Quite impressed with Ubuntu 7.04 Beta

[pelikan]

It's been a couple of years since I used Ubuntu. Here are some nice improvements that I found:

- Automatic partitioning during install that didn't kill XP. I had XP on the HD already. I installed off the Ubuntu live CD and now I'm dual booting.

- The correct screen resolution and refresh rate was auto-detected. Both with the driver that comes with Ubuntu and the ATI driver.

- One click install of the ATI driver through the new Restricted Drivers Manager.

- One click install of Java, in Add/Remove Programs.

- One click install of Flash from within Firefox.

- My Audigy soundcard was recognized and worked without my having to do anything.

The best part is all this just worked, first time. The install was actually easier and faster than XP.

 

[magomago]

What does Feisty Fawn offer over Edgy? Any big movements, or is it more incremental changes like updating gnome etc? Once Edgy came out I sat on it and really haven't looked at anything

 

[pelikan]

Originally posted by: magomago
What does Feisty Fawn offer over Edgy? Any big movements, or is it more incremental changes like updating gnome etc? Once Edgy came out I sat on it and really haven't looked at anything

I don't know what improvements there are. The ones I'm aware of are:

- Restricted Drivers Manager
- Improved partitioning
- Automatic getting of things you need when you try to do stuff. For example if you try to play a video file and don't have the codec, it will go get the correct codec for you.

 

[magomago]

Originally posted by: pelikan

Originally posted by: magomago
What does Feisty Fawn offer over Edgy? Any big movements, or is it more incremental changes like updating gnome etc? Once Edgy came out I sat on it and really haven't looked at anything

I don't know what improvements there are. The ones I'm aware of are:

- Restricted Drivers Manager
- Improved partitioning
- Automatic getting of things you need when you try to do stuff. For example if you try to play a video file and don't have the codec, it will go get the correct codec for you.

you got a link? I checked their site but it didn't llst too much, although i didn't dig deep....

but to just get the right codec, does it have to be free? What it is like a MS WMV or something? That is VERY interesting as it essentially nullfies the need to have to download codecs and everything will work...pretty pimp!

edit:

looked on digg, seems very interesting!!!! I like how compiz and beryl are integrated by default (although we still need to turn it on)...now if I can still play my games even with compiz on, we got a winner

 

[brxndxn]

Originally posted by: pelikan

- One click install of the ATI driver through the new Restricted Drivers Manager.

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!@!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'll definitely have to try this one out.. I eventually get linux graphics card drivers installed.. but it's always such a bitch to do so.

 

[tatteredpotato]

Originally posted by: magomago

Originally posted by: pelikan

Originally posted by: magomago
What does Feisty Fawn offer over Edgy? Any big movements, or is it more incremental changes like updating gnome etc? Once Edgy came out I sat on it and really haven't looked at anything

I don't know what improvements there are. The ones I'm aware of are:

- Restricted Drivers Manager
- Improved partitioning
- Automatic getting of things you need when you try to do stuff. For example if you try to play a video file and don't have the codec, it will go get the correct codec for you.

you got a link? I checked their site but it didn't llst too much, although i didn't dig deep....

but to just get the right codec, does it have to be free? What it is like a MS WMV or something? That is VERY interesting as it essentially nullfies the need to have to download codecs and everything will work...pretty pimp!

edit:

looked on digg, seems very interesting!!!! I like how compiz and beryl are integrated by default (although we still need to turn it on)...now if I can still play my games even with compiz on, we got a winner

That games business is sarcasm right

 

[pelikan]

Originally posted by: magomago
but to just get the right codec, does it have to be free? What it is like a MS WMV or something? That is VERY interesting as it essentially nullfies the need to have to download codecs and everything will work...pretty pimp!

it doesn't have to be open source. you can enable all libraries.

 

[slpaulson]

I wonder if it works with my computer now.

I can't get the released version to install on my computer... I blame the Jmicron IDE.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: BlameCanada

Originally posted by: magomago
looked on digg, seems very interesting!!!! I like how compiz and beryl are integrated by default (although we still need to turn it on)...now if I can still play my games even with compiz on, we got a winner

That games business is sarcasm right

Games mostly work with Compiz. Although you'd probably want to disable it first for maximum performance.

I'll definitely have to try this one out.. I eventually get linux graphics card drivers installed.. but it's always such a bitch to do so.

Even if you get them installed the ATI drivers are pretty unstable.

Next time if your looking to build a machine or purchase a laptop to run Linux be sure to get integrated Intel graphics, which won't generally need to have drivers installed to get 2d/3d working. It'll be automatic. They are fast enough to run compiz/beryl quite well.

Otherwise if you need high performance 3d then get nvidia.

What does Feisty Fawn offer over Edgy? Any big movements, or is it more incremental changes like updating gnome etc? Once Edgy came out I sat on it and really haven't looked at anything

It's about 6-8 months worth of progress, which isn't going to be huge.

Things like Compiz which took effort to get going will work without much effort. UI improvements, bug fixes, and better applications.

Software is evolutionary in nature anyways, not revolutionary. Programs develop over time and all progress is incremental. This is one of the reasons it's tough for Microsoft to release a OS because they want something big to create a splash and convince people to buy new PCs with it on it.

Eventually with Linux distributions I figure you will see incremental continious updates with milstone snapshots that get supported for extended periods.

The choice is realy do you rather deal with many small problems in upgrades and changes over a long time, or would you rather deal with upgrade problems in one big blow?

It's sort of like with the Linux kernel were you have continious releases, but you have 2.6.16 being supported long term for people who don't like upgrading. (not that you have a lot of people sticking with that..)

One interesting comparision is going to be between Gnome and KDE were KDE completely broke ABI/API compatability with all KDE software in order to upgrade to QT4 and KDE4. Previously KDE was able to keep mostly compatabile between QT2 and QT3 releases, I beleive.

Were as with Gnome you have a huge break with Gnome 1.x vs Gnome 2.x and now they see no need to break ABI/API compatability (besides new bugs they introduce) in order to add things like vector graphics and 3d support.

 

[magomago]

Originally posted by: BlameCanada

That games business is sarcasm right

nah i'm serios....then again i only used compiz back when it very first came out...i couldn't play games at all while compiz was turned on. If things changed since then, let me know. Even if itw as a case of "turn it off to play games, and then turn it on again" i wouldn't prefer that - always on or never

 

[drag]

Well for example..
When running compiz on my Intel onboard graphics I can run enemy territory and it's pretty fast.

The bad thing that happens is that on the xterm that I launched it the game likes to output lots of information to the console as you play it (which in itself is actually very cool.. et 2>> game.log >> game.log)

However what happens is that compiz gets confused a bit and when the xterm gets new text it kinda pokes through in a ugly way. Like a flash and the outline of the window. The key is to not have the xterm underneath the 'full screen' window, or to output the text to null or whatever.

Not perfect, but it does work.

Now with window'd 3d applications like blender there are more issues.

But you probably tried it out when it required you to run XGL to get compiz working. However with Free software and Nvidia propriatory 9xxx drivers their is no longer any need to run XGL as AIGLX support is built into the X server and it runs with no issue.

Now my experiances are with Debian unstable with the X.org 7.1 release and their updated drivers. (With X.org they try to keep the drivers somewhat independant of the actual X server version). With the new Ubuntu it will be using X.org 7.2 and may have those issues solved, I don't know.

If your using ATI and it's a R500 series card then you have to use XGL to run it. If you have R4xx series or earlier you can use open software drivers and get AIGLX with no problem, but these aren't so suitable for gaming.

 

[magomago]

yeah you are right drag - I was running XGL at the time.

from your experience how much is the "performance hit" from running compiz and games at the same time? I actually forked out quite a premium for the 7600GT AGP since it was the fastest nvidia card out there that would have the best support for my "aging" agp system. TYou were most likely running the linux binary of Enemy Territory...whereas I'm playing games through Cedega\Wine

 

[magomago]

Originally posted by: BlameCanada

That games business is sarcasm right

nah i'm serios....then again i only used compiz back when it very first came out...i couldn't play games at all while compiz was turned on. If things changed since then, let me know. Even if itw as a case of "turn it off to play games, and then turn it on again" i wouldn't prefer that - always on or never

 

[drag]

I think I still do have a subscription to cedega, but I haven't used it for a long long time.

Not realy interested in big commercial games so much anymore. To expensive, but whatever.

It also depends on your drivers a lot. For 3D support Nvidia is still quite a bit more sophisticated then the Intel open source drivers I am using. On a system with good drivers and a fast video you probably won't notice the difference. I realy haven't done any benchmarks so I am guessing maybe 10% or so? Don't know. It would be interesting to see.

One thing to keep in mind is that when your running Nvidia drivers your not running X.org Xserver anymore.. your running Nvidia's Xserver. It uses a lot of functionality from X.org, but as far as the rendering stuff goes it's going to be all Nvidia. So your experiances may easily vary widely from mine.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Having just installed Edgy 6.10 (I was on hold with the phone company for ~40 minutes, I was bored) I can say without a doubt that the NVIDIA drivers were the biggest pain of the whole process.

Even with the Ubuntu package manager doing the download/install/etc, and following their instructions to the letter, X cheerfully shat itself on reboot claiming that it couldn't find any supported hardware for the "nvidia" driver.

One reloaded xorg.conf later, and an uninstall/reinstall of the drivers, and everything worked perfectly.



- M4H

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
Having just installed Edgy 6.10 (I was on hold with the phone company for ~40 minutes, I was bored) I can say without a doubt that the NVIDIA drivers were the biggest pain of the whole process.

Even with the Ubuntu package manager doing the download/install/etc, and following their instructions to the letter, X cheerfully shat itself on reboot claiming that it couldn't find any supported hardware for the "nvidia" driver.

One reloaded xorg.conf later, and an uninstall/reinstall of the drivers, and everything worked perfectly.



- M4H

That's probably due to you upgrading the kernel along the way. The kernel module you have installed was for the old kernel. If you reboot you'll probably have the same problem again.

Google and download "envy" and use it to install your nvidia drivers. If you do it once it'll fix the reboot problem.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: silverpig
That's probably due to you upgrading the kernel along the way. The kernel module you have installed was for the old kernel. If you reboot you'll probably have the same problem again.

Google and download "envy" and use it to install your nvidia drivers. If you do it once it'll fix the reboot problem.

The process I did was

1. Install Ubuntu 6.10 from CD
2. Let the Update Manager do its thing, which included a kernel update.
3. Rebooted to new kernel.
4. Used Ubuntu's Apps/Add-Remove manager to install the binary NVIDIA driver.
5. Killed X, did sudo nvidia-glx-config enable.
6. Restarted X. Noticed no NVIDIA splash screen and windows were still moving like crap, so no acceleration. Rebooted.
7. Watched X crap itself.
8. Restored xorg.conf
9. Removed the binary NVIDIA driver through Add-Remove.
10. Rebooted.
11. Added the binary NVIDIA driver through Add/Remove.
12. Killed X, did sudo nvidia-glx-config enable.
13. Rebooted the system.
14. Finally had working acceleration.

That's way too much damned work.

- M4H

 

[greylica]

I am still using 6.10, and I can say that it's the most easy and stable Linux that I ever used.
Very, Very, Very Good.

The truly WOW is here:

www.ubuntu.com

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire

Originally posted by: silverpig
That's probably due to you upgrading the kernel along the way. The kernel module you have installed was for the old kernel. If you reboot you'll probably have the same problem again.

Google and download "envy" and use it to install your nvidia drivers. If you do it once it'll fix the reboot problem.

The process I did was

1. Install Ubuntu 6.10 from CD
2. Let the Update Manager do its thing, which included a kernel update.
3. Rebooted to new kernel.
4. Used Ubuntu's Apps/Add-Remove manager to install the binary NVIDIA driver.
5. Killed X, did sudo nvidia-glx-config enable.
6. Restarted X. Noticed no NVIDIA splash screen and windows were still moving like crap, so no acceleration. Rebooted.
7. Watched X crap itself.
8. Restored xorg.conf
9. Removed the binary NVIDIA driver through Add-Remove.
10. Rebooted.
11. Added the binary NVIDIA driver through Add/Remove.
12. Killed X, did sudo nvidia-glx-config enable.
13. Rebooted the system.
14. Finally had working acceleration.

That's way too much damned work.

- M4H

Did I miss something or did you do the same thing 2 times? What did you do differently the 2nd time that you didn't do the first time?

 

[greylica]

Originally posted by: Robor

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire

Originally posted by: silverpig
That's probably due to you upgrading the kernel along the way. The kernel module you have installed was for the old kernel. If you reboot you'll probably have the same problem again.

Google and download "envy" and use it to install your nvidia drivers. If you do it once it'll fix the reboot problem.

The process I did was

1. Install Ubuntu 6.10 from CD
2. Let the Update Manager do its thing, which included a kernel update.
3. Rebooted to new kernel.
4. Used Ubuntu's Apps/Add-Remove manager to install the binary NVIDIA driver.
5. Killed X, did sudo nvidia-glx-config enable.
6. Restarted X. Noticed no NVIDIA splash screen and windows were still moving like crap, so no acceleration. Rebooted.
7. Watched X crap itself.
8. Restored xorg.conf
9. Removed the binary NVIDIA driver through Add-Remove.
10. Rebooted.
11. Added the binary NVIDIA driver through Add/Remove.
12. Killed X, did sudo nvidia-glx-config enable.
13. Rebooted the system.
14. Finally had working acceleration.

That's way too much damned work.

- M4H

Did I miss something or did you do the same thing 2 times? What did you do differently the 2nd time that you didn't do the first time?

He didn't do nothing, the pre compiled drivers for 2.6.10 and 2.6.11 are different, then , when he first installed the Nvidia Driver, the system probably was booted to 2.6.10 kernel, and after the reboot, the header was finnaly instaled and 2.6.11 is OK to install the driver.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: greylica

Originally posted by: Robor

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire

Originally posted by: silverpig
That's probably due to you upgrading the kernel along the way. The kernel module you have installed was for the old kernel. If you reboot you'll probably have the same problem again.

Google and download "envy" and use it to install your nvidia drivers. If you do it once it'll fix the reboot problem.

The process I did was

1. Install Ubuntu 6.10 from CD
2. Let the Update Manager do its thing, which included a kernel update.
3. Rebooted to new kernel.
4. Used Ubuntu's Apps/Add-Remove manager to install the binary NVIDIA driver.
5. Killed X, did sudo nvidia-glx-config enable.
6. Restarted X. Noticed no NVIDIA splash screen and windows were still moving like crap, so no acceleration. Rebooted.
7. Watched X crap itself.
8. Restored xorg.conf
9. Removed the binary NVIDIA driver through Add-Remove.
10. Rebooted.
11. Added the binary NVIDIA driver through Add/Remove.
12. Killed X, did sudo nvidia-glx-config enable.
13. Rebooted the system.
14. Finally had working acceleration.

That's way too much damned work.

- M4H

Did I miss something or did you do the same thing 2 times? What did you do differently the 2nd time that you didn't do the first time?

He didn't do nothing, the pre compiled drivers for 2.6.10 and 2.6.11 are different, then , when he first installed the Nvidia Driver, the system probably was booted to 2.6.10 kernel, and after the reboot, the header was finnaly instaled and 2.6.11 is OK to install the driver.

See bolded lines. I updated to 2.6.11 and rebooted before even touching the Add/Remove Programs wizard.

And yes, I did the same thing twice. Perhaps it didn't work because my wife was nearby the first time, and we all know Linux users can't get women.

- M4H

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire

See bolded lines. I updated to 2.6.11 and rebooted before even touching the Add/Remove Programs wizard.

And yes, I did the same thing twice. Perhaps it didn't work because my wife was nearby the first time, and we all know Linux users can't get women.

- M4H

Sure we can...in fact, my wife like linux ("The computer hasn't locked up since you put that K thingy on there")

btw, my wife is NOT a geek, but she IS a linux user (every single day)

 

[sourceninja]

I tried out the new ubuntu beta (actually kubuntu beta). I found the partition manager would not let me manually partition, it kept throwing errors at me saying start could not be after end. I had to use a gparted cd to make my partitions then reboot back into the kubuntu cd and install. After that I had problems with the new control panel and nvidia drivers. I needed to open the control panel to change my resolution and to configure my power management, but everytime I did that it edited my xorg.conf setting my video back to nv instead of nvidia and adding a few entrys that borked X all together. This was just a few minor bugs that need worked out before release. But they were enough hassle that I ended up just restoring my edgy partition. Which I found out my backup was currupt, and thus in a fit of anger, I went back to gentoo where I've always been happy.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: nweaver

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire

See bolded lines. I updated to 2.6.11 and rebooted before even touching the Add/Remove Programs wizard.

And yes, I did the same thing twice. Perhaps it didn't work because my wife was nearby the first time, and we all know Linux users can't get women.

- M4H

Sure we can...in fact, my wife like linux ("The computer hasn't locked up since you put that K thingy on there")

btw, my wife is NOT a geek, but she IS a linux user (every single day)

That (bolded) is hillarious! :laugh:

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: Robor

Originally posted by: nweaver
Sure we can...in fact, my wife like linux ("The computer hasn't locked up since you put that K thingy on there")

btw, my wife is NOT a geek, but she IS a linux user (every single day)

That (bolded) is hillarious! :laugh:

:laugh:

So as someone who's used both, Robor, should I just screw 6.10 and jump into 7.0x? I've had 6.10 on for less than a day, so it's not like I'll be losing anything.

- M4H