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Ubuntu 6.06 'Dapper Drake' Beta Available

Posted by Zonk on Thu Apr 20, 2006 10:21 AM
from the penguins-in-tophats dept.
Software Linux
Beuno writes "Ubuntu 6.06, aka 'Dapper Drake' has just gone into a stable Beta phase after 5 very successful Alpha versions. There have been a ton of improvements ranging from a new spiffy graphical installation, Gnome 2.14.1, Kernel 2.6.15.6, X.org 7 and a new and improved caramel colored theme. The server version has had kernel tweaks and an easy LAMP installation. A full list of new features and screenshots and be found at the official site. Downloads at the usual place, just try to use torrents please."
+ -
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Related Stories

[+] Planning Dapper +1, The Edgy Eft 320 comments
Christian Jensen writes "On the ubuntu-announce mailing list, Mark Shuttleworth announced the plans for the next Ubuntu release - 'The Edgy Eft', the successor to Dapper Drake." This release is being touted as both cutting edge (edgy) and containing several comparatively "young" software additions ('Eft' being a 'youthful newt, going through its first exploration of the rocky territory just outside the stream.') like Xen, XGL/AIGLX, and others.
[+] Looking Forward, Ubuntu Linux 6.06 383 comments
SilentBob4 writes to tell us that Mad Penguin has an interesting look at the upcoming version of Ubuntu. From the article: "All in all, Ubuntu 6.06 is gearing up to be quite an impressive release. Granted, I saw some bugs during my stay on the distribution, but can I really complain? It's not a full release, so it deserves some breathing room. Considering some of the horribly authored software I've looked at over the years, I feel that Ubuntu in pre-release form is more stable than other distros when they reach final release status. It's not quite in the league of Slackware and Red Hat/Fedora in that respect yet, but it's surely getting there in a hurry. As I said before, it smoked Fedora Core 5 performance-wise, so in that department it's solidly ahead."
[+] Previewing Dapper And Edgy 144 comments
Frank Clarkson writes to mention a ZDNet article about the upcoming release of 'Dapper Drake', Ubuntu Linux. They also give a mini-preview of Eft. From the article: "'I'm promising to impose (almost ;-) ) zero from-the-top requirements for Edgy, this release is entirely up the to development team to envision and implement,' he wrote. 'Almost everything that lands in Edgy will be driven from the development team, who get to play with whatever new technologies they fancy along the way. So that should give us a nice big bump in infrastructure and bling.'"
[+] New Enterprise-Level Ubuntu Due This Week 331 comments
daria42 writes "According to Ubuntu's official release schedule, the next version of its Linux distribution, code-named "Dapper Drake" is due to be released this week, June 1 to be precise. This landmark release will be supported for 5 years (previous versions were only supported for 18 months) and is being touted as ready for enterprise use." From the article: "Dapper Drake will be supported for three years for the desktop version and five years for servers, compared to 18 months for the current 5.10 'Breezy Badger' version. The code release will come after the development process was extended by six weeks in order to improve the reliability of the software."
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Ubuntu 6.06 'Dapper Drake' Beta Available 50 Comments More /

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  • Best Bug Report Evar! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Synesthesiatic (679680) on Thursday April 20 2006, @10:30AM (#15165180) Homepage
    Microsoft has a majority market share [launchpad.net]

    It's nice to see a distro with a sense of humour. I especially like that the severity is set to critical.

    • More sad than funny. I remember visiting 5 computer shops in the large town (50,000+) in which I reside in during semester, looking for a copy of Fedora Core, and none of them had any other OS in stock than Windows. One owner even told me that Linux was a dirty word in his store. I was slighly flabbergasted.
      • You do realise that Fedora Core isn't a boxed operating system and isn't available in stores, don't you?
      • This is understandable, because Linux is not being positioned as a "product in a box", but instead as vehicle for enterprise service contracts. The computer store guys can actually make decent money supporting MS SBS, while Linux sends all the contract revenue back to RedHat etc.
  • gksudo "update-manager -d"

    And the update manager gets the beta for your existing Breezy install. Just tried it on one box, and it worked without a hitch. Each round of upgrades gets a little smoother. I was worried about the 6-month release cycle when Ubuntu first announced it, but the ease of transition lately has made this a non-issue, at least for me.
    • And for those of you who aren't afraid of a little bit of command line stuff:

      Edit your /etc/atp/sources.list file by replacing all occurrences of "breezy" with "dapper". Save, then run "sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade".

