Ubuntu 9.04 Released 620
Mohamed Zaian writes "Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, announced today that Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition is free to download from Thursday 23 April. Also announced were the simultaneous releases of Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition and Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (UNR). Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition delivers a range of feature enhancements to improve the user experience. Shorter boot speeds, some as short as 25 seconds, ensure faster access to a full computing environment on most desktop, laptop and netbook models. Enhanced suspend-and-resume features also give users more time between charges along with immediate access after hibernation. Intelligent switching between Wi-Fi and 3G environments has been broadened to support more wireless devices and 3G cards, resulting in a smoother experience for most users."
Just installed ... (Score:5, Informative)
Happy Ubuntu-Day, everyone! (Score:5, Informative)
I just came from IRC (irc.freenode.net #ubuntu-release-party). It's like the Times Square New Year Party in there.
On the clock at about 1 pm GMT, the Ubuntu website was updated, and the servers at ubuntu.com were immediately IRCdotted.
And now, we're going to Slashdot Ubuntu.com as well!
Get your torrents at
http://torrent.ubuntu.com:6969/ [ubuntu.com]
Please.... (Score:5, Informative)
Firstly, can we get an Ubuntu icon yet?
This release is awesome, I've been running it on my laptop, desktop and work PC for some time and it's been rock solid.
That said. There is one VERY VERY annoying thing that changed in this release. The update notification icon is no longer there unless you fiddle around with gconf. Instead you are treated to an automated "pop-under" launch of the full update manager window once a week unless it's a security update in which case it's 2 days. I dunno if this behavior has changed recently but that was the design a few weeks ago.
So that means:
a.) You probably wont know about feature/bug updates for a week.
b.) You probably wont know about security fixes for 2 days (even if it's urgent)
c.) You will get a window appear out of nowhere behind all your current windows launched seemingly by itself (yeh coz that's not gonna scare Windows migrants)
What a great idea! NOT!
P.S if you wanna revert to the old behavior, run gconf-editor. Go to apps->update-notifier and uncheck "auto-launch".
Re:Still the same color scheme (Score:2, Informative)
They announced they're changing the color scheme in the Jaunty+1 release.
Fix the intel graphics bugs yet? (Score:5, Informative)
I realize it's mostly the fault of Intel, but it would be nice if the modern (2 years old) Intel chips worked well with Linux.
I went with Intel instead of Nvidia in my laptop so I would have a more stable computer than using the binary blog nvidia provides. (and I don't game) Boy, had I known Intel would totally drop the ball I would have went with Nvidia. Ubuntu doesn't seem to be interested in pushing the issue at all, saying 'it's an upstream problem'. I got burned the same way with the g400 and it's so called open source drivers a decade ago. It took them almost 4 years to get them out the door, and they sucked when they were out.
It's a real sad the best video support on linux is from closed source nvidia drivers and their competitors don't even care.
Check out the list: https://bugs.launchpad.net/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bugs [launchpad.net]
So, back on topic, does anybody know how horrid Intel video is in this final release? I need to decide if I'm going to upgrade or not, last I heard it's even worse and locks up after a few minutes. I have an x3100/GM965.
Re:Torrents (Score:1, Informative)
As in previous years, you can also retrieve the torrent files directly from:
http://torrent.ubuntu.com/, or ... which should remain available even if the primary mirrors stop being responsive under load, as has happened for previous releases.
http://torrent.ubuntu.com:6969/
Re:Netbook Remix 4 EeePC 900? (Score:4, Informative)
Use eeebuntu instead - no problems at all with wifi (unlike with the stock Xandros POS).
Apparently they're working on a new version based on 9.04.
http://www.eeebuntu.com/ [eeebuntu.com]
Re:Jaunty (Score:1, Informative)
I highly recommend wicd [sourceforge.net]. It works, it doesn't auto-connect to wired networks (I sometimes wish that were a checkbox option though), it lets you use external programs (WPA drivers, DHCP Clients, Wired Link Detection, Route Table Flushing) and best of all, it allows you to set up scripts to run on connect, disconnect, and/or pre-connect (absolutely fantastic for laptops+cifs/pppoe/etcetera). The only downsides are that it's not in the default repos, it's got a very lazy security implementation (it runs the script manager as root when strictly speaking it doesn't need to), and it's basically just a glorified python script. But it's still miles ahead of NetworkManager/KNetworkManager.
