12 ms·

New Ubuntu is out

80 points by bandris 18y ago

martythemaniak 18y ago
This is something that is an absolute must if you're like me and hate the current huge button/label/tab/* trend in UIs. http://martin.ankerl.com/2008/05/13/human-compact-gnome-theme/ http://martin.ankerl.com/2008/05/13/human-compact-gnome-them... It just makes the default Human and Clearlooks themes much more compact, so its a good way to get more screen space without going all XMonad-crazy ;) Edit: Also, the "Esco" and "Metabox" window borders are good companions to this, as they are the most compact ones shipping be default (at least on 8.04)
- there 18y ago
  "absolutely the current"? is that like "i accidentally the whole..."?
  - martythemaniak 18y ago
    oops. I accidentally the verb while editing ;)
- amackera 18y ago
  Thank you for this!
andr 18y ago
I know people complain when new Windows releases take 5 years, but is the opposite better. I mean I just got my official 8.04.1 CD last month.
- davidw 18y ago
  You can stick with the long term support releases if you don't want to do lots of upgrading.
  - amackera 18y ago
    Exactly. The Ubuntu releases are more incremental. Really all that the new releases contain are new and updated patches, occasionally a new kernel release, better support, occasionally additional applications, etc. It's not like Windows where each release usually brings some serious changes.
    - davidw 18y ago
      Linux distribution releases are really about cat herding. With * Gnome * KDE * The kernel * Openoffice * Firefox * Mysql * Postgresql You're almost bound to release just before or just after someone else's "big release" and so either miss it and be a bit out of date, or include something that is perhaps not 100% stable.
- henning 18y ago
  Every release brings buzz to Ubuntu. Frequent releases probably mean a larger userbase.
- ErrantX 18y ago
  The 8.10 releases tend to be more "experimental". I dont think it's advised to actually run a day to day system with it :)
tocomment 18y ago
Is there any harm in installing the 64bit version? Will most programs be available for it? I have a core2duo processor, those are 64bit right?
- bootload 18y ago
  "... Is there any harm in installing the 64bit version (ubuntu)? ..." Are you upgrading or re-installing from another OS or is this a new system? Each of those have slight problems (bloat when upgrading, backup your data before you install). Aside from that the only problems I've had are existing commercial software like flash (32 bit probably never to be 64).
  - tocomment 18y ago
    Doing a clean install. Was running Hardy 32bit. Anyone know if flash 64bit works yet?
    - bootload 18y ago
      "... Anyone know if flash 64bit works yet? ..." No 64bit but try http://wiki.ubuntu.com/FlashPlayer9 http://wiki.ubuntu.com/FlashPlayer9 (Adobe Flash Player Non-free plugin installer) and more FOSS alternatives System->Administration->Synaptic & search for 'Flash'. "... Was running Hardy 32bit ..." You can keep your home partition or data if you want.
    - timtrueman 18y ago
      Oh it works just it often crashes (the whole browser).
- jbert 18y ago
  I don't know how much things have improved with Ibex, but there are some (mostly resolvable) issues with 64bit on hardy. You need to play around to find solutions for some bits of software you don't have the source to, e.g. flash plugin, ndiswrapper wifi drivers. Ubuntu forums are good for this. The only unresolved 64bit issue I hit was that Java LiveConnect (accessing browser javascript from java applets) was broken in the 64-bit java available for Hardy. Haven't checked to see if it's fixed in Ibex yet. (Hmm...I abbreviate Hardy Heron => Heron, but Intrepid Ibex => Ibex. I wonder why.) Yes, core2 is 64-bit.
ErrantX 18y ago
I'm still not convinced the 2.6.27 kernel is stable enough. Our .27 test cluster (various distros including U8.10) has numerous issues that just ARENT fixed yet. I always hate Ubuntu .10 releases :( even when they call it "stable" is usually isn;t and we see a huge increase in (client) issues...
- notdarkyet 18y ago
  I have to reluctantly agree with this statement. It shouldn't be that when I upgrade to 8.10 from 8.04 I am stuck fixing all of the issues that the upgrade itself broke (for example wireless is working poorly and is non-functional after suspends). While these issues are marginal and will only suck up a few minutes of my time, there are plenty of positives. Notably, GIMP, GNOME, and various other upgrades are quite nice. I always felt guilty complaining about the stability of an Ubuntu distro. If I wanted stability I would stick with Debian or BSD. For free software of such quality, what I am gaining is certainly worth the time ensuring it works on my system.
  - ErrantX 18y ago
    I sympathise over the Wifi issue. Had many similar issues. I always consider 8.10 of "cutting edge" quality and never bother to upgrade our day-to-day systems for a couple of months after release (sometimes we even wait till the next .04). As you say it's not worth the issue fixing headaches :P Agreed though: the package updates are nice.
  - Prrometheus 18y ago
    I can update some packages without upgrading the release, right?
