Submitted by Canonical has announced the final release of Ubuntu 9.04; also announced were the releases of Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition and Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix, but of course also Kubuntu 9.04, and Xubuntu 9.04.
This new Ubuntu release delivers a host of new features, as well as lots of improvements. Boot times were a focus of this release, and have been shortened. I’ve been testing the beta and RC releases for a while now, and I can indeed confirm that boot times have been shortened. Obviously, your mileage may vary. Suspend-and-resume has also been enhanced, according to Canonical.
They’ve also put time and effort into WiFi and 3G, broadening hardware support for switching between the two. It also comes with the brand new notification system, which we’ve covered in greater detail already on OSNews. For the rest, the new Ubuntu release comes with all the latest Free software packages, such as GNOME 2.26, (also covered before here on OSNews), X.org server 1.6, Linux kernel 2.6.28, ext4 support, and much more.
The KDE variant of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, comes with the latest KDE release, version 4.2.2, Amarok 2.0.2, the new Plasma-based network manager widget, the first KDE4 release of Digikam (it doesn’t yet use all of KDE4’s frameworks, though), Qt 4.5, and more.
Jane Silber, COO, Canonical, says: “With every release, we see Ubuntu Desktop Edition make significant steps forward in appealing to mainstream computer users. With access to the latest office productivity suite, support for Skype and Adobe Flash, and faster boot times, we’re confident that Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition will see more people join millions of others and make the switch to an open platform.”
Download instructions can be found in the announcements as linked to in the teaser.
I’m waiting for new reviews on stoplinux.org.ru I hope Ubuntu will gifts as a lot of interesting bugs and issues!
Previous versions were focused to N270 that doesn’t support EMT64 extension. Do this Ubuntu release now support it correctly for desktop Atom 230 and 330 ? I find no track of such information :/
Kochise
Also does somebody know if the Samsung NC20 (VIA) support has been imporoved? I am really thinking about buying one, but in the forums I have only found heavy workarounds…no sit back and let install approach here
Thanks for the info!
cheers
Unfortunately, Netbook Remix on my Asus 1000HE only gave me a 4-5 hour battery life, no matter how much tweakiing I did, and I did a lot! A stock fedora 10/11 gives me 6-7 hours of battery life. I would think a “remix” specifically for netbooks would do better, but it doesn’t. Unfortunately, XP Home still leads the way, as it gives 8-9 hours of battery under normal usage. Moblin approached 7-8 hours of battery life, but it is just too Alpha at the moment for everyday usage. I wound up sticking with stock Fedora 11 in a dual-boot with XP (in case I really needed that last bit of battery life).
I guess you already tried http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop , but it’s worth a mention (even on non-intel cpu’s)
I tried powertop (still a good thing to use), force-hpet, eeepc_acpi_scripts, 2 different EEE applets, turning off services, etc, etc. Still, I could only get up to about 5 hours, maybe 6 if I was REALLY careful.
I think the point to me is if you want to compete in the netbook market, losing that much battery life is not an option. Moblin gets this, but it is just too early to use it every day. Also, it Intel specific (which is what I have). Maybe a little cross-pollination will help everyone along.
If you are prepared to experiment, and don’t mind the cutting edge, try Arch with KDEmod. The Chakra project has a LiveCD-style GUI installer for Arch KDEmod that can be made to work running from a USB stick.
Here are some post-install tweaks for EEEPC 1000HE and similar models:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Asus_Eee_PC_1000HE
This is the best performance full-featured Linux on a netbook that I have tried. It should answer your battery life concerns.
Here is my own small collection of other post-install settings to improve KDE4 from the default configuration:
Edited 2009-04-23 23:41 UTC
KDE 4.2 addresses power consumption on netbooks. There is a new utility called PowerDevil to set the various controls and responses, but more importantly the desktop itself has been modified to significantly improve power consumption.
http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.2/desktop.php
Having said that, apparently the Intel driver for Ubuntu 9.04, including Kubuntu and Xubuntu, is a very poor performer.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzIyMA
So, if you have a netbook, then you almost certainly have Intel graphics, and hence it looks like Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu/Ubuntu NBR might not be a very good choice, no matter which flavour you choose.
Have you tried the LPIA build? https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MobileTeam/Mobile?action=show&redirect=Mobil…
It is supposed to be a bit lighter… i bet the fedora based moblin (moblin.org) is even Lighter than it though going from your numbers and the extra work that has been put into it
Ditto.
I just tried Ubuntu 9.04 on my 1000HE, and I’m not impressed. Seeing all these gobbledygook suggestions (“try this driver and this mod and this patch”) just proves to me, once again — Windows may not be perfect, but it sure as hell is a lot less trouble in the long run.
Why is it that XP, which apparently sucks so horribly according to the Linux crowd, can simply get 20-40% more battery life with just a few driver installs? Why is it that to get Linux anywhere near this, it requires a huge expenditure of time, and then XP is still better?
