Ubuntu announces 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) Beta 1 | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu announces 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) Beta 1

wiki.ubuntu.com

97 pointscobychapple64 comments

Note that this version of Ubuntu will not be shipping with Python 2. That's kind of a big deal.

you mean that it uses python 3 for the system, i assume? surely python 2 will be installable from the software centre, just like python3 can be installed now?

They are going to use Python 3 for the system, yes. Python 2 will be available, as expected, in the repo's.

They are encouraging developers to transition their code to Python 3.

Yes, just like tomcat6.

About time too. It's been 3½ years since Python 3 came out. People should've moved to it a long time ago.

I suspect lack of Django support for Python 3 was a factor

Actually the move has and always had a 5 year time frame. We are well within it.

As a side note, I just yesterday tried out the Django 1.5 development trunk in a python3 virtualenv and it all worked. :)

Oh, sure, that wasn't intended as a dig on Django. My point was just the fact that you couldn't run it under Python3 was likely a factor in the slow adoption.

I wonder if this will cause much strife. I run ArchLinux, for which the default /usr/bin/python is Python 3. Often I run into issues with (admittedly software not from the repos) which uses the

#!/usr/bin/python

shebang, and expects it to reference Python 2, thus causing breakage.

Ubuntu won't be changing that - /usr/bin/python will still mean Python 2. It just won't be installed by default (if they meet their goal, which looks doubtful for this cycle).

There's always:

#!/usr/bin/env python

too

which btw wouldn't help at all with op's scenario of Python 2 scripts finding an unexpected Python 3 interpreter.

Exactly. Whenever a script is made, it should have #!/usr/bin/env interpreter# as the first line.

#!/usr/bin/env python2 #!/usr/bin/env python3

Explicitly declaring the required version fixes that problem. In arch, most of the PKGBUILDs will have a line to sed the explicit line into the file in place of the generic python line.

Interesting, that's not recommended by python devs. Ubuntu follows the guideline of keeping /usr/bin/python as Python 2 (which will not be installed by default), and /usr/bin/python3 as Python 3.

ETA: Arch Linux actually did this before there was an "official" guideline. http://www.wefearchange.org/2012/04/python-3-on-desktop-for-...

I guess the reason that I like Arch (new software releases quickly) also caused them to beat the official guideline here :)

Thanks for the pointer.

not a python guy but heard this means python<3 scripts will break? no backwards compatibility with the new version?

First sentence is false, second is true (by itself).

Python 3 isn't becoming `/usr/bin/python` - it will be `/usr/bin/python3` and the Python programs that are shipped on the CD will use that. If you thought Python 3 was going to become `/usr/bin/python`, then yes, that would cause backwards compatibility issues.

Eh? http://packages.ubuntu.com/quantal/python2.7

Shipping. To wit: Python 2 is installable, but will not be installed by default.

They won't remove python2k from the repositories any time soon.

Are we getting PHP 5.4 too? I want me some [] and php -S.

5.4.6 is in Quantal right now. Presumably 12.10 will have that.

Great! Then I won't have to rely on someone's ppa for PHP5.4 on Precise.

That was the goal, but it's not happening. 13.04, yes. Promise.

Let me expand: we didn't make it to have python3 be the only shipped python in 12.10 because of several major dependencies. The stumbling blocks (as far as I know---when the rubber hits the road other things might pop up) were twisted, protobuf, and xapian. We have contracted out the work of porting the first two (the results of these efforts will be shipped in 12.10, in universe), and are moving away from the third one.

Just installed beta1. Opened terminal and then:

    $ python --version
    Python 2.7.3

I was about to say "What the hell? Beta already?" and then I realized it was almost October. Summer flew past, wow...

There is no longer a traditional CD-sized image, DVD or alternate image, but rather a single 800MB Ubuntu image that can be used from USB or DVD

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

What the heck is that? A pig looking at the golden gate bridge? What does it mean?

I wonder how many people were still using the CD sized image. I'm guessing not very many, and with the size constraints, Canonical were probably itching to get rid of it.

You have a funny take on it, but it's actually a guy flipping over a table.

I always thought it was a person who crashed their skateboard into a wall!

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/flipping-tables-%E2%95%AF%E2%9...

I would rather not have to resort to that sort of stuff here on HN.

> What the heck is that? A pig looking at the golden gate bridge? What does it mean?

This is the best comment I have seen today. Thanks for making me smile :)

Back when I did some small scale sysadmin work, I found that our CD/DVD burners were a lot more reliable as CD burners than as DVD burners. This seemed to be true both of the older Dell ones we had and the newer generic-brand ones. I had much better luck using CDs for basic installs and then fetching additional stuff from the net than trying to use DVDs.

