [System settings][Appearance][Fonts][Source font DPI]. Worked for me when I had the opposite problem (font too small). Actually using the correct NVIDIA driver fixed the X config file for good.

Back on topic, I have nothing but good things to say about this upgrade. Everything that worked still does, and a few problematic things now work. Overall I find that not much has changed and that's a good thing. PS: my machine is both a file/ssh/image/web server, a dev machine and a graphic workstation with Wine/Virtualbox graphic progs, so it's not a basic granma browser/email only box.

Re:Stung by Ubuntu?....and Kubuntu is no better!

[1s44c]

I wonder when we in the Ubuntu/Kubuntu world will have a crisp beautiful and functional desktop by default.

Have you tried xubuntu? By default it's pretty ugly but it's easy enough to get rid of a taskbar and arrange things nicely.

Re:Stung by Ubuntu?....and Kubuntu is no better!

[Anonymous Coward]

If your menus/text is too big, have you tried manually setting the DPI for your fonts?
I've had experience where the autodetection had issues.
(It's definitely still a bug, but at least it's a fixable one.)

Re:Stung by Ubuntu?....and Kubuntu is no better!

[Ash-Fox]

The menus and text are too big

I can fix that for the entire system in just five clicks (four, if I cheat with a drop down menu). I prefer Kubuntu's method of being friendly to novice users and letting more advanced users customize it with little trouble.

Re:Stung by Ubuntu?....and Kubuntu is no better!

[thatkid_2002]

Ubuntu has THE WORST KDE implementation around. It's because of Ubuntu's silly patches to KDE which provide no actual benefit besides providing a Windows(tm) style experience complete with constant lagging and crashing.
Any other distro is better for KDE (amongst other things).

re upgrade to Karmic

[freddieb]

I upgraded an existing install the day of the release. It took a while but that's to be expected. Everything worked great. I would like to see the old gdm configuration editor but no biggie. I then did a clean install on a new driver. It was even smoother. The gdm screen looked better as I had Xbuntu and Kde all on the other system and that seemed to confuse the gdm setup. As I recall. This whining always happens after a new release.

Freezes during slash screen.

[F34nor]

I can usually get to the lang. selection, then choose live disk boot then it freezes, every time.

Re:Freezes during slash screen.

[Anonymous Coward]

My friends computers always had success with the live cd install. My specific laptop hpdv6000 always fails with the live cd.

I recommend you try the alternate cd install, if you didn't already try

Some warts...

[c]

Suspend and resume on my netbook is a bit of hit and miss (suspend crashes if an SD card is mounted, closing the lid doesn't always trigger suspend). I'll probably update my laptop tomorrow since I rarely use suspend on it.

On the plus side, the upgrade process was painless and things run a lot smoother. The netbook launcher is a good order of magnitude faster than the previous version. The user switcher applet is in the panel now.

c.

Re:Some warts...

[2muchcoffeeman]

I'm having problems with suspend/resume on my laptop ... well, actually, I'm having problems with resume. It suspends fine and dandy; resumption ... it doesn't. Hibernate also works, and the computer resumes just fine from hibernation if all the peripherals connected at hibernation are still connected when I bring it back up. So it's something in DeviceKit-power, which replaced the now-deprecated HAL daemon, and I haven't gotten far enough into the various logs to find the specific problem.

That's literally my only problem; everything else works (including my software-based Winmodem, but who still uses modems anymore?). Ubuntu 9.10 is faster than 9.04 and appears to use less RAM with the same software set running. (That's in my experience; your mileage may vary with driving style and tire inflation.)

Why do I do it?!

[PottedMeat]

Why do I upgrade? That's the question that I've asked myself for at least the last four versions. I spend six months ironing out all the trouble to the point where it mostly works then I upgrade and start all over again.

A year and a half for my mic to work, USB drives that transfer at absolutely crawling speeds (solving in Koala for the first time ever tho!), disk to disk transfer at an absolute crawl (seems much better in Koala), flickering screens, disappearing mouse cursors (happens every time on bootup in Koala - a simple CR in any terminal window brings it back), and a host of little this and that's.

The worst issue though by a mile has been sound. There is always a problem with sound. Without exception. I almost had my sound working perfectly in Jaunty but now something is glitched in Pulseaudio or Firefox or Alsa or something cuz padsp now won't wrap around Firefox.

Ya know, I bought an original sound blaster for a 286 in '89-90 and it blows my mind that something like sound can be such a problem 20 years later. Everyone really needs to get on the same page.

Anyway, despite the problems I continue to use Ubuntu. It still seems the best for my needs out of all the distros that I've tried. And I'd certainly still be wasting far more time in Windows dealing with the anti-virus and mal-ware nightmares that are found there.

I'll keep using Ubuntu. And although I'll probably keep asking myself why I upgrade I'll still do it. ;)

PM

Re:Why do I do it?!

[JustNiz]

It sounds like you have REALLY old or obscure hardware.

Re:Why do I do it?!

[PottedMeat]

It's a fairly new Gateway laptop with Intel hardware. You may have heard of them.

PM

Re:Why do I do it?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I upgrade? That's the question that I've asked myself for at least the last four versions. I spend six months ironing out all the trouble to the point where it mostly works then I upgrade and start all over again.

Probably pointing out the bleedin' obvious, but it sounds like you need to get onto the 10.4 Long Term Support version when it comes out, get it working and stick with it for 3 years or until you get rid of this hardware.

I'll let you know...

[Anonymous Coward]

...when I get it to run.

My system got into a state during the upgrade where it demanded I reboot before it finished and upon reboot it claims not to be able to find/mount my hard drives. Nothing will mount read-write even from the recovery terminal and so I can't actually do any reconfiguring or finish the installation manually. Booting to the LiveCD and chrooting in works fine except that I still can't get read-write for some reason. I can run any program on the system I want to, as long as it doesn't try to write to a log file, download anything, install any fixes or change any configuration options.

In short, Karmic appears to be actively opposing any attempt to make it work.

Update failed

[Budha_man_99]

I tried to update from 9.4 to 9.10 but after 5 hours the update stopped responding, in fact the whole PC froze. I had to hard boot the PC, and the update was not complete the entire install was hosed. Luckily this was just a test system and I didn't lose any thing important, but if it was my main system I would have been rather upset. I have gotten into the habit of backing up all of my personal files to a removable drive when I do these upgrades just in case

Re:Update failed

[Ash-Fox]

I tried to update from 9.4 to 9.10 but after 5 hours the update stopped responding

I have to say, the only systems I do 'upgrades' on are servers and that's only because of a extensive modification to the main system configuration files - These upgrades are mostly painless except for the odd thing with me having daemons configured uniquely to fit a strange purpose.

Now when it comes to workstations on the other hand, I just make a extra backup of my home/users path, reinstall the OS from scratch (takes about 15 minutes with Kubuntu), recreate my user account, copy the files back. Install a few 3rd party apps again (Zimbra, Skype etc.) and start using my system once more.

It's clean, fast, no issues as there is no cruft from the previous install. I would suggest you do follow this methodology for any OS. Windows, OS X, Linux distros etc. You will rarely find problems with it.

Upgraded 3 computers

[tthomas48]

All 3 to Karmic. All 3 work great. None are even remotely similar hardware wise. As an added bonus the power saving on my laptop works better than my wife's Vista machine now which is definitely a great upgrade.

Re:Upgraded 3 computers

[thuerrsch]

Me too! In my case, it's a total of four machines, a MacBook, a Lenovo netbook, an ancient Pentium 4 box plus a fit-PC2 server. Did fresh installs of Karmic on the first two, upgraded from Jaunty on the other two. No serious issues, just a few remaining annoyances on the MacBook (display brightness adjustment not working with KMS enabled, two keys swapped on international keyboards, touchpad sometimes slow after resuming from suspend -- minor issues on a somewhat exotic machine and nothing that can't be worked around). Otherwise, everything's fine and dandy.

To everybody who hasn't been so lucky: please don't just complain, file bug reports to help the Ubuntu community fix those problems! There are people out there who will listen and who will try very hard to make things work better for all of us. Flooding ./ with angry messages won't bring us any closer to fixing bug #1. Contributing real information on Launchpad will.

Re:Upgraded 3 computers

[Anonymous Coward]

Same experience here, no problems at all with the upgrade, it even recognized my wacom and configured it automatically. Better than Win7 in that regard

Re:Upgraded 3 computers

[Anonymous Coward]

Same to me, 2 machines -> one new install, one full upgrade..no problems. power management is much better (longer time on batteries)..i like this version :D

xaos

No problems here!

[Astr4y]

I've ran the beta of Karmic on my Lenovo IdeaPad y430 and haven't had a single problem, and as of a few days ago I've been running the official release without a single problem. I also for the first time ever have been able to use my built in webcam (not that there's much use for it mind you).

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

The fix worked for myyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

My Experience

[Das Auge]

I've been using it since the morning it came out (before it showed up on the home page, but was on the mirrors).

I haven't had any show stopping problems. I've found it to be waaay better than 9.04. The sound works far better (it used to not work for some apps), as does compiz.

Oddly, the only thing that didn't work about Ubuntu One. It complained that I had a version too new for the servers. *shrug*

No big problems upgrading from kubuntu 9.04-9.10

[joib]

Some observations from my brief experience

Updating in general went completely pain-free. Well, except for the servers time-outing when I tried to update on the day of the release, so I had to postpone one day.

Regressions:

Audio occasionally pops; due to some power saving stuff, solution: comment out a single line: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2009-May/008239.html

Fonts were ugly in the beginning, turned out to be due to an old ~/.Xresources I had lying around that made my apps use the old X core fonts instead of fontconfig. No idea why it previously worked fine on 9.04. But nothing I can blame ubuntu devs on really.

Bugs:

The new perf tool coming with the 2.6.31+ kernels is missing: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/428159

Some OpenGL apps such as google earth flicker when using a compositing desktop. This is apparently a fundamental problem with the existing DRI architecture. Solution is to switch to DRI2, whenever that is ready. Again, not Ubuntu's fault really.

Improvements:

KDE 4.3.x instead of 4.2.x. Boatloads of improvements and bugfixes. And of course, also other updated apps, such as firefox 3.5, emacs 23.1 etc.

Open source radeon drivers can run OpenGL stuff with my X1550 without crashing (9.04 hard locked the machine within minutes).

Kubuntu variant

[N7DR]

I run the 64-bit Kubuntu variant. My conclusions over the past few days:

1. Roughly 90% of the bugs and inconveniences in Kubuntu jaunty are unchanged.

2. Something like 10% of the Kubuntu jaunty problems have been fixed, to be replaced essentially one-for-one by new problems.

I have not seen any of the specific problems mentioned in the summary. It did take several reboots following the upgrade before the system became stable (don't ask me to explain that, because I can't).

Re:Kubuntu variant

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Not a lot of big changes in the Kubuntu variant with 9.10.
Bluetooth in KDE still sucks. I was hoping to be able to do simple things like connect to and browse a Nokia mobile phone with kbluetooth, but they still don't have bluetooth support finished for KDE4. Bluetooth is the last big remaining regression from KDE3.

Works fine for me

[WahCheng]

I was running the previous version on several computers, including Dell E4300 & E4200 laptops and a couple desktops. The upgrade just ran. The only gripe I have is when I right click on the desktop there is only the 'Log Out' option - reboot & shutdown are gone. No doubt this will be resolved in time. Other than that, everything works just fine

no problems here

[Gothmolly]

Upgraded 9.04 to 9.10, no problem - sound, accelerated video, everything works, and it seems snappier, too.

Re:No Problems here

[PRMan]

I had the opposite (I refuse to refer to myself in the 3rd person)...

2 Vista to Win7 in-place upgrades at work (only annoying Cell card problems)

Upgraded Server 2008 64 to Server 2008 R2 64 (had to uninstall/reinstall 2 applications)

Upgraded wife's XP 32 to Win7 32 using LapLink's PCMover Upgrade Assistant (had to uninstall/reinstall 1 application)

Jaunty to Karmic (black flashing screen of death)

Re:No Problems here

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite the lurker. First comment you made in over 9 years.

Re:No Problems here

[Zathras]

Best to say nothing when nothing to say than give wordy evidence of the fact. ;-)
May lurk for another 9 years perhaps, yes?!

Re:No Problems here

[Bambi Dee]

Isn't "lurker" what they called the slum denizens of Babylon 5?

No Problems here

[Zathras]

Zathras upgrade one PC to Windows 7 ... very bad
upgrade another PC with Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 ... very good
Never use Windows 7.
Ubuntu 9.10 is the one.
Zathras like Ubuntu 9.10 very much because it works!

Re:Fix avalible

[fdisk-o]

Please don't do that.

It's not funny when you cause mischief for no good purpose.

Thank you.

No problems here

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed the RC on three different machines for various reasons - all fresh installs.

An ancient Pentium II - my more recent desktop died, so I dug this up out of storage and threw Karmic on it so I'd have something to use. Other than the obvious fact that it's not fast by any stretch of the imagination, no problems.

A netbook that's now the better part of a year old - through various upgrades, apps from third party repositories and my screwing around the existing install was getting a bit flaky, so I decided to do a fresh install. No problems.

Brand spankin' new quad core i5 - purchased shortly before release, didn't see much point in waiting a couple of days to install. Works beautifully.

Problems Here

[DeanFox]

Moving to 9.04 I could hardly tell the difference. 9.04 to 9.10 - Different story. Immediately started to see a *lot* of crash reports being generated. A *lot* in Ubuntu terms is any number greater than zero.

However, I have to say. A tweak here and a tweak there and everything seems back to normal. A crash report took me to a blog where the solution had already been found: Turn on ECC Memory in the BIOS was one fix. Conky, a real time desktop updating display thing was crashing... unload and reinstall... A couple other tweaks and my server was back to normal. Another was I couldn't switch workspaces any more with my mouse wheel. The fix was I had to install a GUI control manager and change two values...

What makes this extraordinary, it seems to me, is this has never happened with Ubuntu before. An upgrade was nothing more than push a button. Post upgrade tweaks are fairly normal with other distros but it's never been with Ubunto.

In the Windows world what I went through is the equivalent to finding a few new drivers for a couple devices after going from Vista to whatever their new version is...

But from what I've seen so far this has been worth every tweak I had to make. All the changes I've seen so far are extraordinary. I am in awe. :)

As is everything else... JMHO
-[d]-

Actually

[Windwraith]

It worked really well for me. I got it on day 2 and except for a bothersome Grub2 error (error 15!) that took one hour to fix (although it will now take a long time to get to load the actual OS...like 6-7 seconds before continuing), it was pretty good.
Of course my first action once booted was to remove Pulseaudio (those 64mb sink files it generates in /dev/shm are TRUE memory hogs), getting a KDE4 system running (I am desktop agnostic but I am more used to plasma as desktop now due to some plasmoids), ensuring Synaptic was still around (The app center is...not too clear as to what dependences packages have), Ubuntu Tweak, adding repositories, compiling some SVN versions (zdoom, geany, audacious2 and some plasmoids), and I got my system running in about one evening. I don't notice anything different or weird, so I don't really understand the complaints. Maybe because I use KDE4 (not Kubuntu though) instead of the defaults? (this is a genuine question, I am curious)

Re:Actually

[athakur999]

I ran into "error 15" too. I have two hard drives and I think GRUB got the drive ordering mixed up. It put the boot drive as "drive 1" in the boot file when it really should have been "drive 0". Unlike GRUB1 though, it didn't give me an option to manually try altering parameters at that point, which was annoying.

I ended up removing my 2nd drive, reinstalling Karmic (this time it did mark it as "drive 0"), and then reinstalled the 2nd drive after the installation was complete and everything worked fine after that. Hopefully GRUB won't mess things up again at the next kernel upgrade though. I think GRUB has some configuration options to fix bad drive mappings so I'll have to look into that.

Re:Actually

[Windwraith]

I kind of solved it by placing the loader on another drive I suspect is loading first (my OS one is SATA while that one is not). It worked but takes a long delay. I heard an alternate solution was to fiddle with the BIOS boot order, but it was already set up properly. I wonder if I have to wipe out the MBR of every drive and install again...but I prefer the delay to having to load the install CD again! (it takes so much time to be functional that I feel so lazy about it). Anyway just in case I removed grub2 and marked it as "experimental" in my mind. Maybe next time.

This is what we've been working for!

[Locke2005]

So basically, Ubuntu has finally achieved parity with Windows, then?

It just works nicely

[zippygonzales]

Clean upgrade yesterday to 9.10 was sweet. It's not just Firefox 3.5, which I never managed how to upgrade under Jaunty, or the realm of other upgraded releases. Karmic is quicker and more elegant than Jaunty.

Re:My experience

[smoothnorman]

("upgraded" from 9.04) No Audio: space-dumped pulseaudio, re-installed alsa and the music/mplayer plays again No Wireless: Networkmanager option never comes up, "/etc/init.d/networking restart" and wireless connects No System->Administration anymore: haven't figured out that one yet Strange warnings about encrypted hard-drive when there's never been any encryption. ...may go back to pure Debian.

Funny you should ask

[lbredeso]

I have an IBM Thinkpad T42. After upgrading just this past weekend, my sound doesn't work and I have strange display problems when coming back from suspend (I need to switch to a different virtual terminal, then back, in order to see the password box). I wish I hadn't upgraded so soon.

Why did they adopt early?

[Tribbin]

What features do these early adopters badly need that is made available through this fresh release?

Even a fresh debian-stable release needs a cool-down period before running it on anything but hobby or non-mission-critical computers.

You'd expect quirks to come up on anything that is released to a wide public for the first time, being it windows, linux, a media-player, an instruction manual, ...

Re:Why did they adopt early?

[MichaelSmith]

It is wrong to call them early adopters. They installed the release when it became available, I doubt that any of the bugs I have seen will be fixed in this release.

Re:Why did they adopt early?

[the_one(2)]

What features do these early adopters badly need that is made available through this fresh release?

New intel drivers! Need that flash!
No problems here with karmic btw. I did an upgrade from 9.04->9.10 beta->release on my desktop and a new install on my laptop. I thought the new theme was awful though and changed it quickly to "New Wave" (customized to remove the steppers on scrollbars:) hate those things).
Boot feels pretty fast. Didn't try encryption.

I started with Alpha 5 and it has been great

[pyite69]

No weird problems like this at all. I didn't do an upgrade though, it was a fresh Alpha 5 install.

I will never do an operating system upgrade - it seems too risky.

Parallels Desktop

[allometry]

Can't get the install to complete in Parallels Desktop. Have had issues with installing in Virtual Box. Went back to using 9.04 until this gets resolved.

Re:Parallels Desktop

[Kerrigann]

I don't know if you're having the same problem as me, but my problem was that the install wouldn't reboot after installing karmic. I *think* kernel 2.6.31 has some problem with Parallels (or vice versa) that keeps any disk from being recognized. I get dumped to busybox, and there are no /dev/sd* devices :/

If you're having the same problem, just boot with kernel 2.6.28 from Jaunty.

Re:Parallels Desktop

[allometry]

Yep. Same exact problem. I'll give that a try!

spent the day reinstalling Ubuntu today...

[BlackCreek]

Tried to update from Jaunty, and the unexpected mess cost the a whole day of work. Something went wrong with GDM getting restarted during the installation of some libs. The system got corrupted being repair. Many libs were left missing, and if tried to configure or reinstall upstart (it was marked "iU") the system simply rebooted (no joke!).

Tried to install Karmic directly only to discover that the grub(legacy) fall back in case of RAID didn't work. After spending some time trying to remedy that I gave up. Installed Jaunty, and did a update to Karmic with GDM off. It worked.

The new Gnome looks better, but the installation and upgrade are indeed incredibly unreliable.

Debian Sid

[Anonymous Coward]

As a user of Sid for about three and a half years, I really think that more software should work how it does. As I am regularly updating, I see changes as they come down rather than all at once. If something breaks I have a pretty good idea where it broke and can roll it back to a previous version (using snapshot.debian.net at the very least to get the old packages).

I feel like users would be more comfortable with this kind of upgrade if done properly. What's more, I feel like if new users could be introduced to a program's features in this way it would make the learning curve much shallower. Think about it: you didn't start first grade of school learning trigonometry. Math is introduced to you gradually over the years; as you learn the basics you progress. Why should a new piece of software be different?

In-place upgrade, or fresh install?

[Anonymous Coward]

Serious question -- did you install into a fresh partition, or upgrade an existing Ubuntu installation?

I learned the hard way years ago with Red Hat (and then again with Mandrake because I was stupid enough to need the lesson twice) that in-place upgrades are extremely prone to causing things to break. I generally have three 10 or 12 GB partitions on my hard drive that are dedicated to the OS, with all data on a separate partition (usually just the whole rest of the disk). This way, I can have a known-stable OS in one system partition, and two experimental ones. Right now, I've got Ubuntu 9.04 as my main OS, and I'm installing 9.10 (N.B.: it's not 9.1 but rather 9.10, as in 2009 October) in one of the other two system partitions. (The third had Mandriva in it from a while back, not currently used.)

Anyway, seriously, do please let us know -- are you running into these problems after an in-place upgrade, or after a full installation into a freshly formatted partition?

Cheers,

Re:In-place upgrade, or fresh install?

[flyboy974]

It was an upgrade unfortunately.

Unfortunately when I installed Ubuntu, I let it go with the recommended single /dev/hda1 partition that was 100%. Back in my old UNIX days, I normally would have had a small ~2GB /, ~4GB /usr, ~20GB /var, and allocated the rest under /home. But, being that everyone seemed to have been running full / partitions for desktops, I did that. WOOOPS!

I've thought about reinstalling everything. As you see above, I've always locked down my partitions for good reason. Reallocating a few OS partitions is no problem.

On a side note, I also had a custom 2.6.28 kernel as I was working on developing a USB driver for the NVIDIA ESA device support (which is really just HID 1.1, but, Linux is not HID 1.08 compliant). Getting closer, but, I'm really having to reimplement HID 1.11 so I'm trying to decide if I should implement it as a USB replacement for the kernel or as a HIDDEV/RAW type module.

Troubles... yes... Switching back to Windows.. Hell no! (I booted into my old Vista drive to upgrade my iPhone to 3.0... that took 30 minutes to boot and open ITunes! Screw that!)

Re:In-place upgrade, or fresh install?

[Larryish]

You should burn the gparted CD image and delete everything off the drive except your home directory, then repartition the drive and reinstall.

gparted works very well, even with NTFS.

It should even be included on your LiveCD.

Re:In-place upgrade, or fresh install?

[flyboy974]

I have a gparted CD in my active collection. It's a little after the fact now unfortunately. (I also have Darik's Boot and Nuke if I get really upset... hehe)

I'll have to see if I get any more crashes. I can add audio crashes (audio noise/crackling, then openGL app lockup).

The one true benefit, I have a Dell XPS 630, and since I haven't finished writing my Nvidia EDA drivers, the fan speed was reset and is no longer on full blast. hehe.

Re:In-place upgrade, or fresh install?

[GPLHost-Thomas]

Troubles... yes... Switching back to Windows.. Hell no!
You sound like there's no alternative to Windows & Ubuntu. Hell, there's a lot of alternatives, and you don't have only these 2 to choose from!

Thinkpad R61i - No problems either

[1s44c]

I have xubuntu running on a thinkpad R61i. It's been fine. All the hardware works. Full disk encryption works. Suspend and hibernate both work.

The only niggles I have are the firefox google box dropdowns are black on a dark gray background and therefore pretty hard to read and the battery monitor applet keeps disappearing.

Color me shocked...not.

[Enahs]

I've been having an increasing number of problems with each new release. I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty, so I'm using Arch Linux now.

I mean...there were times when I'd know what to do to fix a problem, and their #$%! automated tools would get in the way. Sadly, in some cases, this is what is coming to a Linux near you.

And don't get me started on Kubuntu. if you're like me and cut your teeth on distros like Slackware, but you want to use KDE4, give Arch Linux a serious look. The Chakra Project has a KDE4 repo that makes other offerings look ridiculous.

Someone wake me when Canonical starts busting heads, then I'll take another look at Ubuntu.

Windows sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why we use Linux and don't have to deal with these kinds of problems... oh wait.

I had a problem with my video card driver. I had to manually edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add a line which was not obvious. I've never had this problem on Ubuntu before even using the same video card. Software servers were very slow also but I guess that is expected the first week or so and I was too lazy to set mirror servers.

Re:Windows sucks

[JuzzFunky]

I did a fresh install of 9.10 last night on an fairly old desktop with an SiS 315 integrated graphics card. I couldn't get the display to go above 800*600. I tried to edit the xorg.conf file, but it didn't exist. I tried creating it, restarting X and it still wouldn't go beyond 800*600. I'm pretty sure this has little to do with 9.10 and more to do with SiS drivers, but it was weird that I spent ages on this last night only to find a slashdot story about it this morning.

Re:Windows sucks

[David Gerard]

That's 'cos a lot of old chipsets are falling off the edge of Xorg. Basically, obscure crap is quietly breaking and not many people are noticing, and those that do notice aren't coders.

So Xorg needs a good coder who can maintain crusty old drivers.

Re:Windows sucks

[yuhong]

Yep, this year the Voodoo graphic driver got updated: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzA4Nw

Re:Windows sucks

[yuhong]

BTW, I also have a laptop based on the ALi CyberALADDIN-T integrated graphic chipset from 2001 with basically the same problems.

update to Karmic on P4 2.6Ghz

[marcas1]

I've done upgrade this week end. Hard time with a small partition on hard drive (4Gb) and troubles with the USB key (my CDROM is ooo) with 9.10 to boot (dynamic casper partition /cow on wrong hard drive ID)
My Medion 2.4Ghz with P4 laptop is now running karmic. Hibernate run succesfully after 2 reboots (???)
It seems that compiz is more stable with the radeon 9000 now.
The fresh install doesn't accept my exotic Wifi PCMCIA card more the before. But even ndiswrapper manual install failed on this.

It's not faster than before but more stable when swithing fast from desktop to another. So, it's not a bad update for old hardware (6 years old)

Four days later, got my Thinkpad T61 working

[Anonymous Coward]

I had Jaunty running previously with NVidia proprietary drivers installed (allowed the NVidia installer to compile its own kernel module). My laptop uses the snd-hda-intel driver.

I found that:
1) Kernel was old version, not updated (And surprise! ALSA drivers were MOVED into the new kernel, so you can install what ever you want, it won't work until you resolve the kernel, check your logs or experiment with modprobe to see if you're having issues loading the drivers)
2) Switch to UDEV seems to have reverted strange timing issue bt. ALSA and PulseAudio, causing some apps like Audacity or flash plugin to have really bad lag and/or CPU usage. Need to tweak /etc/pulse/default.sa to change the timer mode for UDEV as folks had done before with HAL via a setting
3) When switching kernels, had to boot to recovery mode and recompile NVidia driver against new kernel before X would start

Also, Alsa-utils ditched the alsaconf tool a while back and a lot of old sage advice recommends the use of this tool. This advice is worthless and a total red herring now. Ugh.

Anyway, I'm running at full speed. If anything I'm where I was before, though startup does seem maybe a little faster. Nothing else seems out of place or outright broken. I really hope they do more regression testing on upgrades in the future, since a lot of this was related to the UDEV and kernel updates more than anything else.

Eclipse problem and workaround

[Elrac]

I'm happy to say I had only one problem with 9.10: In some cases buttons in the Eclipse GUI could not be mouse-clicked. The "OK" button would assume its "pressed" look but would not do anything. It was possible to click such buttons using the keyboard, however.

Thankfully, I was not the first with this problem and found a solution on the 'Net: You can set the environment variable

GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=true

before starting Eclipse and then everything will be fine. Well, as far as that problem is concerned, anyway.

Issues and feedback

[Anonymous Coward]

I updated my laptop (Dell 1525 and HP Pavilion) from 9.04 to 9.10 both had major issues. The laptop had several problems with the broad-com drivers. Had to recompile the b43 driver, injection patch, etc etc. The desktop upgraded, but on reboot couldnt find /dev/sda1 (even though it was there). If I booted from another distro I could mount and write the partition. In single mode only read access ess even when mounting.

I am not a newb to Linux, have tried every distro going back to 1999 from Redhat, Slackware, FreeBSD, on and on.. Ubuntu is a good step in the right direction, don't get me wrong. But still has quite a bit to go. Still it is free, and you there are some areas that Linux in general is far superior then Windows.

For me and running a consulting business, I ended up going back to Windows 7 on the two machines, with Virtual box to run Ubuntu 9.10. With 6GB of RAM, it works beautifully under Win7\Virtualbox. Even use Virtual Dimension to provide the workspace and RK Launcher to give the OSX style doc. Cygwin for basic shell and a hot key to switch to my running linux VM.

Smooth for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I did a complete re-install for 9.10. Upgrading is always perilous, regardless of what OS you run. Everything ran perfectly. All hardware (dell latitude D630) was found and all drivers installed perfectly.

I'm running ext3. I think ext4 is still a bit rough. I was having system freezes every other day when running ext4.

Release is fine....BETA sucked

[guidoFawkes]

I upgraded to the BETA a month or so ago...and it destroyed my machine...forced me to wipe the drive and upgrade to Windows 7. The new release has been wonderful so far. Nothing to complain about thus far.

Re:My experience

[Anpheus]

That's what you call working flawlessly? When it kicks you into an emergency console in which you had to remount your hard disks manually in read-write mode and run the package reconfigure command?

Clearly 2009 is not yet the year of Linux on the desktop.

upgrade from 9.04 on a dual boot laptop

[trb]

I have a dual boot (vista/ubuntu) toshiba laptop that I bought in the early vista days. I upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 last night. I'm an experienced hacker (Unix since the late 70's, PDP10s before that).

The upgrade asked me about the grub.conf, and it was pretty cryptic, as the diffs it displayed weren't showing all the kernels I thought I had. I told it to leave the original grub.conf there, assuming I could reboot into the old kernel and then run update-grub and look at the grub.conf and hack it by hand if necessary. When it rebooted into my old kernel, the system didn't see my lappy touchpad, so I couldn't use the GUI. So I hit ctl-alt-f1 and used a text window to log in (the keyboard worked). As I recall, update-grub wasn't adding the new kernel at that point, so I just edited grub.conf by hand and added it in. I rebooted into the new kernel, which understood my touchpad. After that, I was able to run update-grub, and it found the new kernel, and reboots after that seem ok.

I haven't used it for more than 15 minutes, but it saw my disk, keyboard, touchpad, and wireless. I didn't notice anything else ailing, but I haven't looked carefully. But the way grub handles the new kernel does seem broken.

Happy with it - 21 installs in commercial env

[Anonymous Coward]

I have rolled out 9.10 to all the desktops here at work. Normally I wouldn't have done this but we test each release and 9.10 was simply so much faster for what we do that rolling it out was worth the risk.

Basically I build a single test machine with all the software and settings ready to go and I simply use g4l across the network to propagate it. Ldap authentication, NFS mounted homes all worked perfectly. The biggest advantage is we use a bespoke mysql backed database and the speed and responsiveness of this application is 100% better.

Seat of the pants benchmarking also says opening of emails (thunderbird imap), documents and PDFs is also heaps quicker.

Machines are all pretty similar - AMD x2 processors ranging between 4k & 6k, 2gb ram, 80gb sata drives, gigabyte motherboards with everything on board.

Insufficient resources at Canonical?

[MSG]

I never really bought in to the Ubuntu hype. A lot of users had good things to say about their early releases, but I never actually saw a reason to believe that they were better or easier than other distributions. I did, however, see their installer eat several friends' systems, which gave me a lot of reason to believe the opposite.

With each release of Ubuntu, I hear a larger number of complaints. I've mostly come to the conclusion that Canonical took their time to get the first release right, but has bitten off more than they can chew with the 6 month release cycle. They don't seem to have the resources to keep up the quality that they managed with their early releases.

Re:Insufficient resources at Canonical?

[Ash-Fox]

I never really bought in to the Ubuntu hype.

There was hype? Where?

A lot of users had good things to say about their early releases

Just like users on every other distro and platform, and if you Google problems, you will find a tonne of users for any platform, distro complaining about problems.

I did, however, see their installer eat several friends' systems, which gave me a lot of reason to believe the opposite.

Eating a system? What does that mean? The install failing?

I do however find that hard to believe when the livecd is running well enough to be functional enough to start the installer - which is essentially the system (the difference is only slightly in the configuration from the livecd) that gets copied on to the system. Then again, perhaps the burned copy of the disc was shoddy, but, there is a built in disc check for that when you first boot off the disc to check that.

With each release of Ubuntu, I hear a larger number of complaints.

I would imagine this is due to Ubuntu's growth more so than the same users, although even in those instances, it can be said this is anecdotal.

They don't seem to have the resources to keep up the quality that they managed with their early releases.

I don't think you researched the distribution much and thus wouldn't know the difference between the LTS and non-LTS versions to be honest. LTS generally having higher quality packages and supported for three years, and then move into a secondary support stage that supports a select amount of packages for two more years. LTS having a release every two years.

I, myself use only LTS versions of Ubuntu on my production systems (I also run a tonne of other distributions and operating systems).

Re:Insufficient resources at Canonical?

[MSG]

There was hype? Where?

Most of the Linux users I know insist that Ubuntu "just works", and is far easier to manage than other distributions. None of them have any real experience with other distributions to support those assertions, and the help I've lent to users of the system has certainly convinced me that it's not true. If often-repeated, empty promises aren't hype, then what is?

Just like users on every other distro and platform, and if you Google problems, you will find a tonne of users for any platform, distro complaining about problems.

I'm not sure I follow you, but that's actually a point I frequently make. Ubuntu made a very positive impression on people who hadn't used it long enough to have had any problems with it. Like any complex software, it's going to have problems. My point is that Ubuntu isn't really any better than other distributions, and I'm becoming more convinced that it's not even as good.

Eating a system? What does that mean? The install failing?

In one case it was the NTFS resizer corrupting a friend's filesystem which he'd shrunk to make room for Ubuntu. Plenty of people thought that was included too early, and I have to agree. Another friend had a RAID array that he instructed the installer not to change. The installer reinitialized the array, and he lost everything therein.

I don't think you researched the distribution much and thus wouldn't know the difference between the LTS and non-LTS versions to be honest.

You could always ask. As a matter of fact, I'm quite familiar with the LTS process. However, supporting a distribution for a longer period of time isn't the same as putting the engineering and testing resources into getting the initial release right. In fact, the as the number of actively supported LTS releases increases, resources available for the new releases decrease. That brings me back to my original question: Has Canonical bitten off more than they can chew? Are releases really getting less good as time goes on? If so, what can they do to turn that around?

Re:Insufficient resources at Canonical?

[Ash-Fox]

Most of the Linux users I know insist that Ubuntu "just works", and is far easier to manage than other distributions.

Many users of any OS, distribution I know insist that their choice "just works". Which is insane when you hear it from OpenBSD, Gentoo users etc. No OS just works. Not Windows, OS X or even Linux.

In one case it was the NTFS resizer corrupting a friend's filesystem which he'd shrunk to make room for Ubuntu.

The same NTFS shrinking software is used on every Linux distros installers, if it was going to fail, it was going to fail on every single distro (this is usually caused by an unclean NTFS system - which is why you should chkdsk /f c: it before doing any operations like this).

However, supporting a distribution for a longer period of time isn't the same as putting the engineering and testing resources into getting the initial release right.

If you consider how the releases in between are more of stepping stones to get to that initial release, it is in my opinion. You see a huge amount of changes that are done in six months between the various Ubuntu distros, slower release schedules seems to stunt growth if you looked at other Linux distributions - So I believe this to be a positive thing.

