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Comments: 483 +-   Ubuntu "Karmic Koala" RC Hits the Streets With Windows 7 on Friday October 23, @02:12PM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday October 23, @02:12PM
from the cute-cuddly-linux dept.
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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.'"
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  • by Daffy Duck (17350) on Friday October 23, @02:17PM (#29849945) Homepage

    I live for high upload:download ratios

  • by sexconker (1179573) on Friday October 23, @02:19PM (#29849973)

    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."

  • Seems solid so far (Score:4, Informative)

    by Max Romantschuk (132276) <max@romantschuk.fi> on Friday October 23, @02:24PM (#29850061) Homepage

    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... ;)

  • by FlyingBishop (1293238) on Friday October 23, @02:34PM (#29850217)

    Ubuntu's fall release date has been set in stone for years, the RC release date has been up since before Windows 7's release date was announced.

    Microsoft is the company that chose to release Windows 7 on the same day as Ubuntu's release candidate, not the other way around. Seems like Microsoft wanted to overshadow and minimize the latest release of Ubuntu, and do so without actually permitting Ubuntu to compete.

    • Re: (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.

      • by lattyware (934246) on Friday October 23, @03:16PM (#29850879) Homepage Journal
        They'd be certifiably insane not to. In business, you look at any possible threats. Be it near or far. Like it or not, Linux is a viable threat to Microsoft, one of these distros could some day start to drag users away, and Microsoft would be fools not to keep any eye on them. Also, I don't know what experience you had with Linux, but it's very different to mine. I have less trouble setting up and running Linux distros than I do with Windows.
      • by jdgeorge (18767) on Friday October 23, @03:25PM (#29851029)

        With a modest amount of money, you can put together a new system that provides a slick, fully-supported experience using Ubuntu Linux as the OS.

        The problem is that, like Windows, Linux distros that try to serve the mass market have the almost impossible task of supporting everything. It simply doesn't work in all cases.

        Apple solved this problem by packaging a very limited, controlled set of hardware with their OS. If a computer vendor does that with a Linux distro, they can provide a similar "it just works" kind of experience.

        For example, if you buy a Dell system with Ubuntu preinstalled, I think you will find it will "just work".

        On the other hand, if you install Ubuntu on your system made from parts that you might think "ought to just work", you're gambling.

      • by dangitman (862676) on Friday October 23, @03:36PM (#29851209)

        d) This post will be down-modded to -1, Flamebait, Troll, or Overrated, because I'm making statements which cause cognitive dissonance in Linux Youth.

        Prove me wrong, Linux users.

        Wow, that was a really convoluted way to get your post modded up. It was an OK post (that I don't wholly agree with) until you pulled out this old chestnut.

      • by Kjella (173770) on Friday October 23, @04:09PM (#29851711) Homepage

        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.

  • by jeffstar (134407) on Friday October 23, @02:37PM (#29850269) Journal

    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.

  • by leathered (780018) on Friday October 23, @02:39PM (#29850281)
  • by gravis777 (123605) on Friday October 23, @02:39PM (#29850283)

    Isn't the point of a release candidate to give people enough time time to make sure a product is stable and ready for prime time release, and to fix issues should they arise? Wouldn't an OS, with a whole slew of apps, require a bit mroe than a week for this? I mean, a release of Firefox is usually in RC for several weeks, if not months, before it goes from RC to official release.

  • SeaLab 2021 (Score:3, Funny)

    by Archfeld (6757) * <archfeld@hotmail.com> on Friday October 23, @02:43PM (#29850359) Journal

    "It's like a koala crapped a rainbow in my brain"
    I'm all for Linux but who comes up with these names ??

    • Re:SeaLab 2021 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kjella (173770) on Friday October 23, @06:52PM (#29852989) Homepage

      Koala was to put focus on an endangered species. Karmic is your fairly uncommon adjective that Ubuntu can "coup" so you can google for "karmic *whatever your problem is*" and get relevant results that don't belong to a version from two years ago or every other page that happened to use the numbers 09.10. It works much, much better than Debian that I came from where they typically used stable, testing and unstable which left a ton of junk that doesn't apply to my stable all over the net. Yeah it's corny but it works extremely well.

