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Ubuntu Linux

Ubuntu Linux 10.04 Review (Lucid Lynx) 567

Posted by CmdrTaco from the lessons-in-alliteration dept.
JimLynch writes "The open source world has been eagerly anticipating the final release of Ubuntu Linux 10.04, and now it's finally here. Canonical has been working extremely hard and it shows in the quality of this release."
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Ubuntu Linux 10.04 Review (Lucid Lynx) More

Ubuntu Linux 10.04 Review (Lucid Lynx)

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  • Except... (Score:5, Informative)

    by i.r.id10t ( 595143 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:09AM (#32029678)

    Except it isn't released yet. On hold due to a bug in install process that doesn't detect dual boot set ups properly...

    Release party on IRC server: irc.freenode.net #ubuntu-release-party

    • Re:Except... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by commodore64_love ( 1445365 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:13AM (#32029770) Journal

      And this is why I'm waiting a few weeks, until they get the initial bugs out.

      • Re:Except... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by migla ( 1099771 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:35AM (#32030184)

        I have a pet regression in lucid: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/545443 [launchpad.net]

        "Lucid on Asus EEE PC 901 and 1000H fails to connect to any wireless network". Those (pretty common, I think) netbooks have the RaLink RT2860 wireless chipset.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Luke has no name ( 1423139 )

        EE/CS is a popular degree plan at Texas Tech University. Computer Engineering is a condensed version of EE/CS here, so EE/CE would be repetitive.

    • Re:Except... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Pvt_Ryan ( 1102363 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:13AM (#32029772)
      Why is that a bug? MS hasn't ever detected dual boot properly.
    • Well, that an the big X memory leak... http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODE3MA [phoronix.com]

      • Re:Except... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by V!NCENT ( 1105021 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:22AM (#32029892)

        Caused by heavily packporting features from xserver 1.8 back to 1.7 and KMS from Linux 2.6.34 back to 2.6.32.

        Seriously... what where they thinking? Getting such a huge memmory leak was just being ASKED FOR!

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by BrentH ( 1154987 )
          It has been fixed.
          • Not as of last night...

    • Re:Except... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Skarecrow77 ( 1714214 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:21AM (#32029882)

      Has it?? i've been running beta2 for a few weeks and it dual boots Win7 just fine. Did they break something?

      Speaking of which, my impressions of 10.04 aren't as thrilled as the summary (can't read TFA yet). I ran 9.04 for nearly a year, skipped completely over 9.10, and now that I'm on 10.04, I honestly can't tell what's different from 9.04 aside from the new purple/grey/orange colored interface bars, moved min/max/close buttons, different IM tool (which I was already using in 9.04 anyway), and the login tool already knowing my name. Oh, and some icons for cloud computing (which I'm not sold on at all) and integration with facebook and twitter.

      Maybe I'm wrong here, but with the short 6-month release schedule, it doesn't seem like -any- release of Ubuntu is worth "eagerly anticipating". It's not like we're talking the 6 year feature/design gap between XP and Vista, or even the 3 year gap between Vista and 7.

      It seems like it basically comes down to "install whatever release is current, get it configured to your liking, and run it until support ends." I saw no reason to upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10, and I wouldn't have upgraded from 9.04 to 10.04 except I needed to wipe the HD anyway.

      • Re:Except... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by houstonbofh ( 602064 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:28AM (#32030060)
        The main reason to upgrade is when %your_application% needs to be upgraded to get a new feature, or bug fixed. And the most stable times to upgrade are either early in the beta, or a month after release. For some reason, close to release (on either side of the date) is the most unstable of times.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by DiegoBravo ( 324012 )

          The other reason is when your current version is no longer supported. That's why I'm eagerly waiting for this release, since it's a "long term release", so I'll not be upgrading for a long time.

      • Re:Except... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Have Brain Will Rent ( 1031664 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @12:12PM (#32033046)
        So instead of all installs having the bug only some installs will have it... doesn't sound like an improvement to me.

        While I'm criticising... the recent patch to turn off SMART monitoring, because it apparently damages some SSD's, could have been handled better. On my system it seemed to have a side effect which manifested as all the file systems suddenly going RO - while I was running and editing something important. Even inserting a thumb drive to try and save the work resulted in it coming up RO. And it wouldn't "shutdown".

