Ubuntu 9.10 Officially Released 744
palegray.net writes "The latest version of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) has been released. Offering numerous enhancements for both desktop and server environments, this release includes notable features like Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud images, the Ubuntu One 'personal cloud,' and Linux kernel version 2.6.31. Please be sure to use a release mirror close to your geographic location to help reduce the stress on Ubuntu's primary servers; using BitTorrent for downloads can help alleviate the load even more. If your organization has adequate network and server resources, please consider hosting a mirror as well."
Re:How to get Ubuntu 9? (Score:1, Interesting)
You can do the latter, but it's not recommended. You are guaranteed to have a mess. I did an upgrade from 7.10 to 8.04, and that was sticky. 8.10 to 9.04 went okay, but doing two in one go is going to cause all sorts of trouble. I would expect, at the very minimum, that you will have sound randomly crapping out on you.
Clean install is best.
I would chalk the sound randomly crapping out on you to pulseaudio becoming the default sound system during one of your upgrades. It did that on clean installs too. Pulseaudio was (and still is??) a mess.
Ubuntu Bleeding Edge Features Ready for Prime Time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:REMEMBER! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Flash? (Score:1, Interesting)
not 64bit.
And the version of flash that is "available" to me does not support left-mouse-clicks. Uhm.. thanks?
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:2, Interesting)
USB install (Score:3, Interesting)
Can you install the desktop version (not the netbook edition) using a USB stick? They only provide ISOs on the official website, not IMGs.
Re:Not true... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:3, Interesting)
Upgrading memory on the Eee 1000HE is definately allowed.
Heck, Amazon basically autoreccomends a stick of RAM as one of the "frequently bought together" combos.
Very positive experience so far (Score:5, Interesting)
My experience with 9.10 so far has been extremely positive.
I did an upgrade at first, and then a complete reinstall. The upgrade process went very quickly, and I only had one problem - that my network card became "unmanaged" again. This is some remnant from my 8.10 install back in the day. Besides that, there were no problems and my desktop was exactly as I left it.
The install process from scratch also went well. The partition manager is pretty friendly, and the (I think) new time zone selector is actually easy to use. I also don't need to do a whole bunch of stuff to determine my keyboard layout -- it defaulted to US english and that was that.
The desktop system itself is much improved. The changes to Nautilus are welcome. The side bar is more user friendly, and the folders and such look a lot better.
The notification system has some improvements so it's not quite as useless -- multiple consecutive notifications from the same application drop into the same notification window, and there's a sort of glass effect when you "mouse under" the window, making that absurd behavior a bit more palatable.
My graphics card (GTX 280) was supported after downloading some binary drivers (although I had to restart to enable full desktop effects).
My sound card (X-Fi Fatality edition) is finally supported in kernel, although I had to use amixer in order to get my mic working. The new sound mixer, though, is FAR more user friendly.
I've had no problems so far with EXT4, and my load times in Heroes of Newerth have decreased since the upgrade.
The font rendering. It's much better across the board. Firefox sees the biggest improvement, likely due to the upgrade to 3.5. Font rendering used to be far worse than Windows and is now on par with Mac (I prefer the bolder, smoother look of Mac fonts, personally).
The HDD diagnosis tool is also handy. As soon as the upgrade completed and the tool ran, it warned me of some SMART errors on one of my drives. It's pretty easy to dig into the drives and run diagnostics and such.
Empathy is still bad, and I switched back to pidgin after a few minutes of use. For example, I had to find an hidden check box just to "enable" the account and get it to connect. The UI is also not so hot.
Overall I haven't regretted the upgrade at all, which is more than I can say to 9.04.
Re:Will it... (Score:2, Interesting)
Run MSO, PlanetSide, WoW, Crysis, GTA X, Global Agenda, Steam and the games i download for it?
Nope! No crappy, overpriced games for you to whine about whenever you get your troll a$$ pwn3d! Isn't it great? AND it'll help encourage you to get out of your parents' basement and get an actual life! This one benefits all of us!
Will it use the peripherals available at Best Buy, or that the people around me have?
Oh, hell no! Thankfully, with Linux, you can learn to avoid the borderline-fraudulent practices of Best Buy and use superior sales outlets, like just about anywhere on this wild new invention called the "Internet", where they actually sell you decent hardware, and you'll most likely save hundreds in the process over Best Buy's "premium" name brand nonsense!
Will it work with contemporary video and sound cards?
Certainly! It won't work on flipping exotic just-released-five-days-into-the-future cards that the whiny framerate-scrapers use, leaving you open to actually do useful work, as opposed to sitting around and wanking off to your "l33t" 594.2 frames per second and eighty-bajillion-speaker sound!
Will i be able to share files/programs with more people or fewer people?
That's the best part! Since all those viruses you love to share don't work on Linux, not to mention the existence of an actual security-first design policy that prevents trivial exploits from popping up on a regular and all-too-frequent basis, you won't be able to share them, thus allowing you to actually get some work done once in a while, rather than spend all day updating sleazy, questionably-operated anti-virus programs whose functionality amounts to little more than voodoo dances to ward off a constantly-mutating enemy!
Glad I could clear things up! Enjoy your more convenient life trolling for less!
Re:How to get Ubuntu 9? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you'll be better off with a complete reinstall. Especially if you have /home on a separate partition.
Nice opinion. Got any reasoning to back it up?
