Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) Beta Released 429
vivaoporto writes "The Beta version of the popular Linux distribution, Ubuntu 7.04, was released today. Codenamed Feisty Fawn, the CD images can be downloaded from the Canonical Servers, and the final version is due to be released next month. Get it while it's hot! Read more about it on the official wiki."
Re:download speeds... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:still a long way to go (Score:4, Insightful)
Shit happens, but yeah there should be an automated system to solve package issues. The brilliant bit is, you can submit a feature request to the ubuntu team and it might actually get implimented.
Re:still a long way to go (Score:5, Insightful)
That better not be true, because it's impossible. But we know that it it isn't true - Mac OS X and Windows Vista are far from flawless, and yet people still manage to muddle their way through using those systems. In fact, lots of people manage to use Ubuntu right now even with a couple of bugs.
The fact that it neither recovers in that situation nor gives the "correct" command to recover is legitimately a serious problem - I hope you filed a bug on it - but it shouldn't seriously prevent anyone from being able to use the system. Pasting any chunk of the error message into google gives the answer, as does asking anyone who knows anything about Ubuntu directly.
Switching to any different operating system will be non-trivial, unless someone else is administering it. There's no way around that, however much people trying to switch to various Linux distros demand that it not be so. Ubuntu is well beyond the point where anyone can easily use it if they are willing to slog through the difficulties of learning the basics of a new system - and no new system can ever be significantly better than that.
Been running it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:still a long way to go (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is, everyone knows someone who's pretty good with Windows and can help them with their problems. Five minutes with Google usually does the trick. How many people know a linux geek to help them with that? Probably not nearly as many. So, linux remains a daunting prospect for people who don't know who they can turn to for help.
Re:still a long way to go (Score:2, Insightful)
Really? what is grandma doing that the default install and automatic updates of Ubuntu are not sufficient for her?
She needs the latest Xorg code? She wants to be on the bleeding edge of compositing managers? She's just dying to try out some new bayesian spam filters in her Postfix install? She hates postfix and called you because she's having a bitch of a time installing Qmail? She can't quite get Wow running under wine?
I have a dapper install at home and aside from xorg.conf or smb.conf, i find the built in GUI tool fine for everything. If your grandma is calling you for scripts to help her access windows shares on other machines, Linux just might be for her. Otherwise, Office, email, web browsing, it's all right there and easily configured through GUI menus
Re:still a long way to go (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's my take on the particular situation the OP brought up.
1. telling the user about the problem
1A. it can detect the problem well enough to tell the user what needs to be done... so why doesn't it just ask if it is ok to do that and then do it itself so the user doesn't have to figure out how to type in a command.
1B. if 1A is too much work then at least tell the user "you will need to type this in a window; you get the window by...."
2. telling the user about privilege
2A. It should, tell the user his account doesn't have the privilege necessary...
2B. It should tell the user in words a newbie is most likely to understand, not "you need to be superuser" or something similar but "you will need administrator privileges to do this; here is how you can get them for the purpose of running this command". Administrator is a plain English word whose plain English meaning is exactly right for this context.
I know, it is a PITA to explain every last thing to newbies, but if you aren't willing to put the effort in to do that then you will never win over new users... they will hit something like this, throw their hands up in the air and go back to something more familiar - whatever that is. That's human nature, it isn't going to change, you have two choices: get used to it and work around it or give up. That's all there is to it.
I've gone from Breezy to Dapper to Edgy to Feisty (Score:3, Insightful)
If you've used EasyUbuntu or something like that, you may have problems.
If you're not sure of your comfort level with fixing something like that (or if you depend upon a wireless NIC for connectivity) then you should just go with a clean install.
People with more experience will be able to identify possible problems BEFORE upgrading and also be able to handle them AFTER the upgrade.
I've had no problems but then I use an old NIC and I have a decent amount of Linux experience.
Recently there has been an issue where "hda" suddenly became "sda" and caused some issues for people. Ubuntu changed the way the IDE systems were labeled to make things easier in the future. I noticed when my USB drive changed. This could be a problem for someone with less experience.
Re:Damnit... (Score:1, Insightful)
mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
Also because I am downloading this torrent and more people would mean better transfer rates.
Re:still a long way to go (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Been running it (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Running Herd4 on AMD 64 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Damnit... (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, it's damn annoying. I waited a few months then did the upgrade, only to find 6.10 really shouldn't have been released; 6.06 was great except for beagle popping up.
What I don't understand is that all the "special care" in the 7.04 release should have been spent fixing the many known issues in 6.10. If they don't bother fixing known issues, why is there any trust in upgrading the system to a new version?
A lot of the "eye candy" that went in 6.10 makes a lot of things look worse than they did. The color schemes in 6.06 was simple. I can see what they tried in 6.10, but the startup splash got screwed up, the login background is not as clean on many systems, some systems still don't have the orange color progress bar (it's transparent or grey) despite it being a well known issue.
Icons got changed; torrent files even lost their icon entirely. ntpdate doesn't work via the GUI, as if developers all had ntp installed and just couldn't test it; works fine via command line. "Recent Documents" docs haven't been updated and still show a hack/wanted feature that now doesn't work. All issues documented and unfixed in 6.10.
And some config files still have a typo in them. Not to mention the large number of people that seemed to have gotten their distro download links mauled. Some screwup forgot a separator in on of the
All in all, bugs that have been there for time on end just haven't gotten fixed in 6.10, which makes me very afraid to update to 7 even though I'm hoping many of these issues have been resolved. In the end, Ubuntu should spend some time developing a tripwire/checksum program but not for security, but to help installers compare their files with the official ones to see what files are missing, corrupt, or incorrectly updated aka hosed. I would have moved on SuSE, except for the Novell deal. And I like Evolution, even though its not perfect, and has some non-mail bugs, it's pretty nice for free software.
Re:still a long way to go (Score:5, Insightful)
The proper way for a newbie to install software is Add/Remove programs right off the ubuntu menu... just like in fracking Windows, for Pete's sake.
Re:Running Herd4 on AMD 64 (Score:4, Insightful)
However, on the server they don't apply.
I have been running 64-bit on an AMD server without any problems (apart from a trivial quirk in PHP's PEAR/PECL which has an easy workaround [just add ini_set('memory_size', 16MB) in some script]).
Re:yup, working hardware is crucial (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you. That's basically the whole story right there. If we're going to compare install experiences for operating systems, Ubuntu crushes Windows into the ground all day long.
Re:Not that you shouldn't try Linux but...... (Score:3, Insightful)
NOOOOO, not that spyware-infested piece of crap!
Also, why would you even want to pay for such things when it should be part of the OS (whether the OS itself is for free or not).
Another reason why I prefer Linux...at least in Linux you don't have to download adware/spyware-infested crap in order to do some simple theme or style changes in my desktop environment.
Re:Running Herd4 on AMD 64 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:still a long way to go (Score:2, Insightful)
WTF!
Ubuntu is not perfect. No argument here.
If you want to screw up your computer (HPUX, AIX, MacOSX, Windows*,Linux, Palm, your Cell phone) kill the power when its updating itself. No a guarenteed foobar, but still a dumb idea.
Re:Beta People (Score:3, Insightful)
Installing any operating system for the first time is a "project". It not an especially difficult project for a system like Ubuntu, but it's definitely not a trivial task to undertake. Computer experience makes it a bit easier, but there will still be points where you have to think a bit to figure out what to do next.