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."
All of the reviews of Windows 7 on NetBooks that I have seen so far have been positive about how well it performs on them. Microsoft actually targeted them because it knows it can't afford to make an OS which runs poorly on them or not at all.
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday October 29, @09:46AM (#29910325)
I have to think those reviews were written by people
wearing the rosiest of rose tinged glasses.
I mean I'm a die-hard Windows user myself
but I did try the Ubuntu 9.10 beta on one of
my older laptops and it ran like a dream on
the 192 MB of RAM it had in it. On the other
hand, Windows 7 on my Acer Aspire One netbook
with 1 GB or RAM seemed to run well at first
but after a few days, the sluggishness showed
through. Little delays here and there and
the Aero effects stuttering just started
driving me up the wall. I just went on and
put XP back on it though, I'm very seriously
considering putting Ubuntu on it now. I can't
believe it but I finally think Linux might
be ready. That beta on my old Toshiba with
the 600 MHz Celeron certainly made a believer
out of this Windows user.
Considering netbooks are shipping with 7 and ram costs less than shipping
Real Netbooks are devices like the SmartQ5 and the SmartQ7 which I have got evaluation pieces from China for about $170 a piece. These devices contain the ARM-11 series processor with 256MB of RAM and 1GB of storage.
Windows7 requires regular disk drives and that makes it a mini-Notebook; not a Netbook.
Basically Microsoft took the Netbook, added a disk and forced it onto the market through big-name h/w vendors. This will not work with the ARM-range of Netbooks on which Windows will not run; but Maemo, Ubuntu, Fedora etc run decently enough.
"I can barely run xubuntu on a machine with 256megs or ram let alone full ubuntu."
Xfce's almost as much of a resource hog as GNOME or KDE these days. On a 256MB system I'd recommend LXDE for something vaguely familiar which really doesn't eat tons of RAM. Of course, then you need low-resource apps as well. Dillo's a good basic browser, Midori if you need more than Dillo can provide. I'm partial to nedit for a very low-resource text editor. And so on...
I dont think Im doing anything wrong, we just have different usage patterns. First off, the original poster claimed full ubuntu ran on 256megs of RAM. No, thats the minimum requirement for the standard installer. If you have a machine with less than that you need an alternate install disk. Or you do what I do: use xubuntu. I cant imagine running full ubuntu on less than 1gig.
My xubuntu machine barely runs at 256, which I think is a fair assessment. It boots, runs fine, but when I load up firefox, open a bunch of tabs, play some music, run a mail client, etc then it just runs out of RAM. I dont see its ram usage being much better than 2000 or even XP, but I have to deal with a less impressive and featured GUI.
That said, I am very impressed by xubuntu. Network manager could use some work. I usually just remove it and deal with IP addresses the old fashioned way. I think it hurts the linux community to spread lies about ram. Linux isnt magic. If you want to run a distro thats similar to the bells and whistles of OSX or Win7 then youre going to have to use a similar amount of RAM. Youre not getting away with using 1/4 the ram without giving up gnome.
That sounds fair, but I think we should be clear then that it's not xubuntu that's using your RAM, but rather the apps you're running. As I said in my other post, I've set my parents up with a machine with only 96 MB RAM, but they're using claw email client and epiphany (I think, they're _definitely_ not using firefox!), and their usage is basic.
I agree though - Linux isn't magic, and if you want to run a machine with little RAM you'll need to work within that constraint. Having said that, I don't know which other modern OS they could run with so little RAM.
Let me introduce you to Slackware. Slackware requires [slackware.com]:
* 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)
So if they aim for being usable on 256mb of ram, just imagine how much faster than that it would run on 1gb!
When system X runs on 256mb as fast as system Y runs in 1gb ram, it is usually a given that system X will FAR outperform system Y on the same 1gb system.
actually, I disagree with that statement. Imagine a world where every app required 1Gb RAM to run acceptably (Office 2010 anyone?). What you will see is not an app that runs slow if you give it less and faster if you give it more, but an app that runs slowly no matter how much you give it.
