Recently, Canonical released Herd 5, the last alpha release of Ubuntu 7.04. Masuran.org took a quick look at this preview release, and concluded: “Ubuntu 7.04 will be a very sweet release. I can only hope that the new Gnome Control Center will be the default instead of the current menu structure and that desktop effects like Beryl or Compiz get a more prominent place in this wonderful operating system.”
I like the Control Center. Multimedia plugins also are nice! I wonder how they can install proprietary codecs, isn’t there a legal issue? I wish they had a nicer wallpaper. This one is a little dull.
I wonder how they can install proprietary codecs, isn’t there a legal issue?
They made it sound as though it searched the repositories for find an appropriate plugin, so it’s probably the same as right now: If you select Restricted and/or Multiverse it will find them.
I notice that while they find the package(s) that provide the necessary codecs, they don’t check the boxes by default. The user needs to explicitly click on the check box to instruct the installer to install the codecs.
Also, universe and multiverse are now added to the default repositories list, although the default installation doesn’t install anything from these repositories. Once again, everything is made available by default, but you have to explicitly opt-in. This approach makes much more sense than the hard line taken by Fedora, since one distribution simultaneously caters to the needs of the pragmatist and the idealist. If you really despise proprietary software and don’t even want to install it by accident, you can remove the offending repositories right after you install.
New ?!?
gnome control center has several years.
It takes like 10 times as long to open everything. It is such a degradation in the user experience at the cost of looking slightly better. The old menus had much better organization, were much faster to browse, and were a lot faster to use. The new one looks like an attempt to copy the XP control panel, which is a pain in the ass itself.
You can disable the Control Center and re-enable the old menus using menu editor. Similarly to you, I do like the old menus better; however, it can be that for a newbie, a structured view like the one in Control Center makes more sense.
The problem is, with a 3D structure, it becomes extremely difficult to scan through a larger amount of items quickly FOR EVERYONE, not just newbies. It would need to be solved by reducing the number of categories and the amount of items in each category to make it work, but at that point, the problems with the menu just disappeared as well.
Scanning linearly is much easier for humans, experienced or not, then scanning in 3D. Other scanning methods only tend to work better when the user really knows where to expect it, which can be accomplished by reducing the number of categories.
I did an upgrade just recently and it went back to the old menu/list style. So, it seems I may not have been the only one who disliked the gnome control center.
The “control center” attempted to group certain administrative programs together, much like Windows XP’s control center, but unlike Windows you get presented with _all_ your options in a window. To select what you want, you have to scan side to side as well as up and down to find the item. I am not usually bothered by these little things but that was irritating!
I have been running Feisty now for several weeks on a Thinkpad T43p without any problems. Unlike previous alpha/testing releases, it has worked nearly flawlessly for me. I don’t remember this to have been the case in the past with Ubuntu as well as other distros including Debian and Fedora. There used to be major and freaquent defects in critical packages (like X11 for example) in the pre-release versions of their software. It seems this is not the case anymore.
At any rate, I am very glad to see the improvements that have been wrought across the board among the distros. The provision of a gui for launching virtual machines using the kvm module and qemu by Fedora is exciting. I hope Ubuntu incorporates Fedora’s changes into Feisty.
I liked the control Center, much easier to find stuff than the menus.
Probably just me then!
Am using Kubuntu updated to the latest version using Apt-get. I haven’t noticed much difference. Does anyone know if these features will be visible in Kubuntu also like the control panel etc
Edgy or Feisty? Unless you’ve updated your apt sources to include Feisty repositories, you’re still running on Edgy (which, if you’re just a regular user, is what you should use anyway).
I am on feisty. The system has been quite stable but I still feel that Kubuntu somehow lags behind Ubuntu in many ways regarding the polish and feel of the system. That is why I asked since I have not noticed any obvious changes on upgrading.
KDE has had a control center since what, 10 years? So Gnome is catching up here, though they still launch an extra window instead of embedding the configuration.
And automatic codec installation has been in Amarok on Kubuntu for quite a while, I think it was already in edgy – so catching up again.
