

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala released - zokier
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/910

======
10ren
It supports ARM; and a bunch of ARM-based netbooks are due out soon. They are
cheaper and much more power efficient than intel's Atom etc. And Windows
doesn't run on them (yet).

I'm not a big linux vs. windows or ARM vs. intel fanatic, but I'm excited at
what seems to be a disruptive inflection point coming up in the next year or
so...

~~~
rbanffy
Being Windows-proof is, definitely, a feature for me ;-)

~~~
notauser
You laugh but there is a lot of truth in that!

I have an Eee 1000 which had a 40gb SSD - there are two reasons that you can't
get that today.

\- SSD prices have gone up.

\- You can't put the cheap version of Windows on a device with a large SSD, so
in the interest of rationalising product lines you can only get small SSDs or
hard disks.

If Windows can't be put on the device then at least the second pressure won't
exist.

~~~
tocomment
"You can't put the cheap version of Windows on a device with a large SSD"

Why not?

(BTW I don't know how to quote properly on HN, little help!)

~~~
tome
Presumably Microsoft won't allow it. To make Windows competitive they have a
discount for OEMs to install Windows on machines with low spec, and presumably
this SSD is too large to be able to take advantage of that.

~~~
notauser
This is correct. The limit appears to be 16gb to qualify for the (very large)
discount.

[http://www.itexaminer.com/microsoft-adds-to-atoms-
restrictio...](http://www.itexaminer.com/microsoft-adds-to-atoms-
restrictions.aspx)

Supposedly the Win 7 license has no such restriction.

------
ivenkys
Its all well and good for Ubuntu to push further ahead but they would do a
real big favor to the push of Linux on the Desktop if they could solve 1 major
issue , remove the ugliness in the default rendering of the Fonts. Yes, i know
it can be done via a bazillion font config options and yes its very powerful
and flexible, but lets get it right by default.

~~~
spamizbad
Basically, here's what's going on:

1) There aren't many free typefaces for daily use that are beautiful, so you
have to buy (or commission) several and "open source" them.

2) Techniques for AA font rendering that maximize aesthetics and readability
are protected by numerous software patents. Years ago there was a short-lived
patch in Xorg that had a modern font-AA algorithm that held its own against
the competition, but it turned out to step on several patents so it was axed
out of fear of litigation. That fear is very real, as typography-related tech
patents are one of the most aggressively guarded elements of tech-IP.

As a result, the Linux developers have been forced to re-invent the wheel from
the ground up when it comes to typography in Linux distributions.

~~~
rms
Is there source code out there for a patent infringing Ubuntu font fix?

~~~
blasdel
Yes, it's a part of Freetype, Ubuntu just doesn't enable it at compile-time.

    
    
      In include/freetype/config/ftoption.h:
        enable  FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING
        enable  TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER
        disable TT_CONFIG_OPTION_UNPATENTED_HINTING
    

Even under the most anal-retentive freetard fealty to Intellectual Property
Law, distribution of C source code cannot infringe upon patents, only
distribution of compiled binaries. It's the difference between promulgating
plans for the machine (the original point of patents) and capitalizing on said
plans.

Gentoo is the only distro I know of that has it turned on by default.

------
trevorbramble
Looking forward to upgrading from 9.04 to 9.10 ...in 3 to 6 months when all
the bugs are shaken out and everything is compatible with the new version. =^)

~~~
ramidarigaz
What do you use that isn't compatible?

~~~
trevorbramble
I use a few packages from <http://www.getdeb.net/> and have several PPAs
<https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas> installed as well so there's some
secondary lag there as those developers release new packages for 9.10. Which
shouldn't be too long, really.

My main concern with this release is the ongoing, phantom ext4 (and sometimes
3?) corruption problem. Depending on which reports you read, it affects 64-bit
installations specifically, which is what I use.

As much as the software, I want to ensure that there's plenty of community
documentation and collective experience compiled before I switch. My System76
laptop here is my bread and butter; I don't want to find myself pathfinding on
a new problem when I need to get things done, I want someone to have already
charted a solution.

~~~
bad_user
Out of curiosity ... why do you use the 64bit version? Do you have more than
4GB of ram?