        Long story short, after cycling the power it took the better part of half a day to get things straightened out. Yes there was notice of the change but honestly who reads every single little description of every single patch? Something this major should have had lots of bells and whistles to attract attention - not because of the headache I suffered, although it would have been nice to avoid the frustration and wasted time - but because turning off SMART monitoring without making damn sure the user knows the health of his disks aren't being monitored anymore is assinine.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by meyekul ( 1204876 )

      Release party on IRC server: irc.freenode.net #ubuntu-release-party

      Will there be any chicks there?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by nurd68 ( 235535 )

      The alternate install also fails to do Software RAID correctly.

      While in installer, pre first boot: /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
      (combined to /dev/md0, as /boot) /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2
      (combined to /dev/md1 as LVM)

      After first boot (well, not even, because /boot doesn't mount) /dev/md0 is not started /dev/md1 is comprised of /dev/sda and /dev/sdb

      https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/debian-installer/+bug/563343 [launchpad.net]

  • I heard the same about 8.10 and 9.04 and 9.10 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:17AM (#32029806)

    ... and I've given up. Between the backport madness, button relocation debate, purplification, and a complete disassociation with the community I did something which I didn't think I'd ever do. After 10 years of .deb distros, I'm running Fedora.

    And you know what? It's nice. F12 is stable; yum seems to address all of those rpm complaints of old. I don't have strange oddities, there's actually SELINUX support. F12 works so well that in 10 years of running Linux I find myself (for the first time) in the situation where there is a beta out of the new Fedora and I haven't installed it as my system works flawlessly (I did boot the live CD and F13 beta is looking good too - I just don't want to upgrade until its baked).

    • Re:I heard the same about 8.10 and 9.04 and 9.10 (Score:4, Informative)

      by cynyr ( 703126 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:36AM (#32030196)
      odd, i gave up on redhat and suse back in 2003, and went with gentoo, because i wanted/needed a vanilla distro. Ever try getting an exotic video card working in fedora/suse back then? I'm betting they follow upstream more now. Good to see that Redhat/fedora are getting their act together. Gentoo doesn't force buttons anywhere, it does as upstream says, or as I tell it to. viva la Gentoo

      • Re:I heard the same about 8.10 and 9.04 and 9.10 (Score:4, Informative)

        by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:49AM (#32030482)

        I used Gentoo for almost 3 years, but personally, I dumped it for Ubuntu when 9.04 was released. Gentoo often got confused over time. portage would work great until EVENTUALLY it got into some conflict where you couldn't emerge a new package because it conflicted with an older one. And if you tried to update your profile things could get hairy. And merging your changes to an old config file with the incoming one via etc-update? That was always a crapshoot. 90% of the time it would work fine. The other 10% something would break and require a few hours of digging around to fix it.

        Don't get me wrong I liked the speed of Gentoo, and it was nice that I typically had new releases of software much faster than I do on Ubuntu, but Gentoo just got to be too big of a headache for me.

        Besides. On theming issues it's not hard to pull Ubuntu back to defaults (or customized to what you want - which for me isn't upstream nor Ubuntu's defaults).

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by TJamieson ( 218336 )

          etc-update? I moved on to dispatch-conf a number of years ago, and thought everyone else did too. etc-update is a pain in the ass, and always has been.

      • You have a dedicated card for exotic video?

    • yum seems to address all of those rpm complaints of old

      Yeah, it does when you first install it.

      Then eventually you hit a circular dependency, or a package yum mysteriously won't upgrade, or RPM craps out its database, or you notice how incredibly goddamn slow yum is...

    • Re:I heard the same about 8.10 and 9.04 and 9.10 (Score:5, Funny)

      by spikenerd ( 642677 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @10:38AM (#32031400)

      F12 works so well that...

      I'm on Ubuntu. I pressed F12. nothing happened. For all of us ignorant and backward Ubuntu users, what does F12 do on Fedora?

  • Because there are just too many regular Lynx's out there.

  • No, it's not (Score:3, Insightful)

    by makapuf ( 412290 ) * on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:18AM (#32029822)

    Actually, not currently as the home page issues a warning about a "in development" version for lucid ...

    btw, the review seems to provide little more than the press release : what about bugs ? speed ? HW compatibility and performance besides boot times - it's an OS ! - , system configuration apps, boot splash with nvidia proprietary drivers ..., what about other sister as mint, Kubuntu, or Lubuntu)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cynyr ( 703126 )
      bootsplash should work fine with nvidia drivers. Although to be honest i've never tried that, why do I care what the boot process when it happens at most every kernel release, or less. HW compatability should be as good as anything running the linux kernel. Seeing as the x86 version is compiled for a 386, slow as all hell. Yes i run gentoo but with sane flags, "-march=k8-sse3 -O2 -pipe". I'm not saying they should add -funroll-loops or anything, but maybe a x86 version with SSE SSE2, and 686? Config apps ar

  • What will they do for release 24? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Palestrina ( 715471 ) * on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:19AM (#32029838) Homepage

    I hope someone sees that the naming scheme is going to run into trouble when they reach the letter 'X'.

    What is the best they can do? Ubuntu 24.0 (Xanthic Xerus) ?

  • It's 10.04 LTS (not "10.04") (Score:5, Informative)

    by MagicFab ( 7234 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:21AM (#32029878) Homepage

    This Ubuntu release is 10.04 LTS (for "Long Term Support").

    Getting the RC version or the latest daily ISO and upgrading from that is functionally equivalent to waiting for the final ISO to be released and installing it.

    Anyone updating their packages from a recent enough beta or RC of Ubuntu will end up having the equivalent of the release.

    In case it's not clear, it makes sense NOT to wait for the final release.

    • Re:It's 10.04 LTS (not "10.04") (Score:5, Informative)

      by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:38AM (#32030240)

      While it's unlikely this late in the game, you have to account for the fact that the Beta or RC versions could put your system into a bit of disarray (for example, the alternatives system for Nvidia drivers has given me nothing but trouble) which might not be reversed on final update. To be safest, it's best to wait for the final release.

      Specifically, though I had no trouble upgrading from 9.04 final to 9.10 final, I jumped the gun and tried 10.04 while it was beta. Lets just say that while the system is working ok(-ish), I won't be doing that again, and after the release today I'm wiping the system and reinstalling a clean copy (/home is on separate drive so it's pretty easy to just start over).

  • Perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:22AM (#32029912)

    Perhaps this will be the Ubuntu install were I have no problems like everyone else claims. Every freaking version I try installing I always seem to run into issues, and not of them are easy fixes. Oh you want native resolution fine but you will need to give up GNOME, Unless you want to install it via TAR Balls. Oh you want sound sure... But this only worked in some apps. Oh what is the fix for that. Go into you etc file and add some cryptic commands that are not in any man page.

    But if say there are problems with Ubuntu and there are things that OS X or Windows handles a lot better. Be prepared for a fight and everyone calling you an idiot.

    • Re:Perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by agrounds ( 227704 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:39AM (#32030276)

      To be fair, being called an idiot instead of a reasonable reply is pretty much inherent to the entire IT community. We're an entire culture of people that have long since forgotten that our job is ultimately to provide a customer service. There is a prevaling attitude of 'works for me, you must suck' or 'program it yourself' instead of taking the moderate and service-oriented approach of actually listening, interpreting, and working collaboratively towards a solution in a manner that everyone can follow.

      It's little wonder we are held in disdain by most.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        To be fair, being called an idiot instead of a reasonable reply is pretty much inherent to the entire IT community. We're an entire culture of people that have long since forgotten that our job is ultimately to provide a customer service.

        I think the problem is that most of the people calling you an idiot, are not AT WORK. They're more like an after hours meeting of professionals, and many of the people asking are like going up to a bunch of doctors discussing medical procedures (their version of tools) and asking them to take a look at the rash on their leg. Yes, they probably could examine him but they don't want to, don't care and just want you to go away. And if you keep bugging them they'll tell you that you're an idiot. Come back for a

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by linuxgurugamer ( 917289 )

      So why do you continue with Ubuntu? Not to knock Ubuntu, but have you ever tried some of the others? Fedora comes to mind, as well as Suse.

      There are over 2000 different Linux distributions, so obviously someone will fault me for not mentioning their favorite. But my point still stands, if you have troubles all the time, try another.

  • Is there a How-To on moving the window icons back (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lena_10326 ( 1100441 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:23AM (#32029922) Homepage
    .... to the right side of the window title bar where they belong? If it's not possible, I will not budge from 9.10 thank you very much.

  • Been using Kubuntu 10.04... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mweather ( 1089505 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @09:26AM (#32030000)
    I know Kubuntu is the redheaded stepchild of Ubuntu, but you should try out Kubuntu 10.04. I don't know how I lived without tabbed windows.

    • I know Kubuntu is the redheaded stepchild of Ubuntu, but you should try out Kubuntu 10.04. I don't know how I lived without tabbed windows.

      Without tabbed windows, you lived like some sort of animal. Probably sitting in a pile of your own sick and excrement, as likely to use your computer as to try to eat it or hump it.

