Submitted by Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Herd 1 (Ubuntu 7.04 alpha 1 in English) has been released. Download links can be found in the release announcement. The Kubuntu variant has been released as well. Screenshots are available for Ubuntu as well as Kubuntu.
Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Herd 1 (Ubuntu 7.04 alpha 1 in English) has been released. Download links can be found in the release announcement. The Kubuntu variant has been released as well. Screenshots are available for Ubuntu as well as Kubuntu.
First off I have to say that these guys at Canonical/Ubuntu have an extremely fast production rate. That said…what is new about it? I can see that it has been remerged with the Debain tree and it will have Linux Kernel 2.6.19. But what else? The screenshots look identical to Edgy. But knowing them, it will end up being a very nice step up and very polished when its done. Keep up the good work Ubuntu.
Nevermind…I answered my own question. Current features and improvements: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/herd1
Edited 2006-12-06 20:41
It’s going to be released in April, so don’t expect too much improvements now. Even if it ends looking the same as Edgy, there are going to be internal changes. Would you prefer to wait 1 year or more?
“It’s going to be released in April, so don’t expect too much improvements now. Even if it ends looking the same as Edgy, there are going to be internal changes. Would you prefer to wait 1 year or more?”
No, I am completely content with how fast they develop software
I am a very happy Ubuntu user and I know I will continue to be for a very long time.
Before Ubuntu came along I was jumping from distro to distro about every couple of weeks it seems like.
I could not agree you more. I was the same way. I used Mandrake since its inception, but after a while it just seemed to get ugly. Icon themes are horrible and its insistence on using KDE is terrible.
i have used ubuntu with brazilian portuguese language only to demonstrate the freedom of linux to my non-english speaking friends. pclinux os was my preferred os of choice. finally, i made the choice to downlaod fedora core 6 and give it a shot. man, i have no need to change to another distro ever again. who needs ubuntu ?
//It’s going to be released in April, so don’t expect too much improvements now. Even if it ends looking the same as Edgy, there are going to be internal changes. Would you prefer to wait 1 year or more?//
Kubuntu is going to just miss out on KDE4.
That menas I will be waiting for the release after Feisty if I am going to use any variant of Ubuntu.
I’m sure someone will release the packages to upgrade to KDE4 on Feisty.
Not quite… KDE4 packages will be in universe like the KDE maintainer at Ubuntu (Riddell?) said in one of the development meetings.
Not quite… KDE4 packages will be in universe like the KDE maintainer at Ubuntu (Riddell?) said in one of the development meetings.
Excellent!
As anyone here played around with the KDE4 alphas? Anything worth seeing yet, or is it all still under the hood?
Debian is rock solid – its stability is unmatched. To release every 6 months is a waste of time and energy – in my opinion.
Except that Debian release cycle is at best, unpredictable.
And with Ubuntu you know well in advance when it’s coming. And that’s a good thing for many users.
it’s also faster… i like having the latest technology on my desktop.
Fast release cycles are good for hobbyists and home users, but suck for businesses and enterprises.
Actually, the whole Linux distro process sucks for businesses. Why is it that one must upgrade the entire “OS” in order to get the latest version of KDE? Why are application versions tied into “OS” versions?
That, is the entire reason in a nutshell why Windows is better than Linux in some ways. In fact, that may be one of the most important reason of all for a desktop user (not so much a stagnant server). I can install, uninstall, and reinstall the latest applications without issues. In some cases, as far back as Windows 98.
If I want to run later versions of some Linux applications that aren’t on Dapper, my choice is to either compile it myself, which no “normal” user would do, or upgrade my entire OS to Edgy. Seems silly, huh?
Edited 2006-12-07 03:01
Well, not all distros are tied into a release. Run Gentoo or Arch or Debian Unstable for example and you wont be having this issue. You’ll have access to software as it’s released, much newer software than something like Ubuntu will offer. Indeed, personally I can’t see any attraction in having to wait for the next release to upgrade my web browser but clearly many people are into that. Doesn’t have to be that way though.
Edited 2006-12-07 04:18
If I want to run later versions of some Linux applications that aren’t on Dapper
If the application is popular, chances are there will be a backport of it.
I find that this type of criticism is *always* hypothetical. Can you give us a concrete example where this was an actual issue to you?
