Ubuntu 10.10, Maverick Meerkat, Now Available 473
teeks99 writes "The latest version of Ubuntu — 10.10, called Maverick Meerkat — has been released. This release contains new improvements, like an update to the Ubuntu One online service (with music streaming), Shotwell instead of F-Spot, the new Unity interface (for netbooks), and an upgrade to just about every piece of existing software. The announcement e-mail has more details."
Any good? (Score:4, Insightful)
Has anyone given it a good testing? I've noticed a horrible trend that Canonical tends to rush their releases these days, especially today. Trying to hit the 10/10/10 deadline makes me wonder what they've left broken to meet their target date.
Re:Any good? (Score:5, Informative)
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/625793 [launchpad.net]
If you use a second keyboard layout and switching, don't upgrade, this still isn't fixed and it's hell, at random points in time it starts rapidly changing the layout, leading to weird results in what you type.
Also there are two problems with the NVidia driver - one is that the text is horribly slow with the included driver, you need to install the beta from the site, and the other is that the nouveau driver fucks up the card and makes it impossible to use the card, so I had to revert to an older kernel. There's a bug for this too somewhere, can't remember the ID.
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Thanks for the heads-up.
After a previous kernel update once caused a kernel panic whenever I switched between wireless connections (e.g. activating hibernate at the office and reactivating the notebook back home) I'm kinda wary of these things.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm having the same issue with a Dell Latitude e6510 with the nvidia video card on 10.04. I was hoping it would be resolved by 10.10.
Google e6510 ubuntu problem for details.
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I've been using it a couple of months on a Dell Mini 9.
The upgrade was *flawless*. I've done enough bad Ubuntu upgrades that I find this remarkable, and very cheering. Ubuntu upgrades are notoriously terrible - particularly compared to how well Debian does - and I'm glad they appear to be paying more attention now.
Using it has been just fine and absolutely smooth. I'm using standard 10.10, not the netbook version - there's no reason not to IMO.
Two thumbs up! Four stars! Upgrade, er, tomorrow, when the serve
Re:Any good? (Score:5, Insightful)
The upgrade was *flawless*.
I upgraded to the beta and I had to babysit the upgrade over about four days as they boned the package archive. LOADS of missing dependencies that caused the install to want to remove big pieces of my system, which it would probably have done with -y. You got very lucky, because my upgrades were painful. They did finally work though, and I am free of conflicts and unresolved deps... Now I'm just dealing with the bugs they introduced in this revision, like GDM not properly handling multiple monitors, or my one-of-the-most-common-models Cambridge bluetooth dongle no longer working. Well, bootsplash did vanish, and I never noticed.
It would also be nice if on fresh installs to flash media Ubuntu would automatically disable readahead. Readahead from a flash device accomplishes very little and doing it from a SLOW flash device will increase your boot time significantly, as the machine NEEDS to have something to do while it is reading from the storage device. Right now it seems like Ubuntu has nothing to improve but eye candy, and so they are doing this and don't care if they break anything in the process.
Re:Any good? (Score:4, Funny)
Obviously the answer is to move to a Dell Mini 9.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
o_0 Did you actually dist-upgrade all the way along that chain?
No, sometimes I ran update-manager -dc :D
The best part was converting from x86 to x86_64... I forget where I did that, though. Pretty recently. The same install has been on various disks and filesystem types, and on probably six or seven different computers as defined by motherboard. That it works at all is amazing. I chalk that up more to Debian, Linux itself, and grub than anything else, but obviously Ubuntu has not managed to completely destroy all that is good about Debian and since I run it so much I o
Re:Any good? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I'm using the standard gnome interface on my netbook now. I think Unity's got potential to become something really quite good, but I don't think it's ready yet.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems so far to be pretty good. It feels like a slight evolution of 10.04 rather than the huge leap 10.04 was from 9.10. There isn't a huge amount different, but that might explain why it seems much more stable than 9.10 and 10.04 were when they were initially released.
The nicest new feature is the beautiful ubuntu font.
Re:Any good? (Score:5, Informative)
People try Ubuntu because of the hype, then tar all linux distros with the same brush.
Re:Any good? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh my ; the article that you link shows that the most popular Linux distro ... has more negative articles online about it than the others. Who'da thunk?
If it showed that the ratio of positive articles to negative articles was different, that might be something, even if that might just reflect the relatively inexperienced user base of Ubuntu (because it's more popular, it's going to cover more of the bell curve of expertise). But it doesn't even try.
It does compare it to Windows. Surprisingly, negative Windows articles are more popular than negative Ubuntu articles. Way to go with that insight.
Statistics (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you know that 68% of all statistics are made up?
-B
Re:It's extremely good. (Score:5, Funny)
You install pre-releases of software in the workplace? You're not much of a people person I take it..
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If he thoroughly verified that the software works for him and his users, then what's your point? Does additional testing and "yes, it's ready" sentence from Canonical, make any difference? It makes sense to wait for the release version if you don't have resources to do the testing. OTOH having tests concluded by Canonical does not mean, that you don't have to do any testing yourself.
