Not a hack, not even news, cause everybody who cares knows that ubuntu 9.10 will be out in october, just like everyone who cares know that 10.04 will be out in april, and 10.10 will come in october of next year, surprise, surprise.

FYI: To everyone who comes here to bitch, nag or whine. GOTO ANOTHER FUCKING BLOG THEN!

Not even a distro for people who actually used to hack something. I saw few of ubuntu headlines on hacka.. my homepage, and now I can tell for sure that it pisses me off. It’s a linux-based clone of windows, polished ‘cuz of its popularity and masses of beta-testers beyond IQ of 75 when it comes to PCs.
I rather see some more news about ARCH.linux, a really opensource one, if you really think you oughta have os-considering news in here.

Funny, I just updated last night. Now my webcam works (I hadn’t fooled with it before) and I managed to also get a new bluetooth headset working with Skype.

Not revolutionary, maybe, but a lot of nice polish.

You guys are idiots. Hackaday is not trying to impress you with their esoteric operating system knowledge, they are just trying to get more people to use Linux. I would have thought it was pretty obvious:

“Never used Linux? This distribution is for you but we recommend waiting until the release makes it out of beta to the stable version”

Oh, and yes, the release cycle is well-known… to people who already use Ubuntu. I don’t think they are the target when you are trying to get *new* Linux users.

You guys would do a lot more to help out opensource if you actually cared about spreading it rather than simply viewing it as tool to look down your noses at people. This blurb on hackaday is not an affront to your dignity. I’d rather read a dozen articles on arduino-based light switches than read your incessant whining.

ubuntu is a great os and how dare you call it a clone of windows because its nothing like windows if anything it reminds me more of osX and im glad they posted it because your all a bunch of retards and i got a good laugh reading your stupid post

I don’t care which (complaining, or complaining about complaining) side you’re on; you’re all annoying.

2Insipid Melon
You’ve got a point there! But still it doesn’t look like a good way to spread oss tho. If I were new to uniz and stuff, I’d kinda be more interested in trying out linux by reading some article where it shows something I can’t do on win/mac machine, such as pentesting wifi networks, doing some weird stuff with hardware I already have inside my machine, you know… And really, not a beta of a distro where I won’t really need to config it in a ‘unix way’, you know… like editing sheet config files, looking where what goes, etc.
2Doom2099 && john g
Yea, it’s a debian-based system, which doesn’t really look like a linux system like it were few years ago. Popularity kills the first-source ideas of things – that’s my life’s expirience. You can go download openSuse, Ubuntu, Lime, etc. And all what you get is GUI-based system where you press buttons, and don’t really learn the system itself, you just can’t feel it. That’s why I dare comparing such ‘unix systems’ to windows – same feeling operating on it.
And when you get some real old-school software when you have to use “GCC(all linux distros have it) and a sh (or bash) terminal”, that’s when you start to really hack, not to read a papercut and press buttons.
I really respect people who stand behind developing of ubuntu for work they did, so do I respect you. But that’s not an os where you learn, that’s an os when you’ve learned and tired of consoles and compiling – you can find ANY package there, you just type it in and whoala! You don’t need to solve as much as you have to when it comes to ArchLinux. That’s when you really learn!

2je5us
that was FreeBSD, probably, but it really was long-long time ago. Mac OsX is really the way unix must be for non-geeky users who need maximum out of their machines.

umm apple os is not based on linux. its based on unix and linux is also based on unix and sure ubuntu is not the geeky techy distro but that doesnt make it like windows its just easier to use for the general public but feels nothin like windows to me.

@f.r0ze.n “…don’t really learn the system itself, you just can’t feel it.”

i’m sure you could use Ctrl+Alt+F1 to bring up tty1.

…and yes you are correct, OSX is FreeBSD.(they just have a darwin kernel)i think NEXTSTEP(Job’s old company) computers ran a sort of BSD os.

and to say you dont learn the system when using ubuntu isnt totally correct. alot of apps and games i use arent available in the package manager and have to be downloaded and installed thru terminal. and just wait till something quits working or you try to use sound. getting sound to work can sometimes be a daunting task. ubuntu is a great intro to the world of linux. you cant learn linux if you have no idea how to use it in the first place.

I stuck 9.10 beta 1 on a vbox running on my ubu 9.04 system. It’s a lot prettier and it is faster.

I ran into some bugs doing updates with apt-get (yes I use Ubu, yes I can use a command line). Also ran into an issue with a kernel update. Some how got a future timestamp on a superblock.

Anyway it looks really great. During install the application looks good, explains some of the programs that are available in the base install.

After that, it’s ubuntu, just with a little more polish than last time, a prettier and faster boot up and then it’s just ubuntu with the latest and greatest versions of all the standard apps.

cant seriously call ubuntu a linux. it just so crippled. Dont want to offend anyone but most popular doesn’t mean best

I absolutely disagree with f.r0ze.n. People like him are the reason I didn’t get into Linux years ago.

Warning: Wall of text + full explanation.

I’ve had friends recommending I try Linux(Gentoo/Debian/Slackware) since early 2004 – but I never really got into it beyond installing then wiping it out. Why? It was just too damn hard to get anything done – and as an avid Windows XP GUI modder, my desktop makes me about 10 times more productive than most people running XP. Jumping to Linux – where I also have to learn all these text commands, and can’t just click to have a task complete instantly – seemed pointless.

But then I came across Ubuntu. Tried it in mid-2008, and it’s been great. It lets you learn in baby steps, as needed – and unlike other distros, you can instantly search Google for answers. No need to wait for hours in an IRC chat channel, or post on forums and get a reply in days or weeks. That makes it a great way to dive in, since you can get your answers NOW and continue on.