Also, what’s the big deal about updating the distro every six months? It’s quick, painless, and seamless. If you like the “latest and greatest”, then why not get all of the latest and greatest at the same time? If you just want stuff “that works”, then don’t upgrade just for the sake of upgrading.
Sorry if I sound like I’m venting, I just spent the entire evening trying to repair a friend’s borked WinXP box. He had a “c000021a unrecoverable error” on boot-up. I tried to repair the install, to no avail. System recovery didn’t work. Updating the OS from Safe mode didn’t work. In the end, I had to reinstall the OS, which took about 50 minutes. And then I had to manually retrieve all of the common programs from the Internet (Firefox, Anti-Virus, OpenOffice, WinZip, Windows Live Messenger, Picasa, etc.) and install them one by one, with a couple of restarts in there. So I’m really sorry if I sound a bit on edge, but to me the Linux way of installing software seems much, MUCH better than the Windows way right now…
(End rant)
“Can you give us a concrete example where this was an actual issue to you?”
DOSBox.
DOSBox
Was it that the package wasn’t available at all, or that you really needed the latest version to make something work? I’m curious, because I’ve never used it…I didn’t know it was still in active development.
I needed the latest version.
And depending on the version of Ubuntu, I could even say OpenOffice or Firefox, which are hardly obscure applications. That will always be Linux’s biggest setback, except for Arch and Gentoo, like you said.
I needed the latest version.
And you couldn’t compile it? I mean, DOSBox is hardly the type of package used by someone who’s afraid of the command line…
I could even say OpenOffice or Firefox
Firefox and OpenOffice? That’s hardly true, new versions are available within *days* of the new version being released upstream. (I’m not even going to mention the fact that these two projects release “stand-alone” installers for Linux as soon as the new versions are out…)
Is a delay of a week unacceptable in your opinion? Because to me that’s entirely acceptable. In fact, if we were talking about closed-source software, you wouldn’t get them any quicker, you would simply not know that they are ready until they were released…in other words, it’s not that the Linux way delays availability of software packages for common users, it’s simply that it makes the packages available *earlier* for those who want to compile.
I disagree that this represents a “setback” for Linux. It’s simply a different way of doing things than in Windows, and it affects only Power Users IMHO.
> And you couldn’t compile it? I mean, DOSBox is hardly the type of
> package used by someone who’s afraid of the command line…
Command line and compiling are two things. Many people who have played games in the DOS ages can still use the command line, but don’t know a thing about compilation (even when everything would compile fine, which is in no way granted if you use the “vanilla” sources of a program).
True, however if you’re familiar with using the command line, you shouldn’t have too much trouble compiling. After all, most of the time it’s a matter of following the Compiling howto to make sure you have the essential packages install, and from there on it’s a simple case of “./configure && make && sudo make install”
Sure, it doesn’t always work the first time if you don’t have the correct dev packages, but I have a feeling that DOSBox doesn’t have that many dependencies…
Gentoo in principle has the latest software soon after release, but it is in testing mode for quite a while, before deemed “stable.” For example, Gentoo’s default Gnome is still version 2.14. Also, packages early on are often broken–lots of broken ebuilds, failed compiles, sandbox errors, dependency problems and conflicts with other packages,…on and on…the Gentoo forums are filled with complaints of broken ebuilds.
I find that this type of criticism is *always* hypothetical. Can you give us a concrete example where this was an actual issue to you?
I run Debian not Ubuntu so this criticism might not be so valid, the releases being further apart.
When I run Sarge servers there are traditionally three or four packages for which I use backported versions :
1. PHP
2. ClamAV
3. Anti-spam packages
PHP I don’t use personally, but customers will want to have the latest version(s) available so that requires backports.
For anti-spam and anti-virus packages to be useful they must often be recent – and that is another backport source.
All other software I’m happy to be “out of date” since it is stable, tested, and supported.
I guess for desktop use there are other packages which must be “current” to be useful. The obvious example would be chat clients which must remain in sync with the protocol(s) used by MSN/Yahoo/etc. Still I dont have any personal experience of that since my desktop(s) run Sid.