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Re:It's extremely good. (Score:4, Informative)
In my corporate experience the rule was you only install software that you have already bought support contracts for, and only install it on hardware certified from the vendor to work.
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Naw, he treats it like a fighting game, first starting off with the low level NPC, the managers. When he succeeds there, he moves on to go mano-a-mano with accountants. Finally after emerging victorious, he gets to the final level -- developers! At around that point the release is ready for rollout...
Re:It's extremely good. (Score:5, Insightful)
This comment reads as total BS.
Let me get this straight - you're running pre-release Ubuntu on 60 production machines? Where's your boss, I think he needs to have a talk with you (and show you the door). No IT professional would be caught dead doing that. Besides, let's be honest here - most accountants and managers "require" MS Office (or some other Windows-only software), and wouldn't use Ubuntu.
And what the hell are you saying about being built on Debian, which leads to professional and real-world experience, whereas Fedora doesn't have that? Have you ever heard of RHEL?
Parent comment is bunk.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ah, but Fedora isn't based on RHEL, is it? Debian/Fedora are both community distros, and Ubuntu/RHEL are commercially supported distros based on them. Ergo Ubuntu is more "professional" then Fedora.
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I use RHEL5 at work. I hate it with the fiery passion of a million supernovas. It doesn't help that rhel5 is like six years old, and 5.4 isn't much better. Who else likes using a version of gedit so old it doesn't even have syntax highlighting? My hobbyist Linux development environment at home should not far outshine my professional Linux development environment at work.
While I agree that your parent probably shouldn't be installing pre-release OSes on production machines, I have to admit that given the
Re:It's extremely good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me get this straight - you're running pre-release Ubuntu on 60 production machines?
I was running it on a few. It's a good way to discover if anything that I rely on needs fixing before the real release - bugs are more likely to get worked on when they are reported asap after being introduced. Plus the software itself isn't really pre-release; the actual software versions of core packages are usually considered stable upstream. If you are capable of handling problems yourself, and can accept small amounts of downtime (i.e. non-critical services), then it makes sense to run the development release of your distribution of choice on a few systems.
Re:It's extremely good. (Score:4, Interesting)
When MS Office 2007 came out everybody started receiving xlsx and docx files and the old versions of MS Office most folks had installed couldn't open them. For the die hards (there were a few) I installed the compatibility pack (buried in the bowels of Microsoft's site since I guess they figure most places are willing to just throw money out the Windows(tm) and will buy a new version but I see no reason to re-buy something as trivial as a word processing program which works perfectly well already), but lots of folks got Oo instead. I even changed the icons for some of them to "ease the transition" and to tell you the truth, a lot of them didn't notice the difference. Some that did liked the presentation program better than Powerpoint and swung the whole sales staff over just on that reason. When users ran into something that worked differently (like how to edit headers/footers or tracking changes) they just chalked it up to the "new version". Since we already use Firefox and Thunderbird some folks have migrated over to Ubuntu from Windows (I always used a LTS version but then found they had decided to upgrade to the bleeding edge on their own later and seemed to have no issues most of the time so I let them play). We're not a big company (maybe 100 PCs), and we do engineering and development work so most people are pretty tech savvy, but of course the big issue was our ERP system which is designed for Windows, but its turned out easier to maintain that through terminal services anyway.
Misleading (Score:2, Funny)
Yes, but is it made with real Meerkat?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I don't bother doing this online now, I just ask Sergei in IT:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71hnoVqwkGo [youtube.com]
Kubuntu too! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Kubuntu too! (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally I love Kubuntu, and so if the other KDE distros are better then great. Heard good things about OpenSuse. However, I know I can get pretty much any software in existence packaged in a .deb these days, so I've no real desire to switch.
Phillip.
Changes seem irrelevant... (Score:5, Interesting)
As I use neither Unity nor Ubuntu One, I'm going to be sticking with 10.04, which is the latest long term support version. In fact, I think I'll even install 10.04 instead of 10.10 when I buy a new computer later this year.
I seem to recall previous, preliminary announcements claiming that there would be more items upgraded in 10.10. I wonder if I was imagining that, or if Canonical decide some of the other upgrades were not worth the effort? (Or maybe I was thinking of Xubuntu.)
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Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, the user-space changes seem irrelevant.
But, the kernel is worth the upgrade - along with some other userspace requirements that go hand-in-hand with the kernel.
For example, the (newer?) Xorg for using newer features from the graphics/drm drivers etc.
The newer kernel gives you:
o. more h/w support (drivers moved from staging into mainline)
o. newer filesystems (ceph anyone?)
o. newer archs (tile is now included in mainline)
- just to name a few reasons.
Granted I haven't checked what all is actually
Re:Changes seem irrelevant... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the user-space changes seem irrelevant.
But, the kernel is worth the upgrade - along with some other userspace requirements that go hand-in-hand with the kernel.
For example, the (newer?) Xorg for using newer features from the graphics/drm drivers etc.
If you're running 10.04, none of your applications will know how to use any of these new Xorg features. They won't know they exist
The newer kernel gives you:
o. more h/w support (drivers moved from staging into mainline)
My hardware already works if I'm already running 10.04. Why would I need more hardware support?
o. newer filesystems (ceph anyone?)
