Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ipex)

thefinalstage

I installed this version yesterday over version 8.04 and it is brilliant.

There were lots of little things that did not work under 8.04 but do under 8.10.

Now, the laptop I am using is a Sony vgn-nr21z and there are few things on it. Like a light under the wireless switch that shows if wireless is connected. It now actually turns on and off. Ubuntu before was not able to manage the battery life properly so I got maybe 40 minutes on a full charge now I am up to 1 hour and 30 minutes doing the same things. This release seems to have proper support for nVidia graphics cards too. Before upgrading I had starcraft installed under Wine and it ran slower then geriatric sprinter. Now the playback is smooth and the sound is crisp also, it plays in full screen.

Only one downside was the network manager. It no longer could connect to my wpa network but I quickly got around that by installing and using wicd instead. check it out if you get the chance!

An Fear Aniar

I tried it out. Worked well with the Live CD but when I installed it on one of my partitions the keyboard and mouse no longer worked.

It's been reported as a bug, possibly to do with the Nvidia card I have. I've heard the beta is not working so well with Nvidia cards just now.

I hear the load-cycle-count problem has been fixed in Intrepid as well.

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An Fear Aniar

+UPDATE+

They fixed that bug and I tried it out last night. Straight away I saw somew great speed improvements. Programs open way faster, bootup and shutdown much faster.

I like!!!


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Khannie

Gonna wait for the full release. To be honest I've been unimpressed with the 64bit version of 8.04 that I'm using in work, for work stuff. I've found the system unresponsive a number of times when it shouldn't be. (2.4GHz dual core, 4G of ram, 2hdd's).

generalmiaow

I am most happy with it. I actually like the new network manager. The one thing I'm disappointed by is that it looks mostly the same. I would love to see it look like those mockups of what it should look like. I will definitely continue to use Ubuntu.

Orion

Khannie wrote: »

Gonna wait for the full release. To be honest I've been unimpressed with the 64bit version of 8.04 that I'm using in work, for work stuff. I've found the system unresponsive a number of times when it shouldn't be. (2.4GHz dual core, 4G of ram, 2hdd's).

Ditto. I've 8.04 64 on my HTPC and I'm having lots of problems. Next weekend I'll be installing 8.10 32-bit.

stereo_steve

Working great for me anyway ...

smoke.me.a.kipper

As a recent convert to Ubuntu, i found 8.10 works alot better on my laptop than 8.04. Much easier install and more things worked 'out of the box' so to speak (ie my nvidia card). its also nice to have sound

Khannie

Going to install xubuntu 8.10 on an old machine tomorrow. Also going to stick it on my work laptop (which is low spec) and see how it fares v's XP. I tried out the pre-release on a VM and it was fairly decent.

Orion

Final version released today.

The i386 and AMD64 versions of the desktop cd are mirrored at http://unreal.ie/downloads?dir=/misc - might be faster than HEANET this weekend.

[edit]I've put the alternate CD versions there too.

pickarooney

Is it advisable to upgrade from a (fairly fresh) Hardy install to Intrepid without a CD, just apt-get dist-upgrade or whatever?

Tillotson

Switched a few days ago. Fairly happy, nothing to get excited about though
One niggley problem.
When I log in it takes a good 20 seconds for the desktop to load if I have compiz enabled.
I miss my wobbly windows.
Bug had been reported so I'll just have to wait.

Orion

pickarooney wrote: »

Is it advisable to upgrade from a (fairly fresh) Hardy install to Intrepid without a CD, just apt-get dist-upgrade or whatever?

Upgrading is fine. Only thing to be aware of is any non-repository software that you have installed. You may need to remove it first then reinstall it. For example I remove the Ubuntu Open Office installation and install the latest version manually - I'll have to uninstall it before upgrade.

pickarooney

I ran a distribution upgrade from Adept. After about five minutes I got a message saying that there was no compatible driver for my nvidia graphics card included in Intrepid, though there had been in Hardy...

Absolutely ridiculous.

An Fear Aniar

pickarooney wrote: »

I ran a distribution upgrade from Adept. After about five minutes I got a message saying that there was no compatible driver for my nvidia graphics card included in Intrepid, though there had been in Hardy...

Absolutely ridiculous.