- jrsims 18y ago
  cough FreeBSD! cough
  - kirubakaran 18y ago
    FreeBSD is bad for your throat?
pavelludiq 18y ago
I don't know about ubuntu, but Kubuntu sucks(at least the RC did).
- Tichy 18y ago
  I don't know about Kubuntu, but Ubuntu doesn't suck (at least the 8.04 version didn't).
  - pavelludiq 18y ago
    Kubuntu 8.04 kicks ass, but 8.10 sucks. Maybe its because of KDE 4, but i had a hard time setting up my keymaps,the new adept had random bugs in it, and i found it almost impossible to eject a CD!(i click eject and the cd ejects and GOES BACK IN!?!?!). On the other hand, since i switched back to 8.04 this morning, I've been missing folderview all day. KDE 4 has some good ideas in it, but needs more time to mature. ps. I love kubuntu, but this time they screwed up seriously!
    - Tichy 18y ago
      I am so far very happy with 8.10, too. Finally dual screen works out of the box, yay! Even flashplayer continued to work after the update, what more can one wish for?
    - nuclear_eclipse 18y ago
      The CD issue is a known bug (read the release notes). The temporary fix (until an SRU can make it to the repos) is to press eject again before the CD is remounted, and then it won't pull itself back in again.
  - jodrellblank 18y ago
    I don't know about Kubuntu but I wish linux had something like Microsoft Update. apt-get and yum are a bit too "no, it's your decision, do you want to update libobscure-2.4.6.so and risk breaking everything?"
    - 18y ago
lhorn 18y ago
Intel wifi cards (4965 and 3945) don't work anymore? http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810#System%20lock-ups%20with%20Intel%204965%20wireless http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810#System%20lo... I hate to sound negative, but this makes no freaking sense. Those two Intel cards have been pretty much the only safe choice for Linux laptop buyers: everything else, including Dell crap, doesn't work at all or requires using terrible hacks like ndiswrapper. The first thing I look for when getting a laptop, is to make sure the wireless card is one of those two. AND THEY DON'T WORK ANYMORE?! To me this sounds like a distro with pretty much disabled WiFi. FUCK.
- martey 18y ago
  From the release notes link you posted: Users affected by this issue can install the linux-backports-modules-intrepid package, to install a newer version of this driver that corrects the bug. Calm down.
- dimitar 18y ago
  Wireless worked on my 3945 machine, and although I may have not used it much, there is no reason to panic.
callmeed 18y ago
Do you guys think we'll start seeing this release on Slicehost/Linode soon? Any major advantage over Hardy (from a server perspective)?
- davidw 18y ago
  I updated my slices to it a few days ago, and it seems to work ok: http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/10/25/slicehost-ubuntu-intrepid-upgrade http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/10/25/slicehost-ubuntu-intre... BTW, more here: http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/10/30/slicehost-migration http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/10/30/slicehost-migration
  - nuclear_eclipse 18y ago
    When I did a test upgrade on my slice a couple weeks ago ( same reasoning as yours :P ), I ended up with a lot of .sh scripts in my `rcconf` listings as things that would start up with the box. Any idea if you have those on your machine now, or if it was a fluke of upgrading back before the RC/final?
kaens 18y ago
I'm going to hold off a bit before upgrading. What I run on my laptop, while having Ubuntu as a base, ends it's similarity to the Ubuntu defaults there. There's not much in this release that helps me out a bunch, may as well let some bugs / deficiencies work themselves up before upgrading the system.
keefe 18y ago
and trashed my damn xorg.conf
tarkin2 18y ago
the new kernel change my /dev/hda to /dev/sda, which messed up my custom fstab entry. so it went to command prompt on startup to allow me to change it. fine apart from that.
dimitar 18y ago
Try unetbootin: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ I installed the new ubuntu on my 2GB USB flash drive in less than 15 minutes. Sure is handy when you don't want to burn a CD you know you are going to use less than 5 times :-). Plus it boots fast, unlike the sluggish livecd's. You can make your choice from about a two dozen distro's including LinuxMint (which I intend to try very soon), Fedora, Puppy, DamnSmallLinux and other great ones.
- dmpayton 18y ago
  Hey, thanks for that! I don't have any CD-R's handy (and won't be able to get any till next week), so this was perfect. Once I figured out that the USB drive has to be formated as FAT32, I was solid.
justindz 18y ago
I appear to be on the list of people for whom the upgrade will remove 3d acceleration. I'm going to have to wait. Does anyone know if this is purely an issue with kernel and drivers that should get resolved soon or if this is a strategic change in supporting the vendor drivers (Nvidia in my case)?
- justindz 18y ago
  Update: my driver was supported, upgraded, all was quite smooth. Bonus: couchdb package in 8.10.