Why does my desktop need ceph? Ext4 is plenty good for a desktop. If I'm running a server, why would I be changing the configuration of a production machine? Am I really going to be upgrading everything to ceph?
o. newer archs (tile is now included in mainline)
Whoo, now I can upgrade my x86-64 to a tile processor! This is the feature I needed!
- just to name a few reasons.
Granted I haven't checked what all is actually bundled, but if you can live with manually updating the kernel and the bits that go along with it, you can definitely stick with 10.04LTS provided you're not on paid support from Canonical which might get voided if you change the kernel.
As time passes by, the distro is bound to get into equilibrium - at which point, we can't expect major changes.
NONE of these reasons compel me to upgrade 10.04 a 10.10 on an already working, functional system. The only good reason would be if your hardware wasn't supported in the older kernel, but I'm assuming you wouldn't be using Ubuntu if your hardware wasn't supported.
The only thing left to care about is userspace changes, but it sounds like the userspace changes are minor.
Re:Changes seem irrelevant... (Score:5, Informative)
Consider a filesystem. It consists of a series of descriptive headers, and associated file data (inode, data and directory information if we stay within a posix compliant definition).
"fscking" or checking a filesystem that is in an "unknown" state (basically, doing a forensic analysis) means that we will need to look at the blocks comprising the file system, identifying the descriptive headers and associated file data, dealing with potential overlaps, and extracting the data.
Of course, this requires at least one pass over all data on the disk, and (given the current state of hard disk i/o) this operation will take days on a 5TB disk.
How is this sped up? One answer is to only allow inodes to reside on certain (pre-determined) disk locations. This strategy reduces the time to scan for files to just examining the potential inodes. Also, as long as there is no overlap, data does not need to be copies. The can dramatically reduce the time needed.
We can also use a journal; if the inodes are presumed correct, and all inode updates go through the journal, everything can be brought to "correctness" in the time needed to scan the journal. But, we are PRESUMING the inode correctness -- an errant filesystem driver or firmware may have "scribbled" somewhere it shouldn't have.
A log based filesystem can provide for "fast" checking -- but, again, we are presuming correctness of the already written data.
Something like ZFS can provide for a solution -- given sufficient memory. But, to ensure data integrity, each piece of written data must be redundantly written. And, the data must be scrubbed at a sufficient interval.
Log-based systems are not yet in common use; ZFS is solaris or bsd only, with production systems using solaris. btrfs is not yet ready for production use (and isn't even comparable to ZFS yet).
The only practical (current) production answer in the Linux space is journaling, with underlying RAID.
Of course, it's your data, and if you are comfortable using and testing btrfs, go for it.
Re:Changes seem irrelevant... (Score:5, Informative)
I find it frustrating that a more complete list of new features and new versions isn't listed with the announcement. I found this blog posting : http://linux.gauravlive.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-10-10-maverick-meerkat-whats-new/ [gauravlive.com]
Gnome 2.32
KDE 4.5.0 (QT 4.7)
Default KDE browser Rekonq
Pulse Audio is the default sound server
Firefox 3.6.9
OpenOffice 3.2.1
Evolution 2.30.3
F-Spot => Shotwell
Btrfs now available (though, this is still experimental)
kernel 2.6.35-22.33
X.org version 1.9
Re: (Score:2)
Release Notes: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MaverickMeerkat/ReleaseNotes [ubuntu.com]
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The main reason why I try to use the latest version of Ubuntu is mainly due to having the latest kernel and packages. The latest kernel is obvious - bug fixes in things like filesystems, drivers and other lower-level components are rather important. Regarding packages, it's an unfortunate fact that despite PPAs, it's still a bitch to keep up to date with the latest versions of most software. Ubuntu generally only packages security and minor version updates for things, and that's generally not enough for a d
Shotwell instead of f-spot, almost Yay (Score:3, Interesting)
As a photographer, I like Shotwell. As a programmer, I like it a little more than the mono updates that come along with f-spot (and I don't like Miguel).
But here's what's kept me from abandoning gthumb2 for shotwell. Shotwell keeps pictures in ~/Pictures by default. There is no way for it to randomly pick up a directory and operate on it. I've often thought about hacking that up, but for Vala & the associated learning curve I've been too lazy to tackle.
And now, for an encore can we kick tomboy too out of the CD?
Re:Shotwell instead of f-spot, almost Yay (Score:5, Informative)
Make sure you don't care about what's in ~/Pictures
rm -rf ~/Pictures
ln -s [folder you care about] ~/Pictures
Re:Shotwell instead of f-spot, almost Yay (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and before someone rabbles "ITS THE COMMAND LINE THIS IS WHY LINUX IS NOT READY FOR THE DESKTOP RAGAGEDHDHA" there's a GUI way to do it: Right click the folder in nautilus and click Make Link, you'll get a shortcut. Delete the Pictures folder, cut and paste that link file that was made and rename it to Pictures.
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wtf, there is an option to change the collection dir in shotwell preferences, don't bother with symlinking
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The preferences dialog didn't come until 0.6.1, the GP posts are probably using the older version.
