Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) Release Candidate(releases.ubuntu.com)
releases.ubuntu.com
Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) Release Candidate
http://releases.ubuntu.com/10.10/
125 comments
It has now :)
Slightly more relevant link: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/maverick/beta#New%20features%2...
That's slightly outdated, as it's the beta page. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MaverickMeerkat/TechnicalOverview reflects the latest state of things.
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On the other hand, I am getting tired of the way that Ubuntu is focusing so much on getting its fonts right, that critical aspects like suspend/resume are broken, but not fixed.
Bug 568711 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/568711)... particularly nasty because it is a confirmed bug in suspend/resume that has a lot of people being affected by it - but has been relegated to medium severity and is currently unassigned.
Bug 568711 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/568711)... particularly nasty because it is a confirmed bug in suspend/resume that has a lot of people being affected by it - but has been relegated to medium severity and is currently unassigned.
It seems highly improbably that the people working on fonts and design would otherwise be working on suspend/resume.
Medium severity sounds right for a bug that only affects users with certain hardware. High severity should be reserved for things with a wider impact, or else it loses its meaning.
Medium severity sounds right for a bug that only affects users with certain hardware. High severity should be reserved for things with a wider impact, or else it loses its meaning.
The number of users affected is unknown, but the list of laptops mentioned in that thread is pretty varied, and it makes Ubuntu unusable for those folks.
I know OSS needs to be more attentive to aesthetics, but let's not forget that "Ew, I just can't STAND these fonts" is a different kind of unusable from "I tried six obscure workarounds listed in a bug report, but none worked, so I installed a different OS." Using a laptop exclusively as one's primary computer is extremely common these days. If showstopper bugs are tolerated on laptops, the perception of Linux viability for non-tinkerers is going to regress back to five or ten years ago when it was common to encounter bugs like this in a desktop install.
I know OSS needs to be more attentive to aesthetics, but let's not forget that "Ew, I just can't STAND these fonts" is a different kind of unusable from "I tried six obscure workarounds listed in a bug report, but none worked, so I installed a different OS." Using a laptop exclusively as one's primary computer is extremely common these days. If showstopper bugs are tolerated on laptops, the perception of Linux viability for non-tinkerers is going to regress back to five or ten years ago when it was common to encounter bugs like this in a desktop install.
For what is worth, suspend/resume works on my laptop with Ubuntu 10.04 (a Dell Inspiron 1525) and it was completely broken in Debian testing.
For what is worth, suspend/resume works on my laptop with Ubuntu 10.04 (Sony Vaio F-series) and it is completely broken in Ubuntu 10.10.
Touché.
Touché.
For what it's worth, the battery lasts half as long in Ubuntu than Windows (Dell Studio XPS 16). Also the fan is always on moderately loud even if I am only browsing the web or the lid is closed, and it heats up under the trackpad more than Windows to a degree that is annoying.
Have you tried different cpu governors?
Poor sleep/wake stability was the single biggest reason I gave up on Linux. I was running Ubuntu on my HP nc8430 and had to rush out the door so I closed the lid and didn't wait to make sure it went to sleep properly. I tossed my backpack into my car and when I came back a few hours later I found out the machine never went to sleep. It got so hot that the enclosure actually melted and warped. Probably lucky it didn't catch on fire in there. Amazingly the machine still worked but the physical damage to the enclosure prevents the lid from closing properly and it won't sit flat on a desk anymore.
Not to take anything away from the problem but if your machine got so hot it melted because it was on that sounds more like a hardware problem.
Not to take away from either of you, but I had a very similar problem with Windows XP on a Dell Inspiron 9300. I would open my insulated laptop backpack, at least once every few months, to find a computer too hot to touch and the smell of baking foamcore. I have not had that problem with Ubuntu, and it has been running on that machine since 7.04.
It was compounded by a hot day and being inside a backpack. The problem I was having at the time was a hard lockup of the system on sleep maybe 30-40% of the time due to the ATI graphics driver. My best guess is once the machine hard locked ACPI was unavailable to auto-shutdown the machine once the CPU passed its threshold so it ran until the battery died instead.
Suspend/resume has been broken in various ways on various hardware for years. This makes me wonder whether they're bugs in Linux or bugs in hardware for which each one requires a different workaround. In case of the latter I can imagine why things stay broken for such a long time.
In my experience, suspend/resume breaks because of device drivers failing to put their components to sleep properly. The biggest culprit is wireless drivers.
It may be that as they improve wireless support by including more drivers and making it easier to use proprietary ones, they're making the suspend/resume problem harder and harder.
I've fixed several problems like this on a per-machine basis, but the fixes are specific to each piece of hardware (read: "this obviously would break something for someone else if included in the distro").
It may be that as they improve wireless support by including more drivers and making it easier to use proprietary ones, they're making the suspend/resume problem harder and harder.
I've fixed several problems like this on a per-machine basis, but the fixes are specific to each piece of hardware (read: "this obviously would break something for someone else if included in the distro").
ordinarily I would agree, but there are a LOT of affected users with suspend/resume problems. Now, it might be statistically true that there are exponentially more people who are working on desktops - but there are an insignificant number of people using Ubuntu on laptops.