Yes, that’s exactly the point I was making: for the vast majority of “casual” users, it doesn’t really matter to be running the “latest and greatest.” They just want stuff that works. Those who, like me, always want to install the latest version are generally Power Users (or were Windows Power Users who are now Linux newbies).
Power users should not have any problems learning to compile from source if they really, really want the latest bleeding-edge distro. After all, if they also want to be power users on *nix systems, learning to compile is a must (and, I must say, quite easier than most people imagine). Another alternative, as was suggested, would be to run Gentoo.
I myself have finally been cured from my irrational mania to always install the very latest versions of programs…now, I just follow the current Ubuntu release (though I do have the backports repository enabled…) and I’m quite happy.
Why is it that one must upgrade the entire “OS” in order to get the latest version of KDE?
This is patently untrue. You do *not* need to upgrade any part of the OS in order to get the latest version of KDE, at least not on Ubuntu/Kubuntu.
Similarly, application versions are *not* tied into OS versions. Haven’t you ever heard of backports?
In any case, business users are not the type to rush out and install the latest and greatest. They’ll stick to the tried and true, which is why Ubuntu Dapper Drake is the Long Term Support (LTS) distro, designed for a longer support cycle (5 years, I believe?)
Please don’t spread FUD.
You know, that’s why Ubuntu has “hobbist” releases, and conservative, long-term maintained releases, like Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (“long term support”)
I don’t think it’s a waste of time and energy. I like (and others too, apparently) to have the newer and hotest OS. Besides, introducing small changes and then expecting bug reports is better than having lots of bugs to fix a year or 2 later, when things are mostly engraved in stone.
To release every 6 months is a waste of time and energy – in my opinion.
On a server, perhaps. But on a desktop where an upgrade is only an apt-get dist-upgrade away, it’s not.
On a server, perhaps. But on a desktop where an upgrade is only an apt-get dist-upgrade away, it’s not.
Hear Hear!
>>To release every 6 months is a waste of time and energy<<
I agree.
Unfortunately, most people don’t even understand how it works. You don’t have to wait for a release cycle to keep debian up-to-date. You can have a bleeding edge debian distro, if you want. Just set up as unstable, and upgrade as you go.
With debian you download a 180mb core, then just add what you want. Don’t want openoffice? Don’t install it. Prefer IceWM and don’t want to download gnome, no problem. It’s all up to you.
You only install once. So you don’t have all the crying about how the new release wrecked my system.
Debian unstable breaks far too often. Every time the toolchain has a hiccup, things are broken for weeks to months. You might not have noticed, being an IceWM user, but KDE was broken repeatedly (for non-trivial amounts of time) for the first several releases of GCC 4.x.
Debian unstable breaks far too often.
Yes, it’s almost as bad as Ubuntu’s development branch. But Debian has also “testing” branch — you can enable both “testing” and “unstable” in sources.list and pin “testing” as the default in your apt preferences. This way you can install individual applications from “unstable” while keeping most of your system safely in “testing”.
http://wiki.debian.org/AptPinning
Ubuntu’s release cycle is too fast for servers and big organizations, but it’s too slow for most home users. Debian has found a nearly ideal balance by releasing every 18 months and updating “testing” and “unstable” daily. There’s only one thing I’d like to change in Debian’s release policy: IMO, Debian should make “alpha” releases of “testing” every 3 months. Frequent releases are good advertisement for any distro, like Ubuntu has proved, and such frequent “alpha” releases would also show people that Debian “testing” is actually quite up to date.
Its funny though, because even in the Debian community, 70% of users do not use stable (according to popcon)…
So even people that installed Debian because its “rock solid and stable” are using the latest and greatest software….
Nobody bitching that the name is weird and that he hates the brownish colours of Ubuntu?
Have all haters suddenly gotten used to it?
Wow! Today must be a great day!
I guess I’ll give Kubuntu a shot after it’s out for a few weeks.
If just to check if the new version likes my hardware better.
I’m certainly not going to switch distros, though.
It’s more because I get nervous and bored at the same time
if I don’t check on a distro every once and then
I HATE the puke colors of Ubuntu. I use Linux Mint instead. Much more pleasing all around.
being colour-blind, I hate ALL colour schemes for ALL operating systems
and the names are crap too, Ubuntu, Windows, Solaris, OSX… whats the story with that ?
why cant they be called, henry, marjorie, emily or basil ?