~~~
Randai
You probably already know this, but mostly all modern CPU's (within the last
5+ years, I could be wrong on some accounts) are actually 64 bit, so I believe
and I might be wrong, you are losing some optimizations.

Also its your RAM + Videocard Memory that is your memory, so while you might
have say 4 gig, and it would seem to show up on your computer, its including
your video card memory.

~~~
doki_pen
Absolutely wrong. I wish ppl would stop spreading this nonsense. 64 bit is
actually slower in practice, since addresses double in size. It also causes
nearly double the memory consumption, since all libraries become twice as big,
so when you upgrade to 64 bit, you should actually double the memory you
wanted on 32 bit. There are only 2 reasons why you need 64 bit:

* You need to compute extremely large numbers. You'll get big performance boosts here.

* You need more then ~3.5 G ram. In which case you actually have to buy AT LEAST 8G to see a positive impact. Even this is not a hard requirement, as there are work arounds in 32-bit. But 64-bit is an absolute must if an individual process needs that much ram.

note: I see I'm voted down, and maybe I'm a little harsh in my comment, but
can anyone add any other reasons to go to 64 bit? I've read a ton over the
years and those are the only two I could find. Maybe I should add "because 64
is bigger then 32 and I can tell ppl my OS is 64 bit"

edit: Double is a great exaggeration, but not as much as the replies
indicated. I moved from a 64-bit slicehost with 512M to a 32-bit linode with
320M and have LESS memory woes. The libraries really are almost twice as big.
I speak from experience and not from theory.

~~~
wmf
To explain why you're being downvoted into oblivion:

ints remain the same size, but longs and pointers are double the size. 64-bit
libraries may be bigger, but there's no reason they would double in size. In
general, a 64-bit system uses more RAM, but not double.

~~~
silentbicycle
One data point: IIRC, a benchmark I ran comparing memory consumption for Lua
coroutines (co-operative threads) used roughly 1.3-1.4x as much memory on
64-bit as 32-bit.

I'm not sure if 1.25-1.5x would be accurate as a rule of thumb, but 2x is
almost certainly too high. (It will depend on the data structures etc.
involved.)

------
paulsmith
Smoothest dist upgrade yet ... didn't break any laptop functionality (ThinkPad
T500) AFAICT.

Use a mirror! ;)

~~~
rufugee
But don't trust the upgrade if you use advanced features (as I found out the
hard way) like Software Raid, LVM, and cryptfs. IT WILL BREAK YOUR SYSTEM.

~~~
davidw
Can you point to any bug reports indicating this?

~~~
rufugee
No, but after upgrading via apt-get my system was unbootable. After pointing
it to the proper drive in grub, it would attempt to boot but mysteriously
hang. No one in #ubuntu or #ubuntu+1 could figure it out. I ended up having to
boot from live cd, decrypt the filesystem, transfer it to a different box, and
reinstall from scratch.

------
garply
In the last version, they broke my Intel graphics driver, rendering my machine
almost unusable except for the console. I spent many hours trying to fix it,
and ended up switching to Arch out of frustration. I don't think I'm going
back, but does anyone know if they've fixed it?

~~~
ajross
This was a really famous regression. It's not solely Ubuntu's fault, of
course; they got bitten by shipping newer software. But yes -- they (Intel,
really, not Canonical) fixed it.

------
danielh
It seems the website is in transition. While still coming soon on the
homepage, the download page now lists 9.10 as newest version.

<http://twitpic.com/ndx0v>

~~~
timmaah
Front page is updated now as well..

My download via torrent is cruising right along..

~~~
justanotherbody
[http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.10/ubuntu-9.10-desktop-
amd64.is...](http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.10/ubuntu-9.10-desktop-
amd64.iso.torrent)

substitute whatever particular image you need, it's all named accordingly.

~~~
decode
It might be easier to just go to a list of all the ISOs and torrents
available:

<http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/CDs/karmic/>

------
ghotli
Some googling shows that the VMWare Tools are not yet compatible with 9.10.
Does anyone know how quickly VMWare usually gets around to updating tools
after an Ubuntu update?

~~~
Sapient
I have given up on waiting for VMWare Tools to catch up and switched to
VirtualBox from Sun. <http://www.virtualbox.com>

Unless there is some strange functionality you need from VMWare that isn't
supported in VirtualBox, I suggest giving it a try.

