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Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" Is Out
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Oct 18, 2007 08:58 AM
from the while-it's-hot dept.
from the while-it's-hot dept.
Many readers are sending the news that Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon has been released. Download options include mirrors and torrents. Wired has a review based on the release candidate: "Gamers and hardcore media hounds may still feel left out... but we found playing music and watching movies in the new Ubuntu to be every bit as pleasant as it is under OS X or Windows... Wi-Fi, printing, my digital camera and even my iPod all worked immediately after installation — no drivers or other software required... I did have to install additional codecs to get MP3 and Windows Media Audio support."
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Ubuntu Dev Summit Lays Out Plans For Hardy Heron 261 comments
Opurt writes "On the first day of the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Boston this week, a roundtable session focused on the vision for the upcoming Hardy Heron Ubuntu release. Unlike Gutsy Gibbon, which brought a handful of experimental features along with some new functionality, the focus with Heron will be on robustness as it will be supported on the desktop for 3 years. 'The Compiz window manager, which adds sophisticated visual effects to the Ubuntu user interface, will be a big target for usability improvements. Keyboard bindings and session management were noted as two areas where Compiz still needs some work.' PolicyKit and Tracker will also be significantly tweaked, while Heron is also likely to see a complete visual refresh."
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What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Amarok. There's nothing like it on any other platform.
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Win, win, win, win...
It's a bit pricey retail ($54), but comes with a 300 page manual, and the coupon "DOM3-STARDOCK" will get you 20% off until November 15th, making it quite reasonable..
I'm not affiliated with them, it's just pretty much the only game I bother to play these days.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Gaming Falls to the Winner (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't something anyone developing Linux or working on Ubuntu can just fix. Gaming is always going to fall to the OS with the biggest installbase because of the money involved. All the Linux folks can do is keep polishing and pushing to make desktop Linux a better experience... so that one day they'll have a profitable userbase for the gaming companies to address.
Maybe it seems like Linux geeks are underestimating the importance of gaming, but I don't think that's the case. Projects like Wine and Cedega strive to hit a moving target in the dark, just in efforts to bring you folks over... But we'll only ever see mixed results from that.
From my point of view though, gamers may overestimate their own importance to the adoption of Linux at this time. Because gaming will fall to the biggest (desktop) installbase, how is it going to help an OS that is currently running third? All it can really do is solidify the lead of whoever is in first. Right?
And, contrary to the opinion of many gamers, there are throngs of people who never-ever game... or never-ever game on a computer. Judging from the folks I know, it'd be the vast majority. Most folks just use their computers to communicate, to budget, to work, and to just dink around on the web. Those are the folks Ubuntu is going after right now.
Gamers are important, sure. It's a userbase that is a bit more knowledgeable and a bit more experimental, which would make them a good fit for Desktop Linux early-adoption. We'd love to have them. But, unfortunately, they are going to be forever tied to whatever's most popular... and, further, they are not the end-all of computing.
We'll be happy to see all you gamers again once we hit... sayyy 25%-50% installed. See ya then. =)
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Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd been running Vista and it was a disaster. I have an Nvidia Geforce 7800 GTX, which doesn't support DX10, so even when I got Bioshock I never really benefitted from that aspect of Vista. Long story short, Vista turned me off so much that I now dual boot XP and Ubuntu, with the idea that I'd use Ubuntu as sort of a project to noodle around with, getting used to Linux in anticipation of XP's future abandonment.
Two weeks in I've been pleasantly surprised by how well Ubuntu works and how much I don't need XP. Everything non-game related works great, and I've even made inroads towards weaning my girlfriend off of iTunes. Wine runs EVE well after some mucking about with settings. I still need XP for Bioshock, but HL2 seems to work fine. I have yet to try BF2142 and I have some older games I'd like to try out but so far I'd characterize it as a net success.
So yeah, I agree wholeheartedly that games are important, but people who ask me for recommendations as to software tend to be friends/family that will subsequently ask me to install and maintain said software, and on that basis I'd much rather set them up with Ubuntu than XP or Vista. With my admittedly limited experience with Linux, I still like that when things go wrong in Linux they seem to go wrong for obvious reasons and be relatively straightforward to fix, where Windows does so much mysterious crap in the background it seems like problems just arise out of the ether. I get the impression that extended use is not intended use, unlike with Windows.
As it stands now, I no longer consider XP to be my main os. I basically consider Ubuntu my "serious" os, and the XP partition as essentially the same as my Wii: a console for a few specific games.
