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..."

Debian?

[Klaidas]

Why is there a Debian icon here? Yeah, I know, "ubuntu is based on debian", etc. But if the distro is THAT popular, you might wanna get an icon for Ubuntu too.

Some early impressions

[Anonymous Coward]

Upgrade from Dapper via the net too around 1 hour (DSL) and went very smooth. During the updating process the system worked fine, but some strange things started to happen due to new versions of apps and libraries slowly filtering in (e.g. funny fonts, missing icons).

After the reboot ...

Dapper was already a fast system, Edgy feels even faster. In particular, bott time is shorter, the Gnome menus come up quicker. The Murrine GTK+ theme I had installed from outside of the normal repositories was broken. Fonts were not fully hinted (looked smeared) in Firefox and gnome-terminal; this was fixed by explicitly switching to full hinting in the fonts preferences. These have been the only regressions I've noticed so far.

The new Firefox 2 is certainly nice, e.g. spell-checking in text fields, not slow as molasses anymore on framed pages, etc. Departs further from GTK look & feel with the (literally) shiny new tabs. Epiphany has acquired adblocking capabilities, but is still not installed by default.

So, they replaced init.

[porkchop_d_clown]

But why develop a whole new mechanism, why not just use launchd?

Re:Debian?

[JanneM]

But if the distro is THAT popular, you might wanna get an icon for Ubuntu too.

Well, slashdot hasn't managed to update to the new Gnome icon for over two years either. The /. art department isn't what you'd call speedy.

Re:apt-get dist-upgrade

[johansalk]

It's also nice, once the iso burned, which is a 2 minute job, to have a CD around.

Still no 3D desktop?

[cciRRus]

Mandriva 2007 and Fedora Core 6 now come out-of-the-box with 3D desktop support (XGL/AIGLX + Compiz). The 3D desktop not only serve as a great piece of eyecandy, it (e.g. cube desktop and Expose clone) also makes the GUI friendlier and more efficient. As a Ubuntu user, I'm a little disappointed that Ubuntu 6.10 does not provide 3D desktop support.

Re:Upstart faster how?...

[diegocgteleline.es]

"It still seems to be a serialised startup process"

It is. For Ubuntu edgy, a "compatibility layer" has been implemented to allow upstart run the old sysv /etc/init.d scripts

This is because changing everything in a single release was too much. For the next release, they'll replace the old scripts with true upstart scripts and then the switch will be complete (and still there'll be compatibility for the unported sysv scripts available in extra packages)

Re:Can I

[ryanov]

I can verify this. I love Ubuntu, but I upgraded my laptop to 6.06 and some things that just worked on a fresh install on a different laptop just act funny on the upgraded machine. Nothing wrong with kpilot on that machine, for example... this one freezes all the time. Katapult acted different on this laptop than the other one, even though I never made any config changes. I think it will eventually be fine to upgrade, but right now when so many of the software packages are so early in their lives, it seems like nothing ever works perfectly after upgrade.

Re:apt-get dist-upgrade

[cptnapalm]

It works the other way around too. For example, I put XP MCE on a small partition. It has drivers for almost nothing in my laptop. So I had to do this constant reboot to get into Ubuntu, download the drivers and go back to XP and install them only to find that there was more stuff that was needed. A right pain in the butt. WAP still doesn't work at all in Windows.

Remember, that 6.06 is the Long Term release. If what you want is a working, solid release, then stick with it. Edgy is aimed at... well, being more on the cutting edge.

Hope you are enjoying your Linux experience :)

Re:Debian?

[SexyJesus]

I agree. Ubuntu has been the most popular distribution on distrowatch for more than a year now.

Re:Shipit change

[Locutus]

While I think it makes good 'business' sense for Canonical to keep distributing the 6.06 LTS version over the latest, 6.10 has an 18 month suppport cycle, not 6. Think about it, Canonical wants people to try out Ubuntu but they also want them to feel comfortably supported when they continue to use it. The LTS version gives users this while the latest Edgy/6.10 version will lose support after a relatively short period. IMO.

LoB

Re:Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who says lynx means you go without pr0n [asciipr0n.com]? ;-)

Re:Still no 3D desktop?

[BlackPignouf]

Using Beryl on a fresh Edgy install is as easy as adding repos and installing beryl package:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=26385 1&highlight=beryl [ubuntuforums.org] (en)
http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/applications/beryl [ubuntu-fr.org] (fr)

With an Ati Radeon 9200, I didn't even have to modify xorg.conf or install any driver, while Mandriva 2007 just told me : "Your graphic card is unsupported, you'll never be able to use 3D desktop"

Re:Can I

[drinkypoo]

looks like it will be a while. has torrent sources been thought about for apt?

Apt just barely has concurrent downloads and you're worried about torrent sources?

In order to really make use of torrent, apt would have to be much more asynchronous. It should determine an overall order for packages, create multiple install jobs based on dependencies (so if you're installing two things and each one has five different dependencies, then apt should be allowed to install one while the other is downloading) and so on. Apt does none of these things so a torrent would be a waste. However, it might be reasonable to make major release upgrades through an automated process of torrenting an ISO, mounting it, and doing the update.

Probably not, though.

Re:and the next new release will be called...

[Fnkmaster]

Umm... what's wrong with "I just installed the latest version of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS" or "I just installed the latest version of Ubuntu 6.10". They have version numbers so you can discuss this with your boss without having to use phrases like "Dapper Drake", "Edgy Eft" or "Feisty Fawn".

Re:Debian?

[Doc Ruby]

You know that a department's speed is limited not by its speed of a single operation, but by its latency in getting to any operation, right?

Re:GNOME slower after update?

[sinclair44]

I love Linux, and even dual-boot my PowerBook with Ubuntu. However, this is why the whole "Linux will never go mainstream" argument holds water. He says "windows opening slowly", you say "check DNS". Why should DNS affect opening windows and why should it have to be manually fixed? Most people probably don't even know what DNS is, let alone that it could affect their file browser.

Just to reiterate -- Ubuntu is much, much better about these sort of things than most Linux flavors that I've used. However, it, and most Linux distros, still have a long way to go before Linux "goes mainstream".

Re:Edgy wireless proglems

[xenocide2]

Because you use the forums, which are inappropriate for getting information reguarding bugs to developers? Launchpad bug tracking provides a way for INTERESTED people to be AUTOMATICALLY notified whenever a RELEVANT bug is filed. The forums are simply inadequate to connect the various people holding parts of the puzzle, despite the valiant efforts of folk like Sarah Hobbs.

I realize your wifi may have been the only connection with the internet, but has the initramfs shipped with edgy today fixed it, as suggested in the relevant bug report? [launchpad.net] Development versions are exactly that, and critical fixes can come in until almost the very last minute.

I suppose the other good news is that dapper will be supported for a long time, so you have at least that to work with.