Ubuntu 6.10 is Out

cloudmaster writes "Apparently they were watching me to see when I downloaded the 6.10-rc release isos, as I did that last night, and the full release happened this morning. :) Neat stuff, including Firefox 2.0, Gnome 2.16, myth 0.20, faster booting thanks to upstart (sort of a replacement for init, among others), etc. The announcement and download pages are up. I've got *my* torrent running..."

Easy upgrade from Dapper

[fracai]

gksudo "update-manager -c"

Re:Easy upgrade from Dapper

[fracai]

using apt-get is possible as well, but more involved
http://www.debianadmin.com/upgrade-ubuntu-dapper-t o-ubuntu-edgy-eft.html [debianadmin.com]
http://duggmirror.com/linux_unix/How_to_Upgrade_Ub untu_dapper_to_Edgy_Eft_Today_Released_With_screen shots/ [duggmirror.com]

Re:Can I

[Rik Sweeney]

Can I now dist-upgrade my Ubuntu Dapper to Edgy?

I think so, I was going to do (on the command line)

sudo sed -e 's/\sdapper/ edgy/g' -i /etc/apt/sources.list

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

* Go to bed / work *

Which will update my sources list, update the repository and then upgrade. At least, that's what I think it'll do. If anyone has any corrections then let us know.

Ubuntu Do What Debian [C/W]ouldn't...

[vain gloria]

I say, here's fun! Official word from Mozilla [typepad.com] on why Ubuntu shipped with Firefox branded Firefox, rather than Iceweasel.

Plaudits to the Ubuntu guys for getting this release out so quickly. Wonder if I should stick with 6.06 and its LTS or upgrade?

Re:Can I

[bodger_uk]

You need to run a second dist-upgrade to update the new usplash. Other than that you should be ok.

Re:Can I

[Klaidas]

The safest thing is not to use a computer :)
Clean install is good if you just play/mess/etc with it, but if you have some nicely configured system you might better want to upgrade it.

I hope the S3 video driver works this time

[FedeTXF]

There's a bug since 6.06 in the S3 driver that comes from xserver-xorg 7.0
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/xserv er-xorg-video-s3/+bug/33504 [launchpad.net]

I hope the patch works this time.

Shipit change

[cloudkiller]

I was kind of disappointed that the Shipit process has changed. According to the site you can only get free Ubuntu CDs of 6.06. If you want 6.10, you will have to pay for them. I guess the gravy train has to run out of gravy eventually. Regardless, I still can't wait for the torrent of 6.10 alt install to finish.

Re:Can I

[grazzy]

Also the documentation recommends running sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Thats because if the first command fails you shouldnt run the second for whatever reason.

Ubuntu is the next best thing since sliced bread, and everyone should atleast try it out. I upgraded my 5.10 (no idea how I managed to install that) the other day to 6.06 this way - it went without a hickup. I love ubuntu :P

Re:Easy upgrade from Dapper

[bodger_uk]

Also available is kubuntu (for those that like their desktop KDE.

Links to the CDs / Torrents here:
http://www.kubuntu.org/download.php [kubuntu.org]

Automatic update procedure is as follows:
      1.In Konqueror go to /etc/apt, right click on sources.list and choose Actions -> Edit as Root
      2.Change all instances of dapper to edgy
      3.Launch a console with K-Menu -> System -> Konsole
      4.In the console run: sudo apt-get update
      5.In the console run: sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and follow the prompts to upgrade
      6.In the console run: sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop python-qt3 python-kde3 ubuntu-minimal and follow the prompts to install
      7.Reboot your computer

Cry me a river

[3dWarlord]

Apparently they were watching me to see when I downloaded the 6.10-rc release isos, as I did that last night, and the full release happened this morning.

The release schedule [ubuntu.com] has been known for a very long time...

With Strigi!

[oever]

The universe now contains the desktop search with the fastest file-indexer: Strigi [sf.net]! This is a huge improvement over Beagle in terms of resource usage and with the added ability to search for files no matter how deeply nested in packages, archives or mail, it's clearly the best file searching tool for Linux.

Re:Upstart faster how?...

[sarathmenon]

It still seems to be a serialised startup process, and the documentation does not make it clear how to specify startup dependencies ("IP before NTP", or "spamd before sendmail"), so there is no implied optimisation behind-the-scenes by using parallel startup.

Check gentoo's startup scripts and their structure - they feature a lot of cool modifications like soft boot levels, and an exhaustive dependency structure. I don't know why other vendors aren't adopting it, but its worth taking a look and there is nothing gentoo specific in the whole structure. (I will probably be modded troll for this.)

Re:Easy upgrade from Dapper

[Fweeky]

If update-manager -c doesn't offer it, try update-manager -dc

Re:Can I

[Anonymous Coward]

I updated Kubuntu from 6.06 yesterday (as detailed in the RC press release) and after rebooting the system stop working (frozen at the end of the boot process).
Should it happen to you, I did this:

1. reset
2. hit ESC when prompted at boot
3. select safe mode from the menu
4. run "startx" on the commnad prompt. KDE should start.
5. Update the system with Adept (system > package manager).
6. reboot.