      We all did. Thank god we upgraded.

    • Re:Been using Kubuntu 10.04... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Hurricane78 ( 562437 ) <deleted AT slashdot DOT org> on Thursday April 29, 2010 @12:26PM (#32033326)

      Tabbed windows? Isn’t that called a two-level task bar?

      If you are like me, you start thinking outside of the box. I completely removed any task bar from my system. There’s no point in it.
      I use corner clicks for everything. Which corner does not matter.
      Right click: Compiz zoom overview of all windows.
      Thumb click: Overview over all desktops (expo). ...and finally...
      Left click: Toggle the KDE4 dashboard, which includes the K menu, the .xsession-errors log, calculator, clock, calendar, weather, system information, system tray, minimized windows (as big icons), and whatever else I need in there.

      The rest is all different keyboard and mouse shortcuts. Like Win+LMB = drag, Win+RMB = resize, or Win+End = end program / close window, etc. So I don’t even need window title bar buttons.

      Works very nicely. Unfortunately the dashboard is pretty slow, and gets slower when you add more stuff. But it’s bearable. And I filed a bug, since I think it’s caused by one.

  • For those of you curious... The latest build of 10.04 still has not fixed the Network bug where you can not map Sabma network drives.

    Such as pain in that ass as this did once work in 9.10.
  • I am running the rc's on 64 bit and 32 bit platforms. Yes there have been some annoying problems. the latest update has screwed my Nvidia 64 bit driver, and I have had the samba problem. Production is still in 9.10 and likely to stay that way for a while.

    BUT:

    Nowadays everything is late.

    It is going, I think, to be a worthwhile upgrade with its 3 year timeframe.

    As for the menu widgets - I actually like it that way and I find myself annoyed that Chrome doesn't follow the rules. Sorry.

    • As for the menu widgets - I actually like it that way and I find myself annoyed that Chrome doesn't follow the rules. Sorry.

      If you search around in the menu's there's an option to use the WM's title bar instead of Google's. Not as slick, but it works. There's also a GTK theme option which is what I use. I like the traditional button placement, but the default blue color scheme on Chrome clashes with the GTK theme I'm running, so I just want it to match a little better.

  • This might be the year of the linux desktop!

  • Features (Score:3, Informative)

    by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @10:04AM (#32030796)

    Well since the link is slashdotted, maybe a list of the new features will be useful:

    • Cosmetic changes - looks fine, everyone customizes anyway.
    • New graphic drivers for Nvidia - maybe they will be less crappy or even good?
    • Boot speed improvements - meh who reboots anymore?
    • Me Menu- Facebook, Digg, Twitter and chat integrated into the OS - hmm, this might be useful. I'll have to give it a shot.
    • Ubuntu One Cloud Computing - nice idea, not sure how useful it is with only a few gig of storage unless you pay.
    • Ubuntu One Music Store- Nice iTunes Music Store clone, but with the ability to re-download to different devices.
    • Ubuntu Software Centre 2.0 - I have high hopes for this. The consolidation is nice and should have happened long ago, but the app store for commercial apps is not slated until Maverick Meerkat.

    So it looks like solid improvement for the most part, nothing really revolutionary, but solid.

  • When my Gateway LT3201u with its Athlon 64 and positively antiquated ATI graphics can actually come up in X11, it's ready.

    When my Acer Aspire One D250-1165, an incredibly common machine with bog-standard intel chipset, graphics, &c can stay up for more than eight hours without hanging with only the background image displayed, or kernel panicking because some system component (the only stuff running is "official" Ubuntu packages) has consumed all available memory and the system can't spawn new processes, it's ready.

    But so far, Lucid is in even worse shape than Karmic was when it was released. I'd be ashamed to have my name associated with Lucid.

  • don't forget to run... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Blob Pet ( 86206 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @10:06AM (#32030836) Homepage

    sudo apt-get purge libmono* libgdiplus cli-common

    • No one should be running Mono. It's a well-proven, extensively documented part of Microsoft's PR, FUD, and patent attack on Linux.

      The real problem is that it was included to begin with. It needs to be removed at the source.

  • pulse, flash, java (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Taibhsear ( 1286214 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @10:39AM (#32031424)

    Have they fixed the pulse audio clusterfuck yet? How about flash and java working properly out of the box? (being able to watch youtube and hulu without ridiculous installs and configurations should be a serious focus for serving the general user)

  • Upgrade to debian (Score:3, Funny)

    by darkpixel2k ( 623900 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @10:56AM (#32031730)

    Canonical has been working extremely hard and it shows in the quality of this release.