My nvidia card worked fine. There was a choice of two drivers. I did a fresh install from CD. I see lots of people on ubuntuforums always saying that distribution upgrades can be messy and buggy and they always advise to do a fresh install.

I have a GeForce 8400.

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Orion

Envy ftw

pickarooney

I know I can fix it up in about ten minutes with a bit of fiddling, but the point is that it's fundamentally idiotic to release an upgrade which will break the video display of a user with a running Hardy system. It's typical of Ubuntu releases - for some reason they insist on bringing them out every six months on the dot whether they're finished or not to the detriment of novice users.

An Fear Aniar

Yeah, it seems pretty stupid. They put something in the release notes about Nvidia:

nVidia "legacy" video support

The 71 and 96 series of proprietary nVidia drivers, as provided by the nvidia-glx-legacy and nvidia-glx packages in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, are not compatible with the X.Org included in Ubuntu 8.10. Users with the nVidia TNT, TNT2, TNT Ultra, GeForce, GeForce2, GeForce3, and GeForce4 chipsets are affected and will be transitioned on upgrade to the free nv driver instead. This driver does not support 3D acceleration.

Users of other nVidia chipsets that are supported by the 173 or 177 driver series will be transitioned to the nvidia-glx-173 or nvidia-glx-177 package instead. However, unlike drivers 96 and 71, drivers 173 and 177 are only compatible with CPUs that support SSE (e.g. Intel Pentium III, AMD Athlon XP or higher). Systems with older CPUs will also be transitioned to the nv driver on upgrade.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810


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pickarooney

"Transitioned" - because "downgraded" sounds so negative.

pickarooney

Finally got it installed at the 4th attempt and all I can say is WTFF?
All my menus, wallpaper, shortcuts, file associations, themes have been removed and replaced with a ****ty approximation of Vista... absolutely incredible. I assume it's gone and isntalled KDE4 without so much as a by your leave and got rid of my entire setup.

I thought Kubuntu upgrades couldn't get any worse than Gutsy, but this just blows my mind.

Sherifu

I've been trying it out in a virtual machine on and off. I like dark room and the new network manager is long overdue.

sound_wave

pickarooney wrote: »

Finally got it installed at the 4th attempt and all I can say is WTFF?
All my menus, wallpaper, shortcuts, file associations, themes have been removed and replaced with a ****ty approximation of Vista... absolutely incredible. I assume it's gone and isntalled KDE4 without so much as a by your leave and got rid of my entire setup.

I thought Kubuntu upgrades couldn't get any worse than Gutsy, but this just blows my mind.

In my experience Kubuntu has always been a little lacking when compated to Ubuntu. But yeah KDE 4 just blows IMHO.

mach1982

I install it last weekend on my p4 512 laptop( wiping windows completely) and i have to say i like it a lot .I had no problems my bluetooth keyboard from lildl works better in Ubuntu than in windows.

Orion

installed it on the lappy - first impressions are good. It's a lot smoother. It takes a little longer to load after logging in that Gutsy or 8.04 Linux Mint but not too much. Still the same ****e with the BCM wireless cards tho (Dell Inspiron 6400) - had to install the firmware manually - that's just damn irritating. A newbie wouldn't even know how to find the syslog to get the url never mind want to have to do it. :mad:

But apart from that - it's good. I like the quick user switching - and the Guest login. Haven't played with it too much yet but I'm liking it.

Now if someone would just write a gnome version of Yakuake I'd be very happy - hate having to install all the KDE libraries

An Fear Aniar

I've installed Minefield (Firefox 3.1) and it's er, fast. Love it.

http://www.linuxhaxor.net/2008/09/28/firefox-minefield-faster-than-chrome/


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pickarooney

Got it up and running with Gnome now and have enabled compiz-fusion for the first time, although my laptop seems a little bit lightweight to cope with it. I've had a large number of applications crash (even small stuff like gedit hangs) but I have to give credit where credit is due - for the first time ever a linux distro has recognised my WiFi dongle and allowed me to connect to my router. Unfortunately the signal strength stays resolutely at 14-15% no matter how close the laptop is to the router, making it unusual, but it's a start!

deadpoet

Cant get my Ralink to work at all...ridiculous. Worked with 7.10 though...odd.

pickarooney

I reformatted my laptop and installed Xubuntu, for ****s and giggles and to see how fast it would run. Boot up and go to log in. Message tells me my preferred desktop environment (XFCE) is not available. Priceless!
So I go to install xubuntu-desktop, I'm told it's installed, reboot and choose xfce session. It logs me in... to GNOME.