Why this bug is particularly significant is that the bug affects people with across very different hardware configurations, manufacturer and model.
Still, I grant that I do not know how does one figure out the issues with wider impact: but this particular one has 77 people marked on the "affects me" list. That is not an insignificant number (not the total number of people affected, but rather who bothered to search the tracker and then file a bug)
Why this bug is particularly significant is that the bug affects people with across very different hardware configurations, manufacturer and model.
Still, I grant that I do not know how does one figure out the issues with wider impact: but this particular one has 77 people marked on the "affects me" list. That is not an insignificant number (not the total number of people affected, but rather who bothered to search the tracker and then file a bug)
fwiw, all these laptop issues (especially this suspend/resume bug after I upgraded to Hardy) were what convinced me to get a mac. The only people I know with problem-free linux systems are desktop users.
FWIW, I've been a problem free laptop user of Ubuntu for two years running now. I have an older Dell laptop with the Intel Centrino chipset, Intel wifi, Intel graphics, etc, and everything on it has just worked out of the box since 8.04. It's also the only Linux machine in my house that uses KMS [1], so I get a nice, fast, high resolution display/splash/vte from the moment grub initializes the kernel. All of my desktops have Nvidia cards which also work out of the box with KMS, but enabling the official binary drivers for 3D performance breaks KMS.
[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/KernelModeSetting
[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/KernelModeSetting
That's not true.
I have a one year old Dell Inspiron 1525 with Ubuntu.
Not the best laptop ever but at least since Ubuntu 9.10 ... 3D graphics worked out of the box (open-source, Intel), Wifi worked out of the box (not so on OpenSuse or Debian), the built-in webcam worked out of the box, practically everything is up and running as soon as you install Ubuntu, no extra configuration required.
Not only that, but I also got an external 3G modem from Vodafone, that also worked out of the box.
As I've said before ... there are plenty of configurations that are running just fine with Ubuntu, but if you're going to shop at random of course you're going to have problems. Heck ... my external 3G modem wasn't compatible with Vista out of the box, you had to search for an updated driver on the Internet.
I have a one year old Dell Inspiron 1525 with Ubuntu.
Not the best laptop ever but at least since Ubuntu 9.10 ... 3D graphics worked out of the box (open-source, Intel), Wifi worked out of the box (not so on OpenSuse or Debian), the built-in webcam worked out of the box, practically everything is up and running as soon as you install Ubuntu, no extra configuration required.
Not only that, but I also got an external 3G modem from Vodafone, that also worked out of the box.
As I've said before ... there are plenty of configurations that are running just fine with Ubuntu, but if you're going to shop at random of course you're going to have problems. Heck ... my external 3G modem wasn't compatible with Vista out of the box, you had to search for an updated driver on the Internet.
Apparently some people have laptops that worked great with earlier Ubuntu releases but don't work after an upgrade. That's scary to me -- I could do careful research and buy a laptop now, only to have an upgrade make my laptop unusable. Then at the very best I'd have to downgrade and be stuck on an earlier version of Ubuntu while they classify it as a medium-priority bug and leave it broken in subsequent releases.
P.S. To make this more specific, I've been thinking about buying a refurbished Thinkpad, and one of the commenters on the bug says suspend/resume stopped working on his T61p in Lucid and remains broken in Maverick.
P.S. To make this more specific, I've been thinking about buying a refurbished Thinkpad, and one of the commenters on the bug says suspend/resume stopped working on his T61p in Lucid and remains broken in Maverick.
I've had similar issues with Ubuntu upgrades in the past. I went to Debian (stable) instead, figuring the longer upgrade cycles would mean fewer problems. That was all well and good until I needed to enable backports to upgrade Firefox to >=3.5 for work. Now the package manager's broken due to some weird dependency issues.
I don't understand why there is no free software equivalent of Apple, selling (laptop) hardware and maintaining a GNU/Linux distro that's guaranteed to work on it. Surely there's a buck or two to made?
I don't understand why there is no free software equivalent of Apple, selling (laptop) hardware and maintaining a GNU/Linux distro that's guaranteed to work on it. Surely there's a buck or two to made?
There are a couple such companies, I think. One is called Emperor Linux (if it's still in business) and offered reasonably late-model Vaio laptops among others.
And to my knowledge none of them do direct distro maintenance to keep the laptops they've sold supported -- they just resell OEM (Sager-style) laptops that they spec conservatively so that all the hardware is supported when sold.
I think an LTS version of Ubuntu would be better than Debian, if you want longer upgrade cycles.
ZaReason and System76 are two vendors that sell laptops with Ubuntu. I don't know if they actively support Ubuntu upgrades for their hardware (in the sense of testing/fixing bugs).
ZaReason and System76 are two vendors that sell laptops with Ubuntu. I don't know if they actively support Ubuntu upgrades for their hardware (in the sense of testing/fixing bugs).
For what it's worth, I've had numerous Thinkpads (T23, T42, currently typing this on a T61) and suspend/resume always worked for me.
