Ubuntu 9.04 RC Released 239
Mohamed Zaian writes "The Ubuntu team has released the release candidate for Ubuntu 9.04; 'The Ubuntu team is happy to bring you the latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. This is their latest result, the Ubuntu 9.04 release candidate, which brings a host of excellent new features.' The various other Ubuntu-derived distributions, like Kubuntu, have also had their RCs released."
Let's have some fun with this (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm in the mood to get reckless and use experimental software to handle my upgrade. I know I'm not the only one using apt-p2p tonight!
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6058308 [ubuntuforums.org]
Linux is becoming beautiful! (Score:3, Interesting)
I upgraded a while ago to Fedora Core 10, running KDE with the HW accelerated desktop, Compiz and effects turned on. It almost never ceases to draw a surprise when I'm working while on display and casually turn the whole desktop into a cube, rotate it to a blank side, and put it back down!
It's damned good looking and makes even OSX 10.5 look dated! I use OSX and didn't really notice it until I went to buy a new screen and saw OSX on display.
Windows is about as exciting as watching bread turn green, but even MacOS looked kinda plain compared to my sexy new laptop display!
And I'm talking about simple looks, here. To be honest, it still has some stability issues that annoy the ?@?!/ out of me. Fedora 9 was painfully bad - worst distro I've ever used - but 10 is a good step in the right direction. KDE 4.2.x is the best 4 so far but it's still not functionally anywhere near 3.5.
Re:The pluses and the minuses from two weeks' usag (Score:3, Interesting)
You can actually install the Lightning add-on for Thunderbird which will give you calender functions. I totally agree Evolution suck a$$ and do wish they make Thunderbird de facto standard just like Firefox.
What is really nice about Thunderbird the fact there are Linux and Windows versions which can both read the SAME data files without any kind of conversion. Really slick. I was doing that for awhile until I finally weaned myself off of WinXP for good.
Re:Beauty is still wanting (Score:3, Interesting)
>But then what about not having to use Anti-Virus
on Linux? Speed boost, eh?
Well, antivirus tends to trash the hard disk which is the performance bottleneck of most PCs. Speaking of which, ext4 is rather nice and fast IMO.
>I'm not concerned with look and feel. I just want my computer to run optimally.
Why ubuntu then, you may want to try xubuntu perhaps?
>My CPU is an early Pentium 4 and a recent upgrade to 1.5GB from 512MB of RDRAM.
That should be more than enough for Ubuntu, my aunt has Linux (albeit not Ubuntu, but it shouldn't be much slower) running on a 1.4 Pentium 4 with 640 mb ram and Nvidia GeForce2 440 MMX with basic compiz effects enabled.
>My only other concern is drivers. If I have an
old enough ATI card, will there by some kind of
accelerated driver for it? I'm guessing the
answer to this is going to be use-the-live-cd and
find-out.
Apparently you'll be using open-source ati driver. It has 3d acceleration and it should be enough for compiz. My gf has an old ATI card, with no proprietary driver available. Compiz is a bit slow but still usable.
Re:Anyone have a list? (Score:1, Interesting)
xorg problem (Score:1, Interesting)
X seems to lock up the computer. I just get some weird pixellation. Can't switch to a console window. I'm using an onboard Radeon 690G. it happened a couple versions ago. On the bright side, I learned how to use wpa_supplicant with dhclient to connect to my router from the command line. On the other hand, does nobody realise how annoyingly complicated that is for the average person? on the negative side, still can't get into X. Do they want me to reinstall from scratch? very odd that this happens in an upgrade.
Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:upgraded yesterday (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:blah (Score:4, Interesting)
I second that. Eclipse can be a mess, downloading and installing it directly is, by far, the best option.
I have a bunch of co-workers using Eclipse and Ubuntu. Nobody even considers using the Ubuntu distributed version. The age of this bug should make it clear how much attention Eclipse gets in Ubuntu https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/eclipse/+bug/81900 [launchpad.net]
I was going to say that for Java development you are normally better off by downloading and setting up everything yourself, but I guess that is also true for all other programming languages. At least I did that also when developing with Python.
Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first (Score:3, Interesting)
Ubuntu being usable as a desktop by default was a strong argument as well.
Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first (Score:1, Interesting)
If you're using KDE (and I can assume you are, since you use KWrite) and you're using 4.x, try using the "notes" plasmoid. The good thing about it is that it remembers your notes, and they're always within easy access. The bad thing is of course that they suck at resizing and moving (is this fixed in 4.2?), and probably aren't as kind to your computers' resources as KWrite. Still, it works without hassle on my 2 year old Sony Vaio, so you should be OK.
Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first (Score:3, Interesting)
One more thing Linux has on Windows.
Re:Gotta upgrade to 8.10 first (Score:3, Interesting)
+1. I'm not sure why so many geeks like to brag about how much electricity they use.
I shut down my PC when I'm not using it. Sometimes I shut it down immediately, but usually at night I listen to some music, and tell the PC to shut down when it's done.
I have a function:
musicshutdowninminutes () {
sleep ${1}m && \
dcop amarok MainApplication-Interface quit;
sleep 15; sudo shutdown -h now
}
which lets Amarok remember the playlist (I'm sure it could be improved).
It also means I don't have to sleep with the noise of a PC in my room. Leaving one on 24/7 presumably sucks more dust inside too, and wears out the fans.
Fonts mess after upgrade.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I got an unreadable desktop after the upgrade.
Finally fixed it by changing the anti-aliasing set up in the System Settings/Appearance.
Otherwise looking good....
doesn't even boot (Score:4, Interesting)
9.04 doesn't even boot on my laptop (an HP DV2, some kind of SATA driver problem).
Furthermore, I can't figure out where to report this. What's the point of having a beta or an RC if it's difficult for users to give feedback?
Re:Linux is becoming beautiful! (Score:3, Interesting)
Here are a few shortcomings:
1) Can't drag a submenu directly on the task bar, only menu items.
2) Cross-desktop task list is (apparently) nowhere to be found. So when I have 2,3,4 desktops with tasks on them, I have to hunt through the desktops to find a particular one. Worse, the task bar at the bottom doesn't follow Compiz cube desktop, so I have to go to each desktop, select, wait for the task bar to update, and then go to the next one. (sigh) Perhaps this is because I only like tasks from the current desktop, but when does it make sense to mix tasks from 3 busy desktops into one little task bar? (confusing as he11!)
3) Control-Shift-Tab to "go back" a task doesn't work.
4) Control-Shit-Meta to "go back" a desktop doesn't work.
5) Can't put icons on the desktop. There's a widget where you can stick stuff that looks like a file explore window with the background faded, but it's distracting, what with the settings bar popping out everytime I hover over it. (ugh)