Re:Still the same color scheme (Score:2, Informative)
You're probably referring to Dust [ubuntu.com], which isn't really a dark theme. There's also the Darkroom theme, but it's been around for a few versions now and it looks like ass.
Re:Questions from an 8.10 user (Score:4, Informative)
Do you make this comment everyday or something?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1208265&cid=27678699 [slashdot.org]
Notifications (Score:5, Informative)
Seems generally more stable, I've been running the RC for a couple of days now. Not many immediately noticeable changes but lots of improved under the hood support. Beware if you have an older ATI card you might run into problems.
Anyway, the thing I'm really not sure of is the notifications system. Just about the only option with them seems to be to change their positioning via gconf-editor (and even that seems to be broken). I understand the philosophy behind them (see http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/253 [markshuttleworth.com]) but they seem to be a little too unconfigurable, even for Gnome. Their black appearance would suit the KDE default theme, but it certainly doesn't fit in well with my much lighter Clearlooks theme in Gnome and there's no way to change that. One of the things I like about Gnome is the integrated look and feel of the entire system, whereas these stand out oddly. There is no way to dismiss them, so things get irritating when I want to use the search bar in Firefox and there's a notification covering it (these things could well be click transparent but it's still irritating). There is no way to configure what gets displayed as a notification either; I don't think I need each and every Pidgin message to be displayed as a notification for reasons of both privacy and distraction. To me, the notifications system seems a little too much like an answer looking for a problem. I may well disable them soon, after giving them a fair trial. The only sane way to do that seems to be to remove the notify-osd daemon. So much for ease of use!
That all said, it's my only major gripe with the upgrade, and that system was always going to be controversial. Hopefully it grows and improves. If not, I'm not forced to run it. Overall, this seems to be a steady incremental release that smoothes over a few rough patches and should hopefully do me well for another 6 months. Ubuntu is still the only distribution that I have not had very regular problems with on the desktop.
What's new - the usefull and the not so usefull (Score:5, Informative)
Major changes:
The Jaunty overview [ubuntu.com] should be put on the main page of Ubuntu.com. It really is pointless making that page otherwise. Instead an Ubuntu tour [ubuntu.com] for 9.04 is the main link from the website. That tour really doesn't make Ubuntu sound like a very advanced OS.
Though I haven't upgraded to Jaunty as yet, I don't believe it is something the average user should get excited about. Karmic may.
Re:Netbook Remix 4 EeePC 900? (Score:4, Informative)
Anyone else try this with an Eee PC 901?
I've been using this for a month (Score:3, Informative)
Jaunty Jackelope is certainly worth a download. I've been using it on my eeePC 900 with the Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) for a month and while its got its shortcomings, overall its the best OS I'v used with my netbook.
The greatest plus is Ext4. I know that isn't an Ubuntu exclusive upgrade or anything (Fedora 11 is going to offer the option of installing to a Ext4 partition) but combine that w/ my SSD and I boot in like 23 seconds flat...I don't even bother "putting the pc to sleep" since I boot so quick, I just shut down.
The downfall that I found with this release, and Intrepid Ibex, is w/ the eeePC hardware and graphics tiling. Basically the kernal being used in the release candidate has some issues threading the graphics processing and you get signifigant and annoying lag in the UNR interface...but only there. If you open any app it runs as normal, but the UNR interface lags like a son of a bitch. A patched kernal update did fix this however that fix was reverted due to other issues and as of yet a new kernal patch addressing all issues has not been released. You and review the details of the bug here [launchpad.net]. The .41 kernal is what is shipping and the .40 kernel is what works w/ the eeePC. If you want to install your own kernel you can get the .40 here [launchpad.net].
The use of Ext4 makes this a true upgrade and a reason to install a new build. Enjoy!
You need an adjective, not a verb. (Score:2, Informative)
Masturbatory monkey is just plain wrong. Please try again. I vote malicious millipede. Maybe menopausal mongoose.
Re:Jaunty (Score:4, Informative)
Except XFCE is GTK+ based, so you get those libraries loaded whether you run GTK apps or not.
Re:Jaunty (Score:4, Informative)
I already tried it and was already sorry. I run a million billion GTK+ apps so the major reason to run XFCE, not loading all those libraries, doesn't apply to me.
XFCE is GTK, so I don't quite understand what you're saying. If your apps just depend on the GTK libs, and not Gnome libs, then XFCE is a good choice for you.
