Ubuntu 8.04 Beta Released

markybob writes "Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 beta has been released. It features GNOME 2.22 and uses Linux kernel 2.6.24. Furthermore, it uses Firefox 3 beta 4, and PulseAudio is enabled by default. To ease the transition of Windows users, it includes Wubi, which allows users to install and uninstall Ubuntu like any other Windows application. It does not require a dedicated partition, nor does it affect the existing bootloader, yet users can experience a dual-boot setup almost identical to a full installation."

WUBI?

Anyone have any information about this? I prefer having a linux environment but my work laptop *must* run windows thanks to company software. This seems like it may be a much better solution for me compared to, say, cygwin.

Re:WUBI?

I think it's new enough that there isn't a lot of first-hand experience with it. The FAQ [wubi-installer.org] describes it in Alpha, although the download link refers to it as Beta... in any case, my suspicion is that it is likely not very stable yet. You may want to experiment with it on a home PC before putting it on your work laptop.

Re:WUBI?

Take a look at http://wubi-installer.org/ [wubi-installer.org] and see for your self. Essentially it uses a large file on your windows OS as the file system. When you install it, it modifies your bootloader to give you the option of booting to that machine.

If you decide you don't like it, just reboot into Windows and uninstall it via add/remove programs.

Performance is slightly slower due to the extra hoops your *nix OS has to jump through, but you won't notice if you're running on modern hardware. I liken it to being able to boot to a VMWare image.

** How does this compare with VMWare server perf?

I use (the free) VMWare Server (not ESX) on Windows boxes for various Linux installs...including Ubuntu. I do not understand an earlier comment stating that VMWare Server is complex. You install it as a Windows application, fire it up, select "new VM", choose a linux distro (Ubuntu 32 and 64 are options) for the VM architecture, and away you go...you now have a VM ready for a Linux install. The Live Ubuntu CD works with no issues...as does the default Ubuntu install.

You can also tweak the number of processors, hard disk size, and memory that you assign to the VM, but VMWare suggests low-end (working) default values. I have run VMWare on numerous machines (laptops, desktops, servers) and it just plain works. It is a fantastic way to test out various distros without putting the Windows partition at risk. If you take the time to mount and install VMWare Tools in the VM's hosted OS, switching back and forth between the host and guest OSes (including copying and pasting) is a breeze. You can also have as many VMs (and OSes) installed as you please. Want to play with 8.04 without losing 7.10? No problem. Create a new VM.

Downsides include:

  - It is virtualized. Thus, it is going to run significantly slower than a native install.

  - You are limited by the types of hardware architectures that VMWare simulates. That said, I have not had issues getting any sound or graphics card to work...and the networking options are fantastic. I cannot get access to all four cores however. The free VMWare server only allows me to create a VM that simulates either 1 or 2 CPUs...and I am not sure how many cores the VMWare container is using.

  - Memory...since Windows is still running, it needs its share. Thus, you need a lot.

Of course, on the positive side, Windows is still running...so you have access to whatever you need there (e.g., Outlook, games, whatever). You can also run in reverse, and run VMWare on Linux and install Windows in a VM, but I dare say that most of us are in a situation that requires (or prefers) the VMWare on Windows approach.

I assume that Windows is not running in the WUBI option and that Ubuntu is running right on the metal (not virtualized), with full access to the real hardware architecture and all of the memory. Putting the HD in a Windows file must have some performance impact, but most likely far less than the entire OS in a VM (which also uses the Windows file approach for the HD). Does anyone have anecdotal performance impressions for WUBI? It sounds very cool and a great option for someone who is not yet committed...but I will say that I am not much of a fan of modifying the boot loader, but perhaps I am just being overly skittish.

Steve

Re:WUBI?

There's a small difference. UMSDOS was a (ugly, but useful) hack that allowed to use FAT files and directories as if they were UNIX-like files and directories. So even if you booted in MSDOS/win you could read the linux files. WUBI is different: It stores a whole Linux filesystem in a file. Wubi then mounts the NTFS filesystem with NTFS-3G, and the big file containing the linux filesystem is mounted with the loop device as an ext (or reiser, or whatever) filesystem.

Re:WUBI?