Not always right out of the box -- I had to research workarounds for video-related problems a few years ago.
Not always without problems -- on two occasions a wifi driver bug prevented the suspend from going through and my laptop spent a few hot hours in the backpack. (The Thinkpad survived that splendidly with no problems.)
Things are getting better all the time. Not monotonically -- there are regressions every now and then -- but in general more and more things work for more and more people.
Not always right out of the box -- I had to research workarounds for video-related problems a few years ago.
Not always without problems -- on two occasions a wifi driver bug prevented the suspend from going through and my laptop spent a few hot hours in the backpack. (The Thinkpad survived that splendidly with no problems.)
Things are getting better all the time. Not monotonically -- there are regressions every now and then -- but in general more and more things work for more and more people.
I have a several-year-old Dell Vostro 1400, completely stock, and as I mentioned in a different comment, every distro update since Hardy has broken something that used to work. Intrepid broke wireless--I had to swap out my Broadcom wifi card for an Intel one. Jaunty broke graphics--I couldn't use Compiz without doing some insanely obscure rollback patch to a different version of X or something like that (can't recall now as this was some time ago... Google "intel gm965" hardy). Karmic broke sound--every few minutes my music would permanently transform into loud static. Solution: hotkey `killall pulseaudio` to F12. Lucid seems fairly stable so far. I'm crossing my fingers for Maverick. But all of these problems are on the same laptop with the same hardware! (Except for the wifi card).
I'm trying to make that call at the moment. I've been using Ubuntu on laptops since 5.10 (Badger) and Debian before that. 10.10 has by far the most regressions in it that I've encountered during this time.
If this were my project, I wouldn't be releasing it in this state. I know it's the 10/10 release and presumably 10/10/10 they will hit -- 42 and all that -- but they really need to get some stability into this thing. It's starting to alienate folk.
By raising bugs and doing the legwork I've helped fix quite a few, but two unresolved issues, both involving hardware that worked flawlessly until now, are making me wonder how well my time is being spent.
In addition, Shuttleworth is clearly starting down the road of monetizing Ubuntu, and if I'm going to support that then I want my show-stoppers fixed. Quid pro quo.
Because of this, moving to the Dark Side is looking more and more attractive. I wish it wasn't so.
[Edit: I also have an old Acer on 9.10 that works flawlessly, including the hardware that causes issues in 10.10. I won't be updating it.]
If this were my project, I wouldn't be releasing it in this state. I know it's the 10/10 release and presumably 10/10/10 they will hit -- 42 and all that -- but they really need to get some stability into this thing. It's starting to alienate folk.
By raising bugs and doing the legwork I've helped fix quite a few, but two unresolved issues, both involving hardware that worked flawlessly until now, are making me wonder how well my time is being spent.
In addition, Shuttleworth is clearly starting down the road of monetizing Ubuntu, and if I'm going to support that then I want my show-stoppers fixed. Quid pro quo.
Because of this, moving to the Dark Side is looking more and more attractive. I wish it wasn't so.
[Edit: I also have an old Acer on 9.10 that works flawlessly, including the hardware that causes issues in 10.10. I won't be updating it.]
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Not true at all. My Lenovo T400S runs Ubuntu Lucid Lynx flawlessly.
> I am getting tired of the way that Ubuntu is focusing so much on getting its fonts right
FWIW I tried to install Ubuntu on my wife's laptop and the main thing that made her go back to Windows was the look of the fonts. So I think Canonical is right to focus on polishing up things that can attract non-technical users.
FWIW I tried to install Ubuntu on my wife's laptop and the main thing that made her go back to Windows was the look of the fonts. So I think Canonical is right to focus on polishing up things that can attract non-technical users.
This is shocking to me. Windows font rendering isn't even close to what Ubuntu-packaged cairo/freetype is capable of, especially on high-DPI screens. Or perhaps she didn't like the fonts themselves? In that case you could have copied a bunch of Windows fonts, for instance Consolas looks absolutely gorgeous under FreeType.
I applaud Ubuntu for their font efforts. They were the first distro to package non-crippled FreeType (main reason why so many people believed that "linux fonts are ugly"). Thanks to Canonical, mainstream Linux now has the best font rendering of the 3 by far (windows/osx/linux).
I applaud Ubuntu for their font efforts. They were the first distro to package non-crippled FreeType (main reason why so many people believed that "linux fonts are ugly"). Thanks to Canonical, mainstream Linux now has the best font rendering of the 3 by far (windows/osx/linux).
I've always preferred Window's font rendering because its very readable on a low DPI screen, which is most of the screens out there.
You can't possibly prefer Windows font rendering simply because FreeType can be configured to render exactly the same output. What Ubuntu ships by default is drop dead gorgeous on high-DPI screens and really nice on regular monitors, but you can configure it to render text indistinguishable from Windows. ArchLinux has alternative "clear type cairo/freetype" packages that are just that.
How is FreeType intrinsically better than the Windows font renderer? Microsoft has the advantage of subpixel font rendering (aka ClearType) although admittedly that because it's patented (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering#Patents).