      Damn kids and your GUIs... ;p

  • What does Ubuntu have... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by baadger (764884) on Thursday April 20 2006, @10:34AM (#15165210)
    ...that other reasonably polished Gnome distributions don't?

    I'm really curious. All the 'why I use Ubuntu' type opinions i've read seem to be focused at the n00b. What's in it for a the more experienced Linux user (but not a mad bash hacking pro)?
    • What's in it for a the more experienced Linux user (but not a mad bash hacking pro)?


      It Just Works©
      • It Just Works©
        It doesn't recognize my hardware. :-(
          • If the developers pick up a report on Malone, it'll get dealt with quite quickly. However, if they don't, it can linger for months in 'Unconfirmed' status, even if it's trivially reproducible. I've had much better luck filing bugs directly with the GNOME Bugzilla team (for GNOME apps, in any case). The KDE team won't even accept bug reports for the software in Breezy, because they don't support their old releases.

    • Re:What does Ubuntu have... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by B5_geek (638928) on Thursday April 20 2006, @10:49AM (#15165335)
      Ubuntu is not _just_ for n00bs.

      Does a 'n00b' system admin run Debian?
      not usually.

      Debian is preferred because
      (a) "apt-get" makes life so blindingly simple that you don't need to worry about 90% of the hassels that come with other distros (rpm-hell anyone?)
      (b) It's stable
      (c) "It Just Works!" (tm)

      Ubuntu is: ALL the best of Debain + Quicker updates.
      How long did it take for Debain to support SATA in the stable release? Too damn long!

      Ubuntu is not totally user friendly, ie it wasn't untill Dapper that there was a GUI for setting up a pppoe internet connection. (try telling Mom to: open a terminal, type pppoe-conf, and follow the prompts.)
      Sounds great on paper.

      My mom, Uncle x2, wife, Mother & Father in-laws, and CLIENTS all run Ubuntu because it is easier for me to manage/admin.
      I'm not a n00b. I got desperately tired of waiting for Debian Stable. Now I have all the good of Debian + modern packages.

      • The thing that makes Ubuntu the distro to have is that it has a growing "n00b base". This benefits experienced Linux users, because if they are running the same distro as the people they will end up supporting, then the Linux community as a whole becomes stronger and easier for people to get into. Wouldn't it be nice to run the same system as everyone else you know, and still be using Linux?
        • Redundant/Flamebait/Troll and all, yes, I know... but ...

          Wouldn't it be nice to run the same system as everyone else you know

          Don't know, but around 90% of the users seem to agree with you...
      • I'm in a similar situation. I had been using debian since 1997, but I got really annoyed at the ever lengthening release cycles, and I didn't want to use testing or unstable either due to periodic breakage.

        Actually, my current Ubuntu system is a direct descendant of the original debian I installed in 1997. I have *never* reinstalled the system; tells something about the quality of debian and apt-get dist-upgrade! When getting new hardware it's just much simpler to cp -a the existing system, edit fstab and t

    • Re:What does Ubuntu have... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by baryon351 (626717) on Thursday April 20 2006, @10:51AM (#15165361)
      What's in it for a the more experienced Linux user (but not a mad bash hacking pro)?

      Only speaking for myself and others like me (which may not be much different to yourself judging by your description) ubuntu comes with a lot less fucking-about-with-inanities than other distros.

      I like that I installed dapper and everything worked. I don't mean "it booted to a desktop and I needed minimal fiddling to get my camera working, oh and sometimes sound drops out but I got that fixed in half an hour... and I can't use my music player yet cos it won't mount", I mean I can install it and there's everything working and working well.

      Don't get me wrong, I do like to jump down into the OS and screw about with things from time to time. I figure if I want to do things unique to myself that's what I'm going to have to do, and any linux distro will give me that. It's just the core simple things that I feel any OS should do well out of the box that many other distros have missed. They've come mighty close, but don't QUITE get there fully. Like installing SuSE and not having sound working like it should. Like installing debian and having an endless argument with fonts. Like installing fedora and finding it plays downloaded movies fine, but the ones from my camera are missing audio... even if they play audio fine on linspire but the video skips frames. It's those little core things that are so braindead simple they should always work first go, that when they don't they make me really feel like I'm working for the other distros when I have to screw around to get them working, instead of the distro working for me.