Re:Jaunty (Score:2, Informative)
Xfce is using GTK+ too, just not GNOME library and service (bonobo or something like that)
Anyone else having trouble booting? (Score:3, Informative)
I tested the waters a couple of weeks ago by downloading the prerelease version of Jaunty as an iso and burning it to a live cd. My machine wouldn't boot from the live cd (started to boot, didn't complete the process). I don't have any trouble booting from a live cd of other versions of Ubuntu, and this machine currently has intrepid, which works fine. It's an x64 box.
Is anyone else having problems like this? I'm definitely chicken to upgrade if there's a risk of making my system unbootable. I'm all in favor of shorter boot times, but it does have to boot.
The impression I generally get is that it's a good idea to wait at least a few weeks before upgrading to a newly released version of ubuntu.
Re:Obligitory (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, with Qt 4.5 (which is snappier than Qt 4.4, the "official" Qt for Kde 4.2).
Re:Notifications (Score:5, Informative)
I think they need to look at Growl on Mac OS X to see how to implement a notifications system. At least Growl has an adjustable look and feel and configuration settings.
Re:Notifications (Score:5, Informative)
FWIW, I figured out how to fix this for pidgin specifically. I kind of like it popping up a message when someone says something and the window doesn't have focus, but I don't need a notification every time someone comes online -- you can change this behavior in Pidgin's Tools->Plugins->Libnotify Popups->Configure Plugin.
Once it stopped doing that, I found that I mind much less, and having coherency between the volume control, email notification, etc, etc is sort of nice. I expect that the customizability will improve in the future, because otherwise the feature seems very sane; it's silly for every application to have their own way of displaying messages.
Re:Questions from an 8.10 user (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Notifications (Score:5, Informative)
> Does it preload the "Gnome" menu yet, or do you
> still get that annoying pause when you first
> click on it?
Not sure it's preloading but I've not been noticing the delay this time round. Certainly seems much faster
> Does the lovely dark Dusk theme work with Gnome 2.26?
Do you mean Dust? If so it seems ok, though I've not run it for very long.
> Will it kill off hardware VIA graphics (HP 2133
> netbook) like the last kernel upgrade, or does
> it now handle these properly as a third party
> binary blob?
Don't know sorry.
> Will it give me free beer and hookers?
Yes
There's not a huge amount of shiny new toys but this release seems *much* more stable. Can't think of any regressions I've noticed this time round, which was very much not the case with Intrepid which was bloody awful (and Hardy which wasn't much better).
Looks like someone finally listened on the stability front. I was close to dumping Ubuntu personally.
Re:Netbook Remix 4 EeePC 900? (Score:5, Informative)
"Other thing I love is how the 3G support is amazing. No more messing around with ppp or weird vodafone apps, just plug the dongle in, pick your network and go. Really smooth."
Brought to you mostly by the fine Dan Williams of Red Hat: http://blogs.gnome.org/dcbw/ [gnome.org] , http://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/log/ [freedesktop.org] .
(disclaimer: I work at RH too).
Re:Notifications (Score:3, Informative)
Except if you test it, it doesn't appear to work, which is probably why it was hidden.
Re:Questions from an 8.10 user (Score:3, Informative)
Impossible, if you run Wubi. [wubi-installer.org]
Re:Jaunty (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry, I meant to say GNOME apps, which would have made the whole thing much clearer. If you want the big high-profile applications they depend on more than just GTK+. Since I already have to use those libraries they might as well load at login time. I have removed gnome-panel which is one of the big drags on startup anyway; I replaced it with avant-window-navigator. You have to go fuck with the gconf in like three places in order to do this... GNOME sometimes makes me think it's an attempt to turn Linux into Windows. Hint: Stop abusing your registry-like functionality!
Re:Questions from an 8.10 user (Score:3, Informative)
It's called "copy pasta [urbandictionary.com]"
Too Much RAM for My PC (Score:5, Informative)
I've been using Ubuntu on my Inspiron i8000 notebook since v6.04. But starting v8.10, the minimum RAM requirements nearly exceeded the 512 max RAM the notebook can hold. With a small app or two running it's right at 512MB used. Running Evolution or especially Firefox puts it far over, grinding the whole machine to a halt as it constantly swaps. To make matters worse, the nVidia GeForce2Go GPU doesn't seem supported by compvis, so the GPU doesn't offload the CPU for lots of graphics.
