Ubuntu 9.04

[Andrew]

Time for your yearly ubuntu thread :D

Previous thread: Ubuntu 8.04

Ubuntu 9.04 RC was released today. Here are relevant links with info:

Announcing the Release Candidate for Ubuntu 9.04 <-text

Release Notes <- good read/overview

Ubuntu 9.04 is supposed to be faster than predecessors. Ext4 helps. To enable ext4 you have to manually select it when partitioning, otherwise it uses ext3 by default.

So what is important with this release?

Pretty much just updated software and drivers. They changed notifications, which are ok, but update manager notification sucks (but can be manually changed). I didn't notice many changes when testing, still looks and acts the same for the most part.

I tested booting livecd from usb (called liveusb). It is extremely fast, and boots as fast as my intrepid install (1:30 from power on, to fully working desktop). So if you are wanting to test livecd (ubuntu in general) lots before installing, liveusb is great. It requires 700mb (so 1gb usb). You can also have it set up to remember your settings and firefox stuff etc (I think /home directory, but installing software didn't work). Good for portable OS, instead of livecd. But I would not recommend installing via liveusb as it thinks that usb is cd-rom and your fstab will probably be messed up.

In past 16 days, 11,000 new users to ubuntuforums.org, will probably see lots of traffic next week. April 18, 2008 there were 555,000 members compared to 812,000 now.

It officially is being released April 23. RC is a good time for a quick test to see what works. So far it works fine on 3 computers I've tried (installed on one, and will be installed on another in a week). Whereas 8.10 did not boot to desktop on one, and wireless was crappy with 8.04 (which forced me to temporarily use puppy linux).

[nemafakei]

Do you know if you can upgrade an existing ext3 partition to ext4? I've currently got Incoherent Impala or whatever it is running at the moment.

[Andrew]

Yes you can. I've never done it myself, I'll probably format and use ext4.

Googling "convert ext3 to ext4" brings up many articles.

You must be using ubuntu 9.04 as ext4 is not supported in 8.10 or earlier as it is not in those kernels (so update to 9.04 before attempting).

Converting an ext3 filesystem to ext4

and

Linux Convert ext3 to ext4 File system

Make sure to backup important stuff before doing so in case something goes wrong.

Ubuntu 9.04 was released today :)

[Andrew]

I am trying to upgrade. My internet sucks, so I tried upgrading from alternate cd. It was able to get almost 1000 files from that, but it is still trying to download another 273 files, adn says it will take 3 hours to do so.

I'm too impatient, and I backed up my entire /home folder. My current ubuntu is i386 and ext3. So I'm going to wipe ubuntu clean and install x64 version and ext4.

Will report back in an hour.

EDIT:

Install failed miserably.

Tried installing 64 bit ext4 and it failed twice. Both times the installer crashed at the very end of installing it, before grub is loaded. So now I'm going to have to try 32 bit version.

EDIT:

Good news. 3rd time, it installed properly. 64 bit and ext4. Boot time is 1:06 second. I disabled screensaver before installing as I figured that might have been the problem as it occured a couple times while installing before.

EDIT:

Well now sound doesn't work. This was a known bug for several months and they still havn't completely fixed it. Everyone is having problems and there are lots of updates under "proposed", so I'm enabling that repository and hoping that fixes it. EDIT: proposed updates did fix the sound problems. EDIT: restarted again and still no sound... wtf?

I'd suggest waiting a month before installing ubuntu until they sort this crap out.

[nemafakei]

Your services as a guinea pig are much appreciated!

(Also, thankyou for pointing out the obvious answer of googling, I did need that nudge!)

[Andrew]

Ubuntu 9.10 alpha2 was just released. Lots of changes and upgrades over 9.04.

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/alpha2

To summarize:

- debian sync so apps are updated

- Latest gnome dev

- newest kernel just released a couple days ago. They will be using even newer kernel release for final (2.6.31 instead of current 2.6.30)

- Intel graphics have new technologies. kernel has kernel mode setting. New drivers also fix regressions from 9.04, and switching from EXA to newer UXA.

- ext4 by default

- grub2 by default (I was surprised by this, didn't expect it)

Many big changes, hopefully for the best. Most likely going to add lots of big changes for this release, so the 10.04 release is more stable (since it will probably be long term support).

Still not safe to install alpha2 though, several big bugs.

Ubuntu aims for ten-second boot time with 10.04

Wow while searching for above article at google news I found some other interesting ones.

Acer will use Moblin Linux across its products

Finally, they won't come with crappy linux installs.

And the other article I'll post in the appropriate thread.

EDIT:

Correction: DRI2 and UXA for intel is enabled by default now in alpha 2.

EDIT:

Successfully installed ubuntu 9.04 on amd 1.8ghz, 512mb ram, s3g graphics card, 90gb hard drive. This is a friends old computer. It booted in 50 seconds from pressing power button to fully working desktop. A lot faster than I was expecting.