Then of course it suggests I install some nvidia restricted drivers, asks me to reboot, and kills my X-Windows config. Fantastic.

What kind of retards make these installers?

Orion

The problem with the nvidia drivers is that they are proprietary. Ubuntu includes them but you have to activate them. It's part of the philosophy of open source - if you want to go closed source then you have to choose to do so. Personally I think they should activate them by default. Ubuntu is the newbie distro tbh (not an insult - I use Ubuntu) and if they want to make it easy for newbies then they have to get over this hump. IMO there's a difference between not installing proprietary software and not installing proprietary drivers.

No idea about the XFCE issues tho - only use XFCE on my Mythbuntu box and that was just cos it's the default.

@deadpoet: do a "tail /var/logs/syslog" and see if it mentioned a new firmware. If it does then go to the link - get it - install it. That's what I had to do for my BCM wireless nic. Again - I disagree with this for the same reasons as above.

pickarooney

Philosophy-wise, they seem to be deliberately saying 'look, shiny nVidia drivers that they won't open-source, you wnat 'em?' then childishly misconfiguring them so you're punished for choosing to use them. It's not as though they don't know exactly what will happen when user lambda activates nVidia's drivers and suddenly can't boot up his dekstop.

Xubuntu is based on XFCE, yet on a fresh install the user is told XFCE hasn't been installed. It's the same as installing Kubuntu and being told it doesn't come with KDE.

That said, the appear to have changed XFCE so that it's no longer XFCE but GNOME-slightly-lighter (there's no longer a right-click-on-desktop-for-applications-menu for example and it comes with a Gnome 'start-bar' by default.

Orion

pickarooney wrote: »

Philosophy-wise, they seem to be deliberately saying 'look, shiny nVidia drivers that they won't open-source, you wnat 'em?' then childishly misconfiguring them so you're punished for choosing to use them. It's not as though they don't know exactly what will happen when user lambda activates nVidia's drivers and suddenly can't boot up his dekstop.

I installed the restricted drivers and had no problems. Worked fine - set up Twinview etc no problems. But I do use Gnome. Never tried it in XFCE - not mad on it so don't use it.

democrates

Macros42 wrote: »

The problem with the nvidia drivers is that they are proprietary. Ubuntu includes them but you have to activate them. It's part of the philosophy of open source - if you want to go closed source then you have to choose to do so. Personally I think they should activate them by default. Ubuntu is the newbie distro tbh (not an insult - I use Ubuntu) and if they want to make it easy for newbies then they have to get over this hump. IMO there's a difference between not installing proprietary software and not installing proprietary drivers.

+1, you've got to wonder how many first-timers quit because things didn't work and they didn't know how to get them working.

Even for those who have the experience to find answers online, the default of "sort it yourself" is a damned annoying inconvenience, I'd rather check a box once taking responsibility for non-free drivers and have a "just works" experience.

I shudder to think how many man-hours this lunacy is costing human civilisation :eek:.

thusspakeblixa

I've just installed Ubuntu 8.10 to replace Vista on my laptop, I have to say I'm really really enjoying it!

An Fear Aniar

thusspakeblixa wrote: »

I've just installed Ubuntu 8.10 to replace Vista on my laptop, I have to say I'm really really enjoying it!

Everything working right out of the box? If so, tell us what hardware you have. People often ask on the Ubuntu forums what laptop they would recommend to run ubuntu on.


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thusspakeblixa

An Fear Aniar wrote: »

Everything working right out of the box? If so, tell us what hardware you have. People often ask on the Ubuntu forums what laptop they would recommend to run ubuntu on.


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Well I have a HP laptop, have to check what model actually How do I get system info. on Ubuntu?
Everything's going really well so far, I was a bit worried at first that it might be too different but everything on Ubuntu is really intuitive.
One question though- I can't download RealPlayer- It downloads an installer onto the desktop but then I can't open it...