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Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
I do media production and have always used either Windows or OSX (or both) for my work, in applications such as Logic, Sonar, Premiere, Wavelab, etc. I had tried several times to offload some of this work to a Linux box, but it had never really worked out for me. Either I couldn't get Linux to work with my pro audio hardware, or the applications couldn't do what I needed them to do. I'd always end up back in Windows or OSX.
After an ugly experience with Vista, that came pre-installed on a high-end box that was to become my primary production system (once I upgraded back to XP Pro), I decided it was time for me to make a serious attempt to do my work in Linux again. I'd lost a lot of confidence in the major players (MS and Apple) to serve my needs over the next 10 years. Plus, I had some problems with the way those two companies do business. So, I took the system (the one that the Vista machine was to replace) and installed Ubuntu Studio (Feisty).
The first thing I noticed was that with only a few very easy tweaks (for DVD and codecs), everything was working. My dual-monitor video card and audio hardware worked "out of the box". The audio engine, Jack, was a little bit of a pain to get working, but mostly because of my own inability to read a how-to, but once it was working, the applications that came (for free) such as Ardour were more than just decent.
So finally, I had a secondary system on which I could do a host of pre- and post-production tasks. It gave new life to a system that would otherwise have gathered dust or have been given to a nephew on which to play games. Every day, I find new ways to make use of the Ubuntu Studio box, and I find myself sitting down at that system more and more often. Oh yeah, I didn't have to pay five grand to buy second licenses to the production applications I use because the ones that came with Ubuntu were free.
So, I still use Windows for the bulk of my work, but little by little, the Ubuntu Studio system is making inroads. I'm losing the uncomfortable feeling of being locked in to one of two companies for my operating system, and I'm less afraid that once Microsoft stops supporting XP, I'll be SOL. The impressive improvements that have occurred in the last 4 years and the great new programs that the OSS community has developed will continue, I assume. I keep hoping that one of the major music software developers will put out a native Linux version so I can make the divorce from Microsoft final.
Hell, I've even figured out how to play Eve-Online on the Ubuntu Studio machine.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Developers could create 5 tiny applications:
ipod_mount
ipod_music_sync
ipod_video_sync
ipod_pictures_sync
ipod_unmount
Each would do what they're supposed to do *very* well. They could have some command line flags that would let you do about anything
ipod_mount
ipod_video_sync -device
ipod_music_sync -device
ipod_unmount.
Then you could write a nice pretty wrapper around that. In my opinion nothing would be very bloated because each program would do one thing and one thing very well. You also get the nice 'feature' of having command line tools available to anyone that wanted to use SSH or a Web interface or an Ncurses interface.
I'm a die hard OS X fan. It does everything I need to and I don't have to fight it. I also love the command line if there's a way to do it via command line I probably do. My debian server is headless I only have SSH access. I'd love to be able to plug my iPod into its cradle go back to my chair and do everything via ssh. Most new applications I find are KDE or GNOME only. I finally found someone who wrote a nice perl script to convert *.avi to iPod video files. I wrapped that in a shell script to create iPod videos.
to_ipod.sh Transformers.avi Pulp\ Fiction.avi
And in a few hours I have Transformers.mp4 and Pulp\ Fiction.mp4, but then I have to transfer them to my Mac to sync them via iTunes.
(See also off topic rant in same thread)
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Last I checked Apple doesn't support Linux. If you bought an iPod, you knew it didn't support Linux, so why did you buy it?
This is akin to the people that buy houses next to airports then complain to the city about the noise.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
Tech specs on Apple's site:
Mac system requirements
* Mac OS X v10.4.8 or later
* iTunes 7.4 or later5
Windows s
* Windows Vista or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later
* iTunes 7.4 or later
I don't see a Linux option.
I don't see a "non iTunes" option.
And apple sells the whole package as they do with everything they sell.
Off topic----
Note: I am an Apple user. I have both a MacBookPro and a Debian server. I tried for the longest time to get stuff onto my iPod from the debian server since that's where my music resides. I couldn't find any command line programs to do it. I even had conceptualized a nice little bash script that after I plugged my iPod in, I'd run it and it'd sync everything. I gave up and just use iTunes over an NFS share over Wireless, sure it takes a while but I set it before I go to bed. (Initial sync was over ethernet).
Where are all the linux developers making nice stable non 'flair' programs? Why can't someone make a nice stable cli interface to the iPod and then write a GUI wrapper around that? I've been looking *forever* for CLI RSS torrent grabber. It doesn't even have to be a program, just a simple script will due. OS X has a nice program called TVShows.app, it's just a nice GUI wrapped around a ruby script that reads an XML file. I tried but the script doesn't run under Debian. Shiny programs are nice to keep up with the OSX/Vista crowd but what happened to the developers that make good dependable programs for the command line?
