The beta version of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has been released. “Ubuntu 8.04 LTS server follows in the footsteps of Ubuntu 7.10 with even
more virtualization support and security enhancements – enabling AppArmor
for more applications by default, improving protection of kernel memory
against attacks, and supporting KVM and iSCSI technologies out of the box. The Ubuntu 8.04 family of variants, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, UbuntuStudio, and
Mythbuntu, also reach beta status today.”
I welcome this as the very first beta version of Ubuntu release, which I do not care about at all 😉
Well, you cared enough to comment.
Good news!
Cant wait till its released.Want to move up from Fawn.
I’m in the same boat, though it’s not looking too good for me. The bloat factor with this one is huge
And a lot of new stuff that’s not had much testing, gnome gvfs, selinux for starters.
I guess we’ll see when the final is released?
Lets hope it goes well.Tested Gibbon and wasn’t too thrilled.
I had some problems with 7.10, but got them all worked out eventually. Right now, everything – everything – is working perfectly. Just in time for the next update.
I wouldn’t mind some FF3 goodness (and hopefully a non-suck version of xorg), but I think maybe I’ll wait for security updates to 7.10 expire before I upgrade to 8.04. Then get everything working again, and not touch it (except for updates) until the next LTS release.
Six months is too often for OS releases. I could get behind decently polished yearly releases, but I’ve been doing six month upgrades since 5.10 or so and I’m sick of it. Especially since every upgrade seems to break something really inconvenient at random.
That’s why I moved back to Debian (lenny). You have one release that get’s updated and you don’t have to reinstall and have lots of issues all the time. Also, Debian has better QA, boots faster, feels faster. I don’t miss Ubuntu.
I tried moving to Debian recently (etch, 64-bit) and switched back immediately. I didn’t keep a record of the things that Just Didn’t Work, but the way trying to use the nv driver crashed the system was pretty close to the top of the list. It did not inspire in me a feeling of confidence.
I’ll try again someday, and when I do I’ll try lenny. But not today.
I tried Debian Etch to step out the Ubuntu upgrade cycle for a time.I experienced some issues that I got fed up trying to fix.For example could not get YouTube videos with sound.
Otherwise Debian is really good.Feels solid and responsive.I will try again sometime when I get tired of Etch and if Heron doesn’t suit my tastes.
Meant tired of Fawn.
How can a single CD distro have a “bloat factor”? What, specifically, do you consider “bloaty” about it? Selinux is an available package which you can apt-get *if you so desire*. AppArmor, is still the default. And gvfs comes with the updated Gnome. Would you prefer they stayed with 2.20?
This is an LTS release. So you can bet that they will not let it out the door until it’s solid.
Being an LTS release or not has absolutely nothing to do with the solidness of Ubuntu releases. Some other distros may only “release when it’s ready” but Ubuntu follows a strictly time-based release cycle and they will always release on the predetermined date, ready or not.
OK, dapper was delayed for six weeks but that was their first LTS release, so it was a special case. But I don’t think that they’d allow a delay like that to happen again, no matter how buggy the release turns out to be.
I disagree.
They will not release on schedule if any glaringly massive bugs show up.
Ubuntu is at the forefront of Linux adoption and people who have never heard of Linux before are watching the progress of Ubuntu.
Ubuntu will not rush it out the door. They are not in business to appease shareholders like Microsoft are.
The delay on Dapper was to get the most stable system for release. The same thing will happen this time, unless it is already perfect…
BTW – Personally, I have had enough of Ubuntu, and have removed it and installed PC-Bsd.
I think you give Canonical/Ubuntu too much credit but this is just my opinion, not a fact. Delaying the release if there turns out to be major release-critical bugs unsolved would, of course, be the right course of action, but I’m not that sure that Canonical/Ubuntu would actually let that stop them from releasing. We’ll just have to wait and see how Ubuntu 8.04 LTS turns out.
Canonical/Ubuntu is definitely trying to build credibility in the corporate world by sticking strictly to their announced release dates. And they also try to appeal to the home desktop audience by offering the latest and the greatest software versions, even if it means that they’ll ship their Long Term Support version with unstable pre-release versions of some applications.
Both of these goals (sticking to the announced release schedule and offering the latest and greatest) tend to hinder the goal of publishing solid releases. It’s extremely difficult to both have your cake and keep it too — and that’s exactly what Canonical/Ubuntu is trying to do, IMO.