Everything worked great. internet worked, printer worked. It was really fast compared to broken winxp. It originally had 256mb ram, but I found old used 256mb ram and put it in, ubuntu wouldn't work correctly/good with 256mb ram, but perfect with 512. I used ext4.

Installed VLC, audacious, adblock+, numlockx, delugetorrent. Does everything they want/need and not missing anything from winxp. Now it should be difficult for them to get viruses/spyware, especially since crappy adware software won't be able to install and add in their toolbars and crap. No more antivirus to worry about (AVG was crap on their winxp, and didn't protect them anyways). So many myths, such as the computer has to be left on overnight to do "updates" (avg scan?). Not anymore. Ubuntu put new life into an old computer.

[Andrew]

9.10 alpha 4 was released August 13. Alpha 5 release September 3. Seems to be a good release.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KarmicReleaseSchedule

To see some proposed boot animations and GDM, have a look at

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/Karmic/Boot

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/Karmic/Boot/Demo

Lots of pics and videos.

I tried running malware that infected lots of friends vista computers in ubuntu 9.10 alpha 4 (virtual machine), and I could not get the malware to run (archive manager wanted to open it, but didn't do anything). Looks like I'll get more people to switch once it is released October 29. People were using these computers for work and personal, so all the data is compromised. So sad to see people not care about security with computers, especially since it is so easy to get infected. Download what appears to be picture from friend in email, double click, allow and your infected. trailware antivirus doesn't protect them, windows doesn't protect them, they can't protect themselves.

EDIT:

Revisiting Linux Part 1: A Look at Ubuntu 8.04

Anandtech takes a look at reviewing ubuntu 8.04. Lengthy review.

[Gruntlord6]

i guess its time i upgrade my vista partition to win7 which will leave the win7 partition open to ubuntu or xp. what are the requirements to run xp on vm in ubuntu? i really wish i could tri boot......

[Andrew]

I'm pretty sure you can triple boot. I know for a fact you can boot 2 ubuntu and 1 winxp, as my old computer is doing that now. google should know. Probably just make sure to install windows OS first and ubuntu last (as windows bootloader removes linux distros). I dunno.

I have a core2duo 1.8ghz, 3gb ram intel g965 x3000, and winxp works fine in virtualbox on ubuntu. It is not as good as my installed winxp (games have problems), but it is good enough for testing/web browsing and other basic stuff. I havn't really done much with it.

You'd want 400mb of ram available for clean winxp, not sure about other requirements, but it shouldn't take much processor/video as long as you don't plan on doing anything intense on winxp virtualmachine. Check out winxp recommended system requirements, and make sure you have triple that amount. :P

[Andrew]

Ubuntu 9.10 boot optimizations: 5 second startup with an SSD

The 5 second bootchart is impressive. My bootchart is currently 19 seconds. So adding a SSD and using Ubuntu 9.10 I should see my boot time cut in half at least. There are lots of videos on youtube showing ubuntu booting with SSD.

Alpha 6 was release last Thursday. I'd wait until beta (October 1) before testing as they are still fixing some stuff. But overall ubuntu 9.10 is looking good. New technologies and updated software is great.

Ubuntu 10.04 is codenamed Lucid Lynx. It will be a long term support edition, and will probably be a more polished version of 9.10

EDIT:

Release Schedule for 10.04 is out. They drastically changed the schedule. Normally they have 6 alphas, 1 beta, 1 rc. This time they are having 3 alphas, 2 betas, 1 rc. They are definitely going to polish this version.

[Andrew]

Ubuntu 9.10 Release Candidate

Final release October 29.

It has been running really good on my old pentium 4 computer. I won't be installing to my SSD until after release day as I will have to format SSD and update the firmware on SSD (to get newest and much improved firmware).

[Andrew]

Ubuntu 9.10 has been released.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Servers are obviously slow because of demand. Using the torrent downloads are fastest.

[Dragoon Knight]

Got it downloaded.  Will probably go ahead and just format my spare laptop's HDD.  Don't see any reason to dual-boot XP, since Ubuntu does everything I need it for (i.e. quick checking of emails and whatnot).  Besides, I want everything in ext4 - having FAT32 partitions just to ensure that I can share files between the two is getting silly. :P

Just hope I can remember the boot option that I used last time.  Ubuntu doesn't like my laptop's onboard Intel Graphics - pretty sure it was something along the lines of adding "intelfb" at the end of the boot option list when installing from the LiveCD.

Meh, something to figure out and tinker with over the weekend, anyway. :)

[Andrew]

64 bit Vista, Windows 7, Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10 boot speed comparison

From OS loading to open firefox and webpage.

