Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 4th Sep 2008 19:01 UTC, submitted by michuk
Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu The next Ubuntu release is already around the corner. Only two more months, and the next tidal wave of brown 2 paragraph reviews will be upon us. PolishLinux decided that they'd be ahead of the pack, by taking a look at what Ubuntu 8.10 looks like right now, and what new features it brings. Of course, many of these features come from upstream, and will find their way into other distributions as well - or are already there.
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Great Theme Debate
by fretinator on Thu 4th Sep 2008 19:24 UTC
fretinator
Member since:
2005-07-06

Even as we speak, there are loud discussions at Canonical over whether they should switch to Ochre or Tan...

RE: Great Theme Debate
by kragil on Thu 4th Sep 2008 19:36 UTC in reply to "Great Theme Debate"
kragil Member since:
2006-01-04

They should go in the direction of that famous mockup that "everyone" liked. It was wooden but really stylish.

RE[2]: Great Theme Debate
by foxpaul on Thu 4th Sep 2008 19:49 UTC in reply to "RE: Great Theme Debate"
foxpaul Member since:
2007-11-27

which requires changes in gnome's lower levels, which as we all should know by now, will NOT happen.

RE[2]: Great Theme Debate
by cmost on Thu 4th Sep 2008 22:05 UTC in reply to "RE: Great Theme Debate"
cmost Member since:
2006-07-16

Are you high? Really! That mockup was butt ugly. It was horrid, horrific, shockingly repellent, ghastly, grim, grisly, gruesome, hideous, horrid, lurid, macabre. I could describe it as very bad, appalling, awful, dreadful, fearful, frightful, ghastly, horrendous, shocking, terrible. Should I go on? Please don't generalize. Everyone did not like the proposed theme mockup! A theme is highly subjective and it's impossible to please everyone. Nevertheless, Ubuntu has alienated a great number of users with its continued use of orange and brown. Looking at the screen shots from this article I see that the status quo will be maintained for Ibex. Thankfully, the developers of Linux Mint have more sense.

RE[3]: Great Theme Debate
by cyclops on Thu 4th Sep 2008 22:13 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Great Theme Debate"
cyclops Member since:
2006-03-12

I'm not sure I could pick out *branding* between green and orange. Oddly enough I installed Ubuntu on a girfriends computer she changed the theme to Crux!? and has a picture of Frankie Lampard without his top, added those damn eyes and a fish and just got on with it.

You want real bad defaults she rang me becuase her fonts were not the same as the Microsoft ones in office

RE[4]: Great Theme Debate
by sbergman27 on Thu 4th Sep 2008 23:57 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Great Theme Debate"
sbergman27 Member since:
2005-07-24

Oddly enough I installed Ubuntu on a girfriends computer she changed the theme to Crux!?

You have a girlfriend?

RE[3]: Great Theme Debate
by computrius on Thu 4th Sep 2008 22:39 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Great Theme Debate"
computrius Member since:
2006-03-26

So is the current theme... They keep saying with every release that its going to have a new theme, and they ALWAYS cop out at the last minute. Why dont they just pick something thats not puke orange..

RE[4]: Great Theme Debate
by sbergman27 on Fri 5th Sep 2008 00:04 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Great Theme Debate"
sbergman27 Member since:
2005-07-24

In my opinion, you really can't beat the "outdoors" theme, available from the standard repos, combined with this lovely wallpaper from Olympic National Forest:

http://tinyurl.com/5h4rkl

bornagainenguin
Member since:
2005-08-07

--when the power is going out?

Ubuntu devs should really be investing more energy into getting power management up to snuff with Windows XP and MacOS X rather than just mucking about with themes!

Internals before externals people!

I just got an EeePC 901 and quickly ditched the broken Xandros install it came with in favor of Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04.1) only to discover the power management achieves half the battery life of Windows XP!

In an earlier install using my battered copy of XP Home (there were hardware failure issues, am running Ubuntu on the replacement ASUS sent me) Windows XP SP3 consistently gave me 8-9hrs of life during a long road trip. Ubuntu only promises me a mere 4hrs and 25 mins! I know Linux was a server OS and was never intended to run on laptops but this is ridiculous!

If Canonical (and other Linux corporations their respective distros) want Ubuntu to be taken seriously then they need to ramp up the battery life and power management! The age of the netbook\UMPC is upon us and unless Linux attains the necessary support it will quickly lose whatever edge it currently has..