Because FreeType does it too, in fact FreeType employs every single trick there is: bytecode interpreter, hinting, subpixel rendering, etc. But it has an advantage of being configurable i.e. it doesn't follow "all size fits all" path. Slight hinting + subpixel smoothing with enabled bytecode interpretation yields incredible output on high-DPI screens.
However, IIRC there's a Microsoft-made utility that allows you to tinker with ClearType settings making it more high-DPI friendly as well (doesn't come with Windows but search for it on their site)
However, IIRC there's a Microsoft-made utility that allows you to tinker with ClearType settings making it more high-DPI friendly as well (doesn't come with Windows but search for it on their site)
I think the tool comes with Windows, at least Windows 7. I recently installed Windows 7 and could tinker with how Cleartype looks right away. It's a quite nice interface, you get six different example texts and repeatedly click on which looks best to you.
I don't know how Ubuntu does that but if it doesn't do it like that it already lost by default. In the unlikely case that normal users stumble upon the adjustment tool they might even click on what they like best. They will never diddle with knobs or checkboxes.
I don't know how Ubuntu does that but if it doesn't do it like that it already lost by default. In the unlikely case that normal users stumble upon the adjustment tool they might even click on what they like best. They will never diddle with knobs or checkboxes.
It has the cost of being highly configurable. I could make the same font (Verdana) look much better on Linux than on Windows, by fiddling with dpi/hinting/subpixel rendering settings. And I could make it look worse. It was much easier to make it look worse. I had to spend a lot of time fiddling with the settings until I hit the jackpot.
FreeType has enabled the bytecode interpreter; those patents have all expired.
http://www.freetype.org/patents.html
Unless you are talking about a different set of patents.
http://www.freetype.org/patents.html
Unless you are talking about a different set of patents.
Looks like it is too late to edit my own comment. There are indeed two bunches of patents: Apple's (bytecode interpreter) have expired, but Microsoft's (ClearType's subpixel rendering method) have not.
It's not shocking to me: people often get used to something, and anything different is "wrong." It can take to adjust to something, even when it's better.
My wife wants to switch to windows because certain basic things just don't work in a multi-user/fast-user-switching Ubuntu setup. The wireless applet (nm-applet) is plain broken (bug 284596). Audio doesn't work if the previously logged-in user was playing something. Some of these problems have been known for a while.
you're absolutely right - but ugly fonts were fixable even previously. I used Droid or even Calibri from my Windows 7 install.
I dont think there have been any changes in font rendering itself (which is the main cause of Linux fonts looking bad compared to Win7 or OSX) - rather, just a new font.
But suspend/resume ? I just cant fix it - it is so bad that I have started believing in Linux suspend/resume being sentient (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613621)
I dont think there have been any changes in font rendering itself (which is the main cause of Linux fonts looking bad compared to Win7 or OSX) - rather, just a new font.
But suspend/resume ? I just cant fix it - it is so bad that I have started believing in Linux suspend/resume being sentient (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613621)
Most modern fonts are designed to work around limitations of the display medium. It even seems reasonable you could design a font to account for a bad display algorithm.
What version did you try? I found that 10.04 was the first version with fonts that actually look good.
Agreed. Shuttleworth & co seem more interested in tweaking visual desktop stuff (window buttons, windicators, indicator applet, etc.) than actually making sure their software is as bug-free as possible. Every time I upgrade to the newest release (literally every single upgrade since Hardy, when I started using Ubuntu) a bunch of stuff that used to work breaks. Lucid hasn't been as bad as others (Jaunty and Karmic I'm looking at you) but it's not without its problems. And I'm running a 5-year old laptop here.
I know it's hard to control quality on a desktop sourced from thousands of individual/independent contributors, but Canonical would do well to put money into their QA department to ensure release-to-release stability instead of into their design department--which for the most part seems to be a Shuttleworth cargo-cult dictatorship anyway.
I know it's hard to control quality on a desktop sourced from thousands of individual/independent contributors, but Canonical would do well to put money into their QA department to ensure release-to-release stability instead of into their design department--which for the most part seems to be a Shuttleworth cargo-cult dictatorship anyway.
I hear ya, but these things are just as important. Poor user experience is a bug and graphical tweaks and updating the indicator platform was much needed. I will admit windicators, multitouch and head tracking parallax should take low priority, but most of their designers wouldn't be fixing driver bugs if they weren't turning up the pretty.
With the latest stable 10.04 I have had very little trouble if any. Granted I am on a ThinkPad. When I ran it on a Macbook Pro and its slightly tweaked "standard" hardware it ran like crap and took a lot of coaxing to get up and running until I just gave up and got the right hardware for the job.
With the latest stable 10.04 I have had very little trouble if any. Granted I am on a ThinkPad. When I ran it on a Macbook Pro and its slightly tweaked "standard" hardware it ran like crap and took a lot of coaxing to get up and running until I just gave up and got the right hardware for the job.
They seem to be doing pretty well focusing on what they've been focusing on - end user experience.
