Ubuntu "Karmic Koala" RC Hits the Streets With Windows 7 483
oranghutan writes "Computerworld is reporting Canonical has made available the Release Candidate of its latest Linux-based operating system, Ubuntu 9.10, on the same day Microsoft launched the long-awaited Windows 7. 'The upcoming Canonical release, which is code-named Karmic Koala, is the latest version of the popular flavor of the Linux OS. The development release on Thursday pushed the OS one step closer to final release, which is due on Oct. 29, according to the company's release schedule Web page. An image of the OS is available for download on Ubuntu's Web site. Test versions of Karmic Koala RC available for download include the server, desktop and netbook versions.'"
Re:CentOS 5.4 is out, too. (Score:4, Informative)
no one cares
Re:6 days? (Score:3, Informative)
Seems solid so far (Score:4, Informative)
I upgraded a week or so back, seems solid so far. PulseAudio seems to be properly configured now, haven't had weird audio routing issues yet at least...
Boot is supposed to be faster, haven't clocked it so I'm not sure it actually is. But then again my desktop has been through several dist upgrades already.
But if you have an ICE1712 / Envy24 (M-Audio Delta) based pro sound card stay away, it's currently broken. Fortunately I boot to windows for my music making needs... ;)
Re:Would have been better (Score:5, Informative)
The 2009-10-29 release date was chosen over 8 months ago [ubuntu.com], several months before Microsoft announced their release date [microsoft.com] for Windows 7.
Re:Would have been better (Score:5, Informative)
No, I don't think it would have made a difference when they released it. Canonical sticks to a strict release cycle every April and October and they won't alter their release date just to try and compete with other operating systems. They're appealing to a fairly different user base, anyway.
People who are weighing the option of Windows 7 vs Ubuntu 9.10 as their primary OS are going to make their choice regardless of which one came out a week earlier.
Re:Still some very important stuff to fix (Score:5, Informative)
This bug was reported on Oct 15th, and fixed on Oct 22nd. What more do you want?
Of course if you're a Microsoft slave, you can wait for a bug to be fixed "when we get around to it", which will probably be in SP1 in 4-6 months or so - depending on how buggy THIS Windows version is... (sometimes they have to release the SP faster, like with Vista).
Re:Still some very important stuff to fix (Score:4, Informative)
I'm looking forward to officially-supported VDPAU [wikipedia.org]. Even with a moderately beefy Athlon X2, playback's a little jerky for 720p AVCHD movies from my camcorder. With some hacking and PPAs, I can get VDPAU working with 9.04, and it's much better - CPU usage massively reduced, yet smooth playback.
Re:CentOS 5.4 is out, too. (Score:5, Informative)
Don't worry (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Win7 wtf?! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Need hardware! (Score:3, Informative)
So pay the tax then file for a refund. There's a bajillion articles on the entartubes that describe the process of getting a refund for the bundled 'doze license. (No, I'm not going to search for you.)
Re:What's the point? And, look who's coming to din (Score:3, Informative)
Don't get me started about the issues with the Intel GMA drivers. "8.04LTS" worked fine on a number of systems, and 9.x caused never-ending forum postings from users wondering why the hell they couldn't get X going.
Yep, that is well known, and yes it is mostly fixed in 9.10.
Re:Shitty Summary and Article (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/910overview [ubuntu.com]
Re:Win7 wtf?! (Score:5, Informative)
Right click on "My Computer" and select "Properties". You will see the Windows version number there. That option is available on such operating systems as Windows 95 (4.00.95), Windows 98 (4.10.1998), Windows EffingSucks (4.90.3000), Windows 2000 (5.0), Windows XP (5.1), Windows 2003 (5.2), Windows Fistsya (6.0) and the curiously named Windows Seven (6.1).
So, unless you are a die-hard Applista or just started using computers this year, you probably do remember your Windows 4 and 5 boxes very well.
Re:What Do the Status Colors Mean? (Score:5, Informative)
The (only) RC is dropped one week ahead of the final release? That's not really enough time to even get feedback from the test userbase, much less actually do anything about the bugs that might show up. So, are we to assume that the RC is basically just a marketing stunt?
Considering that is not the purpose of a release candidate, of course not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle [wikipedia.org]
The term release candidate (RC) refers to a version with potential to be a final product, ready to release unless fatal bugs emerge. In this stage of product stabilization (read QA cycle), all product features have been designed, coded and tested through one or more Beta cycles with no known showstopper-class bug.
RC just means no new code will be added at that point, so no new testing is needed, as all the code/features in it by that point were tested in development/alpha/beta stages.
There of course could be bugs in the RC, but that is true of the final release just the same.
These days an RC is used more to get users outside of your normal beta testers to use it, and make sure it works with the basics and didn't majorly break anything else that used to work in previous versions.
Assuming that happens, the RC is basically renamed to release.
Commercial software calls it RTM (release to manufacturer) which burns and presses the final CD/DVDs, and for open source that is the day the ISO is copied to the main download mirrors.
Re: Improved performance in Atom Netbooks (Score:4, Informative)
Thats because of the new Intel UXA driver... It also improved performance in my Acer Aspire One
Re:Rock on (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Netbook version (Score:4, Informative)
The U2400 is either a low power Core 2 Duo CPU from Intel [intel.com] or a Nano CPU from VIA [x86-guide.com]. The Mini 5100 uses an Atom N280 [intel.com], which is a different processor entirely. While all three are supported quite well by Linux, none of them do much for wireless networking.
