What Normal Users Can Expect From Ubuntu 8.10 511
notthatwillsmith writes "With Ubuntu 8.10 due to be released in just a few days, Maximum PC pored through all the enhancements, updates, and new features that are bundled into the release of Intrepid Ibex and separated out the new features that are most exciting for Linux desktop users. Things to be excited about? With new versions of GNOME and X.Org, there's quite a bit, ranging from the context-sensitive Deskbar search to an audio and video compatible SIP client to the new Network Manager (manage wired, Wi-Fi, VPN, and cellular broadband connections in one place)."
What about Kubuntu 8.10? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sticking to 8.04 until I hear otherwise.
jdb2
Re:kubuntu? (Score:5, Informative)
KDE4. No more KDE3, if you want that stick with hardy. So if you have already made the jump with KDE4 packages on hardy I'd guess "not that much", if you haven't well better read up on all the news in KDE4.
Re:Newbie Question (Score:5, Informative)
No. Try Mandriva and PCLOS for the easiest - they've still got the jump on Ubuntu for "it just works" with no fiddling. And their Control Center feature is better.
Otherwise I prefer and use Ubuntu. Been using it for three years on three boxes.
Ubuntu /does/ seem to work without fiddling for some people, and no doubt a few will flame here that I'm some sort of Microsoft Shill or whatever, but that's my experience. When I install Mandriva or PCLOS, those just work from GO, and I really wish Ubuntu would have a good look at what they're doing different.
Haven't installed Ibex yet. I was one of the approx 25% of beta testers who had a wretched time, so filled out the bug reports and am now going to wait a month or two past release before trying the final.
Re:Newbie Question (Score:5, Informative)
What version of Windows XP are you using? Any time I've installed XP from a normal disk, it requires at least agreeing to some license agreement, partitioning, formating, configuring your network to some degree, choosing username, clicking "Next" a bunch of times, some other random stupid things I'm preobably not remembering, and then installing several drivers. I'd love a copy of XP that installed as easily as hitting the "install" button.
Anyway, yeah, Ubuntu is about as easy as installing Windows-- potentially easier because it's likely that it will recognize more of your hardware without installing drivers. Also, you can boot up the install CD as a LiveCD and try using the OS before you install.
Re:kubuntu? (Score:5, Informative)
kubuntu 8.10 is coming along too, i've got the beta running, because the 8.04.1 update hosed my system. broke the x.org server, sigh.
8.10 kubuntu although still in beta has been pretty stable, there was one program that crashed on me, but didn't affect me, and there is an annoying bug with trying to configure the ethernet manually using the 'tray icon' (it won't ask for a password, and the ethernet can't be configured without a password) although, it seems like that icon is mysteriously gone today (there were some 27 updates today) plasmoids are really cool, they let you put useful widgets anywhere on the desktop, on the system bar, etc. but there aren't very many plasmoids right now.
Re:Newbie Question (Score:4, Informative)
I think he's probably talking about a restore cd or similair.
Re:Newbie Question (Score:3, Informative)
I'd love a copy of XP that installed as easily as hitting the "install" button.
nLite [nliteos.com]
You can slipstream in service packs and hotfixes, set all those little options you always change, chose not to install certain components (even Luna), set your CD-key...
Re:PowerPC Ubuntu Help (Score:5, Informative)
Not be be a fanboy, but you can use Debian for a PPC supported distro.
Re:Newbie Question (Score:4, Informative)
It's actually easier than Windows, IMHO. It boots into Ubuntu without asking a single question, so you can decide if you like it. If you do, double-click "Install" on the desktop, answer the same type of questions as you would on Windows, and while it loads onto the hard drive, you can continue using it.
Or, if you prefer, stick the disk into a computer running Windows, click "Install", and it will install as if it were a Windows application. After installation, when you reboot, you get the usual grub menu to select either Ubuntu or Windows. If you later decide you don't like it, boot Windows and select Ubuntu and Uninstall from Add / Remove Programs, and it uninstalls.