Think of that 1Gb, how long does it take to get that off disk and into RAM? Or, if the ram usage is calculated/generated and the disk image is tiny, how long does it take to fill it up with what ever it is doing?
that said, once you have the app that has all that RAM used, how much of it will fit into the CPU caches? How much time will be spent shifting data from RAM to L3 to L2 to L1 caches - and if the CPU is waiting for data to be updated in its cache, its certainly not running at those multi-gigahertz speeds, you'd be better off with an old 200 Mhz P3 and a gigabyte of L1 cache!
Of course, we wont even go into the time it takes if you end up swapping!
It doesn't matter if an app used 64k or 1Mb - both those numbers are still quite small, small enough not to make a difference that you'd notice. But when the memory usage creeps up to tremendous levels, you know its going to run like a dog. 200Mb plus another 200Mb swapped out is normal for some apps. Guess how well they run?
In some cases I wouldn't be worried about an app that did use a lot of memory, if its used for data structures or cached data, but these slow apps seem to be built on bloated frameworks that make them use masses of ram just to do nothing (well, just to make a lazy programmer's life a little bit easier)
An app that requires 256MB will always run faster than one that takes 1Gb, even if you have a machine with 100Gb RAM. RAM may be cheap but I/O bandwidth is not.
RAM is meant to be used, but I'd like that to be used by the OS to cache the disk, or whatever it likes, not to have all that gobbled up by apps that leave the OS with little left over to cache with.
"Correct! Also why have OSes gotten so large they required DVDs! I remember being able to install 3.11 for workgroups off a series of floppies, why can't we go back to that?!"
The new Ubuntu seems to have a lot of new stuff that I feel slightly uneasy about. I'm not sure if Ext4 has proven itself yet (then again, I haven't been paying attention), and grub2 isn't even available on Gentoo yet (my somewhat crude stick of measuring when things are considered "new" or not). I like the progress, I'm just interesting in hearing some discussion about it (hal deprecation, new input system, NX, AppArmor, etc).
On a side note. It would be nice if the Ubuntu installer by default created a seperate/home partition. (or maybe they have in the last version or so, I haven't installed from scratch).
Uh, why? For most people, that's just a pain in the ass... suddenly you have to guess how much space you'll want in / and/home, and if you underestimate, you find yourself having to resize filesystems. And for those who care (such as yourself), you can easily set things up that way during the initial install.
Possible corruption of large files with ext4 filesystem
There have been some reports of data corruption with fresh (not upgraded) ext4 file systems using the Ubuntu 9.10 kernel when writing to large files (over 512MB). The issue is under investigation, and if confirmed will be resolved in a post-release update. Users who routinely manipulate large files may want to consider using ext3 file systems until this issue is resolved. (453579)
Ubuntu One client requires post-install upgrade
A serious bug in the Ubuntu One client software included in Ubuntu 9.10 that could potentially result in loss of data has led to disabling file syncing access for this client version on the Ubuntu One servers as a precaution. Users who see a "Capabilities Mismatch" error when trying to use Ubuntu One should install the post-release upgrade of the client that will be made available immediately after release, fixing the original bug and restoring file syncing access to the Ubuntu One servers. Files are still available via the web interface at http://one.ubuntu.com./ [one.ubuntu.com]
Contact syncing and tomboy syncing services are not affected by this issue.
Package list must be manually refreshed before installing drivers
The "Hardware Drivers" tool (Jockey) requires up to date package lists before it detects and advertises necessary driver packages. Immediately after a new installation, these package lists will not be present. Before running Jockey for the first time, update the package lists using System->Administration->Software->Update Manager (on Ubuntu) or "KPackageKit" (on Kubuntu). (462704)
I don't understand why the Ubuntu team has never simplified the setup process for Samba. It is simple enough to share a folder with unlimited access, but as soon as you want to create users and passwords, it becomes rather complex. I've had to set it up a couple of times, and I never seem to get it to work quite right.
Many Ubuntu users are also going to be running a Windows machine on their local network. If the goal is to give them a positive experience with Linux, then setting up the connections on the local network should be brain-dead easy. Imagine sending a novice user to this page [ubuntu.com]! They would soon be throwing away their Ubuntu disk and installing Windows.
Making an easy GUI for this configuration process shouldn't be that difficult. I hope that it will be addressed sometime soon.
