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Ubuntu LTS Experiences X.org Memory Leak
MonsterTrimble writes "Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 2 is experiencing a major memory leak due to patches for X.org. 'An X.Org Server update that was pushed into the Lucid repository last week has resulted in the system being slower and slower as it is left on, until it reaches a point where the system is no longer usable. ... In order to make the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS deadline, the developers are looking at just reverting three of the patches, which brings the GLX version back to 1.2. Ubuntu developers are now desperate for people willing to test out this updated X.Org Server package so they can determine by this Friday whether to ship it with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or doing an early SRU (Stable Release Update). Right now this X.Org Server that's being tested is living in the ubuntu-x-swat PPA.'"
It works great on my Dell Mini 9, and I dual-boot it on my gaming machine for WINE experimentation.
Living With a Nerd
How come this wasn't caught when they were profiling? Notice I said "when" - the X.org people aren't seriously deploying patches to such a crucial app without profiling first, are they?
9.10 works like a charm on my netbook, and I have 8.04 (the last LTS release) running on a few servers. The length of security patch support on the LTS releases is quite attractive for servers that don't need to be bleeding edge.
It's getting popular, better tear it down, and kill it!
It's funny how when a FOSS project gets to a certain level of popularity (Firefox, Ubuntu) there seem to be a vocal group of people that try to tear them down. Oh my god, a version of Linux that is nearly user friendly, it's not hardcore enough for me!
Um, they are calling you because they want your help to figure it out.
It is a concept known as "Open Source".
I just read what you linked to in your sig. Absolutely friggin' hilarious. Thank you for making this Wednesday awesome :-)
Living With a Nerd
When I first heard about Ubuntu, I thought to myself, "Great, a user friendly Linux distro!" Then I had chance to actually try and use it.
Not impressed. Not at all. It's user friendly, to a point.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Actually, I run Ubuntu variants on two of my three computers at home - Lubuntu on my laptop and Kubuntu on my desktop. I have no desire to see Ubuntu torn down - I simply thought this was news
Wait - GETTING popular? Ubuntu has been the most popular distro for ages! Or were you talking about X.org? ;)
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Don’t they have forums for people who are actively working on it? Wouldn’t those be the logical place to get help?
Slashdot is a great place to get wild speculation from armchair engineers, internet lawyers, and the occasional insensitive clod, but I don’t think this is news. Not yet, anyway.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I've even heard that some of its users are (gasp) not programmers. It's too mainstream for my elitist taste! :P
(Using it since 8.10)
This is the reason why hard release schedules kill Ubuntu. The devs slipped 6.04 to 6.06 for similar reasons, and the release was great. Contrast that with the scramble to get 8.04 released on time and then look at the mess it was in when it was delivered. It wasn't stable until 8.04.1. Ubuntu needs to be more flexible. Slip a month, fix this problem, then release. No biggie.
Why not hold the release until the bug is fixed ?
Yes, I know it's hard to believe, but the most popular desktop Linux distribution on the planet is indeed still in use. We're still waiting on a report to confirm if anyone is still using Windows or drinking Pepsi.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
And then Red Hat 6 Beta is released. We need a Glenn Beck of Linux. "Now I'm not saying that the X.org was attacked by radical Red-followers...well actually yes I am."
The Ubuntu Wiki has details on this issue at the GEMLeak entry. It provides instructions on how to upgrade to (and remove) the candidate packages in the PPA. This comment is worthy of note for those already on Lucid:
This does not affect cards using proprietary drivers or not using DRI2. Intel will always be affected since DRI2 is used with and without KMS, ATI uses DRI1 without KMS.
I understand that fixed release dates are useful for planning, but I think Ubuntu has put too much emphasis on them. Software should not be released until it is ready.
The idea of releasing it on schedule, with this big bug in it, and then issuing a quick fix when it is ready (one of the options discussed) is silly and rather deceptive. If what they have on April 30th is only beta quality then don't call it a release just so you can say that you stuck to your schedule.
When I first heard about Ubuntu, I thought to myself, "Great, a user friendly Linux distro!"
When I first heard it I thought "that's the stupidest fucking name I've ever heard".
Then when I first tried it I thought "Man that is WAY too much brown and orange.".
Overall though, if you ignore the name, and change your theme around to something a bit more pleasant, it's really pretty slick. If anything has a chance to get people adopt Linux for general usage, Ubuntu is it.
Either that or LinuxMint, which is effectively "Ubuntu with the ugly removed".
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Just like every other consumer device.
Including the iPad and Apple's various other products.
It's not just FOSS projects, but pretty much anything that people think they can use to make themselves unique. Music, movies, books, cars... There are always groups of people who were the "first" to enjoy something, then when it becomes popular they begin to loath it for no other reason than it is popular.
You've all got to help them FAST!
Because the world would, you know, end in a fiery ball of flaming death if the LTS ended up being 10.05!
(This policy is why I replaced Ubuntu on my desktop)
Ever since I upgraded Ubuntu to v9.4 last Spring, my x.org has been crashing it anywhere from startup to a couple days uptime. There's no signs of trouble in the syslog, or any other logs, no signs of trouble anywhere until it freezes (cursor screenfreeze, but background processes like wget piped to madplay for streaming usually continue). I know it's x.org because if I disable (only) x.org and leave the console-only version running, it doesn't freeze even after a few days.
I'm running on an Dell tower with a P4/2.4GHz and integrated Intel graphics chip. I thought some upgrades in the past year would fix the bug, but they haven't. If there's no fix sometime after v10.4, I'll have to get new HW, and seriously demote my respect for Ubuntu.
--
make install -not war
Either that or LinuxMint, which is effectively "Ubuntu with the ugly removed".
... and Flash installed OOTB.
Still no love for ATI cards, though.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
If you read the wiki page referenced carefully, it would seem that the general consensus is that the bug is fixed in the testing packages. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Testing/GEMLeak Seems a bit blown out of proportion to me.
The majority of the complaints against Ubuntu that I have seen do not deal with the popularity or the user friendliness.
Instead, they focus on things like the poor signal to noise ratio in support forums, and the cowboy, flying by the seat of the pants approach they take towards to the X server. There's far too many critical Xorg bugs in most releases, and this usually stems from all the extra patches they apply to Xorg and their strict adherence to release dates.
and that's why I don't use them. You've brought up a very good point.