I really can't imagine anything easier. Well, other than buying [dell.com] it [system76.com] pre-installed [tuxmobil.org]. :-)
Very little apparently (Score:5, Informative)
I'm using Kubuntu 8.04 right now. The article claims "The last six months of development have brought tons of new functionality that make running Linux easier for all users". I hardly see anything awe-inspiring. Here's my perspective as a current KDE user:
1. GNOME: I see nothing revolutionary or even exciting here. Ekiga is their picture for this. That's definitely a niche app. Better bluetooth support and resolution controls are good I guess. I've had the on KDE for a few years now I believe.
2. X.org: Hotplugging mice/keyboards "works now"? Well, it works now for me with 8.04. They must've had to dig deep to find something like that. So does resolution switching and xrandr support for multiple displays (which is a huge deal, but has already been around for a year).
3. New kernel: always good for my laptop which typically get a few more things running more smoothly with each kernel release
4. Network manager: Anyway who has a 3G connection probably has a laptop. And laptop's need network profile. I need one for work and one for my apartment. Ubuntu doesn't support these and this article doesn't mention anything new. Everything listed is minor improvements. Personally, I have to use wicd, which is decent, but isn't quite as well integrated as networkmanager.
5. Guest account: I see no point for this. Either you trust the person or you don't. And you can create your own guest account if you really want to and switch to it. At least I can do that from KDE. I suppose one click is nicer than click, type in guest/guest, and log in. So maybe a worthwhile feature, though hardly earth-shattering
6. Flash video: Eh, what was stopping things from working before? I assume this just means version 10 is supported. Which is great, but 64 bit support is still lacking so I'll still have problems with it. No, not an ubuntu problem, but I can complain anyway.
7. Secret hidden folders: Just use truecrypt. This doesn't even encrypt your home directory based on the article. And you need to go to the terminal to set it up?
8. Config-less x.org: Now this is nice. Hopefully it'll work well. I haven't had to use an xorg config file for a few years now beyond the default, though to support multiple monitors I've had to include a virtual screen line. Hopefully this will fix that problem.
Personally, I'm more intereted in Kubuntu dropping KDE3 in 8.10. KDE4 can be set up well, but it certainly doesn't support everything that's in KDE3 and still isn't quite as smooth (though I actually like it a lot).
Re:Newbie Question (Score:4, Informative)
4) Wait for installer to finish then restart taking out the disk.
And meanwhile you can access the Internet (in most cases) or play some games.
Re:Newbie Question (Score:3, Informative)
And Ubuntu's version of the partitioner is that it gives a "use whole disk" option and a "drag the slider to show how much of the disk goes to each OS" thing. There is a more advanced partitioner available, but the user doesn't have to see it.
Re:kubuntu? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm running in Kubuntu 8.04 - I just added what KDE4 files I could using adept literally yesterday, and rebooted to it to try it out, then went back to 3.5.
Biggest issues I saw:
1. When you say there aren't many plasmoids yet, its an understatement. A lot of the useful desktop applets, i.e. local weather, haven't been added yet. There's just about nothing in the way of marginally useful but neat applets such as moon phase converted to plasmoids. You could use a third party applet program until more stuff gets integrated in KDE, but you can do that with 3.5, and there's already at least 2 good ones to choose from.
2. Dual desktop support is limited - I couldn't extend the taskbar across both monitors. Having more applets/plasmoids might drive this feature, and having more space available in the taskbar might drive the plasmoids feature. (Although as I understand it, the real point of plasmoids is to be able to put these tiny programs anywhere and not just in the bar, so maybe not). Not having either just yet makes me think it might be quite some time before there's progress.
3. A lot of the fine tweaks are disabled. If you like being able to do things such as independently set the width of your taskbar hiding buttons and whether there is one at each end of the bar or not, again you'll have to wait and hope somebody gets to that, or bone up on your coding. I don't see all of the fine tweaks making it into the next 6 monthly release, or even a year out.
Re:Newbie Question (Score:4, Informative)
Which he'll get, if he buys something like an Ubuntu computer from Dell:
http://www.dell.com/ubuntu [dell.com]
I bought an Ubuntu laptop from Dell and I'm very pleased.
You get support, a restore disk, "legal" DVD playback support and some very nice equipment.
Re:Newbie Question (Score:5, Informative)
He'll hit +5 because he's right. I install Windows XP every day, multiple times per day, on every piece of hardware you can imagine. As a matter of fact, what he described as the windows setup (which you claim is overstated) actually left out a few steps. Starting at what he should have listed as step six, you still have to install device drivers (this requires multiple reboots as you cover all hardware), install AV software, product activation (may require a telephone call if you've re-installed too many times, or changed any hardware), windows updates (more reboots)...