And people say Linux is ready for the desktop. It’s in the details — and those have always been lacking. A new Ubuntu theme isn’t going to make the real problems go away.
Assuming you like Linux as much as I do (which may or may not be true), I do recommend the following:
For now, use a stock Fedora 10 or 11. It will get you around 7 hours without fiddling. Keep XP around for dual-booting for those times when your really do need the maximum battery life.
For the long run, keep an eye on the Moblin project. This version of Linux gets closer to the same battery life as Windows does – around 8+ hours for me. It is just too unstable right now, but hopefully in a year or so it will be ready for prime time.
I like the new notifications, I like how they cleaned up the startup and shutdown sequence so it doesn’t print lots of junk and I like how it boots faster. The new Dust theme looks completely awesome, I wish they would make it the default theme (even though I understand that some people might prefer more “normal” looking windows).
I guess versions upgrades like OpenOffice 3.0 is nice but I don’t use that very often anyway.
I don’t like the new intel driver though, it’s slower than intrepid when running in the default EXA mode and it also feels more buggy (at least on my 965 laptop). I will upgrade to karmic as soon as intel 2.7 and the new libdrm gets uploaded. I also don’t like the old Eclipse version, but it looks like they might update that for karmic at least which is nice (I sure hope so).
interesing… will look what they are did
Edited 2009-04-23 17:17 UTC
Cool! I just come from testing! Ubunto 9.04 even don’t boot on my PC! 8.10 worked fine! I’m glad to see that with every new release quality on linux is fall down!
Luckily it can’t get any worst then your English.
Edited 2009-04-23 19:36 UTC
in my laptop?
I have a centrino duo.
I was wondering if I would benefit in terms of speed after doing that. I mainly use the laptop to university work so should have office and java(eclipse/tomcat/etc…)
What about installing Netbook remix in my laptop?
I have a centrino duo.
I was wondering if I would benefit in terms of speed after doing that. I mainly use the laptop to university work so should have office and java(eclipse/tomcat/etc…)
I don’t think NBR will make a significant difference. The base of NBR is still stock Ubuntu (including the kernel).
NBR is in essence a different WM to maximize the use of the screen real estate common on netbook machines. A regular laptop has that in abundance in comparison.
Plus NBR assumes you’ll be having one window open at a time. It trades the flexibility of having multiple windows open in for the maximum use of the screen real estate.
I can’t say it is extremely usable. Even on the AAO I’ ve reverted to stock Gnome.
http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/index.p…
I installed the release candidate when it came out. Since I wanted to use it on a server, I decided to use software RAID. That was a nightmare all-around. First, their disk partitioner (the one that comes with ubuntu server anyhow) is junk. It gets horribly confused when there are existing partitions and won’t let you remove them. I had to use dd to manually wipe sections of the disk before I could get the disk partitioned properly. After that, the installation went smoothly… until I it was time to reboot.
The machine wouldn’t boot because it couldn’t find the md devices. Some googling revealed some commands I could type into the busybox to get it to boot. But of course, I would have to enter these commands every time I booted.
And then the RAID array came up degraded. I did a lot of googling to find out how to rebuild the array, but every tutorial I found (including Ubuntu ones) mentoned device names (like /dev/sda1) that no longer exist in Ubuntu, so there was no way I could figure out the correct device node to use to re-add the second disk. And of course, it seems that it never occurred to Ubuntu developers to provide tools for this or do anything automatic.
So much for being a user-friendly distro. I actually had to go back to using Gentoo just so I could get what, to me, are basic things working. At least Gentoo documents stuff do you can fix it yourself. Ubuntu figures everything WILL be automatic, so they don’t document it, so you’re SoL when it doesn’t work.
Software RAID has always taken a back seat for Ubuntu. I know one developer who has put a lot of work into it, but apparently his efforts have been thwarted by others. If you want a really basic desktop, Ubuntu is fine. But don’t even consider it for anything server-related. The fact that they even offer a server edition makes them out to be dishonest.
Oh, and BTW, I went back and looked at the bug reports relating to software RAID not working. As far as I can tell, they havn’t done anything to fix this between the RC and the release.
No, I think I would use straight Debian on a server anyway.
to tell you the truth if i was using any OS Linux or Windows i wouldn’t use a software RAID.
They are just to unstable to use in a production environment.
The only time ive used software raid’s is on a desktop or to simply play with.
As for ubuntu, it’s great to see it maturing at the rate it has, it’s always fascinating loading up an older version and then comparing it to the latest release.
So far ive been impressed with the speed and general feel of polish, it seems more and more parts of it and now starting to stick togeather making it more of a complete package instead of a series of random software parts slapped togeather.
HW raid creates a new physical point of failure (the raid controller electronics). So on paper at least, software raid is the safer option.