That brings me back to my original question: Has Canonical bitten off more than they can chew? Are releases really getting less good as time goes on? If so, what can they do to turn that around?

I don't think they are biting off more than they can chew, but I do believe their organizational and certain quality control systems still need to be refined, which I am confident that they will be over time. Their organization is one of the youngest ones out there in the OS market and with what they've done with the few years they have been in operation, it's quite fascinating.

Some hickups with alpha 1

[AmonTheMetalhead]

But the final was a smooth ride for me, everything works flawlessy (as far as i can tell), even pulseaudio. I'm not going back.

The most common low-level open-source error

[ivoras]

ENOMONEY.

The usual...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm having the usual ups and downs I have when a new release rolls along. There are usually a couple weeks of bugfixing and adjusting to any substantial changes. A case in point: The new indicator applet confuses me and I've been having issues getting it to do what I want. Evolution now crashes when I add a task (but a fix has been committed) and now my speakers don't turn off when I plug in my headphones. Ok, but looking over the bugs I've commented on; the last time there was a dist upgrade I had trouble getting my graphics back online, my microphone stopped working entirely because of pulseaudio and a change in the way the usb modules were built into the kernel meant that suspend stopped working. Here's the deal though: half the reason I use the latest versions of this operating system is to explore new features and find new bugs. Ubuntu, and linux in general, doesn't have legions of paid testers working out bugs. Ubuntu, and linux in general, isn't free. The cost is that you do your part and report bugs, help other users in the forums, and generally be a part of the community.

PulseAudio is EVIL to me. I disable it and my volu

[WolphFang]

PulseAudio is EVIL to me. Static, sputters, dropouts. I have intel hda audio. Has never worked with pulseaudio. Works great without pulseaudio. I disable it to use only ALSA and my volume control now disappears? Eh?

RAID drivers will not load

[Anonymous Coward]

Tonight I'm going to try the previous distro, but I have had no luck getting 9.10 to boot.

Interesting note: I was able to boot to the installation live CD, install on my 3TB RAID5 array (nvidia controller) and it seemed to run just fine.

Then I rebooted, and it has not been able to boot from the hard drive, saying that it's missing some nvidia driver, which is ironic since it was able to see the array and format it (and I assume copy files to it).

It's the Kubuntu effect

[molnarcs]

I can't speak for Ubuntu, but when it comes to Kubuntu, it has been this way for ages. Releasing software with known bugs that any other responsible vendor would consider a showstopper. The last known acceptable release of Kubuntu was Feisty Fawn. Since then, everything went downhill. I always did a clean install because the "upgrade" never worked as advertised. And then, I had regressions after regressions. My hotkeys stopped working with Gutsy, and though I'm pretty good at troubleshooting problems, I couldn't solve it. Hardy brought on a broken OSD plus a couple of other problems, mostly incomplete/OBVIOUSLY buggy packages shipped with the distro and a terrible KDE implementation. Ibex was a nice upgrade though, news about its quality led me to upgrade to OpenSuse, which was OK. In fact, it was a fantastic KDE experience, but I started distro-hopping: Mandriva, Fedora, and finally Arch. All the "big three" had been way way better in every respect than Kubuntu. Neither was perfect, but at least I learned that there is such a thing as quality assurance. Was laughing when I heard Jaunty shipped with a known bug that disabled wireless for half of its users. I never thought it could get worst than that, but apparently it can. Not that I care anymore - Arch it is, and Arch it will be for the foreseeable future. Finally something that simply works.

Re:It's the Kubuntu effect

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't speak for Ubuntu, but when it comes to Kubuntu, it has been this way for ages. Releasing software with known bugs that any other responsible vendor would consider a showstopper.

What I do is install the stock Ubuntu release and install (almost) EVERYTHING relating to KDE except kubuntu-desktop. That removed a lot of shit right there.

Some minor problems

[Kerrigann]

The two biggest problems I've had personally are https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/403339 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups/+bug/465916

Which in the grand scheme of things are pretty minor. The first one is really annoying if you play WoW in wine, because you have to manually turn off keyboard repeat :/

Other than that, I've upgraded 3 machines without problems. My parallels VM upgraded to karmic doesn't detect any drives unless I use the older kernel, but I'm 90% sure that that's not a bug in ubuntu.

But *man* that xorg bug is annoying.

Ubuntu 9.10 vs. Fedora 12

[sensei moreh]

Installed on my HP s3707c while still in development (early Aug), and have been updating ever since. No obvious issues other than video. The nouveau driver doesn't work with the onboard nvidia 9100 graphics, but this isn't an Ubuntu problem - I see the same issues with Fedora. However, using the proprietary nvidia driver, I can run compiz as my window manager in Fedora but not in Ubuntu. Ah, the joys of the bleeding edge.

No issues

[Sandman1971]

I upgraded a few days ago without any issues. The only app (so far) that stopped working for me is Handbrake. So far everything else has worked flawlessly.

Re:No issues

[thuerrsch]

For Handbrake, try the snapshotfor Karmic which has just been released. You'll have to forego avi and xvid, which have been dropped from Handbrake 0.9.4 and will never return. Good riddance, I'd say, but many people won't agree.

Ironic since my Fedora upgrade was painless

[pembo13]

My most recent was quite painless -- I had extrapolated from that installing Ubuntu type distros would be even easier. I wonder what went wrong.

Re:Fix avalible

[Enahs]

You have some sort of problem with FREEDOM?

People should be able to make informed decisions based on what they're given, look into it, and if they fall for something stupid, take personal responsibility.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Upgrading was a very positive experience for me. I had only one problem: my audio was fuzzy and crackly. Turns out that was my own fault. But my Wacom Intuos4 works out of the box which is nice for a change. Having benchmarked my system, it performs much better than it did with Jaunty. Everything seems to work quite well.

Some Early Adopters Stung By Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

[fizzer06]

I am not having any problems with it. I upgraded from 9.4

Installing, but not upgrading

[Arancaytar]

I have installed Karmic from scratch on my new computer (I have in fact put off the installation for a month in order to wait for the release).

Even that has been pretty nasty, but a lot of that is down to non-standard options (had to boot the installer .iso from grub, download Nvidia drivers, fix xorg.conf, install mouse and kbd packages).

With that, and the complaints I've been hearing about the upgrade path, I'm not going to upgrade my laptop.

No Problems

[nontrivial]

I just did a clean install of Ubuntu 9.10 on my Asus Eee PC 900A (4 Gig SSD) with zero problems.

No problems with final

[CarlHall]

I usually jump on Ubuntu releases well before they are released. This round of alphas & betas was a little tough to get through (X won't start, can't find peripherals) but before going final and since then, everything has been working nicely on a couple of different machines.

why the hell do I need a subject /.

[Anonymous Coward]

running karmic since mid-beta. no problems with hard drives, flickering screens. haven't noticed and/or cared about the kernel version; and I'm just assuming _some_ encryption works (eg SSL/OpenSSH/whatever) I haven't tried folder/drive encryption. feels much like ubuntu linux to me.

They should stay in Beta mode way longer

[xiando]

I very recently gave my nice neighbor, a man in his 60s who had no previous computer experience, a P4-based laptop with Ubuntu on it. I tried the Karmic Beta on it and it had trouble with both the Ralink wireless and the soundcard. I reinstalled 8.10 on it before giving it away since that version actually works perfectly on this particular Fujitsu Siemens laptop. What I find rather odd and quite sad is that the final product was released only a few days after my Karmic Beta test. bugs.launchpad.net indicates that these bugs are still open even though they had been for some time prior to me checking for duplicates when I was about to file bug report after bug report. Perhaps the Ubuntu overlords should have a way longer release cycle? Could it be that it would be better for everyone if they actually made sure that most really important already-reported bugs regarding the beta are fixed before releasing the final version? No wireless and/or no sound are real deal-breakers when you're trying out a new OS for the first time, specially if you are used to a proprietary OS with working wireless and sound and the anti-virus and the virus and all those things.

Nobody should be shocked and amazed to find that unfixed reported bugs remain bugs after a fan-fare "final" release. They knew, or should have known by looking at open bug reports, that the release was full of bugs.

Re:They should stay in Beta mode way longer

[Ash-Fox]

Nobody should be shocked and amazed to find that unfixed reported bugs remain bugs after a fan-fare "final" release.

Use LTS versions only then.

Re:They should stay in Beta mode way longer

[Stray7Xi]

I had minor issues moving from 9.10 from 9.04. Specifically my RAlink wifi usb would "connect" but be unable to form tcp connections (while icmp worked fine). I added one of the drivers to the blacklist in modprobe.d and it worked flawlessly since then. In fact I haven't been dropped yet (which I usually got drop once a day before). I won't pretend to understand this, so I take no responsibility, but it might help. Actually now looking up the issue, I found a good thread on this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1256810. I stumbled through it blacklisted both rt2870sta and rt2800usb and apparently am using the rt3070sta now successfully.

On a side note, this laptop has a dead builtin wifi card controlled by a switch. If I accidently flip that switch in windows, it locks up and I haven't found a way to disable it. At least in Ubuntu it doesn't once I have the broadcom driver disabled. If I had read this article a few days ago, I probably wouldn't have bothered upgrading. But thankfully things worked out relatively well for me.

2 fresh installs, no problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I did a fresh install on an Asus eeePC 900 and on a desktop (AMD something, 512Mb RAM, nVidia): no problem at all.
Well, good news do not make headlines.

WiFi authentication? Who needs that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Without WPA/WPA2 authentication working, my laptop is now useless on campus. Thanks, Ubuntu.

bumpy ride and lovin' it!

[ehovland]

For some reason I totally disregarded any warnings about this upgrade. I didn't uninstall the Qt scripting binding I had been told would break an upgrade and I didn't even bother to look up instructions. And as such, getting there was difficult. Now I am there, doing all of those things I should have let the upgrade task do (like hand edit menu.lst). I like it. Kubuntu looks great. And everything I have tried has worked. But it has only been 5 days. I am sure that others have had different experiences.

Working fine on my D610

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been running Karmic since the Alpha 5 release and its all been quite smooth sailing for me. Also noticed a marked improvement in speed when updating with the new ext3 filesystem. I have not opted to encrypt my home partition.

So far so good

[Anonymous Coward]

Updated from 9.04 to 9.10 in three very different environments (and AMD desktop, a Dell notebook and an HP mini netbook) and had no problems at all whatsoever.

Karmic Koala works fine over here...

[Huckminster]

I had one avoidable issue during install that mostly related to my old OS (XP) locking the HD due to an improper reboot (my impatience). This caused the installer to try to repartition the HD, fail, and effectively delete all my data (but only after one partially successful reboot?). But overall, the performance of the new OS is far superior to XP, Vista, 7, and older versions of Ubuntu.

Bare system w/ LVM smooth

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a pretty bare system that I mainly use as a file server and firewall so conflicts during an upgrade should be very minimal. The only distinguishing thing I have is 2TB on LVM.

Upgrade from 9.04 took about 1 hour. Rebooted. Everything works as expected. No errors or bugs to report.

Re:Professionalism... Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Professionalism is the mark of the charlatan.

If someone is a professional, you can rest assured you'll pay the most for the least that solves your problem -- or almost solves, leaving room for some future "deals".

I'll take amateurs any day: these range from the complete idiot to the connoisseur, whose standards are so high that even perfect is a time-related concept.

Kubuntu (and others like Mandriva, FWIW) have problems _because_ they're the most professional in Linux distros. I'm having a lot of annoying papercuts with these two (why, because I like KDE and SuSE won't be usable until Novell let it go free).

Examples of problems:

Kubuntu (pre 9.10): no WPA2, hence only unsafe connections. No deal.
Kubuntu (9.10, i386): not very fast booting, if you ask me. Had to quit booting in a AMD Geode LX 800 (500MHz). That's not too old, I think.

Mandriva 2008/2009: No fscking ctrl+mousewheel zoom. In the same hardware, Ubuntu does it. Had to use Ctrl+Keypad plus. Not the same thing.

fresh install on an Acer Aspire one ZG5

[ScouseMouse]

My install worked flawlessly, and all the internal hardware worked. (Camera, mic, display, Wireless, Ethernet, everything)
However, It doesnt seem to work properly with my Mobile internet dongle. Looks like something kernel related.
I can get it to work if i rmmod usb-storage immediately after i insert it (Why usb-storage?), before the deskop sees it.
Sadly, for me this is a killer. My netbook is mainly for being able to use the internet while camping. (Sad but true)
Shame. 9.04 worked flawlessly with it, first go.

Re:fresh install on an Acer Aspire one ZG5

[WormholeFiend]

I have an AAO 150, and did the upgrade from 9.04... everything was fine except wireless as usual when I do a kernel update, but this time the usual madwifi fix did now work, and by all accounts the wireless should have been working.

So I thought screw it, and switched to Crunchbang.

Re:fresh install on an Acer Aspire one ZG5

[jeffstar]

some mobile internet dongles have 2gb flash memory in them that is mounted as a drive for your reading and writing pleasure. sometimes they stick the driver for the dongle on there.

so your mobile internet dongle may be a hard drive as well, hence the usb-storage.

Let the Holy War begin...

[parseexception]

oh wait, it looks like it has, I guess everyone needs something to bitch about, and "ours" is always better than "yours"

Compaq Presario

[Kamineko]

I upgraded my Compaq Presario 1200 (700mhz, 300MiB RAM, 6GB HDD) from 9.04 to 9.10 Xubuntu using Update Manager with no problems whatsoever. My 3com PCMCIA wireless card still works, crappy Medion graphics tablet, sound, Wine, everything.

They introduced a new picture browsing application (Ristretto) which I don't believe was there before, so now there's two 'ready picture browser'-type apps installed (9.04 had its own one, I think it was simply called Image Viewer, which had a near identical interface to Windows XP's image preview). Kinda confused me at first.

The only thing that's really getting my goat is that 9.10 uses a different version of gdm (apparently the one used in 9.04 was 'really old'). This new gdm can't be themed, and as a result I'm stuck with a really, really naff looking login screen that can't readily be customised or themed (it also shows a userlist, which I don't want). I could manually install the old gdm, I suppose, but I'll just wait for the new one to support themes. On a more practical note, the bar that appears at the bottom of the screen (Sessions, International, etc.) doesn't display correctly in my 800x600 screen. It overlaps and jumbles up.

Re:Compaq Presario

[Kamineko]

Something else, the drivers for the PCMCIA wireless ethernet card appear to have been improved: in all previous distros, the 'activity' light on the card would continually blink whether or not the card were in use. With 9.10, the light stays off unless there is communication (I'm assuming this is the correct behaviour, as this is how the card behaves in Windows. I prefer it, at least.)

Blinky Screen

[Mothinator]

I had the blinky screen issue with X failing to load. I think it had to do with DKMS not building the nividia module for the new driver. I was forced to wipe / and reinstall. An annoyance for sure, but no data lost as /home is on a separate partition.

Re:My experience

[elashish14]

The greatest part is that there is an exact opposite post above you posted 5 minutes earlier which has received +3 without giving any details whatsoever. And here we have a post which deals exactly with the details mentioned in the summary and, where are the mods now?

Zero Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Not one issue on any of my computers. I love it. It has even fixed a wonky sound issue I was having on my laptop along with the unstable wifi. It took me all day to upgrade my wife's machine to Windows 7, it took me all of 45 minutes to load Karmic, and I think I made lunch at the same time.

Easy Peasy here

[Bald-Headed Geek]

It's been very smooth for me. Home PC and work PC updated without any problem whatsoever. Still need to update the netbook, perhaps will do that tonight.

Early adopters ...

[LittleImp]

I thought every Linux user knew that bleeding edge != stability.

Re:Early adopters ...

[thesaurus]

That's why I'll wait for Karmic SP1. How long does a service pack take. 6 months or so?

X.10 versions are never 100%...

[TheGreatOrangePeel]

I think people tend to forget that the X.10 versions of Ubuntu are considered to be less stable than the X.04 versions. They're meant to be the version before the next increment to the major (e.g. 9.10 to 10.04) number and it's expected that there will be kinks to iron out. The point is to make the upcoming X.04 version stable. If you don't want to be stung, don't install a X.10 version. Then again, I've never had an issue with a X.10 versions (namely, 8.10 and 9.10). In fact, they tend to fix my hardware issues from the previous version.

Re:X.10 versions are never 100%...

[shutdown -p now]

I think people tend to forget that the X.10 versions of Ubuntu are considered to be less stable than the X.04 versions. They're meant to be the version before the next increment to the major (e.g. 9.10 to 10.04) number and it's expected that there will be kinks to iron out.

Since when is X in X.Y Ubuntu versioning scheme a "major number"? Last I checked, X is just year number, and Y is month; and the only stability difference is between LTS and non-LTS releases (and not every .04 release is LTS).

defectivebydesign

[MMORG]

Come on now, where's the "defectivebydesign" tag on this story? You know you want to, you're just afraid!

No problems here

[Anonymous Coward]

Upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 yesterday on a dell latitude e6500. Everything is working quite well for me. No sound, video, or other issues. And, my wifi seems to work much better now. It did upgrade to the 2.6.31 kernel... The improvement I've seen is just in connection times, on 9.04 it would spin its wheels for a good 30-45 seconds after login before connecting to my WPA2 wireless network. Now, it connects instantly upon login (well... within 3-5 seconds).

Stung with a venom called anticlimax

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded my laptop from 9.04 to 9.10 at the weekend. I was happy to see minor but noticable improvements here and there, but all said and done, it really was an anticlimax for me.

The upgrade was smooth, all apps updated to the new versions without problems except for the awkward choice when it tried to overwrite my menu.lst file. I wish people would think about this sort of thing from the user's point of view, rather than the developer who understands what 'experimental' merge might mean...

Anyway, I was left with a working desktop that is probably one of the best Linux offerings for the home user yet. However it was still an anticlimax. I guess I'd been excited seeing ubuntu raise their game in all sorts of areas lately, with a progressively more focused offering, aiming clearly at netbooks, desktop/laptops and severs with three separate flavours, with the 'ubuntu one' cloud hosting being offered, and the release date so closely following win7. I really hoped it would deliver a total user experience that would satisfy non-geek users. But it didn't.

I tried to connect up to my new NAS drive, hoping for a 'map network drive + reconnect on startup' type option. It moaned about root privileges, and after just two clicks from a google search on the subject I was back into the land of forum posts saying 'edit this text file', 'run that shell command', 'here are some examples', 'chmod a new text file with your passwords in' etc. I got it to work, but it took me 1hr 59min and 50secs longer than it should have done. Geek hobbyists like myself are prepared to go through this sort of thing, and enjoy the learning experience while they do. The average home or corporate user is not willing to go to these lengths in my opinion.

Windows plus antivirus works out cheaper by the end of the first week if you count the time spent. I'm leaving 8.04 LTS on my wife's netbook and although it hurts to say it, i'll wait until the next major version before considering recommending it to my family and friends.

I use macos winxp and ubuntu regularly and can see the merits of each.

This is the best Linux yet, but still not yet ready for prime time IMHO.

More pain than gain

[pangloss]

Went from Jaunty to Karmic on a Dell Mini 9 (both were the Netbook Remix editions) and was greeted with no wireless and no microphone in Skype. The former is a documented issue with the Broadcom drivers and has a fairly straightforward workaround if you're within reach of a wired ethernet connection. The latter appears to be a problem with Skype 2.1.0.47 (current version in Medibuntu for Karmic, and a "beta" no less) and PulseAudio. So far, the workarounds for the latter appear to be to downgrade Skype or remove Pulse.

9.10 works good so far...

[Anonymous Coward]

We just setup a 2TB SAMBA server for network backups. The install was quick and painless, it boots fast, and everything worked 'out-of-the-box'. Very impressed so far.

i was burned

[Anonymous Coward]

how about having my nvidia drivers break to the point of no return after an upgrade and having to wipe the drive just to get it working. and on my laptop completely removing gnome power manager to fix the god awful screen flickering.

ubuntu, stop rushing your releases

two contrasting experiences

[sambaynham]

I've put Karmic on both my main machines; my x86 netbook and my Athlon X3 desktop. The karmic install on my netbook was absolutely flawless, and Karmic on my netbook is a joy to behold. Waaaay faster, much better with multiple apps, more useful features (Gwibber integration with notifier-applet is a special ) and a much-improved UI. But... Karmic on x64 was an absolute pig. Jockey worked on the livecd but not the full install, which makes precisely no sense. Not a particular problem for me, the only restricted driver I needed was the nvidia blob, and I could install that manually. The drive naming process, however, has been a nightmare. I haven't had to edit /etc/fstab in years, but I had to in order to give my external HDD a consistent mount point. The volumes tab simply refused to work. Getting my MTP MP3 player to work has also been an absolute sod. I'm a loyal ubuntu user, but their release cycle is so hit-and-miss that it's just not safe to be an early adopter. I try not to complain too hard, at the end of the day, I'm getting a world class OS for free. But it frustrates me that their QA Process focuses so much on the new and the shiny and less on the core experience. I know from experience that within a month or so it'll all be peachy and I'll love ubuntu more than ever, but...why not just release it in a month or so, when it's ready? (Note to self; why not just install it in a month or so, when you know it'll be fine, idiot?) (Answer to self: I like new! I like shiny!)

Re:two contrasting experiences

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't had to edit /etc/fstab in years, but I had to in order to give my external HDD a consistent mount point.

This may not be what you want, but I find the best thing with external drives is to label the partition/s and not have an fstab entry. Then each partition will always automount at /media/[label]. However, this makes it harder if you want to specify non-default mount options.

I had the opposite experience

[sammydee]

I've been using Ubuntu since 5.04 and tried an upgrade every time a new version came out. I have never ONCE had one actually work, so I always ended up reformatting/reinstalling from scratch.

This is the first time an upgrade has gone smoothly for me. The only thing that went wrong was firefox failed to load my session directory, and this is only due to upgrading from 3.0 to 3.5. In fact, firefox 3.0 was still installed on my system and that worked perfectly still.

In general however, the Ubuntu upgrades always seem to be a bit flaky, far better to separately partition your home directory and reformat/reinstall instead - too much fundamental architecture changes with each release to make upgrades really work very well. You still keep all your application configurations and data easily that way as well.

Stung???

[Idiomatick]

Since when do koalas sting people? Anyways I'm fine with staying a release behind on my server/mediacenter. Maybe when I get more used to 'nix I'll go bleeding edge once I can reliably help out ubuntu and fix any issues myself.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people insist on trotting out their own experiences of success on a limited subset of hardware as if they somehow negate the fact that people are suffering because of the Ubuntu developer's subservience to the tyranny of the "Six Month Release Cycle (OMG)." Even your example fails since you are having difficulties but are willing to brush them off.

Because the story post says "Whas has been your experience if you've moved to Karmic?" and people think "Whas" is supposed to be "What".

went smooth for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 on Saturday morning with no issues. I don't have any weird repos installed and only used Ubuntu supported software. Hey how many times have you completely hosed an RPM based system with unnecessary software? I'm imagining the users with problems installed a whole ton of shit which isn't supported in mainline Ubuntu, using non supported repos etc....

OpenLdap Incompatibilities

[obender]

The only problem I encountered moving from 9.04 to 9.10 was in OpenLdap. The new version 2.4.18 complained about a configuration file in a subdirectory under /etc/ldap/slapd.d. After reading the OpenLdap source it turned out that it required all access rules to be numbered if at least one was numbered. The files in question were produced by the earlier version of slapd by parsing slapd.conf.auth. So I edited them manually adding a number prefix to the last rule and then it worked OK.

no problems here.

[phrostie]

i updated both my laptop and my gamebox.

both went flawlessly

ones nvidia/amd and the other is intel/ati

Re:Ubuntu = Crap

[Ash-Fox]

While Fedora isn't perfect, the people behind it are much better at what they do.

Considering Fedora's idea of security is chrooting stuff as root processes rather than derooting the various deamons (from syslog to hal crap), looking at how often the selinux setup is on Fedora broken in someway, compared to apparmor or hell, even selinux on other distros. The amount of packages that are broken (check the fedora bug tracker) with every release. five words, proprietary hardware support piss poor.

I can only determine from my experience that they're better at doing it wrong? Because you didn't provide any information as to what they do better, I filled in the holes with my own knowledge on the matter.

And their primary reason for existence isn't to convert Windows users

I agree. Their primary reason for existence is to be "Redhat experimental".

Flash

[nukeade]

I installed this on my work and home PC with no obvious problems, and was really pleased with the responsiveness.

It wasn't until later that I realized that Flash no longer responds to mouse clicks. It makes YouTube and Pandora hard to use, and other Flash apps nearly impossible to use. A workaround was recommended, which unfortunately causes Firefox to crash on loading a Flash app.

~Ben

Re:Flash

[anotheranothernick]

There is a new fix for it. Check it out: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/flashplugin-nonfree/+bug/410407/comments/143

Enjoy!

Re:Flash

[nukeade]

I just gave that a try, but Flash apps don't load at all for me after making said changes. :(

Thanks for the info, though. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they fix this soon! Not having flash is pretty annoying.

~Ben

Re:Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

64bit install? uninstall the flashplayer-installer and drop the 64bit flash plugin from adobe in the appropriate directory, can't remember which at the moment but it's now working better than ever

Re:Flash

[daniel.b.douglas]

I've had the same issue with Flash, as well as having had to do some mucking about to get wireless working on my laptop. I don't really blame Ubuntu for the latter, though, as the wireless card in the laptop wasn't Linux compatible originally and only recently had drivers published. Those are my only two issues... I'm moderately satisfied though I do hope future versions will anticipate the kinds of errors reported a bit better.

Re:Flash

[tuppe666]

It bothers me when I see posts like this, after all the pragmatic/freedom posts. Binary blobs are the cause of too great a percentage of problems on when is in the main a FOSS platform. The only people who are really pragmatic is those who are developing FOSS replacements and working with these companies to create FOSS replacements.

That said Gnash is pretty good and has been for a couple of revisions, unfortunately Ubuntu do not make it a drop in replacement.

Re:Corporation != Profitable

[xiando]

Really? That's your excuse. My indication is that they have never even attempted to do any kind of widespread testing. Its not like there are that many mainstream hardware configurations out there. Ubuntu is a corporately sponsored distribution they SHOULD have the cash somewhere. Just because they choose to make money in ways other

That Canonical Ltd is a corporation does not mean that they are profitable, it just means that they are at minimum making enough to keep running (since corporations who do not disappear). They are not a publicly traded company, so we do not know how their balance sheet looks, but nothing indicates that they have large piles of gold in some secret vault somewhere. "They have the cash and should be using it to do $foo" arguments may be valid when it comes to Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) since you can actually check and see that they do or do not have those bars of gold lying around. Canonical Ltd is a small and insignificant corporation compared to Red Hat, which is probably why Red Hat Enterprise Linux gets way more testing and such.

OK, how long should I wait then?

[BanachSpaceCadet]

I've been an early adopter in the past, but right now, I can't risk stability issues. I only have one computer, and if it's not running, I can't do my work. I'm willing to spend a few hours installing, but I don't have time to spend an entire day ironing out bugs. Surely things should stabilize within a few weeks or months. Does anyone have a suggestion as to how long I should wait? (I plan to do a fresh install.)

I guess they should have waited...

[GuruBuckaroo]

for Service Pack 1?

DO NOT UPGRADE. Wait a month, or 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

My thought: do not upgradem and try Live CD a lot of times. I was using 8.10, upgraded to 9.04, everything worked, except the video driver. My laptop got freezed a lot of times. So I went back to 8.04.
Now, I did a fresh install. My X does not freeze FREQUENTLY, but it does yet. My wifi disconnects quite often. My mom's DSL gave me a lot of headeaches, and is not perfect yet. Sound is annoying in both because they decided to save a lot of energy (shutting down hda intel hardware after 10 seconds).
To sum up: I am using 8.10 again. Soon, I will be using LTS .....
PS: My Vista suck a lot, but it is working without a problem (except for being Vista)

Stand-by

[cm613]

I have an Acer laptop and I have problems going to stand-by and reanimating from stand-by. I need to hard boot and already once it came back up with filesystem errors. Pretty frustrating. I haven't had any of the problems noted above. For now I'll just start up and shut down every time even though it takes way longer.

Re:WiFi authentication? Who needs that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Works for me, man. You'll have to be more specific about your hardware.

mobile broadband issue - huawei e169

[nermaljcat]

Karmic does not work with a huawei e169 USB modem... bit of a disappointment as there was a kernal patch available weeks ago that fixes the problem. I love Ubuntu and was looking forward to Karmic, but will wait another month or so before converting my main machine =(

Re:mobile broadband issue - huawei e169

[ScouseMouse]

I had the same issue. with the Huawei K3520 (the UK vodaphone version of the E169) I have managed to discover a workaround, however its annoying. If its not fixed before my last major camp in three weeks time, i'm going to downgrade back to 9.04. I dont really want to be fiddling with Kernel modules in the middle of nowere in the dark and wet of a typical english Winter. I'd rather just turn it on and it works,like 9.04 did.

Re:WiFi authentication? Who needs that?

[Ash-Fox]

Without WPA/WPA2 authentication working

Works for me. I could not reproduce your issue based off your limited information.

Gentoo

[Ironix]

I upgraded my home server from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10. After the update completed and I rebooted, the system happily announced that I was now running Xubuntu and then refused to boot until I remove the "biosize=16" option for my XFS drives in fstab.

Once the system did boot up, it wouldn't start X, but instead preferred to sit at a swiftly flickering console that could cause seizures.

I think I'll switch back to Gentoo now. =D

Re:Gentoo

[Interoperable]

By the time you're done compiling the next Ubuntu will be out and you can start the process all over again. (Sorry, mandatory compiling time joke for each post mentioning Gentoo).

Re:Gentoo

[True Grit]

(Sorry, mandatory compiling time joke for each post mentioning Gentoo).

For *each* post? Seriously, why bother?

Most actual Gentoo users know that the compile-time meme hasn't made any sense in about a decade or so (because many of them can't even remember the last time they did a full install/rebuild - never mind that modern hardware turns this job from one of days to just hours), even if it is occasionally funny, but if you're doing this *every* time Gentoo is mentioned, even in passing as it was done here, then... your apology is not accepted. :)

The Windows Guy who installed Ubuntu

[war4peace]

Now don't throw stones at me, please, but I'm a Windows guy. I never check for Linux distros to see what's new, I'm contempt using my Win-based boxes. But 2 days ago I was talking to a friend about Linux and stuff and felt the urge to see what's changed. It's been close to two years since I last played with any Linux distro except a heavily modified RHEL release which my company provides to appease its Linux community.

To my shame, I could only remember Ubuntu right then so I went to their website and downloaded 9.10; fired my VirtualBox installation, mounted the ISO and went on to create a virtual machine.

At first boot, I chose to start the live CD, looked around and started a HDD installation. It did some stuff then suddenly rebooted and went into a weird loop: the GUI was appearing for a few seconds, then disappeared, letting some text show up behind it, then went on again, ad nauseam. I forcefully restarted the machine and went on to attempt another install after reducing the amount of CPUs shown in the VM from 2 to 1 (dual-core goes bye-bye). To my surprise, that worked and the installation went on flawlessly.

Now I must say I am heavily impressed by what Ubuntu has become. It's fast, easy to work with and most importantly, I didn't even have to look up where Terminal is. A shitload of apps were available at a click's distance, it never died on me and I didn't have to install any post-installation drivers. On the other hand, yes, it's a VM still, with "standard" emulated hardware, no fancy things and implementations whetsoever, so my experience might not be relevant but anyway, I gave it a go on one of my company's desktop stations (Dell Optiplex 745), where it (as well) installed flawlessly.

Oh, yes, Ubuntu's sound system seems a little bit uneasy on my VM (cracks and pops when OS starts up and plays that annoying "welcome" sound), but I ain't going to use it to play music :) so I could care less. In the end, it was (and is) a pleasant experience... with one NOTABLE exception: it doesn't recognize the emulated monitor. I don't know why, I'm not Linux savvy, I have no clue how to fix the issue, but in Display Options, the monitor appears as "Unknown" and it allows shitty resolutions (640*480, 800*600 and 13xx*768). That on a 24" Dell Monitor which supports a native 1920*1200 resolution. That's bad but not a show stopper.

Re:The Windows Guy who installed Ubuntu

[nermaljcat]

dunno if this helps, but you may get a better resolution by changing your monitor and/or graphics driver ("Hardware" tab under "Display" in your "System Settings" - I use KDE, so it may be different in Gnome). The other options is to haqq around with /etc/X11/xorg.conf (this is the file that the Hardware tab updates), but I don't recommend it if you are new to Ubuntu... if you decide you want to give it a crack, please follow a guide and *back up your xorg.conf file first*

My Ubuntu 9.10 problems

[Oliver_Etchebarne]

This is my list of issues I had installing Karmik Koala from scratch:

- First time I ran the installer, kernel panic (keyboard leds blinking)
- Totem said I didn't have the codecs to see DVD, but it didn't suggest me to install them nor gave me any info about which codec I needed. Automatic DVD reproduction shows a weird "not handle for URI" error.
- Empathy crashes alot. It doesn't have MSN emoticons, can't sent file drag'n'dropping like Pidgin.
- I hated that non-skinnable GDM from Fedora, now Ubuntu uses it :-P
- I created a second admin account, I cannot log in with it, crashes with "Could not update ICEautority", and a bunch of other messages, showing only the wallpaper and the mouse pointer.

I've just reinstall 9.04, and I keep installing that version until 10.04 shows the light, hopping I'll be better. This version is the "Windows ME" of Ubuntu :-P

Some hiccups but mostly fine

[leopardi]

I upgraded from Kubuntu 9.04 on an Intel machine, with the following problems (from memory, corrections, if any, will be in a reply).

1. The upgrade process hung, so I killed it and ran "dpkg --configure -a". The upgrade then completed.
2. After logging in I noticed that quanta was missing. It looks like quanta is not ready for KDE 4.3.2. I fixed this by downgrading kdewebdev to KDE 3.5.10: The KDE software manager KPackageKit was not up to the job of sorting out dependencies, and complained about them one at a time. I used Synaptic instead.
3. The screen was flickering, so I used the Display button in System Settings to change the resolution and refresh rate from 1280x1024 @ 85 Hz. After a hiccup or two (eg. the top 1/2 of the screen not displaying) I changed the settings to 1600x1200 @ 75 Hz. This now works fine.

Everything now seems to work, including the desktop effects.

Re:Some hiccups but mostly fine

[leopardi]

Left out:

1.5. Mkramfs ran out of disk space on the boot partition. I had to delete the files for one old kernel and continue the upgrade from there.

Also, Flash does not fully work in Firefox.

How to upgrade Ubuntu properly

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to test first. All upgrades have the potential to cause problems. Of course we all have home partitions (dont we?) but you should have an extra OS partition, too. I've been running 8.10 which has been working wonderfully, until I needed to make a presentation last week and the resolution was unfixable. So I installed 9.10 into my 2nd 12gb partition, letting me test it all for a few days before really committing.

Don't mount your new home when you start! Let the next version make its own home. This way it won't ruin your old settings if you need to go back. Mount your home into s subdir of the new version's home. Only after its confirmed working well, rename the old home, copy the new onto the home device, log in as second user, delete old home, set /etc/fstab to mount home permanently.

