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Ubuntu: next release will be the critical one

itwire.com — April 24 will be a red letter day for the Ubuntu project. It will be three-and-a-half years since the experiment began and the release that day of Hardy Heron, as version 8.04 is known, will be a defining moment. This could well be the release that either makes or breaks the project.

Who dugg this? Made popular Mar 7, 2008

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  • weizbox, on 03/07/2008, -5/+251I read the entire article, are really saw no reason why Ubuntu's next release will be critical. It's a nice attention-grabbing headline.. but with no real substance in the article to back it up.
  • Planets, on 03/07/2008, -6/+81Isn't this what they say about every release?
  • cornflakepirate, on 03/07/2008, -2/+44"When a grown-up child does not contribute back to the household, parents do tend to get a bit ratty."

    Yeah, except that Ubuntu keeps track of diffs between every single Ubuntu package and its Debian equivalent. See http://patches.ubuntu.com/

    And Ubuntu devs put quite an emphasis on getting patches pushed upstream.
  • tbranham, on 03/07/2008, -0/+37I just want to echo some of the comments posted to the original article:
    I've been running Linux since 1998, and I've use just about every major distro at one time or another. So, yeah, I don't "need" Ubuntu either -- but I run it on both my desktop and my laptop. Why? Because it works out-of-the-box. Frankly, I'm tired of spending 2 sleepless nights tweaking my system after installing a new distro. It (almost) brought a tear to my eye when I popped in the Ubuntu CD (Feisty at the time) into my laptop, and everything worked the way it was supposed to.
    OK. I'm done. Just my $0.02.
  • inactive, on 03/07/2008, -1/+29Make or break the project? What the heck are they talking about? Ubuntu doesn't have to become the dominant OS in the world to be successful. The project is already a massive success for the Linux world and is widely respected.
  • Rewdog, on 03/07/2008, -8/+33Hardy Heron? I was hoping for Hungry Hippo :(
  • geoken, on 03/07/2008, -1/+25Being an open source OS, how is it possible to not give anything back to the community? Every single thing they put into their distro is instantly available to every single person in the community.
  • Gijsterbeek, on 03/07/2008, -1/+24I don't see why the next Ubuntu release would make or break the project. It has proven itself already by its ever expanding user base. So break it won't. Also I agree with weizbox that there isn't that much added to make it substantially different from the previous release. The only thing that would really bring it on equal grounds with mS OS X are:

    - flawless wireless detection and function to increase laptop user base
    - consistent media center function (like Front View in OS X) for adoption by 'living room' users. Elisa Media Center is almost there
    - better compatibility between mS oFFICE and open source alternatives (though admittedly, this should be a mS effort)

    The rest is already covered (and mostly better and more elegantly) by Ubuntu.
  • LithiumPower, on 03/07/2008, -3/+25That's nothing to do with the developers of the OS itself, more the company that makes the software. It's down to them whether they want to add Linux compatibility or not.
  • LittleLORDevil, on 03/07/2008, -4/+26Ubuntu isn't for everyone. That's all there is too it. To each their own.
  • aldenhg, on 03/07/2008, -3/+24Pretty much. The one thing you can always say about ubuntu is that every release is better.
  • Remmy, on 03/07/2008, -1/+19There are these little buttons at the bottom of the page that take you to other pages. Hyper linking is neat.
  • vanden9, on 03/07/2008, -1/+18WIne is native...
  • MacParrot, on 03/07/2008, -1/+18With a screen name like willynilly, I hardly think you should speak of "gay-ass" names
  • inactive, on 03/07/2008, -0/+17I don't see ubuntu in danger of "breaking" themselves. The writer of this article should write soap operas.
  • joseolucha, on 03/07/2008, -1/+17Have been using Ubuntu since Dapper...

    Since Feisty, laptop wireless has worked out of the box, in different laptops using different wireless cards.

    It's not the OS's fault that peripheral hardware companies do not build drivers for linux
    It's not the OS's fault that Game developers are not putting out games for linux

  • cornflakepirate, on 03/07/2008, -0/+16That doesn't make sense. The source code to all of Ubuntu is freely (as in speech and beer) available.

    Launchpad is not Ubuntu.
  • latova, on 03/07/2008, -1/+17Google your laptop name and the word "linux" or "ubuntu". Chances are a lot more people have the same laptop you do and have had the same problem and are offering a solution.
  • Dropperbr, on 03/07/2008, -6/+20Two days ago Ive installed Ubuntu on my PC ..Dual boot with Windows XP
    All I can say is that to surf the web is a great OS
    I'm still using XP for gaming,for me they just need a gaming solution!
    No wine.. and no Cedega!
    Stop emulation and start making thing runs native!
    I know there's nothing to do with the article.. but for me ..is what I'm waiting for!
  • jdong, on 03/07/2008, -1/+14As an Ubuntu developer, I have to say that whenever someone contributes a fix to a package, the first thing we ask is "have you submitted this back to Debian?"