In soviet Russia, God creates you!
10.04 is supposed to be a LTS release, and they are nearing their deadline. Roll back to the "stable" version of X, and push these patches forward to 10.10. Anyone who cares about having the latest and greatest will roll along with the 6 month release cycle.
chown -R us.
Which would be why they sent that to their -dev mailing list.
You do know the difference between someone sending a request, and someone else reporting on that request, and someone else reporting on someone else reporting on that request?
Right???
Overall though, if you ignore the name, and change your theme around to something a bit more pleasant, it's really pretty slick. If anything has a chance to get people adopt Linux for general usage, Ubuntu is it.
Either that or LinuxMint, which is effectively "Ubuntu with the ugly removed".
Kubuntu is a little bit prettier with it's KDE interface and still has the same polish, but I don't think anyone who is trying Linux for the first time would grab it over Ubuntu (as it's not that well advertised, I'm sure partially to not confuse first time users).
The troll with karma.
A hundred Slashdot readers flooding them with bug reports at the last minute probably won't help either.
When I first heard about Ubuntu, I thought to myself, "Great, a user friendly Linux distro!" Then I had chance to actually try and use it.
Not impressed. Not at all. It's user friendly, to a point.
I'm sure the distro you made is much better.
According to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Testing/GEMLeak , then you ARE SAFE!!
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
> system being slower and slower as it is left on, until it reaches
> a point where the system is no longer usable
At last Linux is feature-complete with MS Windows and ready for the desktop!
... and Flash installed OOTB.
Because that's what all the best operating systems do, including OSX, Windows 7, iPhone, Palm....Oh, wait.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
This isn't the only video problem in the Lucid Lynx betas. Since upgrading, I've been having a problem where x.org sometimes fails to start up when I boot. Presumably this is a separate problem from the one described in TFA, since you wouldn't expect to see a memory leak's effects showing up at boot time.
Jaunty and Karmic were really terrible releases, IMO. The good news for me is that sound, which broke when I upgraded to Jaunty, is now working for me again with Lucid. I'm hoping that Lucid gets nice and stable over the long lifetime it will have as an LTS release. In the past, I'd been upgrading ubuntu steadily rather than waiting for the next LTS, mainly because I wanted my apps upgraded. That was such a miserable experience that I'm planning not to do it anymore; I'll just stay with Lucid until the next LTS.
I like debian and ubuntu better than the other OSS systems I've used (Mandrake, Red Hat, FreeBSD), but this close tie-in between updating apps and updating the OS can really be a pain. The OS-level tweaking has never made my life any better. As a user, I couldn't care less about stuff like OSS versus ALSA. I would really love it if ubuntu would focus more on fixing bugs in the OS while keeping applications up to date, but not gratuitously breaking stuff in the OS just because they want to be on the cutting edge.
Another thing can be a drag about ubuntu is that they aren't very careful at all about keeping Gnome separate from the underlying OS. Anyone who uses a WM other than Gnome with ubuntu is going to run into lots of things that don't work properly, because the developers always seem to feel free to make changes without testing them on any other WM. For example, here is a bug in xsplash. It causes problems for people who aren't using Gnome. You know you're in trouble when you have functions whose names begin with "temporary_hack..." This one was not a bug in a beta, BTW, but a bug in a real release.
Find free books.
right up until you have hardware that needs something special to work, for example, "if up eth0; mii-tool -A 10baseT-FD,10BaseT-HD ; $(get dhcp lease" Skip the mii-tool step and the card drops 98% of packets, use it and it is rock solid. nice and easy in gentoo using the post-up function. Pain in the ass on debian/ubuntu.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
Seriously, they need to hide their source code better, so random incompetent people off the street don't mess with it. What, do they just let ANYONE see it?
Ubuntu has chosen for a fixed release, it is a tactic, one of many to deal with the reality of running a Linux distro.
Others do a rolling release, this means they can release a new version of any package when it is ready but means you are near constantly updating and if you don't, you risk missing out on a change that turns out to be essential (going form 6-8 might miss an essential config from 7).
Ubuntu however now faces a near impossible choice of which version to go for. If they wait other packages will have new versions and their release will become older and older.
And lets face it, this method works for MS. If MS had done what you suggested, Vista would not have been released until all drivers for it had been fixed.
If you don't want to risk Ubuntu, use something like arch linux instead. Or gentoo :p
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Vocal minorities increase at least linearly with the existing user base. A larger community always means more complainers.
Bye!
I actually worked on a friend's new Win 7 HP laptop, and I was a bit surprised to see that it came with Flash, Java, and Adobe Reader installed OOTB.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
It is very similar to the Music scene that way. It is very cool to be in the know of some awesome local band, but as soon as they get airplay and make a record all the cool wears off for the hipsters. "I used to go see them at all the local shows, but then they sold out."
Same mentality.
-- Hail Eris
From the perspective of popular OSS projects:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NMGsRmZTFQ
"Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig." - Bertrand Russell
Be glad you added "Most" to your sentence, or this Ubuntu user would BUST YOUR ASS.
But, really, I get what you mean; yet, it isn't just Ubuntu users that are idiots, it's the new wave of Linux users that hang around forums saying: "Why 1s my L1neks so not cool like like a windows I know it can be cool but a windows virus and linkx not ubuntu good!"
Idiots, those users.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
but... Linux doesn't have bugs!
Sure it does.
The point is that they get found and then get fixed fast.
Ubuntu's problem occurred because they have a shipping deadline and a really bad bug got inserted late and detected about a week from the scheduled release. So there's not much time left for testing a fix, another if the first fails, rinse-and-repeat...
Deadlines: "The light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming locomotive."
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
My biggest issue with it is that there are essentially no updates in between releases. NONE. Now I don't need bleeding edge, but it would be nice to not have to wait for the next release for updated software (to mean in this case minor bug and security fixes).
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Yet Ubuntu isn't an iPad. It's an operating system. To not have an easy way to remove outmoded software and install your own is inherent brokenness.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
When is the last time you've made a distro?
Like I said. Ubuntu is user friendly, to a point. I don't use it because I know of better distro's out there. I'm not completely knocking Ubuntu here, despite what you may believe.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
The length of security patch support on the LTS releases is quite attractive for servers that don't need to be bleeding edge.