I am using feisty since it is available an had experienced no problems so far with my Turion notebook. Well… almost… to run vmware I must boot a self-compiled 2.6.18 kernel because vmware neither support the precompiled 2.6.19 kernel image nor a self-compiled 2.6.19 kernel.
I am using feisty since it is available an had experienced no problems so far with my Turion notebook.
Just by curiosity, is it a Compaq Presario? I’m wondering if you have the same laptop as me.
If so, how’s the wireless detection? Is the new wireless stack in the kernel yet? It’s changed name (used to be devicescape) but I can’t remember what it’s called now. (Oh well, driverloader still works like a charm – best 20$ I ever spent!)
usr0,
You may already know this, but I’ll state it anyway. You don’t have to roll your own custom configured kernel to run vmware. Once you have donwloaded the kernel sources and kernel headers from the Ubuntu repositories, you need to create a symbolic link from /usr/src/linux to your kernel source directory. The next step is less well known: create a link to your header files–e.g., in the case of the 2.6.19 kernel, you would do this (or something like it),”ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.19-386/include /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.19/include”.
More detailed instructions are here:
http://www.vmware.com/community/message.jspa?messageID=370579
Edited 2006-12-07 08:05
Ubuntu has also dropped PPC support – and deferred it to community. Ubuntu Apple users will have to go elsewhere for the next release.
With LTS you get support for five years, so by the time Dapper is no longer supported, it will be time for a new comp.
People are going to have PPC Macs lying around for much longer than five years. I’m sure they’re going to want to run a more up-to-date distro than Dapper!
Luckily for all those poor PPC people, Ubuntu isn’t the only distro that supports that platform.
Maybe they should just install Vista on their macs instead…
Since when does Vista support PPC?
I don’t see Ubuntu dropping support for PPC anytime soon, I think they’ll want a chunk of that Playstation 3 pie.
’twas my attempt at a joke
The download page does have ISO images for PPC.
Dropping support is just a proposal at present.
I’ve tested a couple of their releases as they get released, and they are usually pretty good.
It’s the upgrade from the previous version to the new version, that’s where all the troubles are, I think nearly every major release, people have had huge problems with their upgrades.
Systems not being able to boot etc.
I love the Ubuntu team, and I really hope they manage to get this upgrade to run as smooth as possible.
Keep up the good work fellas.
I wonder if the video problem (documented since 6.06) for Dell e1405 laptops has been fixed?
In a nutshell, it does not want to display anything on screen.
The current fix involves hand editing several files and downloading a driver. (The e1405 uses an Intel 950 graphics chip.)
It seems like something that would be a quick fix on Canonical’s end, and I’m shocked that it wasn’t implimented in 6.10.
—
No, I don’t want to have to hand edit files to get something as basic as the display on my computer to work. That’s not my idea of fun. I have a (not entirely unfounded fear) that I’ll accidently introduce an extra space or punctuation mark, or delete a character, or transpose two characters, and then spend hours trying to figure out why things aren’t working like they are supposed to.
I want to install my distro, fire up Firefox, download Opera, open up AbiWord/OO and get to work.
Had a bit of trouble installing 6.06 on this AcerPower FVc2, which also has Intel’s GMA 950. The text-mode installer would go blank towards the end, so I ended up repeating the installation until I just left it alone and it installed perfectly.
I think about going back to Fedora, since installation was so much simpler with Anaconda, then remember how I had to switch to third-party repositories to get the apps I wanted, the fact that apt4rpm just isn’t as good as apt with .deb packages, and other minor annoyances.
Maybe I should just pony up for a commercial distro, but I’m not sure I can get local phone support for SUSE or Mandriva, though I guess e-mail/forum support would be better in case I need to do something in the terminal.
anyone else’s keyring just not work at all? It was from a clean install too. I’m pretty close to just reinstalling dapper.
Are your troubles with gnome-keyring tied to NetworkManager by any chance? I ask because I had the oddest problem in which memory consumption would soar to greater than 1.5GB as gnome-keyring tied to acciess the network key. I had to repeatedly re-enter my network key on every reboot or wake from sleep.
