Ubuntu 8.04 is out | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu 8.04 is out

releases.ubuntu.com

71 pointsmcxx48 comments

Been running the beta for a month or so and have to say I have not had many problems. For the most part everything has been enjoyable.

Running on a laptop with external monitor (as dual monitor). No major problems with the graphics or wifi or anything else.

Dito! ;)

Good to hear! The one issue I had with 7.10, requiring some xorg tweaks, was getting that same monitor setup working correctly. Here's to a smooth setup when I get home tonight :).

yea I was happy with how well it worked out. My setup is using an nVidia card in twinview.

I used EnvyNG to get the right drivers and it worked like a charm, I did have problems trying to install the driver directly.

Good luck!

Yeah, Envy totally did the job for me.

Which is nice, because video drivers were the only nontrivial thing that didn't work for me in Gutsy -- the free nvidia drivers don't work at all with my T61p, and the version of the proprietary driver in the repository was complete crap.

Do you disconnect/reconnect your laptop to the external monitor much? I.e., does it switch nicely between single and dual monitor use?

I looked into doing that for my Ubuntu 7.10 laptop, since I have an extra monitor lying around, but it goes with me on trips so it must be able to do single monitor mode too.

All I could find on the web, though, said such usage was flaky at best and downright hard to setup (for 7.10).

I'd be interested to see if they improved that for 8.04

ya know i haven't much since running hardy. The last time I did I didnt have any problems (i think i restarted gnome though)... The only problem I had was that the panel I keep on the second monitor moved to being on top of the other one... So I ended up with 2 panels, stacked, showing the same information.

Ill give it a try a few times tonight and let you know how things go

Well after playing with it restarting X seems to make it work fine but thats a bit annoying when you just wanna yank the external and move around. Without restarting X it just seems to think the monitor is still attached and things are not visible.

I also had the same panel problem where they will move to the single monitor but not move back when the other is reattached.

I hear the next version (intrepid ibex) will be focused on mobile computing so maybe some of these issues will be addressed.

I use a second monitor at work and only my onboard screen at home. After fiddling around with settings for a while, I got it to work, but I also shut down the system when I go to and from work (I expect restarting X would also work).

The main downside of this setup (other than the rebooting thing) is that it makes it impractical to unplug my laptop and move around when I feel like it.

I'm also interested in seeing what happens under Hardy.

I use 7.10 with an external monitor and laptop. The standard display tools did not work for me, as they kept stuffing up the resolutions of each monitor, so the best solution I found was to have 2 xorg.conf files, one for 2 monitors and one for just the laptop. I run a script to swap them around when I need to. Not the best solution ... but it works for me. Took me about 4 hours or so to setup, as I've not used linux before.

http://www.x.org/wiki/Releases/7.3

The latest RandR added support for that, which appears to have gone in about a month before Ubuntu 7.10. I haven't tried it, but it's a safe bet it's better now. Whether it's good enough for your setup, I can't say.

It's worth noting that this is the first LTS release since 6.06, and thus the first release of Ubuntu in a few years that is sane to run on servers. The LTS server releases are supported for five years, as opposed to 18 months for non-LTS releases. A five year support lifecycle is awesome (and means that LTS Ubuntu releases are comparable to RHEL/CentOS and Debian for server usage).

I gave up on running LTS on my servers. After a while it becomes painful to manage, especially if you need to install packages that require newer version of core libraries. It depends on what you're building, but I'm perfectly fine with upgrading my servers at least once a year.

You're not running enough servers or enough services on those servers, if you don't mind upgrading every year. Honestly, I prefer Debian with the volatile repository to address that problem. I find CentOS pretty good, as well--grabbing a Fedora SRPM or two and rebuilding is usually an easy way to get the bleeding edge version of something without much pain.

You're right, I'm not running enough servers. But I plan to keep my strategy as the number of servers goes up. I like having the same version of OS on the server and on my desktop. I'm a big fan of having everything (configuration, updates, deployment) automated so hopefully the amount of work I have to do doesn't increase linearly (or worse) with the amount of servers I manage.

I will humbly point out that my business (Virtualmin) is the automation of systems management tasks, likewise for my hobby of the last 8+ years (Webmin). And I still consider it an absolute deal-breaker when an OS has a lifecycle less than three years (my usual upgrade cycle is usually 24-32 months...but I like to have some wiggle room, so five years is even better).

So, you're right that there is value in replicating your infrastructure on your home machine and your server, and there's definitely value in building in replicate-ability from the beginning. Nonetheless, the end-of-life of your server will catch you by surprise one day, and some security exploit will mean you have to upgrade (at least some components) under duress. And there's nothing more stressful than doing things under duress on a production server. It'll take years off your life.