They didn't go from nothing to #1 for no reason, you know.
Calling it a cargo-cult dictatorship is a bit unfair as well - he's footing the bill for a huge chunk of the work, why shouldn't he get a say? Nothing's stopping you from ponying up and starting your own distro dev team; you can even fork from Ubuntu and just fix the thing's you think they're lacking.
We'll see who gets more user mindshare...
They didn't go from nothing to #1 for no reason, you know.
Calling it a cargo-cult dictatorship is a bit unfair as well - he's footing the bill for a huge chunk of the work, why shouldn't he get a say? Nothing's stopping you from ponying up and starting your own distro dev team; you can even fork from Ubuntu and just fix the thing's you think they're lacking.
We'll see who gets more user mindshare...
I call it cargo-cult because Shuttleworth makes UI decisions like "move the window buttons" to semi-emulate OSX, but seemingly without doing any research as to why such might succeed or fail. Originally they were even in a different order--his only concession to angry end-users was to arrange them like OSX, in a different order than originally envisioned. Or take the indicator applet: his complaint was that the regular system tray icons are cluttered and disorganized. Solution: reinvent the system tray (which had fairly clear HIG defined by Gnome, which for the most part were followed), almost bit for bit, but with different colored icons, no tooltips, and no default left-click action. If you look at the old system tray and the new indicator applet, they quite literally are almost identical in appearance/clutterdness (yes, he merged mail and IM, and with Maverick merged volume and the music player, so that's two less icons, but the usefulness of those changes is up for debate).
I call it a dictatorship because big decisions like that are made by him, seemingly by fiat. He even calls himself SABDFL (self-appointed benevolent dictator for life).
Shuttleworth is trying to be the Jobs of the OSS world--making design decisions because he thinks he knows software design best. Which is fine--like you said, he's paying for it all. But the difference between him and Jobs is that Jobs defines useable software where Shuttleworth just copies and reinvents. And in my opinion, Shuttleworth doesn't seem to have the insight into users' thought processes that Jobs has.
Again, you're right, the man is paying for it all, so who am I to complain? I can just pick a different distro. But the problem is that with all of these more serious stability problems remaining unsolved and stuff like windicators and indicator applets and fonts getting all the attention, I and others might eventually get fed up and switch to a more stable distro (does one exist? Will I go back to Windows?), or not recommend Ubuntu to friends.
What should I tell my friend: Yeah, install Ubuntu, it's great, but whatever you do, don't let it automatically update because your laptop might never suspend correctly after that?
I call it a dictatorship because big decisions like that are made by him, seemingly by fiat. He even calls himself SABDFL (self-appointed benevolent dictator for life).
Shuttleworth is trying to be the Jobs of the OSS world--making design decisions because he thinks he knows software design best. Which is fine--like you said, he's paying for it all. But the difference between him and Jobs is that Jobs defines useable software where Shuttleworth just copies and reinvents. And in my opinion, Shuttleworth doesn't seem to have the insight into users' thought processes that Jobs has.
Again, you're right, the man is paying for it all, so who am I to complain? I can just pick a different distro. But the problem is that with all of these more serious stability problems remaining unsolved and stuff like windicators and indicator applets and fonts getting all the attention, I and others might eventually get fed up and switch to a more stable distro (does one exist? Will I go back to Windows?), or not recommend Ubuntu to friends.
What should I tell my friend: Yeah, install Ubuntu, it's great, but whatever you do, don't let it automatically update because your laptop might never suspend correctly after that?
Fonts were the most ugly part of Linux by far to me and the reason I bought an iBook long ago. The other reason was perfect hardware support so I could suspend / resume properly.
I don't expect Canonical to support all the hardware in the world, but everybody stares at the OS font all day long.
I don't expect Canonical to support all the hardware in the world, but everybody stares at the OS font all day long.
Smoothing and proper metrics were default in 9.04+ and before that accessible via a GUI interface for manual tweaking. Replacing FreeSans with a well tailored family is just finishing the job (so you don't have to.)
Fonts have been getting better, but the first thing I do is to load up a new install with fonts imported from OS X and Windows. I find these improve the attractiveness of the desktop greatly.
> that critical aspects like suspend/resume are broken, but not fixed.
Well... It works for me - Acer Aspire One 251, Dell E4300 and HP dv6xxx. Windows never got suspend/resume right neither on the Dell nor the HP. I never used the Acer under Windows, so, I am not sure if it worked or not.
It would be useful, regarding this bug, if people with functioning machines chimed in with lshw listings so a failure pattern, if there is one, could be determined.
Well... It works for me - Acer Aspire One 251, Dell E4300 and HP dv6xxx. Windows never got suspend/resume right neither on the Dell nor the HP. I never used the Acer under Windows, so, I am not sure if it worked or not.
It would be useful, regarding this bug, if people with functioning machines chimed in with lshw listings so a failure pattern, if there is one, could be determined.
Try to look at it this way:
You're a user and your resume/suspend on your laptop doesn't work, you file a bug report and are mad it wasn't fixed ASAP.