You imply that, based upon historical evidence, Ubuntu will not delay an LTS release to ensure superior quality… bit admit that 100% of their previous LTS releases were delayed to ensure superior quality?
Perhaps your memory on the matter is not as clear as mine is. Dapper was actually “good enough” in April of 2006. Mark Shuttleworth reminded the Ubuntu community that they would be living with that release for a long, long time. And called for a delay as an additional QA measure, and others agreed.
Is there no limit, da_chicken, to the amount of spin you will put on an item in order to be able to make an anti-Ubuntu post?
Ubuntu is not even my favorite distro… but it’s obvious to me that it is doing something right to have so many jealous detractors.
Edited 2008-03-22 12:30 UTC
Gee…
Ubuntu is a fad, just like Gentoo was a few years ago, and Redhat before that. Many users like Ubuntu because it has Gnome, and usually the latest and greatest. People are like lemmings – they migrate to whatever everyone else migrates to, because they simply like to follow. Just because a large number of people follow everyone else, and use a particular thing, doesn’t make it good. It just shows that many people cannot think for themselves, and simply copy what others do. The old saying “monkey see, monkey do” is so true with modern society.
I prefer to use something based on quality, rather than following everyone else. Debian is a quality Linux distribution, and I trust it.
Dave
An anti-Ubuntu post? Please read my post again, there is nothing “anti-Ubuntu” in it.
Frankly, I don’t see your uncritical Ubuntu hypeing doing the distro any good in the long run. It only creates unrealistic expectations and the users will soon become disappointed when Ubuntu fails to live up to the hype.
IMO, your contention about the Ubuntu LTS releases being more solid than the non-LTS releases is unsubstantiated. The “LTS” acronym stands for “Long Term Support”, it doesn’t mean “exceptionally solid” as you seem to interpret it. Canonical just supports the LTS releases longer than the non-LTS releases, that’s all.
Have you already forgotten what you wrote? Here are a couple of highlights from your post:
That was your major “point”. And, of course, I’ve already pointed out that history is *not* at all in agreement with your assertions.
Edited 2008-03-22 14:48 UTC
I was merely pointing out that a time-based release cycle means that you need to push the releases out according to the schedule. If you continuously let the scheduled release dates slip, then you’re not making time-based releases. But Ubuntu *does* follow a time-based release cycle, which in practice means that they can’t continuously delay their releases.
How is stating this simple fact somehow “anti-Ubuntu”?
Not really. You were looking for an angle for slamming Ubuntu and that one looked convenient. Don’t try to claim, now, that you had the best of intentions.
Straw man. No one has suggested continuously delaying releases. The topic under discussion is the release cycle of an LTS release. And the project has clearly demonstrated that delaying a release, and in particular, an LTS release, is acceptable.
Proper release planning starts before the first development efforts even begin. If a release was delayed, then the feature set for the next one must be set with a shorter release cycle in mind. Debian Sarge pretty much discredited the “It’s ready when it’s ready” approach to release management. It’s an open invitation to poor release planning practices. For example “freezes” which are really just perpetual slushes. Wishy washy policies on feature inclusion. Nebulous goals for the release. And vaporous criteria regarding just what “ready” means. And it’s a procrastinator’s paradise, to boot.
Deadlines are important. They are great motivators. They force people to get up off their haunches and do the work that *isn’t* fun, but has to be done anyway.
However, they should not be adhered to blindly. Even with good, pragmatic release planning, unexpected delays are going to happen from time to time. And, when warranted, the deadlines should be changed to accommodate them. Future release plans must be adjusted accordingly, and made with the benefit of lessons learned in previous release cycles.
Edited 2008-03-22 15:48 UTC
Well, you just wrote recently that “100% of their previous LTS releases were delayed”, did you not?
The bottom line is that either Ubuntu does time-based releases or it doesn’t. And it does. So they try their best to avoid delays. Which means that they might just leave some (or even quite a few) release-critical bugs unresolved in order to push the LTS release out according to the schedule. That’s not a totally unreasonable conclusion, I think.
Let’s try to keep things civilized and do our best to avoid insults like that, OK?
You keep repeating variations on that theme, but have been unable to come up with a single concrete example. To put it succictly: Put up or shut up. Tell us *exactly* what all of these (many) release critical bugs have been. You are making the accusations. The burden of proof lies upon you.