--bornagainpenguin

kaiwai Member since:
2005-07-06

I'm not defending the power management of 8.04 or its use on the Eee pc just in shock and awe that you even bring it up in an article about 8.10. I'm even more in shock that your not talking about Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition http://www.ubuntu.com/products/mobile. Perhaps your better off installing Vista on it then you will get even more hours ;) Clearly your nothing more than a troll, and I will research no further


Stop the character assassinations. Power management is a problem in Linux, and all he (bornagainpenguin) is asking for the focus to be on better power management rather than the razzle-dazzle which seems to be the focus these days. Intel wrote a paper on this a while back on the issues on Linux which drain battery power - someone mentioned GNOME, but the kernel isn't fully tickless as one example. ACPI implementation and support isn't always on par with other operating systems.

I don't know why you jumped into the deep end accusing him of something he never stated.

Edited 2008-09-04 21:17 UTC

cyclops Member since:
2006-03-12

Just for fun, how does a kernel 3 times removed apply to this !? seriously I would love to know. Tell me. I can't do a comparison.

I do know about power management on XP which would need tweaking though the command line on a laptop to gain the mythical 7.5 hours although seriously I would love to know what apps he is using for that kind of battery life.

A quick test from LAST year shows them to be about the same http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=880&num=2

but nothing would reduce the usage by half, computers just don't work like that.

Its not character assassination its fantasy computing, but seriously what has it to do with this article, Oh I'm sorry go back to your mac

Off topic
=========
I can't help noticing that your beloved apple seems to hit a concrete ceiling with its market share ;)

bornagainenguin Member since:
2005-08-07

cyclops trolled...

I do know about power management on XP which would need tweaking though the command line on a laptop to gain the mythical 7.5 hours although seriously I would love to know what apps he is using for that kind of battery life.


As stated above I used nLite to build the install so whatever commandline hacks you say must be involved were automatically done for me. There's nothing mythical about it though, I'm talking about personal experience here. My own.

What apps was I running? Mostly Firefox although I did punch up Media Player Classic a few times to watch some videos and I used Irfanview to check out some pictures I'd taken. It was a long road trip. I got bored easily so...

What I think you're missiing here is the fact we're talking about an EeePC 901. That is, the laptop was using a solid state disk, it came with a gig of RAM and I was not using a swap file. (SSDs are not supposed to depending on whom you ask about it which day of the week.) those things make a difference.

Then when we checked into a hotel I turned on the wlan and was able to surf the internet shile still on battery power. I didn't plugin it in until some time after midnight. The road trip started at 1:00 PM and I didn't have to plugin until midnight. So you do the math, removing an hour for dinner and assorted rest room breaks, an hour or so in the hotel pool...

--bornagainpenguin

lemur2 Member since:
2007-02-17

ACPI implementation and support isn't always on par with other operating systems.


There is very strong evidence to show that it is ACPI that tries to sabotage Linux, rather than a case of Linux not supporting ACPI.

There are commercial BIOS implementations out there right now which return INCORRECT ACPI information for Linux only. Why is the ACPI information returned different for different OSes requesting it? Why does the BIOS even need to know what OS is running? Why is the information incorrect (ie it returns information that does not match the motherboard) ONLY for Linux.

In order to overcome this sabotage, current Linux kernels actually "lie" to the BIOS ACPI. Linux reports itself as Windows to the BIOS.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/archive/index.php/t-277415.html

Edited 2008-09-05 02:01 UTC

kaiwai Member since:
2005-07-06

There is very strong evidence to show that it is ACPI that tries to sabotage Linux, rather than a case of Linux not supporting ACPI.

There are commercial BIOS implementations out there right now which return INCORRECT ACPI information for Linux only. Why is the ACPI information returned different for different OSes requesting it? Why does the BIOS even need to know what OS is running? Why is the information incorrect (ie it returns information that does not match the motherboard) ONLY for Linux.

In order to overcome this sabotage, current Linux kernels actually "lie" to the BIOS ACPI. Linux reports itself as Windows to the BIOS.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/archive/index.php/t-277415.html


Just to play devils advocate, why don't we see OEM's customise their firmware so that it properly supports Linux then? isn't that the whole point of getting hardware off a big name vendor - the fact that you have the assurance that the OS and hardware works together? Why not release a special "linux update" for a firmware specifically written so that Linux can work without jumping through hoops?

Btw, I suggest you look at the specifications of ACPI - in Intels infinate wisdom, they decided not to standardise huge chunks under the guise of allowing vendors to offer 'value added' differentiators in those areas. What has happened, however, is due to the large chunks missing and leaving it up to individual vendors there are large chunks of incompatibility.

