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back to article Ubuntu 10.10: date with destiny missed

Canonical delivered the latest version of its Ubuntu Linux distribution on October 10. Releasing Ubuntu 10.10 on 10/10/10 might seem an auspicious idea, but after the overhaul that was Ubuntu 10.04, the latest release looks tame by comparison. While there is little in Ubuntu 10.10 that will knock anyone's socks, it makes for a …

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      1. David Gosnell
        Reply Icon

        USB stick

        Can't test properly with a USB stick because (if it is at least partially the pretty crappy SSD to blame, one of the slightly faster later P-SSD1800 units) the extent of the problems are only apparent once the system is installed to said SSD. The USB stick might reveal general issues in regard to solid state access, but these things can be very subtle and device specific I'm getting the impression.

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      2. Steven Raith
        Reply Icon
        Thumb Up

        AA1 SSD problems, other thoughts

        The SSD in the AA1 was/is notorious for stuttering on small writes - it's a problem with the on-disk controller, and it affects pretty much anything you install on it - no idea how Linpus works around it, other than perhaps operating nearly entirely in RAM and not having any swap in use.

        Using EXT2 rather than a journalled FS helps, but TBH it's a hardware problem with the AA1 setup, not a software/OS issue.

        I've got 10.10 on my Samsung N130, works nicely, even picks up the better halfs 3G stick with a truly tiny bit of fiddling (eject the virtual CD rom, then it picks up the USB modem device and works straight away).

        In fact, I showed it to her, and now she uses it for 95% of everything. In fact, the only thing her laptop gets booted into Windows for is if we want to hook the lappy up to the TV, as Ubuntus HDMI support doesn't seem to want to display at 1368*768, or whatever the tellys native res is - annoying, but not a dealbreaker.

        A worthy update. And I concur on the partition point, most of the people I have shown Ubuntu to and who have consequently tried it, would shit themselves when being asked about partitions. The fact that it will automatically set up a dual boot partition with virtually no user input (and certainly no user knowledge required other than 'how much space can I use on my HDD) still utterly fucking astounds me.

        Now, I just need to work out how to get my new iPod classic to sync from Ubuntu...although I still need Windows to restore it, alas...

        Steven R

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        1. John H Woods Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          usbmodeswitch

          Then you won't even have to eject the install volume

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  2. Rogerborg
    Alert

    If you have an ounce of common sense

    You'll be rsyncing /home to your backup storage once an hour anyway. Partitioning on the same drive is like making a safety net out of piano wire: looks great, until you actually need to use it.

    Anyway, the question that really needs answered is: which drivers have they regressed *this* time? What exciting WiFi and graphical assplosions can I look forward to? Anyone who's bricked their netbook, raise your hands.

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  3. spegru

    partitions

    I'm no zealot on this and have used Opensuse (separate home partitiion) and ubuntu/mint (no separate partition, but I would have though all this angst about running out of disc space is a bit passe in these days of Gigabyte discs! On the other have a separate disc for docs, music etc is ve useful for sharing the PC with windose (esp for newbies who are nervous about going fully over to the light side)

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  4. tardigrade
    WTF?

    Date with destiny missed? Not really.

    It's a six month release cycle. Six months! What were you expecting? The article doesn't say. Would you rather wait longer and have a big update like Vista, because that went really well didn't it.

    Small and stable updates are good. They keep the momentum going and don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Maverick is a solid release with some excellent improvements and there is only six months to go until the next release. See how that works?

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why versions?

    I always wondered why Linux distros even have versions. I mean it's not like you *need* to package up an OS into a 'version' in the Linux world. All it is is a collection of packages and their versions which are grouped together.

    Is it to avoid upgrade issues? But if you have to reinstall a new 'version' don't you have the same issues? Worse than that, you have to do an upgrade with the new 'version' anyway.

    The approach of Arch Linux or Gentoo comes to mind, which are more of a meta-distribution in that any Linux can run the package manager for them and have essentially the same system.

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    1. LaeMing
      Reply Icon

      I vaguely recall

      Debian discussing a continuous-rolling release between Testing and Stable some time in the past few months.

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  6. kneedragon

    Partitions.

    Here we have a review of a new shirt, but the reviewer didn't like the collar. So now we have a protracted debate on the merits of broad v narrow collars. Taylors, shop assistants and dry cleaners are getting ready to do battle. What about the rest of the shirt?

    I came on board with Lucid, and have dumped MS for ever. 10.10 seems to just like 10.04 with minor detail improvements. It has so far done everything flawlessly.

    I am aware of the benefits of multiple partitions but for the sake of simplicity I originally installed on a single partition, and since then I've only ever done upgrades. It has given me no trouble and I'm not expecting any.

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  7. Rob Davis

    Partitioning essential for dual-boot encrypted Ubuntu and Windows work PC

    ...if your work involves testing stuff on different platforms or that you mostly use one OS for development but need the other for applications unavailable on other platforms.

    Encrypted with Truecrypt or otherwise to protect sensitive company data and intellectual property.

    Such a multi-partitioned, multi-boot setup is possible for encrypted Windows and pre-10.04 versions of Ubuntu that used the simpler GRUB and not the more complex (but automatic updating) GRUB2 that 10.04 uses.

    If Canonical can get the partitioning, multi-boot and co-existing with Truecrypted Windows, then the on-the-move developer office becomes more of a less risky reality.

    I've tried to achieve such a setup here, but not succeeded yet and instead opting for booting Ubuntu from an external drive or use VirtualBox or other VM ware in Windows. Hear about my story here: http://superuser.com/questions/179526/

    An update is that the alternate CD should be used for such special multi-boot mulit-partition scenarios but this may not be for the novice installer.

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    1. Someone
      Reply Icon

      Dual-boot RAID

      Similarly, I wish they’d sort out BIOS-compatible software RAID. When it goes wrong, as a first-time Linux user, you’re left to wade through these two pages.

      https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto

      https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2

      It’s not that the underlying Debian distribution doesn’t support it, because it does. Once you’ve learnt how to install GRUB 2 manually, you find that dmraid works perfectly.

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  8. Francis Irving
    FAIL

    Hardware support

    Bizarre criticism about partitions, when there is a much larger criticism lurking. That is, lack of certified hardware support.

    I still can't buy a decent laptop from anyone, that is guaranteed to be supported (in full, including suspend/hibernate) for current and all future versions of Ubuntu.

    Yes, Dell sometimes offer one for a few weeks, and apparently lots of others sort of work. But sort of is not good enough. There are also expensive specialists, which sell a limited range of laptops.

    If only Ubuntu would do a paid service where I can subscribe to have them actually support a particular laptop (like Transgaming, where you can vote and they support a particular game)...

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hardware support

      @Francis Irving: http://webapps.ubuntu.com/certification/

      All the laptops on that page are certified by Ubuntu to work on the respective versions that they list. You're welcome :)

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  9. Stephen Bungay

    X has been tinkered with...

    Just installed UBUNTU 10.10 in a virtual machine (virtual box). The VBox extensions complain that it is being used on an unknown XServer and I'm restricted to a maximum display size of 800 by 600... which is fairly useless. 10.04 has no problem, the extensions work perfectly.

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    1. WonkoTheSane
      Reply Icon
      Linux

      @Stephen Bungay

      Xserver has been bumped to version 1.9. You may have to wait a few days for Virtualbox to catch up.

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    2. Someone
      Reply Icon

      Re: X has been tinkered with...

      This is a known problem. If you use the PUEL version, download VirtualBox 3.2.10. This has a version of Guest Additions that is compatible. From reading the VirtualBox forum, I understood that Oracle held off releasing this until they could check it against the release version of Maverick.

      However, if you’re using VirtualBox OSE, this shouldn’t be an issue. The version of Guest Additions in the Maverick repository has been updated for the change in the X server. In fact, prior to the release of 3.2.10, users of the PUEL version could bodge it by installing virtualbox-ose-guest-x11 from the repository.

      There may be a problem with 3D acceleration in version 3.2.10 of the Guest Additions. It took me two attempts at installing, before 3D acceleration worked. At least one other person has reported a problem.

      http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=35218

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    WHAT!?

    Why does the layman want a seperate /home partition? To stop them filling the filesystem with their bittorrent downloads and crashing the system, yea, I know. But that setup requires an advanced user to maintain the balance, or you end up wasting hard disk space.

    It makes much more sense to have one partition, warn the user when it's getting fine and only allow root to use the last 5%. Silly register.

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  11. Adze
    Paris Hilton

    OTW Win7 upgrade for Vista costs... ?

    About the same as 3 x 1TB Samsung Spinpoint disks. In fact most hardware can be bought more cost effectively if you leave out the boat anchor Microsoft licence.

    Disk is cheap, partitioning for data security is largely pointless on single devices.

    Now a single disk, a small one, say 120GB/160GB/250GB - they're cheap these days - for / is a good idea, if it breaks, replace & reinstall, job done.

    For anything volatile a mirrored pair of inexpensive disks - as above - is pretty much ideal. Obviously a good backup regime is still essential if you're talking about data which is expensive/irreplaceable/time critical. Just pick your disk size to your dataset - if you've 250GB of data and you increase by 50GB a year... buy 500GB or 1TB disks... simple!