In theory, but then again in theory it might not matter anyways as the server will get destroyed by a rampaging elephant. Still, the odds are slim. At the time of writing there are 12 of us left here, and I ask aloud and not one of us has ever heard of a hardware RAID card go bad. I know for the Compaq going back to the early DL series, even if the card had to be swapped out, it made no difference as it would still identify which drives were in which type of array. Depending upon the age of the machine this was done in several ways. Point is, the benefits of hardware RAID far exceed that of software (which I find no use for).
Worse still is poorly optimized or implemented software RAID can have a very negative outcome. The worst case scenario is where the config is on the drive that is lost, and can not be restored. Then you have complete loss of data (especially for stripes).
I’ve had one go bad. And I like my online, background resync.
I used to favor hardware raid. But now I use software raid, and I would never go back.
I would strongly recommend against Ubuntu for server, unless this is maybe a home hobby server. But even then either Suse Enterprise or Red Hat Enterprise are very much better suited. I would even go so far as to even suggest OpenSuse for a server depending upon specific needs. I would avoid CentOS though completely as it is both a POS distribution and community. I can say strongly that the Suse community is very healthy and open to assisting complex technical issues. We do constant evaluations of everything from BSD, Solaris, Fedora, Suse, etc.. and Novell Suse, OpenSuse, and Rhel always have been the top choice year after year (from our internal evaluation).
And as for this release, I just upgraded a laptop from 8.10, and it really dawns on me why certain other distributions can’t seem to get this down…still.
I’m curious, why do you strongly recommend against using Ubuntu for servers?
I ask because I’m running a 6 server load-balanced cluster on Ubuntu and haven’t experienced a single issue. I find Ubuntu easy to configure and harden, and haven’t had any downtime.
Instead of writing a long boring essay, allow me to say first if you have found Ubuntu to be the answer, and it has been stable, then I would certainly say stick with it if this fulfills your needs. For me I take a somewhat conservative approach, and would look at several aspects. First off would be the level of support they can provide, and who is supporting via hardware. Second I would factor in the past track record, and more importantly the size of the company (how much they can devote to testing before release). I will have to admit ignorance to Ubuntu server release, but from my impression they do release new versions quite often. Unfortunately while releasing a new version quickly satisfies the geek needs, it is a recipe for disaster in the server world. What we focus in on is having a stable platform that can remain stable for some time. The last we, or shall I say the clients want, is a scenario of fast upgrades. Now while it certainly is up to us to upgrade, and we can always chose not to, it does concern me how much time is truly devoted to compat testing.
Ubuntu may actually make a great server, but it does take time to build reputation, and unfortunately we do not have the luxury of taking chances. With either SLED or RHEL we at least of both a good track record and the knowledge that considerable time and expense has been used to insure the release is optimum in stability and performance. There is more to beyond this, but I know the last time the name Ubuntu came up for testing for us, they did not have an enterprise level version available.
They do release a new version every 6 months, however they also do an LTS (long term support) release every 4th release (2 years). The LTS releases have more emphasis on testing and stability and less on new features than the standard releases, and, as the name implies, they are supported for longer periods (3 years on the desktop, 5 years on servers). As for support, Canonical do offer commercial support for Ubuntu although I have to admit I haven’t used it.
I found the LTS release bothersome, as some key patches weren’t backported (especially PHP). Our internal pen test guys kept giving me grief, so I was forced to upgrade to the non-LTS release. (Installing the software from source was another option, but not worth the longterm maintenance headache)
Do other distributions suffer from this issue?
Then Go And F.u.c.k.your self A.s.s.h.o.l.e
I f you want to continue sucking bilgates cock then as your wish
Edited 2009-04-26 19:39 UTC
of course you are aware that centos is basically rhel source. and btw, google and wikipedia use ubuntu for their server infrastructure.
Interesting, since I run Kubuntu 9.04 since betas here in SWRAID1 (two 1TB Samsung HD103UJ disks) in a workstation and SWRAID5 in a Ubuntu 9.04 server
Maybe _you_ are broken 😉
Regards,
Norberto
I took the time to install Ubuntu 9.04 final in a virtualbox environment using three virtual disks with the following scheme:
/boot raid1 (sda5 + sdb5, spare: sdc5)
lvm raid5 (sda6 + sdb6 + sdc6)
lvm-root /
lvm-swap swap
everything works
so either you’re spreading fud or you just don’t know how to install debian/ubuntu with swraids.
With all due respect software raid works just as well in ubuntu as in debian sid (for completely obvious reasons). And if you really believe that ubuntu does not use /dev/sdx you are very misinformed.
root@XXXXXX:~# cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 9.04 \n \l
root@XXXXXX:~# watch cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [ra0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [ra
id10]
md0 : active raid5 sde1[3] sdd1[2] sdc1[1] sdb1[0]
2197715712 blocks level 5, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [4/4] [UUUU]
root@XXXXXX:~# sudo mdadm –examine –scan
ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid5 num-devices=4 UUID=cb321c75:3387115e:4b6ad705:2b865f17
root@XXXXXXX:~# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 703003764 155355856 512218564 24% /
tmpfs 4039288 0 4039288 0% /lib/init/rw
varrun 4039288 384 4038904 1% /var/run
varlock 4039288 0 4039288 0% /var/lock
udev 4039288 200 4039088 1% /dev
tmpfs 4039288 84 4039204 1% /dev/shm
lrm 4039288 2760 4036528 1% /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/volatile
/dev/md0 2163230144 6789680 2046554680 1% /media/raid2
137.53.94.174:/media/raid1
1938128944 452065576 1388387376 25% /media/raid1
I installed the RC on the day it came out. I looked for bug reports and posted my own. There have been no responses. I assure you that there simply were no “/dev/sd?” devices on my system. The drives could be found by-id and such, but not the usual way. I’m really not sure how I could have screwed up the install (THREE TIMES). It’s not as though it’s a manual process. Yes, it’s possible that some hardware quirk of my system (X48 chipset and SATA drives?) confused Ubuntu, but that doesn’t make it any less broken for me.
Anyhow, the point is moot. I was familiar with Ubuntu and Gentoo, so I installed Gentoo. And lo and behold, it all works, so I’m not screwing with it any further. I had considered Debian, but by the time I found out that you can get all the latest stuff in their unstable branch, it was too late. It took me a day to install Gentoo (which is irritating, because I just wanted to quickly install Ubuntu and go), and I’m not about to wipe all that out.
Yeah. But at least now you’re ‘leet.
Oops! Gotta go. 2002 is calling.
Edited 2009-04-24 12:51 UTC
This rant is directed at a few of the people posting here, not so much the one I’m replying to.
You know what amazes me? The arrogant attitude. It’s no wonder Linux doesn’t have more market penetration. The users are hostile. And if they’re this hostile to their own, one can only imagine how hostile they are to Windows users. If a Windows user has a problem, you call them an idiot for using Windows. If a Linux user has problems, you call them an idiot for not having the same positive experience that you did. Well, let’s make something clear. While Free Software may be morally superior, that doesn’t automatically make it technically superior. And having a snarky attitude like yours doesn’t help anyone but make yourself feel better for being able make someone else feel small.
You want to know how ‘leet’ I am? I’m betting you don’t lead your own open source project. I do. I bet you don’t have more than a bachelors degree in computer science. I have over a decade of experience with chip design, two decades of experience with UNIX-like operating systems, AND I’m nearing the end of a Ph.D. in computer science. I bet you’ve never designed a CPU or a GPU. I’ve done both. I’m betting you’ve never published in peer-reviewed journals. I have. I bet you haven’t had personal conversations with Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman. I have. Have you even LOOKED at the Linux kernel source code? I’ve written drivers for it. Check out my home page some time… if you’re smart enough to find it.
Some people need to grow up and learn to treat other people with some respect.
Timothy, that last quoted sentence is just priceless. And all I did was make light of Gentoo’s installation time and its reputation due to its sometimes overenthusiastic supporters. Sorry. But as far as I can see, it is your post, and not mine, which lacks a certain warmth and balance.
Edited 2009-04-24 15:00 UTC
You’re right. But like I say, I wasn’t responding especially to you. I guess your comment just pushed the wrong button. Sorry for the trouble.
No problem. I did notice the disclaimer at the top. But then it got so “up close and personal” that it was hard to just ignore.
Have a satisfying and rewarding day.
-Steve
Thanks for the examples. I upgraded from 8.10 to 9.04 and my softraid is broken now, don’t know why. This is a straightforward 4-disk raid5 installation using this tutorial http://bfish.xaedalus.net/?p=188 which worked beautifully when first setting it up.
During boot, md0 can’t be found by mount. When I look at syslog, I see:
Apr 24 13:52:40 server mdadm[23652]: NewArray event detected on md device /dev/md0
But no md0 to be found when I scan for it.
GParted says about the partitions that it can’t recognize the format (they were ext3 formatted).
Here is the output when I follow your example:
root@server:~# cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 9.04 \n \l
root@server:~# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]
md_d0 : inactive sdd3[3](S)
972558912 blocks
unused devices: <none>
root@server:~# mdadm –examine –scan
ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid5 num-devices=4 UUID=7a4af3e6:e05b5118:01f9e43d:ac30fbff
root@server:~# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 3099260 2482068 459760 85% /
tmpfs 509068 0 509068 0% /lib/init/rw
varrun 509068 320 508748 1% /var/run
varlock 509068 0 509068 0% /var/lock
udev 509068 164 508904 1% /dev
tmpfs 509068 0 509068 0% /dev/shm
lrm 509068 2392 506676 1% /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-server/volatile
As you can see mdadm doesn’t recognize/configure the raid. I can’t find any more specific log information.
I’m a lousy Linux admin, so any help would be appreciated! Thanks!