If you think it is a Linux only issue, Windows suffers from the same problems when it comes to ACPI issues. It reminds me of an ACPI issue within Windows XP that is so bad it requires a complete re-install. Half-baked implementations that not only stop Linux from installing but destabilise Windows installations and cause performance loss, crashing etc.

Then again, it goes back to my belief that the operating system and hardware should be made by the same vendor. The two should be designed from the ground up for each other. The firmware designed to work with the operating system, the operating system knowing there is a predictable hardware specification sitting underneath it.

If that means that we have a DellOS based on Linux, a HP OS based on Novell/SuSE and through the use of openstandards provide compatibility so software vendors can write their software, I'd sooner that than the current fiasco of 'plugin and pray'.

_txf_ Member since:
2008-03-17

To be perfectly honest, I do get an extra half +- 10 min on vista than I get on Ubuntu.

Power management matters and you won't find anyone who won't acknowledge that. Before calling someone a troll for writing something perfectly accurate, you should look in the mirror... and do some research while you're at it

Edited 2008-09-04 21:50 UTC

cyclops Member since:
2006-03-12

Did it already ;) Minor Differences between them ALL which surprises me although it shouldn't, it just surprises me that its so true.

Edited 2008-09-04 22:20 UTC

bornagainenguin Member since:
2005-08-07

cyclops wrote...

I'm not defending the power management of 8.04 or its use on the Eee pc just in shock and awe that you even bring it up in an article about 8.10.


Thank heaven for small merices! If you were to even try defending the power management of 8.04 (or that of 8.04.1--which is what I'm actually running--but perhaps your reading comprehension isn't all that good?) I'd know you were trolling...

Now why would I bring it up in an article on 8.10? Simple, to point out that support in 8.04.1 isn't all that great and could really use some improvements in 8.10....rather than the focus on the theming, which is where all Ubuntu threads seem to degenerate to.

cyclops wrote...
I'm even more in shock that your not talking about Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition http://www.ubuntu.com/products/mobile.


Well I have been discussing this in both the Ubuntu Forums and the Eeeuser Forums and I wonder now if getting an Eee instead of waiting for the Inspiron Mini was a mistake. Hopefully whatever improvements made to the code and whatever optimizations in Ubuntu for the Atom processor and motherboards, ACPI etc will flow their way back into the main releases rather quickly.

That's the nice thing about Linux--if something isn't ready yet you know it likely will have taken several quantum leaps in a short amount of time!

cyclops wrote...
Perhaps your better off installing Vista on it then you will get even more hours ;) Clearly your nothing more than a troll, and I will research no further


Okay that last comment clearly marks you as a troll. Either that or your comprehension is really bad. No one here has mentioned Vista but you.

As said in my original posting I was running WinXP SP3, which gave me the aforementioned battery life. I am currently running Ubuntu--which works in every aspect except for battery life. I'd happily stay with Ubuntu if only the battery life were more uip to par. As it is I'm not in a huge hurry to jump ship just yet any way and am still researching to see what tweaks can be done to improve things for me.

That's one of the main advantages of Linux you see, there's always one more thing you can do to fix things. In Windows you can try a few ideas and then you're basically stuck with whatever Bill gives you. Is it any wonder then I'm a...

--bornagainpenguin

cyclops Member since:
2006-03-12

cyclops wrote...
"I'm not defending the power management of 8.04 or its use on the Eee pc just in shock and awe that you even bring it up in an article about 8.10.


Thank heaven for small merices! If you were to even try defending the power management of 8.04 (or that of 8.04.1--which is what I'm actually running--but perhaps your reading comprehension isn't all that good?) I'd know you were trolling...

Now why would I bring it up in an article on 8.10? Simple, to point out that support in 8.04.1 isn't all that great and could really use some improvements in 8.10....rather than the focus on the theming, which is where all Ubuntu threads seem to degenerate to.

cyclops wrote...
I'm even more in shock that your not talking about Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition http://www.ubuntu.com/products/mobile.


Well I have been discussing this in both the Ubuntu Forums and the Eeeuser Forums and I wonder now if getting an Eee instead of waiting for the Inspiron Mini was a mistake. Hopefully whatever improvements made to the code and whatever optimizations in Ubuntu for the Atom processor and motherboards, ACPI etc will flow their way back into the main releases rather quickly.

That's the nice thing about Linux--if something isn't ready yet you know it likely will have taken several quantum leaps in a short amount of time!

cyclops wrote...
Perhaps your better off installing Vista on it then you will get even more hours ;) Clearly your nothing more than a troll, and I will research no further


Okay that last comment clearly marks you as a troll. Either that or your comprehension is really bad. No one here has mentioned Vista but you.