He was modded up because he was right. The entire Ubuntu installation, configuration, and applying all updates takes less then 1/2 hr (no, I'm not exaggerating, try it) and is finished while Windows XP is still formatting the disk.
Re:The one Ubuntu feature I want most: (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't mind making backups of your bluray discs, I think K3B et al can burn BD-Rs.
In that case, get yourself a copy of SlySoft AnyDVD HD. I'm hoping SlySoft will eventually work with Wine to get this running on linux (I don't think they'll make a real port any time soon) because it's totally worth the money. A buddy of mine bought it a while back after buying AnyDVD. Stuff's great; especially AnyDVD, because some DVD players are peculiar (although, I think it's more because most people have started using DVD+R and that might be the real problem...) but it seems to work with them anyway.
AnyDVD HD won't let you play blu-rays straight, though. I don't think anything will at this point. However, I'm hoping that if you broke the encryption, you can play them straight off the disc with mplayer. With ATI hopefully bringing a working UVD2 with the next catalyst release (or mplayer/ffmpeg/gstreamer/? patching, because they might have released already), things are really rocking for linux. Then it's just a matter of getting the PVR-2250 to work for Linux, and you've got a Godly mythbox =).
(DumpHD works great and is Java but you need the keys. They can be found, but yeah you're stuck looking for them when newer discs come out. However, might beat paying/cough for SlySoft's AnyDVD and then the HD upgrade (sadly HD doesn't come seperately). I think it can do BD+ just fine. And it's Java so it works for linux right now...)
Re:No Joystick Support (Score:3, Informative)
No, 8.10 will support joysticks if you either:
1) Work around it by editing xorg.conf: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6023212&postcount=5 [ubuntuforums.org]
2) Wait for X.org to get their act together, fix *their* bug then the Ubuntu guys either backport it, or release it as an Intrepid update. Infact, the bug in Ubuntu is targetted to the "intrepid-updates" milestone, so as soon as Xorg manage to fix the bug, it will be a top priority to get uploaded to intrepid-updates
I've seen multiple people, in multiple forums jump on the bandwagon complaining that it should hold back the release, not bothering to read the guidelines on what makes a release critical bug (it cant be easily worked around or documented, which this most definately can)
Re:Total system freezes, for one (Score:3, Informative)
No point. I have posted about 5 bugs and nothing gets fixed.
1. Have anyone been able to confirm the bugs?
2. How serious?
3. How long have you waited?
My experience with any software, open or closed source is that it doesn't happen nearly as fast as you'd like, there's no army of bugfixers waiting for you to have a problem...
My Experience (Score:5, Informative)
So I installed intrepid and in the beginning there were constant application crashes, nvidia issues, then my wireless card stopped working and I couldn't even compile serialmonkey's drivers!
But now I am siting pretty, new vlc, new gnome, new gimp, open office 3.0 (from a ppa repo), new deluge
So in conclusion, if you want the latest and greatest free software then I highly recommend that you try Ubuntu 8.10, it works fabulously for me. If you want a super stable free software OS then use 8.04.1.
Re:LiveCD does not leave anything.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Newbie Question (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Total system freezes, for one (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Newbie Question (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Newbie Question (Score:3, Informative)
Except when you load nvidia drivers which instantaneously render your Gnome useless and leave you with a blinking cursor.
I just installed 8.10 half an hour ago. It loaded up first time and even detected my monitors 1680x1050 resolution. Then a popup told me that I can use nvidia restricted proprietary drivers to improve performance. I clicked it, it installed the latest (177) drivers and told me to restart. I did.
Now X is broken and I'm going to re-install all over again.
Re:They still get to manually edit their xorg.conf (Score:3, Informative)
In most cases, the resolutions available are returned by the monitor itself, over the DDC channel (on VGA, DVI and HDMI cables). The information block is called EDID.
Usually, if the monitor's native resolution and timing aren't in the detected list, it's because the monitor itself is sending faulty information, or because of using an old VGA cable which doesn't have the wires for DDC.