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Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
"apt-cache search ipod" returns a nice list of programs, some of which are marked as command line:
python-gpod - a library to read and write songs and artwork to an iPod
gnupod-tools - command-line tools for the iPod family of portable music players
libipod-cil - CLI library for accessing iPods
Where are all the linux users that do a basic search of the documentation before whining on slashdot?
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Re:What? (Score:4, Funny)
"SCO".
ahahaha! hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...
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Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
Check out Cowon's iAudio line. I have an 60GB iAudio X5, and after a year and a half I am still absolutely thrilled with it. It beats the piss out of iPod for functionality (FLAC/OGG/WMA/MP3 compatibility, video, an interface that doesn't suck ass, text file reading, FM radio, audio in/out, recording from radio/audio in/internal mic, and on and on and on), and is substantially cheaper than an iPod of comparable size. I didn't see the X5 on their website, maybe they're phasing it out for the newer models, but check them out. Anecdote: I dropped it in a pile of melting snow one drunk night in my front yard and didn't find it until the next afternoon. Turned right on, no water under the screen or anything, good as new. True story.
the touch round scroller appears to me to be unmatched
I hate them. There is no tactile feedback, so I can't operate it without looking at it, which is a total dealbreaker for me. I bike a lot, I can't be pulling the thing out and trying to look at it in traffic. With my X5 (which has a mini-joystick), I can navigate the whole thing without looking at it.
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IU Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
ftp://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/pub/linux/ubuntu-releases/7.10 [iu.edu]
- or -
http://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/linux/ubuntu-releases/ [iu.edu] (separate server)
Ubuntu release days are fun for mirror operators. It lets us test our hardware and bandwidth.
(Internet2 connected)
Re:IU Mirror (Score:5, Funny)
Not for long
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release notes (Score:5, Informative)
The release notes for the beta version give a good overview of what you can expect:
http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/gutsybeta [ubuntu.com]
With 3D desktop effects and NTFS write support enabled by default, and fast user switching and improved X configuration, this is one of the most significant Ubuntu releases in a while.
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Re:IU Mirror (Score:4, Insightful)
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New logo? (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't know that Ubuntu's new logo was a red spiral!
Re:New logo? (Score:5, Funny)
You -> O
/|\
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Re:New logo? (Score:5, Funny)
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The summary contradicts itself (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The summary contradicts itself (Score:5, Insightful)
Lucky for you, there is Ogg Vorbis, which is technically superior to MP3 anyway, in terms of quality per byte.
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Re:The summary contradicts itself (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Charge for the version of the distro that includes the software, pay the licence fee to the licensor, disallow redistribution of the licensed code
2) Give the distro away for free, pay the licence fee to the licensor, disallow redistribution of the licensed code
3) Reimplement the required code, distribute only in countries with a more enlightened attitude towards software patents (eg the EU)Superior or not, that doesn't help me with all the music I have in mp3 (and no, I'm not about to re-rip it).
The OP's point is valid - the experience is not as good out of the box as that of OS X or Windows, with regards to music playing.
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Re:The summary contradicts itself (Score:5, Informative)
What still is an issue is DVD encryption. Sadly DeCSS can't be legally obtained in the US. Much as I am opposed to software patents, some practical solution needs to be given, while we continue to struggle to change the patent system. Paying a few bucks for legal DVD playback in the US seems the only feasible option at this point, and Ubuntu should facilitate this somehow, if only by providing links to third parties that provide this service (e.g. Fluendo I believe were working on this).
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Ob: Bittorrent (Score:5, Informative)
Currently: 1938 seeds, 4389 peers. and it's going *very* quickly.
Has support from Dell and Novell (Score:5, Interesting)
It's got a slick UI and the package manager is well done.
Add in support from Dell [dell.com].
All that is missing now is a really awesome developer environment [microsoft.com].
Re:Has support from Dell and Novell (Score:5, Informative)
I would just cite emacs, but since you seem to be interested in something more...graphical...I'll just list these three:
* Eclipse [eclipse.org]
* KDevelop [kdevelop.org]
* Netbeans [netbeans.org]
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Re:Has support from Dell and Novell (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Has support from Dell and Novell (Score:4, Insightful)
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Don't download the new Ubuntu... (Score:5, Funny)
THINK OF THE CHAIRS!