    Yeah--after upgrading my server which has a standalone boot drive along with 8 other disks that are in a RAID6 array--it completely fails to boot. Plymouth is a joke--why install graphical boot crap on a server? I can't even see the output of fsck which is apparently complaining that my array is corrupted--because the output is hooked into the fscked-up plymouth system. Lame regressions. Funny how the 8.04 recovery CD says the array is just fine. Meh, loaded Debian last weekend, haven't looked back.

    Oh--and there's my netbook. After upgrading, the wireless and onboard NIC work intermittently. Most hibernates require a reboot because the wireless and NIC fail to come back up. Unplugging from the AC adapter causes a kernel panic about 60% of the time. Lots of lame regressions. But hey--at least plymouth works on my netbook. I can boot graphically into a flaky distro. It's scheduled to be upgraded to Debian this weekend.

    I upgraded my wife's computer even though that BOFH part of my brain was screaming that I was 0 for 2 on 10.04 upgrades. Upgraded her from 9.10 and she immediately lost audio in Firefox along with the sound icon in her systray. Mplayer, totem, and the like all output sound just fine. Just no firefox or sound icon. And I can't seem to get it back. There is no audio panel applet. After a bunch of dorking around, uninstalling things, recompiling other things, I got audio working. Very lame regression.

    I'm going to skip upgrading any of our customer systems to 10.04 in light of this. Instead, I'll start migrating to Debian. There doesn't seem to be any mention of 'plymouth' in their packaging system. That makes me feel a lot better.

    I know everyone's experiences are different, but this upgrade totally kicked my ass.

    Why don't they ever delay the long-term releases by a few weeks or months to put together a truly finished product?

    • Re:Upgrade to debian (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Beelzebud ( 1361137 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @12:13PM (#32033076)
      Well to be fair, you were using a beta version. You can't early adopt an OS when it's in beta, and then complain when it doesn't work perfectly.

      If you did all of this and loaded Debian last week, you certainly weren't even using an RC copy. It's your own fault for installing a beta OS on your server..

  • No GIMP?! Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)

    by LuYu ( 519260 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @12:38PM (#32033534) Homepage Journal

    This is a definite WTF moment. How could Ubuntu not include the GIMP?!! And worse yet, they have replaced it with F-Spot -- one of the most difficult and annoyingly feature free graphics programs I have ever seen. IIRC, it is based on Mono, too, which is another reason to hate it.

    Well, Ubuntu is shaping up to be more and more useless with every release. In 8.04, I could resize an external monitor to whatever resolution the monitor could take. Updates disabled that functionality and constrained me to hardware detection. In 8.10, using an external monitor on an EEE causes a blank screen. CUPS is broken on every release soon after install. Skype and USB audio have not worked since 8.04. Firefox has been getting worse and worse, as well.

    Ubuntu used to be easier to use than anything, but now, it is getting like Windows: Many things are broken and cannot be fixed whatever one does. I guess I will just have to keep my fingers crossed for Haiku or switch back to Fedora. For all the money Canonical has spent and all the work that has been done, I would have believed they would have come out with something better. I guess I will never be able to upgrade my EEE :(

    • Re:No GIMP?! Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Albanach ( 527650 ) on Thursday April 29, 2010 @02:02PM (#32035028) Homepage

      How could Ubuntu not include the GIMP?!!

      Perhaps because the vast majority of their users don't use it, because it's a comparatively large package so including it excludes other more desired features, and because apt-get install gimp isn't too great a hurdle for anyone who does need it.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by LuYu ( 519260 )

        Why is Ubuntu still clinging to an install CD while all the other distros are using DVDs? Again, Ubuntu is not Windows, and it is not made by MS. Why follow MS's weak design choices?

        If Ubuntu claimed that a CD version could not include OpenOffice and instead included Abiword, I would not be arguing. But the GIMP is almost as central to Linux as Gnome or KDE. It is a staple, like rice or bread. Without it, the desktop will be "undernourished".

        Ubuntu also is not Puppy Linux. It does not take up a m

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by segedunum ( 883035 )

        Perhaps because the vast majority of their users don't use it

        Well, yes they do because if Canonical are expecting F-Spot of all things to be an adequate replacement for an image manipulation application then they're nuts. The GIMP was the only one in the Gnome/GTK world. If they're saying that the GIMP isn't good enough and they're dropping then, well, their application pool gets ever more laughable.

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