BTW-I run Fedora 7 on my desktop and Ubuntu 7.10 on my laptop, and deploy to CentOS 4 and 5 on my servers, and the pain is minimal (then again, our product technically gets deployed on all of those platforms, and many more, so that cross-platform compatibility is part of what we're always testing and working on--I suspect if platform-leveling weren't part of our value I'd be more likely to standardize).

Thanks for the detailed response, I'll keep that in mind as the number of servers I manage increases.

Ive been running the beta for a while, its been really nice, my compiz hasnt worked until this release, and it also fixed my printer etc etc.

It also plays a preview of mp3s you mouseover in the filebrowser, not a big feature, but I liked it

> It also plays a preview of mp3s you mouseover in the filebrowser, not a big feature, but I liked it

Yikes, I could see that startling the heck out of me if I left my speakers on full volume.

> It also plays a preview of mp3s you mouseover in the filebrowser, not a big feature, but I liked it

I don't think that's new to HH, my girlfriend's GG does that.

I just finished getting all the drivers up and working on a 7.1 install. I'm kind of scared of starting all over again with wifi, video, sound, etc. I like 7.1, don't know if the upgrade is worth it.

I've generally had very good upgrade experiences with Debian and Debian based distributions.

Sorry, I don't play pokemon

One can only drop this joke once or twice a year and it gets downvoted??

This is a joke? Can someone explain it and why is it so offensive?

http://xkcd.com/178/

Haha, I am more intrigued at how that is something like a third degree cultural reference, like (japanese-import-culture (usa-culture (pokemon (xkcd linux)))

I guess the reversed/flipped sexpr works too.

I've been running the beta for over a month now and look forward to the final upgrade. I did had one issue with the -12 through -15 kernels which rendered my Intel sound card unusable. A bulk update 2 weeks ago fixed that.

Why does Ubuntu provide a server edition in addition to their desktop edition? It would seem a natural fit to leave servers to Debian and focus their own efforts on delivering the best desktop experience possible.

I agree with this in theory, but there's one big advantage to running the same distro on both workstation and server: versioning and compatibility issues at deployment time more or less disappear.

I run Ubuntu on my development workstation, and deploy to Debian servers. While the environments are almost identical, I've wasted far too many hours tracking down stupid bugs in shared libraries that only occur one one distro or the other.

I might finally make the switch and use it as a desktop. My main concern is that wpa support still might suck for linux.

I'll wait a little bit until I hear more good reviews.

I'm most looking forward to Pulse Audio, I end up doing a lot of switching of sound cards that's really annoying with Alsa.

I tried out the beta of Kubuntu; I found KDE 4 painful.

I may give Xbunutu a whirl, or see about swapping out KDE 4 for KDE 3.something.

I love Xubuntu. Surprised there isn't more buzz about it.

Seconded. Xfce provides the best of both worlds, although I tend to stick to the normal one for most things. It's quicker and lighter than Gnome, while being clean and simple, and doesn't look like an odd attempt at "Windows XP 2" like KDE.

Yeah, I tried KDE4 and quickly reverted it. Support seems very preliminary. KDE3 seems solid, though.

A follow up: Turns out that the final release comes in two flavors. The default Kubuntu 8.04 has KDE3; there is also a KDE "remix" version with KDE4.

I've had an annoying time this weekend doing the standard upgrade (I suggest NOT upgrading via the internet using a running system if you can avoid it; my upgrade hung trying to stop a service, and it went downhill from there)

But hibernate and suspend work now. :)

Does anyone have a list of all the applications+versions included like which X.org, Gnome, Kernel etc. are used?

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu

Looks like the kernel is 2.6.25. I'm going to upgrade one of my machines later today and see how it goes. I'm more interested in the Kubuntu + KDE4.0 even if it is unstable. Looks like the Ubuntu stuff is mainly tweaks except a few changes in default programs (Brasero & Transmission by default) and Firefox 3.0 beta + newer Xorg

The kernel is actually 2.6.24.

What new features are in this version?

I'm running 7.10, what's the best way to upgrade without losing any info?

>>do-release-upgrade

It might be best to wait a day or so if you're not installing from a disc, as their servers usually get hammered during the first 24 hours or so.

it broke my nvidia drivers.

I'm guessing you did a full-upgrade. Have you tried a fresh install from scratch?

not yet, just a linux newbie learning the ropes. i know with windows, upgrades break everything too, so i am not pissed, i was just trying to see if linux was better in that regard. and... i guess it is not.

i was also hoping to skip running through all of the customizations that i set up again, but i guess that is the best way to learn linux. either that, or to fix the install i have.

Did you already pre-order your free copy of Ubuntu 8.04?

http://shipit.ubuntu.com

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