Ubuntu 9.10 - wow

[YoMatta]

Aside from some games, is there a reason to return to windows?

Ubuntu 9.10 3D Desktop

Wow.

 

[Enablingwolf]

9.10 Karmic Is just a bit of improvement on 9.04 Jackalope. They did redo how it boots. Other than that. It is a progression of packages and logical back end improvements.

One of the better perks of 9.10 has. Is, it has a new kernel (2.6.30.10) and now the Intel video issues are mostly sorted out. Huge strides for integrated Intel users.

I was running the alpha branch for a bit. Went back to stable (Jackalope.) Since I don't have the time to tinker right now. No Plymouth or major theme updates. One nice thing I got was my MX600 worked flawless again without any editing any HAL related files.

There is some nice features inside the next release. Nothing much past simply fine tuning conventions (Pulse and the notify) and adding a new boot splash. Some other things are going on, but most wont notice stuff like it defaults to EXT4 now and such like that.

Right now. The alpha looks good, but has way more bugs than 9.04 had at this point.

 

[YoMatta]

the "scrolly thing" he does about 60% of the way in is impressive. will have to look into that.

 

[Enablingwolf]

the "scrolly thing" he does about 60% of the way in is impressive. will have to look into that.

I think that is a Firefox plugin. If you notice, that user fires it off from Firefox itself at first. Then goes fullscreen from there. Which is available for other ditros also. Most of the effects you see are Compiz Fusion doing it's thing.

Don't get me wrong. Karmic is going to be nice if they iron out the bugs and there is no regressions in new features. Some of them are right nice. But there is not much going on there that is not available even in 9.04 right now. The newer kernel is going to help it some, but not an end all enhancement.


Now this was one idea floated around for the boot xsplash.. It did not make it unfortunately. To bad they did not go with the Red Hat Plymouth...

Here is what it looks like as of now. Still a work in progress.. But it is about the final for it. Feature freezes are showing up and taking its toll.

Again, Linux in general has some sweet eye candy going on, and stuff you can add. If as a user you choose to.

One thing that the average user may not notice is that they worked on the Wubi installer. Some more enhancements and it is sort of a bit better than previous versions. From the change logs. It sounds like they are making it even better. I didn't have a chance to fiddle with it. The install for Karmic is new. But pretty much the same as it has been. Just looks shinier. 9.10 is more of a maintenance release than an overhaul. It is going to be one or two cycles before we see anything major new from 9.04.

 

[UnseenMenace]

I soon get board with eye candy after a while and return to fluxbox or gnome, I'm never over impressed with it

 

[ihrsetrdr]

Yea, Compiz is interesting as a concept but I tire of it in about 43 seconds, then turn it off for good.

 

[Satyrist]

Yea, Compiz is interesting as a concept but I tire of it in about 43 seconds, then turn it off for good.

Plus, it tends to be problematic at getting it to work, particularly if you've got an older (now legacy) ATI card.

It's less of a hassle with NVidia, that's for sure.

All of the video was showing what was possible with the Intel drivers? It'd certainly make picking a laptop an easier choice for many.

 

[Enablingwolf]

All of the video was showing what was possible with the Intel drivers? It'd certainly make picking a laptop an easier choice for many.

It looks like most.. most of the Intel issues are vetted. Which I know a number of folks had a hard time getting a good experience with Intel video. Now they have it built in. Instead of tinkering and recompiling a kernel that works with the netbook or laptop they bought.
It took a while before the regression was fixed.

So now most Intel users can turn on the eye candy if they like. The comment by the user on youtube does sort of give a demonstration that is is vetted for Intel.

I got my hands on Thinkpad T400s with a intel gfx and a SSD, grabbed the latest Ubuntu Karmic and tried it out. The major 3D problems on intel gfx seems to be fixed for good.

 

[Trombe]

The Ubuntu color scheme is still butt ugly.

Does it at least come with that Miro player pre installed?

 

[Enablingwolf]

No, Miro is not a default. And your still going to have Totem and Rhythmbox as defaults. They did take Pidgin out as the default IM client, now they use Empathy.. The repos are about the same as 9.04, just updated packages. Pretty much as I mentioned prior. 9.10 is not much different than 9.04.
The most notable change is how Pulse is now. The Volume Control applet works pretty good now. Which before it sucked rather badly. It is not perfect, but is a much needed improvement. Now you can use a GUI to change what type of setup you have. Instead of hitting config files. I liked that I could set my 5.1 easy peasy..