    We take our relationship with Debian and other distributions seriously, and not only make all our patches available for anyone to see, but also make an active effort to notify upstream and/or Debian when we feel they benefit from a particular fix.
  • luchid, on 03/07/2008, -1/+14That's weird because my Vista install wouldn't recognize my wi-fi card without drivers, either.
  • Scotchman, on 03/07/2008, -3/+15That's funny - it looks to be about 20 paragraphs to me and with a fair bit of substance. Have you got something against this particular author?
  • wvdavis, on 03/07/2008, -2/+14Send that journalist back to school.
  • glinsvad, on 03/07/2008, -0/+12Oh, they have the internet on computers now?
  • geoken, on 03/07/2008, -4/+14-first computer gaming is dead(and unless your some kind of graphics dev you dont really need those specs)"

    Thanks for the tip. I'll be sure to go home tonight and uninstall all the games I love playing since you claim they're dead.
  • amfantasy, on 03/07/2008, -0/+10what is this hyper linking you speak of
  • sirhomer, on 03/07/2008, -1/+11No in Windows XP you'd need a driver. Unless your manufacturer installed the driver for you, but that wouldn't be any different then if they did so in Ubuntu, now would it? Oh yea, except that Ubuntu comes with drivers for the vast majority of wifi cards. :)
  • yeti22, on 03/07/2008, -0/+10No OS is ever going to be able to provide all the drivers for every possible HW configuration. There are just too many. Hardware usually comes with a driver disk, but hardware vendors do not (yet?) include Linux drivers on their disk, so the solution is usually to download it, whether from the vendor's site or a volunteer's.
    Linux already includes more in-kernel device support than any other OS. Anecdotes about how "network card X doesn't work" do not refute that.
  • MacParrot, on 03/07/2008, -0/+9Nope, it will be Ubuntu willynilly which, admittedly, does sound gay
  • inactive, on 03/07/2008, -4/+13Here are the tidbits that you are looking for. Many of them can be researched in part on their own for your own verification.

    "The naming system is indicative of this ... 'Hardy - our second LTS, built to last.' "
    "For once, the plain brown desktop is gone and there is a graphic which gives it character - fittingly of a heron."
    "Other changes include a change from GNOME's BitTorrent client [bleh] to Transmission and the debut of new CD burning software called Brasero."
    "...the main feature [is] Wubi"
    "Canonical ... is changing too"
    "Using [the aforementioned methodology], one can theorise that Shuttleworth is now almost at the end of the second stage, the most difficult of the three. After that, comes the growth phase."
    "Ubuntu is not meant for users like me... [but instead] a majority are people who would like to first experiment with Ubuntu as a replacement for Windows"
  • sirhomer, on 03/07/2008, -1/+9I notice that the clueless Windows fanboys and shills will repeat the same thing that the previous Windows fanboy and shill said before hand in a Linux thread. For example, if someone says "Ubuntu doesn't have any games", someone will then say "yeah, call me when Ubuntu has games". If someone says "Ubuntu doesn't have a webbrowser", no matter how silly the comment is, they'll repeat it. It's kinda sad. I always wonder why drives these people.
  • evilregis, on 03/07/2008, -1/+9WINE = Wine Is Not an Emulator

    WINE developers are reverse engineering Microsoft's API. The fact that ANYTHING runs blows my mind. That said, I'm dual-booting for Photoshop. I got CS2 running in WINE but when working on large files I find it's unusable.

  • diggHeadOutSand, on 03/07/2008, -3/+10Download Ubuntu Ultimate Edition... burns to a DVD and carries nearly all drivers
  • wvdavis, on 03/07/2008, -0/+7No way... if it weren't for people like that, we'd have nobody to laugh at.
  • earlycj5, on 03/07/2008, -1/+8It's not Windows so it shouldn't run Windows programs natively. If you need Windows programs stay with Windows. Sheesh, it's like buying an XBox 360 and complaining that you can't play Wii games on it.
  • sark666, on 03/07/2008, -0/+7This release is significant because of one thing: the wubi installer.

    I have ordered ubuntu cds in the past, wanting to give them to my friends. But I hesitate with some of the hurdles they might face. It's nothing on the fault of ubuntu or any linux distro, but sometimes partitioning and everything can be risky for some more novice users.