Sorry if you got burned.
1. Don't use new software without testing. Its better to wait until others solve the bugs. Maybe consider always being 1 release behind.
2. Document all your changes and customizations, its enough to use 'screen' to log it and edit that doc, for example. Then you can easily install fresh and rebuild from a blank slate, it will pay off.
3. And above all, back up your whole system regularly so you can always go back to where you were in the event of an emergency.

And STOP talking about boot time, who cares! You shouldn't need to boot more than once a month. Focus on fast OS response when USING the system, for heaven's sake.

Numerous problems, all downgrades from Jaunty

[musicon]

Unlike previous releases where I jumped in fairly early in the beta process (beta 2 or 3), I waited to move to Karmic until the release. I also decided to do a clean install this time to ensure I wouldn't run into any upgrade issues.

Unfortunately, despite the supposed "papercut" fixes, this release seems far more prone to problems. On my Dell Latitude 620 (with Intel graphics, mind you):

1. Where Jaunty did great handling my laptop display and external monitor, Karmic has had no end of problems; problems that kept enforcing mirroring of displays, continually defaulting to 1024x768, random placements of the taskbar and notification popups, etc. See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8229025 about moving the taskbar.
2. Totem/gstreamer had no display, just a blank screen. Finally found http://blog.php-oop.net/archives/39
3. The system defaulted to enabling compiz. I turned it off while troubleshooting all of the other video errors, but now it won't enable again.
4. Despite the touted KMS, I still have a 2-3 second wait at boot (text mode from Grub I'm assuming), and later a 2-3 second delay with a blank screen excepting an underscore in the top-left corner that shows up between the boot image (eg, usplash) and the "pulsing" gdm startup
5. The overall boot time (from power on to entering my password) is roughly identical to Jaunty -- I don't notice any difference.
6. Power usage seems to be about the same, although powertop has reported a spike of 33W whereas before I never saw it go over 19W.
7. Much higher memory usage reported in system monitor (previously most of the memory was allocated to cache, now most of it is allocated to programs).

About the only good thing I can say (which may also be attributed to the larger 500G drive I swapped in for the install), is that overall the system seems smoother and more responsive.

Re:Numerous problems, all downgrades from Jaunty

[cynyr]

• try xrandr, or setting up the monitor section of your xorg.conf. Sorry i don't remember the commands been a long long time since i've had something other than an nvidia card. --primary for a --output section seems promising, "man xrandr"
• wow, shocked, yet again the ATI drivers suck... but yes, some outputs don't work on all gpus, try a different one.(i know you have an intel something.)
• compiz messes with wine on nvidia, i have it off *shrug*
• i was under the impression that KMS was to prevent "flicker" when going from a VT to X. Not that it was going to boot any faster.
• i'm not really shocked about the power usage, hmm same apps running, similar power draw. probably with very similar kernels. Tried enabling screen dimming and cpu speed throttling? adjusting things like how long/often the kernel writes to the drives (laptop mode)? i'm not that surprised that the desktop version of the distro hasn't set these things up for you.I hear there is a netbook version "remix?"

As a note, I've been running gentoo since 2003/2004, and before that i was running suse and redhat, earliest version of redhat i know i used was redhat 6. I probably played around on redhat 4 or 5. Be happy that you didn't have to write your own init system, or had to find rpms before a package manager.

*shaking stick* Now get off my lawn, whipper snapper! :P

Re:Numerous problems, all downgrades from Jaunty

[musicon]

*shaking stick* Now get off my lawn, whipper snapper! :P

Hey, some of us used to have to scrounge together floppies for Slackware, deciding whether we really needed X or not. Sad thing was, I went back to OS/2 at the time since it had better hardware support :)

Re:Numerous problems, all downgrades from Jaunty

[Cato]

How can items 4 to 7 be considered as 'problems'? They are mostly 'this has not improved' statements. Kernel mode setting (KMS) is a very new feature in the kernel, and a slight delay due to this is hardly a big issue considering Ubuntu now boots much faster than a few years ago.

Memory usage reporting in Linux is notoriously inaccurate, but perhaps something has changed there due to the various kernel changes. Fedora etc on the same kernel are likely to have the same behaviour.

I booted 9.10 from a USB key on a Core 2 Duo laptop in just 35 seconds, which is really amazing, and it had no problem detecting my hardware including built-in Intel WiFi.

I find Ubuntu really impressive - I run it on several PCs at home without any problems, and it takes almost no time to keep it up to date. Upgrading to a new release is more time consuming, but that's still less time than consumed by Windows.

Once something is working in Ubuntu, and assuming you don't upgrade (stick to LTS if you want stability), it simply keeps on working. By contrast, Hibernate in Windows has broken yet again - I applied a specific XP hotfix to get it to work initially, but something has now stopped this working in a different way. While XP doesn't crash very often, it frequently gets to a point where I have to reboot my laptop (same one mentioned above), which takes about 5 to 10 minutes just for the disk to stop thrashing and the system to become usable.

Running Ubuntu and XP on the same hardware made me realise how fast Linux is - Firefox launched in less than 2 seconds from the Live USB stick, compared to 30 to 60 seconds on XP.

it's an up and down along the canonical schedule..

[Anonymous Coward]

it's hard to please everybody...

i had some problems with audio and video with 8.10 and huge problems with 9.04 (aopen mp945 minipc)... intel driver and pulseaudio were just not mature enough. i ended up using bleeding edge drivers from the x-edgers ppa all the time (and still had occasional problems, tearing, performance sucking, compiz crashes and huge font with too much overscan in the console on my 1080p tv) and wasted quite a few hours getting digital audio (or any audio for that matter) to work... and it took forever to boot and stopped the networkmanager taking down interfaces before unmounting cifs shares.

karmic now boots in flicker free 25 seconds to X, has a beautiful 1080p console, stable audio so far and shuts down faster than i can grab the remote to turn off the tv.

now that's what i call good karma.

(also i tried pxe & netinstall this time and i am never going back to cds!)

Other way around for me

[hellmitre]

I've had nothing but positive changes since migrating from 8.10 to 9.10. Wireless connectivity is far better; they seem to have ironed out the issues stemming from multiple networks being around in the same band, video out works far better, PulseAudio is finally properly implemented. Overall it's a far smoother distro, in my experience. It took me about 6 hours to get everything working, iSight, mic and Skype, full screen flash, dev headers and software, compiz and conky.

SP1 = Lucid Lynx

[nermaljcat]

Yeah, and it will be called "Lucid Lynx" =D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubuntu_releases#Ubuntu_10.04_LTS_.28Lucid_Lynx.29

Why don't people learn?

[Patch86]

Never, never, ever adopt complex software at launch. Just don't. Why would you do that?

When Vista came out the advice was obvious: don't use it for a month or so so that all the horrible errors and vulnerabilities can get worked out, or at least unearthed. With the Win7 launch, the advice is exactly the same- wait for them to get some of the kinks before making the plunge. Ubuntu Karmic? You guessed it...

Re:Why don't people learn?

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Never, never, ever adopt complex software at launch. Just don't. Why would you do that?

When Vista came out the advice was obvious: don't use it for a month or so so that all the horrible errors and vulnerabilities can get worked out, or at least unearthed. With the Win7 launch, the advice is exactly the same- wait for them to get some of the kinks before making the plunge. Ubuntu Karmic? You guessed it...

I always wait 6 months after a Ubuntu release before I install it.

I'm happy I use a multiboot setup.

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed 9.10 on a spare partition. Install went remarkably smoothly.

However, X fails to load on startup. Teh Google doesn't reveal any reliable solutions/recipes to recover from this situation.

So I'm still using 9.04 for the time being,

Debian

[XanC]

If we're including derived distros, then Debian is the most popular, since it includes Ubuntu.

No problems here. . .

[darth_borehd]

I just upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 and it is awesome. Near flawless automatic hardware detection and just amazingly fast. The look and feel is smooth and polished. I never thought 9.04 would look so slow and clunky in comparison. My only complaint is the default background is again not an animal, just a pattern. :( I was so looking forward to seeing a cute Koala bear on bootup.

So far

[tjones]

So far I've found that flash doesn't seem to work anymore, despite being the latest version. Also, I still have the old "Roll 'em up" pinball game, played fine under Ubuntu 9.04, gets choppy at times under 9.10.

I was almost convinced that there was a DNS problem, but it just so happens that my ISP decided to start sucking again right after the upgrade.

Re:Upgrade success poll not representative

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah 35% but how many people who aren't having problems are going to bother looking on the forums? These polls are always skewed by the fact that the majority of people who aren't having a problem won't be visiting the forum to vote. Also, I upgraded 3 different systems and only had a slight problem with one. I went to vote after seeing this and could only vote once. So no credit for the other systems that were upgraded with no problems.

No problems here

[CAFED00D]

I installed it on my Dell XPS laptop, replacing Vista. My only complaint was that it took some work to get CPU scaling to work...but as far as functionality goes, cheers to them.

Like ubuntu but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Use linux exclusively so I like my chosen os and appreciate the hard work put to these systems. However I never have had a painless upgrade with ubuntu. Now my laptop screen keeps changing the brightness every second Bug #415023 and suspend no longer works. Should have learned by now to wait a few months after the release until a upgrade. They're usually a lot better after a few months after the release. Waiting for the next LTS version. Hardy still works great on my desktop (sadly too old for my laptop hardware tough). Biggest problem with hardy is I still don't like pulse audio. Maybe ubuntu should change to yearly releases instead of twice a year. Bit more conservatism wouldn't hurt with this much regression on a lot of hardware.

Re:Professionalism... Ha!

[Stupendoussteve]

Mandriva 2008/2009: No fscking ctrl+mousewheel zoom. In the same hardware, Ubuntu does it. Had to use Ctrl+Keypad plus. Not the same thing.

You do realize this is a simple configuration option in CCSM?

no issues here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell mini-9 no problems, and had to suspend the upgrade half way through, and successfully completed later.

Dell 700m- no problems.

Did the upgrades from 9.04 using the update manager over wireless.

I didn't have any problems

[Anonymous Coward]

OK I upgraded my main laptop, my daughter's laptop, my wife's laptop, and my server all within a couple days of the release and have not had any problems. I've resisted upgrading my work desktop only because it has an ATI video card and have had headaches in the past. Just my 2 cents worth...

My upgrade didn't go smoothly either

[Macka]

First thing I noticed was it didn't like the way I'd set up menu.lst. I have two disks mirrored with MD raid so I have 4 OS definitions per kernel - two for each disk (one multiuser, one single user). I don't trust Ubuntu to just update or replace, as it always wants to use root="UUID number" which is a pain in the ass if you ever restore from backup as that always changes with a new filesystem, so I just stick with - in my case - root=/dev/md2. I tried the experimental option to merge the old and new files - which didn't work, so I had to let it carry on with the upgrade while fixing it up in the background.

Next thing I hit was more of a problem. It balked doing a post install configure on eBox. The process went zombie and the upgrade just froze. I had to kill the parent python process to get dpkg to carry on with the rest of it, but discovered that at the end of the install and configure phase, dpkg had remembered the return errno from killing that child process and it decided to act on that by aborting the upgrade at that point - before the clean up phase. So the system is in an indeterminate state.

I rebooted, and it came up ok, but I then found I had three problems:

• Compiz was broken again. It broke when I went from 8.10 to 9.04 and I had to downgrade the xserver, etc to get it working. I'm pretty sure the Intel chipset problems are fixed, it's just a configuration somewhere. Haven't had time to look for it.
• About half the desktop menu items don't have icons for them any more
• Default system sound is set to 100% so if I have the speakers turned on when I login they can hear it at the end of the street. Adjusting the slider makes no difference.

I ran out of time to play around with it so had to leave it like that. I think when I eventually get home again I'll just install from scratch and restore what I need to from backup. I can't really complain - after all it's not as if I've paid anything for it.

Software RAID Beware

[digitalderbs]

I upgraded from 9.04, and I have a software RAID10 setup. A bug in dmraid (admittedly, not directly Ubuntu's fault) causes it to recognize mdadm software RAID partitions, and choke when it can't assemble them. The fix for me requires the removal of dmraid, and the manual assembly/mounting of my software raid from the the initial RAM disk (Busybox).

I almost bought a Mac mini last weekend--after 12 years of being 100% linux.

Re:My experience

[Kjella]

From that point on, yes - everything works and everything boots normally now. It didn't handle an unexpected reboot in the middle of the upgrade gracefully, but I don't know any consumer OS that reliably does.

Actually, I had a very smooth upgrade

[oakbox]

My laptop, which is picky and prone to weirdness, had no problems with the upgrade. I think I clicked a total of three on screen prompts, rebooted, and everything just worked. I haven't dug too deeply into all of the new improvements yet (no time), but I am once again impressed with how well the system operates.

Past releases had clean graphical interfaces on top of a solid OS. Koala is really pretty AND is still a solid OS.

-Oakbox

Re:Actually, I had a very smooth upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Roger that.

I upgraded from 9.04 with full disk crypto and encountered zero problems whatsoever. Everything is slick, and it works great!

The problem...

[Abalamahalamatandra]

is less the distro and more the messaging. My work machine runs Ubuntu with a Windows VM, but it's running Hardy and it will stay that way until Lucid comes out and has been confirmed stable by checking Ubuntu Forums for posts on the specific model. Works like a charm.

Now, on my personal laptop (Dell XPS M1330), it got reloaded this weekend with no issues whatsoever and everything worked perfectly, with one small exception - Gnome MPlayer causes flickering in fullscreen mode when the seek bar animates away. A single Google search resulting in a single gconf setting fixed that. I don't think that's too much to ask for a "bleeding edge" release. Disregarding the fact that I opted to move 500G of encrypted data off and back on so I could move to EXT4, it would have taken about 2 hours to get a total reload back to the same state as previous.

What needs to happen is messaging that Karmic is new and shiny, but is not an LTS release, so people who can't handle some problems should stay away. If Lucid comes out and has problems like this, I'll change my tune.

No problems here, on two computers

[shellster_dude]

I upgraded to Karmic Koala on one box, and did a fresh, full ubuntu install on my EEEPC of Karmic, and I have had absolutely no problems. It even recognized my Atheros wifi and ethernet cards which I had previously had to custom compile the ethernet drivers, and install backported intrepid drivers for the wifi before, in Jaunty. In fact, this is the first ubuntu upgrade that I have never had any issues with. I have been using Ubuntu since Hoary Hedgehog.

Re:No problems here, on two computers

[WalesAlex]

Install went great on my laptop as well, and as always when theres been a problem, the solution is never further than a couple of google searches away.

Re:No problems here, on two computers

[eddy the lip]

It even recognized my Atheros wifi and ethernet cards which I had previously had to custom compile the ethernet drivers, and install backported intrepid drivers for the wifi before, in Jaunty.

This is exciting - I picked up a 1050ha this summer and have been suffering along with the pre-installed XP because I didn't want to fuss with the drivers (and I knew this would eventually be taken care of.) Very good news...

Upgrade seems good here on an HP Pavilion...

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything is working as good and in some cases better. For example the Intel HDA audio is working now without any custom module parameters.

Definitely a bad upgrade

[benav]

First off, Karmic told me that one of my hard-drives was about to fail. I've since discovered this is almost certainly not true. In the process of trying to backup the data on that drive to an external drive, while copying large quantities of data the screensaver froze the computer entirely, so that the only option was a hard reset. I'd only been using Linux for a month when this happened, and I didn't have the know-how to either revert to 9.04 or fix whatever was wrong, so I've migrated back to WinXP for the time being (slightly old machine without enough power for Vista or Win7).

There are lots of distros out there: e.g. Mandriva

[colin_s_guthrie]

Well no one is forcing users to upgrade! People can stick about for a while and see how it goes for others.

Also we just released Mandriva 2010.0 (release notes and Errata). The mirrors are currently syncing and the main download page is waiting for that to complete before offering direct downloads but the torrents are out now..

IMO Mandriva offers excellent Gnome and KDE flavours, so feel free to take the most appropriate "Mandriva One" live CD for a spin.

Big mistake...

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded last night, and after reinstalling GRUB twice, running update-grub, losing an NTFS partition (and having to reformat it)... ...I can boot into Ubuntu and Windows again, but my graphics card and sound card still don't work...

My Experience with Ubuntu Linux 9.10 Karmic Koala

[woddfellow2]

First, I tried to do an upgrade normally with Update Manager. I stopped it because due to a slow Internet connection, it was taking too long. Then, I decided to do a fresh install. Before this, Windows XP was on the 35 GB hard disk, and GNU/Linux was on the 16 GB hard disk. I decided to move Windows to the 16 GB HDD and GNU/Linux to the 35 GB HDD, because I store my data on the GNU/Linux partition and I was running out of free space with the 16 GB HDD.

I backed up my data to the Windows partition, installed a new installation of Windows XP on the 16 GB HDD, moved my backup there, then used UNetbooin to install Xubuntu 9.10 on the 35 GB HDD.

It installed perfectly fine. The only major problem I had was that GRUB2 could not boot into Windows "out of the box". I eventually got it to boot into the Windows partition, but then I ran into problems with Windows itself booting. As of this writing I am still trying to fix it. Also, there has been a problem with the swap partition not activating automatically at boot (I must activate it manually with swapon), but I uncommented a line in /etc/fstab and I will see if it worked at next reboot.

The improvements I noticed were:

• It takes only about a minute to boot
• Login/XFCE startup is faster
• Halt/reboot takes only about 10–20 seconds

So far, I am satisfied with Karmic.

Works for me

[Tillmann]

Hi,

upgraded, works for me.

The best news is: PulseAudio no longer sucks. The audio system has been vastly improved.

bye,
Till

If it doesn't work for you

[Chuck Chunder]

I can only assume it's some sort of karmic payback for previous bad deeds.

Karmic Koala completely screwed me over

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded to the RC. There was only a small problem with the installation: It didn't let me keep my grub list. It asked if I wanted to keep the old one (as I had dualboot, I wanted to) but if I chose "yes", it asked me again. That was small problem as I knew how to fix it manually after installation was over.

But the result of upgrading? My box was hacked nearly instantly. It was running apache, etc. but had been doing so for over half a year. I was using strong passwords, two firewalls (one hardware and one software based) to block most of the port scanning, 5 failed remote login attempts gave an hour long ban, I had blacklisted the SSH by default and whitelisted certain IPs... It had been secure for some 8 months or so, no problems. Then I upgraded to RC, went away from home for a few hours (computer was left on) and when I came back to try 9.10 for the first time, I noticed that my internet was a bit slow. So, I began investigating (assuming it was some bug or something) and noticed constant 100kbps stream of shady UDP traffic to wierd servers in numerous countries. It became obvious that my box had been hacked.

How? Did it change some config file or something? I have no idea. But that is too big of a coincidence.

But that's not half of it. The horrible screen flickering made it a lot harder to investigate. In addition, I wasn't able to stop the traffic at all! Blocking IPs didn't help. Even telling firestarter to shut down all internet traffic didn't do the trick (Firestarted was aware of the traffic, though, as it showed me that traffic). I tried to google for a solution, didn't find one. Nothing that should have shut down traffic worked (except for disconnecting the ethernet cable of course). I went to Ubuntu IRC channel and asked for help several times, clearly stating what was my problem and that it was rather urgent (as the computer was still transmitting the shady traffic). I got no reaction (too many other people asking for help at the same time. My questions were on the screen for like 10s).

Eventually I gave up with a sigh and switched to Windows (thank god for dualboot). I had used only Linux for a year or two (except for rare boots when I really needed Windows for something) but now haven't dared to try boot it up again. Windows isn't perfect but at least here I know that if I tell my firewall to stop all the internet traffic, it will do so.

Perhaps I'll try a clean install of some other distribution in a few weeks.

Grub 2 Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Grub 2 seems to spend 4-5 seconds hammering disks while "Grub Loading..." is displayed. That sure eats into any boot time savings.

Also, the Grub 2 boot selection screen looks primitive, no other way to say it.

Finally, Grub 2 no longer uses our old friend /boot/grub/menu.lst, so one needs to research to find where the files are now, edit one of them, then run update-grub to ensure the change is propagated.

And then there was the screen flickering.

8 hours of bad road, and I haven't yet started using the damn thing.

So, does this mean that...

[AlgorithMan]

So, does this mean that the year of the linux desktop is delayed until 2010 after all? Everyone seemed so optimistic in january...

seriously, wtf is wrong!? lately I see nothing than completely broken distros and programs! Lots of features in programs don't work anymore, although they did before (e.g. the script execution in kate and kile, akregator and kmail still have trouble connecting to some servers, dolphin still has far to go - no previews of txt, od* and videos!?). KDE 4 is still a pain (although 4.3 is a huge step forward) and don't get me started on PulseAudio (PulseAudio is a great idea, but it's so damn buggy right now)

If I were a conspiracy-theorist, I'd say that Microsoft pays some coders to "work" on linux-progs and commit obscure, broken code.

Is it just me, or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me, or does anyone else find that either:
1. x.04 versions of Ubuntu are stable and x.10 versions are crap, or
2. x.10 versions of Ubuntu are stable and x.04 versions are crap ?

I've had problems with every x.10 release since 6.10, but never had any issues with any x.04 release (since 7.04). I have a friend whose experiences have been just the opposite of mine. And for the record, no, i have not moved to 9.10 yet, but I'm almost ready to give it a shot, even though it scares me a little bit.

Just a thought, but it almost seems to me like they're trying to make one group of people happy (for example, ATI users) with one release, and then jump to making the other group of people happy with the next release (such as nVidia users). Or am I just crazy?

Best Ubuntu Ever

[pizzap]

Very smooth upgrade, very little problems on multiple computers.

From the article:
"Still, that proves that Ubuntu has a long road to haul before installing even this popular Linux distro is the no-brainer that helps makes
Windows the success it is among regular PC users."

That's really not how I remember it...

bleeding edge ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Apples and oranges, this has nothing to do with professionalism.

Re:My experience

[Daishiman]

Guess you've never had a Windows install crap out of the blue or become noxiously saturated with garbage at book. I admit that the quality of releases in Ubuntu hasn't been as good as Windows during the timeframe I've used it. Nontheless, I've always been able to fix stuff in Linux, while I've had to reinstall Windows from scratch many more times.

Damn, Koala venom!

[Tetsujin]

Koala stings can be very nasty! If you've been stung by a koala, it's critically important that you draw out as much of the venom as possible and call an ambulance to take you to the emergency room as soon as you can. Don't make the mistake of trying to drive there on your own! Without the ambulance's emergency flashers it could take too long, and there is a very real danger that the venom's psychotropic effects will kick in before you can arrive - if that happens you could wind up causing a very serious traffic accident.

Re:Damn, Koala venom!

[GameboyRMH]

I wondered why they used "stung" and not "bitten." They should have saved that for Sassy Scorpion.

Partially stung... but still working

[Da Web Guru]

I ran into the following issues:

The upgrade process - I couldn't upgrade using the command line and had to use the GUI, which was very annoying...

Encryption - When booting my system, the system apparently complains that one of the partitions is unable to be mounted. This is before it tries to launch the crypto stuff. When I enter the crypto key, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. If it doesn't work, I have to drop to the shell, run "cryptdisks stop", then run "cryptdisks start" before it lets me go forward. It still complains about the swap partition (not encrypted, so it is tied to another issue), even though it successfully starts swap. All this, of course, is after I had to force the system to wait long enough to let me type in the crypto key (I had to add "tries=99" to /etc/crypttab)
I ran into the following issues:

The upgrade process - I couldn't upgrade using the command line and had to use the GUI, which was very annoying...

Encrypted partitions - When booting my system, the system now complains that one of the partitions listed in fstab is unable to be mounted. This is before it tries to launch the crypto stuff. (In Jaunty it just asked be for the crypto key without complaining about anything.) When I enter the crypto key, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. If it doesn't work, I have to drop to the shell, run "cryptdisks stop", then run "cryptdisks start" before it lets me go forward. It still complains about the swap partition (not encrypted, so it is tied to another issue), even though it successfully starts swap. All this, of course, is after I had to force the system to wait long enough to let me type in the crypto key. (I had to add "tries=99" to /etc/crypttab before the system wouldn't try to boot without my /home partition...)

VPN - On Jaunty I was using nm-applet because knetworkmanager didn't support PPTP properly. Jaunty somewhat supported VPNC, but only when launching it from the command line. I tried using knetworkmanager on Karmic (hoping they have worked around the issues), but I am still having problems. It now allows me to configure the VPN connection (I couldn't do that at all in Jaunty), but I can't start the VPNC VPN properly. Well, actually, I can start it, and can connect to the VPN, but knetworkmanager doesn't recognize that it has started (knetworkmanager doesn't change the status and won't allow me to stop the VPN). The only way to stop the VPN is to manually kill the VPN processes from the command line.

Laptop lid close - When closing the laptop lid in Jaunty, my screen would shut off and the screen saver would start. Now, when closing the lid, the screen does not shut off.

Laptop suspend/resume - When closing the lid in Jaunty, the system would automatically suspend to RAM and power down, and the screen would be locked upon resuming. Now, closing the lid gives mixed results. The system does not always suspend to RAM. Before I started playing with the power settings, if I closed the lid after starting the screensaver, it would not suspend. If I closed it without starting the screensaver, it would *sometimes* suspend properly, but if it actually suspends to RAM it would take forever to come back.

Honestly, if these issues don't clear up soon (i.e., by next weekend before I go back to work), I will have no choice but to wipe my system and revert back to Jaunty.
VPN - On Jaunty I was using nm-applet because knetworkmanager didn't support PPTP properly. Jaunty somewhat supported VPNC, but only when launching it from the command line. I tried using knetworkmanager on Karmic (hoping they have worked around the issues), but I am still having problems. It now allows me to configure the VPN connection (I couldn't do that at all in Jaunty), but I can't start the VPN properly. Well, actually, I can start it, and can connect to the VPN, but knetworkmanager doesn't recognize that it has started (knetworkmanager doesn't change the status and won't allow me to stop the VP

Win some, lose some

[ChameleonDave]

Karmic Koala fixed a few bugs for me. It has, however, stopped me installing Firefox extensions. I'm going to the Ubuntu Forums now to fix that.

It's probably my fault, because at the same time as upgrading, I also moved all my configuration files around and encrypted my whole drive. This makes it hard to tell whether any given problem is due to the upgrade or to my messing around. I'm also using the 64-bit edition, which could add compatibility issues.

Arch

[oregalia]

Check out Arch. I've had very few problems with their rolling release system.

Re:Arch

[Vovk]

or Sorcerer ^_^

Worked fine for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything worked fine for me when I did an upgrade.

That is until I went to install BFS, but I expected that to cause trouble. It seems BFS does not like the nvidia binary driver...

So I did a fresh install (it needed it too, because that box was originally intrepid) and everything was as smooth as silk.

And it boots really fast! Well done Canonical!

Immaculate on Toshiba Portege R600

[David Gerard]

Works absolutely flawlessly on this here R600 (64-bit version). It feels faster than XP on the same machine. I was particularly pleased as past versions of Ubuntu have had bad reports on this model (it's full of stupidly proprietary crap and the Windows version needs about a zillion added drivers if you don't just use the Toshiba factory install).

A dodgy upgrade indeed

[hattig]

I can barely make out the network and audio icons any more in the taskbar.

Gnome is just out of date. It's akin to XP when the competition has moved to Win7/SL. The UI is simply CRAP. This translates directly to Ubuntu.

The upgrade seemed to go okay for me, but there were problems with PostgreSQL and VirtualBox-ose. Also the upgrade terminal was full of DBus errors. These are things that would terrify a normal user (granted they wouldn't have installed PostgreSQL probably). The upgrade process wasn't automated, so you couldn't leave it alone to do its thing.

Firefox is updated, but has no options, and comes with an annoying default tab behaviour.

Empathy seems to work, but it is a really primitive chat client. This is probably due to using Gnome.

I think I'll wipe and try Kubuntu instead. KDE 4.3 is meant to be good.

I've used Ubuntu with Gnome for around 30 months as well. Gnome is going nowhere though, and it's looking more and more dated to me (not in terms of looks, a nice theme isn't the problem, it's the design of UIs that seems rather archaic, or in Empathy's case you just need to compare it to Adium on Mac OS X to see how clunky it is.

Re:A dodgy upgrade indeed

[tokul]

Gnome is just out of date.
...
I think I'll wipe and try Kubuntu instead. KDE 4.3 is meant to be good.

See you later. When you need stable desktop environment for work and not some unstable resource hogging visual effects, you will go back to Gnome.

Re:A dodgy upgrade indeed

[hattig]

In most situations, visual effects implemented using the GPU use less CPU resources overall than even simple CPU-based compositing with no effects.

And Gnome is running on Compiz, so it has them anyway. KDE is no different. I haven't read anything about instability or resource hogging with KDE 4.3. Gnome has some odd behaviours however, and incredible desktop switch sensitivity. In addition the virtual desktop manager often refuses to hide the hovering window descriptions once displayed (and it will display them even if you don't put the mouse near the virtual desktop manager, when you switch desktops).

My problem is that UIs for Gnome applications are primitive, clunky and poorly laid out, which is actually a bad thing for work. It's like they use Duplo blocks instead of pixels sometimes, they're that clunky.

Gnome does make a good netbook desktop however.

Since Beta, no problems here.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been running Ubuntu 9.10 since the beta came out and I haven't had any serious problems on my Compaq Presario F767NR. I had a number of application crashes, but nothing that prevented me from using the system daily at home and on campus. I reinstalled when the RC came out (using the Desktop install, instead of the Alternative install) and again no problems for me.

Once the final came out I installed it on my desktop via the Wubi installer, I haven't done much with it but I booted and it booted to the desktop just fine.

Installed Fresh Rather Than Upgrading

[likerice]

I did a clean install of 9.10 on a new HTPC that I had recently built and have thus far had absolutely zero problems. No HDMI video or sound kinks (or at least none that weren't present in Jaunty, all of which were easily remedied); networking is fine; the IR remote works; Boxee runs when installed via the Jaunty repo; etc.

I will say that I've been burned in the past by awkward upgrades from one release to the next with Ubuntu and the fact that others have had issues this time around is no surprise to me.

Nonetheless, on the basis of my own personal experience and, I suspect, the experience of others, I think it'd be better to mention that all (or substantially all) of users' frustrations relate to upgrades to 9.10 rather than fresh installs thereof.

Pulseaudio is the biggest offender...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been running Karmic since the first beta on a couple of machines - one an upgrade of upgrades (originally Edgy), the other a new build.

Sound issues were my biggest headache - first alsa then pulseaudio: between them they managed to break audio in a new way after every update. I eventually had to wipe my new build and start over as I couldn't get Pulseaudio to work with an NFTS home partition (for ease of sharing in a multi(x4)boot environment.)

I found the attitude of the pulseaudio developer quite galling - this has been a known issue since at least March/09. Similarly the Palimpsest developer thinks he knows more about hard disk SMART parameters than the manufacturers - so the disk utility gives false fail warnings on Seagate & Hitachi drives.

I hate to think how many millions of man hours have been wasted thanks to these two gentlemen - I certainly wasted my share. Cannonical shouldn't include high profile packages developed by people with their attitude.

Was it worth it? I don't know, for the past few months all I've done in Ubuntu is to google for work-arounds. Meanwhile I've been *using* (and enjoying) Windows 7.

[I was trying to be temperate in the above but what the heck: the Palimpsest and Pulseaudio developers are both obstinate pricks. There, I feel better now. Thank you.]

Karmic Koala is Great! No Problems Here

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been running it since the morning it was released - and haven't had any problems.

So far I have it installed on a new Dell E6500 (8Gb RAM, Centrino Duo, 64bit) and an HP dv9000 (4Gb RAM, AMD64x2, 64bit) - and have had no problems whatsoever.

I had 9.04 installed on both before, but did a clean install because I had heard that there were some problems upgrading the GRUB loader to the new version, and since the e6500 also dual-boots Vista I thought I'd play on the safe side.

On neither laptop did I choose to encrypt my /home/ directory.

What I've noticed since installing Koala:

Pros

• Faster boot time (about 50% faster)
• Improved performance (power-on to google-in-firefox in 30 seconds).
• Gnome feels more responsive. I don't know why. I have all of the effects turned on (jiggly windows - YAY!) and it's great.
• perl 5.10 and Firefox 3.5

Cons

• I still have no idea how to make my microphone work with Skype.
• The number of screensavers installed by default appears to have decreased considerably.

By now everyone should know (especially here) that new versions of ANY OS are going to have some issues. At least with projects like Ubuntu you can download and try it out all you want anytime for free.

Or maybe you forgot - it's a community effort - not a free ride, and not some kind of digital daycamp. Get off your lazy ass and submit some bugs - don't just log onto slashdot and bitch.

What's all the fuss aboot?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had nae bother with Karmic. In fact, it's sorted out the Intel graphics problems I was having with Jaunty.

Unlike my experience of trying to upgrade XP to Windows 7, which I did on the same night on wor lasses' pooter. No fun at all. Still having sleepless nights, can't eat properly and my usually-regular-as-clockwork bowel movements have gone to pot...

Read before you leap!

[anotheranothernick]

FTFA:
> Whas has been your experience if you've moved to Karmic?

Grammar Nazi here. Please proof read before you post such outrageous news!

I have been on 9.10 since RC. Its been extremely stable and have had ZERO issues.

Oh BTW I ran Karmic on an OLD Dell 510m laptop and everything worked out of the box! It had old suck 855GME chipset and an Intel Pentium-M processor!

Just my $0.02 ;)

Re:WiFi authentication? Who needs that?

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife's laptop fresh install picked it up fine. My upgrade also had no problems. You're welcome.

Mine.

[pionzypher]

Experience on a Lenovo R61i:

Upgrade went, well mediocre. Upgrade failed partially into installation of packages. Had to run some (since forgotten) dpkg command to clean up. Restarted upgrade. This time it completed.

After installation was complete upon successful boot everything appeared to work for the most part with the exception of X. Frame rate while sitting at the desktop with no apps running and compiz disabled was terrible... around 5-20 fps. All sorts of corruption / artifacts in the ui. While trying to get online to check launchpad, system hard locked.

Restored my image of Jaunty and all is well.

This was probably the issue I had with X. To be fair it's an upstream.

Re:My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Snow Leopard does, according to reviews online of people who had power failures halfway through the upgrade.

"stable"

[XanC]

Why not test things and then update, instead of arbitrarily picking a version and declaring it to be stable?

"Stable" means it doesn't change. It doesn't mean it works perfectly. If you update something, it's not stable.

Re:"stable"

[dlenmn]

"Stable" means it doesn't change. It doesn't mean it works perfectly. If you update something, it's not stable.

So you mean a piece of software is automatically stable when the developers abandon the project?

Some pieces of software reach an asymtotic type of stability where no new features are being added (e.g. TeX), but that's pretty rare so that can't be what's meant by stable.

Stable has more than one meaning. "Unchaning" doesn't make sense in this context since any single revision in a repository is stable by that definition, simply because that revision never changes. The definition of stable that makes sense is that it's unlikely to crash/work improperly. That's what almost everyone means when they talk about software stability.

Re:"stable"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Stable" means it doesn't change. It doesn't mean it works perfectly. If you update something, it's not stable.

They should call it stale instead of stable then.

Re:"stable"

[iamhigh]

Stable means dependable. Maybe resistant to change could be used as well, but that still isn't NO change. And I have never, ever, heard of software that was considered so damn good it didn't need some maintenance.

Not jumping on that bandwagon..

[Anonymous Coward]

I ran into sound issues upgrading from 8.10 to 9.04, so I knew better than to jump on the 9.10 train if my system seemed to be working fine.