If you *must* run windows for company apps, then Wubi probably isn't for you. It's more of a dual-boot type thing, cept it uses a file on your windows partition as it's 'hard drive'.

You might want to try out andLinux [andlinux.org]. It's a full on linux that integrates seamlessly inside of windows.

Personally, dual-booting is kind of a drag because of the constant reboots to get into Windows to do that one Windows-only thing, so I like cygwin or andLinux over Wubi.

Re:WUBI?

You could also look at innotek's VirtualBox. It's pretty fast if you've got an Intel or AMD CPU with the virtualization instructions, and there's a GPL version that lacks a few features like letting the VM see USB drives.

Another free option is Qemu Manager, which is a free Windows frontend to the free QEMU. Not as fast as VirtualBox on a virtualization-enabled PC, but not bad if you enable the KQEMU dynamic recompiler. There's also MS's Virtual PC, but IME QEMU and VirtualBox work a little better with Linux. And lastly, of course, there's VMWare Server, although IME it's a little harder to set up.

Alternative : LiveUSB

In addition to what other /.ers said about WUBI, there's also the possibility to use Live USB distribution.
PenDrive Linux [pendrivelinux.com] has a lot of resources about this kind of distributions.
I've been using their Quick and easy Pendrivelinux [pendrivelinux.com] for quite some time.
You can buy commercial preinstalled ones from companies like Mandriva Flash [mandriva.com].

It works to a very similar way to WUBI, but on a flash drive.
Essentially it puts 2* big files that contain the file system on the USB drive, and make the USB stick bootable using "syslinux". You start it by hitting F12 when the BIOS starts and choose to boot on the USB drive instead of your hard drive.
(whereas WUBI puts a big file with the partition /on the windows drive/ and adds a new entry to the Windows boot loader to make the system. So you boot you hard drive normally and then use Windows XP's boot menu to select Linux instead of WinXP).

So in that solution, your hard drive is virtually untouched (not that creating a file and adding an entry are *that* much big change) so it may please more the paranoid admins at your company.

Last-but-not-least there's also the running-Linux-inside-Virtualbox [virtualbox.org] (or some other virtual machines that have native-speed performance) solution. It's a bit complicated, but has the benefit of letting you run your Linux apps along side the Windows desktop (with possibilities for native integration, either using a X-Window server for Win32, or using the virtual machine's client tools).

* - most Live USB solutions tend to use 2 files : one is a big read-only file containing the live system, the other is read-writeable and used to store and remember modification (newly installed software, upgrades, user settings, user's home, etc.) between session.
This is because most Live USB distribution are descendant of Live CD distribution (where the CD-Rom is read only and holds the live distro and a RAM-disk holds the modification, using a UNIONFS to bridge the 2 together).
The big advantage of this system is that in case of a big fuckup, you can still reboot using only the original live system (just like a LiveCD) and fix/rebuild/create a new read-write big file.
Of course there are also other solutions for partitioning and installing linux on a USB stick the same way you install it on a harddrive.

Re:WUBI?

A working Linux system requires at least 3 parts:
1) a root filesystem, where the bulk of the files that comprises the system reside
2) a kernel which understands your hardware (or at least the disk hardware and filesystem format and of the root filesystem, other parts can all be loaded as modules later on)
3) a boot loader, which is executed by the BIOS, and knows where to locate and execute the kernel

In most common Linux installs, the root filesystem resides on a dedicated partition on the first hard disk, usually in the ext3 format. The kernel is often a also in this partition, but can be in a seperate /boot partition. Its location is unimportant as long as the bootloader know where to find it: you could put it on a FAT partition and use a DOS based bootloader like loadlin if you want. Nowadays the standard Linux bootloader is Grub, which understands many common Linux filesystems like ext3, jfs, reiserfs, so if you put you kernel on one if those filesystems it can boot.