Simply put. Don't expect a major overhaul of the Koala past Jackalope. If you want a new kernel version and what that brings and newer packages... By default. Then it is a good upgrade. If you know how to recompile a kernel and update/pin your repos or run svn.. Then it is not worth the hassle of upgrading the install.
But this is coming from me using the Alpha builds. Though Jackalope was much further along and much more stable at this point in the cycle.

There has been talk for 9.10 to have an option for Gnome 3.. Which I thought of trying out soon.

 

[Zerix01]

9.10 vs 9.04 is like night and day on my netbook. I'm pretty sure it had everything to do with the crappy intel video drivers in 9.04, every attempt that I made to correct things only made it slower so I gave up and installed 9.10 and Woot, speed again.

 

[SeanBest]

I liked Ubuntu, still do, but after trying Mint 7 ... it'd be hard to go back. Look forward to Mint based off 9.10 though.

 

[ogboot]

WHAT is that app he's digging through towards the end?!? up until about minute 7.

 

[Satyrist]

9.10 vs 9.04 is like night and day on my netbook. I'm pretty sure it had everything to do with the crappy intel video drivers in 9.04, every attempt that I made to correct things only made it slower so I gave up and installed 9.10 and Woot, speed again.

Some things that I'm seeing so far as 9.10 goes on their official forums, are that updates keep breaking the ability to boot. Granted, I know it is an alpha...I do hope that it gets sorted out before it gets released. If it's a difficult fix, I don't think anybody would think worse for them if they delayed the release an extra month or so.

 

[Enablingwolf]

A lot of the breakage for the boot. Is folks doing partial updates/upgrades. Right now on a fresh install. I see that if I upgrade the way it sits. It is going to break the install hard. Later on I am going to select out some packages to install. So the list is not so large.

A tester has to pay attention to what is in the repo and not blindly upgrade. Plus supplement it by paying attention to what is in the works. As the packages appear or are going to appear. You know what to do.

 

[Zerix01]

Some things that I'm seeing so far as 9.10 goes on their official forums, are that updates keep breaking the ability to boot. Granted, I know it is an alpha...I do hope that it gets sorted out before it gets released. If it's a difficult fix, I don't think anybody would think worse for them if they delayed the release an extra month or so.

Yeah that just happend to me last night. But it is only the second time that has happend in many updates. But really it is still Alpha and as far as I know they are not officially supporting or testing any updates yet, only fresh installs. I think update testing will start soon, maybe Beta 1. My biggest issue so far has been loosing Wi-Fi support, not through driver issues but because in Kubuntu they are working on a new KDE network manager and it has been going through some rough times.

 

[Enablingwolf]

WHAT is that app he's digging through towards the end?!? up until about minute 7.

Sorry it took so long to get to your post. I was busy and then had to seek out the plugin page link on moz... If is called Cooliris.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5579

Keep in mind. It has one of the few legal warning things about privacy and a ToS... For a FF plugin. Which is rather long and full of non-open source crap! ( Beyond that, still a cool thing to see and use.)

By downloading Cooliris from Firefox Add-ons, you agree to the terms of our EULA and Privacy Policy. To see our current EULA and Privacy Policy, please visit http://www.cooliris.com/legal/.

In case anyone is wondering about the release schedule of the 9.10

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KarmicReleaseSchedule

 

[Satyrist]

Yeah that just happend to me last night. But it is only the second time that has happend in many updates. But really it is still Alpha and as far as I know they are not officially supporting or testing any updates yet, only fresh installs. I think update testing will start soon, maybe Beta 1. My biggest issue so far has been loosing Wi-Fi support, not through driver issues but because in Kubuntu they are working on a new KDE network manager and it has been going through some rough times.

Generally, one of the first things I've done when installing any of the buntus, is install wicd...Works infinitely better than network-manager.

 

[Charr]

Generally, one of the first things I've done when installing any of the buntus, is install wicd...Works infinitely better than network-manager.

+1. Wicd is far better than Gnome's network manager.

 

[Enablingwolf]

+1. Wicd is far better than Gnome's network manager.

Manually setting it in the config file is better. Less issue and no overhead of the manager. One less thing to have bugs or update also.