80 points by bandris 18y ago

This is something that is an absolute must if you're like me and hate the current huge button/label/tab/* trend in UIs. http://martin.ankerl.com/2008/05/13/human-compact-gnome-theme/ http://martin.ankerl.com/2008/05/13/human-compact-gnome-them... It just makes the default Human and Clearlooks themes much more compact, so its a good way to get more screen space without going all XMonad-crazy ;) Edit: Also, the "Esco" and "Metabox" window borders are good companions to this, as they are the most compact ones shipping be default (at least on 8.04)

there 18y ago
"absolutely the current"? is that like "i accidentally the whole..."?
- martythemaniak 18y ago
  oops. I accidentally the verb while editing ;)
amackera 18y ago
Thank you for this!

andr 18y ago

I know people complain when new Windows releases take 5 years, but is the opposite better. I mean I just got my official 8.04.1 CD last month.

davidw 18y ago
You can stick with the long term support releases if you don't want to do lots of upgrading.
- amackera 18y ago
  Exactly. The Ubuntu releases are more incremental. Really all that the new releases contain are new and updated patches, occasionally a new kernel release, better support, occasionally additional applications, etc. It's not like Windows where each release usually brings some serious changes.
  - davidw 18y ago
    Linux distribution releases are really about cat herding. With * Gnome * KDE * The kernel * Openoffice * Firefox * Mysql * Postgresql You're almost bound to release just before or just after someone else's "big release" and so either miss it and be a bit out of date, or include something that is perhaps not 100% stable.
henning 18y ago
Every release brings buzz to Ubuntu. Frequent releases probably mean a larger userbase.
ErrantX 18y ago
The 8.10 releases tend to be more "experimental". I dont think it's advised to actually run a day to day system with it :)

tocomment 18y ago

Is there any harm in installing the 64bit version? Will most programs be available for it? I have a core2duo processor, those are 64bit right?

bootload 18y ago
"... Is there any harm in installing the 64bit version (ubuntu)? ..." Are you upgrading or re-installing from another OS or is this a new system? Each of those have slight problems (bloat when upgrading, backup your data before you install). Aside from that the only problems I've had are existing commercial software like flash (32 bit probably never to be 64).
- tocomment 18y ago
  Doing a clean install. Was running Hardy 32bit. Anyone know if flash 64bit works yet?
  - bootload 18y ago
    "... Anyone know if flash 64bit works yet? ..." No 64bit but try http://wiki.ubuntu.com/FlashPlayer9 http://wiki.ubuntu.com/FlashPlayer9 (Adobe Flash Player Non-free plugin installer) and more FOSS alternatives System->Administration->Synaptic & search for 'Flash'. "... Was running Hardy 32bit ..." You can keep your home partition or data if you want.
  - timtrueman 18y ago
    Oh it works just it often crashes (the whole browser).
jbert 18y ago
I don't know how much things have improved with Ibex, but there are some (mostly resolvable) issues with 64bit on hardy. You need to play around to find solutions for some bits of software you don't have the source to, e.g. flash plugin, ndiswrapper wifi drivers. Ubuntu forums are good for this. The only unresolved 64bit issue I hit was that Java LiveConnect (accessing browser javascript from java applets) was broken in the 64-bit java available for Hardy. Haven't checked to see if it's fixed in Ibex yet. (Hmm...I abbreviate Hardy Heron => Heron, but Intrepid Ibex => Ibex. I wonder why.) Yes, core2 is 64-bit.

ErrantX 18y ago

I'm still not convinced the 2.6.27 kernel is stable enough. Our .27 test cluster (various distros including U8.10) has numerous issues that just ARENT fixed yet. I always hate Ubuntu .10 releases :( even when they call it "stable" is usually isn;t and we see a huge increase in (client) issues...

notdarkyet 18y ago
I have to reluctantly agree with this statement. It shouldn't be that when I upgrade to 8.10 from 8.04 I am stuck fixing all of the issues that the upgrade itself broke (for example wireless is working poorly and is non-functional after suspends). While these issues are marginal and will only suck up a few minutes of my time, there are plenty of positives. Notably, GIMP, GNOME, and various other upgrades are quite nice. I always felt guilty complaining about the stability of an Ubuntu distro. If I wanted stability I would stick with Debian or BSD. For free software of such quality, what I am gaining is certainly worth the time ensuring it works on my system.
- ErrantX 18y ago
  I sympathise over the Wifi issue. Had many similar issues. I always consider 8.10 of "cutting edge" quality and never bother to upgrade our day-to-day systems for a couple of months after release (sometimes we even wait till the next .04). As you say it's not worth the issue fixing headaches :P Agreed though: the package updates are nice.
- Prrometheus 18y ago
  I can update some packages without upgrading the release, right?
jrsims 18y ago
cough FreeBSD! cough
- kirubakaran 18y ago
  FreeBSD is bad for your throat?

pavelludiq 18y ago

I don't know about ubuntu, but Kubuntu sucks(at least the RC did).