~~~
santry
<http://www.virtualbox.org/>

FTFY

~~~
ableal
And the Virtualbox repository is ready with 3.10 for Koala.

You do have to re-enable the source manually - it's not deleted, but the 9.04
-> 9.10 upgrade process turns off third party sources as a precaution.

Just finished upgrading an AMD quad core box, smooth sailing.

------
a-priori
As someone pointed out when this just appeared on Slashdot, if you go to
<http://ubuntu.com> you'll see in big letters "Coming Soon!"

EDIT: Nevermind, the website just changed.

~~~
barnaby
Yeah, but it's coming out today, and it's going to get like a gazillion
upvotes... so somebody wanted to earn the points by being the first to post.

I've been using the beta for a while now, it is B.E.A.U.T.I.F.U.L. It's
competing with OSX now (having surpassed Windows long long ago)

~~~
megaman821
Actually, with Windows 7 and Snow Leopard out Ubuntu feels even further away
from becoming mainstream. I want to like Linux on the desktop but looking at
it objectively Win 7 and Snow Leopard are better.

~~~
rsheridan6
I spend almost all of my time in firefox, emacs and a few other programs,
which are the same on every platform. It really doesn't make much of a
difference to me what desktop OS I use as long as it's cheap and it works with
my hardware. I use Ubuntu on an HTPC because it's free and it (usually) works.
I can't imagine what MS or Apple could do to improve on free + works.

To me Linux is a lot closer now than it was in the past because you can pop a
Ubuntu CD into a computer and 9 times out of time it you have a working
computer with sound and everything half an hour later. 7 years ago, when I
first installed linux, that would have been more like 1 time out of 10.

~~~
bretthoerner
> I spend almost all of my time in firefox, emacs and a few other programs

Me too, and I have a Dell laptop in the mail that I'll be installing Ubuntu on
and trying to use as my main machine.

But you know what _isn't_ the same in all of these programs between OS X and
Linux? Font rendering. I can get Linux to "OK" but OS X is always refreshing
in comparison.

~~~
mikeyur
Font rendering is a big one for me. For some reason Ubuntu always looks..
ugly.

The color scheme, font rendering, icons, etc, etc. Are there no designers in
the open source community willing to help out? Or do the project leads not
give a crap about design?

~~~
mquander
I personally find the Ubuntu out-of-the-box font rendering with the DejaVu
font family on my laptop LCD to be on par aesthetically with Windows and OS X
font rendering, so consider at least that there is an element of taste
involved. (Unless some bug is making your fonts exceptionally bad for some
reason.)

Unfortunately, I am personally unable to duplicate Ubuntu's pretty fonts on
Gentoo, no matter how hard I configure X and fonts/local.conf.

~~~
bretthoerner
The menus and title bars look great.

But open Firefox and and go to Gmail or something and compare it to OS X.

~~~
davars
Even with msttcorefonts installed?

~~~
mikeyur
The problem is that it doesn't look good out of the box. I shouldn't have to
hack a bunch of stuff together to get it working properly.

~~~
whatusername
True - but when we start comparing it to Windows - (disable crapware, install
firefox, install anti-virus, install iTunes) vs Ubuntu (install restricted-
extras) then a Ubuntu setup starts looking pretty good.

------
mwexler
Just whiny, but why does Ubuntu (or most distros) not give any idea of
minimum/average disk required for install in their system requirements area? I
know, I can customize the install so as to reduce or increase space
requirements, but even a suggestion that "a straight default install requires
around 2gb of space for programs, and 1gb for swap" would be helpful.

~~~
mseebach
If you're a geek and need to ask, it's probably too large (if you worry about
hard-disk space, you're probably trying to install it on something obscenely
old. Ubuntu isn't for that.).

If you're not a geek, it'll fit (any consumer computer going over the counter
for the past 6-7 years, probably more, has at least a 20 GB drive in it. Most
likely you'll have 100+ GB).

~~~
mikeyur
"you're probably trying to install it on something obscenely old"

Or something new, like an SSD on which you're attempting to dual/triple boot.