Nice try, BTW, at casting me as the baddie for pointing out that you have an adgenda, intentionally misrepresented Canonical’s release policies, and then feigned innocence on that count when I called you on it. If you consider my pointing out the truth of the matter to be an insult, perhaps that says more about your demeanor than mine?
Edited 2008-03-22 18:46 UTC
Sorry, but your request doesn’t make any sense. I’m not accusing anyone, I’m just offering rational arguments to support my honest opinions. I keep repeating this theme because your every reply attempts to wriggle away from my arguments, substituting them with your insults, obfuscations, and other distractions. It’s really you who should either provide more plausible counterarguments or shut up. But you seem to be unable to do either.
My main argument is, and has been all along, that there’s a definite contradiction between the goal of making timely releases and the goal of fixing as many major bugs as you can before pushing a release out. And the faster the release cycle is, the more likely it becomes that the number of major bugs that never get fixed increases. And Ubuntu has a relatively fast, six-month long release cycle. The conclusions that one can draw from these premises should be pretty clear.
I’d also like to point out another potential shortcoming in Ubuntu’s release policy: Canonical seems to include experimental pre-release versions of some programs into their releases to attract the home desktop users who always demand the latest and greatest. I think the main MEPIS developer switched his distro from being based on Ubuntu LTS to Debian stable because he didn’t like this Ubuntu practice. IMO, it’s a prctice that Canonical should avoid, at least for the Ubuntu LTS releases.
I have furthermore pointed out that, despite your unsubstantiated claim, there is no actual evidence at all that the Ubuntu LTS releases would be any more solid or bug-free than the normal Ubuntu releases. The only note-worthy difference seems to be that the Ubuntu LTS releases just receive support from Canonical for a longer period of time than the non-LTS releases.
And, to continue in this spirit of constructive criticism, I could maybe add that getting official security support for the “universe” packages would be a most desirable improvement in Ubuntu policies. But I’m not going to hold my breath.
It seems that the only counterargument you can provide against any of my arguments is your claim that anyone who points out shortcomings or problems in Ubuntu must have an agenda against Ubuntu. That’s a very, very weak argument (not really a rational argument at all) but I don’t think you can come up with anything better, otherwise you’d have done that already. So I don’t really see much point in continuing this discussion. Bye.
“This is an LTS release. So you can bet that they will not let it out the door until it’s solid.”
Are you kidding? Am I the only one who’s noticed that each successive Ubuntu release has gotten buggier? Perhaps there’s a direct correlation to the fact that each Ubuntu release has gotten more ambitious. We all know what comes of overreaching ambition. What The Ubuntu developers need to do is skip a release cycle and concentrate on the myriad of bugs that have never been fixed or have been fixed half-assed by overzealous developers who would rather cram experimental and wow-factor features into Ubuntu rather than make it rock-solid and stable to use. Apparently Ubuntu thinks it’s Microsoft.
Yes. (Well, I imagine that da_Chicken has probably “noticed” it, too.)
I was wondering how long it would take you, cmost, to post your usual anti-ubuntu rant in this thread. Such predictability hurts your credibility. I’ve tested each of the last five Ubuntu releases, on a variety of hardware, and have found each to be of good quality. I have found no evidence to support your claim of reduced quality over time.
And what are these “experimental, wow factor” features you allude to so vaguely? Please be specific.
LOL. You’re really grasping for anything to throw at Ubuntu, aren’t you. This accusation also hurts (what’s left of) your credibility on this topic.
Like I’ve said in a previous post, I’m more of a Fedora guy. But I know that nothing brings out jealous detractors like success. And I take yours and da_chicken’s feeble and deceptive attempts at disparaging it as indications that Ubuntu is doing something very right, and thus threatening those who somehow feel that its doing so casts a bad light on their own favored distros. Yours is OpenSuse, isn’t it?
Edited 2008-03-22 14:14 UTC
Thanks for the personal attack Sbergman27, as always, I appreciate it. Firstly, allow me to point out that I am an Ubuntu user (by way of Linux Mint.) As such, I demand, nay expect, a high quality, minimal bug operating system from (what used to be) the number one distribution (at least according to Distrowatch…take it or leave it.) The experimental features I’m referring to are PulseAudio (problematic in the few distributions who have adopted it and certainly not ready for an Ubuntu LTS release) and PolicyKit. Ubuntu hasn’t even gotten SELinux or Apparmor implemented successfully (both available in the repositories) and they’re already jumping to something new (and too untested for an LTS release.) As to my claims that Ubuntu has gotten buggier with each release, all you have to do is have a look at the quantity and severity of major bugs present at release of both Feisty and Gutsy. Some of these still have not yet been fixed. I could give you specific examples but I’m not going to bother. Finally, as to my credibility, I don’t really give a damn what you or anyone else on these forums thinks. I’m entitled to my opinion, same as you. I’m a long-time Linux/UNIX/Windows-DOS/OS-2/Mac/Amiga user and I’ve been involved with the world of computing for over 20 years. I probably have forgotten more than you know about computers.
