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GNU is Not Unix

Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) Released 482

Posted by CmdrTaco from the might-be-time-for-a-topic-icon dept.
SDen writes "Bang on target, the new version of Ubuntu Linux is available for our downloading pleasure. Amongst various changes it sports updates to the installer, improved networking, and a new 'Mobile USB' version geared towards the blossoming netbook market. Grab a copy from the Ubuntu website, and check out Linux Format's hands-on look at the Ibex."
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Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) Released More

Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) Released

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  • Tutorial on Using apt-p2p to Upgrade (Score:5, Informative)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohn@noSpAM.gmail.com> on Thursday October 30, 2008 @11:45AM (#25570369) Journal

    Grab a copy from the Ubuntu website ...

    TorrentFreak has a great tutorial on using BitTorrent [torrentfreak.com] to upgrade to Intrepid Ibex. Odds are high that the default servers in sources.list are going to be taxed pretty heavily today so this might be useful to a lot of people.

    Now if only Microsoft & Apple could harness & effectively utilize the power of p2p ... *cough* *cough*

  • Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect issue (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rikkards ( 98006 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @11:49AM (#25570431) Journal

    I have been experiencing a minor annoying bug with Heron for the last while where the wireless connection will drop randomly. Reading the logs it shows that the wireless nic hasn't talked to the AP for a while and assumes it is out of range. I have seen others with this issue but no solution. A workaround is to restart networking.

    • Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is (Score:5, Informative)

      by binarylarry ( 1338699 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @11:56AM (#25570563)

      I'm not sure on your issue, but the network manager has had some serious work done:

      http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/alpha5#Network [ubuntu.com] Manager 0.7

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Vancorps ( 746090 )
        Good thing too, it was completely useless for me so I went with WICD. Heron seems to have a lot of little glitches although a lot of it is admittedly caused by third parties like the ATI firegl driver and VMWare Server messing with the keyboard. I have a button I have to click on the panel which resets the keyboard so I can use shift and control again as something about VMWare quick switch doesn't release properly or some such. Never had that problem in the past though.

    • I have seen others with this issue, and it seems to be related to the driver for a particular wireless chipset. I was able to fix it by setting a cron job to restart the wireless driver every half hour, because the prescribed fix by anonymous internet strangers was to use the latest CVS copy of the rt2500 driver, and that failed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mcelrath ( 8027 )

      This seems to be a problem with 802.11b itself and some base stations, and is usually due to interference. The base station and/or the card drops the connection for ~minutes on a regular basis. I've seen it on windows too. I doubt NetworkManager updates will be able to fix it.

      You can try switching to a different channel. Use iwlist eth1 scan to get a list of visible AP's, and select a channel that is not used. Remember that the frequencies overlap so in reality there are only 3 usable channels: 1, 6,

    • wicd is your friend, I think it's in the Intrepid Repos now*, but if it isn't you can get it from here

      http://wicd.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

      *I'm still using Gutsy for some reason...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Knuckles ( 8964 )

      Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect issue

      Um, how are we supposed to know about what issues you have? Did you file a bug? Then check its status. Otherwise, well, pray.

    • Re:Does it fix the annoying wireless disconnect is (Score:5, Informative)

      by thtrgremlin ( 1158085 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @12:23PM (#25571001) Journal
      You might not be experiencing the same bug I was, but if you are, this is what I figured out.

      Looking through dmesg, I noticed what appeared to be authentication requests. It appeared to be coming from me. Doing a little hunting, it appears that a lot of routers do not support ipv6 in addition to a few wireless drivers not fully supporting ipv6. Either way, browsing would be fine, until an ipv6 connection was attempted. This would return a "connection not found" type error, and resulted in deauthentication, technically the right course of action.

      Long story short, and from reading about other people having similar problems, opened up /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and add the line 'blacklist ipv6'. My wireless worked fine after this, when previously it would disconnect somewhere instantly, and rarely staying up as long as 2 minutes. Hope this helps.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Or how about the "I know the SSID and the WPA key, but I'm going to refuse to connect to the non-broadcasting AP anyway" bug. There's nothing quite like having to type in a 64-character WPA key every single time the laptop boots.

