Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Released

Lots of readers told us about the official release of Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn (screenshots here for Ubuntu and Kubuntu). Some readers report that the distribution servers are being hammered. Here is a review of Feisty Fawn. Reader LinuxScribe sends us to LinuxPlanet for the story on a pleasant Java surprise in the release.

slashdotted... this time IRC, not HTTP

[Anonymous Coward]

On freenode,

#ubuntu = 1600 users
#ubuntu-release-party = 850 users

In the last hour, these have both gone up by around 100-200 each. 24hrs ago, #ubuntu-release-party had 20 people.

Apparently this is a new record for the freenode IRC network!

Forget whether or not ubuntulinux.org can remain online, everyone start praying for the poor folk at freenode :)

UbuntuStudio

[SomeGuyTyping]

I'm excited about this release mainly because UbuntuStudio was supposed to come out with Feisty. I'm looking forward to having a maintained and stable realtime kernel for audio work

Java

[Vexorian]

I don't like Java too much but I really think that although ubuntu may be rushing it (since Java has not been GPLed yet) linux and Java may make a great alliance, let's face it, linux has the issue that windows programs don't work on it, even with WINE there are issues sometimes, and Java's main selling point (cross platform-ness ) doesn't quite work with the current operating system monopoly situation. The only thing we needed to start improving the situation was a distribution that comes with sun's Java installed by default, these are great news.

PowerPC

[Anonymous Coward]

So where's the PowerPC version? It's not "officially supported" anymore supposedly but I didn't think that meant it was becoming a second-class citizen, just that paid support was no longer available from Canonical.

What's new?

[digitalderbs]

I always find it difficult to get a summary on the new features to help me decide if I should upgrade. These are the results from my searches :

1. 18 month support term
2. Better installation, includes migration tools for mail and such from Windows and linux partitions.
3. Improved wireless support with Avahi
4. Easier third party codec/firmware/driver installation, including Nvidia and ATi proprietary drivers and mp3 codecs.
5. Two new games : glches and soduko
6. Compiz/Beryl support for desktop 3D effects (not default)
7. Beagle (search indexed), Tomboy (note tacking program, sticky notes) and F-Spot (photo management.. alternatively called G-spot, depending on the type of photos).
8. java

sources : blog 1 [sabza.org], blog 2 [blogspot.com]
I already have all of these setup on Edgy, so I won't upgrade.

GUI upgrade?

[Graham J - XVI]

A simpler version of Linux is well needed - props to them for coming up with an easy to use system.

Pity it's still so ugly though - someone needs to steal away an OSX designer or two hehe

Re:Fast mirror at Indiana University

[emarkd]

Not the original poster here, but fwiw vmware player runs my xp partition very well from ubuntu on my laptop. I boot xp in vmware player and maximize it on one face of my beryl desktop cube and watch people do double-takes as I switch from one to the other. Fun. :)

Re:Fast mirror at Indiana University

[Eivind]

Yes there is. And it's very very grandmother-friendly too. My procedure:

• Log in, as usual.
• There's a message for me, indicated by a slowly pulsing alert-icon. It reads: "There are updates available for Ubuntu, click here if you want to install them. So I do.
• I'm met with the familiar update-manager, only this time it has a new button: "There is a new version of Ubuntu available, 7.1 Feisty Fawn, click here to upgrade."
• I click, and am informed that this required administrative priviledge, and would I please enter my password to proceed.
• I do as told, wait half an hour, and that's it.

I've never seen anything even close to this smooth. It's not just a Linux-best. It's quite simply the best I've ever seen.

Oh, and did I mention I lied above ? You see, all the messages mentioned was nicely localized into my native written Language, nynorsk, the least used variant of Norwegian, which perhaps half a million people in the world write. I'm impressed.

Re:Java is not YET Free software

[Gompers]

There will likely never be good drivers for the best video cards for Linux until there is a large installed base of users in the market for those video cards on Linux.

There will likely never be a large installed base of Linux users until a distribution hits the market that is a viable alternative to windows for most tasks.

It's really a chicken-egg problem.

If you want to wage jihad with the closed-software community, you have the option of going with a variety of different distributions that are much more focused on that.

If, instead, you want to build the very best Linux desktop you can, you do what Ubuntu is doing. Politics be damned. The people who view free software as religion or political platform tend to block it into a corner that will always relegate it to a niche market in the view of the general public. At the end of the day, the vast VAST majority of users could care less about whether the driver is close-sourced, or open sourced or anything in between. They care mostly that it works, and secondly that it costs them nothing in terms of time and money to make it work. Ubuntu is aimed at those users. Those users are the ones who will have to use Linux to get it out of the niche. And once it becomes a sizable portion of the market, we will see better drivers.

Re:Why Can't Linux Developers Match OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Like only being able to resize a window by the lower right corner?

Now that's a feature!

Re:Java is not YET Free software

[zenslug]

I like using Linux but it is too much work too often. The easier it is for me to get a desktop running, the more likely I'll use it. Ideals are great, but without enough marketshare Linux won't demand the attention of hardware makers. With a larger marketshare and the continued persistence of people like you, Linux will get more free hardware support.

Re:Fast mirror at Indiana University

[kestasjk]

Requiring administrative/root privileges to install software is the whole point. You are installing programs that are to be used system-wide. You need root privileges (granted to you via sudo) to do that. It's not a security hole when implemented properly. The point is that, unlike many Windows desktop, you're not running with 'root' privileges all the time. This is exactly what most Windows XP desktops are doing. You never need to be prompted for a 'root'/admin password when doing that, because you're always admin! That's insecure.

I think Linux distros would benefit a lot from making it possible to install apps under a user account. I always do this with custom compiled software, it seems logical to do it for possibly dubious (i.e universe repository) software that doesn't need to install things as admin. It would be reassuring to know that non-dependency/library, single user, non-system software never has admin permissions.

Re:Fast mirror at Indiana University

[ottothecow]

This is sort of what blizzard does with WoW patches. The patch downloader is a simple torrent client so all users are able to use the torrent without dealing with people who dont know what torrents are.

Blizzard then has an http seed running. If the program determines that you are incapable of recieving a torrent (firewall or driver issues), then your entire download comes straight from blizzard's http seed. If the program is able to connect to the swarm, you then start recieving data down from the other people downloading the patch AS WELL as the blizzard seed. Likewise, if you connect a long time after the patch comes out and there is nobody left downloading the patch, you still get the data straight from blizzard without having to find the file in a different manner.

In this model you have basically a standard server/client relationship when only one person is downloading and it scales out to a p2p model as additional people connect.

Re:Why Can't Linux Developers Match OS X

[Paulrothrock]

Leopard (OS X 10.5) is going to have multiple desktops in October. And the real reasons I use OS X aren't so much the interface as it's Textmate and Quicksilver. There is no text editor on any platform that can compare to TextMate, and Quicksilver is one of the greatest interface innovations since the GUI.

Of course, they make me use Windows at work.