      Recent Ubuntus have been the only ones that are fuss-free for what I consider those core elements of a desktop machine. Other people might have different core wants of course, and different hardware that other distros handle better - but meh, I'm not those other people. Works for me.
    • It is Debian with a nice layer of solid varnish. I love plain Debian on the server or on a sysadmin's workstation, but on worstations for users who just want the whole thing to work with sane defaults out of the box it is very satisfying, requires very little maintainance and it is still Debian.

    • Here are some things Ubuntu has that (many) other distributions don't:

      1. New stable releases twice a year.
      2. Security updates for at least 18 months for each release.
      3. One of the fastest response times for security updates.
      4. Simple, well-integrated software installation and update tools (synaptic, gnome-app-install, update-notifier).
      5. A huge, up-to-date package repository based on Debian Sid.
      6. Single disk with both LiveCD and graphical installer (new in Dapper).
    • I've been using Linux full time since '97. I'm no crazy kernel hacker, but I've done my share of development. Although Ubuntu is the first Debian based distro I've used, it's by far my favorite. I started with RedHat, then SuSE, was with Mandrake for quite some time, then Gentoo, now Ubuntu. The two main reasons why I love Ubuntu are:
      • Package Management
      • Sudo

      The package management has all the ease of Gentoo's 'emerge,' but without the compiling. Plus, you don't have to worry about something breaking

    • To comparing Ubuntu to say Fedora Core, you have to look behind the sticky smiley usable faces and compare the old clockwork beneath of Debian against Red Hat. I think the biggest answers here are a) speed and b) .deb package management. I use Fedora Core, and it is officially a beast, and managing .rpm's through yum isn't perfect.

      But the real differences aren't in the software. It's the attitude and community. Ubuntu loves you. Ubuntu is your friend. It smiles when you see it on the street. Those behind Ub
        • Hah maybe I sell out in trying to be controversial. But no I do have some real opinions on Firefox that usually get modded out of side. Here they arel, following my story.

          In 2003 , back when I used Windows, and wasn't that geeky at all, I installed an 'alternative' browser at hte recommendation of my brother. This was Firebird 0.7. I liked it. It was faster than IE. He showed me how to use the tabs (using TBE) and how it blocked ads (adblock). I was impressed by the good many geeky features that made it use
          • Is the stylesheet changer the same as that found in View->Page Style? If so I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to put it back in like you remember it with an extention. If it hasn't been done already.

            I still think FF is the Browser with the most geeky features. It's just that they put them as extentions instead so it doesn't flood the browser with features.
            • Firstly is there an extension?

              The current implementation is useless, because you don't know *if* there is an alternate stylesheet avaliable, because there's no visible icon. No-one goes to habitually look in view /page style to see.
              • I don't know if there is an extention. I really don't care about the feature so I haven't looked.

                I imagine if there isn't one you could use GreaseMonkey to hack something together which would show (on the page) if there were alternative presentations available.

                Good hunting, and I'd look at web developer plugins as well. They may have the functionality built in.
    • It's the first Linux distro I would feel comfortable inflicting on my parents, while still being a joy to inflict on myself.

      I'm a CS major, and I do basically all my development on Linux. It's been pretty much the most cooperative distro I've ever run across. Cooperative when I want to do something advanced, and cooperative when I don't (as in "I don't want to manually config ALSA").

    • A big and supportive community. Everything follows from that, really.
      • I'm using gentoo amd64 atm and the only complaint I have is there is no easy way to get many browser plugins working with the firefox-bin or opera (32-bit) packages.

        The last attempt I had at installing Ubuntu Breezy was a disaster, the partitioning situation was pretty poor (I already had 3 primary partitions, 1 windows, 1 freebsd and 1 extended and the Ubuntu installer couldn't seem to cope with it) and then after the thing was installed it refused to boot (just hung).

        Things for me 'just work' just fine wi
        • Well just going by your post and obvious affection for Gentoo, I'd say not much.

          If you've already made up your mind and like a distro, quirks and all, chances are you won't really get any new, instant, where-have-you-been-all-my-life gratification from another distro, even a quality, polished distro like Ubuntu. Gentoo is also a quality and polished distro, just aimed at a techier crowd then Ubuntu.

          Me, I like slackware or debian. But I recommend Ubuntu to my firends and family that don't know or care what "

  • Why Ubuntu wins for me.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by danpsmith (922127) on Thursday April 20 2006, @10:56AM (#15165411)
    One word: community. Anything that you can think of you can find a guide for for the most part, just by Googling. The chat has to be one of the only friendly ones I've seen in the linux community and the boards/wiki are impeccable. They didn't attempt to make me feel like a moron just for not knowing something, and they didn't feel I needed to be pressured into using Linux for every application, just supporting the cause and attempting to learn was enough. I've been waiting for dapper drake to take flight for a while nos so I can get my hands on XGL and get it actually working permanently on a computer. I might have to try out the beta early now that a beta has finally been released.
    • The community is the answer on Ubuntu. And it's interesting because from the outset the Ubuntu folks stated that they wanted to make a friendly distro and it's paid off in terms of how the community operates. I was a really long time Windows user who started with DOS, went to Windows with 3.0 (and remember how 'great' 3.11 was) all the way up to XP.

      I finally got tired of Windows crap and decide to go all FOSS and switched my laptop to Linux. First distro I used was SuSE. I bought it just before Novell b
  • After reading the story yesterday on /. http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/18/ 0047245 [slashdot.org] I downloaded the latest Alpha (/. says beta Ubuntu say Alpha) And for being Alpha it is very very stable. I got XGL working in less than 3 mins, all codecs, plugins, and java installed in 10 mins, and runs rings around Fedora Core 5. It's as responsive as my Gentoo install, seems to me anyway.

    I'm very very impressed, IMHO Mark and the Ubuntu gang are going places in hurry if they keep this up. So the question that comes to my mind now is, would I install this on my mom's computer for her to use 24/7? My answer is I don't t think I would on this release (flight 6) but I will as soon as the final comes out in June, and that's

    • Those terms mean different things to different groups. In the case of Ubuntu as far as I can tell "Alpha" means "We haven't finalized on features yet", "Beta" means "We've finalized on features but need to finish testing". That an Alpha could be quite stable isn't suppirising since most code isn't being written from scratch but is just packaging of other software.

      When you are developing software from scratch, those can take on different meanings. Even if you use the same general points of demarcation (beta
    • According to btdownloadcurses, the name of the file I'm currently downloading is: "ubuntu-6.06-beta-live-i386.iso". From that, I would have to say that it looks like Ubuntu considers this a beta, and slashdot got it right. Don't look so startled! It can happen! :)

      I am going to be installing this on my aunt's machine, but only because she's going to be in town next week, and won't be in June. I'd rather wait, but sometimes one has to strike while the iron is hot. I expect it to be a major improvement ov
    • (/. says beta Ubuntu say Alpha)

      Ubuntu tells me it's a beta when I log in (splash screen says Ubuntu Dapper Beta). Maybe you accidently downloaded an old version? The beta is downloadable here. [ubuntu.com]

  • I'd download it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mypalmike (454265) on Thursday April 20 2006, @11:00AM (#15165447) Homepage
    But I'm still waiting for the last Ubuntu release to finish compiling on my computer!!!

    Oh, wait... Wrong distro joke.

  • Eewy GUI (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BoredWolf (965951) <jakew.white@gmail.com> on Thursday April 20 2006, @11:00AM (#15165455) Journal
    When did techies decide that the GUI was the most important aspect of an OS? What keeps us from identifying the benefits of the 2.6.15-r6 kernel (such as SATA RAID support)? We need to stop identifying the pecking-order by how slick an interface looks. I'm sure some people are tingling with anticipation that they'll have "caramel colored theme", but it would be more useful to detail the benefits of switching. Even on the Ubuntu site, the seem to be more focused on a Graphical Shutdown for a "more professional and user friendly feel overall". If you're trying to reinvent Windows, go right ahead. If you want a streamlined, efficient, and powerful OS that will appeal to converts and linux zealots alike, start pushing something other than Gnome's 'Windows XP feel'. Those of us that know linux know there are many GUIs out there for our enjoyment, and regurgitating old news about an interface that is independent of your distro doesn't pique my interest. People need something to differentiate Ubuntu from every other distro out there. I can put Gnome on my linux box, but that doesn't make Gentoo into Ubuntu. Let people know why they should opt for Ubuntu instead of RedHat or YellowDog...