I have to assume that there are some "secret" plans involving Ubuntu One that make a lot of sense (if you know them) and can actually explain why Ubuntu One exists in the first place. I've read through all the public documentation and, for the life of me, I can't figure out what is even remotely unique or noteworthy about the service.
Right now, it's attempting to be a Dropbox clone. However, it's not yet there and is clearly still in beta -- even though they have the same pricing structure as the (very mature) Dropbox. Their goal for the file synchronization service is to be as full-featured as Dropbox? But not more? Seriously, if your goal is to be as good as Dropbox, then why not just use Dropbox?
It's not even that "Ubuntu One is OSS and Dropbox is proprietary". Both services have OSS parts and proprietary parts.
Maybe, then, they are trying to be more of an online backup service, ala Mozy? Well... no. I can't find any evidence that they encrypt your data so it would be a bust as online backup.
So I don't get it. Why would anybody use (much less pay for) it when there are much more robust services already out there AND there's no indication that it'll actually be better than those services in any way. There must be some secret plans that I just don't know about.
Kubuntu fans can check the release notes here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KarmicKoala/RC/Kubuntu [ubuntu.com] Browsing through them, I got the feeling of tired, haggard Kubuntu maintainers congratulating themselves for surviving, but not excelling in, the production of this version which still has many issues. If you read between the lines, you see that there are still quite a number of issues. "The NetworkManager applet has received some loving from its creators, and offers a more robust networking experience than it did in Kubuntu 9.04."
I went to the Feedback page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KarmicKoala/RC/Kubuntu/Feedback [ubuntu.com] to see how KDE would do in this version. This is where you get the honest criticism that tells you what problems you might encounter. Generally people are offering encouragement but the fact is that this version of Kubuntu is still not cutting it. Comments usually start with "Great release! However... " and then a list of bugs. These are bugs from before. One person says: "all bugs I noticed are still there: broken knetworkmanager, no sending via bluetooth, preview file in dolphin's context menu not working. I tried 9.10 in hope they were corrected, but they weren't."
I myself have been staying with 8.04 since that is the last version that officially supported KDE 3. (I hear that you can now get KDE 3 versions of 8.10 or 9.04, but I don't think those are official.) If I'm going to retrain myself on KDE 4, I might as well wait an extra half year and get the 10.04 Long-Term Support edition --if ever Kubuntu gets around to doing one. (8.04 was LTS for GNOME Ubuntu only, not for Kubuntu.)
I think the Kubuntu developers need to be strongly encouraged to fix existing bugs instead of putting in new features.
As an aside, regarding the "Known Issues" list for standard GNOME Ubuntu: Release notes http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/910 [ubuntu.com] Does anyone else think that there are more and more bugs now, and that Ubuntu simply is not the "install and use defaults" user-friendly distro that it used to be?
For those looking to get Ubuntu 9.10 on a ATI grfx card with a R600/700 chipset, you may want to take a look at the latest drivers from AMD. [amd.com] As opposed to the usual Envyng or Ubuntu provided drivers. There are a few people who are having a bit of weirdness with the ones shipped there (nothing big just a bit of oddities).
I'm still looking forward to the advancement of the experimental support that X.org has added to the new Xserver (1.7 me thinks) for R600/700 chipsets, go open source drivers FTW!
Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud images, the Ubuntu One "personal cloud"
Oh-oh, we're getting dangerously close to a full set of buzzwords...
What did they smoke to make those cloudy names? Did the descision taking meeting look like the car full of smoke in that old Luniz video? ^^
This is unacceptable! I will fork this, and call it "Ubuntu Social iEnterprise Vertical e-Cloud Framework", Codename: "Twitching Twitter". 'Cause I got a fever. And the only prescription is "MOAR CLOUDBUZZ"!
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.
You have to incrementally update through each version. If you have 8.04, you have to go to 8.10, then 9.04, then finally 9.10.
The incremental updates can be done through the install updates on your desktop. If you wait too long, you'll have to change your apt sources, so I'd upgrade sooner rather than later.
Yes, but I believe the proper word is 'tubes'. Please remember that it is a series of said tubes, and not a dump truck. Treating your personal series of tubes as if it were a dump truck will definitely crash your Internets and give your CPU a virus.
You know that Slashdot is going down hill when a perfectly reasonable comment asking for more information is replied to by three sarcastic comments about tubes, trucks, and pipes.