Tichy 18y ago
I don't know about Kubuntu, but Ubuntu doesn't suck (at least the 8.04 version didn't).
- pavelludiq 18y ago
  Kubuntu 8.04 kicks ass, but 8.10 sucks. Maybe its because of KDE 4, but i had a hard time setting up my keymaps,the new adept had random bugs in it, and i found it almost impossible to eject a CD!(i click eject and the cd ejects and GOES BACK IN!?!?!). On the other hand, since i switched back to 8.04 this morning, I've been missing folderview all day. KDE 4 has some good ideas in it, but needs more time to mature. ps. I love kubuntu, but this time they screwed up seriously!
  - Tichy 18y ago
    I am so far very happy with 8.10, too. Finally dual screen works out of the box, yay! Even flashplayer continued to work after the update, what more can one wish for?
  - nuclear_eclipse 18y ago
    The CD issue is a known bug (read the release notes). The temporary fix (until an SRU can make it to the repos) is to press eject again before the CD is remounted, and then it won't pull itself back in again.
- jodrellblank 18y ago
  I don't know about Kubuntu but I wish linux had something like Microsoft Update. apt-get and yum are a bit too "no, it's your decision, do you want to update libobscure-2.4.6.so and risk breaking everything?"
  - 18y ago

lhorn 18y ago

Intel wifi cards (4965 and 3945) don't work anymore? http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810#System%20lock-ups%20with%20Intel%204965%20wireless http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810#System%20lo... I hate to sound negative, but this makes no freaking sense. Those two Intel cards have been pretty much the only safe choice for Linux laptop buyers: everything else, including Dell crap, doesn't work at all or requires using terrible hacks like ndiswrapper. The first thing I look for when getting a laptop, is to make sure the wireless card is one of those two. AND THEY DON'T WORK ANYMORE?! To me this sounds like a distro with pretty much disabled WiFi. FUCK.

martey 18y ago
From the release notes link you posted: Users affected by this issue can install the linux-backports-modules-intrepid package, to install a newer version of this driver that corrects the bug. Calm down.
dimitar 18y ago
Wireless worked on my 3945 machine, and although I may have not used it much, there is no reason to panic.

callmeed 18y ago

Do you guys think we'll start seeing this release on Slicehost/Linode soon? Any major advantage over Hardy (from a server perspective)?

davidw 18y ago
I updated my slices to it a few days ago, and it seems to work ok: http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/10/25/slicehost-ubuntu-intrepid-upgrade http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/10/25/slicehost-ubuntu-intre... BTW, more here: http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/10/30/slicehost-migration http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/10/30/slicehost-migration
- nuclear_eclipse 18y ago
  When I did a test upgrade on my slice a couple weeks ago ( same reasoning as yours :P ), I ended up with a lot of .sh scripts in my `rcconf` listings as things that would start up with the box. Any idea if you have those on your machine now, or if it was a fluke of upgrading back before the RC/final?

kaens 18y ago

I'm going to hold off a bit before upgrading. What I run on my laptop, while having Ubuntu as a base, ends it's similarity to the Ubuntu defaults there. There's not much in this release that helps me out a bunch, may as well let some bugs / deficiencies work themselves up before upgrading the system.

keefe 18y ago

and trashed my damn xorg.conf

tarkin2 18y ago

the new kernel change my /dev/hda to /dev/sda, which messed up my custom fstab entry. so it went to command prompt on startup to allow me to change it. fine apart from that.

dimitar 18y ago

Try unetbootin: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ I installed the new ubuntu on my 2GB USB flash drive in less than 15 minutes. Sure is handy when you don't want to burn a CD you know you are going to use less than 5 times :-). Plus it boots fast, unlike the sluggish livecd's. You can make your choice from about a two dozen distro's including LinuxMint (which I intend to try very soon), Fedora, Puppy, DamnSmallLinux and other great ones.

dmpayton 18y ago
Hey, thanks for that! I don't have any CD-R's handy (and won't be able to get any till next week), so this was perfect. Once I figured out that the USB drive has to be formated as FAT32, I was solid.

justindz 18y ago

I appear to be on the list of people for whom the upgrade will remove 3d acceleration. I'm going to have to wait. Does anyone know if this is purely an issue with kernel and drivers that should get resolved soon or if this is a strategic change in supporting the vendor drivers (Nvidia in my case)?

justindz 18y ago
Update: my driver was supported, upgraded, all was quite smooth. Bonus: couchdb package in 8.10.