- I also remember the CD burners to be more reliably, but that is my memory from maybe 5 years ago, I almost always use USB sticks these days.

- For local deployments (or even repeated installs due to tinkering-reasons), the best thing to have is a local http/ftp proxy (apt-get install squid).

I can't remember the last time I saw a CD, let alone touched one. There isn't a single computer in my house with a CD-ROM/RW drive, and even the ones with DVD drives don't have OSes installed with a DVD.

The alternate image was useful for downloading now/installing the upgrade later. I guess the single image should be able to do that as well.

Also users who previously installed using LVM or full-disk encryption via the alternate CD will find that these installation targets are supported by the consolidated image in 12.10. Finally! It was about time to offer what Red Hat/Fedora have been offering for ages.

If you have internet access, Canonical have always provided a minimal CD installer (about 30Mb) that grabs packages over the internet. See : https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD 12.04 is on there, and I haven't seen any announcement indicating 12.10 won't be. Not idea for every application (e.g. where you're installing onto multiple machines, will use a lot of bandwidth), but for 1 or 2 machines certainly an option.

I really think it's time Ubuntu ditches the bizarre animal names. This one is going to be barely pronounceable for most of the world. 12.10 would suffice

They're almost at the end of the alphabet. What are they going to do next? They won't stop until "Zebra" though.

Start over with Pokemon, obviously.

Unicode?

They've been avoiding mainstream animals lately.

My guess is the Zonure[1], since it is South African and looks awesome.

Although if they continue the trend of increasingly hard to pronounce names they might go with Zyzzyva.

[1] http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4033/4447517348_9bf8d8b2a6.jp...

They might get away with Aardvark, Excel-style...

12.10 is the official name for the actually released OS. The animal name is the code word for the thing that will become 12.10 when it's done. Things get a little confused sometimes in e.g. apt repositories but the official stuff is all quite clear on the distinction.

In my 7+ years as an Ubuntu developer, I have yet to see a news article or forum post about a release that didn't somewhere spawn a discussion about adjective animal names.

Frankly, I think it generates considerable free buzz. Everyone's always talking about shuttleworthian adjectives and obscure animals.

My one point of contention, and I've brought this up with Mark personally, is that he needs to announce the name of the next release sooner. Or at least the adjective code name, as it's relevant for things like scripts and other tools, and once we start to freeze things we need to retarget stuff to the next (+1) release.

It's quite silly for any of that work to delay for a reason as lame as wanting to unveil the adjective in a future quirky blog post. Would you believe we actually had to build an abstraction layer in launchpad for release names so we can have things like the "R release" rather than just using the adjective directly?

Rabid Release-manager

Silly Shuttleworth

Personally I'm looking forward to a Randy Rhinoceros in six months.

> barely pronounceable

Pronounceable correctly, maybe. ("Quantal" is easy, but the first time I read it I pronounced "quetzal" like "pretzel" with a 'qw' instead of 'pr' and I will likely continue to do so even though it's technically wrong.)

I thinks it's pronounced as 'kwantal'. I think it's easy enough to read, maybe it depends on your mother tongue (or 2, 3 or 4th).

Looks like Wayland is not included in this release after all.

As a developer from Guatemala, I must say I am proud.

I'm also from Guatemala, and yeah, it's really nice to see the word Quetzal in something as big as an Ubuntu version name.

Nice :)

I didn't understand the reference until I saw this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_quetzal

"The quetzal is the currency of Guatemala. It is named after the national bird of Guatemala ..."

Looks like this one will handle dual monitor properly with nvidia cards at least.

What are you trying to say?

I use AMD on a desktop and a laptop and dual monitor works perfectly in Ubuntu 12.04 with both in various setups.

YMMV I guess. I just hooked a new monitor up to my laptop running 12.04 last night. I had to manually install the ATI drivers, then change the settings in Catalyst. I was required to reboot after each change. Then, I had to change the display settings in system settings. It took about 2 hours to get right and was a huge pain.

I have a dual monitor set up at work on 12.04 and it works flawlessly & smoothly. It is absolutely hit-or-miss. There are driver issues on Ubuntu for dual monitors.

I plugged my 12.04 laptop into a projector the other day for the first time, and dual monitors worked just fine, without doing anything.

Try fullscreen Sdl or rotating one monitor's picture.

A (bit more) stable Telepathy stack for KDE is a big deal.

Also LightDM and guest mode finally come to Kubuntu. I hope it gets backported to 12.04. I'd prefer keeping my LTS system.

Using it now, but kinda stuck on an ia32-libs problem

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ia32-libs/+bug/101...

Bummer, I didn't see anything about hidpi support in there.

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