Wubi makes use of the fact that the Linux kernel can mount single files as if they were disks/partitions. This is called loopback mounting a file, and many users have already used it at some point when mounting .iso files. But that file must still reside on some other partition/filesystem that has already been mounted. So what Wubi does is, it installs the normal Ubuntu root filesystem in a single file, and puts that on your NTFS formatted Windows partition, along with the kernel (which can mount NTFS partitions read-write these days thanks to ntfs-3g), and the grub4dos bootloader. Grub4dos is a modified version of Grub, which can locate the kernel on NTFS disks, and can be chainloaded from the Windows NT bootloader (meaning, the NT bootloader can boot grub4dos which in turn boots the Linux kernel). Wubi packages all this in a user-friendly Windows installer. Note that although you can add and remove Ubuntu like other Windows apps, you cannot run it alongside them. This is _not_ emulation or virtualization, it's still dual booting, with the only twist that it leaves your existing Windows partitions untouched.

To recap:

Normal Ubuntu startup
1) BIOS loads Grub
2) Grub loads the kernel from an ext3 partition (which also conains the root filesystem)
3) the kernel mounts the designated ext3 partition and uses that as the root filesystem (actually it starts off with initramfs, which is a root filesystem in memory that is swapped with the on-disk "real" root filesystem later in the boot process)

Wubi startup
1) BIOS loads the Windows bootloader NTLDR
2) when selected from the menu, NTLDR loads grub4dos
3) grub4dos loads the Linux kernel from the Windows partition
4) the kernel mounts the Windows partition, then mounts the file on that Windows partition where Ubuntu was installed in and uses that as the root filesystem

Bah

I am waiting for the Hungry Hippo version of Ubuntu...

Re:Bah

It appears Hateful Hillary is postponed in favor of Ostentatious Obama. What happened to Mediocre McCain, I don't know.

wubi ?

To ease the transition of Windows users, it includes Wubi, which allows users to install and uninstall Ubuntu like any other Windows application.

That's just great ... Ubuntu like any other Windows application. I am losing faith in humanity

Sweet Stuff

Just installed the amd64 version on my quad core box. I am really liking the goodies -

Startup is quicker than previous version on the same hardware. Filesystems are now mounted with 'realtime' flag out-of-box - yay for even more speed!
I was able to install it inside of Windows (Vista x64) without any performance loss using the Wubi installer - Ubuntu entry appeared in Windows boot loader and I did not had to partition my NTFS formatted disks - you can try and see how it works without losing data or even disk space when you am done trying it. Cool.

Firefox 3 - my favorite browser is bundled and integrated - can't ask for more!

Got to try KVM /virtio - KVM is something that never worked well for me.

Re:Sweet Stuff

'realtime'

No. That's "relatime". See here [kerneltrap.org] for an explanation.

ubuntu a windows application

which allows users to install and uninstall Ubuntu like any other Windows application.

Since when is Ubuntu a windows application? It isn't even an application.. It is a Linux distribution. If Wubi get's out into the world as "the way to install Ubuntu" noob users will assume they need Windows to install a Linux distro.. why is no one creating an app to turn it around? You can convert your Windows partition to a VMware disk and save it to an USB disk or network store.. Install a Linux distro, install a Virtual Machine player (Innotek virtualbox, VMware) put the disk back and load windows from within Linux.. And install and uninstall windows like any other Linux distribution software package

What's new

Here's what's I think is important (and new) Ubuntu 8.04 Beta, with my comments. There are more new things, but I don't care about them.

Xorg 7.3 - the main advantage should be easier configuration, especially in multi-monitor setups. I haven't tried it yet, so I can't say. But it can only be better than what we have now.

Linux kernel 2.6.24 - The new & neat things here are dynticks for amd64 (power savings), the new CFS scheduler (you should experience less lags when your system is loaded). I'm mostly interested in the dynticks part.

PulseAudio - this is supposed to clean up the linux audio mess. I say wait and see.

Firefox 3 Beta 4 - I tried Beta 3 and it's *really* an advance over Firefox 2. I can't say that I personally witnessed any real speedups, but the new location bar is really cool. It takes a day or two to get used to it, but it really changes the way you surf.

Transmission - a new Bittorrent client. I'm using it regularly since months, and it *rules*. It's exactly the way a bittorrent client should be.

Brasero - a new CD/DVD burning program. I have never used it, but I can only hope that it is the way Nero 5 was.

World clock for the clock applet - that's really handy. Never type "what's the time in california" into google again!

Virtualization - it's supposed to be some super-easy and clicky integration of virtualization. I'm looking forward to it.