Tracker is better than beagle, but I think neither will be in Kubuntu. KDE 4 will feature strigi, which is better in many regards than beagle and tracker combined (esp with the Nepomuk stuff which offers analysis and contextual linking and stuff). Anyway, KDE is behind on this, you just have to wait for integration – unless you install strigi (in the Kubuntu repositories) by hand, it has a taskbar applet and a KIO slave. But for now, these indexing tools are too heavy on resources and not extremely usefull, imho.
Network manager is also in Kubuntu (Knetworkmanager as frontend).
Compiz/beryl are pretty desktop independent, you can install and use them on Kubuntu. And of course Kwin (the KDE window manager) already has support for composite since a few years, though it hasn’t seen much work lately. It is getting a complete overhaul, offering beryl/compiz like features for KDE 4.
Dunno about the integration tool, and there are new things in the new Gnome. But the Gnome changelogs generally give a big deja-vu feeling due to all the ‘new’ features which have been in KDE for years, so I guess not much you won’t have in Kubuntu – even though KDE development on 3.x has been stalling for a year now…
KDE as a project also started long before Gnome did, not to mention that Gnome completely scrapped everything going from Gnome 1.x to 2.x.
Gnome also (as already pointed out) has had a control center for ages. This is an entirely new paradigm of control center (which I hate anyhow, but I digress. Control panels in general suck. The KDE one does as well).
The problem with both KDE and Gnome right now as far as the control centers go, is that their control center applets aren’t converged as well as they should be. Though Gnome is a bit better here, since not every possible configuration that could be done is shown right there in plain site which makes it a pain to configure anything in your theme at all. Baghira is a perfect example of something that could be a lot simpler with it’s configuration.
Well, personally I prefer even a bad control center design like Kcontrol over having to search through a menu. You’re right on the usability of Kcontrol, that’s why Kubuntu has System settings – which is already a lot better, even though not perfect.
And btw, I prefer having settings available AT ALL in a relatively decent gui over NOT having them, or having to edit files by hand, or a horrible interface like gconf. So the System Settings in Kubuntu are lightyears ahead of the current Gnome implementations.
Gnome has always had a control centre just not like what’s being put in now. It’s very similar to OS X system preference.
It’s a balance between what you need and don’t and IMHO KDE goes to far in that respect, gnome does little features bit by bit that make a nice touch. GNOME devs could easy put KDE features but it’s not their way.
Well, it’s good there are differences then, but for myself – I can only paraphrase ‘some guy’: Don’t try to make things simpler as they are.
Indeed KDE has gone too far in the past, and it’s hard to get rid of that legacy – but what Gnome did, imho, was throwing the child out with the bathwater.
The KDE developers are very conscious of usability, but they also don’t want to offend or irritate users. So they take the hard way, redesigning things, trying to find a middle ground. It’s not really usefull to optimize for the most dumb user, and leave all others with the limitations. If you use a computer daily, you get used to KDE quickly and can do whatever you need in it – faster and better than on windows, mac OS X or Gnome.
BTW, Gnome has to find something new, as they have ‘usability’ and KDE ‘the features’ – but KDE 4 might eclipse them in both technology and usability…
KDE 4 will feature strigi, which is better in many regards than beagle and tracker combined (esp with the Nepomuk stuff which offers analysis and contextual linking and stuff).
Inaccurate, Tracker provides today a cut down semantic web storage that offers all that but using far simpler code and performs considerably faster. And its available now and being used for tagging.
Currently tracker is the best system by a long way because its a highly optimized database that avoids the massive complexity and hideous performance of a full RDF semantic web engine.
Now tracker isn’t bad at all (and there is beagle++, also providing some nice stuff) but it’s nowhere near what Nepomuk is working on. You need complexity to do complex stuff, and I trust the researchers from the universities and companies working on Nepomuk to come up with a powerfull, performant and superior solution. Don’t make things simpler as they are.
Tracker actually is better because it offers the fucntionality you want from Nepomuk without the complexity and performance degradation
Nepomuk offers triples so does tracker
Nepomuk offers query language so does tracker
We could use an off the shelf lib like librdf to do the above but the performance is terrible (and so is the performance of Nepomuk).
Tracker is simpler, faster and is here now – no other indexer has db support like tracker (strigi is not integrated with Nepomuk yet)
If you dont believe me speak to maintainer of strigi who has reservations about including nepomuk.