Not compared to Debian.
I operate a number of servers running Ubuntu, due to decisions made in the past. Inertia is enough to keep us on the platform, in the sense that I don't object strongly enough to go through the pain of migrating them to another distro. The servers run well enough, I suppose, but there's nothing particularly attractive about running Ubuntu on them.
Where servers are concerned, conservatism is a virtue, and Debian Stable is my favourite brand of conservatism. I find it philosophically unappealing to be running on Testing and/or Unstable (which, effectively, is what Ubuntu is) because the benefits don't outweigh the liabilities. Happily, my servers have behaved well so far, in part because I use minimally simple configurations, I check everything that happens on them all the time and I read the changelogs before I patch.
On the desktop, however, I quite like Ubuntu. Pushing out closer to the edge in order to get better hardware support and cool features really appeals to me, because the promise of an improved user experience makes it worth enduring a few nagging issues.
That said, Lucid and Karmic have a few bugs that are really silly. One recent one is the Edit Network Connections applet which (rightly) disables the 'Apply' button when there's only partial address information, but never re-enables it. This is a really basic programming mistake, and frankly I'm amazed it was never caught. Issues with removable devices have become increasingly bothersome as well. Karmic saw intermittent problems mounting CDs as well as USB disks and flash drives.
Most -if not all- of these issues can be laid squarely at the feet of the GNOME devs, who seem to be making more and more amateur mistakes at every release. I'm starting to wonder if they have any QA & testing environment at all. But Ubuntu has made its bed by tightly aligning itself with GNOME's release schedule, so they get to share the blame.
As a poster just below observed, becoming popular makes you a target for criticism. I don't really see a problem (or a contradiction) there. While I support Ubuntu and suggest it to anyone who asks, I still think that prominence means that they should be prepared to meet a higher standard and to address such criticism effectively.
Full marks to them, by the way, for getting out ahead of this issue. If this were a proprietary OS, we'd likely have to wait for the first Service Pack before this issue was addressed. (And of course, it wouldn't be documented except for numerous blog and forum posts peppered across the Web.)
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
I didn't even get my install to boot up!
A memory leak would have been luxury...
If they are willingly shipping with major bugs, they are tearing it down themselves.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Ubuntu developers are now desperate for people willing to test out this updated X.Org Server package so they can determine by this Friday whether to ship it with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or doing an early SRU (Stable Release Update).
They should have thought that before antagonizing over 80% of the tester community with the windows button issue.
Yes, it IS a petty issue, the problem is that everybody said "We don want it, please revert pretty please" and Mark was like "Thank you, your opinions are very valuable, however, just bite it".
So I'm not surprised at all if the tester community feels withdrawn. There is a growing feeling that the opinions of the community are being soundly ignored, for instance these (public) statements from the bug tracker I'm going to reproduce without permission:
Jef Spaleta:
First of all I think you put too much weight behind Brainstorm as a tool
to drive change inside Ubuntu. You actually shouldn't be at all
surprised that Brainstorm popularity has very little influence over
design decisions. It's never had influence in any technical decision
making and no one in a position of authority inside Canonical or Ubuntu
governance has ever claimed that it has. Canonical nor the external
Ubuntu governance structures make it a policy to rely heavily or to even
officially review highly popular ideas in Brainstorm on a regular basis
or part of technical decision making or public governance discussion.
Were highly popular Brainstorm ideas even discussed in an organized
session during the UDS in the run up to 10.04?
The track record of implemented ideas backs up my point. You look
really closely at the ideas marked implemented in Brainstorm and they
are at best mediocre in terms of Brainstorm popularity. None of the
highly popular ideas in Brainstorm get implemented..or even discussed
publicly as a matter of technical decision making or governance. Take
for example the music store idea. It has a negative voting total and is
marked implemented.
It's wishful thinking to suggest that Brainstorm popularity plays an
important role in decision making. It doesn't. At best brainstorm is a
dumping ground for random ideas. There's no evidence that the voting
process correlates with feature development or decision making at all.
The thing is, Ubuntu has dropped the ball massively with this release, there is simply nothing good about the new release, worse still is that it lost contact with its user base, most of the decisions are now either politically or corporately motivated, or driven by the team of Cupertino rejects that Mark appointed to drive Ubuntu development.
But really, this is interesting, I'll get some marsh mellows and enjoy the fireworks. The question no longer is if Lucid is going to be an embarrassment but whether Mark will learn anything from it. If Mark learns a lesson it's well worth it.
I really loved ubuntu, I want to love it again, but right now, I'm just deciding whether to switch to mint or debian.
But... the future refused to change.
Not impressed. Not at all. It's user friendly, to a point.
I felt the same thing about Windows Vista and Windows 7.
Someday microsoft will finally make a user friendly OS.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You can get closer to the bleeding edge by first turning on the official backports repository, where packages heading for the next release are also backported to the current. Tends to be more useful in select occasions on an LTS release though.
Or better still (but slightly riskier) is to see if there's a PPA from a trustworthy source for any packages you particularly care about. Some of the newer desktop apps really benefit from this. You just add it to your list of sources and updates are pulled in along with all the rest. I use this for about three or four particular packages.
Um, what? /etc/network/interfaces forever. I've been adding routes, setting up VPN bridges, enabling firewalls, setting up UPnP routes, and doing all sorts of things with that for ages. Adding in a command to run mii-tool sounds trivial.
Debian (and by extension, ubuntu) has had the ability to add things like this to
Did you not know about that file, or was there something about it that was undiscoverable/not doable for you?
I think most people's issue with Ubuntu is it's overhyped. It is not anywhere near idiot-proof enough nor stable enough to be the everyman's Linux, yet it is preached as the holy gospel of Linux usability. Every one of Ubuntu's failures is amplified tenfold, due to its high visibility, making it all the more embarrassing and demoralizing. It is also difficult to support due to its audience of often less technically inclined users.
(l)User: My firefox is broken!
Dev: Um no, it's fine, you just can't install Comet Cursors on Ubuntu.
(l)User: Ubuntu sucks! You should drop everything and give me my comet cursors NAO! Also I installed this awesome web site that defrags the kernel to make it go faster YOU SHOULD USE IT ALOT!
Dev: No. Eat a bag of dicks until you die.
And so having all these (l)Users posting their every juvenile whim on the support forum, leads to a bit of resentment. It's a necessary pain (for the devs), but it is a lot more pain than they're used to. To us hardcore guys, it also means resources are shifted away from power features in favor of mindless creature comforts and eye-candy.
Yes, as a hardcore user, I am a bit jealous. Thank god for Gentoo!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
It's funny how when a FOSS project gets to a certain level of popularity (Firefox, Ubuntu) there seem to be a vocal group of people that try to tear them down.
That's kind of a pointless statement. There's also a vocal group of people who talk it up every chance they get and actively shut down anyone who points out that there might be room for improvement.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
I don't either. I'm only using XP now because the computer I'm using came with a fresh, legit, OEM copy of XP and I'm only paying $100 for the whole rig. I'm probably going to eventually do a binary install of FBSD-8.0, but for right now I'm just happy to have a computer (my other computer is having hardware issues).
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I did that when I was running Debian (Woody) and had nothing but problems with packages not installing (all binary sources, in this particular case it was for the next release of KDE (I believe it was 3.0 or some such) and I was using the KDE repositories) because of dependencies. No thanks.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
"I'm sure the distro you made is much better."
One need not be a chef to choose between restaurants.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Contrast that with the scramble to get 8.04 released on time and then look at the mess it was in when it was delivered. It wasn't stable until 8.04.1.
IIRC, the biggest push to create an 8.04.1 release in July of '08 was the debian SSL/SSH encryption key bug: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/13/1533212&from=rss
I can understand their zeal with keeping to a consistent release schedule. One of the reasons for starting the project was that Debian releases were slowing down and unpredictable. The steady release schedule is somewhat like public transportation: nobody will use a bus or train system if it operates on an erratic timetable, no matter what the benefits are.
That said, I think you're right about letting the LTS slip a month or two here or there. But that's probably unnecessary for their other releases.
but... Linux doesn't have bugs!!
Well indeed, but Linux is just the kernel, what we are talking about here is X.org. SCNR.
The length of security patch support on the LTS releases is quite attractive for servers that don't need to be bleeding edge.
Not compared to Debian.
Where I don't have Ubuntu running I have Debian, but while Debian/Stable is arguably more stable than Ubuntu LTS and often more up-to-date releases do drop out of security support sooner than Ubuntu/LTS releases.
As reliable as upgrading Debian is (I've bumped many machines Woody->Sarge, Sarge->Etch, Etch->Lenny and so on with no serious problems and the only minor ones being my responsibility) a remote full distro update (kernel + libc + everything else) is still something I'd prefer to do less often if possible and Ubuntu's extended support period increases the chance that a machine will be decommissioned and brought in for rebuild/repurposing before it is needed at all.
So on physical machines that not usually local to me I generally go for Ubuntu/LTS. For servers that are local (so can I can get to a physical console if there is a nasty issue) or need to be a little more up-to-date usually Debian/Stable. For the desktop/portable, usually a recent Ubuntu. Both are good distributions and even these days very similar from a server PoV (I've not used Debian on a desktop/laptop for a while, they may have diverged more in that arena) so the choice comes down to where we are in release cycles, how up-to-date the machine needs to be in terns of package versions, and how remote a location the machine is going to live in.
Tried http://getdeb.net/ and http://playdeb.net/ yet?
Yes, I know it's hard to believe, but the most hyped desktop Linux distribution on the planet is indeed still in use.
Fixed that for you. Fedora claims about twice as many active users as Canonical does, and most people consider it to be a desktop Linux distro. Obviously differences in counting methods make it hard to tell with any certainty which one we can accurately call the most popular, but perhaps many of us can at least agree that Ubuntu is undoubtedly the most hyped Linux distro ever. I don't say that to denigrate Ubuntu; I think Canonical's marketing arm is doing fabulous work.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
Full marks to them, by the way, for getting out ahead of this issue. If this were a proprietary OS, we'd likely have to wait for the first Service Pack before this issue was addressed. (And of course, it wouldn't be documented except for numerous blog and forum posts peppered across the Web.)
Full agreement there. Even certain other players in the Linux market might be less "good" in this respect. While Debian's mailing lists can be a brutal place to exist if you are neither omnipotent nor immortal (or at least flameproof), both their core contributors and the Ubuntu equivalents seem to attribute openness the value it deserves more than most do.
yes.
uh huh, yup.
Dammit, now i'm confused. Would someone please backport this question to the parent?
I don't know... removing programs with Synaptic or Ubuntu's Software Center always seemed fairly straightforward to me. Heck, I'm running OO.org 3.2 on my laptop and it has Ubuntu 8.10 installed on it, which originally came with (if I remember correctly) OO.org 2.
I just picked up a couple laptops - one each for me and the wife. I would prefer to put the next LTS on them rather than an older release followed by an upgrade within weeks. B-(
(But if we have to wait a bit for the LTS release to be a GOOD one, or have a backrev of a major component that needs an upgrade in a month or so, that's the breaks.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If upgrades are a server issue, maybe you should be using bsd. Just saying ...
Here - let me fix that for you : "I've even heard that some of its users are (gasp) .NET programmers".
Macintosh Mouse Envy?
And like the one-button mouse, obsolete. Wipe it down and install a real distro already ... one that's not so fugly and not so "we want to be the Windows Experience of the Linux world."
Both Fedora and opensuse have more users. And with the latest b0rkage ...
Fedora claims about twice as many active users as Canonical does, and most people consider it to be a desktop Linux distro. ... many of us can at least agree that Ubuntu is undoubtedly the most hyped Linux distro ever.
I dropped Red Hat for my next upgrade when Red Hat dropped its non-corporate customers. Hurrah for the community picking up support when the company bailed - but my die was cast.
When I next did an install (Gutsy came out two days after I got serious about migrating to my new work laptop) my experience convinced me that Ubuntu had made it to prime time - especially for me, as somebody who COULD dig into the guts to admin it but now had other things to do with that time.
At this point I see no other distribution with significant advantages for me, let alone a big enough edge to pay for the additional effort of switching. And now that my wife's vertigo is under control and she's looking at making the move from Windows to "a real OS" and possibly digging into its guts later, I have no problem recommending it as a starter platform for her as well.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
During its development cycle, Ubuntu is called by its code name "Lucid Lynx".
Only once it's released will it become Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.
Notepad specialist & FAT administrator, group training available
As a full-headed 48 year old cohabiting Linux-using uncle who wears a ratty AC/DC t-shirt over my belly, I strongly object to your generalisation!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I agree with your sentiment, but I think there is something to be said for small, light software, and that most OSS projects begin small and light for obvious reasons and then mature into huge, bloated pigs like Firefox. People who like small, light software are forced to continuously downgrade to newer, shittier software. This even happened to Scheme, which started out as a programming language whose spec could be printed on a handful of pages but which recently ballooned into three or four documents adding up to about 200 pages. If you believe removed code is debugged code, what's added code?
That said, the main thing I don't understand about the big distros is why they do so much patching in the first place. You often hear about kernel instabilities caused by distro maintainers applying patches that weren't accepted by the kernel team for good reason. Why monkey with stuff you don't understand? This is another reason I've preferred Gentoo and Arch, and, when possible, FreeBSD over Linux.
Sounded like at least one voice missed the note a couple postings back. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Debian support for the previous stable releases is very weak: only one year after the next stable release. Assuming a stable release every two years, that's worse than Ubuntu LTS's 5 years for servers, and worse than RHEL's 7 year support.
Kubuntu is a little bit prettier with it's KDE interface and still has the same polish, but I don't think anyone who is trying Linux for the first time would grab it over Ubuntu (as it's not that well advertised, I'm sure partially to not confuse first time users).
If by prettier, you mean it looks like the Canonical Development "team" used the same Fat Crayolas that Microsoft uses for making the UI, then yes, I agree.
And don't get me started on the way the KDE software installer runs as opposed to Gnome... things could get ugly.
You might think, just wait for the X.Org thing to be fixed, then release.... but what about every other part of the operating system. If you wait until every single part is stable at the same time, you would never release. So, what you need to do is simply use the most recent stable version. If that means that the latest-and-greatest gee-I-wish-it-was-in-this-version has to wait for next version, so be it.
If you hold up the release for X.Org's latest and greatest, do you hold up for Gnome's, for the kernel's, for Firefox's, for the filesystem.... etc.
It doesn't mean release buggy stuff. It means release what works, even if it means rolling back to an earlier version.
And for anyone who would respond with 'If they don't wait for the bug fix, they are releasing a buggy version', keep in mind that I expect that every major part of any major OS is going to have a bug list. The only software that I know of that waits until all bugs are fixed before releasing is DNF.
Vorbis and Theora as both tributes to characters in Terry Pratchett novels.
http://www.mhall119.com
Ironically, Mac OS X does include Flash Player.
Actually... Wasn't there a deal shortly after OS X 10.6 came out that Apple had shipped an older version of Flash and that would cause security issues to come back when upgrading? And wouldn't that mean that flash is installed OOTB?
With Debian Stable I have to install lots of software from source because the supported versions are so pathetically outdated. This causes the system to be... less stable.
LTS release schedules are more stable and less work to maintain because they typically have all the software I need in their supported repositories.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
### eix-sync: /usr/local/portage/layman/kde/Documentation && sh ./metadata-sync /var/tmp/portage/* # cleanup stuff from those failed packages /usr/src && ln -sfn linux-* linux && cd linux /boot/.config .
layman -S
emerge --sync
egencache --repo=local --update
cd
emerge --regen || echo "“emerge --regen” has returned the error status $?."
eix-update
eix-remote update
### update
emerge -auDNtv --keep-going world # press y<enter>
# Circumvent or fix a bazillion non-working packages, and run “emerge -auDNtv world” again... for a couple of times, until you got everything working or masked.
haskell-updater
etc-update # walk trough a ton of fils
eselect news read new
# Apply changes from news.
### cleanup
revdep-rebuild
emerge -a --depclean
rm -rf
### kernel
cd
cp
make oldconfig
make
make modules_install
make install # runs self-written installkernel script. answer questions, if they occur.
reboot
# Go hunt the forums and IRC for at least half an hour, to get everything that previously worked to work again, and file at least one bug on bugzilla for whatever you couldn’t fix this time. Get called an idiot or banned for trolling at least once while in your usual rage phase, because you weren’t already born with the knowledge, that from last month on, massive architectural changes are sometimes notified in overlay SVN commit messages, scrolling by and away at 50 lines a second.
Easy peasy. Who needs long-term stable platforms?
</sarcasm> (...and they wonder why I’m angry...)
P.S.: Yes, this was what I actually spent my whole last weekend with. :( Please Ubuntu, adopt Paludis!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Lucid Lynx added two new themes, Ambiance and Radiance. Only in those two themes do the buttons move to the left. In all the other themes, including the default theme from the previous release, the buttons are still on the right.
I thought that moving the buttons was really annoying -- until I actually used the new theme, when I discovered it didn't bother me in the slightest.
If it's not going to be 09.04, then I'm not going to bother paying attention.
--
make install -not war
My main server is running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS with a few VMWare Server based VMs, I'd been waiting for 10.04 before upgrading the main drive to an SSD, and planned on doing that after the 10.04 LTS release.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
People aren't criticizing Ubuntu because it's becoming too easy to use and bug-free without a lot of manual configuration.
They're criticizing it because Ubuntu is
-Making itself deliberately harder for normal users to figure out
-Preferring putting buggy beta modules into releases (even LTS!) to stability
-Not giving respect and listening to the user community
They're basically doing everything that makes things harder for the newbies that people like us tell to try Ubuntu.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Most people here are unimpressed with Ubuntu's usability. I am pretty impressed, as I see regular highschool/college kids installing it on their desktops and laptops and being able to do everything they want to. Not just Linux nerds, just people (including girls) who don't have a particular interest in computers, but don't want to use Windows or OSX. That's something I've never seen with any other Linux distribution. Using one of the other distros means you know how to use a terminal, and probably have been using linux since the time when you had to compile most programs on your box.
Because it takes an *entire* *minute* to install Flash. Hell, it's even a plugin for firefox now; just go to a site with flash and it auto-prompts you.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Vorbis and Theora as both tributes to characters in Terry Pratchett novels.
Ah! ;)
I'm just reading Small Gods for the first time (I'd somehow missed that one), and I was thinking it was a funny coincidence that there was a character named Vorbis
In that case, I would assume Ogg is another reference.
my trust in OSS.
I've been an open source user and developer since long before there was a Linux. And, I've been a Linux user for a long time. Used Redhat, Debian, and now Ubuntu. I've been using Ubuntu since 5 something. I like Ubuntu. It is easy to install, gets easier all the time. It works, which is really nice. And, it has very good support for things like Flash and proprietary graphics card drivers. You can complain that it doesn't have some detail covered that is critical to you, but that's OK. I've been very happy with Ubuntu.
Well, I was. I always try to test the alpha and beta releases. In the early days I could down load the first alpha and it would work. It might get a little weird, but it would work. In the worst case I can remember the computer would at least boot up to the command prompt. That is until the 10.4 release. That just plain wouldn't boot until we got to alpha 3. It wouldn't even install. It has been awful ever since. I don't know if it is a problem with X.org, but every time I type in the search field on firefox I get a black screen. After a few seconds the login screen comes up and I can login. The machine did not reboot. It looks like typing in the search field on firefox is crashing the X server. Now, back in the early '90s I helped get a little program called xcrashme written and distributed and after that was around for a few years the X server was damned near bullet proof. What did they do to mess it up so badly? I went to file a bug report. It turned out to be a duplicate. Seems a lot of people have reported the problem. I haven't seen any action on it.
Then there is the little thing about the user interface in 10.4. Nobody in their right mind, at least no body who had any respect for their users, would change something as basic as the location and order of the window buttons. But, Shuttleworth has done just that. The reason? To make room for a "cool" something that will appear in a later version of Ubuntu. The only discussion involved in the decision was the coolness of the feature and the vague technical argument that somehow it reduces mouse movement, because the buttons are now on the same side of the screen as the menus. Oh, yeah, like the amount of time anyone spends opening new apps is worth retraining your hands to find the new buttons. On the bug discussion list Shuttleworth would not even admit that human factors might have some validity in the discussion. Only the coolness and the bullshit argument about mouse movement were treated as worthy of consideration. Shuttleworth even posted data showing his own mouse movement. The data did not support moving the buttons. But, he claimed it did. He saw what he wanted to see. After all, the new thing is so cool we should all be grateful for the inconvenience.
Why doesn't Ubuntu care about the effect the change will have on their customers? Because they have no customers. They are in it to be cool and to score techie points with other people who do not understand why proprietary software actually tries not to piss off their customers. If you don't believe me ask a human factors engineer why purple is an awful background color for a GUI and then ask what percentage of the public can read light gray text on a dark gray background. Then look at the new Ubuntu default theme. It sure is "cool". I used ssh -Y to log in from a computer with a different theme so I could work select a readable theme and move the buttons back to where I'm used to having them.
The backlash from the users has been astonishing. Even more astonishing is Shuttleworth's "I'm to cool to care" attitude.
At least for now you can move the buttons back and choose another theme. What happens when he puts his uber cool new feature into the UI? I guess I am looking for a new Linux distribution.
That was bad enough... But, then I ran into OO.o Issue #956 (http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=956). Have you heard about this one? It was filed May 25, 2001. For comparison current issue numbers for OO.o are now above 110,000.
Kubuntu is a little bit prettier with it's KDE interface and still has the same polish, but I don't think anyone who is trying Linux for the first time would grab it over Ubuntu (as it's not that well advertised, I'm sure partially to not confuse first time users).
My issue there is I've tried running Kubuntu and found it very unstable. I think it was version 9.04 I tried. Wanted to see what the difference would be compared to basic Ubuntu so I did a complete wipe of my computer to give Kubuntu a fresh start. And it was downhill from there. I've gone back to Ubuntu and haven't bothered to risk trying Kubuntu again.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Hrmm, I actually think The GIMP is one of the greatest names ever. I love the look on people's faces when I suggest they try The GIMP for image editing. Why can't software have a sense of humour?
Kubuntu isn't even remotely usable.
Funny, seems fine to me, and I'm no linux expert. It had some stability issues around 9.04, but 9.10 is pretty darn good. I'm running it on an old original P4 and it's snappier than windows XP was (which was still pretty good really). Also, I'm not aware of any situation where you can't edit the config files rather than use the GUI if that is what you prefer (I tend to do this for some things out of habit).
> LTS release schedules are more stable and less work to maintain because they typically have all the software I need in their supported repositories.
I agree, the LTS release schedule looks very convenient. But we have to see how it works out, this is only the first time that Ubuntu supports LTS -> LTS upgrade directly without going through intermediate repositories. It worked quite well for me, so no complaints at this point.
When I first heard about Ubuntu, I thought to myself, "Great, a user friendly Linux distro!" Then I had chance to actually try and use it.
Not impressed. Not at all. It's user friendly, to a point.
My experience is similar. Installation is really easy and painless. Well, unless you have some unusual piece of hardware of course, but then the Ubuntu wiki and forums are extremely helpful. (Getting my Belkin wifi card working in Windows was a lot more painful.)
User friendly installation is definitely a huge improvement over the Linux distributions I used before Ubuntu. But a user friendly OS? Not really. It's not awful, but if I called the shots, I'd kick out Gnome, stay away from KDE and come up with something better.
I have xubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 2 installed on my laptop. Everything works except screen locking on suspend. I was expecting a few problems but got none.
The ubuntu team have done a really great job with 10.04.
Although you have a point, sometimes I think it's better to constantly upgrade on non mission critical systems because if at some point in the future you need to upgrade it's 100x times more difficult than applying small upgrades.
Regarding the repository, I think after some time they move the old repositories to archives and you need to change the package manager configuration in order for it to work (At least in ubuntu that is the case)
Debian Woody? That was almost ten years ago. I'm not sure it's reasonable to compare experience from then to now.
In any case, I don't think I'd try it for something as big as KDE, but for smaller packages I've never had a problem.
Yeah. They certainly tend not to backport anything where there's a measure of risk. But then that's part of the trade-off. Stability vs latest. If you absolutely need the latest and greatest then Ubuntu is not the right distro.
they should have said "fuck the deadline, we want a stable and modern system."