What you probably have is an HP un2400 [hp.com] (USB ID 03f0:201d), which uses the Qualcomm GOBI chipset. You'll need the qcserial [cateee.net] module to run it, and that is included in the 2.6.31 kernel which ships with Ubuntu 9.10. I can't speak for how easy it will be to use, but support is in the kernel and will be installed by default if you upgrade to The Koala.
Re:What Do the Status Colors Mean? (Score:3, Informative)
No, it means that it is an actual RC ("release candidate"). Now, true, some notable large software companies use "release candidate" as just a later beta, but that's not what it should mean.
Re:Shitty Summary and Article (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What's the point? And, look who's coming to din (Score:4, Informative)
"8.04LTS" worked fine on a number of systems, and 9.x caused never-ending forum postings from users wondering why the hell they couldn't get X going.
You know what LTS means, right? Long Term Support. As in, if it doesn't work in the newest version, but does in the older you're fine. Cause the older version is good for another couple of years of updates. the Ubuntu team has been very upfront about LTS releases being for "stability" and other releases being for new features. So yeah, if there is a "feature" that does not work right, and prevents you from upgrading, wait for the next LTS release, which will be very much inside the support window.
The MS mentality of everyone must always run the newest version of everything or else you won't be protected or get new features is pure crap. That doesn't have to happen in open source, when they aren't trying to force you to constantly upgrade to help their revenue cycle.
Re:Win7 wtf?! (Score:4, Informative)
No actually it's more like this (two forks):
MS-DOS + Windows desktop: 1, 2, 3.x, 4.x (95/98/Me) - terminated
NT line: 3.1, 4.x, 5.x (2000/XP), 6.x (Vista), Windows 7
Re:CentOS 5.4 is out, too. (Score:5, Informative)
Why not? The community support is better, there's a server version with the GUI stripped out that works well, and for what we're using it for (one MySQL database server, a webserver, a Zabbix performance monitoring server for other systems, and an email gateway) Ubuntu works just as well. Our desktops and most of our servers are Windows (not by my choice, but I have to live with that) so about all we're using Linux for is a few disjointed systems.
At the time I was migrating all my systems to virtual machines anyways to make management easier (and I've always had hiccups with live-migrating machines - regardless of os - from physical to virtual), so I decided when I rebuilt them to go with Ubuntu instead.
We are running OpenBSD on some of the other systems (DNS and a lot of our routers) but the main network admin handles those systems (I've used FreeBSD some but have never even tried OpenBSD).
Re:What's the point? And, look who's coming to din (Score:3, Informative)
Statistical monitoring "service"... what are you talking about? You are asked whether or not you want to participate in Popularity Contest, which is just data collection about what apps you use the most.
The "one release" with the screen dimming bug was 8.10... short memory?
Re:CentOS 5.4 is out, too. (Score:3, Informative)
fwiw, ive used linux on the desktop for about 3 years but have used windows 7 regularly since the RC build was released to the public several months agoo (because i built a new rig, wanted to game...but not pay for the OS)
its actually quite stable, being basically a big upgrade on vista. in the RC the sleep settings didnt work very well, but that has been resolved in the Pro release. i was surprised to wake my computer up one morning, find that it had downloaded updates in the middle of the night and put itself back to sleep while saving the wordpad doc i had left open with some notes in it.
Re:CentOS 5.4 is out, too. (Score:4, Informative)
You lost us at the wording "Why not?"
No professional ever changes for the sake of changing.
The community support is far from better, it's UBUNTU. Redhat/CentOS has a world of following. Besides, how many Oracle or install on Ubuntu by support-release?
Ubuntu hasn't proven itself as anything better than another way to do what Red Hat/CentOS has done in the server world.
Our entire data center is Red Hat/CentOS, with XEN virtualization and clustering. While I'm a Debian/Gentoo person, I've noticed the merits of using something industry-accepted when in a publically traded company.
Re:Causality is wrong (Score:2, Informative)
I do have mod points, but I'd rather ask to your (virtual) face: WTF are you talking about? On exactly what hardware did you see these issues? I use Ubuntu on my main computer and have tried it on several others for a few days. I've never seen the sound support dying every few hours or the graphics drivers causing kernel panics or anything catastrophic like that. I'll grant that graphics support on Linux does need some work still, especially in the areas of using 2D/3D acceleration properly, but every system that I've used it on so far has been worked fine for applications other than hardcore gaming.
I've used Macs, Windows, and Linux plenty. In my experience, they all have their annoying issues - Windows isn't exactly free of hardware issues either (get ready to hunt down all the drivers you need if you aren't using a factory config), and MacOS is only available on limited hardware with nothing available in the range I'm looking for. Ubuntu did a pretty impressive job of loading good drivers for all of my hardware out of the box. And I like that I can grab a free app to do almost anything common off of the repositories, have it installed automatically, and never worry about viruses, spyware, etc. And there are pretty good free apps to do almost everything I need right out of the box.
Re:Rock on (Score:3, Informative)
Try NFS or CIFS, or even SFTP. KIO supports FISH, too.
Re:What's the point? And, look who's coming to din (Score:3, Informative)
It's pretty simple. Ubuntu is based on Debian and Debian has the best package manager around.
Not only does Debian have the best package manager around but they also strive to have very
comprehensive binary package repositories. So even someone with obscure interests may find
that what they want is "already there".
Take the "bleeding edge" quality off of Ubuntu and you've basically got Debian.
Call it "the turtle's son"...
Re:Win7 wtf?! (Score:3, Informative)
The code name for the release is simply alphabetical.
The last release was J. The current release is K. The next one will be L.