Everything is fine now.

Et tu, Kubuntu?

[CheeseTroll]

Kubuntu 6.10 has also been released. New features + installation/upgrade instructions are here: http://kubuntu.org/announcements/6.10-release.php [kubuntu.org]

Re:So, they replaced init.

[beezly]

It doesn't take much to find out via the ubuntu wiki - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReplacementInit [ubuntu.com] has lots of information on the whole implementation.

With regards to launchd, that page says;

The four candidates were Solaris SMF, Apple's launchd, the LSB initserv/chkconfig tools and initNG.

The first two of these suffer from inescapable licence problems, which is relatively unfortunate as both have features that are somewhat appealing though neither quite fix our problems. Having whichever system we use being adopted as a Linux-wide standard would not be possible if we chose either of these two systems.

and also from discussion further down the page;

NabLa: [WWW] Apple's launchd has been [WWW] released recently under the Apache license. Would that resolve those "inescapable licence problems"? Looks like a very interesting possibility now.

• ScottJamesRemnant: it still doesn't meet our requirements, so would be only a base for our own work. We've already implemented enough that it'd be a backwards step to start again based on launchd. Also the new launchd licence may not be GPL compatible, so it would still not be ideal

• jec : I think that the licence (apache 2.0) is GPL compatible. But if work is already advanced on your own solution, then great! Just hope that Redhat/SuSE/Debian will adopt it...

• ThomMay: it's not - [WWW] the FSF mark it as incompatible.

init dependencies...

[porkchop_d_clown]

It seems to me that init scripts should state what other services they depend on, then some other program sorts out the optimum (and correct) order to start them in.

That's one of the main features of launchd.

Re:Can I

[kripkenstein]

I ask this seriously: what OSes have you been using that makes you think a clean install is the only "safe" upgrade? I've never done a reinstall-upgrade on a Debian or FreeBSD box, for example. Not once.

Well, you often hear people talking about odd problems after upgrading, on the ubuntu forums for example. A clean install fixes things. It's very hard to pin down the relevant issue in such cases, and they seem rare. But still, I prefer to clean-install Ubuntu (as I will do later today for Edgy).

Re:Easy upgrade from 6.06?

[mbrubeck]

Here are the official upgrade instructions [ubuntu.com]:

If you want to upgrade from 6.06 LTS to 6.10, run the following command (either via ALT-F2 or a terminal):

gksu "update-manager -c"

The -c switch tells it to look for upgrades at all. By default the 6.06 LTS release will not offer that automatically because of its long support cycle and high stability.

If you have a working network connection, it should then inform you about a new release and offer to upgrade your system.

Re:No realtime 2.6.18 kernel yet

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Realtime support should make things better latency wise with audio. Lots of audio specific distros out there will go away once this is mainstreamed.

Re:Shipit change

[TheStonepedo]

The process has not changed. Dapper, 6.06, is marked LTS for long term support. It has 3 years of support for the desktop flavor and 5 for the server, according to Canonical's website. Think of Edgy as a testing distribution; it has all of the new gizmos and doodads but will only be around for 6 months. It would not be practical to ship CDs of 6.10 if they will be obsolete long before support ends for the stable 6.06 version.

I just downgraded to ubuntu 6.04.1

[Billly Gates]

Its not ready yet. I have summarized my experience here 2 days ago. [slashdot.org]

Initramfs has been updated several times a day and reports of usb drives double mounting, not mounting, and randomly unmounting are quite huge, many wifi cards no longer work, multiple midi files can crash xmms, firefox 2.0 randomly crashes, and other issues means its not ready yet in my book.

Also in my journal I mentioned gpart crashed during a resizing of my ntfs partition. That was quite scary but I did not lose anything. According to launchpad it has not been fixed yet so Windows users beware.

Ubuntu is my favorite and one of the most stable distro's out there. However I highly advise ubuntu users to wait a few weeks before upgrading to this version.

Re:Upstart faster how?...

[Anonymous Coward]

It still seems to be a serialised startup process, and the documentation does not make it clear how to specify startup dependencies ("IP before NTP", or "spamd before sendmail")

From the documentation, it looks like you can do exactly this, by specifying that spamd be started when and before sendmail is started. You can also have sendmail start whenever spamd has finished starting. It looks to give you the ability to inject dependencies in either direction. Example: If sendmail is already installed and configured to start at system boot, the spamd installer just needs to add "start on sendmail/start" to it's own startup script, and upstart will call it before calling sendmail's startup script. Or you can go the other direction, and have sendmail's script use "start on spamd/started" to run sendmail's startup script after spamd's startup script finishes running.

However, the most useful aspect seems to be the fact that it can process events at any time, not just startup/shutdown. Such as starting an iPod sync daemon only when an iPod is connected, and stopping it when the iPod is removed.