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
It is not always the case that Debian is far behind though. Current Debian/Stable (Lenny) is more up-to-date in some areas than current Ubuntu/LTS (8.04). Not as far ahead as release dates might suggest (as Ubuntu releases tend to be closer to Debian/Testing and Debian/Stable at point of release) but still ahead.
I don't run Debian anymore. I was describing a problem I used to have with Debian. Used to in the sense that I no longer run anything Debian based and everyone I know personally is moving away from Debian to something better (in this case away from Linux completely and into FreeBSD).
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
You're one of the few that I know of that don't have problems with Synaptic.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I'd have to disagree about the desktop environments (funny considering I don't really like either and use WindowMaker myself). GNOME and KDE have long been making strides to be more user friendly. Just because they aren't there yet doesn't mean they never will be.
If I had to call the shots about anything, it would be with Synaptic and Ubuntu's software manager. I'm not sure what I would do to make it more user friendly, but I had a lot easier time with software using RH 6.2's rpm manager (and no, I'm not exaggerating).
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Well, I don't think it's that unreasonable. My experience with Debian Woody and the few times I've touched an Ubuntu system to try and help a friend in need I wound up with the same sour taste in the end.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I think what you're referring to, mistakenly in my opinion, is that many bands when they first come out, like BTO in '71 and '72, play a wide variety of music styles early on in their careers. When BTO became popular they dropped all but one style of music, and what had been very enjoyable albums and concerts with a wide variety of music styles, became boring as every song sounded alike.
Randy Bachman is a very skilled, very versatile, very creative, musician and he showed what he was capable of in BTO's first two albums. Their first album is a work of art. After those first two though, it seemed like he just wrote music for one section of their fan base. Yes, he still wrote some hits for their later albums, but if you go back and listen to BTO's first two albums you'll hear a much different composer at work. So, did he "sell out" by listening to the record companies and creating only what "they" thought would make the most money? It appears so to me.
I've seen many bands do the same thing over the decades. They start out very creatively and then after a while their music all starts to sound the same. To me that comes from the big record companies unwillingness to allow the bands to produce truly creative music. The record companies want to have a marketable "sound" that sells, and then just rinse and repeat in each successive release, as they don't care about the music. All the corporations care about is the money, and since they have the bands under contract they can specify what the bands release, and rather than have their contracts voided the bands release what the corporation wants. Ergo, you get a "formulaic" sound. That's what's viewed as "selling out" by the artists.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Still, my original question was appropriate. I’m not asking why they sent that to their developers; I never was. I’m asking why it’s being reported on Slashdot before anything really is known about the problem.
To answer my own question, and this is something I only realised after reading the other comments on this thread... it appears that this is news and it’s being reported on Slashdot primarily because of speculation that it has the potential to delay their hard-and-fast 6-month release cycle date. I’m pretty certain there’s a certain amount of schadenfreude motivating it...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Synaptic is as slow or slower than Yumex on my machine. To tell you the truth, I actually like the layout of Yumex better than Synaptic. I haven't found Yum to be very slow either, and I don't run a very fast machine. Fedora runs faster in general than Ubuntu on my machine. It works. Haven't had time to poke into the filesystem too much, but need to go delving into a few things soon. If the filesystem is too wild it'll probably annoy me, but I haven't had any probs yet.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Fedora is RHEL alpha. By definition it's pushed out to the bleeding edge. I think we all know that if you want reliable, then you probably want Debian. And if you want to be fairly reliable, live out close to the bleeding edge, and have a rational package management system, then there's Ubuntu. I don't know how I'd live without PPAs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This doesn't even make sense. Debian doesn't even have a backports repository (my one suggestion) or, generally speaking, PPA's. They are pretty much an Ubuntu thing. So I still don't get the relevance of your ten-year old experience on a different system that doesn't have these elements.
And more recently helping someone else with Ubuntu, it seems highly unlikely that the problem was caused by either of those things. I've pretty much never (maybe absolutely never) seen broken dependencies in reputable packages.
Anyway, I don't really mind what you use, as long as it works for you. What do you use out of curiosity?
I dual-boot solely for the WINE experience.
Well, LTS stands for long-term service, so it's a bit more suitable as a server distro.
I am not devoid of humor.
Not having a separate root account is a HUGE mistake. That's one of the biggest advantages to Linux to me. I know you can technically create a root account in Ubuntu, but they change all the packages so that it doesn't matter if you have one.
Huh? Ubuntu HAS a root account. They just disabled direct switching to root using su by default, and this can easily be turned back on.
Also, there is a reason everything is command-line driven in every "hardcore" distro. It works. Trying to do things in Ubuntu makes me want to claw my eyes out, it takes minutes to find what I want when it would just be a one line change in a configuration file. Plus, then the guis are just as unintuitive as the command line, but slower and generally are more bug prone.
An intuitive GUI will have you find the options quickly and easily. Can't find an option? Suggest a GUI change that makes more sense. In the end, a GUI to change settings is more convenient because all settings are there and you don't have to check manuals or even the net to find out what extra config settings an application supports. But really, this is a case-by-case basis on both the applications' side and the users' side, I'd say. Also, Ubuntu doesn't remove the functionality of having you edit config files by hand at all.
I am not devoid of humor.
The bug affects the LTS version only, which is 8.04.
I am not devoid of humor.
You need to upgrade to a proven, stable and powerful OS like Windows. IT JUST WORKS.
HAHAHAH Oh man! You can't be serious!
I am not devoid of humor.
I find it philosophically unappealing to be running on Testing and/or Unstable (which, effectively, is what Ubuntu is)
In what way is Ubuntu effectively running on Testing or Unstable? Since you capitalized Testing and Unstable, does that refer to Debian Testing and Unstable releases?
(I use Ubuntu, but am not that familiar with Debian or in what way exactly Ubuntu is built on top of Debian)
No, it affects the upcoming LTS-version. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Beta 2)
Oh, oops. Thanks for correcting. At least that LTS isn't out yet, which means that there's a tiny bit of time left to fix it before release (or revert to a more, well, stable version).
I am not devoid of humor.
And if you want to be pretty close to the cutting edge, but have decent reliability and development leadership that isn't either insane or sadistic, there is Fedora. Debian is also fantastic, for different reasons, so my servers will prob. run Debian, while my personal laptop will run Fedora which I'm actually finding to be quite, well, fun.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Why thank you. LOL. It’s nice to have a fan-club.
