Hardy Heron Alpha 4 Released 272
LarryBoy writes "Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) alpha 4 was released Friday and Ars Technica has a look at what's new in the latest builds of Hardy Heron. 'Although many of the significant architectural features like PulseAudio and GIO are still in transitional stages and aren't fully functional yet, Ubuntu 8.04 alpha 4 is still very impressive. I'm a big fan of D-Bus and I'm very pleased to see it being adopted throughout the entire desktop stack in core components.'"
ndiswrapper (Score:4, Interesting)
But 8.04, it's bloody nice! I downloaded it this afternoon for a play
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Re:ndiswrapper (Score:5, Informative)
Re: ndiswrapper (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that a D-Bus operating system couldn't possibly be good, but all I really want, quite honestly, is a good Unix system. More D-Bus at the system level is, for me, rather an argument to switch my laptop over to Debian instead, and then if Debian becomes GNU/DBus as well, I guess I'll switch to FreeBSD instead.
Re: ndiswrapper (Score:5, Interesting)
D-Bus may not be the answer to everything, individual technologies rarely are, and it's not as if D-Bus was even the only user-level software bus commonly used in Linux, but it has interesting potential. Not sure how well it currently plays with clustering technology like MOSIX, or grid technology, but given the effort being poured into developing user-space software buses precisely for those, I imagine that's just a matter of time.
Personally, I'd rather have more localized limited-purpose buses in any case where a general-purpose solution is slower and/or heavier. The code can't be that maintenance-intensive and too much abstraction must eventually pessimize the resulting code. Moore's Law is worthless if code gets slower at the same rate systems get faster. Nonetheless, any general-purpose abstract IPC that is easier to implement against than traditional mechanisms (RPC, CORBA, Unix sockets, System V messages, etc) must surely be beneficial - even if those end up being the mechanisms used under the hood. In fact, the more of those implemented and the better you could switch data between them, the more portable such a software bus becomes as well as the more optimal - to a point. The whole trend in programming is towards such pluggable solutions, it's surprising IPC is so far behind almost every other mechanism out there, and unless there are specific technological reasons to not use a given generic mechanisms (such as performance costs), you're already using so many that are not following some standard or other that it's absurd to discriminate against one just because it's not specifically POSIX.
Re:ndiswrapper (Score:4, Interesting)
To be honest, I've never needed to touch it at all.
I've been pretty lucky with wifi support (every wifi device I've bought has Linux drivers even though I didnt check before hand) but other hardware also works fine.
I consider ndiswrapper a really dirty hack which is required in certain circumstances.
I would never tell anyone to use it.
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Is the wifi problem in Ubuntu driver related or UI related?
Its a well known fact that wifi manufacturers really hate giving away any clues so making wifi drivers is always a struggle.
A *lot* of them are currently supported though and more are on the way.
If its UI related then there arent too many excuses.
However its probably best if they did it right the first time so if they need more time, I say give it to them.
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Re:ndiswrapper (Score:4, Informative)
My wife couldn't be happier.
And you can rest your mind, PCLinuxOS 2007 doesn't put all users into root. If something requires administrative privileges, it will ask for the root password, which is where I come in, if it happens to my wife.
Anyway, in terms of ease-of-use, PCLOS is still much ahead of Ubuntu. I wouldn't run PCLOS on a server, but on desktop and mobile systems, it's top notch.
Re:ndiswrapper (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:ndiswrapper (Score:5, Informative)
To add my experiences with Ubuntu (and being more specific) I had troubles with Ubuntu 6.06 on my T42 ThinkPad trying to use wireless security, although connectivity and WEP worked straight off. Later, Ubuntu 7.10 had a greatly improved NetworkManager. It's everything thing I need. My hat's off to those guys. Even VPN works beautifully through the same interface.
I do hope an open source 11n driver comes out soon. It's really up to which chip vendor wants write one, and it was in this area that I had hopes for the Dell/Ubuntu laptops. If they want to ship 11n, then they'll push someone to support it. You see, your characterization was mistaken. You said:
HP, and Microsoft, fixed the issue with the Broadcom wireless driver
No they didn't. Broadcom fixed it. HP forced them too, and Microsoft did nothing. That's the way it's going to be. Once HP and Dell care, Linux support will be there before the product is shipped.
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MS achieves virtually nothing. The hardware vendors to elaborate testing and fiddling to make sure the pre-installed OS works when you get it.
Apple does a bit more: it checks for its own (limited) hardware compatability.
But pre-installed Ubuntu from Dell
Try installing XP or Vista on a computer you built yourself sometime. It rarely all just works out of the box. It requires hours
cart before the horse (Score:5, Insightful)
You see, if I'm looking at purchasing a laptop with Broadcom wireless and I happen to know that Broadcom Don't Work That Great(TM) in linux, then rather than switch to an OS that is in my eyes inferior, insulting, buggy and patronising, not to mention the fruit of a hostile predatory monopolist, I'll just find another laptop, one that has good open hardware. They abound, at least in this market.