Re:Don't download the new Ubuntu... (Score:4, Funny)
I work for a furniture company. Do download Ubuntu... Think of the 4th quarter profits!
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Damn! (Score:5, Funny)
Seems very newbie friendly (Score:5, Informative)
After the few guided clicks to get that done, a reboot later and suddenly Compiz was also activated without any user actions needed. Hmm, so how do you configure those 3D effects then? No way we could find, but from reading an online computer magazine, we found out that the Compiz Config Settings Manager wasn't included. We installed that one, and it then integrated nicely into the Desktop Settings as a new "Custom effects" option. Why that one wasn't part of the distro by default is still unknown to us though. It seemed like an obvious choice to let the user customize the window effects?
Otherwise, I think Compiz didn't lag or anything even once when maximizing windows or rotating the desktop, etc, and this was on a laptop without a *that* hot graphics card. So we were impressed about how smooth the UI was. No interruptions from some service suddenly kicking in to work a bit like every user of Vista has no doubt grown used to take for granted by now with the SuperFetch, System Restore, Search Indexer etc services. They seem to kick in at the most inappropriate times -- not even when the computer is idle! Come on! Maybe Ubuntu's new desktop search indexer make it suffer too, but nothing we could see anyway.
After doing this, we unplugged the network card, and voila, it automatically discovered our WLAN. We didn't have to do anything, really.
So let's try open the (already mounted and ready) NTFS drive with Windows Vista on it? Oh, we can simply drag a file there now too -- cool! NTFS-3g apparently installed and ready.
We seemed to have to install Windows Media Audio support though and as we're still quite some Linux amateurs, we have still not got around that part as the work day is over. It's been fun experimenting though, and getting up to date with what a modern "desktop Linux" distro can offer. Looking at the feature list of Ubuntu 7.10 [ubuntu.com], and summing that one up with the new features of GNOME 2.20 [gnome.org] gives one a mighty impressive list of new features compared to just 6 months ago.
Linux desktop development (GNOME, KDE, desktop distros,
I have some pretty high demands of novice usability though, which makes me hesitate still as for some distros. E.g. SUSE Linux 10.3 had a few quirks on my home stationary computer. Its NVIDIA driver install having me to use the command prompt and special "SUSE for NVIDIA" instructions is unacceptable for amateur usage IMHO, although I finally got it done. It also even failed to install the distro to the hard drive the first time around, because it couldn't mount the SATA drive it had just formatted (??). A reboot, and then it could do it like it was no problem at all. *shrug* That also gave an early feeling of "still aimed for geeks" that I'd so much like it to see it move away from.
But back to Ubuntu 7.10 -- so far no problems here, and I was left with an excitement to play with it more after the day.
"Gutsy Gibbon" Is Out? (Score:5, Funny)
"What is it Gutsy?"
"...I'm tired of living a lie..."
Works great on my new laptop! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm very impressed. Wireless networking worked out-of-the-box. Battery support works out-of-the-box (if I remove the power cable, Ubuntu will switch to power saving mode just like Vista would; battery meter is shown by default). I can plug and unplug USB mouses at will. Partitioning the system is painless because it supports non-destructive NTFS resizing out-of-the-box. I have absolutely no idea why so many people are complaining about Linux laptop support.
Re:Works great on my new laptop! (Score:4, Informative)
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Ubuntu Server needs work. (Score:5, Interesting)
Bittorrent client (Score:4, Informative)
Sean
7.2Gbps via official torrents (Score:4, Informative)
Over the first 3 minute sample I took, I calculated total torrent pool bandwidth at 6.5Gbps (gigabits per second).
About 10 minutes later (as of right now) I completed a 5 minute sample and calculated the bandwidth usage to be 7.2Gbps.
The tracker is going up and down a fair bit under the load, but those statistics should be fairly indicative of the number of people downloading Gutsy Gibbon via the official torrents.
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Re:7.2Gbps via official torrents (Score:5, Informative)
No, it downloads from your usual update site -- which is almost certainly melted into a pool of slag on the datacenter floor right now.
If you want to update today, or even in the next few days, I'd suggest using a torrent to download the CD. Burn the CD and put it in the drive, then go to "System->Administer->Software Sources", click on the "Third-Party Software" tab, click the "Add CD-ROM" button. This should add the CD as a package source for you. Then when you do the upgrade, it should pull packages from there rather than from the update site (except when the update site has newer packages than the CD, or when you're updating packages that aren't on the CD, of course).
I expect that getting the CD image with bittorrent and then upgrading will be a lot faster than just doing a straight upgrade.