Orion

sudo apt-get install realplayer

Orion

You should also do

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

That'll install all media codecs, flash, fonts and java for you.

thusspakeblixa

Thanks guys,
My laptop is a HP Pavilion by the way, 120gb hard-drive.
I'm running Ubuntu alone now because I didn't have enough space partitioned

thusspakeblixa

Macros42 wrote: »

sudo apt-get install realplayer

When I type in this command it says "couldn't find package realplayer"

Orion

my bad - that's an old thing.
Option 1: Go to http://www.real.com/linux and grab the deb package. Open it with Synaptic and install it. But bear in mind it's based on the Helix player so ...
Option 2: install the Helix Player instead - "sudo apt-get install helix-player". Best of both worlds - full Real support and Open Source.

Here's a good site for a decent setup.

[edit]Gotta ask - why do you need Real Player? I've been using Linux for nearly 2 years now and haven't install Real or a clone at all - no need whatsoever.

An Fear Aniar

Macros42 wrote: »

[edit]Gotta ask - why do you need Real Player? I've been using Linux for nearly 2 years now and haven't install Real or a clone at all - no need whatsoever.

I've used it for the SMIL files on RTE. That's the only reason I've installed it. Been trying to watch the car-crash TV that is Pat Kenny but it seems I have to be within the Irish territory to view it.


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Orion

yet another good reason not to install it

imo you shouldn't install real or helix just to watch RTE - you should instead write to RTE insisting that they provide media to a license payer that doesn't involve installing proprietary software. (yes I know Helis is OS and the OP is an expat - but they don't need to know that. )

thusspakeblixa

Macros42 wrote: »

yet another good reason not to install it

imo you shouldn't install real or helix just to watch RTE - you should instead write to RTE insisting that they provide media to a license payer that doesn't involve installing proprietary software. (yes I know Helis is OS and the OP is an expat - but they don't need to know that. )

Yeah I was going to install it for RTE mainly...
If Helix is OS and does the same job as real then I may just install that

Gonzovision

I've been running this for the last week on my primary pc for the last week. After weeks of dipping in and out of different distros in virtual box I decided to go for Ubuntu. I can finally get Compiz to work. Very pleased so far.Anything I wanted to do worked fine with a bit of googling. I haven't tried any games so far but Ive always got xp anyway.

Orion

I've had issues with Compiz on Intrepid. CPU overloading issues on basic things like file copying and browsing at the same time. Machine has hung for a few seconds. So I've turned off all Desktop effects on both my lappy and desktop. TBH I'm not arsed with desktop effects anyway.

Gonzovision

tbh honest I haven't noticed my pc hanging at all with any of the desktop effects enabled through compiz. Everythings smooth so far.

Stephen

Intrepid broke my wifi
I'm running it on a 3-year-old laptop with a common-as-muck Intel Centrino chipset, which includes an Intel 2915ABG wireless NIC. It worked flawlessly in 8.04 but since upgrading to 8.10 the wireless connection will disconnect after transferring a couple of hundred megabytes over it, and will then prompt for my WPA2 key. It doesn't matter what I enter as the key it will never accept it until I reboot the machine. Poo to that. There's a few threads on the ubuntu forums from people with the same problem and no resolution that I can see yet.

An Fear Aniar

Stephen wrote: »

Intrepid broke my wifi
I'm running it on a 3-year-old laptop with a common-as-muck Intel Centrino chipset, which includes an Intel 2915ABG wireless NIC. It worked flawlessly in 8.04 but since upgrading to 8.10 the wireless connection will disconnect after transferring a couple of hundred megabytes over it, and will then prompt for my WPA2 key. It doesn't matter what I enter as the key it will never accept it until I reboot the machine. Poo to that. There's a few threads on the ubuntu forums from people with the same problem and no resolution that I can see yet.

Can you install the older network manager? Or try wicd?


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Upgraded there the other day, all great apart from:

nothing works on battery power, can't do anything bar move the mouse
bluetooth wont connect (not too concerned about that really)

any advice?

Kinetic^

Going to install this later tonight, hopefully the nvidia drivers work well.

thusspakeblixa

Why is my laptop battery ridiculously crap on Ubuntu?
We're talking less than 20 minutes fully charged :mad: