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Looking Forward, Ubuntu Linux 6.06 383

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the speculative-reviews dept.
SilentBob4 writes to tell us that Mad Penguin has an interesting look at the upcoming version of Ubuntu. From the article: "All in all, Ubuntu 6.06 is gearing up to be quite an impressive release. Granted, I saw some bugs during my stay on the distribution, but can I really complain? It's not a full release, so it deserves some breathing room. Considering some of the horribly authored software I've looked at over the years, I feel that Ubuntu in pre-release form is more stable than other distros when they reach final release status. It's not quite in the league of Slackware and Red Hat/Fedora in that respect yet, but it's surely getting there in a hurry. As I said before, it smoked Fedora Core 5 performance-wise, so in that department it's solidly ahead."
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Looking Forward, Ubuntu Linux 6.06 More

Looking Forward, Ubuntu Linux 6.06

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  • *Really* Mad Penguin (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17, 2006 @09:46PM (#15146209)
    digged [digg.com] and slashdotted on the same day.
    • Wouldn't 'dugg' be a more appropriate word?

  • Features - GCC 4? (Score:5, Informative)

    by SillySnake ( 727102 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @09:55PM (#15146244)
    Features

            * Linux kernel 2.6.15-18 PREEMPT
            * X.org 7.0
            * gcc 4.0.3/glibc 2.3.6
            * GNOME 2.13.94
            * Firefox 1.5.0.1 web browser
            * Evolution 2.5.92 email/groupware client
            * OpenOffice 2.0.2 productivity suite
            * Gaim 1.5.0 instant messenger
            * Gimp 2.2.10 image editor

    I haven't been keeping up with the 4.0 branch of GCC, but is 4.0.3 really stable enough for the average home user?

    • Re:Features - GCC 4? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ivan kk ( 917820 )
      Since when does the average home user need to compile anything?

    • Re:Features - GCC 4? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bronster ( 13157 ) <slashdot@brong.net> on Monday April 17, 2006 @10:03PM (#15146281) Homepage
      Ubuntu Breezy (5.10) was compiled almost exclusively on gcc-4.0 (with the notable, and annoying, exception of the kernel)

      It's really been very stable - I've had no trouble compiling quite a bit of C and C++ software with gcc-4.0 on both Breezy and Dapper (6.04^H6).

    • Re:Features - GCC 4? (Score:2, Informative)

      by owlman17 ( 871857 )
      For the average home user, or the weekend coder even, who won't need to recompile glibc, or other shared libraries, the gcc4 branch is ok.

    • Re:Features - GCC 4? (Score:5, Informative)

      by zerocool^ ( 112121 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @11:16PM (#15146568) Homepage Journal
      -bash-3.00$ yum info gcc
      Repository updates-released is listed more than once in the configuration
      Repository base is listed more than once in the configuration
      Setting up repositories
      Reading repository metadata in from local files
      Installed Packages
      Name : gcc
      Arch : i386
      Version: 4.0.2
      Release: 8.fc4
      Size : 5.1 M
      Repo : installed
      Summary: The GNU cc and gcc C compilers.
       
      Description:
        The gcc package includes the cc and gcc GNU compilers for compiling C
      code.
       
      -bash-3.00$
      That's from Fedora Core 4. It's a year old now...
    • I'm running gcc4 on the current unbuntu stable. If you really need the older versions for compatibility reasons, they're also available. For example, nachOS by default doesn't compile on gcc4 (or gcc3.4), but 3.3 is available for my shitty needs.
    • Since when is the "average" user compiling with gcc and why do they care? The "average" Ubuntu user wants to browse the web, read email, write office documents. If those application have been tested and work fine, why should they care if it is gcc 3.x.x or gcc 99.x.x. As a developer you can probably figure out a way to get the latest/or alternatively older more stable version of gcc if you want.

  • Ubuntu's There (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Quirk ( 36086 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @09:57PM (#15146253) Homepage Journal
    I tried a number of Linux installs on a new athlon/Asus A8v box I built. I installed FC4 and a few others but the slickest install was Ubuntu 5.10. Ubuntu was also the most stable overall. Although I'm now playing around with Openbsd on said box, Ubuntu will be installed on the Athlon box I'm now building.

    "I feel that Ubuntu in pre-release form is more stable than other distros when they reach final release status. It's not quite in the league of Slackware and Red Hat/Fedora in that respect yet, but it's surely getting there in a hurry."

    Isn't FC intended as a test distro for new Red Hat stuff? I'm not a seasoned FC user but I've always thought FC releases were not first and foremost stable so much as innovative.

    • Isn't FC intended as a test distro for new Red Hat stuff? I'm not a seasoned FC user but I've always thought FC releases were not first and foremost stable so much as innovative.

      The article is about Ubuntu 6.06, which is still in alpha. I'm using it right now on my home PC, and its alpha status shows at times: every once in a while, they'll release an update that'll suddenly break a program. You probably installed Ubuntu 5.10, which like RHEL is "stable" in the sense that they rarely release updates th

    • Re:Ubuntu's There (Score:4, Insightful)

      by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Monday April 17, 2006 @10:32PM (#15146404) Homepage
      Fedora isn't meant to be a "test version" for RedHat so much as the "community driven" source from which RedHat can build an "enterprise" product.

      What's the difference? The people making Fedora intend for it to be stable. It's just driven more by the needs/desires of a community of users. RedHat can then cherry-pick the changes that they like to build a standardized business product.

    • I tried a number of Linux installs on a new athlon/Asus A8v box I built. I installed FC4 and a few others but the slickest install was Ubuntu 5.10.

      For the life of me I cannot understand why people rave about Ubuntu's installation procedure. The vast majority of it is no different to any other distro's text-based install and the disk partitioning section is, IMHO, relatively very difficult, unintuitive and confusing.

      • For the life of me I cannot understand why people rave about Ubuntu's installation procedure.

        It installs with very reasonable default settings and exactly one of every type of program that most desktop users are used to having. One can get the default installation by doing little more than saying "OK" at 3 or 4 installation dialogues.

        The vast majority of it is no different to any other distro's text-based install and the disk partitioning section is, IMHO, relatively very difficult, unintuitive and confusi
        • I wouldn't ask my grandma to set up a dual-booting system with any other two OS's, as it's simply beyond her.
          I'll betcha that she can do a Mac OS X/Windows XP dual boot config - assuming she can RTFM [apple.com] - it's only 14 pages long, and written in newbie terms.
        • "It installs with very reasonable default settings and exactly one of every type of program that most desktop users are used to having." I think most desktop users are used to having something to play mp3s with (not to mention DVDs).

    • Re:Ubuntu's There (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JungleBoy ( 7578 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2006 @01:04AM (#15146879)
      FC is a great distro, Ubuntu (and Gentoo) users like to lay on the FUD about it being a 'test' distro. Even though it's an upstream distro from RHEL, it's still great. I run several FC3 and FC4 production servers. The Fedora Legacy project makes this nice and easy, they support all the way back to RH7.3 if that's your thing.

      I am rather disapointed with Ubuntu's (Breezy Badger) install options. The only network install option appears to be a PXE boot network install. I've fallen in love with FC/RHEL Network/Kickstart installs. I even made a custom ISO that will kickstart (or manually) install FC4, FC5, RHEL3, & RHEL4 for both i386 and x86_64 over the network (and it runs memtest of course). I'm working on a multi distro kickstart USB stick as well, but I don't have nearly enough hardware that boots off of USB.

  • My personal experience (Score:3, Insightful)

    by agendi ( 684385 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @10:03PM (#15146282)
    On the long weekend I spent some time testing it and was rather impressed. As a fairly solid user of the previous two versions I can testify that the speed improvements were very obvious in practical ways (boot times in particular were alot faster). I tested it on a computer that was two years older than my current desktop (running breezy) and even with the older hardware it was feeling just as snappy. I haven't run any compiling tests or done any serious poking around improvements in networking etc but I can say that I noticed the difference in general desktop related usage.

    Thanks (u|k|x|edu)buntu devs.

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Ubuntu vs. FC5 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Procyon101 ( 61366 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @10:50PM (#15146481) Journal
      Why is speed of a distro even an issue?? Turn off the crap you don't want if you want to go faster. You aren't going to get significant speed gains by switching distros. If you don't want to lose feature set, the MOST you can expect to gain by switching distros while retaining your current feature set is maybe 5%.

      Compile your kernel.. you will get a bigger speed gain here by filtering out what you don't need and it's a WHOLE lot easier than switching distros. If you REALLY want the last 5-10% then compile and strip EVERYTHING yourself custom for YOUR processor. No distro is going to do that for you because they need to remain generic so that they run on "x86" instead of "Dual Proc Pentium 3 Coppermines only". If you want to do that, then get Gentoo, which exactly why Gentoo exists. Switching from one generic binary distro to another is just changing a few details about how certain peices of the OS fit together and what is on or off by default and has nothing to do with speed.

      • Re:Ubuntu vs. FC5 (Score:3, Insightful)

        by zbyte64 ( 720193 )

        Your comment ommits the fact that some people don't want to invest allot of time to see performance benefits. Yes you can compile everything, but most people don't want to sit around for that. Don't get me wrong, I like gentoo as much as the next ricer, but I will admit the strengths of ubuntu/debian. And you as a gentoor (new word?) should appreciate not having to disable extra stuff, but rather enable the bloatware.

    • Re:Ubuntu vs. FC5 (Score:3, Insightful)

      by unoengborg ( 209251 )
      FC5 is very snappy indeed. It's the most responsive Gnome desktop I have used so far. Much better than Ubuntu 5.04. If the article is right, and the new Ubuntu really smokes FC5 with respect to speed, I will be impressed. This really looks good for Linux.

      Usability is getting better and better for each new release of Gnome.
      It is now at a state where it leaves Windows XP in the dust, and is seriously starting to get to the same levels of usability as MacOS-X.

      Vista will need to be very good to beat this, or pe

  • But is it fixed? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Prien715 ( 251944 ) <agnosticpope@@@gmail...com> on Monday April 17, 2006 @10:11PM (#15146318) Journal
    I am a developer on the Linux platform and have been using linux since 1999. About a week ago, I was ready to install a linux distro since my old HD bit the dust (on my new custom-built Asus SLI AMD64 box). After hearing all the press about Ubuntu, I burned a copy and tried it. I found the install slightly painful.

    Installation:
    On my first install, I tried partitioning a 300 GB Fat32 partition at the end of the drive for sharing cross-OS stuff (mp3s, etc. I'd tried a windows Ext2 driver previously, but it eventually corrupted the partition and I lost all my recent mp3s) and 2 GB swap and the rest for the OS. Ubuntu absolutely failed to format the one partition Fat32, gave me an error and choked. OK. How tbout ext2? Well, that choked too. Not caring about that partition, I decided to just bypass the step manually and have it copy the OS. I can always format the partition manually. It choked setting up apt (for reasons I don't understand). I decided that, despite manually partitioning every linux distro I've ever used, I'd let ubuntu choose for me. This seemed to "work".

    Configuration:
    The first thing any computer user wants to do is get on the internet. I've got a static IP where I live so I decided to set up the networking. Unfortunately, without a working hostname, there's literally no way to do this. On bootup, gnome suggested I manually edit my /etc/hosts file to include my hostname. After doing this, gnome allowed me to configure my network. (Why can't the installer do this?)

    On the positive side all of my devices (audio/video) were configured correctly but on the downside, there doesn't seem to be any good way of upgrading packages (Firefox to 1.5 or my NVidia drivers) when the current version isn't in the repository (I'm probably missing something).

    I'm hoping with the new release, Ubuntu can fix some of these usability issues while keeping their slick package management.
    • You know, I've run in to similar problems with the two previous versions of ubuntu when it comes to hard drive partitioning/formatting during the install.

      It seems the best way to fix it is to use something like boot&nuke, completely wipe the drive, and then start from scratch. Seems odd, but it fixed the problem for me.
    • The first thing any computer user wants to do is get on the internet. I've got a static IP where I live so I decided to set up the networking. Unfortunately, without a working hostname, there's literally no way to do this. On bootup, gnome suggested I manually edit my /etc/hosts file to include my hostname. After doing this, gnome allowed me to configure my network. (Why can't the installer do this?)

      I'm pretty sure the installer already did this... Yeah, right here, on this install guide [mrbass.org] it shows on the 5 [mrbass.org]

    • Re:But is it fixed? (Score:3, Informative)

      by colmore ( 56499 )
      1) Fat32 doesn't support partitions above a certain size. However, the installer should catch that.

      2) reconfigure /etc/apt/sources.list
  • I've been using Ubuntu Dapper Drake (Ubuntu 6.06) Alpha 5 for about a month or so, and am very impressed with it. Of course, one can't expect the stability of a stabe release from an alpha, but ever since I installed it, I've been very surprised as to how stable it is for an alpha. This makes me look forward to the stable release even more -- if the alpha's like this... the stable release will be awesome! The best thing I like about Ubuntu (especially in Dapper) is its hardware support. I have hardware (s

  • Very happy with Ubuntu 5.10 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MWales ( 686969 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @10:46PM (#15146466)
    I'm eager to try out the new Ubuntu when it comes out. Will we be able to upgrade to 6, or will we need to do a complete reinstall? I used to have FC4 x86_64 on my system, and have since then put Ubuntu on it. I think I like Ubuntu more. I was dissapointed/annoyed that so much of the stuff built into FC were missing in Ubuntu, but I've pretty much added back everything I wanted (using synaptic, which is best package manager I've played with yet). The big thing I was missing was the stuff to compile stuff by hand, but it looks like after RTFA, that will be easy to fix (apt-get install build-essentials). I also wish the Ubuntu repository was a little more up to date, because I've had to install some stuff by hand. But the big pros have been the great package manager. Wine, Firefox, and whatnot work good in my chroot, better than I got them to work in FC4. X was leaking memory on my system in FC4, but with Ubuntu it doesn't. Overall, I liked both alot, but I think I like Ubuntu a little bit better.

    • Re:Very happy with Ubuntu 5.10 (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mad_Rain ( 674268 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @11:28PM (#15146620) Journal
      I'm eager to try out the new Ubuntu when it comes out. Will we be able to upgrade to 6, or will we need to do a complete reinstall?

      You know that wonderful "apt-get" program you like so much in Ubuntu?

      apt-get has you covered:

      1. Back up your "/etc/apt/sources.list" file. 2. Edit it with your text-editor of choice, changing all the spots where it says "breezy" to "dapper". 3. Update by typing "sudo apt-get update" and 4. upgrade by typing "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade". Wait for downloads, and all should be good. 4 steps (5 if you count the waiting) to the upgrade process.
      • It's easier than that now. If you have the breezy-updates repository enabled (which it should already be, unless you installed Ubuntu from a development version). From the changelog of update-manager, which performs similar functions to the Windows Update applet in the system tray:

        update-manager (0.42.2ubuntu12~breezy1) breezy-updates; urgency=low

        * backported to breezy
        * this update allows upgrades to the dapper version of ubuntu

        -- Michael Vogt <michael.vogt@ubuntu.com> Mon, 27 Mar 2006 16:45:4

  • If they release it on the first Tuesday, the ISO will be hundreds of millions of binary numbers of the beast. With "Ubuntu" meaning "humanity", it will be the "number of a man", as crazy John the Revelator first announced the vaporware in the cold, damp Greek cave two millennia ago.

  • Someone call the analogy police (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eviltypeguy ( 521224 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @11:25PM (#15146605)
    The author of this "review" uses some of the worst analogies I have ever seen. Flee in terror after reading the following example:

    Oh, I need to cover one more thing before I close. You need to know that before you do anything remotely close to building software packages, be wary that by default Ubuntu comes with nothing close to anything you'll need to do any form of compiling on the system. I mean, come on, shouldn't this be one of the more important things to include? Granted, the idea is to move away from hand compiling all of our applications, but let's not jump the gun here. We're not quite there yet. There's nothing worse than a bad case of premature ejaculation , and that's right where we are if we're expecting everything to work out of the box with prebuilt packages.

    You may now proceed to mock my spelling and grammar in response. Nonetheless, I think that this article is a prime example of "juvenile journalism."

  • I like it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by deadgoon42 ( 309575 ) * on Monday April 17, 2006 @11:42PM (#15146669) Journal
    I installed the Dapper version of Kubuntu on my lappy yesterday. The install was quick and it automagically detected almost all my hardware. The only issue was with the wireless network. It would not work during the install, but it did detect my card and I was able to manually start the network after installation with a few commands. I still prefer KDE to Gnome, but I think I'll give Gnome another try once Dapper comes out. Like an idiot I failed to create a /home partition on my current install, so when Dapper is released, I'll just do a fresh install and try out Gnome. I use Kubuntu as my every day desktop. Windows partition was deleted yesterday. :)
    • It really isn't nessecary to reformat, I don't think, although it could be instructive for you to walk through the install process again. Just install ubunutu-desktop and you've installed ubuntu. Removing KDE / kubuntu is a bit more tricky, since apt-get doesn't keep track of things in quite the right manner to detect orphaned packages automatically. A fairly reliable way is to remove kdelibs -- if you want some of the neater kde apps like k3b, you can get them back later, but this should catch a lot of the
      • Actually, I started out with Ubuntu and installed the kubuntu-desktop package. So right now I get the best of both worlds. KDE just works better for me, although I know that is pretty subjective. It has better helper applications and little dock applets than Gnome. KDE also seems more stable, with a lot less weirdness. Sometimes Gnome just does random things for no reason (like docking my apps, at random, to the top of the screen instead of the the docking area). KDE also looks more polished. However,

  • Ubuntu (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Council ( 514577 ) <rmunroe@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Monday April 17, 2006 @11:55PM (#15146709) Homepage
    My boss spent two months getting a set of robotics cameras to work with Mandrake 10, recompiling a bunch of custom kernels, getting various gurus in, working every day from january through march, just to get the camera data read properly by the libraries and the libraries working properly with the system.

    We were talking about distros, and I mentioned that he might want to check out Ubuntu.

    An hour or two later I get this incredibly emotional call from him. He had installed Ubuntu on the robot, one-click-built the camera packages, compiled the vision libraries, and it worked. 30 minutes of system install plus literally 10 minutes of compiling and he had just done what took him two months on another distro. He is still in shock over this.

    That having been said, I'm running Dapper as of yesterday, and I had to do crazy tricks to get it to actually print to my standard, detected printer.

  • Drivers for E-machines (Score:2, Interesting)

    by emooney ( 968414 )
    I bought an emachine specifically for Ubuntu to play around with and get to know the OS. I couldn't get the Breezy 5.10 or the 6.X beta to recognize the onboard NIC, video or onboard audio. I want to get to know the OS. I don't want to have to know how to install or create a driver at this point. Maybe after I get my feet wet with the OS. I returned the emachine and put Ubuntu on the back burner. From what I was told, there just aren't any drivers written for alot of onboard components yet. =(

  • Screen resolution could use some help. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jbn-o ( 555068 ) <mail@digitalcitizen.info> on Tuesday April 18, 2006 @12:15AM (#15146766) Homepage
    Adjusting the screen resolution is one problem I've consistently seen with Ubuntu GNU/Linux.

    This review is too kind on the matter for the audience I talk to; suggesting that novices use "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" and answer questions about their hardware is not something I'd recommend to novices. While other parts of Ubuntu GNU/Linux shine for the novice, this is not one of them. Fedora Core GNU/Linux has always been better at letting me use the GNOME screen resolution adjuster (and setting the default to the highest screen resolution at the highest refresh rate so I don't often have to adjust the screen resolution at all) and getting the desired results.

    I hope Ubuntu's chosen resolution picks the native resolution for LCD screens. I mostly work with users who have older computers and CRTs but are planning to switch to LCDs real soon now.

  • It's quite obvious that ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by chris_sawtell ( 10326 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2006 @12:55AM (#15146856) Journal
    ... the Ubuntu designers have never changed a baby's nappy/diaper!!!

    It's time to change that absolutely ghastly default colour scheme.

    Otherwise Ubuntu is beautiful.



  • Ubuntu 5.10 made a change to (I think) the hotplug system or something and ditched or moved to something called "udev" (iirc)
    It totally broke ipw2200 WPA support and the ability to monitor packets (war driving with kismet)

    Why do they need to cock about with this kind of stuff without maintaining some kind of backwards compatibility or way of ensuring it works "out of the box"
    The ipw2200 chipset is quite old now as is my Dell 8600 laptop (18 month old tech, maybe more)

    Disapointing.

  • What still bugs me about Linux (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Tuesday April 18, 2006 @07:06AM (#15147610)
    I've been a long time Linux user (Debian) and it still is my favourite OS on custom built PCs. But what still bugs me about it - especially after using OS X for almost two years now - is that you need to be a computer expert to get it running. I know you have to be the same when installing Windows from scratch, but I've stopped taking Windows as the bar like 6 years ago.

    I recently did an update on my debian box and again the german keyboard is gone and I've got wrong (english) characters everywhere. There goes half and hour of research and fixing again. When I go about and reinstall it (or Ubuntu or something else) I better be fully aware of all my hardware and it's chipsets or else I will have serious trouble getting Linux to work. When you run Linux you usually know your HW inside out but it's been nearly 3 years ago since I last did some larger setup and config. I write my HW specs on small stickers that I put everywhere on my cards and MB but thats quite a prospect - opening your box so you can prep for a fresh Linux install that will take 20hrs.+ before everything is where it was before.

    Obviously I'm getting old and gotta get real work done rather than fiddling with crummy x86 architectures, but admit it, I've got a point, no? Remember the C64? Unpack, plugin, works. That's how modern computers should work.

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