      Yes, the wireless network is listed in the saved list. No, you can't get it to connect from that list, you have to create a manual connection and reenter everything. No, you can't copy-paste the WPA key in, that doesn't work for some reason.

      Of course, the laptop could boot a lot les

  • subject says it all...

  • Kubuntu and Nvidia (Score:3, Informative)

    by John Utah ( 1318581 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @11:53AM (#25570509)
    Too bad Nvidia didn't fix their driver in time for the 8.10 release. Using VESA sucks. http://kubuntuway.net/ [kubuntuway.net]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Knuckles ( 8964 )

      Too bad Nvidia didn't fix their driver in time for the 8.10 release.

      Could you specify what issue you have? Because the release notes just mention that nvidia dropped support for some older cards in their new drivers (which are needed because of the new xorg), and I doubt that nvidia considers this a bug.
      OTOH, I have seen nvidia issues with Geforce 6100 card on the ubuntu-users list and on Launchpad, I'd like to know more.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by John Utah ( 1318581 )
        I seem to be affected by this: "Known issues * Users of NVidia cards with the binary driver provided by NVidia might suffer from performance problems in window switching and resizing. We've made the NVidia engineers aware of those problems. However, no fixed NVidia driver has been released yet. You can find information on how to improve graphics performance on Techbase, although we ultimately have to rely on NVidia to fix their driver." I have Quadro NVS 140M. I've tried using the nvidia-glx and nv

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by athakur999 ( 44340 )

        There are some graphical glitches with some Nvidia (5,6 and 7 series) processors:
        https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/99508 [launchpad.net]

        I never had the problem with Hardy but I see it very frequently after upgrading to the Intrepid RC a few days ago. The workaround is to use a non-Human based theme or disable Compiz. Since the issue only affects certain themes it seems to me like it's more likely a theme or Compiz bug than an nVidia problem.

  • Here are the torrent links (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30, 2008 @11:55AM (#25570547)

    Torrents:

    Desktop - AMD 64
    http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.10/ubuntu-8.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent

    Desktop - i386
    http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.10/ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso.torrent

    I am downloading both of these, they are quite fast. Seeders are increasing by leaps and bounds!

  • Bang on Target? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by segedunum ( 883035 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @11:59AM (#25570615)
    Well of course it's bang on target. They have a six month release cycle where they release come-what-may without a feature list.

  • I guess Iguana was too obvious.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @12:03PM (#25570699)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mortonda ( 5175 )

      I'm sorry that you had such a bad experience, but I really find stories like this to be odd. I haven't had an install of any distro fail to recognize hardware since... oh I think about 1998. Maybe 2000. And that was due to a buggy 3com card that had problems in windows too.

      The last version or two of ubuntu have even gone beyond what I expected - my HP 7310 network printer even works with the scanner and card reader features - Ubuntu just found it automatically.

      If we're going to be putting anecdotal evide

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )

          Under Windows, if you have a problem with crappy drivers you usually get "That's the latest driver version so you're SOL, kthxbye!". If you have an equally crappy experience under Linux, there's usually ten pages of discussing hacks to make it work or work better. That alone is probably a lot of the reason it looks like Linux users have more hardware problems. This process is also a fundamental part of how Linux gets support for more hardware, and there's nothing really inherently wrong about there being mu

    • No ethernet card detected? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nicks,nicks,nicks! ( 1312041 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @12:30PM (#25571137)
      Isn't that exactly the kind of situation something called the "Live CD" was invented?So that you could check out whether all your hardware works before you install.Or was that too newbie for you?

    • Re:I hope the improved compability. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rantingkitten ( 938138 ) <kittenNO@SPAMmirrorshades.org> on Thursday October 30, 2008 @01:52PM (#25572557) Homepage
      Well, it sucks that you had that experience. Next time, try the live CD and make sure things are working -- if it works there, you know it can work with the full install.

      As for your commentary, let me point out two things.

      1- Lack of standard, reducing support available and compatibility consensus.