The newer binaries for Lucid (and Maverick) are here [launchpad.net].
SB
Re:Shotwell instead of f-spot, almost Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
Compare:
To
Which instructions are really easier to follow?
Re:Shotwell instead of f-spot, almost Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
The command line ones. They often can be copy-pasted, and are much more language neutral (though not so much in this particular case)
Language is a pretty big barrier for giving GUI explanations. For instance, I don't have my GUI in English, so if I were to try to explain this to somebody here, I'd have the problem of not knowing the exact name of the "Make Link" option. It could be "Make Symlink" or "Create Link" for all I know. But in the commandline, "ln" is always "ln", and the name of the Pictures folder is one of the very few deviations from that.
Re:Shotwell instead of f-spot, almost Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
If I have to look up the command line syntax every time I want to make a link, it's a lot slower than just using the GUI method. I have to figure out what to type in the search engine, and sort through for something that tells me how to do exactly what I want to do.
Another problem is long paths to directories. Sure, typing ~/Pictures is easy enough, but what if it's ~/Desktop/android-sdk-mac_86/tools (random example), or something worse. It is hard to accurately remember and type long paths in the command line, but with the GUI there is no chance for mistakes assuming you don't have multiple files with very similar names.
Of course it's great that the CLI is there, but usability is a lot better if a GUI option is available too.
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That's why you make a script. Or copy/paste again from the original source, wh
Re:Shotwell instead of f-spot, almost Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
But which one is easier to remember? The graphical ones.
Really? Using a GUI is a lot like going to the toolbox and grabbing a tool. Sometimes a tool gets misplaced and you're going to have to hunt for it. Words (like CLI commands) are always right there.
Sure, we've all had the experience where a word is right on the tip of our tongue and we can't think of it. But it's an uncommon experience, which is why it's remarkable. We all have enormous English vocabularies that we can call up instantly. On the other hand, most of us lose something every day. I've learned to keep the important things (keys) at hand, but I couldn't tell you where the swiss army knife I was just using is.
GUIs are the same way. When I use a GUI, I am constantly asking myself "ok, which menu was that command in?". With a CLI you never have to know where your commands are. Just speak the words and it is done. It's like a fucking magical incantation. That is what I call easy.
If I have to look up the command line syntax every time I want to make a link, it's a lot slower than just using the GUI method. I have to figure out what to type in the search engine
Search.. engine..? If you invoke 'ln' with no arguments, it tells you to use --help for more information. When you do that you get a nice list of options. It's all right there at your fingertips.
Another problem is long paths to directories. Sure, typing ~/Pictures is easy enough, but what if it's ~/Desktop/android-sdk-mac_86/tools (random example), or something worse.
That's what tab completion is for. This explains why you think the CLI is harder than the GUI. You're doing it wrong. The CLI has been around for long enough that it has tools to get around all these problem cases. The GUI is getting there. Features like desktop search are helping to solve the "where is it?" problem I described above. But, surprise, surprise, they do it by becoming more like the CLI.
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The first set of instructions. They're so easy a computer can follow them.
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I know of another OS that claims to be ready for the desktop, where the developers of some software hard code C: for name of hard disk. some software only allows serial ports named COM1 to COM3, etc.
Re:Shotwell instead of f-spot, almost Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Shotwell instead of f-spot, almost Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you see the irony in your comment? You've tried to negate the predictable complaints about having to use the command line to fix something - by providing instructions on how to workaround a bug (it's a bug as far as I'm concerned) with a program that comes standard with Ubuntu now.
In other words, you haven't nullified the argument that Linux isn't ready for the desktop at all, because the workaround provided shouldn't even be necessary IN THE FIRST PLACE. No wonder people get tired of this shit. At least we have the choice to use another app I suppose
First, it's not a bug. It's a feature that doesn't exist that he would like to exist. There is a difference between a bug and a feature request.
Next, the reason use CLI stuff to explain something is because it's faster. The post describing how to do it via CLI was two lines long. The post explaining how to do it in the GUI was much more than that.
...because the workaround provided shouldn't even be necessary IN THE FIRST PLACE...
So every piece of software should do everything that everyone might want it to do?
This workaround offers a feature enhancement, not a bug fix, as I've said before. Can you explain how to get any number of windows, import photo applications to import to different folder? Is it even possible? Well, when you are done with your instructions, go ahead and answer the "because the workaround provided shouldn't even be necessary IN THE FIRST PLACE" you brought up because it didn't know where I wanted the images copied before I told it.
"Might screw something up" (Score:3, Interesting)
Hardcoded paths in a user-space app is a bug, period, end of story.
Say all paths used by an application are stored in the application's configuration file. Where would the path to this configuration file be stored, other than hardcoding something like ~/.$appname/preferences.ini?
It's very simple for one person who knows how to do something using a command line to communicate that to someone else
It's also very simple for one person to communicate instructions that are the equivalent of sudo rm -rf /. For this reason, some users feel afraid to touch a Terminal for fear that they "might screw something up". A fear of typing commands appears to be common among people who only occasionally int
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Nonsense. Macos subjects you to those same style of workaround. Linux is no more unsuitable than macos in this regard.