I’m not quite as excited these days about a new release but after the last 3 Ubuntu releases left me fixing things, I hope that the installer will be more thorough this time.
Still, I hope that it is much improved overall and that Canonical builds on their success. I’d really like them to push both Microsoft and Apple toward better choices.
It works perfectly on my Inspiron 1501. I’ve been running the RC once it came out, and haven’t had any problems with it.
To my surprise, it does boot up perceivably faster, and overall the system seems more responsive.
Also, general desktop rendering performance is way better with the default xfree ati driver than 8.04’s was with the latest proprietary one installed (at least on my card). Finally I can stick to that now.
The only thing that bothers me so far is PulseAudio. I know some say it is the future and that it’s infinitely flexible, but a regular desktop user probably doesn’t want to chuck around sinks and sources, I think the routing most would be interested in is musicplayer->speakers->ears. I’m not entirely against it but probably should not be default (yet), found it problematic so far on most installations.
Having the mono framework by default isn’t very nice either. FSpot is a good spot, but one could live without it (and C#).
Anyway, a nice release.
Edited 2009-04-23 19:33 UTC
Been messing around it a bit, I have to say this is a good one:
– xmodmap works properly again (X.org evdev fiasco broke it on Intrepid). Gnome was even nice enough to ask me if I want to load up my xmodmap file on the first time it started up. It’s funny, but this is a killer feature for me, and the main reason I kept Hardy LTS on my work machine. I think I may dare to install this on my work machine after I kick the tires a bit more at home (and see that kscope works properly).
– KDE 4 is done, finally. I don’t know whether it’s Qt 4.5 or just good bugfixing, but I’m happy with it now. I have an eerie sense that the keyboard feedback is not as “fast” as it is with other environments somehow, but that’s probably just in my head.
Well done, (k)ubuntu dudes and the whole community that beefed up all the individual packages.
2010 will finally be the year of linux
When I hear claims like that it reminds me of the old adage, “don’t count your chickens before they hatch”. I’m hopeful for Linux to provide a viable desktop for the masses but at the same time I would sooner see the open source community take a constructive and step by step approach rather than a dash to the line only to find a whole heap of problems come back to haunt developers and end users.
I’ve just finished having a look at the latest OpenSolaris as well as looking at Ubuntu (looking forward to see Fedora released soon). I think the question isn’t trying to marking down a hear but instead recognising that each year that comes along Linux and alternative operating systems step closer and closer to addressing the needs of end users.
Some end users can jump in today, some in 6 months, and others it might be in 2 or 3 years time. The difference between the commercial world and the opensource world – there is no mad dash to cram something out there to make a dollar. A slowly-slowly approach can be taken to ensure that decisions that are made aren’t going to come back and haunt users and developers.
This is way-way off topic but I’ve just had a look at the OpenSolaris pre-loaded Toshiba laptops – and it’ll be interesting to see what the open source world will look like in 1 1/2 to 2 years time when I look for new laptop.
We have been slowly but surely migrating away from our many FreeBSD servers to Linux boxes – vast majority on Ubuntu servers. Mainly because of KVM – or the lack of on FreeBSD. I am installing this Ubuntu release on my laptop right now. A couple of questions though:
1) How is Broadcom wifi support on Ubuntu? Works out of the box?
2) Is there anything similar to Dummynet on FreeBSD? We keep a couple of FreeBSD machines to do network impairment and characterization but are looking for something similar on Linux.
I’d go for Debian for servers then, if I were you.
We were looking at Debian but on some of the new serevrs Debian asked me for Broadcom GiGE card firmware. Ubuntu 9.04-RC Server detected and worked perfectly. Have not spent much time debugging the Debian server though.
I believe the superiority of Debian on server is mostly a myth that predates creation of Ubuntu. Debian had lots of stuff going for it at the time of Red Hat dominance (back when Red Hat was mostly an “enthusiast” distro, apart from timeless releases like 6.2), but these days, when you contrast it with Ubuntu LTS (few months after the release), I think the situation is quite different. My experience with debian Lenny did not indicate that it were in any sense “better done” than Ubuntu 8.04, but this was on desktop.
Well, depending on what kind of server I was running I wouldn’t use Linux at all. I prefer OpenBSD for most server tasks, or Solaris 10/ZFS in the case of a file server.
If he has to use KVM there is no way around Linux, However given what happens each time I upgrade or reinstall Ubuntu, I would install OpenBSD on any server that doesn’t use KVM.
Security considerations apart, each new Ubuntu update(And linux OS release in general) introduces a lot of features but destroys support for things that used to work. They re-fixed my gfx tablet but broke the webcam this time.
Probably the fix is trivial, but I will have to look into it and that sucks. OpenBSD doesn’t support as much hardware, but once it is in you can trust it will stay there until it is more than obsolete.
The broadcom wifi support is included in the default install, but you have to activate it and tell the system you want to use their firmware. Quickest way, at least with standard Ubuntu (don’t know about X/Kubuntu), go to:
System/Administration/Hardware Drivers
Click the Broadcom Wireless item, and click the activate button. You might have to reboot after doing this, it seems to depend on the specific Broadcom card in use.
Don’t bother with Linux on any kind of router or firewall-type box, especially if you’ve used IPFW and/or PF at all. Trying to do the same with iptables will make your eyes bleed.
No, you are just a troll.
Nope. I manage the network connections for ~70 school district sites. We use FreeBSD-based firewalls and routers everywhere we can, using IPFW and Dummynet. We also use Debian Linux on our diskless servers, which do double-duty as NAT boxes in the elementary schools. And, it makes my eyes bleed everytime I try to make even the slightest change to our iptables setups.
There’s no way to get a listing of *ALL* the rules in all the chains, tables, and what-not, in the order that they will be processed. It’s also not possible to use multiple separate IPs in a single rule, or multiple separate subnets in a single rule. It’s also difficult to write even simple rules in less than 80 characters. Getting logging to work (and be useful), or packet counters is not fun, either. There’s nothing as simple and easy to use as dummynet. And the networking commands (netstat, route, ifconfig, etc) are not as nice to use on Linux either.
iptables is a hack, and should not be used for any kind of serious firewalling or routing duties.
Edited 2009-04-24 15:10 UTC
Agreed… provided, of course, you don’t get an aneurism first from looking at iptables. Who in the world thought that syntax was a good idea? About the only thing worse than iptables was ipchains, which iptables replaced. You’d think they could have gotten it better the second time around.
For me, there’s only one choice when it comes to a firewall/router setup, OpenBSD with PF. Flexible, readible, and pretty well locked down by default.
Dummynet: there seem to be Dummynet-like features in the Linux kernel, but I haven’t had much luck using them. The Linux documentation I found all seemed out-of-date (kernel 2.4) and I haven’t put the effort into figuring out what to do with newer kernels/firewalls.
I’m downloading it at work now and can’t wait to get home to install.
But can someone who’s already installed this or who’s used the RC tell me if the NTFS-3G read/write driver is used for existing Windows partitions by default during installation?
Sudo apt-get install ntfs-config
Its a graphical front end for NTFS-3g and will autoconfigure your NTFS partition for read/write.
Wondering if any kde guys out there would recommend this as a good KDE4 distro to give a try. Been pretty disappointed with what I have tried so far, but heard good things about kde 4.2
KDE 4.2 sort of sucked on Intrepid (I installed it from whatever repos), but on Jaunty it seems to work great. Also, I’m loving the kwin effects.
This is on an nvidia card.
I would give Mandriva try. Great gui tools and a good integration of both kde and gnome. Although they do mix gtk with the kde, so if you’re a purist and prefer Qt/kde only, it might not be your favourite.
But in my mind, choosing a purist kde only policy, is something that makes kubuntu less usefull. If you want the smoothest desktop experience, you need to use the best tools, even if they’re not made with the ‘right’ widgets.
I think distros like Mandriva and OpenSuse have a more ‘get things done’ and ‘things just work’ focus, but that is not what everyone wants.
Mandriva 2009.1 will should be out in the end of the month. I’m running RC2 right now and it’s looking good
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.1_Development
If you want a good KDE4 distro try Arch. It requires some manual set up, but don’t let that scare you off. I used KDE 4.2 on Arch and didn’t have any problems. I eventually switched back to GNOME, not because of any problems with KDE4, I just didn’t like it as much as my GNOME environment.
Besides regular KDE4 packages there is a project that maintains a special Arch repository called KDEmod. It’s regular KDE, but repackaged into more modular packages.
There is an easy LiveCD-type GUI installer for Arch KDE4. You can get it (warning, Alpha version) here:
http://chakra-project.org/download-iso.html
If you are trying to install Arch KDEmod on a netbook using the USB image, then there are a couple of “gotchas” to avoid:
(1) Do no have your network connected during the install procedure, and
(2) Make sure to de-select the default option labelled as “Select the best mirror” when you see the screen where this is on.
Arch is a cutting edge rolling release distro. With KDEmod 4.2 it is very fast indeed (perhaps the fastest full-featured Linux desktop) but it can be a little unstable at times. YMMV.
That’s how Debian does it in Main. There are kdebase and kdepim etc. source packages, but individual debs for konqueror, okteta, kopete, juk, etc. I couldn’t imagine KDE without it (I always wondered why people moaned about having three text editors installed. Obv because they didn’t have modular packages to install) so it’s cool to hear of someone else doing the same thimg.
This is definetely a winner! It feels quite snappy on the desktop – much more than 8.10. For the 1st time I have the feeling it is on par with Debian proper in terms of speed. Good job!
Wonder if they managed to fix the completely borked Atheros wireless driver for the Acer One yet. Couple of other show stopping bugs on my desktop system that I was tracking but havent followed at all since then. Guess its time to follow up in a VM
Probably not.