      I'd argue there's far more standards and compatability in Gnome and Ubuntu than for Windows. From a user perspective, Windows allows any executable installer to basically vomit anywhere it wants -- sure, go ahead and muck with the registry, install three systray icons, a quicklaunch shortcut, a desktop shortcut, and two start menu entries. Which might be named after the manufacturer, or maybe the product, or maybe the parent company. Who knows? There's no standard way of doing it -- it's just that users have been trained to accept it. In Gnome, basically everything gets filed so it's never more than one click away, and it's always under a sane, general heading. "Internet", "Games", "Graphics", "Office", whatever.

      Same with installation of new stuff. Want a CD burner for Windows? Google "cd burner software" or similar, tromp through eight or nine results looking for one that doesn't look sketchy, isn't crippled trialware, and that you're reasonable sure won't install some spyware or other. Download it, run the installer, agree to weird EULAs and maybe it'll work. Maybe not -- maybe it was XP only and you have Vista, or vice versa. And unless you really know what you're doing, you can't be sure it didn't stealthily install some crapware alongside it. Finally, clean up the mess it left behind when installing (extraneous icons, shortcuts, start menu entries, etc).

      Ubuntu? Open Synaptic and click whatever you want. Then ignore it. It'll download, configure, and install without any further interaction, and there's accountability for who made it and where it is coming from. You're done.

      2- Linux Geeks expecting average joe to spend time (which he doesn't have) browsing at forums for his answers, often "on his 2nd computer" (which he doesn't have either).

      No one expects this. And honestly I have never, ever had trouble with drivers on any machine, on any distro -- including random ones like DSL, Puppy, or other ones I just want to use for experiments. The sole exception has been wireless Broadcom stuff...and that headache stopped over a year ago with the Restricted Drivers manager.

      Compare this to Windows, where I've never gotten an install to work the first time. A clean install of Windows will not have drivers for your wireless or ethernet, sound card, video card, and probably a few other things. You either have to have some sort of recovery CD, which Joe User doesn't have lying around, or you have to have...a second computer, so you can go to dell.com or whatever, and download the drivers. Then install them one at a time, by hand. And clean up the mess they leave behind, again. :)

      I guess my point is that Linux in general and Ubuntu does a much, much better job at hardware detection and driver handling. Windows is essentially incapable of it, and either way, if you're Joe User, you don't know how to fix Windows problems any more effectively than Linux problems, so it's kind of a null point.

      No, I think the real reason Ubuntu doesn't have a solid base of home users is because the overwhelming majority of users just buy a computer that has Windows already on it, and stop thinking about it right then. They see no reason to switch because to most people, "Windows" IS a computer, and the only other option is to buy a Mac. So they put up with Windows' endless annoyances and nagging because it's what they're used to, and are blissful in their ignorance.

    • Re:I hope the improved compability. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by WebCowboy ( 196209 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @02:03PM (#25572715)

      However, when I upgraded to a non-OEM machine of my own, and tried to install 8.04, I wasn't so lucky.

      I think this is not an issue with Ubuntu 8.04 specifically, but instead with your new hardware.

      I got a new system with an Intel motherboard that was introduced only this summer, after the release of 8.04. That version--and 7.10 before it--gave me no joy. There was no support for the new Intel graphics chipset and there were some other problems too. Not much blame can be put on Intel though; they had Linux drivers out publicly before the motherboards based upon the chipset were even available to the public! Linux being a more...errr...diverse ecosystem means it is a bit more challenging to package and distribute such divers (alas, my board did not include binary packages suitable for Ubuntu with the appropriate modules backported to the kernel in 8.04).

      So, I've been running 8.10alpha5 (and upgrading as alphas and betas became available) and had more luck (still no digital audio out, but I may need to tune my system--and for a couple weeks I had to disable onboard NIC and use a cheapo spare to keep the e1000e driver from bricking it--ubuntu blacklisted it anyways and has since fixed it and I am using my onboard 1000bT again--but considering it is pre-release quality I cannot complain).

      Trouble is, I spent way too much time messing with Linux before, and now I no longer have that patience.