If I was a sysadmin and there was a bug in Ubuntu that would crash apache every 3 nights, I would file a bug report and be mad if it wasn't fixed ASAP.
If I was a designer and I found the colors on the screen where totally off, I would file a bug report and be mad if it wasn't fixed ASAP.
I hope you see the point.
Everybody's problem is 'critical', but you just have to accept it doesn't work that way. Everything depends on context, but please think a moment about this: resources are limited, time is precious and getting 'fed up with things' rarely helps. Want to change things? Feel free to look at other issues and see if you find a solution, if you do, fix it and be part of the people who change stuff for the better.
I hope you see the point.
Everybody's problem is 'critical', but you just have to accept it doesn't work that way. Everything depends on context, but please think a moment about this: resources are limited, time is precious and getting 'fed up with things' rarely helps. Want to change things? Feel free to look at other issues and see if you find a solution, if you do, fix it and be part of the people who change stuff for the better.
I understand that it's open-source and a lot of the work is volunteer, but man - they ship with known bugs that as a Windows OS dev I'm pretty shocked. Like, if this was some chipset from 1995 that'd be okay, but this is the chipset in like > 70% of today's laptops afaik.
> On the other hand, I am getting tired of the way that Ubuntu is focusing so much on getting its fonts right, that critical aspects like suspend/resume are broken, but not fixed.
You do know that a company can work on more than one thing at a time, right?
You do know that a company can work on more than one thing at a time, right?
About 6 months to a year ago, the (geek) headlines were FULL of articles lambasting Ubuntu's fonts. I agree, it seems kind of trivial to me, but apparently it REALLY, REALLY matters to some people, more than anything else.
On a related note, why do fonts look so terrible? Surely it's not just a lack of decent, free, typefaces? FreeType is unencumbered by bytecode hinting patents as of May 2010. The only other patent (according to http://freetype.sourceforge.net/patents.html) is a Microsoft algorithm for color filtering for subpixel rendering (which, according to the page, is circumvented by using a different color filter).
Couldn't agree more. Slightly tweaked fonts aren't the highest of priorities.
This release uses a new interface font, which is the first major OS (that I know of, anyways) to not use a Helvetica-like font for their GUI. Mark Shuttleworth talks about the decision and impact on his blog: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/537
Macintosh prior to OSX used Chicago and Charcoal. These are fairly distinctive and aren't really "Helvetica-like" in my mind. Chicago in particular was pretty much synonymous with "Macintosh" and was used in early iPods. Pre-MacOS machines used fixed-width bitmapped fonts that fall more in the range of "programmer fonts" than Helvetica.
Nifty. I would have been 9 at the time :)
I'm not sure what you mean by "Helvetica-like". OS X Uses Lucida Grande as a system font, which is quite different to Helvetica (Lucida Grande == Humanist, Helvetica == Neo Grotesque)
I can't vouch for Windows, but if memory serves it's system font is also a humanist style.
I can't vouch for Windows, but if memory serves it's system font is also a humanist style.
Oh, nice to see a light, pale theme, like in Mac OS. It's much easier on the eyes, at least for me.
Anybody else think this is the first ever professional looking Linux distro they've ever seen?
Congrats to the Ubuntu team.
Congrats to the Ubuntu team.
You must be a graphic designer :-) I thought, "What does attractive have to do with professional?" and then realized you meant designed by professionals, not designed for professionals. Professionals' tools tend to look beautiful to them and ugly to everyone else. Maybe this is a step toward changing that, at least for Linux. (Except I'll still have emacs taking up at least half my screen space, with its functional but butt-ugly syntax colorization....)
Nope, I'm a programmer. I just don't like brightly colored notification icons all over my GNOME taskbar. They're distracting - looks (and discoverability, and other UI aspects) directly affect usability, I'm surprised you say you don't get that.
As a counterpoint to your argument, I'd say OS X has more professional UI designers than Windows or the Linux OSs and is generally regarded as being more usable too.
As a counterpoint to your argument, I'd say OS X has more professional UI designers than Windows or the Linux OSs and is generally regarded as being more usable too.
I'm surprised you say you don't get that.
Thanks for reading my comment so charitably ;-)
What I'm saying is that beauty to the professional user and beauty to an innocent bystander are different things. A professional actually cares more about usability and certainly cares about aesthetics as they apply to usability. The way a professional perceives a desktop will be very different from the way a casual user does. But some people are self-conscious about that; they don't want their professional exposure to change the way they perceive things, or at least they don't want anybody else to notice. So they want a plastic consumer case for their Hole Hawg[1].
Not that OS X doesn't have a lot going for it on the desktop, but a major part of the appeal for developers is that they can have a great desktop they love without non-geeks thinking they must be a little weird to love it.
[1] http://www.team.net/mjb/hawg.html
Thanks for reading my comment so charitably ;-)
What I'm saying is that beauty to the professional user and beauty to an innocent bystander are different things. A professional actually cares more about usability and certainly cares about aesthetics as they apply to usability. The way a professional perceives a desktop will be very different from the way a casual user does. But some people are self-conscious about that; they don't want their professional exposure to change the way they perceive things, or at least they don't want anybody else to notice. So they want a plastic consumer case for their Hole Hawg[1].