Good luck with 3 old laptops (HP, Dell, Sony Vaio)

[Abies Bracteata]

Beta version of Karmic: Two upgrades (HP, Vaio), one fresh install (Dell) went almost without a hitch.

There was one very annoying issue: Obnoxious "clicking" sounds coming from the HP's speakers (Intel sound hardware). A quick google search led to a quick fix (mind you, this would most likely have stumped someone new to Linux). That being said, I *did* upgrade to a beta version of 9.10 -- hopefully the problem was fixed for the final release.

Overall, very happy. After upgrading the HP machine (Intel video hardware), graphics performance improved dramatically (9.04 had performance issues with certain Intel video hardware).

Wireless worked "out of the box" on all machines.

The Sony has only 512M memory -- performance (including the Compiz goodies) is quite satisfactory on that laptop.

Anyway, that's my experience: OMMV.

Ubuntu's *almost* ready for the average end-user. What it needs most is the type of vendor handholding available to Windows and OSX users.

If all Windows users had to install their own OS, then you'd probably see plenty of complaints/problems there too (even a 99 percent success rate would make for large absolute numbers of unhappy users).

I upgraded

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded... from Windows Xp to Windows 7, and didn't have any trouble whatsoever! Omigosh.

Now watch this post disappear because Windows is teh evil and nothing could ever beat Linux! What I want to know though is: Why do you put up with it? I don't understand the mindset that says "I'm going to go through all the trouble of setting up Linux, making sure all my hardware will work with it, deciding which release to get, living in fear of any sort of update breaking everything I have, not being able to run a ton of commercial software" and ect.

Don't give me the BS answers about viruses and whatnot either. If you really understand computers you know that a good, free antivirus will keep any windows machine almost entirely clean, you might have to run spybot or something once a year. Don't give me the "it's free" thing either, I got Windows 7 for $30 bucks, legally and without any trouble at all. Obviously there has to be some perceived benefit to you, and I'd like to know what that is.

not much to see here, move along.

[davygrvy]

9.10 with Nvidia 190.42 works great. Took a bit of work at first to get right moving from 180 as things kinda became a mess. Had to add my users to the video group manually and fix the start-up script. frames are up to 12K from 5K with glxgears. pulseaudio was a problem as the SDL lib for it was not installed. I had to get rid of the old ALSA one and put in the pulse one along with adding my users to the pulse-audio group.

That's about it.. all minor issues to me except for the usual learning curve which is a bit steep to find and resolve these things, but it's the price we pay.

Another stingee

[quixote9]

64-bit Karmic is just plain unhealthy on my Fujitsu Lifebook laptop, nvidia graphics. Suspend doesn't work, hibernate doesn't work, system freezes to the point where nothing works but a hard reset. Luckily, I was testing the move on a sandbox machine, so I'm not terribly stung, but it's still a disappointment.

Funny thing is, I've been running 32-bit Karmic since early alphas in virtualization, and had no unexpected problems. I have the RC on there now, it's rock steady, looks gorgeous, and everything runs fine.

Maybe the ubuntu devs were doing all their testing on virtual machines??

My anecdote

[jareth-0205]

Upgraded two desktops and one laptop from 9.04 to 9.10. One work perfectly (infact better than before, a sound recording bug was fixed). One has issues with Spotify+Wine but otherwise ok. One had a wifi process go crazy once and require a reboot, but has been fine since.

First impressions is it's not their best ever release. But if I remember correctly, these sorts of issues often happen with Ubuntu releases and get fixed within a few weeks. I'm not overly shocked....

4 machines as advertised

[Anonymous Coward]

All 4 of mine work great ...

Been surfing forwards since Karmic alpha2

[John Whitley]

FWIW, I've been surfing forwards since Karmic alpha2. Aside from a few annoying app bugs along the way (most often upstream issues), the only thing I got bit by was the upstart changeover breakage. But that's what one gets for tracking a prerelease distro with big changes landing. Fortunately, I'd followed Debian unstable for many years previously and have good Linux experience generally, and so got myself up and running again in short order (before the repo was officially declared all-clear again).

I've had no major problems, no reboots that I didn't initiate, and frankly I'm pretty impressed with how many nettling little bugs in end-user apps vanished even between late Beta phase and the official release.

Register Bloodied by Lack of Research

[dustinkirkland]

As this article attacked the feature I personally worked on in Karmic, I felt it appropriate to respond in my blog at http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2009/11/register-bloodied-by-lack-of-research.html.
Typically, I read and respect The Register. They usually run intriguing technology articles that make me think. I'm quite disappointed with today's carelessly researched piece, specifically, the paragraphs regarding eCryptfs.
Lack of automation? In Ubuntu 9.10, encrypting your home directory is a matter of selecting a check box in the installer: That's it. 9.04 Encrypted Home upgrading users simply run update-manager and upgrade all packages to 9.10. Their home directory encryption is not affected by this.
The author of this article found one post in the Ubuntu Forums poorly articulating an issue with home directory encryption and suddenly Ubuntu 9.10 users are getting "bloodied" by encryption in Ubuntu? Seriously?
I expect better journalism from The Register...
:-Dustin

Perhaps the Kernel is to blame

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the problems I am reading are hardware related. Is it possible there is a problem with the kernel itself and not the OS. People need to remember that a Linux distro is a composite work across the span of FOSS and therefore bugs sometimes make their way into a release from the upstream. Sometimes shit just happens. The thing about Ubuntu is there will be a fix pretty quick for any issues.

Karmic Koala = fast and stable

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been running Karmic Koala since last week on both my ThinkPad and Dell laptops as well as my desktop and it's been a very pleasant experience. It has been running absolutely flawless and rock solid. The many improvements are very noticeable, including the faster boot time. A couple of my friends are also running it now and none of us had any problems with it.

Anonymous Coward.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was an early adopter and I haven't had any issues with the new 9.10.
I'm running an older 3ghz x64 hp media pc with 4 gigs of Kingston memory with a Western Digital sata drive and I have yet to run into anything preventing me from using the system. I must have been lucky. One thing that did not work well was the empathy instant messenger, but just re-loaded pigin.

I switched shortly before the RC

[drinkypoo]

I have a gateway nforce athlon 64 4000+ with a geforce 8600 gt (IIRC) and I switched to karmic during the beta period. I then updated every day during the RCs and my experience so far is that it's got annoying but small problems.

Video is blue; had to modify gstreamer props and specify opengl output for vlc
Login window appears on secondary desktop, but desktop is in the right place at least
Suspend/resume still doesn't work, but it didn't work before so I count this as small
Occasional pop sounds from the speakers, but audio is working fine. I followed perfectsetup before update so who knows.
Can't play wma in gstreamer. Don't know if this is how things are or a special failure
Emerald is not used for window decoration even though it is specified in compiz configuration and desktop effects are set to custom

At least all of this can be worked around. Haven't figured out a good workaround for gstreamer and wma yet, so I'm using wimp in virtualbox ose with windows xp (seems to work except live messenger crashes on every "boot") to play my WMAs. I also get prompted for an ID3 tag demuxer sometimes with gstreamer, wtf is that.

Re:I switched shortly before the RC

[melikamp]

Occasional pop sounds from the speakers, but audio is working fine.

In

/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

comment out

options snd-hda-intel power_save=10 power_save_controller=N

(last line).

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1311262&highlight=popping+sounds

Re:My experience

[xiong.chiamiov]

He said that it is working flawlessly now, not that the installation procedure was flawless.

Early Adaption Success

[FatherDale]

I moved my EEE 901 to 9.10 about three weeks before the final release. I was bored one day, and that just happened. I've never been happier with an OS. After the official release, I moved my desktop and my work laptop to 9.10. Zero issues. I mean, none, not "fewer than usual", none. The EEE was a clean install, the desktop was a fresh partition, and the work laptop was an upgrade over 9.04. Everything works -- more stuff on the EEE than worked in 9.04. Guess your mileage may vary.

Re:Early Adaption Success

[TheDugong]

I upgraded my eeepc 1000H running xubuntu-ish. Easiest OS upgrade I have every done. Pressed the "there is a new release..." or whatever button in upgrade manager and, apart from a couple of prompts to keep or use a new config file, 1.5 hours or so later I was upgraded. Linux is getting a bit too easy. I might have to look for another OS so I can feel superior :) /s.

Re:Early Adaption Success

[FatherDale]

Head for Slackware. That's where all my friends hang their geek cred these days.

No problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I updated my laptop on the day of release. NO PROBLEMS. None, nada. My laptop does not have any nVidia hardware. How many "problem upgrades" have nVidia hardware?

Re:My experience

[PitaBred]

You wouldn't have even had that option on Windows. Trying to install Win7, I was getting bluescreens left and right until I figured out which SATA controllers to enable and which ones to set which way in the BIOS, and that was before I could even install the damn thing. It works alright now, pretty ok as a gaming machine, but seriously... bluescreening on install? Requiring SATA to be run in IDE mode in 2009? It's obvious that Windows is not ready for the desktop.

Mixed bag

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not seeing any improvement in boot times, either. Possibly my SSD's fault.

Hardware: AOpen MiniPC MP45, w/Samsung SLC SSD (100/80MB r/w)

I wanted to do an upgrade but the installer said my / partition wasn't big enough. So, I did a fresh install of Karmic to new ext3 partitions since the release notes said ext4 might have problems w/large files. The install went painlessly.

-- I have an Intel GMA X4500HD. Karmic has the best support for it I've seen so far.
-- ioquake3 runs well again (jaunty had broken something wrt resolution setting), but if I play long enough, eventually the sound cuts out, the game spikes the CPU (although it stays responsive) and won't exit cleanly, and I need to restart xorg to get things completely back to normal. Might be a 3rd-party app problem.
-- dosbox segfaults loading a game that ran almost perfect under Jaunty.
-- the new gcc caught an error in my code that previous versions had missed. It also threw a few new false-positive warnings. I'm having trouble w/ncurses not working well either, but I need to check some code I appropriated in that area for 32bit-isms.
-- simple stuff like web browsing etc. (even w/flash) all seems to work as expected.

Rants replacing Bug reports?

[Jerry]

I've been using Linux for 11 years. Before Linux captured 10+% of the desktop market share (according to Ballmer himself!) most of the community was technically oriented and ranting wasn't that common. We understood that those doing the developing were VOLUNTEERS and the best way to help them was to post BUG reports filled with details of the bug that the developer could use to resolve the bug and fix it. IOW, the users were the testers. We understood that and agreed to it. We were patient and our patience was rewarded.

Now, we have a generation of users who don't appreciate or care that most of the developers are still volunteers. These users don't care that they get the OS, the desktop and tens of thousands of high quality apps for free. Even worse, they don't want to take the time to take notes of the problem they think they are having and file factual bug reports at application's bugzilla site. What they will take time to do is write rants in blogs and news groups. Rants that are devoid of facts or knowledge but long on flames and vituperations. Thankfully, most developers know about these kinds of "Penguins" and ignore them. What else can they do? The rants rarely contain useful information and the developer doesn't have the time to search the countless blogs and forums for rants about his software. If he did he wouldn't get any developing done and he'd get discouraged and quit, which would make Microsoft happy,

To make matters worse, many ranters are serial ranters. They aren't satisfied with ranting in a single forum or blog. They visit as many as the can and post essentially the same rant in all of them. This makes the ranter appear to be part of a larger movement when, in fact, he is not. There were several ranters in the KDE4 dustup that were identified as serial ranters, and for a year and a half you could track them through the Linux sites as they dropped one rant after another. If someone called them on the topic of a rant they'd switch topics in their next rant. It didn't matter. The purpose was to destroy KDE4, if possible, and force developers back to KDE 3.5.x. The ranters were totally ignorant of the technical issues and reasons why KDE was redesigned from the bottom up.

The examples of stupid rants are almost endless. One ranter registered on a forum just to make his first post a rant against KDE 4.2.1 because "IT didn't have a way to change the menu structure to KDE 3.5.10's." Read the documentation? NO! It takes too much time and he's much too important to do such trival stuff. Ask a question on the forum instead of ranting for his first post? NO! He's not about to humiliate himself by asking a newbie question.

So, he rants. The first reply states "right click on the K-Gear menu icon and select "Convert to classic menu".

Now, everybody knows that not only is he a mindless ranter, he is also an idiot.

The problem is that his subject line appears in some Google search of "Problems with Ubuntu" and adds at least one count, or more if the rant is picked up by multiple blogs, to the number of users supposedly having trouble with Kubuntu (or Ubuntu). Someone takes the results of that search and extrapolates it into a story about how "Some Early Adopters Stung By Kbuntu's Karmic Koala".

Meanwhile, my Kubuntu Karmic 9.10 instalation on my Sony VAIO VGN-FW140E/H notebook with an Intel GM45 video chip continues to hum like the perfect combination that it is. Did I say that I checked the compatibility of my notebook with Linux before I installed Linux on it?

Re:Rants replacing Bug reports?

[Zoxed]

I would like to mod you up but I have no points :-(

But I agree with your comments 100% !

Re:Rants replacing Bug reports?

[mok000]

Most sensible comment I've seen on /. in a long, long time! Thank you!

Re:Rants replacing Bug reports?

[True Grit]

I knew there was a good reason why I friend'ed you. :)

Well said, especially about the KDE 3-to-4 transition, that stuff was some of the most pointless ranting that I've ever seen. None of the ranters ever bothered to even try to understand *why* there was a (need for) KDE4...

Re:Rants replacing Bug reports?

[quippe]

I've been using Linux for 11 years. Before Linux captured 10+% of the desktop market share (according to Ballmer himself!) most of the community was technically oriented and ranting wasn't that common. We understood that those doing the developing were VOLUNTEERS and the best way to help them was to post BUG reports filled with details of the bug that the developer could use to resolve the bug and fix it. IOW, the users were the testers. We understood that and agreed to it. We were patient and our patience was rewarded.

Now, we have a generation of users who don't appreciate or care that most of the developers are still volunteers. These users don't care that they get the OS, the desktop and tens of thousands of high quality apps for free. Even worse, they don't want to take the time to take notes of the problem they think they are having and file factual bug reports at application's bugzilla site.

Well i strongly agree with your points; however, dont forget that the technically oriented community you cited, *could* write well described and documented bug reports: that meant having clean bug trackers and development cycles. Now, that new user base cant even understand (yet?) if a bug should be reported at distro level, or upstream. The new challenge for linux in desktop end-user environments, is actually to found one solution between teaching new concepts to the "ignorant masses" (how i hate that definition) and/or automate bug reporting tools in a process integrated with packaging. Or, redirecting all reports to /dev/null as microsoft seemed to do in the last years (and they had only to track os and a small bunch of apps and drivers).

Re:Rants replacing Bug reports?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, we have a generation of users who don't appreciate or care that most of the developers are still volunteers. These users don't care that they get the OS, the desktop and tens of thousands of high quality apps for free.

Should the users care? Seriously. Why the hell should an end user of a desktop system need to care about developers? Don't get me wrong -- I've been using Linux steadily for years now on my primary machine, and I've used it sporadically for well over a decade. And I am grateful and in awe of all the amazing stuff that has been created by primarily volunteers. I've contributed plenty of my own share of bug reports.

But I understand the work that goes into it. For most desktop users, all they care about is whether it works. And when it doesn't work, yes they should file bug reports, but they also have the right to rant.

(You're absolutely right that some ranters are idiots, but those people are clearly ignored by everyone else except for people more idiotic. You shouldn't worry about those people, because those people are seen for what they are on the forums or blogs they participate in. And if their complaints are driving away other idiots, what's the problem? You're always going to have idiots who can't figure out how software works, even if there are no bugs. That's NOT the problem!)

Sorry, but we're not talking about some crazy ass new piece of software written by a couple friends down the street that's barely an alpha release. Yes, in such a case the user should be grateful for what he gets, and he is responsible for running a piece of software that probably won't work correctly on his system. That's what you expect when you sign on to try an alpha version, or even a beta release.

But with Ubuntu, we're talking about an actual released version of a distribution -- in fact, the most popular Linux distribution at the moment. If Microsoft releases software with bugs, people should feel free to rant. Same thing with Ubuntu. If the software doesn't work yet, call it beta. Call it unstable. But don't make it part of a "stable" release. To do so is a disingenuous characterization, and I think any users are justifiably entitled to rant about being misled in such a circumstance.

No problems with my Karmic Xubuntu here

[loudmax]

I upgraded to Xubuntu 9.10 the day after it was released and I haven't had any problems with it. Admittedly, this machine isn't doing all that much. It's for my kids and they mainly use it to browse the web or play Battle for Wesnoth. The wireless and Flash and everything works fine though. If there were any problems, they'd have told me about it. I don't know if running Xfce instead of Gnome should make this machine more or less likely to have problems, but it's been a smooth upgrade for me.

As far as comparing the release of Karmic Koala to Windows 7, there are some pretty huge factors that need to be taken into perspective. First of all, Ubuntu is developing at a significantly faster pace, which pretty much means that you should expect more problems. If you want an Ubuntu machine to "just work" you should be sticking to the LTS version which comes out every two years. Vista came out three years ago, so the Windows release cycle is slower than even Ubuntu's LTS cycle.

And look, I really have different expectations from a company with nearly $60 billion in revenue and 93 thousand employees and universal unconditional support from all PC hardware vendors than I do from a company with $30 million and 200 employees. And considering the role that proprietary protocols and vendor lock-in plays in MS's near monopoly, I also have different sympathies. So is this making excuses for Canonical? Yeah, could be, but IMHO it's a pretty reasonable excuse.

Re:No problems with my Karmic Xubuntu here

[kikito]

don't forget the pricetag :)

My experience (Kubuntu)

[JacobSteelsmith]

I upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 on one laptop and two desktops. The laptop is an older IBM i386. The desktops are a Lenovo 64 bit Intel and a white box AMD Phenom 64 bit. The Lenovo interacts with the Active Directory services here at work.

I almost always have issues upgrading when logged in as an AD user. This was no exception. I had to logout and $ sudo dpkg --reconfigure -a as a local user. I rebooted and had to run $sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and $ sudo apt-get -f install a couple of times.

My home laptop and desktop went better. I think I had to dpkg on my home machine as well.

The desktops run great and have nothing strange happening. My laptop won't login to the wireless automatically. I have to restart knetworkmanager to get it to prompt to open kwalletmanager. Also, the sound works, but it displays a message about pulse (I think) not being available and it falls back to something else. It also prompts me to remove the device permanently, which I am going to try when I get a chance. I haven't reported, or done much debugging, because these aren't show stoppers, but I will in the next couple of days and I hope everyone reports bugs that are encountered.

Installation Difference

[landivision]

I was both an early beta user and a user of the official release. I had allot of problems with beta releases and with upgrades. However with a fresh install of the official 9.10 ubuntu and kubuntu releases, I have not had any problems at all. This is really the first ubuntu release where everything has just worked. WPA, Widescreen video resolution with intel graphics chipset, successful resume with laptop. I think 9.10 is great. I am using Kubuntu on a Dell Latitude E5500 and a Shuttle PC with quad core 905cpu. works flawlessly.

Yes but did they fix pulseaudio?

[mrmeval]

It's been so broken for so long.

I moved completely away from Ubuntu because an upgrade broke my system with the 'stable' version previous to this latest snafu. They also disabled several long term features. One broke midnight commander in a terminal was done to placate emacs zealots and the others for no rational reason other than it bothered someone with the power to make it happen.

It sounds so familiar.

Official Disclaimer:

[Anonymous Coward]

"This software is released for free public use under several licenses. It is provided without warranty, without even the implied warranty of merchantability, satisfactoriness or fitness for a particular use. ..."

Two machines, No Problems

[Prototerm]

On Friday, I installed the 64 bit version of 9.10 on a Dell Inspiron 1721 laptop and a Dell Studio XPS 435T desktop without any problems or complaints. Did an update on the laptop with an already encrypted Home directory, and it worked just fine. Even the built-in Broadcom WiFi worked properly. I did a fresh install on the desktop, and all the multimedia hardware and software worked without trouble.

In the end, your success depends on what you've got and what you're using. I should mention that I always keep my Home directory on a separate hard drive partition, and make a backup of the system before making this sort of move. That ought to go without saying, but a lot of people out there hate the "B" word ("backup" for all you /. pervs out there).

My Experience

[Tarlus]

Whas [sic] has been your experience if you've moved to Karmic?

The Good:

• PulseAudio was improved and is (finally) friendly and functional with my sound card.
• The new Intel drivers have drastically improved the performance of my video hardware.
• My machine boots up and enters/emerges-from hibernation faster than ever.
• General performance in GNOME is faster and more responsive.

The Bad:

• Notifications in GNOME were deliberately shoved downward and away from the top of the screen. Luckily there's an easy fix.
• The Firefox icon disappeared. Had to spend a whole five seconds re-applying it. :D
• A couple of packages disappeared since they were mistakenly marked as deprecated. A quick apt-get reinstalled them.

I would have to say that in my experience with Karmic, the pros greatly outweighed the cons. I'll live major increases in performance at the cost of minor fixable annoyances!

Of course, I did an upgrade from 9.04 so I haven't taken the plunge to GRUB 2 or EXT4. Those two things are still kinda young (and bold decisions for Canonical to commit to production) so perhaps they're contributing factors to the problems that most people are experiencing?

Karmic's Karma

[skiquel]

Case 1.) Jaunty to Karmic beta. Went to sleep with laptop on, woke up. Couldn't read/write files. Rebooted. Ran a huge fsck. System was permanently borked.

Case 2.) File system encryption brings you to emergency root shell. Running fsck solved it. Unsure what happened because who the hell monitors this stuff.

Case 3.) 64-bit flash is fubar'd. You gotta go grab the 64-bit version from adobe and symlink to it.

The truth is, Karmic was not a smooth upgrade in the big picture.

Ubunteros can't gloat at Windows 7 being a bitch to upgrade.

Too much complains

[Anonymous Coward]

Geeezz, I know where Ubuntu aims, but those complains in slashdot? Are you nerds, really?

Re:There are lots of distros out there: e.g. Mandr

[shutdown -p now]

IMO Mandriva offers excellent Gnome and KDE flavours

I may be wrong here, but back in the day when I last tried Mandriva, it was widely seen as a KDE-centric distro. Does it actually have good Gnome support these days, or is it on the same (low) level as, say, KDE in Kubuntu?

Yeah; I'm glad I'm waiting the month.

[Grendel Drago]

Intrepid Ibex caused the use of my integrated wireless (an Aironet on a Thinkpad T40p) to eventually lock up my laptop. I eventually gave up on trying to git-bisect it after the tenth kernel recompilation, as older kernel versions caused *X* to crash instead. Jaunty Jackalope contained a version of PulseAudio which shit all over my sound setup, such that I cannot play a goddamn MP3 in Rhythmbox on my idle desktop (a bog-standard Dell with ICH5 audio) without the sound skipping. (Party like it's 1999!) At least mplayer works if I pipe things through its esd module... even though that's just a frontend for pulse. I don't even want to know.

I cannot wait to see what happens when I inflict the Koala on my systems. If the audio is unfucked on my desktop this time, maybe I'll actually try it on my laptop.

Seriously, though, I wish I could be surprised when incredibly common commodity hardware is horribly broken on the most popular linux distro. I just wish it would eventually get *less* broken.

Re:My experience

[bill_mcgonigle]

It didn't handle an unexpected reboot in the middle of the upgrade gracefully, but I don't know any consumer OS that reliably does.

To split hairs, StormOS would probably be fine, but it's well-understood that Linux doesn't yet have the resources for this (btrfs is on-order).

Flawless.

[DarkVader]

I'm only running it on one machine, but the upgrade was absolutely flawless. Not a single issue.

I don't think I've ever had such a smooth upgrade, with nothing broken before.

If you've paid attention, I'm a huge Macintosh fan, but this was a far easier upgrade than 10.5 to 10.6 - and that was an easy upgrade.

Tried it - but facebook doesn't work right

[Anonymous Coward]

Tried to get my wife to make the switch to Karmic Koala. She's back on XP since some parts of facebook didn't work on linux, even with the non-free components installed.

Re:My experience

[Anpheus]

Something is wrong with your hardware, or as you guessed, it is not supported in Win7 by default. I not only installed SATA not in IDE mode, but on a RAID controller with AHCI/hotswap enabled.

I like how jumped from "it doesn't work on MY hardware with these settings" to "it can't POSSIBLY work on anyone else's with these settings". Stay classy, Slashdot anecdotes.

better than windows 7 (which has been ok)

[Anonymous Coward]

Had some issues getting Karmic ready to go. Slightly disappointed since haven't had a problem since 6.xx days. However they are exclusively with third party software 1) ANSYS 2) ATI Catalyst.
 
  In contrast, windows 7 and its bootloader promptly freaked out despite being on another drive. Maybe its my fault for trying out 2 new boot loaders at the same time (grub2 and nt60). Regardless, repeated attempts to clone the win7 super secret boot partition failed so I had to reconstruct that. Then Win7 decided it wanted to freak out, become ungenuine, look like win95 and not function. Evidently, it became confused when the system drive was spontaneously relegated to "d:". After recovering mbr and editing registry to fix win7's apparent confusion, karmic's grub2 detected it and now both live in harmony. FYI, My last machine upgraded from hardy through feisty, and winxp. Had similar problems with the ATI driver in win7. Win7 keeps wanting to update my network driver (gigabyte 1000mb/s on board), but the driver doesn't work. Ubuntu for the win....

Re:My experience

[Anpheus]

If Windows fails to install it rolls back to the state before installation, and can do this for even the most trivial updates, and anything up to and including a new OS install. I don't know if Mac OSX has similar capabilities.

Re:My experience

[Anpheus]

Saturated with garbage? We run antivirus, block the obviously bad sites by using the antivirus' and OpenDNS as blacklists and I haven't needed to fix a computer in weeks. If Ubuntu had enough marketshare, are you saying spyware/grayware/malware/etc wouldn't be prevalent and made easy to install with debian packages and all?

It happen's...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not outlandish to think that fresh software will have bugs and compatibility issues. Canonical's recent boom in the Linux community seems to have made people feel like everything they would touch would be turned to gold. At the end of the day, you still have people, which are bound to make mistakes in code. Until we figure out a way to patch that, just roll your distro back to 9.04 and wait.

My upgrade experience

[jargon82]

I've just upgraded my T61 laptop today. Had no issues to speak of, everything went smoothly, and I'm up and running 9.10. Now, also today I made some changes to my partitions, and now my win 7 partition doesn't quite work right (boots sort of but doesn't login) so there you are. Guess I'll be fixing that install, but Ubuntu 9.10 is here to stay... for now.

no problems here

[boblaroc]

I recently ditched m$ on my home laptop and installed ubuntu studio 9.04 - which sucked 'cause the real time kernel kept crashing. So after some research, I decided to install the 9.10 beta to see if it was any better. My computer has never run better!! 9.10 is an awesome release, and I have not seen any of the issues others are having. Maybe its a clean install vs. upgrade thing. That said - if anyone knows how to get patchage to recognise the audio port of my NI Audio 8 DJ usb soundcard - I will be forever grateful (patchage recognises the midi ports!)

Why is everyone upgrading...

[Anonymous Coward]

2 Partitions 1 /home and one /

install fresh system + apps and there is no pain with upgrade bugs!

New adopter, fresh off the boat, nothing but good

[macraig]

I'm a "new" adopter who hasn't had a bad experience... yet. I've installed Linux and Ubuntu previously, but never for very long nor for persistent usage. My familiarity goes all the way back to about '92 or '93, though, when I had a couple diskette boxes stuffed with 70 diskettes containing some early distro ("1.2", it's labelled).

I installed it this time for a very specific reason: GPT support. I had finally gotten around to upgrading the drives in my RAID 5 array to 1 terabyte drives, and discovered that I had slammed into the MBR wall; my nVidia MediShield BIOS was reporting the capacity as about 750GB, which is just about 2TB shy of what it should have been. I then learned that no 32-bit version of Windows recognizes GPT structures, and I had NO intention of upgrading to yet another overpriced version of a product because the last version artificially handcuffed me from using my own damned hardware! I had already been enduring the 4GB RAM license limit in Windows XP; this was too much.

I also learned that Linux in general and Ubuntu did in fact recognize GPT disk structures, so I created new partitions and installed Ubuntu 9.10. I had already used the live CD and GPartEd to convert the array from MBR to GPT. Sure enough, not only did Ubuntu recognize my RAID 5 array, it recognized the FULL capacity of it, not the capacity reported by the MediaShield BIOS (which apparently is just a "display issue"). I now have a 3TB ext4 volume just waiting to be used. (Windows XP now recognizes it only in Disk Management, as a "GPT Protective Partition", as expected, though it still gets the capacity wrong.)

I'm now exploring the virtualization options, looking for one that will still let me run Windows XP as a guest and use Samba or some other technique to allow some Windows apps to have access to the 3 terabytes in the new array. (Hopefully one that also supports AMD-V and lets me boot the guest Windows OS directly from my already-installed instance.)

The migration will take some time and might never be entirely complete (I may have to dual-boot for Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, for instance), but it seems like this has been the proverbial Writing On The Wall and I must heed it. I hope I don't crash into these showstopping bugs that other people are reporting, because if it proved too frustrating that might drive me back into the waiting arms of the Wicked Witch.

grub2 killed me

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I installed 9.10 to test it out and then repented and went back to Linux Mint 7. I just couldn't stand the grub2 bootloader. It was far more difficult to configure and to set the default selection of the bootloader, the time, etc. and it doesn't have nearly as cool of an appearance as good old GRUB. Maybe with a few tweaks in the future it'll be up to par, but for now I'm sticking with Linux Mint 7 and GRUB 1.

Redundant. What is the lesson here?

[w0mprat]

early adopters are having a tough time with ********

Where ******* is any application or hardware. Don't be an early adopter

KK Rocks for me!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am perfectly happy with 9.10, which ran the RC nicely on my 2003 era Tosh laptop- with nvidia 96 to boot (which did not run in 8.10 or 9.04)- Karmic is also treating my fairly recent AMD Phenom with AMD 4800 series very well- and finally able to run w/restricted drivers & dual-head too (well I guess that's AMD's fault but still...) Were there a few bumps along the way - yes, but they were mostly self inflicted and nothing a quick trip to the forums or google didn't solve....

In my experience...

[Jephir]

... Ubuntu 9.10 was actually less buggy than previous releases. Before my system would crash whenever put into suspend mode, audio would stop working after resuming from suspend, Flash would constantly crash Firefox, etc. None of which are a problem in the current release.

My Koalas are Performing Well

[randomsearch]

I've been using Karmic since release on my laptop and desktop. Both work wonderfully - all hardware works perfectly (compare this to Windows 7 on my laptop: no audio, no accelerated graphics and no wireless). Only gripe so far is that I had to download proprietary stuff for my desktop wireless card, but I have to do that for each release and at least this time it was a painless experience (but did require using a shell).

The biggest thing of note is how much more responsive everything is. I don't know what changes have been made to the kernel, but the scheduling seems exactly right. The things I'm doing take precedence, as do those applications that need regularly CPU time, such as CD reading and audio.

Talking of which, the audio is completely fixed from my pov. Previously, I've had problems with stuttering under load, which was been blamed on poor configuration of Pulse Audio, but this seems to be eliminated now. The new audio settings app works great for me too, nicely sorting out my two sound cards, giving them sensible defaults and removing the clutter.

Boot time is much faster, as is shutting down. My laptop suspends correctly. All in all, I have no complaints. The O/S seems so polished now that I'm beginning to find myself criticising the applications more. It seems that Canonical are going to have to get involved at an individual application level if they are to take things further, as the desktop is looking great and prior to GNOME 3 I can't see how it can majorly improve.

Kudos to the Canonical team, I actually found 9.04 a bit disappointing, but they have clearly responded to feedback on Pulse etc. and delivered something great.

As other people have pointed out anecdotal evidence is quite meaningless, but from my experience at least criticism of this release compared to the previous just look like FUD.

RS

Re:My experience

[Abcd1234]

Just do a reinstall. I put a fresh copy of 9.10 on my laptop and everything worked straight out of the box, just like Jaunty. My only complaint is higher power consumption... other than that, it works great.

My experiance..

[davej]

I've just upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 with no problems at all.

In fact, I now know that one of my hard disks is failing (high reallocated sector count) due to the default use "palimpsest" to monitor drive condition!

I'm stoked!

DO NOT WANT

[endianx]

I am very unhappy with Koala (Server install). I can't get Xen working with Grub2. I seem to lack the skills to make the switch from grub2 to grub without messing things up.

I am switching back to Debian. I love having access to newer software in the repositories in Ubuntu, but it isn't worth all this trouble. Why switch to grub2? Was grub one really such a major problem?

Minor problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I had two problems. The first was that the upgrade wouldn't go ahead because there was some dependency problem with konqueror. This was fixed on the Ubuntu bug tracker in about three hours (uninstall it, upgrade, re-install). They're still analyzing why it happened but the problem is fixed from my point of view.

The second was corrupt graphics when X started which I solved with a bit of Googling. Turns of the gfrlx driver doesn't support some of the older ATI cards (like my HD 2400 Pro). Changing the device to "radeon" and uninstalling the gfrlx drivers fixed that.

I was "hit", still happy though

[harris s newman]

My X86_64 wouldn't boot up after install, after 2 days realized it was a simple comment out of the splash page in Grub. Openarena also won't run without crashing my system (wow!) but still, I love ubuntu! Never would I go back to windoz.

I also have an eeepc...901 model

[bornagainpenguin]

If I try hitting Fn+F2 to turn my WiFi on and off the system crashes HARD. Millions of 9xx model eeepcs have been sold--all of them with the Ralink rt2860 WiFi card. Some 10xx models of eeepcs are also reporting this issue. Considering this is an issue that has been known since JULY and the Canonical developers made the choice to release known buggy software that causes kernel panics rather than accept an alteration in their precious schedule...I think people have a right to be annoyed.

The attitude seems to be 'let upstream (Debian) fix it' while Canonical pisses around with themes and icon changes--well if I have to wait for Debian to fix the issues, why not simply run Debian?

--bornagainpenguin

waiting..

[Anonymous Coward]

Think ill wait for sp1 to come out...

Very fustrated

[zakeria]

touchpad does not work on any of my three laptops and they are all different!! 9.4 worked great.. really pissed at this, also two wifi cards no longer work.

Sure, it's very clear indeed...

[feranick]

From the download page:

"Choose a version

Download Ubuntu 9.10
This is the latest version, released in October of 2009 and maintained until 2011

Download Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
Released in April 2008 and maintained until April 2011 - ideal for large deployments"

LTS: long term support. It means you get support for longer, not that it gets a better support than in regular version of Ubuntu. So in terms of understanding the benefits for you, end user, and how much more stable a LTS system is, the description is useless.

No real problems ...

[the eric conspiracy]

Updated both a desktop and a laptop. The only issue I had was Palimpsest falsely reporting a large number of bad sectors on one of the laptop drives.

This was the first Linux update *ever* for me that didn't bork my wireless setup in my laptop. Also the first time I haven't had sound problems (I was using Pulse in 9.04 previously).

DNS Problems

[lavaforge]

Coming in late to the conversation, but what the hey.

The biggest thing I've noticed so far is that DNS lookup in the default install is CRAZY slow for me. I've read some posts about blacklisting the ip6 module or changing the name resolving order, but I'd rather not use a temporary workaround that's incompatible with whatever fix they eventually choose to implement. The bug is here, by the way: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/417757

Other than that, I've noticed instability in Flash, some general UI unresponsiveness, and a (now fixed) bug in the update manager that would throw up a kernel oops message.

It sure is pretty, though.

no problems at all

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience with 9.10 has been great - no bugs at all. I was a little hesitant, since after 9.04 I had to tweak things to watch videos again, and it took me some time. This time, though, things have worked perfectly. Boot time is faster, maybe run time is a hair slower, but since I'm running an older laptop (dell inspiron 600m), I'm really not complaining.

Re:STUPIDER THAN WINBLOWERS !! WHODATHUNK ??

[Aphoxema]

You have convinced me, AC. I am a dumb muthafucka and I shall get a MAC to be GAY. Thank you for your savvy and influential argument. You have changed my life.

STOP UPGRADING

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the griping that I've seen is from people who've clearly upgraded from one version to 9.10. Why don't people learn that any OS is more prone to issues when you upgrade from one version to another. Back your crap up and do a clean install! I've been running 9.10 since the RC on my HP dv4-1117ca and it's been great. The intel graphics work much better now, audio works cleanly out of the box and as much as I've been a fan of ALSA since back in the day when it was starting to replace OSS, pulse is pretty slick, it'll flip the output from my USB headset to the laptop's speakers on the fly, something that vista won't do for me (my experience is that you've got to restart the application in vista before it'll start routing the sound stream to the speakers after unplugging the usb headset)

Its great

[kregg]

I am running it on my laptop and have no problems. I am pretty sure half of the problems people have with Linux in general is hardware drivers which is understandable because more hardware is made for Windows. Until more hardware is supported in Linux I think we will continue to see wireless and video driver issues.

I've gotten it working pretty well.

[TxRv]

It works fine for me on a ThinkPad. I'm not too happy with some of the "user-friendly" features, as Iswitched to Linux because I like to have control over my machine, but once Ifixed the usual flash issues and got rid of that awful user list on the login splash I'm really happy with it.

Re:Professionalism... Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but thanks for the hint -- er, as soon as I find out what CCSM is.

See, I've been using Mandrake 10.1 all these years since 2005... we didn't have these CC whatever you're speaking of...

And get off my lawn!

Ah, Google is grrreat... Compiz Configuration Settings Manager... do I have to use this even if I chose "disable Metisse and Compiz"?

After calling Mandriva Control Center, and clicking on 3D configuration, there it is: "Disable 3D Desktop" (actually I'm translating back to English on-the-fly, so the words might not be exact). Hmmm, do flies have sex on-the-fly? Heh!

On a hunch I tried it on Konsole and guess what? An otherwise inaccessible tool called "ccsm" (lowercase)! Isn't it fun to discover things like this?

Anyway, there's a lot of options (I seem to recall this... maybe I've seen it in Ubuntu?) and I don't think such a basic option (default in Mandrake 10.1, long before Compiz, and in Windows, for crying it out loud) would be here. Maybe that meta-mousewheel thing which zooms the screen image, not the app contents, like ctrl-mousewheel does.

Maybe kwin has some configuration to that effect...

Thanks for the info.

Works great, except for suspend / resume

[q2k]

My upgrade to 9.10 was fine except that Suspend / resume is completely broken and I have to hard reset to get back from sleep mode. On the good side, my NAT drive, which would never mount on boot with 9.04 is now mounting with no human intervention. One step forward, one step back.

Got Burned.

[Alias14]

Yeah Karmic was a load of shit. I have been running Ubuntu for just over a year now and was really really excited about the new release. I downloaded, installed and I thought it looked really nice. However once I installed my ATI driver it just shat itself. 3 re-installs and a driver compile it still fails. Now I'm running Jaunty and couldn't be happier.

Re:My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't had any of those problems yet. Although, I have seen my laptop screen's brightness suddenly drop while I was typing, only to happen again a few hours after I reset it to where it was.

Currently there is a notification sitting on my screen, saying that the xserver running on this machine is screwed up, pointing to a random blog entry.

I've also run into another problem with some of the GUI admin tools.

Re:My experience

[melikamp]

None of the mentioned things affected my setup: Dell XPS with AMD64 and nVidia, but I had other various issues.

1. The wired card ceased to be "managed". The fix was easy, but the reason will remain a mystery.
2. "Popping" sounds could be heard. This is a very minor bug with a very easy fix.
3. Quake Live became a terrible dog for FPS, and the problem was traced to its interference with compiz. Since QL is still in beta, it is hard to say whose fault it is. The workaround (by me :) is OK.
4. Where is the Services wizard? It got nuked! To be sure, it's not a bug, but a serious usability issue. Users have to either grok System V scripts (so I am OK) or use Synaptic when they want to, say, disable/enable sshd.
5. The login screen is fugly and the wizard for it is gone. Or could as well be gone.

Altogether, this was a rather painless experience for me, but if you hate ironing out bugs, I would recommend waiting for a few weeks before upgrading from stable. On the other hand, if you are doing a new installation, 9.10 is probably a better choice, as it basically works.

P.S.: God, I hate it when I press a wrong button and Firefox navigates away, which causes me to loose my notes.Slashdot should open the input form on a separate page.

Re:My experience

[Xtifr]

I like how when someone has a problem with a Windows install, it's always: "it must be your hardware", but when someone has a problem with a Linux install, it's "Linux isn't ready for the desktop!" or similar nonsense.

Note, I'm not accusing you here; you stuck to the subject in front of you, and I don't have a problem with that. I just think it's funny that yours was the first post in this article suggesting someone might be having hardware problems...and it was regarding a Windows install, not Ubuntu.

Re:My Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

That should fix it ;)

No floppy drive

[hammarlund]

Apparently this is a known bug, yet the it was still in the Karmic release. So, I've got openSuse ready for an install tomorrow. PulseAudio seemed to be working ok for me though.

My Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I went from 8.10 to 9.10 on my laptop (Acer travelmate 2Ghz sempron 1Gb ram) and desktop (2.5Ghz dual core 2Gb ram) and both the update process and results were flawless. I have to say that the improvement I am seeing is massive, my two main uses Java and Flash are far more stable and quicker. The one problem i had was that scim pinyin on the laptop (i live in China) was broken. However this was a pretty dodgy install by me in the first place and a switch to iBus as recommended on the net has fixed it.

Absolute disaster of an upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Akonadi doesn't work - mysql/innodb problems. KDE services just die randomly. Hardware is intermittent. It has that "get it out the door whether it's ready or not, we're on a schedule" feel to it. I ran the upgrade from 9.04, I've heard a fresh install goes great. But I have my environment heavily customized, and I'm not inclined to go through manual config every six months. I do the heavy lifting on the .04 releases, and then expect a clean upgrade to .10. That's been the case for me since the 6.x series, but not so this time. It's really bad.

Issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly haven't had an issue with any of my machines.
I did a clean install to the beta, then upgraded to the release ver. from there, I have yet to discover any issues.

Ubiquity Crashed During Install

[ilovepi]

Nearing the end of the install on my laptop ubiquity crashed, this happened on each of three attempts. There had already been a bug filed on the beta and someone had found that apt-get removing ubiquity-slideshow-ubuntu before running the install off the live CD solved that problem. Since that the only issues I've had have simply been me messing with the wrong files, these are easily fixed. All in all it's a pretty sleek operating system.

Works for me

[spinkham]

I have 2 fresh installs and 1 upgraded from jaunty, and they all work fine for me.. In fact, they work much better then the previous version on my laptop with Intel x4500 integrated video.

Some GRUB2 links

[tqft]

Did an upgrade to KK a few weeks back - some grub2 links I found

http://slashdot.org/journal/238659/Karmic-Koala-Ubuntu-910-stuff

My Karma's Good

[SuperMetroid]

Karmic boots quite a bit faster than its predecessor. I upgraded and have had no real issues, aside from my computer not shutting down properly anymore (it hangs due to an I/O error, so you have to force it). I definitely wouldn't eschew it just for that though.

Works fine for me

[NINJacob]

I've had zero problems....none at all. Everything is working perfectly.

I even gave gnome-shell a try and I love it. It's not ready for prime time, but I haven't gone back.

Empathy sucks balls though....when it doesn't crash.

Read the fine summary...

[zogger]

..including the last question, complete with minor typo. The submission asks for your experience upgrading.

For me, my upgrade went completely smooth. I first skimmed through the forum, realized most of the problems people were having were outside of my concern, as I don't quad boot from a natted raided clouded server with 4 dimensional desktop effects resonating off my skypedTivo relay home robotic automation system from the wirleless AP off my moonbounce pringles can home media center rig..so I just adjusted the one thing I needed for insurance, switched to the nv driver instead of the nvidia blob, and the upgrade went fine. Took a long time on my almost broadband (we'll call it "hey, better than freaking dialup and cheaper!). but the net upgrade method worked just fine.

The distro is bleeding edge or close to it..if you choose it to be and demand a lot of exotic action from it.(apparently, my guess skimming around those forums and generally speaking).

Really, most of the problems appear to revolve around the *need* for eyecandy and wiggly windows and whooshing around the desktop. Skip the eyecandy, it might work better. Run some cheap ethernet cable under the carpet at the wall edge, eliminate a lot of other problems.

KISS still works. You want bleeding edge, you'll get cut once in awhile. For what people pay for it, they sure can bitch a lot.

HOWEVER, I totally agree with you on six month release cycles, or even further, WTF is it with "release cycles" anyway? It really has gotten to the point that that is ridiculous, it is a worthy goal of sorts, but impractical. Now seven years is way too long, but once a year instead of twice, then a very concerted effort on bug fixing for a long time before development starts on the next generation, might work better. I just think modern linux distros are way too complex and have so many programs and libraries, that come with them etc that it is just impractical to try and maintain that pace. It is an arbitrary and artificial number picked out of the ether for some esoteric but flawed reason.

Maybe they should put it to a vote on the ubuntu forums?

OR, my major point, just try to work out minor perpetual upgrading instead of all at once? Install once, that's it, no need to reinstall the whole thing ever, ever, ever again. I would prefer that latter method if possible from a user's standpoint. I am not a dev, I don't know if this is possible, but seems like it should be. The kernel can be upgraded and is. Individual programs and libraries and so on are. Whole desktop environments can be. uhh..not much left. Maybe, don't know..

    So why isn't the perpetual slow upgrade then the way to do it, why have a whole new "version" all the time anyway? That part I never understood. There must be a reason, I just really don't know what it is. Just slop over thinking from the closed source world where they need an excuse to dun you again for another wad of ca$h every few years or something?

Re:Read the fine summary...

[kripkenstein]

So why isn't the perpetual slow upgrade then the way to do it, why have a whole new "version" all the time anyway? That part I never understood. There must be a reason, I just really don't know what it is. Just slop over thinking from the closed source world where they need an excuse to dun you again for another wad of ca$h every few years or something?

My guess is this: Ubuntu is primarily a desktop distro. People using desktops tend to want the latest firefox, GIMP, graphics drivers, and so forth. It's possible in theory to backport those in various ways (PPAs, etc.), but in general the standard way to install stuff is from the repos. So, the approach is to upgrade every 6 months.

In theory this is easier to solve for apps like Firefox, GIMP, etc., than for drivers. But desktop users tend to have newer hardware than servers. My desktop, for example, was bought last year but only started to be fully supported out of the box with Karmic. If the upgrade cycle was 12 months, I might have had another 6 months to wait.

Re:Read the fine summary...

[jhfry]

At first I wanted to mod this... but I just had to reply.

There are at least 4 GOOD reasons for a 6mo release cycle. (maybe more but these are the ones I know).

1. Build Hype. Would Slashdot and a bunch of other media sources really talk about Ubuntu if it didn't make a release every 6 months.

2. Developer Fatigue. Having a 6 month release cycle allows developers to be creative and add new features for a few months then shift to bug fixing mode for a couple of months. This prevents developers from getting too wrapped up in adding new features or from getting bored just fixing bugs. IIRC many developers left Debian due to agonizingly long cycle from unstable to stable... they had to add features to keep up with other distros, but that only prolonged the bug-fix mode that they were in.

3. Support Cycles. There is a for-profit aspect to Ubuntu that many people forget about, and in order to exploit that they must put limits upon what they are willing to support. With a regular, frequent, release cycle they can be sure that their releases are timely enough to support the customers needs and they can retire support for aged releases at a specific time as well.

4. Stability. If I install KK then I know that any package upgrades (short of upgrading to a new version) are only supposed to fix things that are broken in my current install. If there were a perpetual upgrade cycle, then I would be pulling upgrades to packages that include new features, depreciate features, or even remove entire depreciated packages. This may make my system unusable for it's intended purpose.

A prolonged, or worse perpetual, cycle is nearly impossible to support, has no guarantee of package stability, is boring to many/most developers, and generates little to no press. NONE of these thing would allow anyone to profit from the development of Ubuntu, except perhaps Apple and Microsoft.

Re:Read the fine summary...

[koko775]

FYI, I do believe Arch linux does the perpetual upgrade thing.

Re:Read the fine summary...

[Risen888]

OR, my major point, just try to work out minor perpetual upgrading instead of all at once? Install once, that's it, no need to reinstall the whole thing ever, ever, ever again.

Losing the mod points I already used in this discussion, but this is important, so listen. Cancel whatever you had planned for this weekend, because you need to switch to Arch.

Anon E. Moose

[Anonymous Coward]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1305924

There's the official sticky feedback vote. It's pretty much right across the board on votes. Which is understandable. As ubuntu releases live on the BLEEDING EDGE. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_edge Not cutting edge but rather bleeding edge. Then the OP says early adopters. So beta testers living with bugs???? Say it aint so.

Personally my 1 netbook had highly customize grub2 setup so when i upgraded from jaunty that got busted up. I otherwise have had all positive experiences. The death by papercuts has fixed many little bugs I never had the interest in fixing. Very nice.

You never, ever, upgrade...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess because I'm a Mac user? Or I'm just used to the finicky nature of Linux PPC... but I never upgrade distros. I update it, but when a new distro upgrade comes out... I make a liveUSB, backup my home folder, and wipe/install.

I like Karmic. I've installed the latest build of Google Chrome, which is many many ways compliments the new Empathy messenger client. However it's far from full features, both Chrome and Empathy, so I have Firefox and Pidgin on retainer.

I went for the netbook remix this time around. Wonderfully configures, very elegant and fast. Everything worked on reboot: camera, audio, sleep, video, wifi

My only hiccup was that Flash refused to install until I ran the Update Manager and let it update some 2MB of stuff on the computer, after that, Flash installed and everything was ready to go.

I hardly count an Adobe installer not working correctly a critical failure for an Operating System, but someone will say that it's unacceptable and this isn't the year of the Linux Desktop.

Asus eeePC 1000 (no H, 40GB SSD Linux keyboard - no MS Here, ever)

Karmic Ko-all-that...

[ninjapinecone]

Karmic has been a breeze for me. No problems, excellent update from within Jaunty, kept my prefs, and it has nearly doubled ( possibly more ) the battery life of my laptop. No joke. Add to that the fastest browsing / rendering I've seen and I totally pleased. Excellent work ubuntu team!

Re:Karmic Ko-all-that...

[igny]

NO CARRIER

Fixed that for you.

Two laptops: one OK, the other borked ...

[kbahey]

So, I upgraded my own laptop from Kubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) to Kubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) on Saturday. The GUI upgrade refused to run. So I did it from the command line using the do-release-upgrade command, and it was successful.

The Intel Wifi Link 5100 did not work but I was able to compile it from source and get it going, like I did on 9.04.

The second problem was power management. The laptop got so hot, up to 63C (normally it is between 42C to 49C). Guidance Power Manager did not detect when the AC was plugged, although at the ACPI level (/proc/acpi) showed that events were detected. The solution was simple: edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and add:

acpi_os="Linux"

At the end of the line that has "ro quiet splash" in it.

Now the laptop works fine, and I am typing this from it. KDE4 on 9.10 is far better than KDE4 on 9.04 which was too broken.

Then, I proceeded with another laptop, also Toshiba, but older CPU. This one refused to boot after the upgrade.

It would show:

Begin: Loading essential drivers ...
Done.
Begin: Running /scripts/init-premount ...
Done.
Begin: Mounting root file system ...
Begin: Running /scripts/local-top ...
Done.
Begin: Running /scripts/local-premount ...
[ 3.710938] PM: Starting manual resume from disk
Done.
[ 3.728858] kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
[ 3.728942] EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
Begin: Running /scripts/local-bottom ...
Done.
Done.
Begin: Running /scripts/init-botton ...
Done.
mount: can't find /home/public in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab

Then nothing. No prompt, no GUI, ... stuck there.

This is reported on launchpad, but none of the solutions mentioned there worked for me.

Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del did indeed work though ...

I used boot options like noresume, acpi=off, single, to no avail.

Was able to change the grub command line to " ... rw init=/bin/bash", and get a prompt. I connected the ethernet cable, got an IP address, and ran "aptitude update && aptitude full-upgrade" and made sure there are no pending updates. Still no go.

I regenerated the initrd image using update-initramfs -k all -c, and ran update-grub as well. No go still ...

Running dpkg-reconfigure -a did not help either (and complains about upstart socket not being there).

I booted from an old Kubuntu disk and connected a USB drive and made a backup of the home directory. Then booted from a fresh Kubuntu 9.10 i386 desktop CD, but the fonts were all borked: too big to be useful, and most popup dialogs (e.g. when you press on the K start button) are unreadable, so can't even proceed with a full clean install.

Not sure what to do for that second laptop. I am hesitant of doing 2 more now that I am stuck on that one.

Ubuntu 9.10

[mothore]

I installed the morning of; And am loving it.

upgrade failed miserably

[gsgleason]

I backed up my home directories and attempted an upgrade. It failed, miserably. I wiped and did a clean install of 9.10 and since then have had no issues at all.

Maybe I am lucky but.....

[DeathFire]

I haven't had any problems with this release that I have come across. 3 computers, 2 different sets of hardware, no issues that I have noted. For me it was actually the smoothest upgrade that I have had.

Re:My experience

[gwdoiron]

You probably have one of the new Socket1156 systems, then. Windows 7 thinks it has a correct driver for the MCH, but like in any version of windows, if the hardware was released after the OS was RTM'd, then you should be hitting the manufacturer's web site for the latest drivers. Unfortunately, Win7 doesn't complain about missing a driver (as it usually does); it automatically installs the built-in ICH driver, which "almost" works. That's unfortunate, but not unexpected (at least, not to anyone who has set up bleeding-edge hardware before) when working with bleeding-edge hardware.

Re:My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

What full disk encryption? I thought Ubuntu 9.10 only offered an encrypted folder. If you're doing full disk encryption in the BIOS then Ubuntu has nothing to do with it.

Basically fine. On two different boxes.

[wonkavader]

"Whas has been your experience if you've moved to Karmic?"

Whas? Well, anyway -- did two upgrades. One on a laptop, the other on a Desktop. One Intel with an Intel video chipset, one AMD with an ATI one. Everything's great except lack of glx on the AMD/ATI box.

It worked great for me and is faster than Jaunty.

[HardWoodWorker]

I am very happy. I am enjoying my Jaunty -> Karmic upgrade more than my Vista -> Win7 upgrade.

Fundamentally flawed development atmosphere

[Pausanias]

I get your point, but the problems are much deeper than that.

The main issue with the Ubuntu development cycle is that unless you're dealing with an LTS, big issues are kicked to the next release. Just downloaded and installed LTS+1? Found a regression that breaks sound/wireless/graphics? Oh, thank you for your bug report. The issue is already fixed in LTS+2 Alpha 1. Yeah, it stinks that it worked in LTS but doesn't work in LTS+1. Sorry, we do not have the resources to fix it in LTS+1 as well.

What? Sorry? You do not want to run the LTS+2 Alpha software? Then downgrade to LTS (yeah, right---it's next-to-impossible without a backup, wipe and reinstall) or wait for LTS+2.

OK, I wait for LTS+2. Put up with whatever inconvenient/crappy workaround they suggest in the bug tracker. LTS+2 comes around. Yay, sound/wireless/graphics bug is fixed. But now there's intermittent freezing. Lots of people report. Cause of problem found and fixed in LTS+3 Alpha 1. Sorry, involves a new kernel, so will not be fixed in LTS+2. So you can either downgrade or wait for LTS+3.

You get the gist of my meaning. There are many regressions in Ubuntu (and I don't know whether other distros have the same problem). You are usually told to wait till the next release, but then new regressions always crop up. I haven't seen an Ubuntu release free of regressions since... well it must be since Feisty.

This is not made up---it has really happened to me. With Jaunty it was a freeze bug, with Karmic it's intel wireless regularly dying.

Makes me want to go back to Mac OS X.

Re:Fundamentally flawed development atmosphere

[blazerw]

Sorry for your troubles, I can't figure out why your sound/wireless/graphics worked so perfectly on the LiveCD (unavailable on Mac or Windows), but then didn't when you installed. Did you point out in your bug report how the LiveCD worked so well? That might have helped the bug folks track it down.

And I'm really sorry it happened to you again on the next release. Wow, intermittent freezes that didn't occur on the LiveCD either. I heard there was freezing caused by upgrading Ext3 partitions to Ext4, that you wouldn't have seen on the LiveCD. However, since Ext3 was the default and stable filesystem for LTS+2 (Jaunty), I doubt you would have done something that risky.

Again, I'm sorry for your troubles. I truly wish your experiences were as good as mine. For me, the LiveCD experience exactly predicted the final installation experience, except that the LiveCD was a bit slower.

Painless, easy upgrade

[bangin]

I'm running a dual boot system with Vista and Ubuntu. The Karmic Koala upgrade went smoothly and easily. Really I can't say enough good about my experiences with Ubuntu. I've never had anything not work that wasn't easy to find the solution to on line and easy to fix. And considering the price tag Ubuntu is awesome. If I didn't play computer video games I wouldn't bother with Windows at all.

Some good, Some bad

[DirePickle]

This was the first and only dist-upgrade I've managed with Ubuntu that didn't completely hose the installation. And it's the first time my wireless card has continued to work without excessive tinkering post-upgrade. Of course, this latter is probably because I moved from an ath5k to an Intel card. On the other hand, it totally hosed sound on my t61p.

Surprised

[RAMMS EIN]

I am surprised. If so many people are affected by these issues, how come they weren't found and fixed prior to release?

Or is it a matter of pushing the release out of the door despite known bugs still being present?

Stay away from 9.10 till re-release

[Anonymous Coward]

the usb-creator.exe is faulty.

dell mini 9, networking does not work without dinking about with finding packages and installing them with dpkg

dell mini 9, power management doesn't work -- doesn't suspend / resume / hibernate...

kubuntu netbook remix isn't there either.

    I'd have to power down the computer.

Kubuntu on tecra m4 ,-- the screen always locks, even though I changed the setting to not. .. tablet screen works though!

Beta issues

[SpitfireSMS]

I upgraded to Karmic 2 days before its release, just thinking "oh, itll update itself find when the actual release comes out"
The beta was FULL of issues for me.
I use the same /home partition, and it wouldnt let me have access to it, so X wouldnt start.
Someone without any linux experience(not than Im any expert) would be stuck, but i was able to chown my /home/user folder and get X running.
Then my drivers wouldnt work. No nvidia driver would install, absolutely NOTHING would install through apt-get, it kept telling me another instance was running/installing something else.
Nothing would work on startup, no matter how many times I put it into the startup applications or ticked/unticked the "start at login" box.
I was also getting some pretty severe sounding kernel crashes(though nothing ever became unstable or crashed)

I did a reinstall as soon as the non-beta version came out, and it resolved everything except for getting Gnome-do to run at startup.
All my other startup apps work fine, why not gnome-do?

Re:My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had Windows do basically the same thing to me if you have a power failure near the end of an install or upgrade. Sometimes it can recover automatically, but I've also had to go back, reformat and reinstall to fix it...

No problems here

[Anonymous Coward]

I did a clean install (after distrohopping to Debian Lenny, Sidux, and OpenSUSE). I was actually amazed at how perfect everything is now. My Sansa MP3 player (which wasn't recognized under 8.xx and 9.04) is picked up, my 3d card was set up perfectly (first time without a single headache!), no problems with sound or anything else. Aptitude is so much faster than zypper, too, which is nice.

I wonder if the problems are just related to upgrades as opposed to clean installs?

Anyway, as if anybody cares what an Anonymous Coward thinks. :)

HP laptop video pain

[SEWilco]

Well, upgrading my HP laptop with Nvidia video caused it to display a flashing text console. I think the X startup was failing, and it kept restarting X. I had to reboot into Ubuntu's recovery mode, select the network start, and let apt-get get the latest updates. As I suspected, that took care of the problem. So whatever causes that problem has been solved, but it hadn't been pushed back into the release CD. The hard part was that apt-get kept asking for a CD which I didn't have, until I commented out that CD in the sources list.

Re:My experience

[ServerIrv]

After backing up my 9.04 install, I performed a fresh 9.10 install which allowed me to change from ext3 to ext4 (kept /boot as etx3).
Blank and flickering screens: No
Failure to recognize hard drives: Nope
Defaulting to old 2.6.28 Linux kernel: Nope, I'm on 2.6.31-14
Failure to get encryption running: well, yeah, but only because I didn't use it.

PulseAudio now works in Skype
My webcam now works and doesn't freeze after 3 minutes.
Boot times are a lot faster (although I haven't really had to reboot except to install the nvidia 185.18.36 driver)
Movie Player now actually plays video while Firefox is running.
Sound in VMWare works without making any changes or customizations.
My dual monitor setup now works properly through the Nvidia control panel
Flash video works a lot better in Firefox.

OK, can all of these good things be attributed to 9.10? Probably not, but I'd just like to show that 9.10 is working great. I've submitted a bug report already, but I always do. Great work to the Ubuntu and Linux community. I have a lot of friends that have upgraded and all have had tons more positives in 9.10 than negatives.

Some-Early-Adopters-Stung-By-Ubuntus-Karmic-Koala

[Anonymous Coward]

Some-Early-Adopters-Stung-By-Ubuntus-Karmic-Koala

Then maybe instead of using one of the development versions you should try using Ubuntu 9.10 since its the newest stable release. I know its being nitpicky but Im sick of shit of listening to people bitch about Ubuntu's naming scheme. I dont know how many times Ive read or heard someone say "im not using a distro named ". Karmic Koala is Ubuntu's internal name for the distro before it was released as a Ubuntu 9.10. who gives a flying fuck if ubuntu's internal development distribution is named "purple and pink prancing ponies" or "the-most-uber-leet-super-duper-awesomess-gizmatic-linux-distro-evah". its reallly irrevelant.

ok im stepping away from the soapbox now...

MSi Wind u100

[Anonymous Coward]

MSi Wind u100 works perfect with 9.04. Now, this new Ubuntu Release has 3 bugs, one of them makes the laptop (at least for me) unusable -backlight changing-, the others are USB and standby-hibernation related.

Re:MSi Wind u100

[vwbus]

Under 9.04 I had issues with being able to connect to an ad-hoc wireless network and I also had to workaround a bluetooth issue with my bluetooth mouse. Both of those issues are fixed in 9.10, but I too have the backlight changing issue along with the USB bug. The camera doesn't work either, when it did on 9.04. I was able to workaround the backlight issue by stopping gnu-power-manager. Not the best solution, but it does allow me to work without going into seizures.

Re:Corporation != Profitable

[icannotthinkofaname]

nothing indicates that they [Canonical] have large piles of gold in some secret vault somewhere.

Because Mark Shuttleworth making 500 million dollars and throwing about ten of it at a group he called "Canonical" had nothing to do with it, right?

The guy who started it has the cash on hand to keep it going. He most definitely has large piles of gold* in some secret vault somewhere.

In fact, as of 2008, Canonical Ltd. has yet to turn profitable (but give it a few years, and that bug may yet work itself out).

*Or the equivalent value, calculated and stored in some nation's currency. The guy's completely loaded, and that's a fact.

Flawless upgrade experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Flawless upgrade here on an HP DV1000 Centrino lappy following the instructinos on the website. I am very happy and the new ubuntu feels slick and fast.

9.10's Bad on both my machines! All worked on 9.04

[hovercycle]

Fuck... Maybe I should try slackware 13 on my new computer! Matter of fact I kinda miss it!

A good experience overall.

[Greyor]

I've overall had a good experience, although I finally bit the bullet and did a clean install of Karmic on my desktop, which fixed all my gstreamer issues (which had been a problem since at least Hardy). I like it very much -- it's been quite impressive. The "New Wave" theme is one of my faves now, and I use it on both my desktop and laptop. So yeah, I've had a good experience in general.

No prob for my clean install -- ThinkPad T400

[CWmike]

No problems whatsoever on a ThinkPad T400. It's sweet and easier than ever to upgrade away from Windows and to use. That said, this was a clean install on a disk drive the machine came with with Vista Home on it. Wireless sure works a lot better than two versions ago.

PHP5 issues

[Fishy_Fishy_Fish]

Well... I guess "I told you so..." lol http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1423349&cid=29921115 http://twitter.com/rmwb/status/5067278215

Re:My experience

[the_womble]

OS upgrades can go wrong with any OS.

That said, Ubuntu seems to have more problems than the other distros I have tried.

Lucky++

[Anonymous Coward]

I find this rather odd and am starting to feel like I'm one of the lucky few.
The first machine here that got Koala was an old GX260 I just pulled out of retirement to use on the new LED TV.

Next up was my desktop, then the wife's desktop, then the laptops, and finally the work laptop.

No issues to report so far except that the bluetooth keyboard keeps dropping characters when the tinfoil hat isn't on.

Newschool N00buntu

[angevin]

I started using linux in 1997. Now I use Windows, OpenBSD and NetBSD. Something like Ubuntu existing in the 1990s is unthinkable. Some call this progress but I call the dumbing down of *Nix. Linux used to be exclusively for Geeks and have a relatively knowledgeable user base but now it is for bitches and dumb ones at that. BSD is the way so pick one : FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. I personally will never use Linux ever again if I can help it. “Linux has never been about quality. There are so many parts of the system that are just these cheap little hacks, and it happens to run”. --- Theo De Raadt.

where's LTS kubuntu?

[goombah99]

I spend the last two evenings trying to install 9.10 ubuntu and 9.10kubuntu on the current virtual box. Random hangs. Basically it won't boot right after the install.
Seeing the posts here about LTS I went and found LTS ubuntu but I can't find an LTS kubuntu. They even make it hard to find a Juanty. there dont' seem to be any links to the jaunty on the site. You can find it by editing the URLs from Koala to Jaunty however. But I never did find the LTS kubuntu.

The Koala doesn't work even in a virtual machine.

Re:where's LTS kubuntu?

[LinuxGeek]

The Koala doesn't work even in a virtual machine.

Blanket statements like this tend to bother me. Here is my experience with the Koala release:

- On my netbook ( Gateway LT31, vista, 2GB ram, 1.2GHz AMD L110) I grabbed the desktop i386 torrent and started the d/l.
- While that came down I downloaded and installed virtualbox.
- Booted the koala ISO as LiveCD and created a bootable USB drive.
- Rebooted from my thumb drive and did a quick install which included shrinking the single ntfs partition; took about 20 minutes.
- Rebooted, got the Grub menu, booted Vista to make sure everything was functional, rebooted back to Ubuntu to finish configuration and add more packages ( eclipse, python3, etc...)

Everything has run very well; sound, ati accelerated driver, and atheros wifi drivers all function. My desktop system is still running ubuntu 9.10-rc, my older laptop is still running ubuntu 8.10. I ran 9.10-rc from my usb thumb drive on several different systems prior to the release and was quite impressed with the wide range of hardware support.

I've been running linux since 1994 and have been through about all of the common distros as well as commercial UNIXes, OS/2, most versions of DOS and Windows starting with 1.0, C-64, Vic-20, TRS-80s, TI/99-4a and a couple of Macs thrown in. Guess what? There have been various problems with every single platform and release version.

A bit of googling would have pointed you here concerning the lack of LTS 8.04 Kubuntu. I'm not trying to pick on you, but good answers to many questions may be found with just a little effort.

Re:My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Ofcourse, Windows never fucks up when you upgrade it:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c01457284

(It happens, and that issue wasn't even for a major OS upgrade, just a service pack that it even nags you to install)

And no, That issue was not trivial to fix , If you installed SP3 on those machines you had to either make a fresh reinstall (Since not even Safe mode works) or drop down to the recovery console and delete or disable the offending driver from there.

And ofcourse a bluescreen with:

"
A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer...

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x0000007E (0xC0000005, 0xFC5CCAF3, 0xFC90F8C0, 0xFC90F5C0) SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED "

Does not really give you much hints about the problem, and you can't google from the recovery console to get any hints like you can with most Linux distributions (Lynx is really an invaluable tool when shit hits the fan).

Stable Hardware Platform

[RAMMS EIN]

Part of the problem is the myriad of possible hardware combinations, with each piece of hardware needing different instructions from the next piece that does the same thing, and hardware vendors constantly releasing new hardware that makes the situation worse.

I'm for selecting a few hardware interfaces and stating clearly that these are supported, then doing our stinking best to ensure that no upgrade breaks things on that hardware. For any other hardware, support can be best-effort.

This will provide two benefits: first, it will provide users with clear information on what to expect, and gives them the option to choose for smooth upgrades. Secondly, it will provide an incentive to hardware makers to make their new hardware be interface-compatible with previous iterations, lessening the unnecessary burden on driver writers.

Shoulda been Karmic Khameleon...

[FlyByPC]

...or would that have made it SuSE?

Re:My experience

[apoc.famine]

That's the biggest plus for me. When I bork windows, it requires a reinstall most of the time. When I bork linux, I can generally fix it. Sometimes, it's easier to reinstall, but often, as long as it boots, I can fix about anything with a few commands.
 
Windows requires less knowledge to run, for sure. But that also means a lot of fixes require a wipe.

just my 2 cents

[bean.java]

just my 2 cents.... i downloaded the iso thursday evening(day of release) realized my cdrw's got used for coasters(damn kids) so i chroot installed it and guess what.... it just work grant this is a p4 with 1g of ram but damn its nice.... already building liveusbs for the family to use.... musical computers/netbooks/laptops/friends' computers uggghh but i haven't been able to find problems....maybe because i installed it alternative cd to ubuntu-standard to lubuntu-desktop(once i got a new set of cdrw's) but i can't find a problem...except that if your disk is meant to be scanned on mount it scans in the background still booting all the way to gui (separate /home partition) but hey once i figured that out its all good used ubuntu since 6.06 and only look back so i can laugh(upgrade from 98se and 2kpro)

Lost Display

[sirdude]

Upgraded to karmic from jaunty and lost my display.. nobody has been able to help me find it. Come the weekend, I'm just going to install Fedora 12 and be done with it.

This is true for W7, and it's true for every OS

[symbolset]

Upgrades are tempting. Sometimes they go well. Sometimes they don't. No matter how well they go, an upgraded OS is not as good as a clean install. Avoid the temptation and clean install when you update your OS. But first, and frequently otherwise, BACK UP!

Re:My experience

[Anpheus]

You're right but the prevalence of issues with installing Linux are far more numerous, or at least, as a percentage of installs, than the issues of installing Windows.

That's a problem.

Re:My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always been able to fix stuff in Linux, while I've had to reinstall Windows from scratch many more times.

And you'll blame that on Windows itself, rather than your lack of knowledge.

any number of free software packages

[dhammabum]

OK, I'll bite.

apache / IIS
gcc
tcp/ip stack, bgp, etc / NETBIOS, SNA, LAT, etc
postfix / Exchange
awstats
squid / whatever the MS proxy is
ntp
snort
nmap
samba / CIFS

Not to mention OSes. I don't know alot of the commercial stuff but those are pretty irrelevant in this environment.

