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Next Ubuntu Linux To Be a Maverick
VincenzoRomano writes "While the latest version of Ubuntu is still smoking hot, the Ubuntu development community is already working on the next step. Both the wiki and the bug tracking system at Launchpad have already been set up for Maverick Meerkat, which will be version number 10.10. This confirms the usual naming and numbering schema and the fact that the final release should be due in October. This next version, which obviously won't be Long Term Support (LTS), should sport a lighter and faster environment with GNOME 3.0, a.k.a. GNOME Shell, among the main advances. Everything has been explained by Mr. Shuttleworth in his own blog since the beginning of April. The first alpha release is not due earlier than the end of June, so maybe it'd be better to take advantage of the Lucid Lynx while the technical overview of the Meerkat starts getting more details."
I've used Ubuntu as my primary desktop OS since 8.10, and I can say without reservation that 10.04 is the worst of the bunch. Why? They broke everything! And I'm not just talking about button placement. I fixed that in the first 10 minutes. The reason why I'm abandoning Ubuntu are simple: they dropped the quality ball on this release.
First I noticed that VirtualBox doesn't let you use bridged network unless you manually install some kernel drivers. Googling found that people had this problem for at least 3 months, and they still didn't fix it in the release. Second, upgrading uninstalled my Java plugin for Firefox, so I had to manually add the symlink. Third (and by far the worst), my 6GB machine became non-responsive in the first 24 hours of uptime -- on the same machine that typically had months of uptime on 8.10 through 9.10 (I only rebooted for security patches that required a reboot).
In conclusion: if they don't fix these problems in the next two weeks, I'll abandon Ubuntu for another distribution, and I'll never consider using Ubuntu again.
But it gets current code out there and in use.
That's where the LTS releases come in. If you don't want to upgrade, you don't have to. For years.
In the meantime, the other people are hammering on the short-release cycle code.
I was really hoping for Majestik Moose. Seemed like the obvious choice to me.
I went against my earlier decision to wait a few weeks after the official release, and upgraded the night 10.04 came out. For the first time since I'm using Ubuntu from 7.04, nothing broke! I mean - network, virtual box, mail everything still worked. My only problem was getting use to the placement of the control box on the left instead of on the right. In terms of speed, I haven't seen any visible improvement in startup, but shutdown occurs in way less time than 9.10. This is the best Ubuntu yet!
Try sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
Ever since ubuntu became usable without command line hacking (somewhere in 2007 by my account), they started fucking up other parts. They started adding in new flashy shit that no-one really needs, and forgetting about actually getting a STABLE distro out there. In 9.10 everything pretty much works on my desktop (wish i could say the same for my laptops, which fuck up on every release), except for the piece of misconfigured shit that is pulseaudio. If i try to play certain DVDs in vlc, all sound will play, except for the fricking voice tracks.. it takes endless fucking about to get this to work. And every single release the last few years has had these type of issues on nearly all of my systems. nearly everything works, but they never forget to royally screw at least one thing up, preventing themselves from becoming a true user friendly distro.
10.04 will NOT make it onto my main systems for day to day use, if i ever find the need to upgrade from my current ubuntu settups, then fedora is first on my list.
People, what a bunch of bastards
28 is a perfect number. It is the sum of all of its proper divisors. 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
It's important to say to the impatient among us that the first alpha release is not due earlier than the end of June,
Actually, the release schedule page has the first alpha release on June 3. The second alpha is end of June (actually July 1st.)
GNOME Shell doesn't just require compositing (which almost all computers support - compositing works fine with the generic VESA drivers), it requires OpenGL which (effectively) means it requires accelerated 3D. Computers which don't have accelerated 3D will have to stick with metacity and the panel, I think, which will still be in GNOME 3.