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Re:7.2Gbps via official torrents (Score:5, Informative)
When you stick the CD in the drive it will ask if you want to upgrade and run the script to upgrade from the CD. Why make things harder for your self?
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Re:So what's next? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:So what's next? (Score:4, Informative)
Ubuntu Names Repository [tipotheday.com]
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Re:So what's next? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:will it wipe my /home? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Just do (n00b question).... (Score:5, Informative)
OK, you know how you are prompted to install updates from time to time, right? Usually for security or bug fixes or whatever?
This is essentially the same thing, except you're installing newer versions of packages rather than just ones with fixes applied to them. You won't need to edit or format partitions or anything like that. It's just another package update, really, but a BIG one that will take a long time, and which will occasionally ask you "do you want to replace such-and-such configuration file, which appears to have been altered, with the new one", and unless you recognize the file you'll just want to say "yes, I want the new one" to all of those.
Video drivers: not sure, but Gutsy prompts you to install restricted drivers with a little icon up by the clock (in Gnome, don't know about KDE). So, if the upgrade breaks your restricted video drivers (I suspect that it will, as I doubt that the Ubuntu folks feel comfortable including non-free drivers in a mostly-automated major update) then it should just prompt you to re-install them the first time you log in, after a reboot.
As for the resolution thing: if you manually edited any files (probably
If you did not manually edit a configuration file to get your resolution how you want it, then my advice is to either stick with what you have, or just give Gutsy a go and take the risk. It might mess it up, it might not. Probably not, in fact, but it's possible. In any case, the forums and IRC support will still be there if you need them, and should be able to help you get things back in order should the upgrade cause any breakage of any kind.
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Re:Props to Shuttleworth (Score:5, Informative)
You forgot to describe what that 'humble benchmark' is, but in any case it depends on what your needs are. What do you feel is lacking?
You may need Photoshop, DRM or games, so you use XP.
I need 100% legal software on a low budget; a rock solid, cross-platform programming environment; audio routing across almost any 2 audio applications. I don't want to wait for minutes and minutes when searching for a file- I want it NOW. XP just doesn't cut it for me.
Interesting enough, more and more software that started out as Open Source software for Linux only is becoming available for XP. Do you use Firefox? Thunderbird? Gaim? Gimp? Audacity? Open office? Free software is becoming an increasingly realistic alternative to closed software.
If you like that philosophy, you may want to order in a free live CD and take it for a spin. It won't cost you anything- you won't even have to install anything.
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Re:Props to Shuttleworth (Score:5, Interesting)
* plug in a USB memory stick, make some changes, rady to take it out. In Ubuntu, "Safely remove" is one click away in the context menu, and does exactly what you would expect. XP pops up some unintelligble menu of USB root devices and it's 3 clicks until you get to remove it.
* plug in a USB printer. In Ubuntu 7.10, it appears in your printer list automatically. In XP, you have to find the drivers, install the drivers, finish the "new hardware wizard"...
* need more multimedia codecs? In ubuntu, it'll prompt you to install them, then do so. In XP, you have to search the web for them, install some third-party software, repeat until you find some that work.
* want to edit a
* install/update/remove thousands of third party applications. In ubuntu, it's all in the package manager, there's a "new updates notifier", and there's no reboot unless you upgrade to the newest version of the OS. In windows, you only get updates for Microsoft products, and those all require a reboot (and upgrading to the latest OS requires $400 and yet more CDs).
* 3d desktop effects - ubuntu 7.10 has 3d desktop effects enabled by default, where your virtual desktops are on a spinning cube, windows can be consumed by flames when you close them, and there's 3 or 4 alternatives to boring old alt-tab. Windows Vista can give you an orthographic view of your windows when you hit alt-tab and that's about it. XP doesn't have such effects(a small percentage of which improve productivity) and it never will.
* migration - Ubuntu can find and import many settings and files from your windows drive during install. XP just barely acknowledges that other OSes exist, and will blow away other partitions unless you've partitioned in a very particular way.
For all purposes other than games, Ubuntu has long since been surpass XP in usability and user friendliness. "Average users" are not doing those things that require XP; average users surf the net, send email, and write word documents.
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Re:Feisty Doesn't Know (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Feisty Doesn't Know (Score:4, Informative)
Not true.
The -d flag gives you the latest development release - which will be newly unstable 8.04 any minute now. You may be able to cheat with the -d flag (and get 7.10) for a couple more hours, but in general update manager will automatically show a new distro version when it's ready - probably tomorrow.
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