I have an eee 900 and the native ath5k driver is still broken for me. Many claim that it’s fixed now, but I get much better performance from ndiswrapper (as in, the transmission w/ ath5k driver breaks randomly).
I had something worse; everything I downloaded turned out to be corrupted. At the end of the day I guess one will basically have to wait till Intel finally force intel wireless into netbooks.
Intel provide the best wireless experience bar none – on Linux, Windows, OpenSolaris or what have you. Given that the netbook main board is from Foxconn – there is almost zero chance of change in the future. Maybe Intel need to get into the motherboard business and rescue users from the deluge of crap wifi chipsets which OEM vendors seem to be hell bent on using.
Btw; I used to be an Atheros fan when I had my old MacBook (before it was nicked) but that was until I tried it under Linux. For me, a hardware vendor should either provide a driver or provide specifications so that a given operating system programmers can write a driver. A hardware company should not be using IP voodoo excuses to prop up a monopoly (Windows) – maybe the EU can chase after hardware companies who refuse to give hardware specifications freely (without NDA) rather than after Microsoft.
Yes, it is incredibly off topic but it does in a way relate back to poor hardware support and the failure of hardware companies to release specifications.
Edited 2009-04-24 07:24 UTC
But hasn’t Atheros come a long way, now providing open source Linux drivers?
Providing drivers that are broken and result in corrupted downloads is just as bad (if not worse) than no drivers at all. Just because they provide drivers shouldn’t mean that as a user I bend over and kiss their toes – their drivers are, in all due respects, crap quality. It is the old story, “if you can’t do a job right, don’t do it at all” – Atheros hasn’t been bothered fixing the problem and unfortunately Linux distributors and users suffer because of it.
Yes, but the drivers don’t seem to be there yet.
e.g. see here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/337311
I instaled the RC a couple days ago -I was impatient- and it is currently running on my Acer Aspire One with no problem whatsoever with the atheros wireless card working out-of-the-box without requiring any additional config after installation.
Battery life is slightly shorter than with Linpus lite (2:15 h vs 2:40 in Linpus) and you have to make an easy step to fix the fan working all the time, also the computer gets hotter than with linpus.
Look for “NOISE FAN CONTROL” in this website on how to load the acerhdf kernel module -very EASY-, don’t try to use the old acerfand hack because it will make your laptop hang:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne#Upgrade%20from%2…)%20to%20Intrepid%20Ibex%20(8.10)
Instructions are for 8.04 and 8.10 but worked for me on Jaunty.
In every other aspect it works and looks beautifully. Desktop integration and polish of this version is the best one I have seen with Gnome (I am more a KDE 3.5 user)
Edited 2009-04-23 22:43 UTC
I have just installed Ubuntu 9.04 in VirtualBox 2.2 (my host is Mac X 10.4). Surprisingly, 3D acceleration works. I can enjoy compiz effects (e.g. 3D cubes) in ubuntu on Virtual Box 2.2. 🙂
Is there any unofficial repos with mono 2.4 and monodevelop 2.0 ? The mono 2.0 is too old.
The official Arch repos include both mono 2.4 and monodevelop 2.0.
I have a Dell Vostro 400 with an ATI 2600 XT card and an analogue CRT (Philips 201B4, which can do all sorts of crazy resolutions/refresh rates). The beta, release candidate and final versions of Ubuntu 9.04 simply don’t like this combination when it comes to displaying 1280×1024 (24-bit) at a decent refresh rate (85Hz to avoid flicker).
Firstly, the “normal” graphical installer just comes up with a blank screen, so I can’t use that. The “safe graphics mode” chops off the last 200 horizontal pixels so I can’t see the OK/Cancel buttons during installation, so that’s out too. I can’t use the normal desktop CD because it bizarrely doesn’t come with a text-mode installer, so I used the DVD (I could have used the alternate install CD, but I had the bandwidth 🙂 ).
The text mode installer is much better than the graphical one – it actually asks a few more useful questions, particularly at the end when you can add OpenSSH server (though it really should include the NTP server at least as an option – it’s stupid that after all these years, Ubuntu still doesn’t install ntpd by default…surely people want their desktops to have the right time?).
Anyway, the text installer works, but – yep – the first boot into the desktop left me with a blank screen. Luckily, I had other partitions with example xorg.conf files that work (Fedora to the rescue), but trying out the open source “radeon” driver wouldn’t let me set the refresh rate above 60Hz and even trying the proprietary fglrx driver wouldn’t go above 60Hz either (Fedora’s always been happy with 85Hz). 60Hz sadly gives me a blinding headache with my CRT monitor, so for the moment, I’m afraid Ubuntu 9.04 is a no-go. Note that 8.04 and 8.10 were happy to go to 85Hz on exactly the same setup, so this is quite a poor regression.
Why are you running a 5:4 AR on what’s presumably a 4:3 CRT? I don’t know if it’ll be at all related to your refresh rate woes but have you tried 1280×960? 1600×1200 @ 85hz is OK for me.