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. I got that from a brief look at https://one.ubuntu.com/ [ubuntu.com]
Ubuntu still needs to change a lot (scrap Upstart/clone FreeBSD init, get rid of DKMS, ideally get rid of crapt-get and clone ports, revert to OSS for sound, get rid of the insane scenario where GNOME is irremovably fused with virtually the entire rest of the system)
Or you could just run FreeBSD, rather than trying to turn Ubuntu into it...
It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:5, Insightful)
A lesson for Windows Engineers. Aim for 256MB, not 2GB. The era of Netbooks is upon us, and it looks like Microsoft will miss the bus.
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:4, Funny)
MS doesn't miss the bus. The problem is the MS bus is a short bus.
Parent
Re: Bus (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Not true... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not true... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:5, Insightful)
The first generation of netbooks ran linux. Just about everything after that ran windows. Sounds like linux will miss the bus.
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:5, Funny)
Linux caught the bus. But MS made Linux sit in the back of said bus.
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't you mean front?
All the "cool" people take the back seats.
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Microsoft got on the bus and then forced the bus company to turn the bus into a jumbo jet so that Microsoft's fat ass could fit in the seats.
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can barely run xubuntu on a machine with 256megs or ram let alone full ubuntu.
>The era of Netbooks is upon us, and it looks like Microsoft will miss the bus.
Considering netbooks are shipping with 7 and ram costs less than shipping, I'll take the 2gig model, thanks. More ram for my apps.
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:5, Informative)
Have you tried swapping xfce for lxde?
I makes one hell of a difference on my old transmeta based tablet.
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering netbooks are shipping with 7 and ram costs less than shipping
Real Netbooks are devices like the SmartQ5 and the SmartQ7 which I have got evaluation pieces from China for about $170 a piece. These devices contain the ARM-11 series processor with 256MB of RAM and 1GB of storage.
Windows7 requires regular disk drives and that makes it a mini-Notebook; not a Netbook.
Basically Microsoft took the Netbook, added a disk and forced it onto the market through big-name h/w vendors. This will not work with the ARM-range of Netbooks on which Windows will not run; but Maemo, Ubuntu, Fedora etc run decently enough.
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:4, Informative)
"I can barely run xubuntu on a machine with 256megs or ram let alone full ubuntu."
Xfce's almost as much of a resource hog as GNOME or KDE these days. On a 256MB system I'd recommend LXDE for something vaguely familiar which really doesn't eat tons of RAM. Of course, then you need low-resource apps as well. Dillo's a good basic browser, Midori if you need more than Dillo can provide. I'm partial to nedit for a very low-resource text editor. And so on...
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:4, Insightful)
I dont think Im doing anything wrong, we just have different usage patterns. First off, the original poster claimed full ubuntu ran on 256megs of RAM. No, thats the minimum requirement for the standard installer. If you have a machine with less than that you need an alternate install disk. Or you do what I do: use xubuntu. I cant imagine running full ubuntu on less than 1gig.
My xubuntu machine barely runs at 256, which I think is a fair assessment. It boots, runs fine, but when I load up firefox, open a bunch of tabs, play some music, run a mail client, etc then it just runs out of RAM. I dont see its ram usage being much better than 2000 or even XP, but I have to deal with a less impressive and featured GUI.
That said, I am very impressed by xubuntu. Network manager could use some work. I usually just remove it and deal with IP addresses the old fashioned way. I think it hurts the linux community to spread lies about ram. Linux isnt magic. If you want to run a distro thats similar to the bells and whistles of OSX or Win7 then youre going to have to use a similar amount of RAM. Youre not getting away with using 1/4 the ram without giving up gnome.
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:5, Insightful)
That sounds fair, but I think we should be clear then that it's not xubuntu that's using your RAM, but rather the apps you're running. As I said in my other post, I've set my parents up with a machine with only 96 MB RAM, but they're using claw email client and epiphany (I think, they're _definitely_ not using firefox!), and their usage is basic.
I agree though - Linux isn't magic, and if you want to run a machine with little RAM you'll need to work within that constraint. Having said that, I don't know which other modern OS they could run with so little RAM.
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:5, Funny)
Linux isnt magic.