Edited 2008-03-22 22:00 UTC
Psst. Yes, you’re wrong.
6-month releases typically focus on a particular area. The boot loader and desktop effects are examples from past releases. LTS releases are intended to be stable, in order to make Ubuntu more attractive in an enterprise environment, which benefits from high reliability and a long update cycle.
That CD is in fact only web-installer with graphical interface. Do not forget about that c.a. 20 gigabytes in repositories. In case of Hardy they fulfil 5 DVDs when downloaded.
Try to use Ubuntu as Windows/MacOS replacement without all that repositories – no matter on-line or off-line.
Try to use Windows/MacOS without installing any additional software. Compare that to what you get with the Ubuntu CD, without any repos. And remember that Ubuntu comes on a CD and MacOS and Windows comes on DVDs.
Edited 2008-03-22 20:56 UTC
You mean – Vista comes on one DVD – for all its flavours ? Compare this to Ubuntu DVD which even do not have packages for KDE (and vice versa – Kubuntu do not have GNOME packages) on their limited “main” repository. It was even more curious in the past version, when whole “main” was much smaller, and could be fitted in only one DVD.
Edited 2008-03-22 22:46 UTC
I said that MacOS and Windows comes on DVDs, you removed half of the sentence. Vista doesn’t package more than one DE either. And the ubuntu CD also has a complete office suit, a live system that runs from the CD and some OSS apps for windows among other things.
Just because it’s only one cd, doesn’t mean it can’t be bloated.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=714858
There’s too many things that are installed and turned on by default. And without trying to start a flame war, mono is there and the two useless apps that require it, none of which I care for or want to use. And the second biggest biggest cpu hogging, hard drive churning, piece of alpha cr… err…. code no one wants – Tracker.
Now add restrictive drivers manager, displayunconfig-gtk, not at all bullet proof X and you can see for your self that one can surely bloat a one cd linux distribution if one so desired!
I don’t care for Mono either. Only Tomboy is on by default. Rightclick->Remove from panel.
I have tracker enabled for all my Fedora 8 users. That’s 60 simultaneous instances on my largest server. I leave it at the default settings. And it hardly impacts the system performance at all. It sips memory daintily. It doesn’t hog the CPU. And is not unstable at all. My users love it. I was afraid to turn it on. But once I did, I was impressed. If you’ve been turned off in the past by the memory sucking, CPU grinding, perpetually unstable Beagle, give yourself a treat and try tracker. (Because I can tell that you haven’t.)
The restricted drivers manager is absolutely necessary for new users. Converts invariably have Nvidia cards, wireless cards with nondistributable firmware, etc. This is *definitely* not bloat.
And how can you call a distro with a default install that runs very nicely in 256MB of ram on a 630MHz Celeron “bloated”? I ran it on my eee pc for a while which I was using quite extensively. It comes with 512MB, but I limited it to 256MB for a few days, just to see what would happen. And it did very well, indeed.
I’ve tested two systems with the beta (apt-updated from Gutsy), and the sound is killed on both after rebooting. After more investigation, it seems whoever built the kernel package decided to do so without building the sound modules.
How did this get past the QA folks? I know it’s beta, but this is obvious.
I wonder if 8.04 fixes the two bugs I hit with 7.10:
– cryptdisks at boot time won’t work if you have /usr on a seperate partition (/usr/lib eventually) – there’s a workaround to copy some file from /usr/lib to /lib but updates make you run outdated versions of it.
– no scripts for apache ssl certificates
Besides having to care for these, I’d might go for an upgrade a month or two after it’s ready.
I will try this when the final release is done, but I will prepare for it to be as troublesome as the previous two releases (and especially the last one). This way I won’t be too disapointed if it sucks, but will be really positive surprised if it works like a dream (or the ubuntu releases before the last two).
A Debian-based distro which followed the Debian release schedule and only relied on Ubuntu’s usability patches.
Now that would be nice!