Ubuntu 9.10 wins big time over windows. 9.04 second place. Something must be wrong with windows 7 as it's almost twice as long and worse than vista.

[Andrew]

Installed ubuntu 9.10 to my SSD

There are some bugs/regressions that I need to fix. Hopefully not a big problem. I havn't rebooted since noticing and trying to fix any of these problems. These bugs have been documented at the forum with other people.

1. sound: makes a bit of a noise (like when you plug speakers in). Only happens when no audiom has been used in a while and you decide to play something. Happens on startup/shutdown. Sometimes kinda loud. EDIT: Fixed. Too aggressive of a power saver to turn off sound. power saving now disabled for sound.

2. GRUB now takes several seconds to show up as my hard drive is thrashing which didn't happen before. bug report

That's all for now while I get it set up the way I like it. Gonna have bootchart installed soon.

Worst news is that I can not update firmware on my SSD because my BIOS won't allow me to change from AHCI mode to IDE mode. So I'll probably have to connect it to a different computer to do this. Has nothing to do with ubuntu.

EDIT:

Holy shit my bootchart is 6 seconds. 4 seconds less than 9.04.

I've attached default bootchart that adds 45 seconds extra to show desktop loading (and firefox or whatever you load when you get to desktop). The 6 seconds bootchart is the one everyone would have seen in previous versions of ubuntu. Ubuntu 9.04 on my hard drive took 19 seconds to boot. So 9.10 + SSD = 1/3 boot time.

See my SSD thread for 9.04 bootcharts.

[nemafakei]

Decided I didn't have anything worth keeping on my 8.10 install, so I'm now just installing over that partition with an ext4 partition containing 9.10.

[Andrew]

Decided I didn't have anything worth keeping on my 8.10 install, so I'm now just installing over that partition with an ext4 partition containing 9.10.

You tested the livecd first to make sure basic stuff worked correctly (audio/videoresolution/internet)? Make sure to do that before format/installing new OS.

9.10 is big improvement over 8.10 :)

If something doesn't work feel free to ask here. I'm pretty good at searching the forums. Someone else most likely reported any bugs at ubuntuforums.org.

[nemafakei]

Yes, I tested it wit the Livecd first. It works fine. First impressions are that it's generally a bit smoother and that the noifications seem to behave oddly.

[Andrew]

It's a 'feature' that some notifications are down below the panel far. Enough room for the volume and some other notifications to be directly below the panel.

I agree it's not the best, especially with them intentionally hard coding it so that it is impossible to move them to different locations (bottom right/left, top left etc). Maybe they'll have time to do something about it for 10.04.

[Andrew]

I'm sure some of you want to disable the 60 second countdown timer to shutdown/restart etc. To remove the popup:

Shutting down in 60 seconds... why?!!! - There are other methods mentioned in same thread, but this one worked for me.

Or if you don't want to get rid of it, press spacebar when it comes up instead of moving mouse to click it.

There have been 16.7 million ubuntu torrents downloaded since September 12, 2009.

http://spreadubuntu.neomenlo.org/

Reading through raw data there have been 4.6 million torrent downloads since October 29 (row 26847). That is a lot in 1 week. No idea how many were downloaded from http. I got mine from http. :P

As for changing the notifications, saw someone mention a way to change it to old style. I havn't tried.

Make the notifications in Ubuntu 9.10 behave like they did in Jaunty

Includes picture comparison and link on how to do it.

[gryphon]

Just thought to mention this as interesting quote.

From a Google representative on Linux.

Google has a number of "pain points" which make working with the community harder. Keeping up with the upstream kernel is hard - it simply moves too fast.

One of the things that doesn't help the current larger companies shift to Linux.

[Andrew]

True, linux is a moving target. When a new technology or something better comes along they abandon the old way of doing things. You don't see too many linux companies supporting a 7 year old operating system (winxp).

But you do have LTS from ubuntu (and other distros like debian) which is supported for 3 years, so it's not that bad, and if the company is big enough they could simply hire someone to keep an old version 'updated'. Or run whatever old version you want unsupported (but free to use).

Linus himself has said that the kernel is bloated.

A good thing about Ubuntu 9.10 I noticed over 9.04 is that when I come out of suspend it doesn't ask for my password. I have auto login set, so this makes sense. *Bam* 4 seconds and I'm back to my desktop (stopwatch timed). Faster than password prompt, then have to type it in and get desktop.

[Guest Abnorie09]

Im interested in the VPS or the VPDC packages, but am left wondering when will Ubuntu Server OS will be added as an option? Thanks.

[Andrew]

Im interested in the VPS or the VPDC packages, but am left wondering when will Ubuntu Server OS will be added as an option? Thanks.

What do you mean as an option? There is ubuntu server.

[Khan]

Tried to install 9.10 today but alas I couldn't get my wireless hardware working. Ah well trusty windows 7