Nepomuk is not bad technology if your goal is to make a semantic web but on the desktop its massive overkill.
So afraid your making life much more difficult for yourself if you think thats the way to go…
Oh you can test the performance today if you wish or feel free to google about how complex and poor performance affects rdf semantic web stores…
Now I don’t want to downplay Tracker, but after seeing the Nepomuk presentations and ppl on FOSDEM, I can hardly believe what they’re working on doesn’t involve more than triples and a query language… How else do they keep so many scientists busy?
😀
They are busy because of the complexity
LOL, yeah, very well possible… And you’re right, often additional complexity doesn’t offer as much advantage as it makes things more complex…
Well, we’ll see what the future brings.
You know, I think that’s the difference of both projects, while GNOME knows traker is doing now what Nepomuk is going to do is not showing off or overhyping it, that’s why I like about GNOME is proud of what is doing w/o the need to overhype or showing off.
LOL
Well, it’s pretty new for Gnome not to overhype stuff… They’ve always been behind in most area’s, but it seemed like they where ahead ‘cuz they got their marketing right. Now KDE is getting their PR up and running, and gnome is slowing down in this area.
Anyway, it’s good tracker is here – keeps nepomuk and strigi on their toes, and as both projects have cross-desktop ambitions (they provide tools for both KDE and Gnome), the DE’s can choose whatever fits best.
Yeah thats true. KDE does feel more feature complete than Gnome _For ME_. Having said that Ubuntu puts a lot of polish into Gnome which I feel is not put into Kubuntu as much.
Basically every iteration of Ubuntu gives something new in Gnome which is obvious to the user. Not so much in Kubuntu & KDE.
Yes it should be default, it’s a much cleaner way of showing gnome controls and long menus are not good. There is still some ugly icons in the menus which would be converted to gnomes new icons theme and rhythmbox should have new icons as well.
check out the cool tango icons which most have made it in so far, they go perfect with the gnome stock icons.
http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Fridays
Only issue I have is that the boot time is slow, apart from that it all works extremely well. Compiz is installed by default(not on by default) which is great and the fonts are very sharp in Firefox, I’ve not seen them as nice in any other OS.
Edited 2007-03-05 19:47
With a creative audigy 2zs pro i only have sound every other time I boot…
I agree with liquidator, isn’t there some sort of legal issue including proprietary codecs even if they are marked restricted?
I agree with liquidator, isn’t there some sort of legal issue including proprietary codecs even if they are marked restricted?
I believe Feisty merely points you to a repository maintained in a country where there are, as yet, no legal issues (France or Hungary). Canonical does not redistribute the codecs. It is your responsibility to negotiate the legal grey area in the country you reside. I don’t think I have a problem here in Canada. I don’t think the Fraunhoffer Institute is going to track you down and prosecute you in the US.
I don’t think the Fraunhoffer Institute is going to track you down and prosecute you in the US.
Probably not, but I wouldn’t put it past Alcatel/Lucent, who just won $1.5 billion (with a B) from Microsoft because they only licensed MP3 from Fraunhoffer. Just about anyone can be taken to the cleaners for distributing software for consuming mainstream media, even if they think they acquired all of the necessary licenses.
Just face it: there’s all this media out there, and nobody is allowed to consume it unless forms are filed in triplicate and stamped twice in the presence of a notary.
I could consume mainstream media, but when I can get my kicks and giggles watching some idiot doing something stupid on YouTube for free, why should I bother paying out the a** to get content I probably don’t have the legal right to consume anyway? Or, more importantly, why should I give a damn if what I’m doing is illegal when enough sufficiently-priced lawyers can take me down regardless of my best intentions? We’re all filthy criminals in the eyes of the content industry, and once a crook, always a crook.
Does the new Gnome control center offer as much functionability as SUSE’s YaST or is it just a reorganization of the Gnome panel menus?
I’m talking about advanced settings like a GUI to configure X-server, enable/disable DMA mode on IDE devices, set up different kinds of servers (HTTP, DNS, FTP, Mail, …), so on.
Basically, I’d like to see the control center packed with tools so that all system configuration can be done with the GUI as well as the console.