--mistyped on an idevice
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That's a cool (and obvious) workaround, but it doesn't solve the basic deficiency of a tool that has to be used in a specific way which conflicts with many people's workflow. Ubuntu is on the "two steps back" model.
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WTH?? Why are you avoiding mechanism which is in place for those things, namely XDG user dirs? Shotwell, as every good behaving application, uses directory which user defined for storing pictures. This define can be changed with command
xdg-user-dirs-update --set PICTURES [folder you care about]
Or by editing ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs.
10 Years On - The Dream Is Dead (Score:3, Insightful)
Over the past year or so it has become clear that even on heavy open source/Linux focused sites like Slashdot that the fanatical enthusiasm for desktop Linux that existed throughout the 2000s has mostly dissipated into a resignation that the dream is dead. OS X continues to leave Linux far, far behind in marketshare in the consumer space. And Windows 7 has squashed the now unrealistic dreams from the Vista days that consumers would abandon Microsoft for Linux.
One just has to look at how Google took the Linux core and created a single stable set of APIs and development tools and have come to dominate the cellphone market in sales in just a couple of years and wonder what could have been with desktop Linux if it hadn't been for the juvenile license wars, API and desktop manager wars, and spinning cubes instead of real world usability that sums up most of the past decade of Linux development.
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Windows 7 really has sucked the enthusiasm out of the push to get people to migrate to Linux. The huge amount of progress Microsoft has made with security and stability have left very little reason for the average home computer user to make a change.
Re:10 Years On - The Dream Is Dead (Score:4, Insightful)
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after 6 months of use, by which point Win XP is crawling towards it's reinstall.
Try Windows 2003 Server. I hear they're seeing crazy uptime numbers now, like three months, six months.
Re:10 Years On - The Dream Is Dead (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd be willing to bet that the only reason Windows 7 is any good is because of the competition from Linux. Even if you don't use Linux you still benefit from it.
I'll take that bet and raise you ten. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd be willing to bet that the only reason Windows 7 is any good is because of the competition from Linux.
Linux is scarcely a blib on the radar.
On the monthly Statcounter GLobal Stats [statcounter.com], Linux ranks lower than "Other." It is falling off the edge of the world.
What drives Microsoft onward is it's thirty year run with Apple.
Re:I'll take that bet and raise you ten. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Also note that Windows 7's current user interface resembles the bastard child of both Gnome and Finder ;-)
Re:I'll take that bet and raise you ten. (Score:5, Informative)
"In January 2001, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates explained the attraction of adopting Linux in an internal memo that was released in the Comes vs Microsoft case. He said:
“ Our most potent Operating System competitor is Linux and the phenomena around Open Source and free software. The same phenomena fuels competitors to all of our products. The ease of picking up Linux to learn it or to modify some piece of it is very attractive. The academic community, start up companies, foreign governments and many other constituencies are putting their best work into Linux.[122]"
In short, Linux is much more than a blip.
Re:I'll take that bet and raise you ten. (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time I ride the bus, I am struck by how many people are using iPhones -- particularly the poor people. It's counter-intuitive, until you realize that if you can only afford one Internet-capable device, instead of several, you're going to choose the one that does the most, which is most likely an iPhone.
I think a more accurate picture is that Microsoft is challenged on the enterprise end by Linux, on the consumer end by Apple, and in the Internet by Google. Microsoft is powerful, but boxed in. I think there are signs that Microsoft is exploring alliances with the open source community in order to break out of that box.
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No, Apple has its niche of high-end computers and will not give it up. From that position it does not threaten Microsoft - Apple does not have a single laptop under $1k, so they have not made any netbooks, meaning that Microsoft continues to dominate the cheap market. Also, Apple has been generally ignoring much of the business scene. Apple does have iPhones and iPads, but those are not markets that desktop Windows could get into. This is why Linux is so dangerous - it attacks Windows in both business and o
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Other might not necessarily be desktop operating systems. Infact, I have a feeling it's various smartphone devices, consoles, etc. Infact I'm curious how large part of other is Android, which is based on the Linux kernel (but is unlike any other Linux distro, and did fork the kernel...).
Considering the amount of computers around, I actually find 0.77% impressive since by those stats Mac is only "seven" times bigger than Linux. And Macintosh is widely advertised and have the whole brand thing, while there is
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One just has to look at how Google took the Linux core and created a single stable set of APIs and development tools and have come to dominate the cellphone market in sales in just a couple of years and wonder what could have been with desktop Linux if it hadn't been for the juvenile license wars, API and desktop manager wars, and spinning cubes instead of real world usability that sums up most of the past decade of Linux development.
No, the problem is in the techie delusion that something which is ONLY a core (Linux) can somehow be used to define & identify a complete, consumer-oriented desktop platform. There is no SDK for "Linux", hence it is hostile to application developers. There are no reference hardware implementations for the desktop. There is no official IDE that app devs can use to establish their footing on the platform. There is no corporate sponsor which takes responsibility for the delivered OS soup-to-nuts.
Android ad
Announcing ubuntu releases (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Announcing ubuntu releases (Score:5, Informative)
Fedora: 12-beta [slashdot.org], 12 [slashdot.org], 13-alpha [slashdot.org], 13 [slashdot.org]-
Windows: Vista SP2 [slashdot.org], 7 date announced [slashdot.org], 7 beta [slashdot.org], 7 [slashdot.org].
Mac OSX: Tiger [slashdot.org], Snow Leopard [slashdot.org]
You were saying?
Re:Announcing ubuntu releases (Score:4, Informative)
Well, Ubuntu, like it or not, is the most popular linux distribution (that, or its users just have very loud mouths). I honestly don't see what the big deal about Ubuntu is anymore. Linux Mint does a much better job at being easy-to-use right out of the box (and doesn't make stupid design decisions involving window buttons... cough cough). For the more geek-inclined, Fedora is a very un-assuming distribution and makes for a much less awkward first experience compared to Ubuntu. And for the extremely geek-inclined, Arch Linux and just plain-ol-Debian are awesomeness. I'm using Arch right now, and if you can get it set up right the first time (thanks to their awesome documentation), you get a rolling release system with constant updates and a gigantic user repository of packages (I even maintain some packages for them, and it is to stupidly easy to make a pacman package that I'm never going back to deb/rpm)!
Thankfully, it's incredibly easy to distro-hop if you don't like the current distribution you're using enough ;)
Re:Announcing ubuntu releases (Score:5, Informative)
Although I would tend to agree with you, I use KUbuntu 10.04 today on my laptop and my MythTV box at home. Simply put, they're well put together, well supported and don't suffer from some of the strange GUI ideas that Canonical put in the regular Ubuntu (which shooed me away from it for a LONG time I might add).
I have used Macs for years, and still have my Macbook Pro for a few applications I just can't get under Linux (for example my own business is mostly managed using iRatchet, and I still haven't got a good way to get music and podcasts to my iPhone from Linux) but it took playing with KUbuntu on my laptop to convince me that Linux was ready for me to return. I used to run all kinds of distros... I have run Fedora numerous times, Gentoo, Redhat... you name it. I like the fact that for the most part Kubuntu gets out of my way and lets me get my work done the same way OSX does. I've had a couple of issues with wireless network not working after updates, but I find a second reboot usually clears that up. Other than that, it's rock solid stable, gets me better battery life than Windows 7 on the same hardware and generally just works like an operating system should.
Of course, freedom of choice is what Linux is all about anyway... and yes Mint is a great distro as well. However, I found that if I have a problem with Kubuntu it's usually much easier to find answers than it is for Mint simply because of the larger community of users.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux Mint does a much better job at being easy-to-use right out of the box (and doesn't make stupid design decisions involving window buttons... cough cough).
How? All I can see is it is a reskinned Ubuntu with "restricted extras" and medibuntu installed. I tried it on my HTPC/Nettop and it was about as easy to use as Ubuntu, except with a dog-ugly and inefficient Windows XP menu. It did not live up to the hype. Yes, it was prettier, and yes it maintained Windows-style buttons, but this doesn't really
Re: (Score:2)
Every ubuntu release is announced here. Even RC ones. Why? Other operating systems and distributions are not.
Not true. Announcements are also posted here for every minor tweak to BeOS and AmigaOS.
Slashdotted already (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems that at least from my location in Northern Europe the ISOs are not downloadable due to the server having been already Slashdotted. But luckily the files are also avaialble as official .Torrents [ubuntu.com]. Download speed currently 3MB/s, or the absolute maximum my DSL can handle.
cough (Score:2)
I was wondering why I couldn't connect to gb.archive.ubuntu.org today ...
It seems I got it last night (Score:5, Insightful)
I started when it went beta and every night since I finally got my upgrade ironed out (it took days before they got the package database in order such that you could actually complete an upgrade and not have packages trying to remove themselves) I've been doing
sudo at midnight
aptitude update && aptitude -y dist-upgrade
^D
Trying to upgrade today resulted in no updates, so I must be running final.
Let's see if they fixed the bluetooth driver they broke... nope. Failed to set bluetooth power. The error reported is: Connection timed out. Thanks for breaking the world's most common bluetooth dongle, dumbshits. I see testing is alive and well at Ubuntu... wait, no it isn't. And this bug was reported multiple times, including by me, before the release, but apparently replacing the working image manipulation software with one that uses a hardcoded directory for your library was more important than fixing bugs that they created since Lucid.
The market is ready for a Debian derivative that cares about stability and bugfixes. Ubuntu is like Wine, they break something every time they add new functionality and you can't trust that anything will continue to work through an upgrade.
Re:It seems I got it last night (Score:4, Insightful)
The market is ready for a Debian derivative that cares about stability and bugfixes.
Why a derivative? Why aren't you just using Debian?
Re:It seems I got it last night (Score:4, Interesting)
I wanted to try debian but it's simply not as accessible as Ubuntu is.
When you go to Ubuntu.com you click the "Download Ubuntu" button and then hit "start download". Done and easy.