    • When did techies decide that the GUI was the most important aspect of an OS?

      I'm probably a "techie" and I don't believe that the GUI is the most important part.

      But with Ubuntu, I can install a "server" version and skip the GUI.

      Or I can do a regular install and get a nice GUI. This is great for workstations.

      With Ubuntu, you no longer need to choose between "stable system" and "nice GUI". You get them BOTH.

      I'm sure some people are tingling with anticipation that they'll have "caramel colored theme", but it

    • Re:Eewy GUI (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nmos (25822)
      When did techies decide that the GUI was the most important aspect of an OS? What keeps us from identifying the benefits of the 2.6.15-r6 kernel (such as SATA RAID support)?

      Probably because anyone who knows what a kernel is can install whatever one they want on any distro. A really pollished (not just pretty but actually works right) GUI is a lot harder to graft on to a distro that doesn't already have it.

    • Re:Eewy GUI (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mixmasta (36673) on Thursday April 20 2006, @06:39PM (#15169459) Journal
      Because it is the only thing left to do on Linux.

      Technically it is mostly finished, but lots of work still needs to be done to improve ease of use. Hence, that's where the excitement is.
  • Madpenguin recently had a really good review of some of the new features in 6.0.6.

    http://tinyurl.com/j3hyq [tinyurl.com]
  • I've been running Dapper since Flight 4 on my laptop. Impressive (while some things not working yet... bug reports submitted). I've just updated, but haven't seen any changes today

  • Graphical Installer (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stu42j (304634) on Thursday April 20 2006, @01:38PM (#15167093) Homepage
    It looks like the "new spiffy graphical installation" only works under the LiveCD. Perhaps the Ubuntu folks should work with the Debian folks to finish the gtk frontend for d-i. That way they could have a "real" graphical installer.

    http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/GUI [debian.org]
    • Personally I think the LiveCD should take over as the standard distribution mechanism. Let people preview before they install and make the install as simple as possible.

      The traditional method of installation should be available for techies, but these hardly need a shiny interface with icons and buttons.

      There is nothing wrong with a text based installer as long as it is well done.
  • look here (love the url)
    http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/dapperbeta#head-c56a 98f3cc839f858104f654c0f6900908721f73 [ubuntu.com]

    it's the notification section. gnome 2.14 has a sexy new notification box at last. there's a message saying updates are avaliable. and then it says 'a restart is required' what's that about. when do you ever need to do that in linux? obviously if you want to boot into a newer kernel, but i wouldn't recommend rebooting JUST for that. wait till you next turn on tomorrow. any other application is the
    • The reboot option is displayed only for kernel updates, as you suggested. Users of released Ubuntu versions receive updates only to fix security holes and other critical bugs, so it's probably a good idea to recommend that they reboot into the new kernel as soon as possible.
  • My moms hard drive sh!t itself the other day, so after we got a new one I offered to put Linux on it for her. She's a total novice, so I used Hoary as opposed to Dapper, but so far its doing everything she needs: Firefox, Thunderbird, Frozen-Bubble, and even FirstClass, her school district's email/groupware client has a linux beta available. Slowly, Linux is penetrating the absolute beginner market.
    • I WISH I could install Ubuntu on my mom's computer. It would work so much better for her; she wouldn't have to keep buying stupid games like solitaire and majohng that I could just apt-get for her, her printer wouldn't unistall itself everytime she restarts, and I wouldn't have to do anymore anti-virus/spyware sweeps. Of course that last one would be much easier if her company's it dept would stop remoting into her computer and deleting all the anti-spyware programs I install, but you know, people are jus
  • I've been using Dapper as a primary OS since Flight 5 and have been extremely impressed with the stability, considering the warnings and alpha status. Today was supposed to be the release of the original 6.04 if I am not mistaken (before Shuttleworth announced the delay). If they can iron out whatever small bugs remain in the beta until June 1, imagine how rock solid Dapper is going to be. At this point, when you couple the (almost) ease of use and the large forum community this is as close to LotD as yo

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