But isn’t that the problem with YaST? Too much funtionality, too little space, too ‘KDE’? Regular people cannot cope with that many options up front. Windows Control Panel is bad, there’s no call for Linux to be worse.
So having to resort to the terminal and type in arcane commands is better for Linux newbies?
The lack of comprehensive graphical administration tools and the need to enter the command line for advanced setup is one of the most complained about aspects of a typical first time Linux experience.
I understand the importance for learning the command line but its also important to cater to the Windows people trying Linux.
Indeed. Yast is not everything, and it duplicates some functionality already offered in other places, but it was the first tool allowing extensive configuration of your system without having to use the commandline. And still is the best.
Though I prefer the commandline myself 😉
Except that anyone who is going to be running web servers or ftp servers isn’t going to be a newbie anyhow.
Not to mention that DMA is enabled by default now if your device will support it (most devices do).
I agree with what others have said, the new Gnome Control Center sucks. I’m glad they put in the ability in the menu editor to change it back to the Administration / Preferences menu. It was so bad, I was considering moving to a different desktop environment.
As far as Yast goes, I think the only configuration thing that Ubuntu is missing, would be a graphical one for X. Though with the next version of Xorg, that should be a moot point anyhow, since it should auto-configure itself without need for an xorg.conf.
Isn’t “advanced setup” exactly that, advanced. Therfore fine to be in the command line. If there’s not a clear distinction between setting the wallpaper and editing conf files in the designer’s mind, there’s a problem there. A control panel should contain only that which the regular user is interested in, something more advanced should be hidden behind an advanced button in each prefpane, or a seperate app like YaST, or the command line.
If you’re saying that there isn’t a clear distinction between simple options and advanced options, well then Linux needs to hiring some proper User Interface engineers because OS X doesn’t have a problem with that distinction.
Well anyone who considers Linux at this point is probably well adapted to Windows and it’s advanced features. So new users probably know what they want when they switch but don’t know the proper command incarnations to make it happen nor feel they should be forced to learn the CLI right away. After all DOS, however primitive it might have been, was the thing they remember using in the 1980’s.
Anyway, I agree that an Advanced tab would be fine as long as it contained the GUI tools I mentioned. This does not seem to be the case today in most “newbie” distros.
SUSE, Mandriva, and to a lesser extent, Fedora have some of these tools but suffer from other problems like a poor package system, buggy releases or extreme dedication to FOSS principles (locking out restriced formats, closed drivers, or non-free software).
“But isn’t that the problem with YaST? Too much funtionality, too little space, too ‘KDE’? Regular people cannot cope with that many options up front.”
I found Yast very useful. If only it weren’t so s_l_o_w.
Seems to me like my computer had more of a problem with it than I did.
Then again, I’ve yet to see a _single_ control centre that is fast.
Well gnome-system-tools offer most of that already and have done for a while just not by default like DMA and boot.
So yes it’s all in one place rather than split across two menus.
I’m looking forward to the easy codec installation. I tried installing codecs yesterday on ubuntu 6.10 64bit and it still wouldn’t let me play dvd’s or wmv files. I’m going to do a little more investigating tonight because I know someone somewhere has found a way. Now that I think about it I’m sure I had that ability before my harddrive crashed last week.
When is the final version going to be released?
Pretty sure 7.04 spells it out
April of 2007
doh.
More specifically, April 19 is the target date.
I think that it only installs MP3 support (though I could be wrong) which is easy with Feisty, because it has the universe and multiverse enabled by default in which case the gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 package is there for mp3 playback. I think for the wmv, wma etc you still need the w32codecs which I’m not sure if they’re installed or not. They have more of a ‘legal’ issue than any of the other codecs.
I think that it only installs MP3 support (though I could be wrong) which is easy with Feisty, because it has the universe and multiverse enabled by default in which case the gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 package is there for mp3 playback. I think for the wmv, wma etc you still need the w32codecs which I’m not sure if they’re installed or not. They have more of a ‘legal’ issue than any of the other codecs.
It’s true that the “w32codecs” package has more of a legal issue than any other package, because the DLL files contained within are Microsoft’s copyright, and as such can’t be redistributed without permission.