Edited 2006-12-07 08:08
I have used Fedora for several years now. Several days ago I downloaded the Xubuntu live CD. I was really impressed. It worked without any modifications. The integration with XFCE was incredible. I don’t switch distro very easily but I think Ubuntu has finally swayed me away from Red Hat. I feel a little bad about abandoning the Fedora Community but so many others are leaving for Ubuntu. It is more than just a flavor of the month. I have to admit that Ubuntu is better all round than Fedora. The installer worked perfectly, there was plenty of support online. It is also nice to get away from sloooow Yum update. The only thing I don’t like is the default brown theme. Ugh, nasty default color decision. But of course not using a distro because of its default theme would be insane since it is so easy to switch.
Maybe as more users defect to Ubuntu Fedora will move away from the test bed type model to a more stable release. It will be difficult to convince users though since so much has already been said about how they use it for experimentation.
Edited 2006-12-06 23:13
I gave up on Fedora a long, long time ago for the same reason. I used to run quite a few servers on RedHat. When RedHat changed directions, I trustingly migrated my servers to Fedora. After dealing with 200+ megabytes of upgrades on a weekly bases, unstable kernels, unstable daemons, I quickly moved away. Now at home and work, all the servers run CentOS and FreeBSD. I would deploy Debian more often, but 18+ months between supported kernel updates is way too long.
It seems Ubuntu has struck the perfect balance of change and stability. While Ubuntu currently lacks any significant presence in my server room, it has taken over my workstation and broken into a few servers. As it destroys any hesitations I hold against it and old servers reach EOL, Ubuntu will increase to a larger percentage of my servers too. In my opinion, if Ubuntu stays the course, it will go where no other Linux has gone before.
Regarding the Fedora debacly, I have one point to make. I have never paid RedHat a dime for anything, so I guess they don’t owe me anything. That said, it is rather sad that RedHat has gone to owning my Linux experience to being completely absent. And while I never gave anything to RedHat, they never really lost anything with me running their product. And I can assure them that it is better if people run their product and not pay than run their competitors product and not pay.
So when can I see Beryl and binary video drivers installed by default w/ Ubuntu? Am I hearing 1 year or not?
Decent Sound support from a normal install. Currently Edgy, one has to manually create .asound and setup alsa properly including in some cases installing firmware for thier sound cards so that the driver modules load properly.
This is quite a stumbling block as is also the lack of documentation for configuring cards with ALSA in general. I find it a royal pain to configure multiple outputs for my Gina 3G sound card and the documentation just isn’t there.
That and decent 32bit support in Ubuntu64. We have to have some backwads comp until apps catch up and again, currently it’s a royal PIA.
Still, Liking running XFCE under Ubuntu Edgy 64.
There are two effective development models, and each has its own set of risks to manage. Frequent releases are good if you can get a “release train” going, because you don’t have the hurry-up-and-wait problem associated with long release cycles and because you can keep closer to current with the state of your upstream provider.
The Ubuntu teams seems to have figured out the release train model and are doing a good job with it.
The other model is to pick a feature set and not release until it’s good and ready. There are times when that’s the right model as well.
The nice thing about using the release train model is that you release small upgrades, get plenty of tracking date which makes it easier for you to predict how long new work will take and you keep your QA pipe churning at a relatively constant rate.
The downside is that your customers end up having to upgrade more frequently if they want to keep up with you — but they don’t have to do that.
And yes, some folks do this with servers. Project I’m working on now the server folks do a release every three to six weeks, with a goal of one major feature each release. They seem to have the train running smoothly. On our side of the house, we take a couple of years between releases, but they tend to be big deals and new products.
I have tried kubuntu. I ran it from a CD so i expected it to be slower than normal. Nevertheless I can safely say that if this is supposed to be “easy” linux then linux is never going to make it to the desktop. Not Windows power user and certainly not mom and dad.
First of all, it’s very unstable. i loaded a website with embedded quicktime video and the whole screen went black. had to reboot. Got myself to try it again and same thing. You would think that only Konqueror would go instead of the entire desktop. Either way, it’s not good news for Konq or the entire desktop. What was the point of using this over Windows?
I wanted to set the time. Found my time zone but it displayed in army time. I switched to 12 hour format but it didn’t register. said I had to restart…huh?
Then i wondered how to use my 5 buttons on my intellimouse. The only way I could do that was (after googling) by hacking some text files using the command line.
I’m going to continue playing around with it but I can see why linux even after all these years still has ways to go before it can compete with windows.
Hmm, strange, I use nothing but Konqueror, and have never had any problems viewing any online video (KMplayer & Flash 9). Anyways… How do you expect to play Quicktime Media when the drivers are proprietary, and don’t come with the OS?
Perhaps your were unknowingly in fullscreen mode?
If it did turn out to be a bug, did you submit a bug report? (or your system info if one already exists?)
(also, you could have done Ctrl+alt+bksp to just have restarted X)
Army Time? Ohh! you mean the time format which the majority of world uses (sans the US), anyways no worries … no reboot needed, just tried it myself. KDE recommended I log out, but that’s only because it wanted to ensure that all the programs received the updated time format.
I wonder, on a fresh install of Windows, does your _Microsoft_ Intellimouse work with all 5 buttons? No! That’s why the mouse comes with a CD! It still requires a bit of tinkering!
I know Linux is doing pretty good with the best thing that haters can bitch about is the lack of mouse buttons and the wrong time format.
Waaah… finally i810 modesetting is a part of Xorg!!
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xserver-xorg-video-i810-mod…
This is aparently included in the new Ubuntu.
fig I’m definitely going to file bugs on the crashing. Yes I did try control alt backspace and that didn’t help. But, a bad app shouldn’t make you restart the entire desktop.
As for the army time, it may be what the majority of the world uses but when I put my time zone to “New York” it should know the locale instead of making me look at very terse time formats. Yet, the time display didn’t change.
This was my experience for the first 10 minutes. It’s the crashing that really bothered me.
Do you by any chance have an ATI graphics card? This sounds like an issue some LiveCDs had with ATI chipsets. What version of Kubuntu was it?
I found out that when a modern OS crashes these days, whether it’s WinXP or Linux, it’s most often due to problems with the graphics driver. ATI and Nvidia have not released the specs for their graphics cards, and it’s a bit complicated to include their proprietary drivers on LiveCDs, so open-source drivers are used instead. I know that this is sometimes a problem for ATI cards.
Mind you, once you install the OS and the proprietary drivers, it works really well. I haven’t had a crash or hard lock-up on my laptop (Compaq Presario V2310) since I’ve installed Kubuntu on it, fifteen months ago…
yeah not only did it not automatically give me the right format, it didn’t give me the right time either. I wonder if it can sync to atomic time server like Windows.
but then i noticed something that was making me sick. So I checked the display settings. The refresh rate was 60 hz! In windows right now it’s 1600×1200 @85 hz. No wonder why I was feeling horrible. But I couldn’t change the refresh rate even though I could change the resolution.
And no I wasn’t in safe mode.
I agree, I also can’t use a monitor running at 60hz, the X configuration is a bit of a problem, however, I’ve read that the X.org team is working to make X.org config-less. So in the future it should be much easier to change your resolution and refresh rate. I’d say that over all Linux is 98% of the way there – to full n00b usability.
It’s also good to note that time syncing is built right in to Kubuntu & Ubuntu.
well at least I finally gave linux a chance. for all these years i was just talking about trying linux and not actually doing it. Linux from CD really helped…I did that with BeOS too.
BeOS r5 also wasn’t completely there yet. Windows does spoil me with its completeness but I wish I could try macosx on my pc.
I have nvidia gefore 5600. You mean I’m not seeing kubuntu with a real driver? That could be the cause of my problems.
I thought there was a nvidia driver for linux
The Nvidia GeForce 5600 works fine in Ubuntu/Kubuntu with the proprietary driver. However, due to licensing issues, the proprietary driver is *not* included on the LiveCD. Instead, the LiveCD uses the open-source driver, which is functional but lacks many of the more advanced features.
To use your Nvidia card to its fullest potential, you’ll need to actually install the OS (presumably on its own partition, for a dual-boot setting), then follow this relatively simple procedure once the new system is installed:
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edgy#How_to_install_Graphics_Dri…
It’s not the ideal situation, but this is due to legal issues, not technical ones.
BTW, Ubuntu Guide is your friend for all newbie-related questions:
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edgy
Edited 2006-12-08 15:19