No limited functionality. Still free.

'with limited functionality'

Where did you read that? If you look at the official page https://wiki.kubuntu.org/HardyHeron/Beta/Kubuntu [kubuntu.org] you'll see that the difference is the commercial support available. Since KDE 4 is not intended to be used by the general public just yet, there will be one version of Kubuntu 8.04 with KDE 3.5 that is supported, and one with 4.0 that isn't.

Re:No limited functionality. Still free.

You're misunderstanding what they mean by that comment.

Since 8.04 is a long term support (LTS) release which will be supported for years, they don't want to include the still incomplete KDE4. So the only version you can choose to buy commercial support for will use KDE 3. And since a lot of their users don't care about commercial support, there is still the unsupportable KDE4 option.

In short, Kubutu with KDE 4 is missing features because KDE 4 is missing features, not so that Canonical can make money. Both versions are available for free (without paid support).

Re:Still free?

Kubuntu

            Rock solid KDE 3

            Commercial support provided by [WWW] Canonical for a term of 18 months

            Release available through ShipIt for everybody as well as downloading

Kubuntu KDE 4 Remix

            Cutting edge KDE 4.0

            Support provided by the Kubuntu community via [WWW] Ubuntu Forums, [WWW] Kubuntu Forums, IRC, and the [WWW] Kubuntu Users Mailing List.

            Release available through CDs for groups who need it (ie. LoCo teams, conference teams, etc.) as well as downloading

As I understand it, there will be 2 versions Kubuntu 8.04 and Kubuntu KDE 4 Remix 8.04. The vanilla version has the standard support lifetime with updates and you can purchase support from Canonical, basically the way it has always been. The Remix version includes KDE 4 and is a bit less stable. Therefore, the Remix version does not offer official support and you need to go to the forums. I am not sure what the security or bug update procedure is, that is, whether or not packages found only in Remix will receive security and bug updates. So the "commercially" supported version is the same Kubuntu as usual, but Remix is for all of those people screaming about KDE 4.

Re:Still free?

I think you're confused. Canonical splitting any of their official distros into a limited free version and a fully-functional paid version would violate their own promise [ubuntu.com] that Ubuntu will always be free of charge. Even if they wiggled out of that on a technicality, Ubuntu lives purely on the strength of its community. Canonical know that and would be insane to risk losing them through such a move.

The actual situation is that Kubuntu will be splitting into two versions, both of them free in all senses of the word, for the 8.04 release. One (using KDE 3.5.9) will be officially supported for 18 months (it won't be a Long Term Support release, since KDE 3 likely won't be supported in three years, though it will still support upgrading directly from 6.06) while the other (using KDE 4.0.2) will be community supported. This is probably because (like me) they think that KDE 4 really isn't ready yet as it hasn't had much time to mature and many of the Extragear application (some of which come with Kubuntu) haven't been updated yet, the most notable for me being Amarok.

My understanding is that Kubuntu will only do this split release system for the 8.04 release, with the 8.10 release likely to use KDE 4.0.x officially.

Re:Still free?

During the time that RH and Mandrake didn't do this, weren't THEY suckers too for thinking you could run a business without charging for ... well anything?

Re:Still free?

Charging for support/consulting is something that money can be made on. You don't have to cripple your product in the process.

Re:Still free?

Please explain your redhat comment please.

1. There's Fedora (which Redhat supports) which has the bleeding edge stuff that other distributions get the benefit of. PulseAudio is enabled in Hardy Heron which Fedora 8 currently has it. BTW Fedora 9 is being released around the same time as Hardy Heron
2. There's CentOS which quoting them "... is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. ". That Linux vendor is redhat.

What you're paying for Redhat is the support which makes sense for business to have a safety net. There's nothing different software-wise (as far as I know) except that you have someone to call when some UH-OH happens.

Not a typo

The "relatime" mount option tells the filesystem to update atime only when it is older than mtime or ctime. This is better than turning off atime entirely, but doesn't have the performance issues of the older atime functionality.

Re:torrent?

http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.04/ [ubuntu.com]

Torrents are down there at the bottom.

http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-beta-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent [ubuntu.com]

http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-beta-desktop-i386.iso.torrent [ubuntu.com]