~~~
mseebach
Yeah, well, good point. My point was that a userfriendly distribution
shouldn't present technical information that isn't absolutely vital. And it's
really easy to find, by the way:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+requirements>

~~~
natrius
Disk space requirements aren't obscure technical information. Providing it
wouldn't confuse anyone, especially not anyone adept enough to install an
operating system. It should be provided.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
> Providing it wouldn't confuse anyone

You fail at UI. Any and all information always adds some cognitive load and
confuses the user. Every time you think you should show the user something,
you must figure out a very convincing reason why you should not just leave it
out. There clearly isn't one for majority of users who are going to install
ubuntu, and for the rest, googling for two easy words isn't going to be too
much of trouble.

~~~
natrius
Disk space is required to install the OS. The alternative is letting the user
download the .iso, burn it, then try to install only to have the installer
complain about not having enough space. That is failing at UI. The additional
cognitive load of reading a disk space requirement is negligible, especially
compared to what someone who needed that information has to go through without
it. You haven't even considered the possibility that a user might not think
about how much space they have until they come across the requirement.

Not only are you wrong, but "You fail at UI" is a particularly abrasive way to
be wrong.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
> Not only are you wrong

I might well be wrong about whether it's worth it to show disk space or not. I
have no problem admitting this, because I haven't done any studies about it.

> but "You fail at UI" is a particularly abrasive way to be wrong.

>The additional cognitive load of reading a disk space requirement is
negligible

Apparently I was too abrasive, or not abrasive enough.

 _NO_ amount of cognitive load is negligible. Ever. When you design a dialog
with two buttons that both have to be there, both of those buttons are
creating a significant amount of cognitive load. Understanding this is largely
why apple makes good UI's. You should never try to justify removing something
from the UI -- you must instead always have very good reasons why NOT to
remove something, and remove it by default if you can't find enough (not any).

As I said, I have not made any studies of how users install ubuntu or what
they expect, but as it's supposed to be installed as the os on the computer,
in place of whatever that was before, and as there is no commonly available
commodity hardware that it won't install on, I can easily see how there is no
longer enough justification to show disk space requirements.

~~~
dandelany
> Apparently I was too abrasive, or not abrasive enough.

Just the first one.

------
kingkawn
i done been on beta, it actually works pretty well and the graphic card
compatibility is improved greatly.

~~~
liuliu
Actually the graphics card support is better than Windows _for me_. My
graphics card driver keeps crash under Windows 7 but for 9.10 Ubuntu, there is
no problem (Rademon HD 5770)

~~~
heyitsnick
Correction: Actually the graphics card support is better than Windows _for
me_. One case study is not enough evidence to support your claim that overall
their driver support is better.

But I'm v happy to hear this: i've struggled with my ATI graphics card the
last 2 major versions of ubuntu (7.x i managed to get working after days of
hacking around. Never got compiz working though. 8.x I got compiz running, but
the general performance was so sluggish it was unusually).

I'll give it another shot.

------
iamaleksey
Just upgraded and everything is smooth so far. The only exception being VMware
Workstation 6.5 - you need to upgrade to VMware Workstation 7.0 or it won't
work.

------
scrollinondubs
for anyone who finds the Ubuntu mirrors to be too slow due to being hammered
on the first day of release, we just posted a technique for quickly making
your own private, temporary Ubuntu mirror on EC2:
[http://blog.jumpbox.com/2009/10/29/instant-ubuntu-mirror-
usi...](http://blog.jumpbox.com/2009/10/29/instant-ubuntu-mirror-using-
jumpbox-cloud-gear/)

sean

------
ypk
Looks like they've included Ubuntu One,GNOME 2.28, kernel 2.6.31, Quickly
(rails like framework that brings rapid development) and many more

~~~
Randai
With Quickly, I remember what uhh it does, I just can't remember what
languages it supports.

------
tybris
but as always, I'm very scared to update.

~~~
bokchoi
Amen. I just can't get excited about fixing broken stuff on linux by tweaking
text files any longer.

~~~
telemachos
Is editing the registry or hunting down drivers for a new version of Windows
better? Or how about waking up to Snow Leopard having deleted your $HOME
folder? Operating systems have their issues - it's inevitable...

~~~
pyre
> _Is editing the registry or hunting down drivers for a new version of
> Windows better?_

When was the last time that installing a new Windows involved registry hacks.
I'll admit that I haven't used Windows 7 or Vista, but I don't remember
hacking the registry on Win95/98/ME/2k/XP installs.

Maybe you shouldn't get so bent out of shape so quickly. It's not like he was
bashing Linux and promoting Windows/OSX. If someone gripes about Windows do
you immediately rush in to make comparisons to similar problems in OSX or
Linux?

With the way that Ubuntu does releases though, it's little wonder that people
are scared to update. It's been a revision or two since Ubuntu pushed Xorg
over to using evdev for mouse handling/etc, and my Thinkpad's TrackPoint is
_still_ only recognized as a regular mouse (no scrolling) when previous Ubuntu
revisions had readily setup scrolling automatically for me.

{edit} I'll add there are multiple blog posts, and a LaunchPad report, IIRC
with the fix... which the Ubuntu devs have not seen fit to include in Ubuntu,
so a fresh install mean applying all of the fixes. {/edit}

With the update to Jaunty (9.04), I've had a few woes with my Atheros chipset:

1\. ath5k was forced as the default out-of-the-box driver for Atheros chipsets
over the previous madwifi (ath_hal) driver.

2\. ath5k is flakey whenever I come home and connect to my wifi network...
_even when the laptop is 2 feet away from the access point._ It will
connect/disconnect from the network 2-5 times before deciding to stay
connected.

3\. If I change position in my room (with the access point in the middle), the
same connect/disconnect 'settling' period still needs to happen.

4\. /var/log/syslog is filled with spam from NetworkManager with messages
along the lines of this (even when I see no visible disconnects in nm-applet):

    
    
       'disconnect from network (mynetwork)'
       'connect to network (null)'
       'disconnect from network (null)'
       'connect to network (mynetwork)'
    

5\. There are unexplained slow downs in the network with the ath5k driver. For
the longest time I thought that my ssh woes (random 'hangs' that last 2-6
seconds) over my network were the problem of the server, but since I've
switched back to madwifi they've vanished.

6\. The madwifi driver _still_ doesn't play nice with suspend-to-ram (and
maybe suspend-to-disk but I haven't tested it). It will refuse to work after
waking back up (and a modprobe -r/modprobe doesn't help). Ubuntu could easily
fix this... Just need to drop `SUSPEND_MODULES="$SUSPEND_MODULES ath_hal"`
into a file in '/etc/pm/config.d'. This problem has existed for at least 2 or
3 revisions of Ubuntu (maybe more). The fix is on the web and on
Launchpad.net, but I have yet to see the fix make its way into an official
release.

If me, as someone that knows my way around Linux, can get frustrated with
these issues, then how can 'Bringing Linux to the Masses' be anyway near
achievement? My laptop isn't exactly a brand new laptop with highly
unsupported hardware. I'm running a ThinkPad X41.

[ Oh, and did I mention that the headphone jack stops working after the second
time I suspend/resume after a fresh boot? I'm perfectly willing to work with
the Ubuntu devs on Launchpad, but all of my suggestions/information is
apparently falling on deaf ears. <https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/101986> ]

~~~
pqs
Would this be better with another distribution?

~~~
pyre
Not necessarily, but someone griping about needing to wait for Service Pack 1
of a Windows release before having a stable platform wouldn't have gotten the
same response.

------
siegler
What are people's favorite guides for setting up Ubuntu?
<http://www.funnestra.org/ubuntu> is really good but they don't have a 9.10
update yet.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
`sudo do-release-upgrade` :)

In all seriousness, "guides" for setting up Ubuntu are most likely unnecessary
or superfluous; they'll just go into some random area of "customization" that
95% of users probably don't need or care about.

If you already have an older version of Ubuntu, just run the command I
mentioned, or go to System->Update Manager to handle the upgrade, and get on
with your day. If you don't have Ubuntu, just boot the live disc and install
it, and go from there.

~~~
pyre
> _In all seriousness, "guides" for setting up Ubuntu are most likely
> unnecessary or superfluous; they'll just go into some random area of
> "customization" that 95% of users probably don't need or care about._

Guides that target a particular system are still useful (i.e. "How to install
Ubuntu 9.10 on a Thinkpad x200") because they are guiding you through the
stuff that _doesn't_ work out of the box, even if they are minor issues. (Or
hidden options to make something that 'works ok' or 'sorta works' into
something that works well)