Ubuntu was in the lead until Debian lenny came along.
Current problems I find in Ubuntu:
-slow boot, about 10-20 seconds more than in Debian
-slow login (in Gnome), about 1 minute (!) more than Debian
-the whole OS seems very sluggish. This is both using Hardy and Gutsy.
-bugs in upstart: if fsck dies, a reboot does reboot but starts GDM
-usplash bugs: usplash in Hardy beta only displays for seconds then disappears
-lots of bugs show up in boot with scripts that says this or that file is now found
Current problems I find in Debian:
-an update killed my Thinkpad hardware buttons so volume up/down is not shown in Gnome
-NTP support in Gnome: it says “install ntp support” but does not say which package it is. In Ubuntu it is integrated with the package manager
So stable, you can’t even grab a torrent for the beta…sure, I’m on 56k dialup, but I’ve spent the past hour trying to get and download a torrent for it from the Ubuntu website…think they’d have the torrents mirrored elsewhere as well, no?
Dave
Of course, murphy’s law being what it is, a minute after I posted the above, the damn torrent file actually downloaded. Of course, useless as tits on a bull to me, since it seems max speed I’ll get from .torrent is about 1k…
Tried a bunch of the ftp sites, and guess what – NONE of them have it…
I mean, if you’re going to publish on your site “get it here”, then please make sure it’s actually there, ready to be downloaded!!!
That’s strike 3, I’ll give it a miss.
Dave
Well, I tried downloading the iso. It started in about five seconds and is now downloading at 50 KB/s.
I also tried the torrent. It downloaded in 5 seconds, immediately connected to 180 seeds and is downloading at 600 KB/s.
Looks like the problem is on your end.
What are you talking about? After reading your post, I chose a site and random and started a download. It immediately started downloading at 1.75MB per second on my fast cable connection. In the time that it has taken me to post this, it is over half way through and will complete in less than 3 more minutes. Are you on dialup?
http://ubuntu.osuosl.org/releases/8.04/
Edit: The download is complete. Total download time: About 6 minutes.
Edited 2008-03-22 17:38 UTC
i made a mistake by upgrading to this. Beta quality sofware should not be like this.
– i had sound working, now is gone
– i could access NTFS drivers, now i cannot.
– webcam was working, now it is gone.
– firefox fonts are messed up
Also things not wroking before, still are not working.
– i still cannot access removable hdd with NTFS (maxtor)
– scroll of the mouse is stil broken
Using Dell Inspiron 1420:
– intel 3945ABG wifi
– intel X3100 integrated graphic
From my personal experience, this is a lot more stable than the current Ubuntu release (7.10/Gutsy Gibbon). All hardware seems to be working fine, including audio.
Firefox 3 beta 4 is a lot nicer than Firefox 2. The boot time feels faster. NTFS read & write is working.
I upgraded all of my Ubuntu desktops to Hardy except my eee. While none of the problems I had are catastrophic, I must confess they do cause me some concern.
– The Sun Java is broken for gui apps. There is a work around on the forums and the bug report but it sounds to me like this might not get fixed before release. This I would consider unacceptable since it will effect many users.
– Network Manager is still a bit hit and miss. Prior to Gutsy it was completely unusable for me though, so I guess that is an improvement. Still it is a struggle to get wireless to connect reliably to my WPA enabled WAP. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.
– Suspend is still unreliable. This is a major annoyance to me but not a problem unique to Hardy.
– Kaffeine did not have sound. I had to switch the sound output to pulseaudio.
– VMWare server is a bit of a challenge to install. I suspect a couple weeks after release vmware will get added to the partners repository but for now the install took more work than in any of the prior releases. (The steps are documented on the Ubuntu forums in case anyone is curious.)
All my installs started as a straight Ubuntu (desktop or server) install to which I added either kde-base or kubuntu-desktop. So while I am using an Ubuntu install I have not had to deal with the bugs involving Gnome too much. gvfs seems to be a risk point as well as FF3B4. I have had no issues with the Firefox beta myself but based on the number of comments I guess others have not been so lucky.
All in all though I have done one fresh install and three upgrades so far. All have gone without any problems beyond the ones above. All the hardware was recognized and there were no major difficulties. Software wise I am not too sure about some of the additions this release given its long term support status, but I have adopted a “wait and see” philosophy for hardy, much as I have for KDE4. Troubled times…
Well,
One thing nice about this release, it’s got some
great bugs. (ouch.stop biting me ubun)