      Honestly, aside from using alpha and beta distros, it has been YEARS since I've had to "mess around" with Linux. As a matter of fact it is faster and easier to set up a "bare" PC with Ubuntu (or Fedora or SuSE for that matter) than it is with Windows. Ubuntu install is done faster, I can run a 3-D desktop just as well on literally half the machine Vista requires, updates and upgrades are easier and faster, there is NOTHING like "software repositories" for Windows--you always have to insert a damn disk or explicitly google and download an EXE or MSI and you cannot install applications with MSFT update--only upgrade. when I do a fresh install of Windows I ALWAYS need to run Windows update and reboot 2 or 3 times, and with new hardware you still need vendor drivers, sometimes event to get out of the initial install phase! Hell, I hardly have the patience for WINDOWS anymore!

      As to your assertions about barriers to Linux adoption:

      1 - there is no lack of standards, just resistance to universal adoption. There are many Debian-derived distros that use the same package format and can work against the same repositories. There is Fedors, RHEL, SuSE,Mandriva, etc that all use the same "standard" in RPM and related apt/synaptic style management and update tools, and above that is the LSB that not only specifies standard packaging and deployment practices, it outlines a cross-distro binary compatibility standard!

      For some reason, for every complaint about lack of a single standard there is a chorus of calls against any and all attempt at establishing a formal or de-facto standard! Perhaps it is because in the MSFT and Apple worlds there is no choice because standards are so entrenched--to the point of lock-in. People that move to Linux right now LIKE the choice and don't want to lose it in the process of creating standards.

      2 - I fail to see the point here. When people have problems with Windows the exact same thing happens--some Windows guru saying to do something way above a beginner's head, useless tech support, etc. The average joe still has to rely on forums (which are relatively useless for windows compared to Linux), second computers, or an expert friend or coworker. In fact, I think your argument here is quite false: If an average Joe user starts off with an Ubuntu system that is working, it continues to work and is LESS likely to just break with everyday use. Windows, however, seems to break much easier with normal use--installing and uninstalling, various upgrades that break other things and above all VIRUSES.

  • Eeepc Netbook Support (Score:5, Informative)

    by johnsie ( 1158363 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @12:06PM (#25570749)
    This version of Ubuntu works better on the EEEPC than Hardy did. They have included alot of eeepc modules so less tweaking is needed. If you have a 701 with 4gb, compressing /usr will give you a at least 1gb free space, possibly 2gb. I used this tutorial too do it: http://po-ru.com/diary/linux-liposuction-or-xubuntu-in-under-a-gig-on-the-eee-pc/ [po-ru.com] The tutorial works on Xubuntu and Ubuntu, possibly Kubuntu but I haven't tried that. Read the comments on that page for extra help.

  • New features (Score:4, Interesting)

    by apathy maybe ( 922212 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @12:08PM (#25570775) Homepage Journal

    Personally, despite some wonderful new features, I'm going to stick with 8.04 for a bit, at least until they work out the bugs. Of course, I won't ever be prompted to upgrade to 8.10, because 8.04 is a long term support release. Having a look at the release notes, at least one unacceptable (for me) bug is:

    On laptops with Intel 3945 or Intel 4965 wireless chipsets and a killswitch for the wireless antenna, starting the system with the killswitch enabled (i.e., with wireless disabled) will prevent re-enabling the wireless by toggling the killswitch. As a workaround, users should boot the system with the killswitch disabled. A future kernel update is expected to address this issue.

    Considering the regression from 7.10 with the wireless lights (it used to be a light would flash when transmitting data, now the light never even shows (known bug)), maybe they should have a long look at their wireless system.

    Oh, and the CD eject bug...

    Yeah, I would like to have the latest GNOME, and OOo 3 without installing backports, but honestly, I don't think I'll bother.

    • Re:New features (Score:4, Informative)

      by Chris Pimlott ( 16212 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @12:27PM (#25571083)

      Personally, despite some wonderful new features, I'm going to stick with 8.04 for a bit, at least until they work out the bugs. Of course, I won't ever be prompted to upgrade to 8.10, because 8.04 is a long term support release. Having a look at the release notes, at least one unacceptable (for me) bug is:

      On laptops with Intel 3945 or Intel 4965 wireless chipsets and a killswitch for the wireless antenna, starting the system with the killswitch enabled (i.e., with wireless disabled) will prevent re-enabling the wireless by toggling the killswitch. As a workaround, users should boot the system with the killswitch disabled. A future kernel update is expected to address this issue.

      This is not a new bug in 8.10 by any means, it's been present since 8.04 [launchpad.net].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Knuckles ( 8964 )

      Just FYI, you can change the setting to be prompted for all new releases, not just LTS, by changing the setting in Software Sources.

      Re the wireless light, this was "fixed" in the new kernel at least for the iwl3945 module. Unfortunately, it is now worse: the light will now indicate traffic, and so will flash all the time for me, which is very annoying (bug filed)

  • Excellent on Acer One Netbook (Score:5, Informative)

    by SlashdotOgre ( 739181 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @12:09PM (#25570801) Journal

    I initially tried 8.04 on my Acer One and found a lot of basic features required some ugly workarounds. Before I gave up on Ubuntu (was going to do a binary version of Gentoo using my desktop as a build server), I gave 8.10 beta a shot and everything (wifi with ath5k, sound with snd-intel-had, etc.) works out of the box. I'm very satisfied with the 2.6.27 kernel.

  • Default wallpaper? (Score:5, Funny)

    by kermit1221 ( 75994 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @12:10PM (#25570813)

    Based off the screenshots, the desktop looks to me like a bloody faceprint on a cave wall.

    Or is it significant of "Bang Head Here" when configuration works like 8.04?

  • But will the wifi work? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Yarcofin ( 1397091 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @12:18PM (#25570919)
    I'm a beginner trying to make the switch from Vista to Ubuntu, but for the past two weeks and about 5-10 failed attempts, I've been trying to get my AR5007 wireless card to work in Ubuntu 8.04 to no avail. Will an AR5007 card work with 8.10 right out of the box? Or else I'm not going to bother with it if I can't even get a internet connection. Most user-friendly distribution of Linux my ***...

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Knuckles ( 8964 )

      Will an AR5007 card work with 8.10 right out of the box? Or else I'm not going to bother with it if I can't even get a internet connection.

      Yes: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EeePC/Fixes [ubuntu.com]

      Most user-friendly distribution of Linux my ***...

      What can Ubuntu do it the kernel did not support it in earlier versions? Go complain to your hardware manufacturer.

    • Re:But will the wifi work? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Trelane ( 16124 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @12:53PM (#25571589) Journal

      Most user-friendly distribution of Linux my ***...

      You were doing quite well up until this point. Generally, blanket insults (particularly one that blithely ignores highly salient details relevant to the situation) will turn people away from giving you help with the project you're insulting. If you want help, please be nice. Otherwise, you will only spark a flamewar.

  • Thanks, Slashdot, now I see why my upgrade process has speed down from 200KB/s to 15KB/s and going down :((
    Seriously, I knew this would happen :P
    I should consider cleaning up my packages, since my download is up to 2Gb!!!!

  • Anyone know if the nvidia proprietary drivers work now? They weren't working as of Monday of this week. (I got burnt with installing the release candidate on my testing machine. Go figure.)

  • The biggest most awesome change in Intrepid!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30, 2008 @12:37PM (#25571255)

    You know that GTK bug where if your mouse cursor is on a button and the button becomes greyed out so you can't click it and then it becomes normal again but your mouse cursor has been in it the whole time but now you can't click the button even though it's normal now so you have to move your mouse pointer OUT of the button and then back into it again to get the button to work? You know that bug? The one that makes you want to rip out your hair and scream?

    Well it's fixed. Whoever is the awesome person who fixed that is my hero. Someone give that person a fucking cookie.

  • Good luck with that (Score:5, Informative)

    by SleptThroughClass ( 1127287 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @12:44PM (#25571401) Journal
    I wish you luck. My upgrade doesn't recognize my sound card, Pidgin starts but displays nothing, and Totem hangs (MPlayer does work). And the network configuration tool shows both wired and Bluetooth links, but it doesn't seem to actually use the Bluetooth link for data (even if I disconnect the wired LAN cable). Sure do look purty, though.

  • Drifting further away from the unix ideology (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Theril ( 606664 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @12:51PM (#25571561)

    Again Intrepid seems to take the progression of and Linux desktops in general: abandon the traditional and well proven unix ideology, where simple tools do well defined tasks well. Instead things "Just work" meaning that when they don't work, they "Just don't work" and the only solution is to wait for new release. Yes yes, you have the source, but hacking around all of the "Just works" bugs isn't isn't very feasible even if one had the programming knowledge.

    I've been using the prerelease versions of Intrepid for about a month and have witnessed again few cases of the new bloat-methodology.

    For example the NetworkManager has been around for a while destroying an architecture that could be comfortably tweaked in command line and config files. Of course I don't have anything against GUIs that simplify this, but in the same time the command line usage has been stripped.

    A great example is the new touted 3G automation, which does work quite nicely. However, for more experienced user it seems quite weird as there's no options to set up the network interface or serial device to use. Of course it turns out that this only works on USB devices that are somehow autoprobed probably by HAL (which itself has configurations that few mortals can edit by hand). And this leading the system not supporting 3G over Bluetooth, even if I'd set up the rfcomm serial device myself.

    Another amazing way for "Just works" methodology is to write them in the DE itself, not as separate programs. For example in GNOME there's a applet to kill a misbehaving GUI program by clicking it's window (ie a xkill replacement). But of course it runs as part of gnome-panel process (or something like that). Well, when the kill cursor is on it prevents switching VTs (WHY!?) and also jams the whole screen in the process. Now of course the solution is to SSH to the box (because VT switch is prevented) and kill the offending process from command line. But with the new way to do things, there's no single process to kill.

    And other great thing is the gconf. Sure it's nice to use from programmer's point of view, but of course it's practically unusable otherwise. With the GUI-editor there's change to find the proper configuration field in reasonable time, but using CLI is nearly impossible. Sure it uses ASCII files to store the data, but these are in some horrible illegible non-commented XML format nesting several directories deep with some "overlaying" stuff so that the offending parameter can be where ever.

    It's a fun way to spend time trying to config your screen through gconf when Gnome has decided to screw up your display using XRandr.

    These kinds of situations are already everywhere and getting more common by every distribution and DE release. In no time the big open desktop distros reach the "Just doesn't work" level of Windows and OSX.

    Please don't get me wrong. I like the new stuff that makes computers simple to use (like automatic networking setup etc). But it really shouldn't be done in expense of flexibility and ability to fix things manually _when_ the automated stuff breaks.

  • Strange question from an Ubuntu user (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ericrost ( 1049312 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @12:55PM (#25571625) Homepage Journal

    Why upgrade an existing system to this release? I have a working, nicely functional laptop that has support for the next three years for security updates, why should I hop on the update treadmill again and deal with upgrade headaches every six months? I like where I got Hardy (after waiting through 4 releases to get to another LTS).

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by edmicman ( 830206 )
      Personally I'm upgrading from 8.04 to get newer software releases. A handful of programs I use regularly (Filezilla, Pidgin, Deluge, Firefox) are woefully behind in the Hardy version compared to what is released on those programs' sites. I'm hoping 8.10 upgrades some or most of them. One of the biggest pluses I read for Ubuntu is the package management and not having to maintain and upgrade software yourself. But then the packages aren't updated at all and here I am multiple point versions behind the on

    • Re:Strange question from an Ubuntu user (Score:5, Insightful)

      by martinw89 ( 1229324 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @02:04PM (#25572733)

      No one's suggesting you do. In fact, your LTS release won't even notify you that there's a new version available until the next LTS. That's the whole point.

    • Here's another question: does Kubuntu have a LTS (Long-Term Support) version yet? Ubuntu 8.04 (GNOME version) was LTS, but because the KDE developers decided to drop everything KDE3-related and go running after the KDE4 Holy Grail, Kubuntu 8.04 was not LTS. So now it's October, the next version of Ubuntu is out, and KDE4 has been upgraded to KDE4.1 , do we have LTS yet? Or will we have to wait 4 more version still Ubuntu 10.4 (Muckraking Manatee) before we get a LTS?

      Personally, I don't want to upgrade to

  • EEE? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Taibhsear ( 1286214 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @12:57PM (#25571669)

    Anyone know if the EEE version of 8.10 is out as well? Has it fixed the wireless problem that 8.04.1 has? I just got a 1000 40G yesterday and already had to fix the automount for the 32 GB drive, USB drives, and try to troubleshoot the wireless (which appears is set up for the wireless card on the previous EEE PCs and not the current one). Oh and is this the full release version of 8.10 or a beta?

    • Re:EEE? (Score:4, Informative)

      by mean0machine ( 1103993 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @02:38PM (#25573253)
      To answer the last question first: it is the final version, not a beta (although I foresee that some (inherent) bugs will still have to be ironed out in the next weeks or so).
      And instead of the EEE version of 8.10, I suggest you install the full (K)(X)Ubuntu and add Adamm's kernel packages for Ubuntu 8.10, which add support for all the problematic devices on the EEE (on top of this they also remove some kernel modules not needed on the EEE, resulting in much shorter boot times).
      Here is the link where you can read more about the needed packages: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=46649 [eeeuser.com]

  • Is the disk thrashing addressed? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spitzak ( 4019 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @03:29PM (#25573989) Homepage

    I have the problem that caused a huge amount of discussion here before, where the disk in the laptop repeatedly parks and then wakes a few seconds later to write something. I have used up about 1/3 of the lifetime limit on the disk for these parks. I have updated from Feisty to Gibbon and Hardy and it is still there.

    I have a script to turn off the disk timeout to fix this. However I have to run it manually every time I unsleep the machine. I have followed the instructions to install it in init.d and power on/off but it appears to have no effect. Either it is not run or it's changes are undone after it is run. This is very frustrating and I see absoltely zero information about this.

    I heard there was some analysis about why Windows does not have this problem, and it was determined that Windows reads the disk *continuously* until it sleeps. This led the manuafacturers to adjust the timeout very small so it is, in effect, a fast "Windows is sleeping" detector. Now it appears that Linux is using the disk far less often, but not zero, so the result is worse for the disk. It would be really cool if Linux actually stopped reading the disk at all when nothing is happening, but I realize this is difficult, so I think an acceptable solution is to replicate how Windows acts.

    In any case, despite all the yakking about this earlier, I see no comments. Have they addressed this or not? Is it ever going to be fixed? Or can somebody tell me how to debug the init stuff and find out why my script has to be run manually?

  • Serious regressions (Score:4, Informative)

    by Unsung Bovine Herd ( 1323691 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @03:37PM (#25574113)
    I've experienced serious regressions with Intrepid Ibex. Among them is bad audio due largely I suspect to the new False, I mean, Pulse Audio system. Wine games are largely unplayable unless I disable sound. Then there's the confirmed "won't fix" bug concerning Gnome session (https link to Ubuntu bug tracker here) [launchpad.net]. Now every time I log out I have to manually restart all my applications. I'm not talking about the usual background system stuff but the important end-user programs like Pidgin, Firefox and Gnome Terminal. All in all, this is the most troubling Linux upgrade I've experienced since I switched to a Debian derivative. The last time something like this broke was when I couldn't play Crack Attack [nongnu.org] because of a Mesa incompatibility in Debian Unstable! And that was fixed within weeks.

  • Really? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Amiralul ( 1164423 ) on Thursday October 30, 2008 @03:50PM (#25574285) Homepage
    "Ubuntu Linux is available for our downloading pleasure. Amongst various changes it sports updates to the installer, improved networking[...]"

    Well, I personally find this a little ironic since I've tested Kubuntu a few days ago and since I have a non-DHCP, manually IP set-up, I found it to be almost impossible to get a working Internet connection. The KNetwork applet (or whatever its name is) will not open. I tried setting it up manually by, yes, using Konsole. Internet connection worked for a few seconds after that it automatically tried detecting my IP. Setting it again manually worked. For another few seconds. A friend advise me to get rid of avahi, I did with no use.

    But again, it was Kubuntu and it was a beta version, I'm sure they fixed it by now.

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