Submitted by 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.
One of the important new features is an upgraded Network Manager, which includes a much broader and better support for 3G networking. It is possible to network with 3G today, but the process is rather complicated and not very user friendly. With the recent surge of popularity of netbooks, and the focus on true mobility, the importance of easy 3G support in Linux is clear. “The developers are promising to make this process even faster and a lot easier.”
By default, Ubuntu 8.10 comes with a pre-configured guest account, allowing people to make their system accessible to others without the risk of losing data or messing up the system. A related addition is the ~/Private directory, which can be encrypted and is inaccessible to others.
Other changes include a graphical configuration tool for fontconfig settings, tabs in Nautilus, a cleaning utility for the package database, a new look for the installer, and a lot more. The theme will also receive a redesign, but it is not yet complete for the current alpha releases.
Even as we speak, there are loud discussions at Canonical over whether they should switch to Ochre or Tan…
They should go in the direction of that famous mockup that “everyone” liked. It was wooden but really stylish.
which requires changes in gnome’s lower levels, which as we all should know by now, will NOT happen.
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.
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
You have a girlfriend?
Come on now, this is not Slashdot. But now we now that you don’t have a gf!
Come on now, this is not Slashdot. But now we know that you don’t have a gf!
No. I have a bf.
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..
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
–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
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
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
cyclops trolled…
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
LOL I find it somewhat amusing that you never mentioned you were not using a stock install of windows XP. You clearly do not understand my points. When you used to buy XP on a laptop it came with an *additional* profile to the stock XP one, this needs to be done from the command line, and done to suit the processor.
My comments that you don’t seem to understand is that the OS is not a magic bullet to performance management, becuase by its nature things take up power CPU;Screen; Disk; Wireless. Oddly wireless power management was implemented recently on one of the chipsets to little effect. If you have your screen On it simply is not saving power they should by there very nature be about the same. The assuming that you have the same usage on both platforms browsing; watching video’s etc they should be the same. That leaves SSD access. I haven’t used installed Ubuntu on an eee pc for some time but you switch all the wasted access off.
but the bottom line is you simply have made a claim, without any empirical evidence, which just seems unlikely when compared to any logic, or any benchmark anywhere, or that improvements in an OS thats not static will change the playing field… they almost certainly will *for an idling OS*, but the reality is I have wasted enough time talking about a 7 year old OS, or one 5 months old. I want to talk about the one being released next month the one with a new alpha release this morning. I can talk about this you simply can’t.
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
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’.
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.
Indeed, Windows suffers from power-management issues also. I have several older machines that just hang whenever I try to suspend them. Linux on the other hand works perfectly fine, suspends and resumes without issue.
However, I do agree with the original poster of this thread: Linux PM needs improvement. A lot. Many device drivers still don’t support power-management at all and some of them support it but it’s flaky.
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
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
cyclops wrote…
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…
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…
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.
cyclops trolled…
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.
I haven’t stopped laughing
cyclops crank-yanked…
Or trolling it would appear…
Alas, if only this inspired genius of technology and computer operating systems would use his powers for good! If only he would stop… laughing …and post instructions on how to improve things. Too bad he’s too busy being a part of the poroblem and obstructing those seeking answers….
–bornagainpenguin
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 ?
Moulinneuf wrote…
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
http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/index.p…
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.
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?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=886980 from my post how about you READ the post before commenting on it, but what do you expect when people are focusing on screenshots and themes when the background is a damn heron(because you probably don’t know thats from the last release which had…a heron in the release name)
I know my posts are informed its a shame the article is not, or the comments.
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.
Wow, its always fun to get your hands on the newest, freshest Ubuntu releases! What a lively and cool distribution. I cant wait!
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.)
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
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
Yeah, because these things always work in Vista. (sarcasm)
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.
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.
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.