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Next Ubuntu Linux To Be a Maverick

Posted by Soulskill on from the a-lock-for-the-primaries dept.

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."

32 of 319 comments (clear)

  1. Great.... by mangu · · Score: 4, Funny

    Let's hope it comes with the 302 engine

  2. Should have aimed for 10/10/10 by Kelson · · Score: 5, Funny

    I see that they're aiming for October 28. You'd think someone would have tried to aim the "Perfect 10" for a 10/10/10 release date.

    1. Re:Should have aimed for 10/10/10 by ElectricTurtle · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yeah, too bad that date is politicized because it is the national day of Taiwan/ROC. It could be interpreted as attempting to honor Taiwan and by extension provoke the PRC. You might think it's silly, but believe me, the PRC tracks every little thing that happens in connection with Taiwan, even things that might only be coincidentally symbolic.

      --
      I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
    2. Re:Should have aimed for 10/10/10 by Kjella · · Score: 5, Funny

      A "Perfect 10" is 36-24-36, if 10-10-10 is your idea of it seek professional help ;)

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    3. Re:Should have aimed for 10/10/10 by thePsychologist · · Score: 5, Informative

      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
    4. Re:Should have aimed for 10/10/10 by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Only if she's 5'3".

    5. Re:Should have aimed for 10/10/10 by pipatron · · Score: 3, Funny

      Actually no, the end of October has never been on the 28th.

      --
      c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */
  3. Maverick Meerkat? Meh... by Em+Emalb · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm waiting for Naughty Nautilus myself.

    --
    Sent from your iPad.
  4. Re:Maverick Meerkat? Meh... by gzipped_tar · · Score: 4, Funny

    Forget those underwater invertebrates. Naughty Nymph FTW.

    --
    Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
  5. Sounds good! by Scholasticus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I know, I know, "'Ubuntu' is an African word meaning 'I'm too stupid for Slackware'" ... I don't use it myself (I use another distribution, not going to plug it here), but I've installed it for a number of friends and family members, and just installed Lynx for my brother, because: 1) Ease of install/configuration 2) Pretty easy transition from Windows 3) Lots of software in the repos And some other reasons. LL is pretty sweet, so I think Shuttleworth & Co. are on the right track in many, if not all, ways. So I think the announcement is pretty exciting. Gnome 3 looks very promising ... so next June' Maverick Meerkat could be pretty interesting.

    1. Re:Sounds good! by MonsterTrimble · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I use Lubuntu 10.04 & PPA repos (testing) on my 5 year old laptop. I like it in general - responsive, clean, simple. However, it does not 'Just Work'. To wit:

      1) Lack of meaningful network tools - Pyneighborhood is the worst solution I've ever seen to this. WiCD & network manager like to fight it out over who starts which day. I STILL can't browse my LAN.
      2) Plymouth - this one has settled down but it was a pure nightmare when I first installed it. I ended up removing GDM entirely to stop the hanging on startup.

      I applaud the Lubuntu team and the complaints above are only my observations - I am looking forward to future releases and the maturing of Lubuntu as a distribution. As a probable future refugee from Kubuntu, I beg to not become part of the system and stay close to LXDE. Gnome is the king, the rest are pawns.

      --
      I call it 'The Aristocrats'
    2. Re:Sounds good! by Abcd1234 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I know, I know, "'Ubuntu' is an African word meaning 'I'm too stupid for Slackware'"

      Funny, I thought it was African for "I used Slackware years ago, but now I have better things to do with my time"...

  6. Ubuntu 6 month cycle by mxh83 · · Score: 3, Funny

    The 6 month iterations are plain stupidity, IMO. Hardly anyone wants to "upgrade" that often, and when it's out, we all realize that it's the same old crap in a different color.. No real usability improvements.

    1. Re:Ubuntu 6 month cycle by FictionPimp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I go from LTS to LTS. But those incrmental upgrades are great. It gives the bleeding edge people something to do, and it let's me keep tabs on what will show up in the next LTS.

    2. Re:Ubuntu 6 month cycle by Minwee · · Score: 5, Funny

      The 6 month iterations are plain stupidity, IMO. Hardly anyone wants to "upgrade" that often

      If you don't want to upgrade every six months then don't do it.

      Just let me know if you have any other really tough problems that you need my help with.

    3. Re:Ubuntu 6 month cycle by MBGMorden · · Score: 3, Interesting

      From release to release? Yeah, the improvements tend to be incremental so you're not going to see anything Earth-shattering. That's just the "frog boiling in the pot" effect though. Compare Ubuntu today with Ubuntu from 3 years ago, and you'll notice HUGE usability improvements. Despite having been a Linux user in a "dual boot and learn it but still spend most of your time in Windows" fashion since 1997, Ubuntu is the first distribution that fully converted me. I'm still on Windows at work, but at home? It's been 3 or 4 months since I've touched Windows. And for the first time, I really haven't felt much of a need to.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    4. Re:Ubuntu 6 month cycle by Seth+Kriticos · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The 6 month iterations are plain stupidity, IMO. Hardly anyone wants to "upgrade" that often, and when it's out, we all realize that it's the same old crap in a different color.. No real usability improvements.

      You aren't into OSS development much, are you?

      See, as some others pointed out, the long term support releases are there for the more conservative / more stable environments. You can upgrade every 2 or 3 years and have your peace.

      Some of us are actually curious and like to see new stuff at times. We like new releases. We play with them and see how they do or break, then we post bug reports and stuff. We check out the regular releases and are happy with that.

      One important thing the Linux community realized was, that building something for two years in your basement and then trying to release something perfect will most probably end in havoc.

