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.'"
Rock on (Score:0, Interesting)
Rock on Ubuntu.. I hope 9.10 fixes a lot of the nagging usability issues and bugs of 9.04 and yonder. I love Linux but am frustrated at the slow evolutionary , ugly looking UI, nagging bugs, compatibility issues and lack of enough bundled Open source utils.. I would HATE to switch back to Windows , hope it never happens
Shitty Summary and Article (Score:5, Interesting)
News would entail what's new in this version.
Non news is a "hey guys Ubuntu has something new too" cry for attention amidst the Win 7 release.
Ubuntu is great and all, but this article is crap.
It barely gets around to mentioning:
"Built on the latest Linux 2.6.31.1 kernel, Ubuntu 9.10 offers faster boot times, an improved user interface and programming tools for easier software development, according to Canonical."
Win7 wtf?! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Win7 wtf?! (Score:1, Interesting)
Well I was going to buy Windows 7, but since it looks like 9.10 LTS is coming out on the 29th, I'll save $125 and get my OS for free! Thanks Slashdot!
Re:What Do the Status Colors Mean? (Score:3, Interesting)
What I want to know is, what the heck does a RC build mean to these guys? 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?
transparent system tray in awn (Score:4, Interesting)
I've got hardy on my thinkpad at the moment. I'm considering upgrading just because the new gtk in karmic enables a transparent system tray so AWN will finally look right [blogspot.com].
I never liked having two horizontal bars or panels on my screen, especially on a 14" widescreen. too much wasted real estate. especially when applications have a title bar. then add fire fox book mark bar, menus and address bar and that doesn't leave a lot of real estate!
AWN with google chrome makes the most of it.
Re:Causality is wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
Or, just maybe, the fall is a great time to release a new OS to cash in on all the holiday period new PC sales?
Do you seriously think that Microsoft even considers Ubuntu a competitor for the desktop at this point?
To act like there actually is something to minimize at this point in time is facetious.
I dearly wish there was something to minimize, but let's not kid ourselves.
Re:Causality is wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree in general that there isn't a serious competition. But I can't believe that Microsoft chose the Ubuntu fall RC date by accident, given that it was on the Ubuntu calendar back in June when MS announced the Windows 7 release. They want the buzz as people begin using Windows 7 in the next couple weeks to totally eclipse the usual buzz that comes with a new Ubuntu release (Anemic as it may be, you still get gushing Slashdot posts and the like.) MS wants all eyes on Windows.
Need screen space? Move stuff to the bottom panel. (Score:3, Interesting)
I never liked having two horizontal bars or panels on my screen, especially on a 14" widescreen.
Here's how I solved that in Ubuntu Jaunty on my 9" laptop:
Windows 4 existed. (Score:1, Interesting)
Windows NT 4, to be exact, which was released in conjunction with Windows 95/98/Me
Re:Code Name Runner-up (Score:2, Interesting)
Nothings perfect (Score:2, Interesting)
Ubuntu v9.10 Karmic costs me $0
Windows 7 cost me $219.
I've now using Ubuntu as the Host OS and I'm running Windows 7 as a Guest OS virtualized in KVM... works great and no dual boot any more. If Windows crashes and burns I can just start a new VM.
Re:CentOS 5.4 is out, too. (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I not joking, I seriously use it.
I know a lot of folks who use it, too :). CentOS is great for organizations that use RHEL but don't need paid support on every server instance. I'm a Debian/Ubuntu guy myself, but to each their own.
/me goes back to testing the Ubuntu 9.10 RC now...
Re:Causality is wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:CentOS 5.4 is out, too. (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone with a real job who uses Linux there (not as much as we used to unfortunately), I switched most of my servers to Ubuntu from CentOS a while back.
I'll admit that lots of people are still using CentOS (and I'll never mock a distro's users - though I'm on Linux Mint now, I used to use Gentoo at home, and before that I was on Slackware - 'nuff said), but even in the corporate world it seems like the push is towards Ubuntu.
Re:CentOS 5.4 is out, too. (Score:3, Interesting)
I get the advantages of ubuntu on the desktop but on there server why would you want to switch from CentOS to Ubuntu?
Ubuntu? Windows? What's the difference? (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay I've been wanting to vent about this for a few weeks now and this seems to be as good a topic to write this in as any.
My first encounter with Ubuntu came when I recently installed Ubuntu Jaunty on a laptop for a club I belong to. The laptop's got an XP licence but we couldn't find a CD and the programs we need are available for Linux, so Ubuntu seemed like a good choice to get us up quickly. And it worked out fine: Install was simple and quick and the system looked good. The only tricky bit was figuring out the wireless setup but it wasn't too hard.
However I was utterly horrified to see that Ubuntu has also faithfully and I must say blindly replicated the most hideous features of Windows! The despicable "My Documents" folder structure was the first and most obvious. Say what you well about Vista, at least it fixed this into something less cumbersome and more sensible. Next was the constant prompting I got after doing almost every little thing. If I wanted that I'd have left UAC enabled on my Vista desktop. Then I find out Firefox was happily setup to save everything to the desktop by default. FOLDERS EXIST FOR A REASON!!!
Why why WHY are so many Linux folks trying to clone Windows when they dislike it so? It may be Linux and it may be free, but if it looks and acts like Windows then it's still an ugly mess. Here I thought Ubuntu would take the best features of Window and combine them with Linux, but instead all they did was turn Linux into a horrible disgusting Windows clone.
If a company knocks off another company's product we accuse them of stealing ideas. If someone releases some new program (open source or not) that replicates existing functionality we say "well why use yours when I can just use the original?" So why should we get all happy excited about Ubuntu when all it does is rip off Windows? To me that'd be the height of hypocrisy.
Mod me down, I don't care. I had to get this off my chest...
Notebook without Windows (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Causality is wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
To their credit, I think they recognized they blew it when they started the 100 Paper Cuts project. It was a good way of showing, to the those who had become recalcitrant about fixing problems that mattered to actual users and were focused on latest-and-greatest instead. Even then, there's some LaunchPad comments that could lead you to suspect that some people are a little too settled in their ways.
Actually, I think they realized they were in trouble with the whole badly-broken-Intel-graphics in 9.04. I don't know how they let that slip through: badly breaking graphics performance for most laptops and many desktops seems like the kind of thing that would have shown up in QA reports and the beta period, no?
Re:Causality is wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's my take on Linux support: Not that long ago, I'd have to chase high and low to find any Linux compatible hardware and certain things like wireless cards was near impossible. These days I have no problems finding Linux-compatible hardware, even though not all or even most hardware is compatible with Linux. There's usually some well-supported official drivers in most categories instead of the "best of the reverse engneered" there used to be. I don't remember this machine having a kernel panic ever, though X did have an oops a month ago because I've upgraded to a beta KDE/X release.
If I was to say my biggest greatest annoyance with Linux, it's media plugins and flash in particular. If only Firefox would stop being so patent-freaky and decode H.264 when it is available [ajaxian.com] then we could kill flash and live happily ever after. *buntu seem perfectly capable of shipping a video player that'll use the x264 codec if installed, so should Firefox.
re: MS and Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, sure ... MS keeps an eye on Linux to see how far popular distros have come. In fact, they *even* have some developers working for them who like and use Linux.
But we've heard for well over a decade now that "any time now", Linux is going to have its day and "threaten Windows for dominance" .... and it never really happens.
I think it's rather idealistic to believe Linux can somehow overtake a gigantic commercial endeavor to make and market an operating system, when in reality, a BIG part of such a battle would involve convincing a massive number of existing Windows users to abandon the platform they're already used to using. Considering the advertising and P.R. budgets for a Linux distro vs. somebody like Apple or Microsoft? You can see a little problem there.
If Linux was just as ready and user-friendly for the desktop PC as what Apple or Microsoft had to offer, about 18 years ago, THEN we'd have more of a "fair fight". But in reality, Linux is a "Johnny come lately" to the game, having spent much of its existence concentrating on being true to its Unix roots with shell scripts, a command line, and catering more to server administration and educational/research/mathematical apps than to entertainment, "home productivity apps" and the like.
Re:CentOS 5.4 is out, too. (Score:3, Interesting)
I work in government rather than a publicly traded company, but as I said I was redoing the installs anyways as a result of moving to a virtual environment, so it's not like I was changing for the sake of changing.
Also, if you'll notice in my post, I never mention Oracle or any other application that doesn't work well on Ubuntu. The simple fact of the matter is that for what I'm using it for, Ubuntu works fine. Bandying about doom and gloom predictions isn't hampering my little Ubuntu VM's which have been humming along without a hiccup for the better part of a year now.
Re:Causality is wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
So you are saying a OS that's so badly designed it needs virus scanner add-ons just to stop rogue files trashing it is better than one that just works?
Windows isn't ready for mass deployment and never has been. Ubuntu isn't perfect but it is better than windows in most of the ways that count.
Re:Causality is wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, if you buy a Dell system with Ubuntu preinstalled, I think you will find it will "just work".
Exactly.. if you buy hardware from a vendor that has official Linux support, you'd get a system that "just works" Whereas, when you buy hardware from Sun, Apple, or IBM, you get a system that "works really damn well".
I think you're missing the point. For a fair comparison, you need to buy a computer that comes with Ubuntu pre-installed as the only OS and the OS the computer was designed and tested to work with. It can have Windows as an optional install after the fact or something, but buying a machine where Dell has done a little bit of testing to try to expand it into the Linux using market, but are still primarily selling that hardware as a Windows box does not cut it.
Even Microsoft does SAN management better than Linux, and they don't have strong ties to any particular storage vendor.
Here's where you're wrong. Microsoft doesn't do SAN management better than Canonical. SAN makers may make their SAN offerings work better with Windows because that is their primary market. The main problem Linux developers face is the ecosystem in which they are trying to compete. This is important to recognize because it strongly influences how Linux needs to be developer differently from Windows and what else needs to happen other than just the OS component.
Apple succeeds because they target the entire user experience and don't pass the buck when there is a failing by blaming it on people who make the hardware or who make applications or who provide services. If no one else will do it acceptably, Apple will do it themselves. With Linux, it is even more important to make sure there is a complete vertical stack for end users. I think Canonical gets this to some extent and are trying, as they are providing in the cloud services and starting to develop an app store model for commercial offerings on Ubuntu. They still need to get those things working, woo application developers, and find strong hardware partners.
Re:Causality is wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft would have to be certifiably insane to consider Ubuntu even a marginal form of competition.
Prove it.
Linux in total represents less then .93% of the Desktop market. Ubuntu a fraction of that.
Microsoft *are* ahead of Ubuntu in at least one, basic, critical area. Stable hardware support that actually works.
Prove it.
Broadcom(or most other) wireless chipsets, nVidia video drivers. The end.
Ubuntu is filled with wonderful software, but honestly it's not ready for wide adoption. Now maybe you can try to pin that on the hardware companies that don't support it, or the users who want to just use what they know, but it doesn't change the fact it's not ready.