Re:any number of free software packages

[pdabbadabba]

Point taken, though I'm pretty sure the GP and GGP intended to be talking about consumer applications.

Re:any number of free software packages

[dhammabum]

Yes, I realised that, but why have that arbitrary limit? The strength of Open Source is much greater than end user apps.

Re:any number of free software packages

[pdabbadabba]

It seems to me that this general discussion is about Ubuntu's (and apparently by extension other Linux distros') ability to appeal to consumers. And, generally, consumers are won over by the availability and polish of consumer applications. The technical crowd generally seems to be regarded here as having been already won over.

That said, I think you're right to suggest that people broaden their perspective a bit. Linux (and other FOSS) has already seen tremendous success in the technical world. But the significance of that accomplishment tends to be forgotten whenever anyone so much as speaks the word "Flash," or "GIMP."

Re:My experience

[Anpheus]

I suppose if we wanted to talk about eight year old releases of Linux and the problems they have, we could.

But instead, at least with Vista and Windows 7, the filesystem creates snapshots before and after even minor updates and most applications, or at least any application adding or modifying a driver, should do the same. There's a published API on how to do so, that way if the machine reboots, discovers it's non-bootable, it can go into the repair console, check for disk or boot manager issues, and offer to rollback the filesystem.

That's all built in with a nice easy wizard/GUI interface and access to a more advanced command prompt, but it's largely automatic and self-fixing.

Faster boot (NOT 10s), but broken wireless..

[mxh83]

Having wireless work out of the box without having to connect an ethernet cable is a make or break feature for many many people, especially new Linux converts. I have an XPS 1530, 1 yr old with Broadcom wireless. 9.04 used to work perfectly, 9.10 is broken. Need to connect that cable and search repeatedly for hardware drivers (that drivers module seriously SUCKS!!). If Linux is made by so many "smart" people why can't they realize that when they break something so basic, they will lose many users. I can also attest to seeing several screen flashes. WTF happened to having a "smooth" boot experience? The only thing improvement in 9.10 appears to be boot speed. Which is still NOT 10 seconds? What the fuck. This release from my point of view, is garbage.

I must be lucky

[Schrambo]

The upgrade for me has been the easiest and trouble free. Flash broke but that was an easy fix getting the non-free package.

sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

i am an avid ubuntu user and i upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 the second it came out. it absolutely was a mistake. it took me a few hours to get back my old settings and revert back to 9.04. im waiting until they fix this.

Rare Linux

[symbolset]

Something bothers me about this "rare Linux" claim. Whether I go to slashdot, The Register, CNet or CNN, or any other website that deals with tech and offers user generated content any subject that touches on operating systems, software or viruses has Mac fans in equal number to Linux fans and Windows fans. Are the Mac and Linux fans just more vocal in inverse proportion to their market share, or is there something else going on here? Frankly for Windows this is an improvement - a few years ago Windows fans were nearly limited to authors of published content, but these days a number of prolific bloggers have stepped up to express the same shared talking points in every thread as if they were involved in coordinated messaging.

Re:Rare Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

a few years ago Windows fans were nearly limited to authors of published content, but these days a number of prolific bloggers have stepped up to express the same shared talking points in every thread as if they were involved in coordinated messaging.

Maybe Bill Gates parting gift to Microsoft was a working AI that makes all those posts and manages hundreds of profiles to do it with.

Re:Rare Linux

[True Grit]

You're not the only one who has seen this, and wondered about it. You can add osnews.com to your list of places where it occurs as well. And in this case, its even more interesting: I mean, if you really hate Linux, then why would you even be reading anything posted to 'linux.slashdot.org'? Go figure.

Re:Rare Linux

[symbolset]

... and the thread goes over a thousand comments. I don't think even Windows 7 got that much attention around here.

Re:Rare Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Who should listen to you when you got spanked by an ac here today right here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1429510&cid=29979500 , and here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1429510&cid=29980114 twice in a row? You're obviously no expert and anyone can take a read in those links, the second one mostly, and at how badly you messed up on your comments on a se windows moron.

Re:Rare Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Who should listen to you when you got spanked by an ac here today right here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1429510&cid=29979500 , and here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1429510&cid=29980114 twice in a row? You're obviously no expert and anyone can take a read in those links, the second one mostly, and at how badly you messed up on your comments on a se windows moron.

Re:My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Upgraded this morning.

No problems. I'm on nvidia's closed source drivers, maybe the flickering is a problem with other cards / drivers?

I don't use full disk encryption, so I can't speak to that.

It's delicious Intel (you must eat it)

[Alex Belits]

Video problems seem to be related to i915 driver -- they are fixed by adding "i915.modeset=0" to the kernel command line.

Re:My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

minor issue with sound that a fresh install fixed.
I wasn't sure I would like the interface changes.
But it is growing on me.

rmmod -a *

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is so smart it keeps the drivers for the old kernel and tries to load them first according to preference. Even if they are built for an older kernel. The drivers for ati / nvidia / poulsbo (intel DRM) then break on your shiny new kernel. Yank the drivers using rmmod and then see what happens.

if while damned then do else dont

Jaunty Jackalope was bad enough, thank you

[grikdog]

Jaunty was a beta, in my opinion, so I considered myself warned off Karmic. It took me six weeks to bring everything I had running in Intrepid (mostly sound and non-YouTube video on a Dell Inspiron 1525) back into Jaunty. I don't intend to try another release from Canonical until the q.a. institutional issues are resolved. Not Karmic Koala, and certainly not Lucid Lunatic at this stage of the game. On the other hand, that's only 9.4 feet. The ten foot pole is reserved for W7.

They've broken DNS

[shutdown -p now]

Have a look at this gem. Because of IPv6 DNS lookups going nowhere, and the thing waiting for them to time-out, you get 2-4 second delays on every name resolution. Happy browsing!

In practice, people are not amused.

What more, the bug is 2 months old - and it shipped in Karmic, still rated "undecided", and not assigned to anyone. Really?

I also had a chuckle out of this comment to the bug:

I agree it is a pretty serious issue for many and by no way mean to imply windows is anything but a well polished turd.

It's kinda sad that the person feels obliged to "apologize" for pointing out a serious deficiency like that.

On a minor side, there's issue with font smoothing settings in Firefox. Workaround? Edit ~/.fonts.conf - wonderful, just wonderful. When did I last see a /. comment claiming that, no, you really no longer need to edit config files in Linux by hand?

Sorry for being somewhat bitter... despite my background, I was looking forward to this release - not the least because it finally has Eclipse 3.5 in repositories (it used to be 3.2 in 3 previous major releases, lagging 3 major versions behind mainstream...). And straight away I run into crap like this, all while a bunch of /. muppets keep sticking fingers in their ears and going, "it works for me, PBCAK, lalala, can't hear you!".

No.

[XanC]

We're not talking about an application. We're talking about a distribution.

"Unchaning" doesn't make sense in this context since any single revision in a repository is stable by that definition, simply because that revision never changes.

Exactly! That's Debian Stable. Apart from security patches, over the life of each Debian Stable distribution, that's exactly how it works. The revision of the software never changes.

Obviously Stable isn't for everyone; if you're not running servers you may not even understand it. But that's what the word "stable" means in context of Debian.

Re:My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. For every problem I've encountered, I've always found a workable solution (in a reasonable time frame). Outside of hard disk failure, I've never had to reinstall a distro due to bugs.

argh Canonical, why did you do this?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Karmic has become the last straw for me. Ever since 8.04, things have been going downhill. I have not only bit with the netbook intel bug, I have also been fucked over with karmic not having the stable 190 nvidia driver, no vdpau in stock mplayer (the ppa fucked up kde something fierce), all the devs for EEE support scripts on ubuntu have gone in disgust over canonical's royal breaking of the kernel (and removing DKMS has made otherwise usable ones like EEE-control uninstallable), the poorly configured kernel ( why the insistance on one kernel to rule them all? desktops and laptops have different needs then servers and workstations), and my biggest pet peave, the abomination known as pulseaudio. Between the perfect storm of pulse's idiosyncracies and canonicals insistence on borked kernel's, multimedia blows.

for example, I play sins of a solar empire on my linux box. With a quad phenom, 4 gigs of ram, and a gts 250 i get stuttering sound. I never got stuttering even with playing freelancer on a old rage pro and p3. That phenom box when I was running with a properly configured kernel and pulse disabled, it was smooth as silk. And on the netbook, sure I had to coerce the wireless to work in 8.04 but a little pain for about ten minutes is alot better then 9.04's intel performance from hell and 9.10's lack of super hybrid engine support. I use linux so I don't have to fuck with my computer. If i wanted headache and pain on something i am not getting paid for, i would go back to windows, with its lack of a sane application management system(no reason i have to babysit service packs) and random breakage from all the third party crap to get a useful system (nvidia and adobe and avg and all that other shit that makes me view those years like I was a battered wife). I like Linux and have been using it for 5 years, but ubuntu makes me want to tear my hair out.

Screw it I am going back to SUSE. It is a distro grounded in reality and actually has polish. the boycott novell people can blow me. these are the same type of people who would go out with a girl for a week before getting dumped and a year later still be moping around. Sane system management and solid desktop performance is what users want, not buzzword compliance and a fancy launcher.

(forgive the rant, just a year of pent up anger at canonical. I want them to succeed. I just want them to remember the users they have, instead of replacing disgruntled users with magpie bling.)

My experience with the upgrade.

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience is this: I was running 9.04 on a MacBook Pro and went to upgrade. The upgrade failed because of a bad hash on Tux Kart. I was pretty perturbed that the upgrade would fail because of a silly game. Anyhow, I uninstalled the game and then the install went fine. I did initially get the white screen after log in, but that was because I failed to update the grub file (had to do it manually after my goof) * The only issue I have noticed are: 1) Occasionally, I can't seem to buttons in eclipse with the mouse in dialogs, keyboard is fine. 2) The stupid notification bubble last way too long! I understand that it needs to be long for new/slow readers, but why isn't it configurable? Yes, I can spend some time and write a configuring application, but really, why must I? Anyhow, I'm pretty happy with the upgrade beside that. *BTW: It did not install the new grub2 grub.cfg file or anything that some have mentioned. Maybe because I'm on a Mac.

Re:My experience

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

Blank and flickering screens: No
Failure to recognize hard drives: No
Defaulting to the old 2.6.28 Linux kernel: No
Failure to get encryption running:

Okay, well to even the score:
Blank and flickering screens: Yes
Failure to recognize hard drives: Yes
Defaulting to the old 2.6.28 Linux kernel: Don't really know
Failure to get encryption running: Haven't tried

I was in the middle of an upgrade of my Compaq Presario R3000 laptop when I saw this article. The upgrade finished and right upon boot my screen started to flicker when the grub text was on the screen. It kind of stayed there doing that for a while and then I saw the small white Ubuntu logo for a little while and then and error about not being able to mount one of my drives. I rebooted with the "-generic" kernel image insead of "-386" and everything seemed to be okay. I then went about removing every single kernel image with "-386" and rebooting seems fine now.

Insides runny, needs a longer bake

[bornefearless]

As soon as I couldn't get vim, I downgraded to 9.04 - I mean, come on! How are you supposed to run a posix system without a good text editor? And I had issues with the wireless driver - apparently if you have a Ralink wifi adapter, there's two kernel mod's competing for resources, which you have to blacklist in order to get it working. The insides are still runny, it needs to cook a little longer. I'll check back in when the apt packages cache has had a chance to catch up with user requirements.

karmic koala on two AMD hand built machines

[rocksteady_racer]

I haven't had many problems with Karmic Koala suprisingly. My processor is an AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual Core 5200+ (2.61Ghz). I am running the 64bit edition of the desktop version. I upgraded from 9.04 8 days before the release and was having kernel problems complaining about Non-ECC RAM on my Gigabyte motherboard. But that's been fixed, or hasn't occured since the few patches after the release. Pulse-audio (sound blaster audigy live pci sound card) was crashing randomly but that's seemed to be fixed with the new patches also. I'm running SLIed Nvidia 7900 GS video cards with the newest 190 release of the Nvidia Driver with Coolbits enabled (one card has a slightly faster clock/256mb of vram and the other has 512 mb vram). The video processing is excellent and haven't had any problems with that. The boot up is faster and the system runs flawlessly except (I think because I only have a 1gb of 667 DDR2 ram) when I load too many pages on firefox the system grays out and I have to wait a while to watch multiple videos at the same time. The other thing I have noticed which is quite annoying is that my hard drive transfers to NTFS and to SD Cards and sometimes even with the same linux partition takes forever compared to the older versions. I have no idea why this is since I have a 500GB SATA harddrive with linux running on a 100gb partition. Also USB connections seem to go on and off randomly (HTC T-mobile G1 especially). After I had installed it on my main computer, i installed it on my media pc (connected to my living room tv). I originally avoided upgrading my slower pc to the newer ubuntu (was still 8.04) versions because I had a Radeon 9800 and ATI stopped producing drivers. I really only needed it for media purposes. Surpisingly the new kernel and 9.10 on it, it actually performs better with the new kernel included "radeon" driver. It only has 1.5gb of ram and is running an Athlon XP 1.8 Ghz core and it works perfectly and boots way faster. I did an upgrade even though I was going to install ext4 and reformat the harddrive but I haven't got around to that yet. For some reason, I haven't had any of the hard drive problems with this desktop with the older ide drive. I even upgraded this while connected via WIFI - took a while but worked perfectly.

Internet Woes

[somegeekynick]

Just yesterday, I installed Karmic on a brand new computer. Installation went fine, and a cold boot takes 26-27 seconds, but Internet speed is sllllllooooo...w -- virtually non-existent. I was able to find a work-around for Firefox by setting the value of network.dns.disableIPv6 to true in about:config. But I was able to find neither a system-wide fix nor a permanent solution. (Yes, I have tried playing around with the GRUB file, it does not work.)

Re:My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Snow Leopard froze in the middle of the install. I forced a restart and the installer picked up where it left off and completed.

Tried it out on my Dell XPS M1730...

[JasonB]

But after a few days, I went ahead and replaced 9.10 with a fresh install of Windows 7 (64-bit). As loathe as I am to admit it, Win7 is a much more polished, finished, stable product. For my hardware at least, Win7 is a much more effective operating system.

Of course, YMMV.

Karmic? Got it, works great with minor issues.

[alizard]

I'm running Kubuntu Karmic, and I upgraded in place from Kubuntu Jaunty, I did not do a fresh install.

Seems to work better with ATI drivers, I've got the proprietary driver working for the first time since I bought this A780GM integrated motherboard. Nice to see the good old spinning cube desktop change running here again.

I'm happier with it than I was with Jaunty.

Minor rough edges. Workarounds mentioned not guaranteed to work for everyone.

1. USB ports after hub not recognized. Workaround - unplug, replug, enjoy your peripherals.
2. Suspend (pm-suspend - mine is set up with uswsusp) only works when you push power button, not from keyboard. Since it works on wake-on-LAN, it would be nice to see it fixed, but I'm in no hurry. However, if you want this to work consistently, you need to find a place to put (as root) ethtool -s eth0 wol g - best way to do that is to add it as a pm-suspend quirk so it'll get run during machine shutdown.
3. Sun Virtualbox does not print from WinXP with Kubuntu Karmic host. Presumably, you've already enabled yourself as a member of the vboxusers group. Add yourself to the lp group as well.
4. Network management applet still does not work properly. This may be because I manually edited a few files to deal with the same problem in Jaunty.
5. Proprietary driver manager (access via Hardware Drivers from menu) does nothing when you click activate button. Workaround - install envy-ng from repository and run it, if it won't run from the menus, use sudo envyng-t from terminal to run in text mode ... and it's easy once you do this.

Presumably, people who adopt Karmic a few weeks from now will find all or most of these problems solved out of the box.

No horror story, no drama. Just another routine upgrade that leaves things running better and looking cooler.

It's on time and good

[1800maxim]

Upgraded from 8.10 to 9.04 to 9.10 within 60 minutes without a glitch, running proprietary nvidia driver and windows driver for belkin n-wireless adapter through ndiswrapper. I was expecting all hell to break loose for doing 2 upgrades in a row - nothing of the sort. The only "fix" i had to do was to add my MOVIES folder as a share in samba.

It even didn't break my wine apps.

So, my experience is very smooth, and I give thumbs up for such a solid product. It's interesting that I had lots of headaches installing the proper display driver on the same system 3 years ago in Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.

Kudos to Canonical.*

* your experience may vary

Debian?

[alizard]

I switched to Kubuntu to avoid the problems I had with Debian and drivers.

Worked, too.

what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

ubuntu is a hobby (for a lot people called the "community"). if you need to get stuff done, get a mac. ubuntu is free--as in free advice, and worth the price

Is it a hard disk failure?

[muxecoid]

I downloaded the netbook .iso under desktop kubuntu twice and I got different MD5 sums. Furthermore both times the MD5 was different from the expected md5. Strange things happening. :(

Re:My experience

[supernova_hq]

If Windows fails to install it rolls back to the state before installation ... anything up to and including a new OS install.

So that giant white and blue warning that read "WARNING: formatting your harddrive will destroy all data" was a lie?

My first Ubuntu box

[eyrieowl]

is a core i7 i just built out with Karmic as the OS. No dual-boot, going Ubuntu whole hog with XP in a VirtualBox to handle software I can't do without. It's been fairly painless thus far. My biggest issue is that I pulled the internal flash card reader from my old PC (SD, XD, CF, etc) and put it in the new one. Ubuntu no like off-brand card reader, no sir. After starting up with that device, Ubuntu gave me a very helpful "unable to enumerate USB device on port 3" in dmesg 2x per second. Indefinitely. Which really makes dmesg pretty useless. For the time being, the device is still in the box but unplugged from the motherboard. I'd love to find a solution, I've spent a while searching bug reports (and adding my voice to a couple), but the truth is that what I learned is that the USB support is still somewhat less robust than XP. Which is unfortunate. It's exactly those sorts of issues which make the appeal to the masses difficult. There is NO WAY most of the people I know would want to or know how to go searching for the solution (btw, another distro suggested switching the order of uhci and ehci, still looking to see where ubuntu has that configuration)...which makes me a little sad, I'd really like to see free OS's predominate, but the peripheral support still needs help. I'm okay, I'll either find a config to play with or I'll give up and probably get a new card reader than people vouche works, but it'd be nice if the reader which worked properly and well under XP didn't require heroics to work in Ubuntu. Ubuntu is better in so many other ways, it's just disappointing to see where it still has catching up to do. FWIW, I fully understand that the USB device I've got probably is slightly non-standard or something. I get that, but the thing is, in the real world, people have devices like that, and I think the real-world OS needs to do more than throw its hands up with dealing with slightly non-standard equipment and make a best effort to use it as is. It's like...Firefox, say. It is standards compliant, but that doesn't mean it switches to showing you raw HTML if the page doesn't comply...it makes a best effort to show you something useful. ESPECIALLY for peripherals, Ubuntu, and Linux broadly, need to do the same. Oh, there was one other issue. My Gnome (I think), crashed, the screen got filled with a bunch of random blocks of color, things stopped responding (except the blocks would shift a bit when I moved the mouse around), and it logged me out. The login screen was fine, and I logged back in and things were back to normal. I was annoyed to have the crash, but I was pleased that it did handle it without requiring a reset or reboot. So, another bug, but at least a bug that was handled better than windows might have done.

Re:STUPIDER THAN WINBLOWERS !! WHODATHUNK ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Here comes the GNU/Ubuntu, here comes the GNU/Ubuntu
Watch him walk this way, watch him walk that way
There goes the GNU/Ubuntu, there goes the GNU/Ubuntu

Re:My experience

[FrankieBaby1986]

If i understood your prior post correctly, it did handle the unexpected reboot quite gracefully, you were still able to continue it without too much trouble. I've never heard of anyone successfully continuing a Windows install after a reboot/power loss in the middle.

ok upgrading from fluxbuntu

[magwm]

I have a HP compaq nx6110 laptop that was originally a fluxbuntu 8.04 install (y'know, thought it would be slow and all). upgraded to gnome-desktop which to my surprise worked beautifully. upgraded to 9.04 which worked quite perfectly. only had to install f-spot from svn as it was lacking some features. upgraded to karmic. no problem at all! cheers!

Where have I heard this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, when 9.04 broke my X server with an ATI card. Lather, rinse, repeat. If Ubuntu doesn't start getting their act together, I worry about the near-term future of the Linux desktop.

No problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I had absolutely no problem when upgrading to Karmic, although I even had many PPAs enabled and packages of them installed.

This is why I'm not that early an adopter.

[TheWormThatFlies]

There are problems to be ironed out in every new release; it's inevitable that when many people suddenly start using the software on a wide range of hardware combinations, all kinds of previously unnoticed bugs are going to be found.

All the people I know who download and install the latest release the second it becomes available are very enthusiastic fans who are prepared to fiddle around and fix things and file bug reports. I don't really feel a burning need to upgrade as soon as I possibly can. I order a nice, packaged DVD and wait for it to arrive. By the time it does, the most egregious problems have usually been fixed. I've never had a show-stopping upgrade problem. The worst I've had to do is regenerate my xorg.conf (but that's so minimal now that it never happens anymore) or make sure that I had actually rebooted properly after the upgrade.

Bad statistics - GIGO

[AliasMarlowe]

The Register failed to notice the text in red boldface on that ubuntuforums.org page which states:

"*** Disclaimer for those willing to analyse this poll ***
Most of users voting here are users with issues.
Users with painless experience are not likely to come here."

The statistics derived by The Register are thus invalid, and probably quite wrong, being from a nonrepresentative self-selected subset of Karmic installations or upgrades. Here's another nonrepresentative data set: I have installed or upgraded 4 PCs from Jaunty to Karmic at home (2 upgrade 32bit, 1 upgrade 64bit, 1 conversion 32bit to 64bit). All went flawlessly, even the migration of user accounts and reinstallation of applications (including commercial paid-for apps) on the 32bit to 64bit reinstallation. Being a self-selected non-representative dataset, would that entitle me to proclaim that every Karmic upgrade or installation was flawless? Obviously such a conclusion would be unfounded, and so are those of The Register.

It's tricky to get reliable statistics on Ubuntu installations. According to an unofficial monitor on the official torrent tracker, there were over 16 million torrent downloads as of today http://spreadubuntu.neomenlo.org/. The number of direct downloads from the servers is unknown, and the average number of installations per download is also unknown. BTW, I've uploaded more than 60GB on these two torrents in the last several days from home, and the upload rate is still humming along (I limit each of the torrents to below 1Mbit/sec upload).

It's also tricky to get reliable statistics on Ubuntu installation problems. The forum mentioned by The Register probably has only a fraction of those with problems, and that came to about 1400 as of yesterday. Comparing this number to the number of torrent downloads would give 1 in 10,000 but that would also be an example of bad statistics, since both of the numbers are incomplete to an unknown extent or nonrepresentative to an unknown extent.

Systematically incomplete nonrepresentative data produces incorrect statistics. It's the old adage: GIGO.

Re:Bad statistics - GIGO

[Giloo]

The article sounds indeed more like a rant made public about a problem. Of course, this doesn't deny there is problems with 9.10, but heh, it was in alpha/beta, as the others, and nothing really "that serious" was pointed out I think. Anyway, people ranting loudly enough to make it to The Register may learn that they can also participate in testing the releases..

As for my story, I was running 9.10 since alpha, and it went quite nicely.. Minor pulseaudio glitches that were solved over time and so on. At work and on my laptop, I've upgraded from Jaunty to Karmic when offered to do so by the update manager, and it went nicely too. No problem here, not even a dependency issue, it really went fine, and 2.6.31 is really nice to my setups ;)

About all this issue.. I can't help but think it's more a PR prank than a real spotted issue.. The bugtracker doesn't tell that "that many" users are impacted, and also, that it may be more due to a ATI-card weirdness.. Heh. Not ubuntu's fault in the end, even if they could have worked around it..

Re:Bad statistics - GIGO

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have to agree with this. My upgrade went seamlessly. But I had trouble getting the youtube videos to run. Mostly because I forgot what i did with the last upgrade. 9.04 worked so well that I had No maintenance to do on it and forgot many processes. And I KNEW that I was going to have issues. I knew it would be best to wait a month for the Bugs to be sorted out. But Mashed the upgrade button anyway. If you download on the first day the new version is out. Don't be surprised there are issues.

Re:Bad statistics - GIGO

[AliasMarlowe]

I can't help but think it's more a PR prank than a real spotted issue.

Possibly true. The Register is almost the internet's equivalent of The Sun tabloid. They can produce garbage out, whatever is put in.

it may be more due to a ATI-card weirdness.

FWIW my two Karmic-amd64 systems (1 upgrade, 1 install/migrate) both have ATI 4890 cards with ATI's proprietary binblob driver, while one Karmic-i386 upgrade was to a 7-year-old laptop with ATI mobility radeon 9600 with FOSS driver. The other Karmic-i386 upgrade has nVidia 9600GT graphics with proprietary binblob driver. I encountered no problems on any of them. Then again, anecdotes are not necessarily statistics, although The Register and The Sun remain blissfully unaware of this.

Re:Bad statistics - GIGO

[commodore64_love]

Your right.

This isn't really a big deal. I just bought the Windows XP Restore Disc from Compaq for $10 and all my problems were solved. Now I have a slightly outdated but stable OS.

Re:Bad statistics - GIGO

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly right, the statistics are completely scewed to people that either a) read the ubuntu fourms as a greneral thing they like to do, and b) people with pre-existing issues they are looking to RTFM to fix. You dont need to be a rocket scientist to realise this, must have been a slow article day for the boys.

Just fyi I've done 2 9.10 installs one fresh one an upgrade on my alienware laptop, both worthed perfectly with no issues during or afterward.

Re:Bad statistics - GIGO

[Anonymous Coward]

Statistically you're right, but statistics is funny stuff. I updated to 9.10 and had so much trouble I've just downgraded to 9.04. This has not happened in previous upgrades, and I've been using Ubuntu since 5.04. That's a sample set of 10 upgrades, and 9.10 is the only one to be unworkable.

Karmic Koala in VM

[AliasMarlowe]

The Koala doesn't work even in a virtual machine.

Which VM platform did it fail on?
I installed one Karmic amd64 alpha in a VM on a PC at home, and it worked fine. This was done with VMware Server 64bit on Jaunty-amd64. I later replaced it with Karmic RC, which also went fine, and was easily upgraded to the release version. That's how I checked it out before upgrading the base OS to Karmic. The Karmic i386 RC is also running in a VM on my work PC, using VMware Workstation on Windows XP SP3. I'll upgrade it soon to the final release.

Re:Karmic Koala in VM

[Anonymous Coward]

Virtual Box (Sun's VM)

Re:Karmic Koala in VM

[AliasMarlowe]

Virtual Box (Sun's VM)

Well, Karmic seems happy enough on VMware.
I occasionally recommend VMware Server to people, but this is not through great knowledge of different VM platforms. Rather, it's because I'm familiar with it, and it tends to work fairly well for me. My main quibble is with the "improved" admin interface which came in version 2.
VMware Server is not OSS, but it is free for personal use (registration needed), and there are versions for Linux as well as Windows. At work, I have VMware Workstation on XP, which involves license fees. VMs can be exchanged between most flavours of VMware.

second hard drive missing and weird sound problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded to Karma on two pc's. With one I had no problem at all. With the
other (my htpc) I first had the problem that my second harddrive (sata) wasn't
detected. Plugging it to a different sata socket on the mainboard solved that.

The next problem I have is a very mysterious issue that only arrises when using
rhythmbox. The sound volume is continuously creeping up, until all sliders reach
maximum. I'm struggling to come up with a supposed feature that is to blame for
that bug.

Anyway, mixed feelings about this one!

Some very basic stuff STOPPED working

[aepervius]

The sound control panel I had before upgrading showed me all my input/output in line and with a slider for the volume, and a mute button. After the upgrade it show me some brain dead interface I can't switch on all sound from it. i had to download some additional gnome alsa volume control panel. Worst : the default interface does not allow me to set volume for some of the stuff gnome alsa shows me (I think it is PCE for example, I did not find an equivalent in that control volume default program) *BUT* it is RESET TO MUTE after every reboot. That is very very frustrating and i can imagine a user giving up on Ubuntu after not finding out why they don't hear a sound from Ubuntu. I nearly gave up and wanted to go back to the previous version, until I thought of trying in the package manager to find a volume controller panel.

wlan stopped working

[paai]

I upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 on two desktop machines, a laptop and a netbook.

* On the laptop, the wlan (rt61-based) stopped working. After searching the bug database and Google, this appeared a known issue, but the laptop is unuseable for work untill I buy myself an USB dongle. I really was upset about this.

* On one dektop several graphic features of the KDE destop stopped working, such as the revolving cube.

* There are unresolved issues with the fonts of thunderbird. This seems to be related to the use of KDE over an NX connection.

There are some bugs that I hoped/expected to be solved after the upgrade, but still are not working satisfactorily:

* syncing Evolution with a Palm Treo is not yet without problems, like the duplication of entries and having to reconfigure bluetooth after every sync.

* kpilot still a mess, Actually I consider it a total loss that cannot be salvaged any more.

* scrolling of firefox still too slow. This is a problem over a NX connection.

karmic koala

[Anonymous Coward]

8.04/8.10 worked just fine on a single 320 gig drive with a gig of ram with a creative labs 24bit Audigy2.
No Sound in 9.04
No Sound in 9.10

Ubuntu no longer runs on every clone out there.
In 9.04 there was a list of black-listed hardware instead of a product that worked.
9.10 is no better IMHO.

So don't get caught jonesin' over a newer unix/linux release ver.

Ref:Great

[wheresmyplane]

I'm having a blast with Karmic. Hands down the best Ubuntu release I've ever used. Except for one problem when resuming from "suspend" its working flawlessly.

One mostly happy user

[dhalgren]

Well, just another anecdote in the mix here, really.

I ran the 9.10 RC in virtualbox for a little over a week before the release, and was pretty happy with it overall. That still wouldn't have told me everything I needed to know, but I know from experience that I should expect problems with the nvidia and intel 4965 drivers, and I have always had to ditch PulseAudio (which I have railed against including as default) and I hate Network Manager. For reference, this is on an ASUS G1S laptop with a retrofit Seagate Momentus 7400 hd running ext4 on all partitions.

So I waited for the weekend after the 9.10 release to install. I get a 3-day weekend, which should be enough for anybody to recover from a botched OS upgrade even with dumb partitioning (and mine should be fine). The upgrade went off in around an hour with no trouble. I was somewhat shocked that I had no problem with DKMS handling the nvidia driver install, although, as expected, I had to plug in a CAT5 for a couple of minutes to uninstall Network Manager and install wicd (which is just in my experience completely superior anyway).

I was stunned to realize after a couple of days that I still hadn't uninstalled PulseAudio. Several days on, and it's still running, and still behaving itself. I don't do any serious audio work on this machine as it's a laptop for programming and not an audio workstation so I can't speak to latency but for the first time in my experience it's actually performing as advertised. My wifi worked out of the box and so do all of my ASUS LEDs.

The desktop layout is solid, things look good, and to me the menu setup in Gnome makes a hell of a lot more sense than in recent Windows and Mac machines I've used (flameproof undies on--I admit I have more experience in Gnome than in Windows or Mac so take that for what it's worth).

Now, all that said (I sound pretty happy so far, yes?) I offer these caveats:

- The generic-pae kernel completely refuses to boot to the desktop. Haven't really looked into it yet since I only have (and only need at this point) 2GB RAM--but it was the default kernel so I rewrote menu.lst to make the non-pae kernel the default and am quite happy for the moment running 2.6.31-14-generic. I suspect it's simply a matter of properly setting up the nvidia driver to work with it but am waiting for the weekend to work on that.
- This upgrade would have sent my folks running. They would have no idea how to edit menu.lst, no clue to plug in the CAT5 and do 'apt-get remove network-manager; apt-get install wicd', and so on.
- For some reason, the 'disable touchpad' button no longer works--it worked out of the box on 9.04.

Overall, I would count myself as happy with the upgrade. If I had less experience running Linux (I've run several distros since about 1994 or so) I would likely be less happy. I just want a distro which gets me up and running with my tools and, where possible, my eye candy--and this worked perfectly for that. Aside from ditching Network Manager and swapping the default boot kernel, I have everything I want so far and the Compiz bling is turned up to 11 and working fine. I even (so far) have been able to skip the whole 'disable Pulse' step, since for a change it actually seems to be working.

So: Grandma-ready? No. But ready to be packaged and given to Grandma to use (without the root password)? Quite possibly.

Just some thoughts.

Re:My experience

[chromatic]

That's a problem.

Isn't a major contributing factor that Windows has a huge advantage in preinstallations?

Worked for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Typing this on an acer netbook freshly updated to Karmic netbook remix - updates downloaded slowly but it all installed and is working fine. Desktop and HTPC/server to follow soon...

So they have a vista of their own now...

[Noctris]

How Cute...

And that kids, is why people wait a while before blindly upgrading to a new version

LTS

[Errol backfiring]

I tried an LTS once (8.04) and will never stay on the long cycle again. Basically, you are just guaranteed that the problems will not be fixed. Only security issues. Non-working hardware drivers are fixed in new versions, not in semi-frozen LTS releases.

Re:There are lots of distros out there: e.g. Mandr

[colin_s_guthrie]

Well IMO both the Gnome and KDE flavours of Mandriva are very well put together, maintained and supported. I tend to jump between DEs (and run apps from both when running either too), and I can't say I've ever found either lacking!

Crashes After a Few Hours

[Doc Ruby]

The box on which I upgraded to U9.10 from U9.4, a P4 Intel mobo w/ integrated graphics, crashes GNOME (but not the kernel) after 2-6 hours running Firefox, Evolution and a few Nautilus folder windows. I suspect its 512MB RAM, but I haven't probed it over the LAN to see what's left up and in what condition. I'm hoping the next few days/weeks see patches that get it to a real stable condition on such extremely common HW.

My experience.

[rew]

As I had to do a fresh install anyway, and Karmic was out officially a few days, I decided to try it out.

After a few days it wanted to reboot because of a kernel upgrade and because I changed a display setting, I wanted to log out anyway. So I rebooted.

Well, I got a flickering text screen. It seems GDM was starting X at a rate of about 5 per second, and that it was failing.

I finally got X to work again by (re-)installing the proprietary driver from the display vendor. (ATI/AMD).

On the other hand, I did find out that I can still run my old window manager sawfish, which can do things (which I use!) that newer window managers like compiz and metacity cannot. This means that I'm a happy man.

Only one or two

[Anonymous Coward]

Only 1 or 2 minor glitches (the new Google Earth wasn't showing earth for a while). Otherwise, things are faster than before (much faster), and its more polished than 9.04.

Works great for me

[melted]

Both on the server and on the desktop. Actually, I threw away VMWare ESXi 4.0.0 I was testing on one of my non-production machines. At this point KVM is more stable with my set of guests, and easier to manage too (doesn't need Windows to run management tools). VMWare would hang the host when running FreeBSD 8 sometimes. Not acceptable.

As a matter of fact, I'm posting this from Karmic. If you can't tolerate a little roughness around the edges, wait for a month or two. Heck, even with Windows you have to wait for an SP1.

My girlfriend did it all on her own...