  • It's ok (Score:5, Funny)

    by Locke2005 (849178) on Friday October 23, @03:12PM (#29850821)
    Karmic Koala is fine, but I just can't wait for Masterbating Monkey to be released!
    • by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23, @02:19PM (#29849987)

      no one cares

      • by geckipede (1261408) on Friday October 23, @02:36PM (#29850239)
        It's so very tempting to mod this Informative...
      • by h4rr4r (612664) on Friday October 23, @02:48PM (#29850437)

        I would imagine lots of folks with jobs do. I get it, Centos is not big with the unemployed living in Mom's basement demographic, but trust me outside that locked door there is a whole world with many people that do care about it.

        • by MBGMorden (803437) on Friday October 23, @03:42PM (#29851305)

          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.

            • by MBGMorden (803437) on Friday October 23, @03:56PM (#29851523)

              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).

              • by arkane1234 (457605) on Friday October 23, @04:22PM (#29851853) Journal

                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: (Score:3, Informative)

      No - the RC is usually nearly identical to the actual release. Only if there is something totally disastrous (eats your data, leaves dirty socks in the hall, sleeps with your girlfriend/boyfriend/cat/dog) would the final release be delayed.
        • A huge Koala has trashed my hall with a load of dirty socks, and is now fucking my girlfriend!

                Well the Koala is getting sloppy seconds, but I think your girlfriend was starting to enjoy the Jackalope.

                Oh wait, what are we talking about? This is slashdot. You don't HAVE a girlfriend...

        • "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.

    • Oh heck (Score:4, Funny)

      by WindBourne (631190) on Friday October 23, @02:31PM (#29850175) Journal
      it worked for God. Miracles CAN happen, when you apply yourself.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23, @02:26PM (#29850111)

      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.

    • by Tarlus (1000874) on Friday October 23, @02:31PM (#29850169)

      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.

    • by Dunbal (464142) on Friday October 23, @02:32PM (#29850177)

      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).

    • However, the list of great features planned for this release is amazing!

      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: (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?

      • by dissy (172727) on Friday October 23, @03:03PM (#29850677)

        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: (Score:3, Informative)

          "Karmic Koala" is just the code/theme name for the release. Like how Mac OS releases are called things like "Panther" or "Snow Leopard".
        • Uh yeah, I clearly remember my Windows 4 and my Windows 5 boxes...

          • Re:Win7 wtf?! (Score:5, Informative)

            by Minwee (522556) <dcr@neverwhen.org> on Friday October 23, @02:52PM (#29850495) Homepage

            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:Win7 wtf?! (Score:5, Insightful)

            by jipn4 (1367823) on Friday October 23, @03:02PM (#29850659)

            (Your typical Joe or Jane Q. Public will give-up at this point, and buy a Windoze PC-compatible or Apple Mac instead.)

            You're comparing apples and oranges. Your typical Joe and Jane Q Public couldn't figure out which version of Windows or OS X to install on their machines either, nor will they know whether to install Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate. The problem is the "having to install part", not the names.

            Buy Linux preinstalled and it won't overtax your brain. People will have made reasonable choices for you.

            Besides, none of those installations lock you in; it's one command to upgrade to any other one.

    • by nostriluu (138310) on Friday October 23, @04:30PM (#29851931) Homepage
      I think you're totally wrong. The basics of the WIMP - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMP_(computing) [wikipedia.org] - experience date way before Windows, and Microsoft only got file structure sensible - not storing data with programs - post Windows 95. Firefox across all operating systems can be configured to ask where to save documents so it's not an Ubuntu thing. And what's especially wrong with My Documents? The main thing Ubuntu tries to do is make it easy for people to understand how to use the OS. On that level, they succeed admirably. The same strategy is used for OpenOffice - make it like Office so people can adjust to it easily. That's the main goal - make it functional and easy to use, free and easy to install for as many people as possible. Those who need to can "escape" to the more advanced options. Being different for the sake of being different would be a terrible mistake.
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