Re:Newbie Question (Score:4, Informative)
I use twinview on my laptop all the time, switching between dual and single a lot. The problem with it is really a Gnome issue. If you start up with a single monitor and switch to dual, Gnome doesn't think of it like two monitors, and so panels span both, windows maximise across both, etc.
The solution is to add 'Option "twinview" "1"' (or whatever it is) to your xorg.conf and the first time you use dual monitors after starting gnome, logout and login with the second monitor attached. Then it works.
You'll need to use the nvidia control panel to set up the monitor layouts etc.
With the exception of this (which is really less of a problem than it sounds, it meant that every couple of weeks I'd have to log out and log back in), twinview works fine.
In Intrepid, even this isn't necessary. Plug in a monitor, turn on twinview through the control panel, and it's all happy. Twinview is pretty much just an nvidia implementation of xinerama.
The reason it doesn't work like all the other cards is thanks to nvidia. Nothing that can be done until they see the light and make their drivers free software.
Re:Newbie Question (Score:5, Informative)
Huh. That happened to me, but I just started it up in some kind of safe mode where it started X without loading unusual drivers, and I uninstalled the nvidia stuff. Pretty easy. No reinstall needed.
If all else fails, you can usually just press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to switch away from a broken X and get a terminal, then use "sudo apt-get uninstall nvidia-glx nvidia-glx-new" and restart.
Re:What I noted about upgrading from 8.04 to 8.10 (Score:2, Informative)
Hmm...
I have /home on a separate partition and I always do a clean Linux install.
I don't wipe my /home partition and once everything is installed, all my settings and data are there with a brand new shiny system.
Don't get me wrong. I've gone through plenty of fresh installs and now certain things don't work correctly and I'll have to flush out my /~ dir soon enough :(.
My way is much easier than yours. You can easily go back to the old version by installing it again.
Re:kubuntu? (Score:3, Informative)
With regards to #1, you can run SuperKaramba applets and Screenlets as Plasmoids. The weather and moon phase Plasmoids do exist but you have to go to kde-look.org and install them yourself. But I must say that I am distressed by the lack of enthusiasm that applet developers have so far displayed toward Plasma. You're right that that list isn't as long as it should be.
Re:What normal users can expect (Score:1, Informative)
Or just install the theme/etc for ubuntu studio?
Like all officially recognized Ubuntu flavors, all the packages are in the repos.
ubuntustudio-look is a metapackage (in universe) that should bring in all of the theme stuff.
Re:The one Ubuntu feature I want most: (Score:3, Informative)
According to Wikipedia's page [wikipedia.org] it'd seem the following codecs need to be supported:
VC-1 is Microsoft's shit all over again, and I don't remember libavcodec supporting it yet, if ever.
Even when you've got support for all the X codecs required by BD you'll still have to crack the encryption (you bought it right? ... instead of downloading a hdrip).
Dual monitors (Score:2, Informative)
Been awhile since I've tried it with Nvidia (plenty of machines with NV cards, but not with NV cards and two monitors), but with the ATI card it was pretty easy. The little manager icon it adds to your "K" menu (I use KDE) worked nicely. With my laptop I just tell it to add a new screen... in expansion mode... to the left of my current screen, just a few clicks needed.
My work machine also has dual monitors, which work but I've noticed two points of weirdness which seem related to GL or the ATI card itself:
a) Icons and window shades tend to get all-black borders at times, and look asstastic.
b) When coming out of "lock" mode with a GL screensaver, the lock dialog is hidden behind the paused screensaver so I can't actually see if it's working.
Re:Eclipse (Score:3, Informative)
Why don't you just go ahead and install the minimum java support (sun-java6-jdk i believe is the package's name)?
After that you can download eclipse binaries from their website, and run the binary from the directory! That's at least how I been doing my Java development on linux (kubuntu) for the past year.
Agreed, those packages don't work, but those seem a bit redundant. Eclipse does have it's own upgrading and addon system, there's really no need for a system wide installation!
If you screw something up, you just do a fresh install (unpack the .tar.gz). If you want to back up, or even better, transfer your whole eclipse distribution, you just tar your eclipse installation directory.
APT and dpkg are great tools, but as eclipse moves on with continiusly higher pace, and it's you the developer who wants to use it I believe you should be able to find a way around all the shelly stuff. Otherwise you could consider changing from Java to for example Visual Basic.