[Anonymous Coward]

...when I came home from work she was just rebooting. I smiled at her and kept my fingers crossed. Everything went well. Siemens Lifebook with Intel graphics. No upgrade trouble whatsoever.

oh sir dont miss the trolling that goes on

[Anonymous Coward]

... to keep ethusiastic newbies out of matters.
Yep, ubuntu has trolls and flame wars too.
They're too busy to have honest community managers also.
Sf.net has a better community manager for a long time.
Chiefly, he does not reply with STFU on the IRC or cold officalese on forums.

Then you expect us to become nodes of a dsitributed test lab?!?!
No thanks, I will wait for the LTS releases.
Oh by the way, the LTS releases are really good.
They even have an 8.04.2 for Kubuntu
which is wher they fixed a lot of the bugs 6 months down the line and so that's much cleaner than anything else.

I think once I have my hands set on a bunch of apps that work fine, I don't really need to upgrade.
To use any of the cool new apps, I just copy the data to be used in the said cool new apps into a new virtualbox shared folder and run them from inside vbox

That works just fine and does not screw my system because I made a copy without touching the host system.
Command for proper copy: sudo cp -uav src dest

Peace of mind without having to face the Army Of Anubis. Suits me.

Nothing of the sort

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been testing and enjoying Karmic for a while now
No issue what so ever of the ones mentionned
There even is an up to date version of wine in the Ubuntu repository for my games

My only frustration is with the new login screen (GDM) which fine tuning is not as easy as the previous one

I enjoy a faster boot than with 9.04 Jaunty, better hardware support and cross-software integration...
I really think it is on the right path

Works great here, but

[thsths]

I can see that they changed a lot. Especially the kernel video mode setting is a big change, although arguable long overdue.

It is better to have these problems now than with the next LTS version.

Three words

[Lodarage]

BACKUP before upgrading.

Sound, Networking and Java problems

[apetrelli]

I upgraded form Kubuntu Jaunty to Karmic 64bit, I had no graphic problem but:

• a problem with sound in non-KDE applications, especially Flash and VLC, solved by removing PulseAudio
• a problem with networking, the network manager plasmoid has been removed in the favour of a systray application. The biggest problem is that already set configuration went away...
• about Java, as I am a Java developer, was a pain. It installed JRE 1.6_16 but, since JDK 1.6_16 was not available (only _15) it installed OpenJDK. To make it work I had to get back to JDK and JRE 1.6_15 and removing OpenJDK.

Arturito

[arturito]

Fresh install + development environment (eclipse,netbeans, tomcat, lamp). Not a single problem.

ubuntu problems are not new

[Bigos]

When I tested beta version of Karmic I realised it's not beta at all, it's an early alpha. Serious constant crashes rendered my desktop system unusable. On my netbook I have been using Linux Mint for a while. It is based on Ubuntu but it seems to be more polished and so far I had no problems with it. I think many Mint users are Ubuntu refugees. Maybe if the problems continue I will put Mint on my desktop too. Anyway someone on Mint forum made following comment: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=33183&start=30/

Oh gosh...I keep my fingers crossed for the next Mint-release. In the worst case we have to postpone the next release with a few months I guess. But first wait for the final Karmic-release. Perhaps Ubuntu will come up with a miracle in these last remaining weeks... :? In my experience it was like:

04 = beta
10 = alpha
LTS = final after 2 or 3 months

not good for me

[Anonymous Coward]

PPPoE in network-manager (the only non-text mode way of configuring PPPoE) is not working even to this day in 9.10 (you must install software from a PPA):
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/432205

The bug was reported one month before the release but acted upon only after the release and to this day the fix is not in the official upgrade repositories (note that even that would not be enough because you can't upgrade without internet connection...).

Black desktop when desktop effects are on on some ATI radeon hardware:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/444139

AND desktop effects are on by default on such hardware...
This is an upstream mesa bug but Canonical should have at least turned off desktop effets by default for this hardware since it was known not to work. Instead people will get black desktops.

Both issues not fixed to this day, not mentioned in release notes.

Upgrading

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded my old "test" HP laptop from Jaunty to Karmic before risking anything I actually try to work with. The upgrade would freeze midway through downloading on wifi. No problem, I plugged in the Ethernet cable. The upgrade completed, and I rebooted. No madwifi included in this this version, so no Atheros card. I installed it with subversion, and the card was recognised until I rebooted again. It hasn't worked since. All the wireless encryption keys have disappeared, and when I re-enter them, it won't remember them. Mythfrontend says it can't talk to the Jaunty backend, and tells me to upgrade that. Reverting to the previous frontend is complicated at best, and with the problems I've had, and more I've read about, upgrading the backend doesn't give me much confidence. Time to wait a month or six.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Default configuration issues

[machinegestalt]

Honestly, I like a lot of the stuff they're doing in Ubuntu, however having JUST set up a complete novice Linux user with Koala and watched the things they had an issue with:

1. The SMB mounting tool is nice, except it doesn't show shares in Gnome file dialogs! The connection it makes is not persistent. Nor is SMBFS installed by default. I had to install smbfs then go in and set up everything manually in fstab, which is ridiculous for a distro not to have covered in a cleaner way. That's not hard for me but come on!

2. Mime types are not properly set up in firefox. With a totally fresh install, a .doc downloaded from the web cannot be opened directly, even though it's listed as the type handler... She ended up going to the containing folder and opening it through the file browser, again this is pretty bad not to have working.

3. Sound settings are not properly saved by the mixer on reboot. In addition though pulse is installed by default it doesn't work nearly as well the way it is configured by default as in some other distributions I've used. I've had to sit down and fix various sound issues several times.

There are probably more things I'm forgetting as well, or that she has not seen fit to bother me with...

On the plus side, the regressions in 9.04 with full screen flash and some types of webcams seem to have been fixed (no more LD_PRELOAD shortcuts). That's positive.

Ultimately, the only thing at this point that is really keeping me considering Ubuntu/Kubuntu over SuSE is apt. YaST is pretty good, but apt is better and the package coverage is also better. I really dislike Canonical's insistence on making you jump through hoops to use "non free" software. I am very pro-free-software, however if anyone involved with high level decisions at Canonical is reading this right now, give me a freaking button I can click during the installation that says "I am a big kid, I can make my own choices regarding free/non free software, I'm not interested in making a big philosophical statement with this computer, please include non-free software in my basic installation".

 

Re:Default configuration issues

[machinegestalt]

Oh, of note:

The network manager used in Ubuntu 9.10 has problems with reinitializing network interfaces that go dead for some period of time. When she boots windows the network interface gets automatically re-initialized after connectivity failure, however the Gnome network manager does not seem to get this right very often - I've instructed her to wait until other people come back online then unplug and re-plug her ethernet cable, which fixes the problem. I am on the same network and I have no problems with KDE's built in network manager.

Re:Default configuration issues

[machinegestalt]

Haha, to edit my posts...

I had to sit down and install a bunch of the shared decoding libraries for mpegs among other things, she couldn't play mp3s with the out of the box install. Seriously? 3 different apps complained about the lack of suitable decoders, but only one was smart enough to pull up a package management dialogue and give the option to actually do something about it. This is something pretty much everyone uses, why set it up so backasswardly? Every app installed by default that plays mp3s should work. You shouldn't have to guess correctly which app you need to use to play your music.

The Register = Professionalism? lol

[theolein]

On the other hand, this is The Register we're talking about, and they will "bash" anything they can, including Microsoft. That's how you do business as the IT version of the Sun or Daily Mirror tabloid newspapers.

No major issues since early October

[hoover]

I upgraded from 9.04 to karmic beta in early October and have been running it without major problems since. The screen flickers a bit when changing from the boot logo (actually it was xubuntu 9.04 I was upgrading from) to the desktop resolution and I have had to manually add some packageswhich I thought were there by default in karmic (empathy, ubuntu one), but I've had no issues or problems otherwise.

even better

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony that you and your friends get modded up every time (even when you're wrong). All you have to do is whine.

easiest upgrade ever

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded and had no issues except for with a labtec and microdia webcam. It was the easiest upgrade ever.

9.10 is most working great

[MongooseCN]

I find 9.10 is working faster than 9.04. It boots faster and the interface is a little faster. The only issue I have is wxmaxima crashes constantly. I can't even do a sqrt(4); without crashing. I'm hoping patches will take care of everything soon.

goomior

[Anonymous Coward]

Failed to get Ubuntu 9.10 working instantly on Lenovo T500. I've made a fresh install and got flickering screen on Radeon HD3650. Switching to integrated Intel 4500 solved this issue. Another fresh install on IBM/Lenovo T43 went fine with no problems. I think the most annoying regression in Karmic is broken support for Huawei E220.

Slow Boot Up

[mangomama]

My old notebook (P3 650mhz) went from booting up in ~1:45 on 9.04 (that's pushing the on button to firefox loaded) to about 3:15 on 9.10. That's very disappointing. The OS still runs fine, but it ran fine before. At least that is the only issue I've had. Still, I expected improvements, not a near doubling of my bootup time.

Few grave regressions, but otherwise neat

[amn108]

I have been running 9.10 release since hours before it was released to public (downloaded by BitTorrent).

It seems really snappy, noticeably snappier than 9.04, especially with X graphics and hence Firefox page rendering and scrolling.

However, for some strange reason, there are regressions:

1. The average temperature is 3 degrees higher for most of the hardware sensors including the CPU. Hence the fan ups the speed a pulse-width-modulation notch, which makes for a more audible system, even for a quiet Thinkpad laptop like mine.
2. PulseAudio volume control does not remember per-application (technically, per-process-name) volume, resetting it to maximum if you relaunch the process, and even if the SAME process restarts an audio stream. This completely negates the whole idea of per-app volume control. Imagine you listen to a bunch of files with "mplayer *", as you adjust mplayer volume with pavucontrol, the next song mplayer plays is again played at 100% per-app volume, and so it resets it for each new song, even though the same mplayer process has been playing song after song all along. I don't know how they could have missed THAT, can only hope it is a bug, not a "feature".
3. GUI seems better, but a bit unpolished - specifically some icons have the "grey" style, while some others remain "carneval" style. This is not a regression really, grey icons are better than the previous ones, just pity not all icons are grey for the theme.
4. The whole GDM is just bollocks. The boot process is faster than 9.04, kernel including (probably just tuned on a feature/need base), however once GDM starts it complements for the time gained with its slow setup. The image is also somewhat out of place, seems like a kid designed it in Photoshop in 5 minutes. Also, I cannot find a way to remove it with GUI (did not yet bother using the command line for that) - the default GDM screen is not really what I would consider for a productive developer. In fact I would instead prefer to login to my X desktop from terminal instead. Can't see how extra 10 seconds of GUI balooney are good for me.
5. Can't yet decide on this, but it SEEMS that the ondemand governor is either more aggressive, or the system hides the true CPU usage (which affects the governor). From the settings I can see that it is supposed to max the speed once usage exceeds 95%, but in reality I can check that it jumps to max speed once the usage reaches 25%. That does not look correct to me, and I have read the PDF on how it works :-) May be I am missing something...
6. Again, Canonical seems to forget laptop users. There are more processes, daemons mostly, that each contributes to more wattage being drawn. In their search for more software abstraction, the real resources are neglected, and so I can see about 25 CPU wakeups per second compared to 2 with 9.04.
7. No longer possible to disable polling of removable media (something not good for laptops since it keeps the CPU awake to poll whether media has been inserted). "hal-disable-polling --device=/dev/cdrom" no longer seems to have the effect it did.

The rest is so far been really pleasant experience. The Disk Utility is nice, it monitors the hard drive health with pretty extensive information presented.

4.4.1

[raistlinwolf]

It's running GCC4.4.2 & linux-2.6.31. That's pretty hardcore.

oops, thats 4.4.1 gcc, but still..

One good, one bumpy - all's well in the end

[Dakiraun]

My experience was less a bit rocky at first. Previous upgrades never caused a problem, but on doing Karmic, my work laptop (Dell Precision M65) had the blank, flicking screen issue. It was a problem with it trying to use the Nvidia 180 drivers. Whatever the driver problem did, it locked up the system so bad that the keyboard was not usable, so I had to log in via another system to terminate gdm before the system was usable again. I removed all Nvidia drivers, copied the xorg.conf.failsafe to xorg.conf, rebooted, and reinstalled the Nvidia stuff going with the 185 driver instead - all was fine after that. My other Ubuntu machine updated without issue.

But that's part of the fun of running Linux!

[dg5]

Call me masochistic but the little kinks and quirks when upgrading my Linux distros are part of the fun. I've been running Ubuntu for the past 2 years on my laptop and I've always had little issues crop up - this time it was some of the repositories of the apps that i was using had moved to the main release - but I thought that Karmic handled them quite gracefully.

I find that Karmic is much more elegant and a shade faster than Jaunty for most things I use it for (granted I am a desktop user only). But I didn't find the "most usable OS" hype justified. I don't see huge changes in usability, the Ubuntu Software Centre is a little better organised, but I found Add/Remove fairly intuitive in prior versions as well so no great gains. Also I don't notice the faster boot time using ext3 file system. Well, strictly speaking, it lets me log in faster, but once I've logged in it takes a bit longer to actually let me do anything (for the icons to appear in panels etc).

Are you kidding me?

[Hitman_Frost]

Anecdotal only of course, but my own experience was a surprisingly flawless upgrade which actually fixed some issues caused my my earlier meddling in systems I didn't fully understand.

And what sort of early adopter is going to dive straight into encrypted partitions? Certainly I now run with a separate home partition in case an upgrade goes badly, an experience learned from early bad upgrades, but this time it wasn't needed.

Inevitably every time there's an upgrade some people get burned. I think people forget that there's no an actual need to upgrade on the first day also. At least wait a week and see what issues other people encounter or run it on a spare machine / swappable hard drive and see what sort of possible problems you encounter.

early adopters "bitten" by 9.10???

[lduvall]

For the first time in a long time I had a bit of difficulty in installing Ubuntu - my wireless and network cards were not recognized on the first two attempts. I recall reading that 9.10 was supposed to boot faster, but so far I haven't seen it. I like the opening screen (but don't like having a default log-in user identified (need to find and change that setting). Some of the sound-related settings have changed, so I had to rely on google to figure out how to turn off some obnoxious bits. Otherwise, no major complaints.

Worst. Release. Ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded three machines. One went almost flawlessly and two were rendered incapable of booting (one for init problems, the other for failure to find and mount the LVM on RAID). A better name for the release might have been Kolossal Klusterfuck. At least it's way easier to get a full refund from them than from Microsoft. :)

Fantastic release

[andre_pl]

i did a clean install on my laptop (non-essential machine and a clean install goes a lot faster). The process was very quick and painless, by far the most pleasant ubuntu installation yet. the only issue I've had, which seems to have cleared itself up, with some updates, was that ctrl+C wasn't working in my terminal,it wouldn't do anything at all...

overall i think the improvements in karmic are more significant than many of the previous releases, everything looks and feels better. thumbs-up to the chocolate brown color, the orange was starting to get played-out. a friend of mine was here when I did my reinstall, when it booted up to a beautiful, fully functional desktop just 20 minutes after I started the install, he was so impressed he took the live CD home and installed it for himself.

Its been 3 days and I've yet to have a single question or complaint from him.. everything is working including his sound card, which wasn't working under windows. he even figured out how to get mp3/xvid support all by himself. I'm both proud of him and of ubuntu. things have come a long way.

Re:Fantastic release

[andre_pl]

oh and his dad used it to check his email, and didn't even realize it was different, he asked "Did you do something to the computer downstairs?, it seems a lot faster now."

Upgrade issue

[Anonymous Coward]

i was using 9.04 on my acer travelmate 2310. After the upgrade my wifi was not detected. I tried to use the windows drivers n still it did not work. Searched for it a lot. Basicaly tried every trick in the hat. Finally a fresh install solved the problem....

from Dell M1330 user

[Anonymous Coward]

Using it a week now on a laptop for some heavy development and no issues yet.

Works for me

[WhiteHorse-The Origi]

I've got 2 laptops running it just fine. Got winXP and Win7 running in a virtual box. I've yet to find a problem... I run my Openoffice Impress slideshows on our projector and advance the slides with my mobile phone. I dunno, it "just works". Blows people at work away when I'm 500x as productive as they are. Sometimes I show them some 3D games like Nexuiz or OpenArena and they can't seem to believe I can run all that on a crappy Intel GMA 965 with shared memory and only 1GHz dual processors.

Worth the gamble

[yk4ever]

9.10 made my Intel 855GM graphics card to finally run at full speed. No more jerky games and videos. Hooray! This alone was a worthy reason for an upgrade.

What's broken for me:
- xv is broken for my card (mentioned in release notes), so video playback is ugly and I had to switch KMS off
- after switching KMS off, my mouse cursor is invisible. I have to do Ctrl-Alt-F1, Ctrl-Alt-F7 after every boot
- russian keyboard layout was lost, had to re-configure it
- touchpad settings were lost
- 9.10 actually boots slower than 9.04 for me, and booting splashscreen sometimes falls back to console

All in all, these problems are manageable and release is pretty neat. But for my next PC I'm gonna try OpenSuSE 11.2, it looks promising and I've heard some good reviews of KDE 4.3

what do you mean by change to other one?

[Anonymous Coward]

a) do you mean that it wouldnt boot into gnome, so you had to boot into safe mode, then afterwards (was it necessary to do any video config steps) it will then boot straight into gnome.
b) you can only boot into safe mode and not the normal mode gnome

Yet Another Reason to Hate Apple

[Slash.Poop]

All these stupid animal names that people are adopting.
Karmic Koala? Are you serious?

Re:Yet Another Reason to Hate Apple

[rcastro0]

All these stupid animal names that people are adopting.
Karmic Koala? Are you serious?

Then I guess it should be called a Karma-Killer Koala, nickname KKK...

Flickering screen

[koinu]

I've tried Ubuntu, because I needed some Linux that runs from USB stick to install Gentoo on a netbook. I got this flickering screen problem which was quite annoying, but I simply reduced the resolution to 800x600 (1600x1200, 1280x1024, 1024x768 were all broken) and it went away. Maybe Ubuntu does not support (some) CRT monitors anymore(?), I don't really know.

That was last year.

[jotaeleemeese]

Linux started the Netbook market.

Microsoft, with traditional finesse, shouldered out Linux from it.

But that is a vane attempt to stop the obvious: Android, Linux on its many incarnations, Chrome, Jolicloud, even OSX. And then applications in the Net and the yet nebulous cloud. Do you see much talk about Microsoft leadership ? Nope.

The game is up, Linux arrived last year, the year the monopoly had to explicitly brush it aside (if Linux had been a corporation perhaps MS would be doing some explaining in an antitrust tribunal, they may still do...)

It works!

[jotaeleemeese]

I have no idea how that chap thought about that workaround, but it seems to be working ....

Get another hard disk. Even a pen drive.

[jotaeleemeese]

There are ways to test in critical environments.

In Linux you can make a copy of your current disk and use that for testing.

Try that with Windows....

My experience has been bad

[dbc001]

I run Ubuntu on 4 computers in my house, and on my laptop at work. I did a fresh install on my main workstation of Ubuntu Studio 9.10 x64.

I've had several serious issues, and I'm considering downgrading to 9.04. Occasionally nautilus will switch from clearlooks to what looks like a default theme, with larger fonts. It's distracting to say the least. When I reboot, my dual monitor setup reverts to single monitor mode.

While those are pretty minor problems, I'm concerned that there might be more issues under the hood.

Stack

[Anonymous Coward]

Upgraded to Karmik from 9.04 on which I had all updates installed. Works like a charm. Even better drivers for intel graphic chipset works very smooth now. I have not seen any problem.

Works for me

[WhiteHorse-The Origi]

Ubuttu Ladyboy Remix works fine for me on 2 laptops with no probs. Oh wait, I had to reset the machines after install finished cause I was running the beta installer...

No problems here!

[Viduliya]

I am surprised by this article. I have installed and upgraded a few machines to Karmic and this had been on of the best releases since Gutsy. Ever since they had pulseaudio included by default in Hardy I had issues with new releases, specifically with pulseaudio. Hardy and Janty was the most painful and Intrepid caused much less pain. Janty had issues with pulseaudio and then issues with the Intel video drivers which made it a much worse release than Karmic. As far as new releases of Ubuntu go I am happy with Karmic.

LTS Releases

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh ... Mr, Troll, the LTS releases are burned in. When you release new OSes every 6 months, not every ... er.... 8 years, you accept certain risks. LTS Ubuntu releases are every 2 years and come with greater testing and huge user base installs.

Which would you rather have? OS release with 3 SPs every 8 years that costs between $120 and $300 that requires constant OS patches and application patching
  OR
3 beta releases and 1 LTS release every 2 years .... that costs you nothing where all patch management is centrally maintained and almost 99% of the software is free of charge?

I had to use 1280x720 on a 24" monitor

[bebemochi]

Jaunty handled my 24" 16:9 iiyama just fine at its native resolution of 1920x1080. Upgraded to Karmic... it autodetected the native res fine, except that it's practically unusable. Screen is blank except, oddly enough, for the toolbars, which display fine. Email and gedit display when run, but nothing else does. I've looked for workarounds, none worked, ended up having to file a bug. Another guy with the same monitor and better Linux skills than I is just as stumped. Meanwhile I feel like I've gone back in time 15 years, because the only res that works properly on my monitor is the lower 16:9 at 1280x720. At 24" it reminds me of the pixellization on an old 800x600 res monitor. My eyes, my eyes...

HP Compaq laptop

[Yert]

2 year old Compaq laptop, no problems whatsoever with 9.10 install. Took about 15 minutes from SD media. Replaced a WIn7 install, and the partitioner detected and defaulted to multiboot configuration - was rather nice, but I wanted to blow Win7 away and go full-bore anyways, and had no issues. Pretty happy with it so far.

I regularly replace the OS on this laptop, roughly once every month or so. Last month was Win7, before that a few days were spent with Haiku, and Fedora 10 before that. I honestly haven't had many issues with most of the OS/distros I put on the thing, except with wireless support.

Not the worst upgrade I've ever done ....

[bcaz]

I upgraded my HP nc8430 from 9.04 to 9.10 on Monday and had a few problems. In the first day after the upgrade I had some stability issues, also the GRUB menu defaulted to an older kernel (2.6.28-14) so had to upgrade to GRUB2 to boot from the 2.6.30 kernel, which worked great. Touchpad wouldn't respond after that so I had to update the psmouse.modprobe file. ATI driver disabled my desktop effects and I couldn't fix it until I updated to GRUB2. Finally, pulseaudio had some issues, but nothing cleaning out the .pulse directory couldn't fix. Oddly enough, I'm seeing a slowdown in boot time compared to Jaunty, but I fully admit that's just a subjective opinion.

I don't really think that Karmic was ready for public release since while pieces of it are polished, these kind of issues would turn a new Ubuntu user off for one of those platforms that *shudder* just works. As has been previously stated, I think Canonical rushed it out the door to be available close to the Win7 release date.

That all being said, the upgrade still went smoother than reinstalling XP, Windows 2000, Vista, Windows98, Windows95, Windows 3.1 ....

My experience

[fudgefactor7]

Here's what I did: in place upgrade, not a wipe and replace. Found that two issues cropped up (really low end annoyances). (1) prboom no longer worked correctly, causing Doom and Doom2 to crash on launch with "signal 8" error; and (2) Quake 1 didn't work either. Both were working under the previous Ubuntu. I tracked down the prboom issue to the version of prboom being broken. Replace with a only slightly newer build fixes it. Quake required me to rename the ID1 folder to id1. Not a big deal. Silly really. At first I thought it was WINE messing up, but that wasn't it. (Yes, I play Quake using WINE, so sue me.)

I will tell you they fixed an issue I had with Google Earth flickering, so a trade up in my opinion. Otherwise everything went ok.... Cannot explain why acidrip was uninstalled as a mandatory part of the upgrade when it's in the Karmic repository and all I had to do was reinstall it...perhaps some dependency? (Same deal with mencoder and Mplayer.) Just weird.

X wouldn't boot with ATI 2400 Pro and 2.16-31

[Anonymous Coward]

Had to boot into 2.6.28 in order to get my flgrx to work. From there I downloaded the new driver from AMD, and installed that. Only that didn't work, because I remember having to boot into 2.6.31 recovery mode at some point, and running the driver installer from the shell.

Anyhow, my update manager is still busted, saying there is a partial upgrade to install, but if I click cancel it will still get some package updates.

And, it broke the sound in Wesnoth 1.6 and caused it to freeze occasionally--I had to kill it with kill -9 a few times. Fortunately there is no problem with 1.6.5 from the repositories.

That being said, I really do like Karmic, it is super snappy, and all told it was probably less than 3 hours that I spent getting X running. Easily the 6 most used programs that I've been using are gedit, ispell, latex, evince, firefox, and wesnoth--so no there really was no need to upgrade anyway, other than the speed gains from running firefox, which wasn't such a slouch in 9.04.

So count me in the whopping 70% that had some install pains but got it up and running without wiping everything out.

Ubuntu 9.10 rules for Laptops (Sony SZ770)

[Silicontoad]

I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 since Alpha4 (dist-upgraded) every week on my Sony SZ770 - I can tell you that no other linux distro every supported my laptop as Ubuntu 9.10 (HAL was so shite). For me the only bug was ext4 error (touch wood), everything from sound to brightness controls work out of the box. I compile most of my progies, not a single problem. But seriously if you want tested use debian lenny, lenny is a beast that is still better win7 - I'm happy I jumped ships a while ago

Mf

[Anonymous Coward]

Upgraded the other day:
1. Internet connection broken (mobile broadband dongles are not supported by Karmic due to a kernel bug - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1305931)
2. Sound not working
3. Boot time amazingly long

Been bitten had by this one. I'll wait a few months before trying to upgrade next time.

Relatively smooth

[Jedimstr397]

Seems to be doing fine on my Vaio laptop. I was an early adopter of Jaunty as well, and Karmic doesn't even come close to the problems I had with the Jackalope. I know that there were a lot of problems with audio, brightness settings, battery life, and a slew of others. Karmic seems to have everything under control. The ONLY issue that's slightly annoying is the boot time. No ten second boot time here. Jaunty was faster at approx. 25 seconds from Grub to the log in prompt. The shut down sequence kicks ass though, by the time I reach over to close the lid its already done and off at approx 6 seconds! At least the new startup screens are pretty.

No problems

[Anonymous Coward]

My upgrade went seamlessly. I'm not thrashing it though - I just use it as a desktop PC.

My experience when upgrading

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, first of all, I upgraded because the application "update manager" had a button that said "upgrade", it didn't say it was a beta, an early release, nor contained any indication that this was not a stable final version. I'm just learning that it wasn't by reading this slashdot article.

Some of us just use the damn OS and are not active members in the linux community, how'd I had known this was a risk? Oh, by reading some websites I never visit? great!

Now I don't have any sound.

Can I roll back? nope, I have to reinstall from scratch if I want the system I had.

How many people still using Windows XP? uh?

[viraltus]

Do Microsoft pay you well?

9.10 should have been 9.11 or even 9.12

[higuita]

I also had problems with a CDMA usb modem (still unsolved) and a huwaei 3G usb modem... so i had no network... i had to wait for another computer to connect to the internet and search about the problems. Also, network manager edit windows gives a "access denied" popup, but mostly works...or maybe not...

But what i see as the worst thing might have been the lack of waning for the known problems for those installing/upgrading. The ubuntu release notes are hidden in the site, the update release notes warn about anything, so users think its OK to upgrade where its a "dangerous" thing to do.

IMHO, after reading all the foruns and bugs, its clear that there where too many critical open bugs (video not working, DSL not connection, 3G cards faiiling, etc), not solved because it was already in freeze state. Most of this bugs had a fix, other still dont have.

Canonical have also done what commercial software is always doing and failing, deliver a buggy product just to because its the "release date". Almost all people prefer to wait one, 2 or even more months to fix the critical issues than updating or installing and have a not working system. Not entering in the X11 and lack of network are very critical problems, as make the system unusable for most people.

We all can accept problems not found in Release candidates, but most of this were already reported before the release and many had fix waiting for the "release" to enter the proposed packages. There is no excuse for delivering a software, knowing that will not work for many of its users and that could be fixed by delaying a little the release.

Canonical and Ubuntu have lost a lot more by delivering on time a broken system than by delaying the release.
They could always say that the quality of the release is more important than the release date, that unlike most closed source software, Ubuntu prefers quality over artificial deadlines.

Unfortunately they have sent the wrong message with this release. Canonical didnt learned with the past and failed on this one.

ps: for those thinking that the release could be postpone forever to fix all bugs, you are not forced to wait to fix a broken package, you can always revert to the previous working version. the same thing could be said about the ubuntu release for users, but only for new installs, for upgrades, if there is no warning for the users before the upgrade, reverting isnt that easy.

That's why I stick with SLED

[Hasai]

Why? Because I need a Linux box for my profession.

It works better than any past edition for me.

[freetolio]

I have used the previous 3 versions of Ubuntu on my desktop, and this is by far the best. It looks better, the "included" proprietary graphics drivers have improved, and wireless finally works with included ath5k drivers only requiring commenting out a blacklist statement rather than some convoluted solution like I usually have to go through. Flash operates on par with Windows now performance and appearance-wise. It is also faster in general with a better boot time. I keep thinking that Linux is just now finally truly ready for even the average user's home desktop. The jump from 9.04 to 9.10 was totally worth it though it only worked on the second try when doing the upgrade via the update manager.

It's been good to me.

[cuby]

9.10 is slower on startup, but I noticed it faster in runtime. It uses less processor and memory (It is only a perception). The pulsaudio crap is working well. I've installed it in 3 computers and only in my eeepc 901 I had a bad bug, that I later found is due to a driver issue related to the wireless adapter. I think the article is histerical.

Karma bites back

[Anonymous Coward]

Jaunty was working fine, been dabbling in Ubuntu for over a year with no real problems.
Karmic, however...
After upgrading through the Update Manager, I only half boot and then lock up tight looking at
an empty desktop and no response from mouse or keyboard. Nice doorstop!

I'm glad this is only my "experimental laptop".
I'm not going to be upgrading my desktop just yet.

Its free, but still a much bigger pain in the rear to get setup than Windows, which I hate...
Vista created a lot of ill will, but it was the slickest thing to configure to our home network I've
ever seen. It even auto-detected and installed network printers upon connecting. I was impressed.
Ubuntu, I've gotta manually configure a lot of things, and that's not gonna fly with most users.
You can't treat end users like IT professionals. I'll sit and play with it because I love a challenge,
but I can see that I can't trust it as my primary OS, yet.

Works 100%

[b4upoo]

I installed the Karmic Koala version of Ultimate Edition Ubuntu and it works just fine and without any problems at all.
                I can say that it boots so fast that I have one hard drive that can not reach speed fast enough to keep up and I sometimes have to do a reboot on the first boot of the day. Both the boot speed and the shut down speed are flat out superior.
                If one wishes to run Ubuntu then Ultimate Edition is a fabulous choice.

Drivers?

[zogger]

Drivers are in the kernel or as modules aren't they? We already get regular kernel updates for kernels, about the only time you have to reboot, and video kernel modules just need to restart X. You can jump around and do that now if you want. But those don't require an entire new distro version. And none of the apps require a new distro version. Near as I can see (again, I am in no way an expert), only a new file system change should absolutely require an entire new upgrade (like happened here with those who chose it, extension 3 to 4). But that certainly isn't all the time, not every six months it isn't.

Really, I am looking for more of a technical reason why the whole thing needs to be done at once, necessitating a ton of things to all be upgraded at the same time, leading to a lot of things that are close but no cigar, the subject of the whole article. It looks more just..dunno..politically driven or market-thinking driven than necessity driven. Whereas if it was incremental by design, only those apps/drivers/ whatever that really are ready get upgraded. Maybe it is all the shared libraries and linking, I just don't know...just mused on this over the years and never read an explanation for it.

And if it was incremental by design, you would only have to wait for your new hardware to be fully supported as long as it took the devs to do it and test it, 12 months is just another artificial time limit. I would prefer, "exactly when they are ready", whatever that time period happens to be. And if the design had an automatic revert to last good working state, then you'd have a relatively painless way to fix any accidental whoopsies that occur. Give you a chance to really tryout this or that new incremental upgrade "thing", to see if it works for you or not, before a full committment and it wipes/replaces the old stuff fully then.

I also noticed in the article thread that Arch linux http://www.archlinux.org/about/ does in fact use a "rolling release" incremental upgrade system, install once and that's it. So, technically it IS possible like I thought, so now I am wondering why they do it but no one else (?) does it that way?

Re:Drivers?

[kripkenstein]

Drivers are in the kernel or as modules aren't they? We already get regular kernel updates for kernels, about the only time you have to reboot, and video kernel modules just need to restart X.

A lot of the time, the driver will only work with the latest kernel. This is in part due to the kernel (on purpose) not having stable ABIs. So, you do need to upgrade the entire kernel for such things (which are common).

Mouse pointer disapears on dual-monitor setup

[Anonymous Coward]

After upgrading both my computers, on one of them my mouse pointer periodically disappears.
On one monitor it appears as a 1"x1" white box, on the 2nd monitor it disappears completely. The work arround to fix this problem is to move the pointer back and forth between screens until it appears again.

This happens about every 5-10 minutes. Strangely it is only on teh one PC so not likely easily duplicated.

great!

[Anonymous Coward]

I upgraded my system at home (kubuntu): run fast, beauty and no (really big) problems...

It's open source: try, enjoy, fix/report bugs, learn... and repeat the cycle with emphasis on enjoy :-) ... if you don't like, don't use, there are a lot of options around there. If you like, welcome to our community.

Re:My experience

[fishexe]

That's what you call working flawlessly? That there was a bug? In the unstable branch?

Clearly 2014 is not yet the year of Linux on the desktop.

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[account_deleted]

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Sun VB and USB Devices + Flash = no deal

[Skull_Leader]

For me, everything is running fine, and the upgrade went almost without a hitch, except: In my guest XP system under Sun Virtual Box I no longer can use any of the USB devices. The Ubuntu host seems to have grabbed them and won't share with VB-XP anymore. Setting up USB filters hasn't helped either. Especially sucky since I need a USB label printer using windows-only software to work for my business. I also don't seem to have full compatibility with Flash on some websites through Firefox anymore. The first one is the kicker though. That is enough of an issue to just drive me on over to a Psystar Mac...

I just switched from Fedora 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Man what a difference. I am not sure what these users are experiencing. I backed up my /home directory, and made the switch to Karmic. Everything that was broken in Fedora seems to magically work. My laptop no longer freezes when I undock it. I can have Compiz running and put the machine to sleep without it freezing. Everything's faster. Software installation is far superior.

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[account_deleted]

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If I use Karmic long enough...

[fishexe]

...will my karma improve? No, seriously though...I upgraded this past weekend and it is awesome...aside from a couple really dumb mistakes I made. But now that everything is fixed, it runs like a dream. Smoothest OS I've used so far, with the gnome-do dock mode it reminds me of mac OS X except that it doesn't penalize me for having minimum RAM installed by seizing up every 5 minutes. Two pieces of advice: Don't leave Firefox open while upgrading and then walk away, and Do replace the open source JRE with the Sun one (unless you absolutely can't handle an EULA). Also, the default pinyin IME for IBus sucks, (no context-based autoselection) but just search synaptic for the other one in there and it works great. Empathy is much cooler than Pidgin, IBus is smoother than SCIM, booting takes about half the time, pretty near everything runs faster, and for some reason my laptop now gets 50% longer battery life.