Not that OS X doesn't have a lot going for it on the desktop, but a major part of the appeal for developers is that they can have a great desktop they love without non-geeks thinking they must be a little weird to love it.
[1] http://www.team.net/mjb/hawg.html
but a major part of the appeal for developers is that they can have a great desktop they love without non-geeks thinking they must be a little weird to love it.
Most developers (and sysadmins) I know positively delight in their reputation of being a little weird. I know that given two options I like as well otherwise, I'll usually pick the less common one. I still use OS X, though, having switched from Gentoo in 2003, and having tried Ubuntu and Arch for 6-7 months within the last year.
Most developers (and sysadmins) I know positively delight in their reputation of being a little weird. I know that given two options I like as well otherwise, I'll usually pick the less common one. I still use OS X, though, having switched from Gentoo in 2003, and having tried Ubuntu and Arch for 6-7 months within the last year.
Sorry if you think I was being uncharitable. I suggest that stating that someone else must not be a programmer on a programming site may not be the best way to conduct a polite conversation.
I was impressed by Mint http://www.linuxmint.com/
Release candidate screenshots: http://www.webupd8.org/2010/09/ubuntu-1010-maverick-meerkat-...
The asymmetrical upper case T annoys me.
My friend made this:
Compare: Ubuntu font overlaid on Verdana and LiberationSans:
http://i.imgur.com/51jao.png
http://i.imgur.com/51jao.png
Practically every Linux distro uses DejaVu Sans (previously Bitstream Vera Sans), which is not Helvetica-like. Windows and OS X don't use Helvetica-like fonts either.
I think you might be smoking an Arial hash pipe... because Helvetica is clearly too good for you! :-)
I think you might be smoking an Arial hash pipe... because Helvetica is clearly too good for you! :-)
How's Lucida Grande Helvetica-like?
The font is available on the CD, but it has not been set as default (and it might not be default in the final release either).
It will most likely be default for everything other than monospace and document fonts.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-artwork/+bu...
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-artwork/+bu...
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This is the first time I haven't found a human-readable summary anywhere of the new features and major changes of the upcoming Ubuntu version. They used to have this but now their release pages just point to a list of ~250 blueprints which doesn't constitute a "human-readable summary".
Can someone help, please?
Can someone help, please?
Their power management is the only thing keeping me away at this moment. Right now Win7 is getting almost double the battery life on my laptop.
Ubuntu boot times are impeccable though.
Ubuntu boot times are impeccable though.
Is it possible to upgrade from 10.04 to 10.10 without reinstalling the whole OS?
Should be possible via update-manager soon enough. Even major upgrades (6.04 -> 7.04 etc) have been possible for a year or two at least.
Minor niggle: it was 6.06; they delayed that release by two months in preparation for their very first LTS release.
And another one: you can upgrade 6.06 (a Long Term Support release) directly to 8.04 (the next Long Term Support release), but to get to 7.04 you had to do incremental upgrades to every intermediate release (6.06 -> 6.10 -> 7.04).
Yeah, of course.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgradeThat's an unsupported upgrade method. Please issue "update-manager -d" in a desktop install, or "do-release-upgrade -d" on a server or other command line environment.
And before people complain about the command line, this is possible in the GUI as well.
System - Administration - Update Manager
Click "Settings"
Under "Updates" select "Show new distribution releases: Normal releases"
By default if you are running an LTS release, Update Manager assumes you want to update only to the next LTS release. This setting will cause it to prompt you to update to the next non-LTS release and each other from then on.
System - Administration - Update Manager
Click "Settings"
Under "Updates" select "Show new distribution releases: Normal releases"
By default if you are running an LTS release, Update Manager assumes you want to update only to the next LTS release. This setting will cause it to prompt you to update to the next non-LTS release and each other from then on.
I guess this is a tiny point, but is there really no supported way to update from the command line?
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I'm glad that the Maverick Meerkat EC2 images(1) are working great. In the latest Lucid Lynx image (24.9.) as well as in the updates for the previous ones they introduced a nasty bug(2) causing a phantom load of 100% on one CPU. No fix in sight yet; this was really annoying. In my experiments so far, Maverick Meerkat works just great!
[1] http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/server/releases/
[2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-on-ec2/+bug/574910
[1] http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/server/releases/
[2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-on-ec2/+bug/574910
I also gave up on Ubuntu. I had Dell D800 and Ubuntu was working just fine including suspend/hibernate. Now I got a new ASUS, where suspend/hibernate does not work. I decided to stick with Windows 7, it is more reliable for me when it comes to that issue. Although, I miss Ubuntu, for me it is a much better OS. Hopefully on day, before I am dead, they will fix this issue.
Can I dual boot ubuntu on my mac? I am looking to get a mac to replace my netbook.
I am, but it hasn't been particularly great. There are some hardware issues, mostly surrounding audio and multiple monitors, that I haven't experienced when running Ubuntu on other machines.
