Ubuntu 9.10 is out

Thanks for that shared mirror (the post above this one). Was on an official torrent with thousands of seeders and leechers listed but of course, barely cracking 50KB/s pretty haphazardly. Now snatching at 1.5MB/s off the bu.edu mirror... will toss it in VirtualBox and give it a whirl in a few minutes.

Showing a steady 1.5MB/s so, should be done soon... ;)
 
heatlesssun said:
So what's the "killer" feature(s) on 9.1?
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They have revamped the intel drivers for the gma900 video that's on most netbooks (it was broken on Jaunty Jackalope). Default filesystem is ext4 instead of ext3. New Xorg acceleration driver. Lots of other changes but these are the one's i'm looking forward to.
 
Not to mention they were gunning for a 10 second boot time. I don't think they got that one covered, however... :(
 
sub.genius said:
Not to mention they were gunning for a 10 second boot time. I don't think they got that one covered, however... :(
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Fast boot times are nice but I think people get a bit obsessed with them. Unless I'm installing something that requires a reboot, which is fairly rare with Window 7, I might boot all of 6 of my machines a combine total of three 3 times a week.
 
sub.genius said:
Not to mention they were gunning for a 10 second boot time. I don't think they got that one covered, however... :(
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They are significantly improved though, and the init system has been completely swapped over to Upstart now.

I'm stoked about iSCSI booting being easy now, or apparently anyway.
 
I'm not thrilled with the sudden switch to EXT4 as the default file system. The data loss bug that was discovered with it (has that been patched yet?) shows that it's in need of more testing.

Also, has anybody else noticed the "show icons in menus" checkbox is non-functional? Unchecking it isn't removing icons from menus as it did in all previous versions of Ubuntu.

Edit: I'm not the only one having trouble with menu icons. A friend just sent me a screenshot from his system, showing the same problem:
64852247.jpg
 
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Unknown-One said:
I'm not thrilled with the sudden switch to EXT4 as the default file system. The data loss bug that was discovered with it (has that been patched yet?) shows that it's in need of more testing.
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If we're thinking about the same thing, it's not really a bug per-se, as the behaviour is expected, however application developers and users expect different behaviour. A patch to slightly change the behaviour so as to maintain the advantages and mostly solve the practical issues made it into 2.6.30, so it's in 9.10 final.

See: https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/317781 and this comment especially: https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/317781/comments/45
 
Maybe it'll be like Snow Leopard, within a week of release we'll see Ubuntu 9.11 to fix the issues already popping up. Amazing how this stuff slips through the cracks, ain't it? :D
 
I installed the netbook remix on my acer aspire one d250 and it works flawlessly. Linux has changed a lot since the last time I tried (unsuccessfully ) to use it, its gotten much MUCH more newb friendly. Installing dropbox was as easy as installing it in windows and evernote that doesnt have a linux client took me about two seconds to get it installed via wine.

I still have win 7 on my netbook as a dual boot, but this is really the first time I've installed any linux distro and didnt want to pull my hair out within 5 minutes
 
leezard said:
I still have win 7 on my netbook as a dual boot, but this is really the first time I've installed any linux distro and didnt want to pull my hair out within 5 minutes
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I'm having the exact opposite experience. The more I use 9.10, the more I want to be back on 9.04. It really feels like an unfinished, beta quality, version. Some design decisions don't make sense (notifications fill half the screen on a netbook), some features are outright broken, and what's the deal with having 5 different ways to access the package manager?

Software Center, Update Manager, Aptitude, Add/Remove, command line apt.

Is it really that hard to pick one interface and stick with it? Having multiple frontends for the same thing is just going to confuse users horribly.
 
Let's see here, in the past week we've had...

Windows 7 released, polished, absolutely awesome from start to finish so far, no huge problems noted, nothing major broken, public opinion is positive from all accounts.