[subjective opinion] all technical progress aside …. they definitely should hire an art-team at canonical. It is still very brown and very dull to my eyes and the theme still doesn’t show any progress either (and even though i like the new centralised message popup thingy it certainly does not fit well with the brownness of the rest of the theme).
[/subjective opinion]
too bad they missed 2.6.29 this time around. Fortunately Fedora11 will come around in a month or so.
stefan
Installed it on my laptop, wifi works which is great. But suspend doesn’t work.
Yay:
* Kpackagekit. Yes! No more crappy adept.
* Intel driver. I can actually play Kento Cho’s games now.
* qtcurve. It’s nice to have the few gtk apps I use blend in well in Oxygen.
Nay:
* Networkmanager plasmoid is still pretty much useless.
* Intel driver. Need to fiddle with xorg.conf to get things working, EXA performance is not as good as it should be and UXA is unstable for me (everything dies if I log out)
* Dolphin does not see mounted truecrypt volumes as, well, volumes.
Also, the Networkmanager plasmoid icons for Mobile Broadband is godawful.
when you remove mono and monoprograms
Do you have any technical arguments to back that up, or is it a purely political statement?
i tried f-spot and tomboy and didn’t like them at all
f-spot ignores me and downloads pictures from my mobile phone when i don’t want to
tomboy is slow and crash on me
Edited 2009-04-26 11:08 UTC
I’ve yet to install the release. I was reading the Ubuntu forum thread on installations and upgrades, though.
The problems outweigh the positive upgrades and clean installations. I’d compare it to previous releases, but I can’t find the threads.
It’s interesting to me that the release installations don’t seem to be better than the last three. I would normally expect that they would become more familiar with the problems and be able to fix them.
On a side note, I was thinking about all those who’d like Apple to put Mac OS X out there for anyone to use. If the developers familiar with thousands of configurations of x86 hardware can’t do a seamless release, how would Apple?
I think its about getting some perspective. I’m not trying to defend Ubuntu as the same may be true for many operating systems:
It would seem logical that more people would use a support forum to get issues resolved than make threads to report each time something goes well.
Here is a good place to start if you want to lookup problems that others are having: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty
I think this is an ongoing battle for most operating systems that IMHO can only be fixed using open source drivers or releasing documentation that would allow others to write drivers.
The latter would be cheaper for manufactures as the community would do a lot of the work. And the former would allow distributions (Including Windows) submit patches if they wanted.
Thanks!
Well, I’ve been participating in these Ubuntu-sponsored threads for releases since 7.04 and people seem to be voting, even if they don’t comment.
I’m just thankful that my installation problems have been lighter than some but then, I don’t customise much.
Kubuntu looks pretty good, but the most fundamental took in the distribution is broken: Kpackagekit cannot properly install software when it requires upgrades or removals, which is pretty often.
How could they in good conscience release this? Particularly, when it’s a known issue according to their download page and one that they have no intention of fixing for this release according to the bug report’s page.
http://www.kubuntu.org/news/9.04-release (scroll down to known issues)
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/packagekit/+bug/342671
So much for linux for human beings. Anybody that tries Kubuntu will come away with the impression that software installation in Linux is broken.
I have no problem using aptitude from the command line, but I was hoping I could pass this CD around to friends, because their KDE 4.2 implementation looks good.
If you are ok installing software from the command line, give it a go.
If not, wait for Mandriva which should be right around the corner or the next Opensuse.
Edited 2009-04-26 17:35 UTC
I’ve been using Kubuntu since beta, can’t say that I’ve had any problems at all. I’ve added repositories, google, codecs, games and apps, so far, no problems with kpackagekit.
That being said, I installed synaptic, it still works fine too, but I only used it for a couple things to check it out. But the problem is something that should definitely be fixed before next release. Someone “new” shouldn’t have to worry about package installing and updating not working out of the box.
I don’t know what you think of Fedora, but hopefully their next release is good too.
Or you could just use adept, which is available in the top-level Applications menu.
So, is this going to work with my intel graphics card?
andy@andy-laptop:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82830 830 Chipset Host Bridge (rev 04)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82830 CGC [Chipset Graphics Controller] (rev 04)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82830 CGC [Chipset Graphics Controller]
I heard bad things about 8.10 for this laptop (ibm R31), and I’d sooner stick with 8.04 than upgrade to something that doesn’t entirely support my hardware.
Regressions hurt. They hurt alot.
Let’s not have anymore unless we just can’t help it.
I downloaded and installed kubuntu. It is still the same old POS that it has always been. Has their ever been a worse KDE based distro? No sound, no nvidia support or resolution detection, adept was broken so I couldn’t use it to add software, dragon wouldn’t play any media at all. It is obvious that Ubuntu don’t want to support KDE at all. I’m dowloading ubuntu 9.04 now.