I’ve gone through versions 8.04, 8.10, and 9.04.

In 8.04 my resolution was set wrong, so I had to manually configure xorg.conf. I had a dedicated computer set up(VIA C7) for tinkering with. I tried to recompile my videocard drivers from source to improve stability, but that didn’t go so well. :) Learned a bunch about repositories and package management. I also had to locate a mixer program, because Ubuntu didn’t seem to come with one, and my default all sound was muted.

In 8.10 I learned a bit about conflicting packages (certain totem codec packages conflict with others) – my sound also broke, but later it started working again. The big thing in Ubuntu 8.10 was the new kernel corrupted my SATA HDD. Ubuntu was installed to a PATA one, but my storage drive went poof. Apparently libata got updated and it didn’t like my SATA controller, so bye bye data – total corruption! FSCK really screwed it up bad. I Learned quite a bit about formating and drivers during this fiasco. Afterwards I bought a PCI SATA controller to hook my drives up, and after being reformatted, they’re all okay. However, I had to manually configure fstab, which again was more learning. During this same time one of my other drives was failing, so I had to learn about smartctl and SMART tools. One PATA drive had 3000 errors recorded one day, and 6000 recorded the next – heh.

9.04 was definitely the best upgrade. I no longer required a manually configured xorg.conf. I also took some time to strip out extra packages, reducing Ubuntu to a lean 1085. ;) It significantly sped it up on my lowly C7. Before the package removal, though, I worked on converting my Ubuntu box to a Samba NAS. I got it set up to filter by IP, then restricted those IPs by MAC addresses in my router. A good learning experience, and it has worked fine to this day! However, when setting it up I faced the issue that Samba’s daemons often wouldn’t start after a reboot – some searching gave me the answer, that I needed a static IP for the daemon to reliably start up, and Ubuntu’s Network Manager didn’t provide that. In the end I was manually configuring /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/network/interfaces in order to get it to work.

If I had used any other distro, I would’ve faced even more issues at once, and ultimately gave up. But for Ubuntu, all the answers are right there on Google, so you never get discouraged or feel like it is *too difficult* – it may be pointlessly difficult, but you can still get a task done. ;) Ubuntu is solid enough that it *almost* works perfect, and once something breaks, you can dive in and learn about it. I really like Ubuntu – and now I know enough about Linux that I might try out Debian one day. That’s something that never would’ve happened if I had gone with another Linux distro first.

But I do owe Gentoo and Slackware Linux for something – my awesome XP Desktop. Never would’ve found the time to create it if Linux had sucked me in! But now I’m doomed – I like Ubuntu too much to not use it where possible.

Some like Linux to be complicated and only usable by them, this gives them elite like feeling.

Ubuntu is doing a good thing by just making Linux and OSS popular. Along with the devastation Vista brought to the image of Windows Linux really slowly, but steadily grows.

I started with Red Hat (before it was called Fedora) professionally and had to cross-compile our own Linux. When I look back at these days I learned a lot, but it was not fun at all.

Since Ubuntu 5.04 I used it and first I had a hard time because colleagues were using all sorts of Linux (Gentoo, Debian, …) and they were looking down at me for giving a user-friendly distro a try. After I had good success since I did not have to waste time on the base-system administration itself they stopped laughing and a few even silently switched to Ubuntu…

Anyway, bottom line is that I am convinced that a few people (I hope not too many) do not want Linux to be easy to use, because then suddenly they are not the clever geeks anymore…

I prefer to create something really new and work on new software/hacks etc. than to care for the desktop and stuff.

For instance a colleague had to waste half a day on his dual monitor setup (Arch), my Ubuntu just supported it properly out-of-the-box…

I went home on time that day, he did not get his work done that day :-P

@BikeHelmet : You are incredibly forgiving. If any OS tore up my storage volumes, it would be a dark and violent day…

@Torx : Your point regarding base-system administration is a good one. Ubuntu is fairly clearly enduser oriented, where it seems other dist consider enduse a slight possibility?

More to the point, as was mentioned by a few people: Ubuntu’s success is primarily with it’s larger community, and quick help forums.

everything improved when knoppix arrived, this is my opinion, this allowed people to spend a day playing, without [potentially] trashing their primary OS.

–PidGin128

@PidGin128: Yeah, I am. I had a DFI board break apart a RAID array in Windows XP, so I’ve gotten a bit more cautious about having multiple backups. :P

Drivers can be flawed for any OS. It’s a bit disappointing to have a kernel update break stuff, but oh well. Microsoft has pulled similar stunts with Windows Home Server and Vista.

i’ve been using ubuntu since 2005 and not turned to any other flavor (using linux since 1998 including suse, mandrake, debian). must say it’s user friendly.
the point why these alpha and beta’s should be posted here is because hackaday people can provide help in polishing the rough edges to a solid release for the ‘general public’.
hackaday wouldn’t exist if there was a 100% perfect OS tailored to each user’s need.. they would be out of a job :)
point is, by helping end users solve problems to make their computer behave like they want it to behave, hackers provide a way out of the propriatary loop of OS’s that ‘just work – don’t try to tinker’ and ‘doesn’t work – but we’re your only choice’.
ubuntu is neither of the above. we all have to put an effort in making linux work for as much people as possible. i’ve yet to meet the first hacker who doesn’t want to share his solution to a problem. all of us are going through a learning process. main stream users and hackers alike.
let’s give each other a bit of slack (no pun intended :)