Now you may accuse me of being political, bigotted, or evangelist, but I've used every significant version of Windows since 3.11 for Workgroups frankly they all grate my nerves.
And I'm done screwing away hours just to get this soundcard or that wireless or video hardware to work. Yeah, most people here will agree with you, but choosing Vista over Ubuntu when there are perfectly good hardware options out there is, in my view, shooting yourself in the foot, putting the cart before the horse, and throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
db
Re:cart before the horse (Score:5, Funny)
I agree. When picking an OS, you really need to throw your hat into the ring. You've got to get your hands dirty and get your feet wet. I know they say the grass is always greener on the other side, but moving to Vista is just getting out of the frying pan and into the fire. You can't cut off your nose just to spite your face. I'd say just let the chips fall where they may, and don't cry over spilt milk. This topic is really just beating a dead horse; after all, what goes around, comes around.
Needle in a haystack. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Re:cart before the horse (Score:4, Funny)
PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8 (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8 (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8 (Score:5, Insightful)
So what you're saying is that Debian fucking sucks because they take like, Linus' kernel and GNU compilers and Theo's ssh server instead of developing their own things?
I think you need to take a deep breath and read the GPL and BSD license again. ;)
Sharing is caring.
Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8 (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8 (Score:4, Insightful)
Is Launchpad even released to the public? It doesn't make much sense to discuss the license if it isn't distributed. Do you require Google to release source for its search engine?
Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8 (Score:5, Informative)
More to the point, though Launchpad isn't yet open source, Canonical have made a commitment to open sourcing it. The reasons for it not being done yet are well documented - Shuttleworth himself explained things at length in a blog post some time back. They've already open sourced Storm.
So Launchpad isn't open source, but using that to level an accusation of Ubuntu being closed source is a fairly radical interpretation of the facts.
Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8 (Score:5, Informative)
How did this get moderated insightful?
Re:PulseAudio works nicely in Fedora 8 (Score:4, Insightful)
If you dont want your software to be freely used and redistributed, DO NOT OPEN IT. Period. Canonical is doing what they can with what is available and has no obligation, either moral, ethical or legal, to do anything for or against the producers of the FOSS they use. About they not opening software of their own, in that very speciffic case, im right besides you: release, cannonical bastards, SLES did it for yast (although thankfully that didnt take off for the rest of the distros), redhat did it for the Netscape Directory and gfs (and that cost them a bundle) so yeah, play fair and dont use proprietary software.... or is this right?
For example, redhats RHN proxy/satellite stuff uses oracle as backing and is quite proprietary as far as i know. Novell hasnt released the code for their support portal either, is that ethically right or wrong?.... im not sure where you want to stand on this issues, but its getting more complicated to pass judgment on this stuff the more I think about it.
Now... im waiting to see if lightning strikes me. Your slashdot id gets you quite close to the very begining. I mean, you gotta be old in this game. I was about to cite the Open Source Definition but then again, maybe you're one of the authors or something and will retaliate to this strongly.... aw, hell, here it goes:
Dont you think your position goes against the spirit of the OS definition and the GPL?
Define contribution (Score:2, Insightful)
All I can say is, as long as Ubuntu stays true to its name, I wont have
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I sure hope so.
16.7 million colours to choose from and they choose the exact shade of shit.
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Hilarious. Might I then suggest that Fedora do the same to win their market share back?
I'm not sure I quite understand this infighting; surely you must realize that what is good for Ubuntu (or any Linux distro) is good for Linux? I know one thing that makes Linux less attractive to the outside world: petty fighting over th
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How is that hypocritical? It's not because Canonical is helping the spread of open source. It's helping the popularity of Linux. Perhaps one of the best things any company can give to the open source community is more use
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Absolutely true, through and through (Score:2)
What they do is wrap it all up in a neat little package. Why not? If they're the wedge needed to widen the market for Linux-distributors, then that's great. I even got my father onto xUbuntu. Is the xfce implementation in Ubuntu anything but marginally different than other xfce implementations? (I don't even believe xUbuntu is on the official tree, but replace "xfce" with "Gn
Yet to be impressed (Score:3, Interesting)
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Seriously. I would like to know, how copy&paste is faster/better than just clicking on the link.
Re:Yet to be impressed (Score:4, Informative)
I click on a PDF link in Epiphany and it downloads the PDF and opens it in Evince (or whatever is registered as the primary PDF handler). If the website annoyingly opens a new window to show the PDF in (as if you have the plugin installed), Epy even helpfully closes the empty window for you.
This works for all registered content types, not just PDFs. If on some occasions it does not work, it is because the server is misconfigured and is sending the wrong MIME content type.
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Perhaps this will change now gnome-vfs has been replaced by "GIO" and moved into glib.
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Re:Yet to be impressed (Score:5, Funny)
I did good, didn't I?
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GNOME does not know how to handle this! If you knew what you were talking about, you'd have asked the question: "If you need to read a PDF file, why not save the PDF file, start a PDF viewer and load it up?"
It's people like you who are contributing to GNOMES apparent playing catchup to other desktop environments.
Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Another Look Available Here (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations! (Score:5, Interesting)
-A Longtime Gentoo User
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It's not to say that Ubuntu is better then Gentoo or anything else. It's just that I think my day to day goals have changed. Where as before I had more time to tinker and play, Gentoo was so much fun. But now I've switched jobs and life is getting in the way, I need to get "work" done and pass on the tinkering.
After switching to Ubuntu, it's nice to just have little things "work". Not like
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I don't like the name (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:I don't like the name (Score:4, Funny)
nautilus is undergoing big changes (Score:4, Informative)
Snipped from the release notes:
Nautilus can behave erratically, especially in trash operations. Refrain from operating on valuable files with this version. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/185756 [launchpad.net]
Queued file operations -- finally?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Please tell me this means that file operations will actually queue to be run in sequence, saving us from disk and cache trashing slowing things down? With "run", "pause", "cancel" on each individual transfer? Pretty please?
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- which volumes are mounted under which mount points (quite easy, but then calculate that for all files transferred, not just root of each transfer)
- which volumes are really LVM2 logical volumes, and how those are mapped to volume groups and then physical volumes (LVM is default in Fedora and maybe also Ubuntu, I always install it explicitly)
- is RAID in use, at level of software RAID (Linux
What about KDE integration? (Score:2, Interesting)
However with the fiasco with Suse, Micorosoft, patents,
Kde 4.0 supposed to be a rapid improvement and Kubun
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I can't find any mention of that anywhere; care to expand on this?
Re:What about KDE integration? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, KDE 4.0 is more of a beta quality [kde.org] release (like Mac OS/X 10.0 or pre-SP1 Vista) - it's 4.1 or so that'll really be ready for daily use by normal users. Unfortunately, Hardy falls at an awkward time with respect to 4.0 (or vice versa) - 4.0 isn't ready for long term support, but 3.5 isn't likely to be relevant for 3 long years. As a result, while Ubuntu 8.04 will be a Long Term Support (LTS) release, Kubuntu 8.04 will not be [kubuntu.org].
I agree with your opinion of Gnome (I use it myself), and with your assessment of KDE 4 (I look forward to trying it out - looks great so far!). And I'm very suspicious that Mono contains Microsoft-patented technology, and believe free software developers should avoid it until the title is clear. But that's just my $0.02 worth (and it seems to be worth less every day...) I don't believe any critical part of Gnome is dependent on Mono, however.
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This is complete rubbish, and is a poor decision from Canonical (not the first, I might add). The desktop that should have been in 8.04 is KDE 3.5.x, and many KDE developers have stated that KDE 3.5 will continue to be supported. Cano
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Miguel is a Gnome dev, but he is not the leader or even a leader of Gnome.
Mono is not a core component of Gnome. Some of the most well known programs that use Mono are Banshee (Music player, not the default), Beagle (desktop search, there are several others), and F-Spot (Photo Manager, gthumb and Digikam are possible replacements). You can have a fully functional Gnome desktop without Mono.
As far as d-bus issues, unless those are actually fixed, KDE 4 will not be an improvement over Gnome, as i
Anyone try the latest totem? (Score:2)
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What's wrong with 'mythfrontend' that Totem needs to get involved?
It does a terrible job of playing back high-definition video. I have a two-tuner Mythtv box with a standard-def and high-def tuner. I know my system is powerful enough to playback high-definition video because there are no problems using xine, mplayer, and totem. When playing back HD content in mythfrontend on the same machine however, there are frequent pauses in the video playback. This is a widely reported problem. Being able to use Totem as a form of frontend would be nice, as I currently have to open
Maybe they'll fix the broken releases? (Score:2)
Also, the latest release seems to have broken wireless, at least for the Intel IPW 3945 chipset in my laptop. I had to downgrade to 7.04, and all is well again.
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Its just a distribution... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yay, another sound daemon... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Actually on second thoughts I've just checked the article and it's only about Gnome, there's not once mention about KDE in it at all.
So yes, who gives a shit
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Rather oddly, the Kubuntu Alpha 4 site [kubuntu.org] talks only about Gnome applications as well. Go figure.
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(Score: 5, Corny)
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Jovial Jaguar?
Kaptain Kangaroo?
Myself, I'm still disappointed that this release wasn't the expected 'Horny Hamster.'
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Yes, but what do they do after Zoroastrian Zebra?
Well, there was never an "A" release, so they can still have the Ambivalent Aardvark ... And besides, they've clearly got nothing against re-using letters, since Hearty Heron is using the same letter as Hoary Hedgehog ...
...)
(The idea of stepping through the alphabet seems to have started with Edgy, which followed Dapper. Previously it was random: Warty, Hoary, Breezy, Dapper
Hmmm. (Score:2)
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I understand why that would frustrate you. My experiences were mixed - it's as stable as always on my desktop with Compiz disabled, but crashes about once a week with Compiz enabled. I enable it anyway - there's just something about people's reaction the first time I close a window and it burns up that makes me more tolerant. :-)
On the other hand, 7.10 is the first version that worked perfectly on my lapto
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