Re:Ubuntu Do What Debian [C/W]ouldn't...

[MooUK]

Edgy always was expected to be a little less stable than Dapper, with more recent releases and updates included in it. Hence the name.

Re:Upstart faster how?...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The older v1.3.x version of Apache is under a different license.

Interesting. From a two minute quick look through Google, it seems the Apache license v2 is compatible with versions 1 and 3 of the GPL license, but not version 2, which is what Ubuntu relies upon. Apparently the specific issue is patent protection. The Apache requires that submarine patents be revealed and licensed for included code, while GPL v2 does not.

Re:With Strigi!

[Anonymous Coward]

Strigi can be steered over DBus so anyone can easily add another client, be it command-line, GNOME or KDE. There already is a plugin for the Gnome Deskbar. And the packages in universe are available to Kubuntu users too.

Torrents

[RAMMS+EIN]

Use the torrents [ubuntu.com]

Re:Can I

[Qamelian]

The sed utility is an editor that allows you to make changes with in a file without actually opening the file in a more traditional editor like vi, emacs or gedit. What the mystery command does is to read through the file /etc/apt/sources.list and change each instance of dapper to edgy. Essentially it's converting the dapper verion of sources.list to an edgy version so apt-get, aptitude and synaptic will read from the edgy repositories instead of the dapper repos. So long as your system doesn't have to many oddities installed from outside to Ubuntu repositories, this method should work fine. If you've added a lot of stuff that doesn't appear in the repositories (i.e., compiled from source, convert from RPM via alien), you may end up with a broken system. I generally do fresh installs after making an image of my current set up and a separate backup of /home. The image is for quick reversion to my original setup if needed. The backup of /home is in case things go horribly, tragically wrong. I use a lot of custom apps that tend to interfer with the dist-upgrade process.

Re:What does a version release *really* mean?

[SpinyNorman]

It's good for updates to be lumped into releases since they can be tested better. Individual updates can be individually tested, but in terms of the whole distro this is really just unit testing. System testing each entire release (via release candidates, etc) is likely to find additional bugs such as where updrading some component broke something else that relied on the old version.

Re:what about easyubuntu?

[BlackPignouf]

Though I really didn't agree with their lack of respect for the GPL at first, it seems that Automatix is now in the right track. And I must admit that their product is really good and very helpful, both for newbies and veterans installing bunches of 6.(06/10): http://www.getautomatix.com/ [getautomatix.com] Installing java, flash, dvd, mp3 support as well as skype or googleearth is as easy as using synaptic.

Re:Fewer Updates for Dapper?

[hammarlund]

Why don't you edit your sources.list to get only the security updates then?

Dapper isn't dead.

[Kadin2048]

Actually you probably did the right thing, Dapper is the "Long Term Support" version -- basically the 'stable' line, while Edgy is the first of a number of smaller builds that will be released, but do not totally supplant the LTS version.

If the PCs were all your personal machines then of course you can do what you want, but if they're ones that have to work reliably and you're expected to support, you probably saved yourself a lot of trouble by going with Dapper.

Re:What does a version release *really* mean?

[xenocide2]

Firstly, some changes to Ubuntu are more fundamental than a new version. Upgrading glibc is still a version bump, but affects almost every package. Additionally, new versions of gcc itself produce potentially different objects. Releases allow for a coherent whole to be formed.

Additionally, releases allow for planning and coordination. Sometime programs aren't exactly C++ standard compliant, and sometimes the compiler isn't either. Changing the compiler version can occasionally introduce subtle bugs or build failures. By staggering freezes, you give people deadlines to work with / around. Imagine not knowing whether the kernel would support a specific feature your program wanted (like wpa_supplicant and NetworkManager).

Finally, the release system allows for simple testing and bug fixing. Sometimes upstream will fix a bug and introduce a new buggy feature at the same time.

Re:Slashdot as Upgrade Offerer

[ceswiedler]

I read on an Ubuntu wiki that Dapper, being their current long-term-support version, does not automatically suggest upgrading to Edgy, which is the 'bleeding edge' version. Presumably Edgy will notify users when Feisty is ready.

That isn't normal

[Chuck Chunder]

I've been plugging memory sticks, external hard drives and my compact flash camera into my PC since Ubuntu 5.something (now on 6.10 and 6.06 on different PCs) and they always magically appear as you'd expect. I'm sure it would be interesting to get to the bottom of whatever is causing problems on your particular installation but I don't think it's the 'normal' experience by any means. A jump to 6.10 may be worth a try but if it's a configuration issue rather than a problem within an actual package upgrading may not fix what's wrong.

Re:Long-Term Support?

[Almahtar]

It will not. The idea behind Ubuntu's release pattern is "try something new... refine it... get it right... LTS... try something new... refine it..." etc.

Edgy is the "try something new" phase, and as such couldn't be supported as LTS.