My home file server was originally installed in 1998. For 11 years I've been upgrading it, never a problem. At this point there's nothing left of the original hardware or the original software, but it's the same installation. My laptop was installed in 2001. That was three machines ago, but I just copy the disk image from one to the next, and keep on apt-get upgrading. Those are both Debian systems, of course, Ubuntu doesn't go back that far. My desktop machine was originally installed with Ubuntu 7.04. It's now on 9.04 and will be upgraded to 9.10 soon.
There's no reason whatsoever to reinstall.
Re:Personal Cloud... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ubuntu One looks like it uses other Ubuntu One users to store up to 2GB of data (hopefully securely) in a cloud-like state, e.g. with redundancy so that one failure doesn't cause you to lose those backups.
Nope. Apparently the data is stored on Amazon's S3 servers, according to the wiki here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne#"Storage" [ubuntu.com]
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:4, Interesting)
* 486 processor
* 64MB RAM (1GB+ suggested)
* About 5GB+ of hard disk space for a full install
* CD or DVD drive (if not bootable, then a bootable USB flash stick or PXE server/network card)
Re:Ubuntu Bleeding Edge Features Ready for Prime T (Score:3, Interesting)
They might get to understand how to re-install Ubuntu. They manage it with Windows, and tech support hand-holding them, or just slapping in the DVD and clicking next a lot.
The only good reason for a separate /home is to partition your data from everything else. I don't care if my OS dies, I can re-install it without having to worry (or copy) masses of data to a backup partition, and possibly (probably in my case) forget something. Its not something you'd do very often, but when you do come to do it you realise why you did it. If you have Windows on, you'll realise exactly why you did it when Windows 7 practically won't let you do an upgrade anyway.
In these days of super-large disks, there's no reason to give / a mere 10Gb. Give it 25Gb (which is what I gave Vista, and is nearly full now :( ) and you'll never fill that, not with Linux software.
I tend to do 3 partitions anyway - one for the OS and stuff; one for my data; one for temp files, downloads, backups etc. It works well for me. I think it'd work well for the common user too, the days of one big "C:" partition should be over.
Re:Not true... (Score:1, Interesting)
I'd hardly consider turning of Aero effects "sawed off at the knees". It is more like "no makeup".
And I'd say just enabling the styles without any other effect it looks better than XP possibly can and doesn't need much performance.
I would always choose 7 before XP because of:
- UAC / usable privilege escalation mechanism
- better firewall
- searchable control panel
- better organized start menu, taskbar and tray icons
- better volume control
- UDF for non-optical drives
Re:Ubuntu Bleeding Edge Features Ready for Prime T (Score:3, Interesting)
The only good reason for a separate /home is to partition your data from everything else.
Right. And the only advantage that provides is if you decide to upgrade and reuse the same /home. I've already pointed out how that's a bad idea, in general. And that use case requires more advanced knowledge of Ubuntu, Unix, and partitioning than your average user possesses. So it's only really useful for advanced users, who are already capable of splitting out home into a separate partition.
Its not something you'd do very often, but when you do come to do it you realise why you did it.
No, you might. I haven't. I've upgraded from 7.04 -> 7.10 -> 8.04 -> 8.10 -> 9.04, and soon 9.10, and never once have I regretted not splitting out /home. In fact, given the incompatibilities I've experienced due to config file changes and so forth, I've been extremely *glad* I chose to create a whole new /home, followed by copying over the things I want, as that ensures I start with a clean slate as far as the desktop environment goes.
I think it'd work well for the common user too, the days of one big "C:" partition should be over.
Again, you say 'should', as if it's just a foregone conclusion that your way is better and that everyone else is too dumb to realize it. But that's not at all true. A split partition scheme brings certain advantages. A unified scheme brings others. Hell, this whole discussion is about that very topic. To pretend that your approach is the end-all and the be-all is absurd.
Re:Canonical does something right for a change (Score:2, Interesting)
Linux was originally a UNIX clone, before Mark Shuttleworth got hold of it.
No it wasn't. Linux was a Minix clone which was a clone of Unix.
So to me it makes more sense for Linux to resemble BSD than Windows.
How did anything you critique about Ubuntu have any resemblance to anything in Windows? Other than purely superficial cosmetics, there is nothing about the internals of Ubuntu that match anything in Windows.
This "cloud" thing (Score:3, Interesting)
I for example, have a computer at home, and a computer at work. My current projects are stored in my UbuntuOne directory so at work or home I have access to the same files locally and backed up in three locations automatically in addition to being able to use a web browser to get the files wherever I go. I had used Google Docs, which still works great, but it requires constant Internet access. With UbuntuOne I need only enough Internet access to sync my files when I am done.
As a teacher, in my classroom I have 4 computers with Ubuntu (2 dual boot windows, and 1 dual boots MaxOSX). On the Ubuntu side have a classroom UbuntuOne account all the computers connect to. If a student saves their files on one machine it is automatically backed up online and then to every other computer "in the cloud" Then any computer a student chooses to use will have all their files on it. If a computer is off or not running ubuntu there will be a delay in the sync, but as soon as it is switched back, the files get sync'd and they are good to go. Before I used sshfs and a central machine. It only worked when the computer was on, and though never had any problems, there was no redundant storage. It worked "ok", but UbuntuOne is really the "right" way to be doing it. While it is not necessary, each student could have their own accounts and share files with each other as desired; that is just more than is needed.