I'm hoping the 9.04 release now might possibly have some upgrade that relieves the RAM pressure. But I expect it will just get worse. Is there any simple way to trim the minimum RAM requirements of Ubuntu down below say 300MB (without losing GNOME)? Maybe if there's a simple way to convert the machine into just an X server to a separate faster box across the LAN, without saturating the LAN. Or maybe I finally have to kiss goodbye my 7 year old notebook and its fabulous 1600x1200 LCD.
Re:Notifications (Score:3, Informative)
> >Beware if you have an older ATI card you might run into problems.
> "Older," in this case, defined as anything prior to the HD3x00 series. My experience with 9.04 and a 2600XT is less than ideal.
One of Fedora's recent test days [fedoraproject.org] (in preparation for Fedora 11 [fedoraproject.org] which is due out soon) found a number of problems with ATI cards. Hopefully by the time F11 ships (in about a month) a number of the issues will be sorted.
Fixes made for Fedora will eventually benefit Ubuntu users using the OSS ATI drivers too
Re:Anyone else having trouble booting? (Score:3, Informative)
Mount the cdrom on a running system, cd to that directory and run:
$ md5sum -c md5sum.txt
It will check the md5sum of each file on the cdrom and report if anything is corrupted.
Re:Too Much RAM for My PC (Score:1, Informative)
Try turning off all the indexing and tracking stuff.
My 512mb computer was constantly swapping and crawling till I did. The tracker-update thing was using 400mb of ram!
Re:Jaunty (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Just installed ... (Score:2, Informative)
It works a treat.
Totally transparent to the user, no typing in 128bit pass phrases. The user's password unwraps the 128-bit pass phrase at login.
The user's password can change, this just re-wraps the 128-bit pass phrase using the new user password.
It is a good idea to make a note of the 128-bit pass phrase by using the command:
ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase ~/.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase
I think the option for encrypted home folders is only available using the alternate installer.
There is also support for adding other users with their own encrypted folders.
Ext4 FS large file bug warning (Score:1, Informative)
Netbook Remix Torrent (Score:1, Informative)
The official site has no torrent for the Netbook Remix - here is an unoffical torrent:
http://www.demonoid.com/files/download/HTTP/1890254/3100888
Re:Jaunty (Score:3, Informative)
There's a panel applet that adds a menu to select what user should be logged in. If you've been updating an existing install since before this applet existed, then it might not be there, but by default on new installs it's in the upper left corner. You just click it, pick a different user, and then they type in their password.
(of course, I don't bother with separate user accounts on my systems, but the feature is there).
And still no Eclipse update... (Score:4, Informative)
It is very unfortunate that the Eclipse package has been stuck at 3.2 [launchpad.net] in Ubuntu repos for several major releases already (the most recent version of Eclipse is currently 3.4.2). Given that Eclipse is one of the best FOSS IDEs out there (with only NetBeans being comparable - better in some things, worse in others), it is surprising that the effectively "#1 desktop Linux" can afford to alienate developers like that.
Re:Jaunty (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Nuked my install (Score:3, Informative)
Are you saying you just changed "intrepid" to "Jaunty" in your sources.list and did a dist-upgrade?
If so:
You are an idiot.
Ubuntu understands that there are fundamental system changes that can cause an unbootable computer when you swap out core system libraries, and thus give you their upgrade manager. It handholds the system while it's in an unstable state.
Has problems with VMware 6.5 (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not sure how they managed to achieve that, but package management doesn't work with VMware Workstation 6.5. I tried both Ubuntu and Kubuntu 9.04, and I could neither list nor do anything else with packages. It's so strange that I suspect VMware might have actively broken something in the installation. I can't imagine why else would something like packages not work in any virtual machine.
Re:Questions from an 8.10 user (Score:3, Informative)
Because "insightful" doesn't mean "literally true".
Actually, insight - the result of apprehending the inner nature of things.
Note how it doesn't say anything about being literally true.
To clarify my point, calling a poster Ballmer doesn't necessarily have to be literally true to be insightful, it just needs for the idea of calling the poster Ballmer to provide some sort of insight. I'm not saying it did, but found your objection due to "lack of evidence" to completely miss the point of what insight is. A lot of nonsensical things are insightful. And a lot of very true things lack insight.
Re:And still no Eclipse update... (Score:1, Informative)
This thread might be of some interest to you - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2009-April/007868.html