It's the same old song

[bl8n8r]

Anyone that's been doing this for awhile knows to let fresh releases sink-in to the mud awhile before stepping on them. You can't expect glibc and linker updates to treat applications the same - especially when it comes to the sketchiness of closed-source binaries (nvidia xorg for instance).

Anyone that's been running desktop Linux for a few years knows to keep /home on a separate partition just in case you need to format/reinstall the system.

Anyone that's been runnning destkop Linux for more than 10 years will have a second boot partition for testing new releases.

There are tools avaialable to keep you from shooting yourself in the foot when you upgrade Linux. Some hints for you:

- fdisk
    create one swap partition
    create 2 boot partitions
    create one partition dedicated to LVM

- lvm partitions for tmp, home, slash1, slash2, usr1, usr2, var1, var2
- raw partitions are boot1, boot2
- never let a new release install grub over your working install
- learn how to boot knoppix and use grub-install --root-directory

Re:It's the same old song

[cecom]

Yes, and anybody who has actually used Linux, instead of just playing with it, knows that upgrading your OS every 6 months is madness, so in case they do use Ubuntu at least they stick to the LTS versions... :-)

moderately smooth upgrade

[azmodean 1]

So the plural of anecdote is... a slashdot thread?

Anyway, my upgrade was moderately smooth, I had several issues, which were mostly caused by Ubuntu not gracefully handling changes I had made behind its back, but nothing I couldn't work around YMMV.

1. boot failure.

Cause: Grub entries were updated to use the UUID of my root partition, but Ubuntu picked the 'wrong' partition because I have two roots (backup) and one of them was corrupted (I didn't say it was a GOOD backup...)

Solution: Manually correct grub entries (This is the most questionable fix, I happen to have mucked around in the grub internals and done semi-embedded grub installs, so I'm quite a bit more expert at this than most.)

Reason it's my fault: I have a completely non-standard partition layout that confused the upgrader, also it warned me about the changes during the upgrade but I ignored the warnings.

2. Mozilla apps would not start

Cause: I use several Mozilla apps (Firefox, Thunderbird, Songbird), and install from tarballs, the update finally removed libsdtc++.so.5 (which was obsoleted a year or more ago.) and all the Mozilla apps depend on it.

Workaround: Downloaded a .deb containing libstdc++.so.5 and installed it until I get around to updating all my Mozilla installs.

Reason it's my fault: I intentionally maintain my Mozilla installs manually, so it's my responsibility to do the maintenance on them, I assume the Mozilla apps Ubuntu ship with Karmic don't have this problem.

3. Songbird still wouldn't boot after the libstdc++.so.5 fix.

Cause: The gstreamer libs that ship with Songbird somehow conflict with the ones shipped with Ubuntu... maybe? See here for discussion, also where I found the solution after about 5 minutes of searching.

Workaround: Do "export LD_BIND_NOW=1" before launching Songbird. On one hand this is an expert fix and I don't expect most people to know what it does, on the other hand I got it off an official help forum, so YMMVBPNBM.

4. Sound would not play.

Cause: Changes to audio stack caused upgrade process to mute audio.

Solution: Unmute audio. (This would have been far more obvious if I used a "normal" window manager that has a volume panel widget, I use ion3)

So, as you can see I did have some issues, but they were mostly self-inflicted, and I had little problem fixing them or working around them. (Spent something like 30 minutes post-upgrade sorting out the issues.)

P.S. Tried to end with "My 2 cents", but with "cents" rendered symbolically... Unicode didn't work, the html escape sequence for it didn't work, tried to use brackets in a previous P.S., and the html escape sequence for them didn't work either...

back to the past: 8043

[Anonymous Coward]

tried 910 alpha: yuck
tried 910 beta: ditto
tried 910 RC: absolutely no change

It's like those nasty 99cent tv dinners, you wonder if whoever makes it ever really tries it out...?

Flawless so far

[probesport]

I have been loving 9.10, no issues here at all - in fact I have been happier with this release than any others before it, I have convinced a few friends to make the switch based on 9.10 alone. Also the gaming seems to work better as well, Counter-Strike Source has been excellent.

Upgrade Very Smooth, works great

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had none of the issues that folks are talking about. I read through all of the documentation and gotchas prior to upgrading from 9.04 to 9.10. The upgrade process was very smooth, and once done, I have had ZERO issues. It makes me very happy to know that I have not had to deal with Windows in so long. I don't hate Gates, or Microsoft, i just grew tired of windows after all these years of problems and troubleshooting.

I have been a Software QA engineer for 19 years, and expect all software that is released, paid for or not, to pass some level of testing. To come out and say this is not a tested OS, or the upgrade was not tested enough, makes me laugh. the test cycle on this release was quite extensive, and filing bugs has gone on for months, and continues to now.

I have found any defects that i have filed to be reviewed and answered in a fairly short amount of time. open a defect with Microsoft windows and good luck!

All in all, i say, Great Release, keep it up!

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[account_deleted]

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Kubuntu 9.10 and wireless woes

[yuna49]

Upgrading to 9.10 killed my wireless as well. 8.10 and 9.04 worked fine with WPA-PSK2. In 9.10 it would hang and never connect to the router.

My biggest gripe about recent releases is the problems they have with certain displays. I have one machine connected to a Sony KDL-V3000 television. All the installation screens appear with unreadably tiny text; even zooming the image with the TV's scaler doesn't help. I've done enough Ubuntu installs to know pretty much every screen, but I wanted to repartition the hard drive on this occasion, and that was simply impossible given how small the text was. I even tried switching to the onboard VGA connector to see if the problem was a function of my NVIDIA card, but that didn't help either.

I can solve the problem after installation by adding the line
Options "DPI" "100x100"
to xorg.conf, but I obviously can't modify the file on the installation CD. I actually had to connect the machine to another monitor, install, then move the machine back to the TV and update the drivers. Of course, that wasn't too easy to do since I had no working wireless.

I reverted back to 9.04.

Great

[arnodf]

In my opinion it's great. Had some problems with the clean install (locking, extremely slow) but after the first update all went fine (except for a few crashes). I used 8.10 and had to skip 9.04 because that one was a real pain in the ass. So far I've had a few kernel crashes but that should be fixed soon, regarding the amount of times it has been mentioned on launchpad and kerneloops. Luckily these kernelcrashes don't mean I have too reboot, the screen just locks (like the option under screensaver) and I have to give my password after which I can continue my work. For the rest: All fine.

update

[goombah99]

Updating my own post. After four clean sheet install attempts It worked. I got koala running nicely on my VirtualBox vm. What did I do differently. Nothing that should have made a difference but the two things were to ask for 900MB rather than 1.2GB of memory and I moved the installation to a different hard drive. Neither of these should matter as the drive is virtualized anyhow, and I have 4GB of memory available on the host. Anyhow this time it did boot.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:My experience

[PitaBred]

Nope. I have a socket AM3 with an AMD750 southbridge. Should be bog-standard hardware, came out well before Windows 7 shipped.

release upgrade with apt-get dist-upgrade

[Filgy]

I'm not sure how you initially tried to upgrade because you didn't say... but an ubuntu upgrade from one release to another one should NEVER, EVER be done by simply changing/updating your repos and doing apt-get dist-upgrade. Alot of old debian users think that you can do this and it leads to their system getting hosed more often than not.

The proper and supported method is to do:

sudo apt-get install update-manager-core && sudo do-release-upgrade

So while you did not specify how you tried the initial upgrade attempt, if it happened to be via apt-get dist-upgrade it was in no way ubuntu's fault that your system got hosed.

I really wonder how many of these people (again, maybe or maybe not you) with all these upgrade horror stories have tried to upgrade via apt-get dist-upgrade instead of the proper, documented, and supported method.

Re:release upgrade with apt-get dist-upgrade

[chill]

It popped up a dialog box saying there was a new version, and asked if I'd like to upgrade. I clicked "yes".

After it politely failed and told me I needed to make room, I did and rebooted. The box popped up again. This happened a few times until I cleaned out enough stuff for it to be happy.

When it froze, it froze good. The GUI was locked and CTRL-ALT-BS wouldn't reset X, nor would CTRL-ALT-DEL shut down the system. I had to push & hold the power button to force it off. This was after 20 minutes sitting on the same setting and no HD activity.

Re:release upgrade with apt-get dist-upgrade

[Filgy]

Wow that's the GUI upgrade tool for you.. not good.. I've found shutting down X and upgrading from the console to generally be your safest bet when upgrading.

Re:my experience

[DaVince21]

Don't worry, if you were installing Windows you'd have had the time to have an orgy lasting the entire day.

My attempt to upgrade was unsuccessful...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a super-user of Linux but I would like to be when I grow up. ;) I like to think I do my best to get things working when they don't. With this upgrade, I spent a lot of time with google, trying several approaches to solve the problems that arose on my laptop after installing a fresh copy of 9.10.

I am using a Lenovo Thinkpad T41, which had been running 9.04 quite happily. I remember the install for 9.04 was quite painless. Everything "just worked!" I was rather impressed!

When 9.10 was released, I first tried to upgrade but the process kept failing at the last minute over wireless. So, I tried the upgrade over wired and it would fail at the same time as before.

I then tried a fresh install over my existing 9.04 (wipe and install.) The install went along nicely. No worries. Then, after the first reboot, GRUB could not find the boot partition. The data was there and the drive was accessible but something was wrong with GRUB's configuration.

I found several articles about this problem, one that laid out a step-by-step procedure for fixing it which included manually booting the OS via the command line and manipulating a GRUB configuration file. Follow these instructions, I was able to boot into the GUI OS where I was to edit the appropriate file. Suddenly, though, the computer would freeze.

I did this several times and noticed that the wireless activity light would come on just before the system froze. So, I suspect there was an additional problem linked to the wireless driver or the ethernet auto-configuration process.

In the end, I was unable to get past this problem. So, I couldn't fix the boot problem. Finally, I resorted to re-installing version 9.04.

Yeah, I was ticked after spending so much time on something that was easy with the previous version but I was less ticked than I had been when I tried to install Vista and had to abandon that OS after spending $100 for a new copy. At least my frustration was free with Ubuntu. :)

A disappointing experience? Yes, but I have faith in Canonical and the Ubuntu community. I am sure it will be fixed at some point. When it is, I will download my free copy and try again. In the mean time, 9.04 is perfectly stable and does everything I need it to do. Eventually, I want to leave Windows behind altogether. Slowly but surely, I am making my way toward that goal. :)

Broke when it worked before...

[kimgkimg]

I installed Karmic on my Dell Mini 9 and was not able to get to my wireless network. After a few hours of searching on the various forums I was able to find a solution which had me reinstalling my Broadcom drivers from a different repository. Of course this all worked in the prior release (v9.04), so I was a little surprised that basic networking was broken in the new one.

Got blank screens?

[GameboyRMH]

My laptop would freeze whenever the display went idle after I upgraded to Karmic. It was a DPMS problem. To fix it, in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, in the monitor section, add:

Option "DPMS" "Off"

And restart (or at least restart X). That's the only problem I had upgrading to Karmic, with a laptop known for video issues under Linux.

Since upgrading, startup and shutdown are faster, video playback performance has improved (this laptop has a crappy 1.9Ghz single-core P4 and a half-gig of RAM, so playing video from embedded flash players pushes it to its limits), and the UI looks a little better.

Re:My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

runs flawlessly here .. much better than any of the previous ubuntu versions

Mine is good

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Ubuntu as a main desktop OS for 2,5 yrs.
This upgrade is one of the best so far. Two previous upgrades required a reinstall because of the nVidia drivers. This time everithig was smooth an perfect.

the points

[zogger]

1. Build Hype.--so the number one reasons is as I thought, it is just market driven to be able to "sell" new shiny?

2. Developer Fatigue---they wouldn't be under any pressure at all that would result in fatigue, as I pointed out if it was only released when ready, not held to a drop dead date on the calendar. There is no one developer does every single thing here, they all work on their little niche aspects. If it was incremental, when this or that niche was deemed good enough for the release to the generic public (I leave alpha and beta testing out, most people don't do that really), they would do it then, irregardless of some arbitrary date on the calendar. I'm not a code guy, I am a farmer, you harvest and take to market (a release analogy) when it is ready, that's it, not on some date picked out of the air. Stuff takes what time it takes, that's it. You just can't make this or that thing grow past what it is capable of, and it is silly to harvest too early or too late. You use the goldilocks principle, only when things are "just right", whatever that is. Ya, still problems can occur, but creating additional problems on purpose, like insisting on an arbitrary date for your crop to be "done", doesn't make the other problems any better, just makes them worse all around.

3. Support Cycles--the whole idea of cycles is eliminated with incremental, so I am not seeing the problem there. "Support" would go to what is released. You sign up, you accept that in advance. We *already* get and deal with updates on this that or the other, even within these six month "cycles", I've seen that with every distro I have ever used, and the default in business anyway is to have test boxes. And with an automatic "revert to past good working" feature, that works at the app/driver whatever level, all of it, you can "try before you really buy", or really commit all the way to the change. As to how long support for this or that would last, that is really still left up to thhe devs, how long they want to support some older version. This is how it is now anyway, either they do it, or you take it on. There's no change there, it would be up to the developers to say "we will only support and bug fix back two versions on our app, after that, upgrade or do it yourself". It is what we have now, I don't see how that would be different on an individual app basis with a distro that did incremental perpetual changes as opposed to some version number for the whole thing. So I'd have to call that a wash, a non issue with comparison.

4. Stability.---see all of the above. The way they are doing it now, the current default status quo of major all at once massive changes in "cycles", every six months or whatever like that, STILL results in major borkage, still results in "INstability", else this entire thread wouldn't exist, we wouldn't be discussing it at all if the cycle method worked all that well. Even in closed source, how many times have we heard "wait for service pack 1 before installing"? And service packs in themselves are just a fancy way to say "whichever this or that needed an incremental update to".

My experience

[Looce]

* As I don't have an encrypted hard drive, the encrypted hard drive problems didn't affect me.
* As I don't use full-screen applications, the flickering full-screen application problem doesn't affect me that much, though I couldn't use a full-screen Firefox for pseudo-kiosk mode when a family member wants to do some things with a web browser.
* Linux 2.6.32 hasn't posed many problems.

However, the bugs I'm affected by are mostly PulseAudio, Totem (media player) and CD-ROM related. PulseAudio skips and freezes in Audacity; Totem has a 1/200 or so chance of freezing at the start of a song (but then going one track forward then back to the previous one fixes it); DVDs won't eject if played in xine; CD-ROMs won't unmount if they're ejected via the hardware button, leaving the next one you insert inaccessible if you don't unmount the previous one yourself.

There were many more bugs in the alphas, obviously, but those are alphas.

Upgrade not good.

[danne]

I upgraded one of my PC's and all sorts of software started crashing, Evolution didn't even start before it crashed. So I did a clean install instead which seems to work fine so far. The upgrade worked better on the other machines, but there are still some unresolved issues, mostly segfaults.

Re:My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's your quality level, please tell me: which will be first, the Year of Linux on the Desktop, or the Year of Windows on the Desktop?

Works for me

[dclydew]

I have exactly one bug from the painless upgrade... The old Neverwinter Nights game with the linux binaries crash on exit and I have to kill the nwmain process.

That was it. Everything else works perfectly.

Re:My experience

[Anpheus]

Actually yes, you can reinstall windows without having it format your drive, and in Vista and 7 this is the default option, for obvious reasons.

In Windows XP I think it would just rename the Windows folder and write over it. Much like Ubuntu writing over /bin and other OS and non-user folders.

Seems okay to me

[TClevenger]

I upgraded my Toshiba Tecra M5 laptop (Core 2, 2GB, Nvidia) a few days ago to Karmic (AMD64), and no issues so far. I did the one-button upgrade in place, after doing the in-place upgrade to Intrepid when it came out. Boot is a little longer than I'd like (40 seconds from POST to desktop), but not out of line with the XP installation on the second partition. In fact, sleep seems to behave better (Toshiba rolls their own ACPI, and Intrepid didn't always bring back the screen when waking up), and my VPN connection to work, which I had given up on for a couple of weeks, suddenly started working.

The one big difference of Gentoo, ....

[aix tom]

..... which is basically why I have stuck with it for the last years is:

"There are no versions"

No *Oh, new Distro version!! Should I try it??" headaches every few months, you just upgrade the packages where you think it makes sense to do so.

Re:The one big difference of Gentoo, ....

[Moridineas]

I primarily use FreeBSD, but the last time I messed around with multiple linux distros, I enjoyed Gentoo.

kubuntu 9.10 upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, from my own personal experience the upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10 only had on problem. I had to start the upgrade from the shell, because it failed to start through the kpackagekit gui. Apart from that, all went smoothly!

Everything works, from openoffice to the desktop effects to the sound card... everything i've tested to far works properly with no bugs! Hasn't crashed once yet! Can i say kubuntu 9.10 FTW?

Dell Latitude D620 - np

[Anonymous Coward]

My migration to karmic was smooth - almost boring. Ubuntu just works great on my Dell Latitude D620.

Mines works fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had 9.10 since it can out and not had a problem with it.

I Love It!

[L0wt3ch]

Funny, I was just in the middle of upgrading ("downloading packages") when I came across this article, and chickened out! But then I read some of the comments, and got curious, so I went through with it. I love it! My old Toshiba Satellite feels new again. I like everything - the new software utilities (disk checker, etc), the wallpapers (how classy!), that compiz just works out of the box again (how I missed it!)... The sound server is far better! It doesn't take full control of the computer's resources when the volume's turned up all the way (as much) anymore, and it actually sounds a lot better. (Louder, too.) The only problem I had was that, instead of having ubuntu-desktop and ubuntu artwork, it changed it all to xubuntu - usplash, gdm, everything. I had to manually reinstall the ubuntu-themed packages. But that's no big deal. I'm very happy I upgraded, article notwithstanding.

Netscape?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh?

I upgraded

[downhole]

I upgraded to Karmic on my main home computer pretty much as soon as I could get all of the packages downloaded, which admittedly took a while. I wonder if they could speed up the process by letting you download a file with all of the package updates over Bittorrent? AFAIK, I could download the install disc over Bittorrent, but the only thing I'd be able to do with it is reinstall, which I'd rather avoid if possible.

Anyways, I'm happy so far with how it's running. One big fix for me is that the ATI display drivers are working much better. I'm using integrated Radeon 3200 graphics. When I installed Jaunty on it, the default drivers were fine but un-accelerated, so I let it install the proprietary drivers. They gave me accelerated video, but also a really annoying flicker/line jump problem that nobody was able to help me with. I messed with installing newer versions of ATI's drivers, but they all had the same problem, so I gave up and kept running un-accelerated. This wasn't a huge loss, as I don't play games on it or anything, but still annoying. I did try installing a spare NVidia card that was lying around, and I managed to get good accelerated video on that. When Karmic came around, I was hoping that this bug would be gone. Before I installed it, I removed the NVidia card and rebooted - this did seem to cause some problems, with some garbled graphics and funny dialog boxes from X when I started up again. I was able to get to a desktop and uninstall all of the NVidia-related packages, and it worked fine when I rebooted after that. That's one of the things that can be pretty annoying about Linux/X - it just doesn't handle switching graphics around nearly as smoothly as Windows. But I got back on the integrated Radeon graphics and ran the update, and when it rebooted into Karmic, I let it install the proprietary drivers, and now it works great. So good job there - I guess it was an X update that did it.

I can't really think of any actual problems I've had with it. Sound still works fine everywhere, but since the update, it seems to be turning off the sound system when it's idle so that I get a popping sound on the speakers when some sound starts playing. Mildly annoying, but I don't really mind. The new drive management app seems to do a little better then what they had before, but I haven't messed with it much yet. I do know that in general, Linux could use some polish on this - I'd like better, more clear control over what drives get mounted where, when.

Of course, Windows has it's own share of problems. I have it installed on an extra drive on the same computer, and finding drivers is more of a headache than any of the Linux computers I've tried. And it doesn't come with any significant software or any built-in places to get good, safe software. And it doesn't support any drive formats other than NTFS and FAT32, so my ext3/4 and HFS+ formatted drives are unreadable, and no free utility I can find will let me read them. Meanwhile, Ubuntu, despite coming on CD instead of DVD, has a mail program, an office suite, a graphics editor, photo manager, music manager/player and video player supporting more formats, and a built-in app to download programs to do other things that are known to be free of malware, and it reads and writes every drive format I can throw at it, if not out of the box, then with a free download that is automatically installed. Yep, I guess Windows just isn't ready for the desktop yet :D

Yes

[zogger]

Yes, thanks, I found that out elsewhere in the thread yesterday and used it in a reply up above.

My upgrades

[br00tus]

I put Koala on two laptops - one an upgrade from Ibex, one a fresh install.

In mid-October I was running a Ubuntu-derivative Heron on my desktop and a straight, normal Ubuntu Ibex on my laptop. I had a package application doing a segmentation fault under certain repeatable conditions with both. I upgraded my laptop to Jackalope and still saw the bug. I checked out Ubuntu's launchpad and saw that most of the new bugs reported were for the Koala beta. So I upgraded to Koala beta (thus, being one of the people who tested the beta). The bug was still there, and I had apport report the bug to launchpad. When the release happened I was doing work over the net, so I did a piecemeal upgrade to the full version, grabbing 100 megs of packages via apt-get, doing other work, grabbing another 100 megs of packages and so on until i had upgraded completely. Aside from this third-party application bug which still persisted, the upgrade went fine for me.

Days later, someone who has a netbook running Windows said that it was broken and asked me to fix it since "I know how computers work". They use it solely to surf the web and they only use their web browser. It was blue screening on ever bootup, even "safe mode". I booted with Ubuntu LiveCD on the USB, mounted the hard drive and tried to fix the startup but it persisted. I did not have the time to deal with solving their Windows problem, and did not know how that Windows OEM recovery crap would work on this netbook. I told them I could wipe Windows and put Ubuntu on and they could surf the web again. They agreed. I did a fresh install.

The first problem was, networking was not working. Their netbook actually had a switch that turned networking on and off. I made sure it was turned on, stopped and started the wifi and network stuff a few times, rebooted once or twice and then it came on. As I said, I was in a rush and preferred it to just start working then diving into figuring out the problem. The second problem is they could not watch Youtube because Flash was not installed. I did not see flash as package, whether via apt-cache search or in that software universe GUI thing. Adobe did not have the Koala (9.10) as a package download so I downloaded a previous version. It could not find two package libraries. So then I looked for Gnash or Swfdec, even though those aren't so great. They were not listed. So I told the person I would fix it so they could watch Youtube some other day, they could still access e-mail and so on. So wifi was a slight bump, and Flash still is.

I went back to my laptop, which had been upgraded and not fresh installed and it could see Gnash and Swfdec as packages although the fresh install had not been able to.

Having looked at all of launchpad for my application problem, I began checking out other applications having problems on Koala. I saw a few that said all was well in Jackalope but an application went bust with the upgrade. I tested some of them and saw it was true, some of the Ubuntu package applications do not work at all on Koala - not a minor bug, the whole package is completely broken.

A lot of the bug reports have applications which use a lot of Gnome/Gtk/Glib libraries, as well as other libraries, and the problem that occurs spans calls from an application to one library to another library to another library, often libraries which are not that well-related, sometimes written in different languages (one C, one C++). As one needs to know Gnome/Glib etc. to some extent, download all these libraries etc. I can see how debugging can be tough, or a bit of a pain, or whatever. One was only downloadable off of SVN and it took me half an hour of playing with autoconf, automake and so on to recall that autom4te would just do all of that for me with the package.

Insofar as Ubuntu, Ubuntu wants to do a code release every six months, and after the experience of Debian, I support this 100%. Ubuntu also wants to focus on the desktop, and be one that a non-techie can use, and I think that is good

Vector Linux

[cavaughan]

I remember a long time ago having to use Vector Linux on old pc's. Although I don't have the issue any more, Vector Linux still exists and I would assume as before it is specifically geared for machines with low resources. www.vectorlinux.com

More user stories at ubun2.com

[ZyYyXy]

There is lot of user stories on the ubun2.com site check it out http://www.ubun2.com/question/290/how_did_your_ubuntu_910_karmic_koala_install_or_upgrade_go

I did have some problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to upgrade from Jaunty and completely failed. My problem was I didn't read any of the warnings running around the web. I just hit the upgrade button and restarted my machine. Wow, The upgrade completely tweaked my machine. I knew I was running ext3 but what I didn't realize that the upgrade assumed ext4 and cause I didn't do my research I managed to crack my system. I also ran into some weird mount errors and even thought I had a recovery shell it was read only. I wrangled with it for about 6 hours trying different things. I hit about 20 different online forums to get some help but ultimately I just said the hell with it, got a different machine, created an ISO disc and ran a completely new install on the original machine. I already had my data backed up so for me I only lost my programs and configurations. No big deal for me. The clean install went with out a hitch and so far (knock on wood) I haven't had many problems.

Re:My experience

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what you call working flawlessly? When it kicks you into an emergency console in which you had to remount your hard disks manually in read-write mode and run the package reconfigure command?

Clearly 2009 is not yet the year of Linux on the desktop.

Canonical is obviously attempting to bring Ubuntu more into line with the expectations of Windows users. This is a good start.

Clearly the year of linux on the desktop is not far off.

Linux Mint 7 == U9.10 on Dell Lattitude D610

[Anonymous Coward]

Clean install. No problems so far.

Works fine

[mackyrae]

Early adopters mean people who upgraded at release time? Huh...interesting...

I've been running Karmic since the first week of June, alpha 1. Sure I hit bugs back during the early alphas, but meh. Since release? Or rather...since a month before release? No problems.

KK 9.1 failure

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to upgrade to 9.1 KK. Total failure. My PC would not boot. I downloaded the 9.1 KK ISO on a Windows PC. I did a clean install of 9.1 KK on the Linux rig that would not boot because of the upgrade failure. After the clean install I got to the desktop, but it was totally frozen. I reinstalled 9.04 JJ which worked fine. Forget about Karmic.

slitering problems

[ncmathsadist]

Python's include mechanism and its path mechanism must be broken. I installed Pygame via apt-get.Then I open a session and see this

>>> include pygame
No module pygame found

Oops. I built pygame for source; then it worked. The printer applet is broken. Its stderr stream is directed to /dev/null. Add it to you panel and right-click. It launches system-config-printer.py Error from this program: module gobject not found. Scare up gobject.py in your file system, put it where needed, and then other modules are declared missing. You are now entering the gates of dependency hell. I think that this could be causing a host of problems in Ubuntu 9.10.

The includes for core modules of Python work. It is extensions that don't. This is the place to start looking.

stop making up "facts"

[jipn4]

Windows ... is causing outrage and frustration, with early adopters wishing they'd stuck with previous versions of the Windows.

This is exactly how Windows releases in the past have worked and failed; just go and read the forums and archives. But with Windows, users are so used to buggy releases that many don't even bother installing before SP1 or later.

This again comes from the fact that both Windows and Mac OS X releases are properly tested and maintained and tend to be in more professional quality.

The current Mac OS X release erased people's hard drives, among many other problems. It also runs on a tiny number of hardware configurations compared to Linux and declared many machines obsolete and unsupported. Previous Mac OS X releases have had massive problems. More importantly, Snow Leopard and Windows 7 are basically just bug fix releases with few new features. Windows 7 is a bug fix and performance release Windows Vista, which failed so badly that large parts of the industry simply refused to install it.

And, of course, after a new OS release from Apple or Microsoft, there is massive problems with end user applications because neither Microsoft nor Apple update those. They're saying "not my problem" and leaving the mess for vendors and users to fix. In contrast, Ubuntu actually tests and fixes integration of a massive collection of third party applications.

But why don't the Linux distros go to same lenghts? It shouldn't be impossible, unless of course, commercial projects are maintained more professionally.

Both your premise and your conclusion are wrong. Linux distros go through great length to test their releases, and their releases are of high quality. And, unlike Microsoft and Apple, Ubuntu has releases like clockwork, release that include huge amounts of new functionality, driven by the changes in the contributing projects.

Both Apple and Microsoft's previous OS releases were so buggy that Windows 7 and Snow Leopard have little new functionality and focus instead on massive bug fixing. And because they couldn't handle support of old hardware and fix their bugs, they simply declared large amounts of hardware obsolete and don't work on it at all. In contrast, Ubuntu installs on a huge range of hardware and with a huge range of configurations.

If you make up your "facts" as you go along, of course you can reach any conclusion you like. Well, I suppose that shows that Apple and Microsoft have one thing that's more professional: their PR and disinformation departments.

Critical error

[bokac]

When i upgraded to Karmic it give me a "Critical Kernel Error" and it won't connect to the internet

Re:My experience

[jfanning]

Snow Leopard was supposed to handle this. Not that I wanted to test it.

On the other hand, I got strange things like Maven builds failing because of "too many open files". No problem at all with 9.04.

Change one word and this becomes +5 Funny

[PinkyDead]

Just imagine the amount of bashers if the news would had read;

Windows Vista is causing outrage and frustration, with early adopters wishing they'd stuck with previous versions of the Windows. Blank and flickering screens, failure to recognize hard drives, defaulting to the old kernel, and failure to get encryption running are taking their toll, as early adopters turn to the web for answers and log fresh bug reports in Windows forums.

This again comes from the fact that both Windows and Mac OS X releases are properly tested and maintained and tend to be in more professional quality.

But why don't the Linux distros go to same lenghts? It shouldn't be impossible, unless of course, commercial projects are maintained more professionally.

Re:Corporation != Profitable

[petermgreen]

The impression I get of canonical is they are desperate to portray ubuntu as a distro suitable for enterprise andOEM customers because they know that is where the money is but they just don't have the resources to do so. Consider for example when they shipped a beta of firefox in a LTS release because they didn't want and/or couldn't afford to have to backport fixes to the then current version of firefox for the life of the LTS release. Not to mention that thier defintion of long term support only looks long term when you compare it with thier 6-monthy "ricer" releases.

Its been fine for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I've not had any problem at all. I still prefer pidgin over empathy - i like the new webkit browser, epiphany. I don't like how the link between the power management on the display and the screensaver idle time is broken. You used to be able to set them to the same, and then when you adjusted one - the other would adjust with it.

It's blazingly fast to boot. I mean blazingly. 20 seconds to log in - 20 more seconds to going.....

My suspend works better on some computers. The new intel graphics driver is fantastic. I've got it on three different computers running both the 64 and the 32 bit version. It may have some bugs, but is no less buggy than any other release by any other vendor. And most bugs that i noticed have already been corrected in very frequent upgrades. Nice.

Its no wonder apple and micorsoft try not to let anything work on ubuntu. Sure, its no match for them now. But its come farther in its short life than they have. Iexpect that another 5 years will see some linux distro as solid and robust as windows and Mac. That's why they're a bit scared. Not for the present - but for the future....

Re:My experience

[jasonwc]

Sounds more like a BIOS issue. I've installed Windows 7 in both AHCI and IDE modes. Both work. The problem normally is that if you install in IDE mode and decide later to switch to native SATA (AHCI), you must change a registry setting or Windows won't boot properly as it won't have loaded the necessary SATA driver.

Have you upgraded your BIOS to the latest version? I actually found the Windows 7 install to be the easiest OS install I've ever done on Windows or Linux. All my hardware worked after booting. Gigabit LAN. Wireless setup during setup. SATA. eSATA. Audio drivers. They even had a fairly recent Nvidia driver allowing me to enter the system at 1920x1200 - not 800x600. I quickly updated my audio and video drivers and everything worked perfectly.

jfoc

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, if you're having a lot of issues don't upgrade your distro, just make a clean install, you'll notice that many of the bugs you had will dissapear. Upgrading ubuntu using the update commands will only give you a pain in the ass.

I switched.... Succesfuly. :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I switched to Ubuntu 9.10 just a week after the beta was out (the beta itself didn't work on my PC, but fortunately it got fixed), and I have to say... it works WAY better than the previous release for me :) FInally my (Intel, 8mb on board) video drivers work good enough to paly World of Goo, also compiz is now running smoothly.

I'm sorry, but I love the Koala :)

uh oh

[Anonymous Coward]

After each D upgrade you MUST remove the old python. It will fix at least 30% of all bugs.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer Debian-based distros because of the thousand of packages available and because the package manager is very fast and efficient. I have been a Ubuntu user for at least 3 years, testing alphas, betas, RCs and keeping my distro up-to-date. I had to stop using Ubuntu since 9.04 because it entirely broke my filesystem. What annoyed me is that the bug was reported in alpha stage, then in beta, then for the RCs and then for the final release and, as I continue to receive bugs reports regularly, I guess I has not been fixed yet. The quality and stability of the Ubuntu releases has been worsening and worsening which each new release since the last LTS version. This is a fact. I am currently used Kanotix because it is Debian, it is stable and it recognised and configured my hardware automatically (something that Debian and Ubuntu did not, for different reasons: Debian because of the old kernel and Ubuntu I do not know why). In addition, Kanotix, being Lenny-based has some more up-to-date packages. Do not get me wrong, the Debian guys are doing a great job and it is not by chance that Debian is the precursor of some of the most popular distros out there, such as Ubuntu itself. Ubuntu started very promisingly by providing an out-of-the-box beginner-friendly Debian experience. For a while I even thought it could compete with Windows. Now, it has become a fashionable distro for people who are not doing serious things with their computers. What is the point of sticking to the deadlines if they are going to release a system which is going to break many people's system. Let's listen for a while the Fedora (also a state-of-the-art GNU/Linux distro) philosophy and let's try to learn something from these guys:

"We're still pushing to make the Fedora 12 final release on time but without compromising on quality. It has been a little hairy over the last two days but we've got what we think is a solid package set in at last, and a first release candidate build has been cut. We still need to do some heavy testing on it and make a final call on whether we're going with the planned release schedule -- that will happen on Monday -- but at the moment I'm hopeful. We'll make the right decision either way, if we ought to slip the release we will do, and Fedora 12 should be one of the highest quality Fedora releases for a while."

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

My parents upgraded their computer to 9.10 to 9.04 It wasn't able to do a complete upgrade (no space left on /), So I made some space and continued the upgrade. For the most part it was fine. I had a problem with NVidia drivers but it wasn't hard to fix. Other than that the upgrade went fine.

Need explanation of status of releases

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be useful if Canonical would explain how releases work:

Will a downloaded version ever change? For example if 9.10 has broken networking - if I delay say 3 months, will a downnloaded 9.10 have this fixed?

What happens to a user if a given release has broken networking? What does Canonical expect a user to do next?

If networking is OK, then will updates gradually make the release more stable? Or will it just bring in software that may or may not be OK?

Karmic Koala Update

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed KK and when I got online for updates and downloaded them and rebooted, Ubuntu 9.10 completely failed to find the kernel and the partition. I lost 15 GB of data, luckily I had backed up. I uninstalled Ubuntu Karmic Koala using WUBI and just use my boring but safe Windows XP instead.

To Hell With It

[mountainman2307]

So, it's not an LTS, big deal. Isn't that what open-source is all about? I'm not going to rely on Canonical to maintain my computer, I'm going to fix the damn problem. For example, Win3.1 still has software/drivers being written for it. But to be on topic, my upgrade from 9.04 was mostly flawless. I did have a few kernel conflicts after resuming from sleep mode, but nothing more.

Application Problems

[KGF2009]

Mostly, when I first upgraded to Karmic, I had problems with the applications I had on there. Most applications that used any kind of sound crashed on start, with an error relating to the registry I can't remember anymore. It had some sound issues with the programs that didn't crash as well. However, I did quickly dispatch these problems by downloading a disc of 9.10 and doing a fresh install. That fixed everything right away, now I have no problems with the Koala.