Strangely, coinciding with the biggest release of Windows in a long long time we have:

VMWare Fusion 3 shoved out yesterday, nothing but trouble with it, the sheer number of posts at the VMWare Fusion support forum has literally quadrupled in the past 24 hours since release, majority opinions seem to lean towards "it sure seems rushed, unfinished... the older version is better."

Parallels 4.0 shoved out a few days ago, while it has some good aspects, it too has a ton of complaints against it, poor performance, lackluster effects - but it's better than Fusion 3, it seems - and majority opinions seem to lean towards "it sure seems rushed, unfinished... the older version is better."

Now Ubuntu 9.10, just released today, hours ago really, and already majority opinions are "it sure seems rushed, unfinished... the older version is better" and that opinion is growing, by leaps and bounds.

Coincidences? Hmmm... I wonder if the Windows 7 release really irked those other developers to the point where this stuff just got crammed out too fast. Parallels, VMWare, they could have waited. Ubuntu's biggest "flaw" I think is having chosen specific time frames to release in, and unfortunately, another 2 days left in the month of October wasn't going to help resolve the issues now being bandied about across many forums, including the Ubuntu support one itself.

Not good... not good at all.
 
ubuntu is really horrible at trying to lock down a solid release, they are more concerned with hiting their .4/.10 release schedule. from a limited look, I am defeinitely not impressed with 9.10. I just don't see ubuntu putting any effort into what made them popular (having a solid, simple linux distro for everyone). now it just looks like a dated distro making unnecessary changes and not resolving simple bug.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
Man...I was looking forward to this...but it's been a piece of shit so far. So many things not working off Synaptic...I spent the past 4 or 5 hours downloading updates, only to watch them fail one after one at the 50% mark.

I reformatted my Thinkpad this morning, it took less time to install 7 and all the other applications, tweak the shit out of it, clean it up, & back it up than I've spent on these failed updates.


Here's to hoping for better luck when Mint 8 comes out. I'm sorely disappointed by 9.10.




Also, might as well toss in the fact that my screen flickers every minute or so, and it randomly turns the brightness down while I'm typing. DV8230US in sig is the Linux system.
 
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So far, loving 9.10. I agree the icon bug is annoying, but overall it feels far more polished than 9.04 did (9.04 randomly crashed Xorg, weeeee). We'll see if it's more stable than before. Also, the in-place upgrade went by flawlessly.

And to those bitching about it not being stable: Go download the LTS and use that. Problem solved. The next TLS comes out in 6 months, and it should be a fairly feature rich, stable release. I plan to stick with it once it's out so long as the ATi Xorg 3D drivers work flawlessly (as can be expected).
 
batteriesnotincluded said:
... So many things not working off Synaptic...I spent the past 4 or 5 hours downloading updates, only to watch them fail one after one at the 50% mark. ...
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This is more than likely due their servers being hammered by everyone downloading the release and updates. I downloaded it via torrent and installed it yesterday evening without any issues. I did experience a few hiccups when adding programs via aptitude, but I expected it due to all the people hitting their servers for updates.

Overall experience so far.. too early to tell, but it's not that bad. A couple of issues I haven't gotten figured out yet, and I am not sure I like empathy over pidgin, but I just need to use it some more.
 
SoRnMaN said:
This is more than likely due their servers being hammered by everyone downloading the release and updates. I downloaded it via torrent and installed it yesterday evening without any issues. I did experience a few hiccups when adding programs via aptitude, but I expected it due to all the people hitting their servers for updates.

Overall experience so far.. too early to tell, but it's not that bad. A couple of issues I haven't gotten figured out yet, and I am not sure I like empathy over pidgin, but I just need to use it some more.
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Maybe, but if that was the case, it should have errored out during the download, the not the installation, right?
 
I've formatted back to Mint 7. I'll be skipping this distribution, I just hope that Linux Mint 8 won't be plagued with these issues.
 
sub.genius said:
Strangely, coinciding with the biggest release of Windows in a long long time we have:
...
Now Ubuntu 9.10, just released today, hours ago really, and already majority opinions are "it sure seems rushed, unfinished... the older version is better" and that opinion is growing, by leaps and bounds.
...
Not good... not good at all.
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New Ubuntu releases are tied to new Gnome releases, which means a new Ubuntu released every 6 months. Moreover, this isn't an LTS release, so this is when they (should) try to dick around with new features/software (say, different sound servers) to get things ready for the LTS release.
 
tsuehpsyde said:
And to those bitching about it not being stable: Go download the LTS and use that. Problem solved. The next TLS comes out in 6 months, and it should be a fairly feature rich, stable release.
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Darundal said:
this isn't an LTS release, so this is when they (should) try to dick around with new features/software (say, different sound servers) to get things ready for the LTS release.
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This argument always pisses me off. They should be adding new features and software during the beta phase, this is a final release (weather it's LTS or not, they've still said it passed Beta and RC stages). Anything that wasn't ready for prime time should have been removed by the time the RC was being tested so that the finished features could be debugged and made ready for a polished public release.

If it really is the purpose of these non-LTS builds to test new features, then they should be labeled as Beta, not Final. Calling an OS in such a state "final" is highly misleading (and damaging for Ubuntu's public image, since something so unfinished got their seal of approval).

As it is, they've released a beta quality product as a final release. I, for one, am not amused.
 
This is the downfall of a release schedule tied to upstream. It's definitely a legitimate issue if the software is buggy on release, but there are pros and cons to a steady and frequent release schedule, and this is one of them. It's still a lot more predictable than a rolling-release, but you still get the latest versions of everything.

If you want a more stable distro, you shouldn't really be using Ubuntu (at least non-LTS), it changes too fast.
 
I was the aforementioned friend with the screenshot, here's another:

84834386.png


Hi, by the way, I'm the new guy.
 
9.04 worked fine... 9.10, not so:

-It fails to see my Realtek-based USB wireless adapter. This was a problem with some earlier versions but it has worked fine for the last couple of releases. Why did they feel they needed to break it again?

-On my HP laptop, I just get a black screen when trying to boot into it from the CD or a Wubi installation

Oh well, at least it works fine in a virtual machine inside Win7...

Maybe if they actually fixed stuff instead of just breaking things and changing the graphics for every release, the OS would gain some traction...
 
Moonlit said:
I was the aforementioned friend with the screenshot, here's another:

84834386.png


Hi, by the way, I'm the new guy.
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What Icon set are you using? I really like it, I like that your Wifi signal strength is a different color!
 
spotdog14 said:
What Icon set are you using? I really like it, I like that your Wifi signal strength is a different color!
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That's actually the Humanity icons, and strangely the wifi strength is grey, the blue bars you're seeing are actually the 3G signal strength. I can only imagine that's another bug.
 
If you used Ubuntu for a long time you would have come to expect that every new release would break something that was previously working or introduce new bugs. Sadly this has gotten worst in the past few releases that I didn't even bother downloading the 9.10. Wait a couple months till they sort things out then try it again.

Funny but true :)
http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/06/evolution-of-ubuntu-user.html

I'm currently running Sidux XFCE and its amazingly snappy and surprisingly problem free for a bleeding age distro. Its been a while since I experienced "shit that just works" until Sidux came along. Only inconvenience with Sidux is that you would need to do upgrades via CLI and not with a graphical solution like synaptic.
 
Wow, a lot of Ubuntu hate here.

I find 9.10 very polished, and working better on my laptop than 9.04. I like that ext4 is the new filesystem (much faster working with large files than ext3, made me go to it from XFS on my server), and the new icons/etc. Nothing broke for me after an upgrade from 9.04 (that was a fresh install when it came out).

The distro has fixed release dates. Yes, there are bugs. There are always bugs. I've found just as many bugs in Windows 7 as I have in Ubuntu 9.10. But I like a set 6-month upgrade cycle and a free(dom) OS over "we'll release it when we want, and charge however much we want, and it's not yours".
 
If anyone notices Adobe flash acting strange, you have to completely turn off all Desktop Effects.
 
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