As said in my original posting I was running WinXP SP3, which gave me the aforementioned battery life. I am currently running Ubuntu--which works in every aspect except for battery life. I'd happily stay with Ubuntu if only the battery life were more uip to par. As it is I'm not in a huge hurry to jump ship just yet any way and am still researching to see what tweaks can be done to improve things for me.

That's one of the main advantages of Linux you see, there's always one more thing you can do to fix things. In Windows you can try a few ideas and then you're basically stuck with whatever Bill gives you. Is it any wonder then I'm a...

--bornagainpenguin
"

Learn about power management on Linux and Windows XP before posting again, you clearly have no knowledge of either. I should have ignored your post and just talked about the topic.

bornagainenguin Member since:
2005-08-07

cyclops trolled...

Learn about power management on Linux and Windows XP before posting again, you clearly have no knowledge of either.


Hmmm... I suppose my direct empirical knowledge simply doesn't count?

The fact I spent more than eight hours on my EeePC 901 while using Windows XP and cannot get more than five hours* on it using Ubuntu is irrelevant because....?

The fact I am a Linux fan (been dabbling with it since around '98 and using it for my default desktop fairly steady now for nearly two years) and am quite happy with it in all other respects is disregarded because...?

Oh! I get it, all that doesn't count simply because you say so.... Great now that makes perfect... wait what?!?

Make up your mind--first I'm trolling then you claim I'm a liar and now suddenly you decide I'm too ignorant to be commenting on the subject.

Look pal, I gave you the information I have at hand...and all I know is that when I install and tweak Windows XP I get over eight hours of battery life on my EeePC 901 and in Ubuntu I am unable to break the 4 and a half hour mark*. If you have a solution then please present it, but putting your fingers in your ears and chanting to the contrary or trying to pretend this doesn't matter helps no one. In fact it is this attitude that holds Linux back from being all it could be.

--bornagainpenguin

* I recently managed to add another five minutes to my battery life following some tweaks that have been showing up here and there as various people complain about the power management issues and begin to work on fixing or work arounds for it.

What's your setup ?
by Moulinneuf on Fri 5th Sep 2008 04:32 UTC in reply to "Who cares about painting the house--"
Moulinneuf Member since:
2005-07-06

http://www.ubuntu-eee.com

http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/

http://www.moblin.org/index.php

Care to elaborate on your setup ? Both on Ubuntu and Windows ?

RE: What's your setup ?
by bornagainenguin on Sat 6th Sep 2008 16:45 UTC in reply to "What's your setup ?"
bornagainenguin Member since:
2005-08-07

Moulinneuf wrote...

Care to elaborate on your setup ? Both on Ubuntu and Windows ?


In Windows I used nLite to build an iso using my battered old copy of Windows XP Home, which is an original goild release (no service packs applied at all) and slipstreamed SP3 to it as well as onepiece's updates post SP3 and IE7 packs. I also updated Windows Media Player and did some registry hacks...

You can see my nLite *.ini here: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=42821

On Ubuntu all I did was use unetbootin to download and create a USB key installer and installed vanilla Ubuntu 8.04.1 on my EeePC 901. Then I used my desktop to download Adamm's kernel and modules deb packages on to another USB key and installed them using the directions here: http://array.org/ubuntu/setup.html

After that I rebooted and did all the posted tweaks on Adamm's site and the ones that seemed to apply on Ubuntu Eee site. As well as the various tricks and hack I like to do to make my Ubuntu desktop work for me. So more or less a standard set up.

--bornagainpenguin

cyclops
Member since:
2006-03-12

The releases in October of not just Ubuntu but all the major players in the Distribution world ie Suse Fedora.

Seeing these articles people here of all places do not seem to understand what Linux or a Distribution is.

A Distribution is simply the latest and greatest Applications+OS at any particular time to make it more awesome than the other Distributions.

In reality you have to check out Linux(3 revisions see almost universal solution to everybody's wireless problem)+X(1 release+numerous improvements to the drivers)+Major upgrade to FireFox(3 is awesome and that the end of it)+Ubuntu(the 6 moth release cycle it follows and thats all over the place)+OpenOffice 3 should just sneak into that timeframe(fingers crossed).

Thats ignoring all the fun stuff Banshee and Transmission are simply different READ WORLD APART IMPROVEMENT over there predecessors.

This is a better indication of whats happening http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=886980

But the bottom line is Ubuntu is coming out just in time to celebrate Vista RTM 2nd year, thats right 2 years old, and early Alphas really put it to shame.

Thom_Holwerda Member since:
2005-06-29

What part of "Of course, many of these features come from upstream, and will find their way into other distributions as well - or are already there." don't you understand?

Clinton Member since:
2005-07-05

Assuming you are not a troll and are honestly trying to shed some light on the subject, it might help get your points across if you took all the abrasives out of your speech.

Comment by pinochet
by pinochet on Fri 5th Sep 2008 00:15 UTC
pinochet
Member since:
2008-09-05

Wow, its always fun to get your hands on the newest, freshest Ubuntu releases! What a lively and cool distribution. I cant wait!

Mobile 3G tethering now, please!
by bousozoku on Fri 5th Sep 2008 01:00 UTC
bousozoku
Member since:
2006-01-23

I can't say it enough. When my Mac was down, I didn't have any internet access for Linux because my mobile phone is my connection.

I wouldn't complain really, but it was so simple to get Mac OS X to work, even though that specific device wasn't supported. I modified a modem script and copied it to the scripts folder and attached it to the the PPP section in networking. No shell prompts were necessary. Mind you, I readily consider how a grandmother would cope, and she might not do so well with modifying the parameters of the modem script, but everything else was a point-and-click operation.

If Canonical has a good look at the extremely long thread in the Ubuntu forums, I hope they'll restrict functionality to what they can complete in a high quality fashion. (They should worry less about fashion and more about quality. Is the theme important to smooth operation? No.)

I hope they will fix 8.04
by hraq on Fri 5th Sep 2008 04:37 UTC
hraq
Member since:
2005-07-06

My GF9800GTS and GF9600GT both are not supported with the restricted driver application yet.

Also Mac keyboards are not supported and they crash after logon.

I didn't have much trouble before with 7.10

I had to switch 2 of my workstations and one laptop to 8.04 because of the advances they introduced and now with the killing feature of multi tabbed nautilus, maybe I am not gonna install konqueror.

I have to test more 8.10 before I upgrade
Well done Ubuntu

RE: I hope they will fix 8.04
by lemur2 on Fri 5th Sep 2008 05:48 UTC in reply to "I hope they will fix 8.04"
lemur2 Member since:
2007-02-17

My GF9800GTS and GF9600GT both are not supported with the restricted driver application yet.


If Windows supporters are permitted to claim that Vista problems with drivers are strictly the fault of the manufacturer, then perhaps it is just as valid to point out that difficulties in Linux with restricted drivers are likewise not likely to be due to the Linux vendor.

RE[2]: I hope they will fix 8.04
by jbauer on Fri 5th Sep 2008 07:56 UTC in reply to "RE: I hope they will fix 8.04"
jbauer Member since:
2005-07-06

If Windows supporters are permitted to claim that Vista problems with drivers are strictly the fault of the manufacturer, then perhaps it is just as valid to point out that difficulties in Linux with restricted drivers are likewise not likely to be due to the Linux vendor.


Except in Vista there's no need for such thing as a restricted drivers application to allow humans to install a driver easily.

Edited 2008-09-05 07:57 UTC

apoclypse Member since:
2007-02-17

Yeah, because these things always work in Vista. (sarcasm)

Atheros AR5212 problems
by Robo on Fri 5th Sep 2008 20:34 UTC
Robo
Member since:
2007-07-17

I have a Thinkpad R51e Model 1845-A19 with an Atheros AR5212 wireless card. I just cannot make it work under Ubuntu 8.04.

I hope 8.10 fixes it :-)

Lots of others with the same problem -- search for Ubuntu AR5212.

Sorry but...
by factotum218 on Sat 6th Sep 2008 20:24 UTC
factotum218
Member since:
2007-03-20

Okay, that's it. I'm sorry but after 6 years I am finally going to say it...

I don't care. I don't ever want to see another distro release headline again.

RE: Sorry but...
by aaronb on Sun 7th Sep 2008 12:11 UTC in reply to "Sorry but..."
aaronb Member since:
2005-07-06

This may be the wrong news site for you <-;

RE[2]: Sorry but...
by factotum218 on Mon 8th Sep 2008 20:20 UTC in reply to "RE: Sorry but..."
factotum218 Member since:
2007-03-20

This may be the wrong news site for you

Yeah, I know, but it's still puzzling to me how much hooplah surfaces over the all new themes and whatnot. I figured by now people would have had it pounded into their heads that they can easily change aspects of the theme to their liking.