Fortunately however, the only common video format requiring these DLLs was WMV9 — earlier WMV versions, and both versions of WMA, could be handled by the ffmpeg codec package. With this version of Ubuntu, the ffmpeg package now includes a WMV9 decoder, meaning the w32codecs package probably has no use whatsoever any more.
What’s more, if you live in the States and want to remain 100% legal there, you can purchase WMV decoder elements for GStreamer (based on Microsoft’s source code) relatively inexpensively from Fluendo.
I am better off waiting until a Ubuntu Distro comes with Firefox 3.0.
Edgy is good enough for me.
I dont think the new panel makes it any easier for a newbie
I’m running Kubuntu Feisty Hard 5 and I like it. The only thing that bothers me is that they forgot some config options in the new “control panel”. For example, the option to turn off the bouncing cursor when launching an app is gone. Duh!
I run Ubuntu server with XFCE4. Some dependencies got mangled and XFCE4 was removed. No worries though, whatever happened managed to correct itself about an hour ago. My point being herd 5 is still an alpha, so be patient and cautious with updates. Generally it has been stable for me.
There are a number of decisions with Ubuntu Desktop that I do not agree with. Avahi and Network Manager being active by default being very high on the list. Additionally I was not too find of the Gnome Control Center and I am glad it was removed.
Overall it seems like it will be a decent release. If it were not for the factor that I needed 2.6.20 for my motherboard and PcHDTV 5500 though I might have gone with Edgy. Everything is updated, which is good, but from a standpoint of installed apps and services it seems a step backwards to me. I am not really a typical user though and my requirements are a bit different from the norm.
EDIT: spelling
Edited 2007-03-05 22:00
Yeah….they need to keep at it. I installed Kubuntu 7.04 and basically everything gets up and running ok. It recognizes my NIC cards, but neither of which communicate with my network. DHCP gives some address that isn’t valid, and manually setting the IP does nothing. Then the whole system gets progressively slower and finally freezes after about 30 minutes. It might just be the x64 version. If I was ambitious, I’d get the 32bit version and see if the same thing happens. Too bad my ambition goes away at 5pm.
Oh, and my specs are as such…
Core2Duo E6400
EVGA NForce 680i SLi
2GB DDR2 800MHz
NVidia Geforce 7950 GT 256MB
It kinda sucks as this is the first time any Ubuntu dist has flaked out on me. Since it’s beta, it’ll get a pass….but when the final starts shipping new hardware like mine should “just work”.
add the following line to your /etc/modprobe.d/options file
options forcedeth msi=0 msix=0
then do the following 3 commands
sudo modprobe -r forcedeth
sudo modprobe forcedeth
sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
the restarting networking may not be necessary with network manager running. That should fix your network problem. As to the locking up… I do not know.
Yeah, thanks, I’ll give that a shot. Not getting on the network kinda sucks.
Like I said, I’m not ruling out the x64 version to be extra flaky, especially running an Nvidia card and all. I suppose I’m actually pleasantly surprised the only thing that didn’t work out of the box, was the NICs.
I ended up doing an <alt><f2> and adding the line during install (before networking). During install you would not need to restart networking or modprobe for the record, just add the line.
I spent a day or two on the 64 bit version but reinstalled with the 32 bit yesterday. While for most stuff it was stable, Eclipse and Open Office kept crashing. This made the system pretty much worthless to me. So far I am having better luck with the 32 bit version though, I will try 64 bit again in a couple releases.
I agree, it is really dull. They should think about a new color scheme. Something like blue…
Feisty will ship with a blue theme as well as the default brown; so no downloading of new themes will be required to lose the brown
Yay!!! I love blue.
NOO, they shouldn’t change the color scheme!!! Gnome always had a very ‘old’ look, a ‘windows 95’ kind’a thing, but the Ubuntu Gnome look is amazing. Original, different, and beautiful. They should definitely keep it!
Anyone know if this release supports the linksys WUSB54GC out of box?
Was doing okey on this version, but everytime I install Herd 5 it breaks my once working fine Windows 2000 dual boot, it’s done it 3 times now and I have to fdisk /mbr to repair it.
If I have to choose then it’ll be Ubuntu for the scrapheap no doubt about that.