Too bad you can’t see my sig.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Ubuntu is Debian based.
Probably not, but being unable to compile anything reliably from source (or being able to do so with little trouble) was nearly impossible (I did manage to get WINE to install via a script from a trusted source so he could get access to iTunes, which was also a very limited success type thing but that's to be expected with WINE IME).
My comparison is based on thus: If Ubuntu is Debian based, and PPA and backports is anything like apt-get, dependency resolution STINKS. Period. Unless in the past 10 years Debian has changed (doubtful as my trusted friend ditched Debian a little over a year ago for FreeBSD for about the same reasons I ditched Debian 10 years ago).
FreeBSD 8.0. While not perfect, ports is AWESOME at dependency resolution and just about everything I could ever need or want is already in ports (and there is even a process to use ports to build from sources outside of the main ports tree, truly a powerful tool). I still think, though, that ports could take a few hints from Gentoo's (which is based on Slackware's package management tool which is based on FreeBSD ports IIRC) emerge (rev-dep rebuild (I believe that's the command, it's been about 4 years since I've touched Gentoo) is awesome) .
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
So instead of waiting for the first Service Pack, you wait for the next release? or the random chance a patch for this problem will show up? But as you've noticed, new releases and new patches bring the risk of new bugs.
Right now, the proprietary OS on my hardware is being updated automatically every 3-5 days with patches and whatnot.
Big pieces of software come with big lists of bugs; it doesn't matter what the business model is.
It's plenty hardcore once you try to go past the velvet ropes of the user-friendly part.
Its a "single click change"? Would you mind telling me that single click? It requires you go know that a program named gnome-gconf-editor exits. It isn't in the menus anywhere. You then have to know where the info you have to find is hidden. Then you have to understand the syntax used in that specific field for that specific app. Then you have to actually edit the info. That is not a single click change.
I've been working with X11 based desktops since X11R3 and it still took me a good half hour of googling to find the info and another half hour to fix it.
OBTW, you have to know not to do it as root and you have to repeat the fix for each user.
So, please, tell me how it is a single click.
I guess I have to say this one more time for you folks who think that the Linux Desktop is a clone of the Windows desktop. It is not and never has been.
The windows desktop is a clone of the Alto and Star desktop developed at PARC in the '70s on into the early '80s. The Apple desktop is also a clone of the PARC desktop systems. MS did start borrowing from Apple by sometime around 3.0 when Apple sued MS over copyright violation. BTW, Apple lost.
The court ruled that Apple didn't own the copyright and neither did MS. The few things that were copyrightable belonged to PARC who didn't bother to sue until it was too late. When PARC sued they sued MS and Apple, not the X consortium or any Unix vendor. Why is that?
If you check your facts. You will find that the X Consortium got legal permission from PARC to use the desktop metaphor. The X11 desktop is the only one of the three, Apple, MS, and X, who have the legal right to clone PARC's work.
Check the dates. X and its predecessor W (yes before X11 was X10, X9, X8.. and before X there was W and guess what W is short for) predate Windows. The version of the X11 protocol we currently use was finalized in '87. MS released Windows 2.0 in December of '87. X1 came out in '84. Windows 1.0 came out in '85.
By the time that horrible thing called Windows 3.0 came out in '90 X11R4 was out in commercial products. By the time Window 3.1 came out in '92 X11R5 was out with the font sever and a standardized 3d graphics systems called PEX. (PEX looked strong enough in the market to force SGI to release an open version of their Graphics Language that we all know and love as OpenGL.)
Windows is not older than X11. While all you noobs moved from Windows to Linux/X11 some of us used Unix/Linux plus X11 all the way from the '80s until today. Only noobs moved from Windows. The rest of us either never used Windows or moved from Unix/X11 to Windows and then to Linux/X11. (Ok, that was fun to write. But I guess it may be considered a bit unfair to call most people under the age of 30 or even 40 "noobs". Even if you are. :-)
I got a laugh out of your "Moire" wallpaper comment. The Moire thing was there because way back in the before times pixels had one bit. Unix systems tended to have high resolution with 1 bit per pixel while PCs had very low resolutions with as many as 4 bits per pixel. In '87 when the VGA display first came out for PCs giving them an amazing 640x480 resolution with 16 wonderful colors I was using X11 on machines with multiple 24 bit color + alpha planes, a z buffer, multiple shaders, and support for stereo viewing using quad color buffers and shutter glasses.
Ah, that feels really good. But I do find myself thinking about Hank Hill yelling at Beavis and Butthead when he found them in his shed.
Stonewolf
P.S.
"I am the Great Cornholio, I need tp for my bunghole"
Go away kid, play with yourself somewhere else.
Since you suggested Gnumeric I tested it. Nice spreadsheet. Unfortunately, although it does handle circular references, it does it in a very odd way. Oddly enough, I can see exactly why they do it that way, but it makes it useless for doing what Excel is so good at.
Basically the formula a1: =a1+1 That is, in the cell a1 you have the formula =a1+1. Since the initial value of a1 defaults to 0 you would expect a1 to increment by 1 each time the sheet recalculates. But, on Bnumeric is increments by 2. Instead of giving you 0,1,2,3.... you get 2,4,6,8....
So, I tried the spreadsheet in Google Docs. It has a lot of advantages. But, it flags circular references as errors. I was not able to find any way around that. That spreadsheet provides minimal functionality. Great for casual use, no good for serious use.
I then tried KSpread in the KOffice suite. I found the UI to be peculiar. But, after only about and hour I was starting to like it it. OTOH, I was never able to find out how to make all the tools on the toolbar visible or how to get rid of the drawing tool menu. Why does that even show up? BUT, it handles circular references just fine. It works. Except... I could not find a way to set the iteration count. That means that if I want to process 100,000 samples I have to press F9 100,000 times. Close, so close...
So, I am looking for more info on KSpread. After looking at KOffice for a while I've decided to spend a lot more time looking at KOffice. To bad it is so closely associated with KDE. It looks like it could be a good alternative to OO.o. Of course, it runs just fine on any Linux/X11 based system, but a lot of people don't know that that.
Stonewolf