Strange, Lucid works great without any problems on my Macbook Pro 6,2.
What model are you running?
What model are you running?
Given the maturity of the software, there's no reason not just to run a virtualbox on Mac OS X with Ubuntu inside it. It's a hell of a lot easier than messing around with the partitions on your hard drive and worrying about hardware support. Unless you do very intensive real time work on the linux install, it's almost unnoticeable from a performance viewpoint.
The dual booting part should be painless, but as stanleydrew noted you may encounter problems with hardware support in Ubuntu.
Works fine for me already.
I hate Ubuntu, there is no support for it. Tried it twice already. They need to go back to the drawing board.
An overview of support options, which are mainly free:
http://www.ubuntu.com/support
If you need live human support for a consumer desktop system, you can purchase it on a yearly basis:
http://www.canonical.com/consumer-services/support
http://www.ubuntu.com/support
If you need live human support for a consumer desktop system, you can purchase it on a yearly basis:
http://www.canonical.com/consumer-services/support
I wish to use Ubuntu because I have slightly older hardware, but if it renders youtube video in slow motion and if I see tons of similar complaints on the internet, than what good is an operating system competing with Microsoft which isn't even working well right out of the box?
Everyone seems to be getting greedy for updated hardware and operating systems. I don't really care to upgrade my hardware every two years. If Ubuntu cannot deliver without fastest processor and video memory, than they might as well just start selling to corporate and be done with the free stuff.
Everyone seems to be getting greedy for updated hardware and operating systems. I don't really care to upgrade my hardware every two years. If Ubuntu cannot deliver without fastest processor and video memory, than they might as well just start selling to corporate and be done with the free stuff.
Youtube is rendered by Flash. Entirely. As in, Ubuntu did not write the software, has no control over it, and can't make it run any faster. Just like Apple and Microsoft can't.
There are also slimmed down Ubuntu versions for older hardware, e.g. Xubuntu and Lubuntu. Those run much faster on aging systems, allowing Ubuntu to support people with newer hardware.
Not to mention that nobody's forcing you to update if you don't want to. For example, 8.04 is still officially supported through April 2011 for desktops and 2013 for servers. Please feel free to continue using that if it works better for you.
There are also slimmed down Ubuntu versions for older hardware, e.g. Xubuntu and Lubuntu. Those run much faster on aging systems, allowing Ubuntu to support people with newer hardware.
Not to mention that nobody's forcing you to update if you don't want to. For example, 8.04 is still officially supported through April 2011 for desktops and 2013 for servers. Please feel free to continue using that if it works better for you.
Um....ok. At my day job pay roughly $150 a year to Canonical for support. I don't really need it, mind you, as most of the time the system operates as expected. However, it was a way to give a little back to a company who has done a lot for Linux over the years.
I have used it on occasion, and aside from the rather crappy salesforce interface they're using to track cases, it works very well. The responses are quick and the engineers are very knowledgeable.
I have used it on occasion, and aside from the rather crappy salesforce interface they're using to track cases, it works very well. The responses are quick and the engineers are very knowledgeable.
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Ok, my previous comment ("Who cares?") seemed to be thoughtless or even offensive (~15 downvotes in 5 minutes), and I have to acknowledge that it lacked quite some arguments.
So let me ask: why does this news deserve so much attention to stand in front of HN? What interesting innovation, except the GUI, has brought this new OS release? Is an OS all about GUI and look & feel?
Generally speaking, I am just fed up with all this thoughtless media attention.
So let me ask: why does this news deserve so much attention to stand in front of HN? What interesting innovation, except the GUI, has brought this new OS release? Is an OS all about GUI and look & feel?
Generally speaking, I am just fed up with all this thoughtless media attention.
"Is an OS all about GUI and look & feel?"
Considering 95% of the world don't care about anything but how something looks and whether they can interact with it in a way that makes sense I would suggest that it is, to a large degree.
They also need a good foundation of course but too often do people in the OSS communities confuse having a solid foundation with having a winning product.
Considering 95% of the world don't care about anything but how something looks and whether they can interact with it in a way that makes sense I would suggest that it is, to a large degree.
They also need a good foundation of course but too often do people in the OSS communities confuse having a solid foundation with having a winning product.
Generally related to the UI, but from a technology viewpoint - this release will use Freetype 2.4 which is the first released that is not patent encumbered by Apple or Microsoft (all those patents expired in May)
Though Ubuntu has always shipped with the patent encumbered stuff turned on, but I think we are going to see some interesting innovation in font rendering going forward.
Though Ubuntu has always shipped with the patent encumbered stuff turned on, but I think we are going to see some interesting innovation in font rendering going forward.
I don't think it's on the front page because 10.10 is innovative. It's on the front page because it's Ubuntu, which is popular among HN linux users.
One thing I like about the bi-annual Ubuntu announcements is that it has provided a sort of mental metronome for the pace of development, and a moment to reflect on when, exactly, I did I last update those servers?
[1] http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/09/ubuntu-10-10-release-cand...
[2] http://release-blog.ubuntu.com
[3] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce