Ubuntu Linux Catch-All [10.04 "Lucid Lynx": Released!]

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I know there are a number of us Ubuntu Linux users here, but no catch-all thread.

I upgraded my work laptop (Sager NP 5797) to the 9.10 beta release. I ran into a couple of issues, addressed in these blog posts:

I'm also currently figuring out a fix to a sound problem on this laptop. The Intel HDA sound worked without a hitch on previous Ubuntu releases, but the system does not currently see the hardware (I've read that this is a problem from the upgrade process, as others who have had the issue resolved it with a clean 9.10 install).

There have been some deep changes in this revision, so it's no surprise that there are some transition issues. A clean install may be a good idea if you encounter problems.

I don't run linux on my main machine (an iMac), but I do run it on my home server where most of my media files are stored and streamed from. Additionally, the pieces for my media center PC are going to arrive today and the plan is to install Ubuntu and Boxee onto it.

Any mind-blowing new additions to .10?

HAL is out, ext4 is standard, GRUB2 is in, Empathy replaces Pidgin, and NX/XD is standard. Not bad I suppose. It looks like the release has been pushed back to Oct. 29th. I'll download it and drop it in VirtualBox to see how well it holds up once out. I haven't done much with Ubuntu on my VB setup yet, so I suppose it wouldn't hurt to wait for the new release to tool around with.

I've been testing it in a separate on my laptop over the last few months, and it's been coming along very nicely of late. In particular, it fixes a lot of the video issues I had with my Intel chipset -- it's definitely a bit quicker, and it fixes graphical glitches that prevented a lot of games from running properly under 9.04, including the Penny Arcade episodes, Doom 3, Nexiuz, and HL2 under Wine.

I've had a crash or two with Empathy, but if you put a nice Adium chat theme on it (it uses the newly-included GTK port of Webkit to render its chat windows), it looks great.

Is ext4 really ready yet? I was under the impression it needed a few more months of shake-out time?

I experimented with GRUB2: it was a complete clusterf*ck in July.

Ubuntu's got a bad habit of shipping stuff before it's ready and then patching like crazy for months; this seems like more of the same.

Malor wrote:

Is ext4 really ready yet? I was under the impression it needed a few more months of shake-out time?

I experimented with GRUB2: it was a complete clusterf*ck in July.

Ubuntu's got a bad habit of shipping stuff before it's ready and then patching like crazy for months; this seems like more of the same.

ext4 was marked as stable back in October 2008. I haven't experimented heavily with it, but it hasn't given me any grief at all during my Ubuntu 9.10 testing so far. GRUB2 also installed just fine for me, and hasn't given me any trouble. It's worth mentioning that Ubuntu won't install GRUB2 as part of an upgrade -- it only installs it for new installations. If you're upgrading your existing system, it'll stick with your known-working GRUB setup.

Malor wrote:

Is ext4 really ready yet? I was under the impression it needed a few more months of shake-out time?

I experimented with GRUB2: it was a complete clusterf*ck in July.

Ubuntu's got a bad habit of shipping stuff before it's ready and then patching like crazy for months; this seems like more of the same.

Did you see the blog meltdown from the guy who was "porting" to Asus EE laptops?

Sure didn't, have a link handy?

I'm more of a Fedora guy myself (typing this on a Leonidas system) but I'll try Karmic on my old desktop.

Going from Ext3 (?) in Fedora 10 to Ext4 in Fedora 11 I noticed a nice improvement in performance and responsiveness. Of course, it may not be solely due to the jump to Ext4 but I think it is ready for basic desktop usage and Ubuntu is mainly a desktop distribution anyway.

I'm waiting for the next Fedora in November. Being quite content with Cambridge, I think Leonidas felt a bit unfinished. I hope Constantine will be better.

Wow:

“Instead of moving forward with every release, they have the uncanny ability to take Linux back in time by piling code that doesn’t work on top of more code that doesn’t work until they have turned their OS into a garbage salad.” He said.

That's a little stronger than I'd put it, but there's a reason why Debian releases so, so slowly. It's usually behind on supported hardware and available features, but by god, a Debian box works, and it keeps working for years at a time. It would be better still if the Linux kernel devs were more focused on stability and less on jerking themselves off with new features, but the Debian kernel team does as well as they can, given the crap they have to work with.

Will definitely be checking into the Debian with the FreeBSD kernel; the BSDs in general strike me as being written by and for people who actually have to do work with their computers, who understand that some of their audience fears losing their jobs or hurting people if something breaks. The Linux team feels more like programmers on vacation. They're smart guys, but their focus is primarily on writing fun and cool new code that usually works, as opposed to less-featureful code that ALWAYS works.

I'd love to see the Debian feature set and excellent stability paired with a kernel that shares its mindset more. About 95% of my pain with Debian comes from the kernel.

The response from the Ubuntu Forums seems to be a big fat, "meh".

Apparently, a lot of the functionality in those "Eee add-ons" has made its way into the mainline kernel, rendering those add-ons largely redundant.

Indeed, a lot of Eee users are just using Ubuntu Netbook Remix proper, instead of Eeebuntu (which is based on UNR) or the other Eee-specific UNR spinoff, Easy Peasy.

Wow... they're accused of having things fail while returning a success code, and they're okay with that?

Like that Eee developer, I think I'd rather run Windows.

The Linux "blame the user" effect sounds like it's in full force there.

Malor wrote:

Wow... they're accused of having things fail while returning a success code, and they're okay with that?

That wouldn't be what I said, is it?

What they're responding to is the "loss" of Eeebuntu and this guy's Eee tools, which are seen as not really necessary anymore - so nobody cares.

The users aren't concerned about the return code from xrandr. They see a guy complaining about getting his Eee tools to work on Karmic, while they are running Karmic on their Eee's just fine already.

The Linux "blame the user" effect sounds like it's in full force there.

That makes no sense. It's the developer complaining, and the users who aren't.

Ran the Live CD on a friend's Macbook just to see if it would work (I can't figure out if it has hardware or software issues, and I have no idea where the original OS X DVD is), and Kubuntu booted up fine. The only weird thing is that it detected the wireless card and home network fine, but won't connect to the WPA Personal access point. It keeps popping up the password screen until it finally gives up.

Is that a well known Ubuntu thing?

I'm considering just blowing away the entire drive and installing Kubuntu as a single boot OS onto it, but am hesitant because of the wifi issue.

unntrlaffinity wrote:

Ran the Live CD on a friend's Macbook just to see if it would work (I can't figure out if it has hardware or software issues, and I have no idea where the original OS X DVD is), and Kubuntu booted up fine. The only weird thing is that it detected the wireless card and home network fine, but won't connect to the WPA Personal access point. It keeps popping up the password screen until it finally gives up.

Is that a well known Ubuntu thing?

I'm considering just blowing away the entire drive and installing Kubuntu as a single boot OS onto it, but am hesitant because of the wifi issue.

I also use WPA and saw the same thing as you using Ubuntu's default wireless configuration utility (NetworkManager maybe?). I was finally able to get wireless working by installing wicd and manually setting up my /etc/network/interfaces file with all of the correct information. Note, though, that said file needs the hex version of your WPA password/phrase. Luckily, despite not actually connecting to my network, the password box that came up had the correct hex version of my password in it, so I just had to copy that. In the end, my file looks like this:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-driver wext
wpa-ssid HomeNetwork
wpa-ap-scan 1
wpa-proto WPA
wpa-pairwise TKIP
wpa-group TKIP
wpa-key-mgmt WPA-PSK
wpa-psk my_wpa_passphrase_in_hex

unntrlaffinity wrote:

Ran the Live CD on a friend's Macbook just to see if it would work (I can't figure out if it has hardware or software issues, and I have no idea where the original OS X DVD is), and Kubuntu booted up fine. The only weird thing is that it detected the wireless card and home network fine, but won't connect to the WPA Personal access point. It keeps popping up the password screen until it finally gives up.

Is that a well known Ubuntu thing?

I'm considering just blowing away the entire drive and installing Kubuntu as a single boot OS onto it, but am hesitant because of the wifi issue.

WPA has always worked out-of-the-box for me, both on my current Dell and my old MacBook Pro.

I had no problem with WPA2 on my old white Macbook.

*Legion* wrote:

I had no problem with WPA2 on my old white Macbook.

The Linux "blame the user" effect sounds like it's in full force there.

lol

TheGameguru wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

I had no problem with WPA2 on my old white Macbook.

The Linux "blame the user" effect sounds like it's in full force there.

lol

I don't think anyone's blaming the user To be more clear on what I said, WPA is meant to work out of the box, and it's done exactly that for me on multiple systems. There's been no trick to getting it working, either -- you just select the network in the drop-down list, type in the password, and it's all meant to work.

If it doesn't work for a particular user, it's probably not because they're doing something wrong, but rather because there's a bug somewhere. If Googling doesn't bring a solution to light, then it's definitely worth posting a bug report.

TheGameguru wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

I had no problem with WPA2 on my old white Macbook.

The Linux "blame the user" effect sounds like it's in full force there.

lol :)

Yeah, not so much.

He hasn't even installed Ubuntu yet. He was booting from the LiveCD environment, which doesn't quite have the same full hardware support of actually installing the OS, and asking if the problem he had was a known systemic problem with Ubuntu and that hardware, or if it was more likely just a shortcoming of the LiveCD boot environment.

But, you know, don't actually read what you're responding to or anything...

When I'm talking about 'blame the user', you most frequently see this when something is difficult to do with Linux and really shouldn't be. Generally, the Linux crowd then demeans the person for wanting that bug fixed, or new feature. The thought process seems to be:

  • Linux is perfect;
  • That user is having trouble with Linux;
  • Therefore, that user is stupid and worthless.

This isn't as prevalent as it used to be, but I remember posting on Slashdot about ten years ago that Linux wasn't ready for primetime use as a server operating system, because the filesystem was too weak. At the time, all it had was ext2, which is very prone to data loss and damage from crashes and power failures. As far as I was concerned, lack of an acceptable filesystem was the reason not to use Linux in business. NTFS wasn't perfect, but it was WAY better than that garbage.

I talked about a specific case where I'd had a couple of DNS servers in a spare cubicle. One of the power supplies blew up, and recovering that machine was extremely painful. The filesystem had taken a TON of damage, and it ended up being faster to just rebuild it than to try to fix it. (the critical data was backed up, but we didn't have backup utilities for Linux at the time, so I couldn't just restore the whole system from tape like I could with our Windows machines.)

The ensuing thread was amazing and depressing to me. Not ONE PERSON agreed that ext2 shouldn't have taken damage from a power failure. Not ONE. Instead, it was all my fault. Idiot me hadn't run the servers on UPSes (which were scary expensive at the time). And obviously, the painful recovery was my fault too, because any Linux guy worth anything at all would know how to manually go in and hex edit the filesystem, copying in data from backup superblocks over the primary one.

I'm serious! The pile on was amazing. I was a clueless loser because we couldn't afford UPSes, and I wasn't familiar enough with the physical layout of an ext2 filesystem to fix it myself if it broke.

A year or two later, ext3 had come out, and I posted that I thought Linux was finally ready for real business use. And, of course, there was an ensuing pile on of people blasting ext2 for its unreliability and uselessness. I don't know if it was actually the same people in both cases, because I'd already lost track of the other thread (I think Slashdot lost some of its earliest discussions). But it sure sounded like it. The exact same community that blamed me for my stupidity in dealing with ext2 cheerfully then blamed ext2 as soon as a better alternative was available. When Linux was actually broken, it was my fault; when Linux was fixed, then and ONLY then was it ext2's fault.

You see this basic tactic over and over again; if it's hard to do something with free software, then the user is unreasonable for wanting it. I haven't closely read that Ubuntu thread on the xrandr stuff, but it sounds like more or less the same basic thing... User of software complains that software is broken, community concludes that user is broken, even when the software is clearly and obviously at fault.

You're NOT, however, seeing it in this thread; nobody's saying that unntrlaffinity is wrong and stupid for wanting WPA2 to work on his hardware; rather, they're just sharing that it's working okay on their machines. If someone had told him to 'buy a real computer' or 'get a wireless card that's properly open, n00b', that would have been closer to what I was talking about.

The fact that there were two responses to my ridiculous point means that you people need to lighten up.

You're NOT, however, seeing it in this thread; nobody's saying that unntrlaffinity is wrong and stupid for wanting WPA2 to work on his hardware; rather, they're just sharing that it's working okay on their machines. If someone had told him to 'buy a real computer' or 'get a wireless card that's properly open, n00b', that would have been closer to what I was talking about.

Pretty much this.... hell I even put the damn smiley face which I loath to do.

This reminds me, I currently have Win7 RC running on my file server. Maybe i should slap Ubuntu on that instead of buying a full Win 7 license. Hell, I only use it for storing software and other things of questionable nature.

It'll work fine, but if ALL you're doing is file sharing, you probably won't see a lot of difference. Ubuntu will make it very easy to add more stuff, like a webserver or a SQL server.

On Windows, if you want to do much beyond file sharing, you usually have to switch up to a Server license, which is very expensive.

Malor wrote:

It'll work fine, but if ALL you're doing is file sharing, you probably won't see a lot of difference. Ubuntu will make it very easy to add more stuff, like a webserver or a SQL server.

On Windows, if you want to do much beyond file sharing, you usually have to switch up to a Server license, which is very expensive.

Yeah I wouldn't really be using it for more than a file server. If I got bored (heh) maybe a LAMP setup, but i mostly work in .net/mssql now days. Heck, I have WIMP and variants on my desktop right now so..who knows.

TheGameguru wrote:

Pretty much this.... hell I even put the damn smiley face which I loath to do.

You're right. It was just a couple of days ago where I posted to someone else about the "dry Guru humor", and here I have completely forgotten it myself.

Consider this a "my bad".

This is kind of a tangent, but I've found the Linux community to be more helpful (in that they actually submit potential solutions to the problem, if at times in a non-empathetic, aggressive/insulting and/or overly-complex manner) than the Apple community, who are plenty friendly but the majority only offer solutions that involve "Insert install DVD. Hold down "C". Repair/reinstall. Did that work? If not, send it into Apple or visit the Genius Bar."

Which is kind of comical because I remember when I first started getting into having my own PC, tech support lines mostly offered the advice "Reformat and reinstall. Did that work? If not, you're screwed." So at least there's improvement in the cycle.

I eventually fixed the weird blue screen non-boot problem, but it involved a lot of trial and error of pretty much every boot key sequence, and once I got the Live CD working I was able to figure out the HDD wasn't actually damaged (another weird aspect of the Apple suggestions involved every person who has ever had a weird, but similar problem thinking it HAD to be whatever they experienced, the heatsink, the logic board, the hard drive, etc., all of which came with the recommendation "just bring it into an Apple store".) Maybe it's a testament to Applecare, but it seems like because people just send in their machines and they come back fixed, they often have no idea what actually went wrong, and sometimes form their own weird ideas of what exactly the problem was.

You guys did answer my question though, in that it's probably not a Live CD issue. I might install anyway and try the wicd solution, as that's popped up a few times on the message boards. She already bought a new Macbook, so this is mostly for my own fascination/benefit (although, what's a 1st gen Macbook worth, anyway? Having a "beater" Macbook with Karmic might be worthwhile.) I think I'll try installing the new Kubuntu when the non-RC Karmic is officially released.

TheGameguru wrote:

The fact that there were two responses to my ridiculous point means that you people need to lighten up.

I wasn't taking you to task over it -- it was clear that you were talking in jest. I just wanted to make sure I had my thoughts on it down properly, with my assumptions spelled out rather than just left assumed.

So I'm actually typing this from a successful install of Kubuntu RC on a 4 year old Macbook. Runs pretty damn zippy. And the WPA thing seems to have resolved itself.

Kubuntu has some weird quirks I'm not used to compared to Ubuntu and Gnome. For some reason the network config, while now working, won't save/auto-login my connection.

Also, the package manager isn't nearly as friendly as Synaptic. It took me ten minutes to realize that the reason it kept saying "No results" when I tried searching for programs was that the repositories weren't checked under settings, even though they were listed. Why do that?

KDE4.3 looks great.

Also, Kubuntu seems to have no control over the brightness settings, no matter where the slider goes. The battery life is pretty unimpressive so far.

If you can, put a bug into their bug-reporting system, so that they know that Macbooks have a problem. That'll improve the chance of getting a solution in time for the actual release. They're really cutting it close this time, only a few days left.

Offhand, I have no idea how to do that for Ubuntu; I've only used it on a laptop, and everything just worked. *Legion* might know.

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