    For me it's like, 'here's a cd check out ubuntu! Want to install it? Sure go ahead. Uh, but first run scandisk on your existing drive, oh and make sure you defrag it, oh you have vista? hmm, ya that can cause some issues repartitioning. Use their (vista's) builtin partitioner. Oh it won't let you shrink the partition enough? (cause vista a lot of times will put a back up of the first bit of a partition at the end, making shrinking it a nightmare). Uh, ah screw it I'll do it for ya when I come over'

    The above scenario(s) gave me pause in handing out live cds. Now with the wubi installer, that has taken away a lot of those concerns. From what I've read, defragging first is still highly recommended, but that's not so bad. It would be nice if there was some opensource defragger for ntfs that they could include in wubi and check how fragmented the drive is beforehand.'

    But it's miles closer to foolproof. And if they really like it, I can explain things a little further about a dedicated partition for ubuntu.

    Anyway, this is the first release that has addressed almost all my concerns in just handing the cd to any novice and saying 'go ahead and install it, don't like it just remove it from add remove programs'

  • TheRealToma, on 03/07/2008, -1/+8Anyone with an rtl8180 based wifi card will be short changed in Hardy. The driver for it has been axed and the card doesnt work with the included ndiswrapper. I filed bug reports and done testing but nothing has been done. Just a warning.
  • iKnowKungFoo, on 03/07/2008, -0/+7I installed 7.10 on an older Compaq laptop. It found my wireless card on installation and gave me a list of available wireless networks when it started. All I have to do is enter my WEP key and I'm on my network, just like in Windows.
  • CharlesSaint, on 03/07/2008, -1/+8Wine is a compatibility layer, not a Windows emulator.
  • zach382, on 03/07/2008, -0/+6Hey AzureRise I have the same laptop as you and I had the same problem. I fixed it by going into synaptic and adding the backport repository and installing linux-backport-modules. My sound worked after that. Send my a shout if that doesnt work and I'll see if I can find thh link with instructions.
  • AzureRise, on 03/07/2008, -0/+6HP Pavillion dv6589. I've tried googling and going to various forums. I've even tried weird distros I've never even heard about.
  • shredswithpiks, on 03/07/2008, -0/+6Dell isn't necessarily bad for things like laptops. I plan on getting the M1330 very soon.
  • CharlesSaint, on 03/07/2008, -3/+9Except that this one is an LTS release, so it's especially important.
  • 0two, on 03/07/2008, -0/+6It's the same with anything. People tend to be mindless sheep when they're trying to put down something. It's amazing how many people think Macs suck without knowing anything about them (these people are usually jealous) or how many Mac fanboys think Vista is the worst operating system ever and is barely usable (these people are usually insecure about Linux or OS X).

    This can also be seen with video game fanboys. No explanation required.


  • DjArcadian, on 03/07/2008, -1/+7I got excited when I saw the headline but it was all hot air. Suggesting that it's a critical release based on its name alone seems silly. Like wvdavis said above. Back to journalist school
  • smacksaw, on 03/07/2008, -1/+6Really? I love Kubuntu on my AMD64. I dual-boot with 32 Vista (got rid of 64, compatibility) and it's far slower and uses more RAM. I just keep it for games, which is why if I'm using a 64-bit OS...it came down to Kubuntu.
  • webcrumb, on 03/07/2008, -0/+5Except Edgy (for me) - that was a little /too/ unstable... (I know it was called Edgy for a reason, but still...)
  • benplaut, on 03/07/2008, -1/+6This is why I love Linux... say you have a problem--even in a place you wouldn't usually ask for help--and two dozen people pop up with possible solutions.
  • Theli, on 03/07/2008, -0/+5And that it's stable even on the very same day it's released.
  • neowolfwitch, on 03/07/2008, -0/+5If everyone who complained about things in Ubuntu here (and on Slashdot, etc.) would actually do so on the Ubuntu forums or somewhere it would count- it would be a much-much better OS. Too many people say things like "I won't use it because wireless doesn't work" or "configuring it sucks", without backing it up. Yes- I'm a Linux "fan-boy", I've run it on a dozen servers for the better part of ten years, and have used various desktop versions of it (admittedly unsuccessfully until Ubuntu) for three.
    If you don't like Ubuntu, and can provide solid reasons with examples, instead of just something like "Ubuntu sucks!", go here:
    http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/
    or here:
    http://ubuntuforums.org/
    BTW- several of the issues I saw skimming the comments are either resolved or being worked on for Hardy.
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