That's because you forgot to sudo apt-get install magic.
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:5, Informative)
Video Ram. You probably have 128 MB installed, however 16 MB is being allocated to do video work.
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't know if anyone said it, but it seems to me that it's because the onboard video is using 16 of those 128 MBs..
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:5, Funny)
My Compaq laptop with XP only has 112 MB of memory.
Here's $5 and a map to the Salvation Army. Upgrade that slab.
Parent
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)
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:5, Insightful)
So if they aim for being usable on 256mb of ram, just imagine how much faster than that it would run on 1gb!
When system X runs on 256mb as fast as system Y runs in 1gb ram, it is usually a given that system X will FAR outperform system Y on the same 1gb system.
Whats not to like?
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:4, Insightful)
actually, I disagree with that statement. Imagine a world where every app required 1Gb RAM to run acceptably (Office 2010 anyone?). What you will see is not an app that runs slow if you give it less and faster if you give it more, but an app that runs slowly no matter how much you give it.
Think of that 1Gb, how long does it take to get that off disk and into RAM? Or, if the ram usage is calculated/generated and the disk image is tiny, how long does it take to fill it up with what ever it is doing?
that said, once you have the app that has all that RAM used, how much of it will fit into the CPU caches? How much time will be spent shifting data from RAM to L3 to L2 to L1 caches - and if the CPU is waiting for data to be updated in its cache, its certainly not running at those multi-gigahertz speeds, you'd be better off with an old 200 Mhz P3 and a gigabyte of L1 cache!
Of course, we wont even go into the time it takes if you end up swapping!
It doesn't matter if an app used 64k or 1Mb - both those numbers are still quite small, small enough not to make a difference that you'd notice. But when the memory usage creeps up to tremendous levels, you know its going to run like a dog. 200Mb plus another 200Mb swapped out is normal for some apps. Guess how well they run?
In some cases I wouldn't be worried about an app that did use a lot of memory, if its used for data structures or cached data, but these slow apps seem to be built on bloated frameworks that make them use masses of ram just to do nothing (well, just to make a lazy programmer's life a little bit easier)
An app that requires 256MB will always run faster than one that takes 1Gb, even if you have a machine with 100Gb RAM. RAM may be cheap but I/O bandwidth is not.
RAM is meant to be used, but I'd like that to be used by the OS to cache the disk, or whatever it likes, not to have all that gobbled up by apps that leave the OS with little left over to cache with.
Parent
Re:It says: 256MB RAM... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Correct! Also why have OSes gotten so large they required DVDs! I remember being able to install 3.11 for workgroups off a series of floppies, why can't we go back to that?!"
Because...then we'd be running Windows 3.11?
*shudders*
Parent
Ubuntu Bleeding Edge Features Ready for Prime Time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ubuntu Bleeding Edge Features Ready for Prime T (Score:5, Informative)
Ext4 in Ubuntu 9.10 is specially problematic, as there are reports of corruption when writing large files:
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/910#Switching%20to%20ext4%20requires%20manually%20updating%20grub [ubuntu.com]
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/453579 [launchpad.net]
Parent
Re:Ubuntu Bleeding Edge Features Ready for Prime T (Score:4, Insightful)
On a side note. It would be nice if the Ubuntu installer by default created a seperate /home partition. (or maybe they have in the last version or so, I haven't installed from scratch).
Uh, why? For most people, that's just a pain in the ass... suddenly you have to guess how much space you'll want in / and /home, and if you underestimate, you find yourself having to resize filesystems. And for those who care (such as yourself), you can easily set things up that way during the initial install.
Parent
Re:Ubuntu Bleeding Edge Features Ready for Prime T (Score:4, Insightful)
Why a separate /home? So that you can easily do a clean install of the next version from CD without blowing away all your data.
I learned that lesson several releases ago. I have 10GB / for the OS, and the rest in /home.
Parent
Obligitory Culture Club (Score:5, Funny)
Karmic Karmic Karmic Karmic Karmic Koala
Download and install
Download and innnnnstaaaalllllll....
Before Installing, note: (Score:5, Informative)
Possible corruption of large files with ext4 filesystem
There have been some reports of data corruption with fresh (not upgraded) ext4 file systems using the Ubuntu 9.10 kernel when writing to large files (over 512MB). The issue is under investigation, and if confirmed will be resolved in a post-release update. Users who routinely manipulate large files may want to consider using ext3 file systems until this issue is resolved. (453579)
Ubuntu One client requires post-install upgrade
A serious bug in the Ubuntu One client software included in Ubuntu 9.10 that could potentially result in loss of data has led to disabling file syncing access for this client version on the Ubuntu One servers as a precaution. Users who see a "Capabilities Mismatch" error when trying to use Ubuntu One should install the post-release upgrade of the client that will be made available immediately after release, fixing the original bug and restoring file syncing access to the Ubuntu One servers. Files are still available via the web interface at http://one.ubuntu.com./ [one.ubuntu.com]
Contact syncing and tomboy syncing services are not affected by this issue.
Package list must be manually refreshed before installing drivers
The "Hardware Drivers" tool (Jockey) requires up to date package lists before it detects and advertises necessary driver packages. Immediately after a new installation, these package lists will not be present. Before running Jockey for the first time, update the package lists using System->Administration->Software->Update Manager (on Ubuntu) or "KPackageKit" (on Kubuntu). (462704)
Samba? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why the Ubuntu team has never simplified the setup process for Samba. It is simple enough to share a folder with unlimited access, but as soon as you want to create users and passwords, it becomes rather complex. I've had to set it up a couple of times, and I never seem to get it to work quite right.
Many Ubuntu users are also going to be running a Windows machine on their local network. If the goal is to give them a positive experience with Linux, then setting up the connections on the local network should be brain-dead easy. Imagine sending a novice user to this page [ubuntu.com]! They would soon be throwing away their Ubuntu disk and installing Windows.
Making an easy GUI for this configuration process shouldn't be that difficult. I hope that it will be addressed sometime soon.
Ubuntu One: Secret Plans? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to assume that there are some "secret" plans involving Ubuntu One that make a lot of sense (if you know them) and can actually explain why Ubuntu One exists in the first place. I've read through all the public documentation and, for the life of me, I can't figure out what is even remotely unique or noteworthy about the service.
Right now, it's attempting to be a Dropbox clone. However, it's not yet there and is clearly still in beta -- even though they have the same pricing structure as the (very mature) Dropbox. Their goal for the file synchronization service is to be as full-featured as Dropbox? But not more? Seriously, if your goal is to be as good as Dropbox, then why not just use Dropbox?
It's not even that "Ubuntu One is OSS and Dropbox is proprietary". Both services have OSS parts and proprietary parts.
Maybe, then, they are trying to be more of an online backup service, ala Mozy? Well... no. I can't find any evidence that they encrypt your data so it would be a bust as online backup.
So I don't get it. Why would anybody use (much less pay for) it when there are much more robust services already out there AND there's no indication that it'll actually be better than those services in any way. There must be some secret plans that I just don't know about.
Anybody feel like letting me know what I missed?
KDE summary: usable but not great. I'll pass. (Score:5, Informative)
Kubuntu fans can check the release notes here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KarmicKoala/RC/Kubuntu [ubuntu.com]
Browsing through them, I got the feeling of tired, haggard Kubuntu maintainers congratulating themselves for surviving, but not excelling in, the production of this version which still has many issues. If you read between the lines, you see that there are still quite a number of issues. "The NetworkManager applet has received some loving from its creators, and offers a more robust networking experience than it did in Kubuntu 9.04."
I went to the Feedback page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KarmicKoala/RC/Kubuntu/Feedback [ubuntu.com] to see how KDE would do in this version. This is where you get the honest criticism that tells you what problems you might encounter. Generally people are offering encouragement but the fact is that this version of Kubuntu is still not cutting it. Comments usually start with "Great release! However ... " and then a list of bugs. These are bugs from before. One person says: "all bugs I noticed are still there: broken knetworkmanager, no sending via bluetooth, preview file in dolphin's context menu not working. I tried 9.10 in hope they were corrected, but they weren't."
I myself have been staying with 8.04 since that is the last version that officially supported KDE 3. (I hear that you can now get KDE 3 versions of 8.10 or 9.04, but I don't think those are official.) If I'm going to retrain myself on KDE 4, I might as well wait an extra half year and get the 10.04 Long-Term Support edition --if ever Kubuntu gets around to doing one. (8.04 was LTS for GNOME Ubuntu only, not for Kubuntu.)
I think the Kubuntu developers need to be strongly encouraged to fix existing bugs instead of putting in new features.
As an aside, regarding the "Known Issues" list for standard GNOME Ubuntu:
Release notes http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/910 [ubuntu.com]
Does anyone else think that there are more and more bugs now, and that Ubuntu simply is not the "install and use defaults" user-friendly distro that it used to be?
BitTorrent links (Score:5, Informative)
http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.10/ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso.torrent [ubuntu.com]
http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.10/ubuntu-9.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent [ubuntu.com]
http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.10/ubuntu-9.10-netbook-remix-i386.iso.torrent [ubuntu.com]
http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.10/ubuntu-9.10-server-i386.iso.torrent [ubuntu.com]
http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.10/ubuntu-9.10-server-amd64.iso.torrent [ubuntu.com]
http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.10/ubuntu-9.10-alternate-i386.iso.torrent [ubuntu.com]
http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.10/ubuntu-9.10-alternate-amd64.iso.torrent [ubuntu.com]
ATI Xorg 9.10 drivers (Score:4, Informative)
I'm still looking forward to the advancement of the experimental support that X.org has added to the new Xserver (1.7 me thinks) for R600/700 chipsets, go open source drivers FTW!
Buzzword bingo? (Score:4, Funny)
Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud images, the Ubuntu One "personal cloud"
Oh-oh, we're getting dangerously close to a full set of buzzwords...
What did they smoke to make those cloudy names? Did the descision taking meeting look like the car full of smoke in that old Luniz video? ^^
This is unacceptable! I will fork this, and call it "Ubuntu Social iEnterprise Vertical e-Cloud Framework", Codename: "Twitching Twitter".
'Cause I got a fever. And the only prescription is "MOAR CLOUDBUZZ"!
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:How to get Ubuntu 9? (Score:5, Informative)
You have to incrementally update through each version. If you have 8.04, you have to go to 8.10, then 9.04, then finally 9.10.
The incremental updates can be done through the install updates on your desktop. If you wait too long, you'll have to change your apt sources, so I'd upgrade sooner rather than later.
Parent
Re:How to get Ubuntu 9? (Score:5, Informative)
You can skip from one LTS release to another. eg: 8.04 to 10.04
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes [ubuntu.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you'll be better off with a complete reinstall. Especially if you have /home on a separate partition.
Re:Time for my Ubuntu 9.10 Launch Party (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.funnyordie.co.uk/videos/ef83afc272/hosting-your-windows-7-torrenting-party [funnyordie.co.uk]
Don't worry, this one isn't cringe-worthy like the original.
Parent
Re:It's not released yet?! (Score:4, Informative)
Take a look at the mirrors - it's up, but the site doesn't yet reflect it.
http://mirror.its.uidaho.edu/pub/ubuntu-releases/9.10/ [uidaho.edu]
Parent
Re:It's not released yet?! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:no it wasnt.. (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Personal Cloud... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Personal Cloud... (Score:4, Insightful)
You know that Slashdot is going down hill when a perfectly reasonable comment asking for more information is replied to by three sarcastic comments about tubes, trucks, and pipes.
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. I got that from a brief look at https://one.ubuntu.com/ [ubuntu.com]
Parent
Re:Flash? (Score:5, Informative)
Flash has been available for many versions already...
Parent
Re:It's FREE! as long as... (Score:4, Funny)
Depends on your definition of noob.
He's been installing and administrating Windows systems for 15 years - so by the general definition, he is no noob.
He's using Windows - so by my definition, he is a noob.
Parent
Re:USB install (Score:5, Informative)
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Parent
Re:Canonical does something right for a change (Score:4, Insightful)
Ubuntu still needs to change a lot (scrap Upstart/clone FreeBSD init, get rid of DKMS, ideally get rid of crapt-get and clone ports, revert to OSS for sound, get rid of the insane scenario where GNOME is irremovably fused with virtually the entire rest of the system)
Or you could just run FreeBSD, rather than trying to turn Ubuntu into it...
Parent