      On the other hand, releasing often, getting feedback, keeping in touch with users is much more effective.

      Another good example for this is the Linux kernel: an new version is released every 3 months. Works great, is stable and everyone can calculate on when to integrate. Also developers don't have to wait ages for the merge window when they can add their own code.

      ps. And there are nice changes in a lot of places, though the focus of this long time release was obviously more on the stability part and a lot of people on the previous LTS release were awaiting this one eagerly.

  7. Awww... by Kirin+Fenrir · · Score: 4, Funny

    They didn't accept my name, "Menstruating Mongoose". :(

    --
    Caffeine is my anti-drug!

    Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
  8. sorry, but Ubuntu failed hard this release by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:sorry, but Ubuntu failed hard this release by tom17 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm in a similar boat. I did the upgrade over the weekend from 9.10. When I went from 9.04 to 9.10 I was mostly pleased, except a few irritating bugs and the fast user switch applet was removed - this previously made wife-friendly usage in the living room a breeze. I was all excited to get to 10.04 as it was returning. This would be Ubuntu's last chance to keep me.

      Yes it returned (in a less intuitive place, the menu with your name is now all 'communication' based. The fast switching is located under the *power* icon... huh?)
      I have already had a system freeze while switching user.

      Sun Java was booted and now isn't even in the repositories. "OpenJDK is good enough for most people". I will try it for a while but I hope it is up to scratch for Java EE 6 development (doubt that). Now I have to jump through the proverbial hoops.

      The whole Indicator applet/Indicator applet session/Notification Area/Volume control/Battery meter/Network icon mess is a joke. - The combinations of icons that you are allowed ends up with far less efficient usage of space in some circumstances. The reason they made the changes? To increase efficiency of space used.

      I know some of these are minor irritations in reality, but it's mucking about with stuff like this, causing frustration with the users, that pisses me off. I know, I will get used to it.. *sigh*.

      So it's time for a switch. Is Fedora Core wife-friendly? She is begging for Win7 so I may just partition it with FC/Win7 & Hackintosh - Maybe this is the OS that will lure me, cos linux (Well, Ubuntu) only seems to be going backwards.

      Tom...

    2. Re:sorry, but Ubuntu failed hard this release by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Interestingly, 10.04 is the first release in a couple of years that has worked without a hitch for me. I installed it on a whim, hoping that it might include a driver with hardware-accelerated 3D for my RV730 video card. I was pleasantly surprised that not only does it include that driver, everything I have tried has actually _worked_, and the experience is a marked improvement over what I was running before.

      The only issue I ran into is that GDM would not read my ~/.xsession, but it's not entirely clear if that is a bug or a design choice, and, regardless, there is a fix for it.

      For the rest, it's stable, it's fast, it's beautiful, and it's even an LTS release. It's been a while since I've experienced that from Ubuntu, but they seem to have gotten everything I care about right this time.

      Keeping in mind your experience, I am curious as to how people in general fare with this release. I share your observation that Ubuntu has been caring more about new features than quality, and I was hoping that they had found their way back to putting together top quality releases. I would really like to know what the trend is, qualitywise.

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    3. Re:sorry, but Ubuntu failed hard this release by Bambi+Dee · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sun Java is in the "partner" repository. You have to un-disable (...) it first.

  9. Release early, release often. by khasim · · Score: 5, Informative

    The 6 month iterations are plain stupidity, IMO.

    But it gets current code out there and in use.

    Hardly anyone wants to "upgrade" that often, and when it's out, we all realize that it's the same old crap in a different color.

    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.

    1. Re:Release early, release often. by IANAAC · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's where the LTS releases come in. If you don't want to upgrade, you don't have to. For years.

      The problem with this is that many good applications won't support the release for the same amount of time.

      Boxee is an excellent example, at least for the last Ubuntu LTS release. They dropped support for it as soon as the next Ubuntu release came out - not an LTS release.

    2. Re:Release early, release often. by bcrowell · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That's where the LTS releases come in. If you don't want to upgrade, you don't have to. For years.

      For me, the big problem with that is that I can't update my apps without updating the OS as well. This is just the way debian/ubuntu is designed. With jaunty and karmic, I had to upgrade in order to get bug fixes in my apps, but then I got new bugs in the OS.

      If I'd still been running Hardy until last month, then I would have been running some ancient, buggy version of Inkscape, for instance. On the other hand, by upgrading I got sound completely broken by pulseaudio.

      What OS guys don't seem to understand is that end users don't really care about the OS-level features that seem so exciting to an OS guy. We just want the OS to work so that we can run apps.

      --
      Find free books.
  10. Majestik Moose by mikemsd · · Score: 3, Informative

    I was really hoping for Majestik Moose. Seemed like the obvious choice to me.

  11. Maverick Meerkat?!? by Locke2005 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I thought for sure they were going to name it "Masturbating Monkey"!

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    1. Re:Maverick Meerkat?!? by migla · · Score: 4, Funny

      I thought for sure they were going to name it "Masturbating Monkey"!

      But that was all ready taken by OpenBSD (or given to them by Torvalds, to be more precise):

      http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-211239.html

      --
      Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
  12. Re:Get 64 bit working properly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Try sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

  13. What's next? by Locke2005 · · Score: 3, Funny

    In defiance of spelling nazis everywhere, I propose the next release be named "kneeling gnu".

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  14. Just leave now, and save yourself the trouble by Vectormatic · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
  15. The Slashdot Trolls all agree by Beelzebud · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Slashdot Trolls all agree; Ubuntu is the worst OS ever made, and only caters to retards!

    Which means it actually may be getting close to the year of the Linux Desktop. After all, it's actually becoming usable by "morons", a.k.a. people that have a life.