When you go to debian.org you're greeted with information overload. Lots of completely useless information and I had to figure out that you need to go to "getting debian" link in the menu. After you're there I'm still mystified as to what I'm suppose to download. Testing? Release? No recommendation as to what to use.
You click on the stable release and i386 and it shows you a list of 31 CDs.. lol wut? I'm suppose to download them all or what?
Ok lets try again. debian.org -> click the "latest stable release of Debian" link -> intel 86 link -> ???
Ok lets try again. debian.org -> click "available versions of Debian" link -> ... wait a sec that's the same as above!!
Ok lets try again. debian.org -> click "getting a copy" -> oh great it's that getting debian page again..
I give up!!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Very interesting! However if I use this Linux Mint Debian Edition am I really using Debian?
For example, do they fork their code like Ubuntu does? If I report bugs in this will Debian accept them? If the answer is no then what is the point in switching from one Debian derivative to another.
The answer is yes. It's the exact same thing as debian with Mint's default customizations and extra repositories for Mint-specific applications, like mintDesktop, mintBackup, mintNanny, etc.
Re:It seems I got it last night (Score:5, Insightful)
It is exactly this kind of condescending elitism that is actively damaging the reputation of the Linux community. Click download. Burn download to disk. Insert the disk. Reboot. Click OK on a bunch of dialogs. Done. Canonical has its issues, but at least they understand that much. Your accusation cuts both ways:
"If developers lack the patience, attention span, or ability to produce an easier to use operating system or even proper download instructions, then perhaps they shouldn't be writing an OS to begin with."
Does that sound both obnoxious and arrogant? That's because it is.
Just because someone doesn't see something the same way as you, does not make them stupid. And before you accuse me of being some ignorant n00b for defending those who would dare to tarnish Debian's hallowed name, I've been exclusively using Linux as my main desktop OS since 1997, and yes, at one point that included Debian. Debian was easily the messiest install I ever encountered, and that includes Slackware. If Debian cleaned up their act a decade ago, there would be no need for Ubuntu. As it is, they're the same as the makers of DomainOS, probably one of the best UNIXs out there that died a horrible death because its developers were excellent at coding, and terrible at marketing. Ubuntu is the marketing Debian needs to remain more than a tinkerer's OS, and I'd say it's working so far. How many people cut their teeth on Ubuntu and then moved on to Debian because it's "real" Linux?
People don't just dive into using a new operating system, they need handholding at first and then can develop their skills as they grow into the system. But that'll never happen if they're belittled and ranted at the second they offer a difference of opinion or confusion at an admittedly counter-intuitive interface. Grow up. Or are you getting too old for that, too?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I know, I know, this is only a login manager, and it works OK despite being fugly. But FFS, at least in Debian Squeeze the old GDM is one apt-get away.
It works "OK" at best. I have dual monitors. Boot happens on primary display. X comes up with the cursor one pixel to the right of center which puts it on the secondary display. The GDM menu (top or bottom of the screen, as configured) appears on the secondary display. The user chooser shows up on the primary display. This is the most goofy version of Ubuntu since the bad old days before Edgy, everything is like this. Bootsplash just went away during my upgrade, is it supposed to be text-only or did they ju
Re:Have they made GDM configurable/themeable yet? (Score:4, Informative)
customization of the login screen? It was made obsolete by the gnome devs not by canonical and the reason for that was faster boot time. Yes, this sucks, I liked keyboard only logging but ubuntu team is not guilty here (unless you think they should keep and maintain legacy software)
Still ships with rsyslog 4.2 (Score:4, Informative)
Shotwell? (Score:3, Interesting)
Will that one be able to open a folder of ~50-60 average JPEGs without choking on swap on a 2GB RAM machine?
Why I like Maverick Meerkat and Ubuntu (Score:5, Interesting)
Lately, what I have been primarily running has been Ubuntu's Maverick Meerkat's alpha and then beta. Not to suggest the alpha was always rock-solid - sometimes huge bugs crept up in it that had me switching back to my stable Ubuntu Lucid Lynx distribution. But if they were bad they were usually dealt with swiftly.
Here is why I think Ubuntu, Canonical and Maverick Meerkat have done a great job.
In February of this year, I was installing Debian squeeze on another system. Once installed, I looked in /etc/fstab to see information on my disk partitions. The disk information was in UUID format, and a comment line in fstab said "Use 'vol_id --uuid' to print the universally unique identifier for a device". So, I did what the file told me and did a "vol_id --uuid". But it didn't work. There was no vol_id program. I did a little digging and saw that the vol_id program had been a part of the udev package on lenny, but now it no longer was. The program to decode those mysterious UUID's had disappeared. I did a little more digging and discovered the blkid program in the util-linux package could decode those UUIDs. I tried it out, it translated the UUIDs to device names for me, and I was happy. However, I realized /etc/fstab was still giving everyone faulty information. So in February I filed a bug report [debian.org] with Debian.
So now it is October, and my bug report sits in Debian's bug tracker, undisturbed by anyone. There have been four updates to the partman-target package (which creates the initial /etc/fstab) since my bug, but none implementing my suggestion to remove the outdated suggestion of using the no longer existent vol_id program, and replacing it with a suggestion to use blkid. In August, Debian squeeze froze in anticipation of release, so it becomes more unlikely my bug will be fixed.
So where does Ubuntu stand with all of this? Well back in May, Ubuntu resynchronized their partman-target with Debian. While doing so, someone checked out Debian's bug tracker, saw my report, and fixed the problem in Ubuntu. While their change log [launchpad.net] in May notes this, I can see it myself when looking at /etc/fstab on my meerkat - "Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier for a device".
So this - I find impressive. I am having a problem with Debian and report a bug there, although it remains unfixed. But Ubuntu comes in and fixes the bug which was put on the bug tracker of another system.
Yes, this is just talking about the quality of the distribution and not all of the other things involved, which of course, are important. I know how some Debian developers were (and some still are) unhappy with Canonical and Ubuntu, and how some other upstream contributors are unhappy with Canonical (like Linux developer Greg Kroah-Hartman) and so forth. And whatever acrimony exists, I think the Debian folks and Linux folks and the like are right that Canonical and Ubuntu have to find a way to push more patches upstream. Here is a case though where the bug fix was already upstream, but only Ubuntu decided to implement it.
Considering that I got Ubuntu for free (as in beer), I have been very happy with the responsiveness of the (Canonical etc.) Ubuntu team to my problems and patches via their bug-tracking system, Launchpad. As far as I'm concerned, it is one of the best, and probably largest, testbeds of the Gnome desktop environment out there. I think it's really going to allow for a good, integrated Gnome desktop environment experience, and hopefully the Canonical/Gnome relationship goes w
Fun ride. (Score:4, Interesting)
I feel Ubuntu's momentum within the FOSS community is starting to fade.
The greatest thing Ubuntu did was making a name. It attracted lot's of people and became something you can actually "sell" to business and the masses.
Ubuntu also *had* the best mindset of volunteers, helping and polite instead of RTFM grunts.
Lastly they also did a lot to push in the direction of hardware detection and ease of installation, yes, the Debian installer existed before Ubuntu but they set it up to actually work on most hardware.
It was a fun ride.
Nowadays Ubuntu seems to be stagnated, most progress is in relation to services like Ubuntu one and such. Good for Ubuntu of course but not news worthy anymore. More like newsvertisment.
The few changes in the GUI also leave a bad taste in mouth, a sort of forced Mac-ness that nobody was asking for except the new "design" team. Worse yet in my POV is that the nicer volunteers are gone and are being replaced by a bunch of canonical yes-men.
This year was the year I switched off Ubuntu, I no longer felt loyal to the brand and simply switched to the next best thing I found. For the first time in 6 years news of a new Ubuntu release don't concern me, for the first time in 6 years I wasn't counting down the days before the release, it feels odd.
Thanks Canonical,thanks Mark, it was a fun ride.
Re:Fun ride. (Score:4, Interesting)
Lastly they also did a lot to push in the direction of hardware detection and ease of installation, yes, the Debian installer existed before Ubuntu but they set it up to actually work on most hardware.
Seriously? No, that was the first thing Ubuntu did; it was (and is) the primarily reason that Ubuntu made a name. Amongst geeks, it was "hey, try Ubuntu, it's Debian but with better hardware support", and amongst the neophites, it's "try Ubuntu, it's an easy to use Linux".
The volunteers, likewise, followed. They're there simply because it was easy to use, and wasn't Vista or XP (for the most part).
If Ubuntu is 'starting to fade' it's for one of two reasons:
* Hey, Windows 7 is out now.
* Those people are growing up and not terribly fanatical - or they're graduating on to other things, like Debian or CentOS (or for that matter, jobs and girlfriends).
My point is: do not marginalize the significance of "just works" installation and hardware support. That is quite important for any "doesn't come preinstalled" OS. The focused on the kernel and the pretty clicky graphics, whereas Debian, on which it is based, focused on utilities and tools. Those efforts, combined, resulted in a pretty solid system (yes, even now).
It's the same approach used by Stormix and Progeny years ago - the efforts of which are, likewise, part of Debian today.
Wait what? (Score:3, Funny)
The timeline for this release is all wrong. It's only 20XX - we shouldn't be getting mavericks for another century.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
With the announcement email timestamped 11:10:10 BST, which is of course 10:10:10 UTC.
Trick they missed: not getting 808 State's 10x10 [youtube.com] for the official theme tune.
Re:early (Score:5, Funny)
And 101010 is binary for 42...
And if you add 4+2 you get 6........
How many years has Ubuntu been around? 6. Not a coincidence people.
Re:early (Score:4, Informative)
Wohoo! This proves how the world is all Determined by the Lord in all its greatness.
Or that no such lord exists. I'd rather stick to that one.
Re:early (Score:5, Insightful)
And there are 6 digits in 101010!
Wohoo! This proves how the world is all Determined by the Lord in all its greatness.
And He took 6 days to complete the Earth. And He saw that Ubuntu was good.
Re:early (Score:5, Funny)
And He saw that Ubuntu was good.
That's only because he hadn't seen KDE based distro yet.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:early (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Are all these versions needed? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/upgrade [ubuntu.com]