    In terms of time - I recently reinstalled 10.04 from scratch. An hour and 45 minutes after I booted from the Live CD I was back to a fully functional system, apps, data, VPNs, mapped drives, scheduled tasks, the lot basically and that was on 3 year old, hardly cutting edge when it was bought HW.

    By contrast, I recently reinstalled a client's 18 month old MS Vista laptop from the recovery partition of their HDD - 15 minutes for the OS install, which was fast, but 4HOURS of downloading security updates, patches and anti-virus later before I was ready to restore their data backup. In no way can 10.04 be described as time expensive compared with MS.

    Cheese!

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  12. kain preacher

    Windows re install

    If you have to reinstall windows once a month or 6 times in year , you are doing some thing wrong.

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    1. serviceWithASmile
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      yes

      you are using windows, that's the problem

      in most cases, "doing something wrong" is normal usage.

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  14. Richard Lloyd
    FAIL

    Partitioning gripe is nonsense

    In the graphical installer, you're given the choice to "install Ubuntu side-by-side with other OS'es" (which, er, requires shrinking of an existing [probably Windows] partition and, yes, a new partition is created), "erase and use the whole disk" (thankfully not the default!) and "manually partition" (which I always do myself because I have multiple Linuxes on the same drive). If you're just installing Ubuntu and no other Linuxes on the hard drive, then technically you don't need separate partitions, but in reality, you probably want the OS to create a swap partition at least equal to your physical RAM.

    Anyway, apart from the total lack of innovation of anything actually useful in 10.10 compared to 10.04, I'm surprised that the disastrous ATI kernel modeset problem *still* hasn't been fixed in 10.10. I have an ATI HD 2600XT and the graphical installer for Ubuntu just goes straight to a blank screen. Sure, pressing F6 and adding "nomodeset" to the kernel boot line will fix it, but who will know to do that?! Recent Fedoras (even including F14 beta) have the same catastrophic bug and no-one seems to be fixing this kernel modesetting issue in the upstream kernel.

    I think Fedora 14 is going to be a far more interesting release than this near-pointless 10.10 release - there's actually new stuff going into F14 that looks useful, unlike, oh, a new Ubuntu system font which they don't even make the default!

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  15. Bob. Hitchen
    Linux

    Ubuntu Rocks

    I don't know about 10:10 but I've been using Ubuntu for years on everything but pc games and satellite telly. Out of interest I tried 10:04 that came with a pc mag. It worked first time so I loaded a spare disk in a caddy and installed it. Only thing I've done since is installed all the usual flash stuff. Partitions who cares? Get yourself a couple of network disks or usb sticks and COPY important (to you!) files. Ubuntu now offers a clear alternative for computer dummy's.

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  16. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

    Does VNC work with Compiz yet?

    Type your comment here — plain text only, no HTML

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Compiz over VNC?

      OUCH! Thats a whole lot of bandwidth to send down the pipeline just so the windows can jiggle like jello along with a nice spinning desktop cube. Compiz is great eye-candy for the desktop... but trying to use it over VNC? Not that it can't be done... but SHOULD it be done?

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  17. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    /home is where the heart is

    Wow... A/C at 12:02 actually gave a good reason for seperate /home! That's actually a decent idea, to have room to run multiple distros while keeping /home.

    I'm one that just uses one big partition. And, I did do installs all the way back to 1993 (slackware), I always used either one partition.. Well, when I had a big disk in a system with a 4GB boot limit, I had a seperate /boot (something like 32MB.. since it only had to hold a kernel and a backup kernel.) I don't want to have to worry about running out of space on one partition while having plenty on the other, and /home is already in /home so I don't feel any reason to keep it sperated. I can back up /home if I screw things up badly enough to have to do a FULL reinstall (which I have never done. I had a disk crash -- based on the sound it made, I think 1 out of 4 heads actually fell off the disk mechanism -- but partitioning would not have helped that.)

    That said, first I can't believe the whole thread focuses on that alone. Secondly, good review -- I used 10.10 in a VM a bit and it really does sum it up -- there's nothing earth-shattering compared to 10.04, they've just kind of fixed some broken stuff. I think there's some nice changes "under the hood" though.

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  18. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Version numbers

    "I've got 10.10 on my Samsung N130, works nicely, even picks up the better halfs 3G stick with a truly tiny bit of fiddling (eject the virtual CD rom, then it picks up the USB modem device and works straight away)."

    Even that minor issue is actually fixable -- I'm sure I saw something in /etc/hal or somewhere like this that has a list of the 3G cards that show up as a fake CD first, and basically auto-ejects the fake CD.

    "Why versions? " Sorry, but versions are important (and I do say this as a gentoo user). If everything works perfectly, then it really doesn't matter, updating to the latest to greatest automatically is all good. In reality that doesn't happen. Some apps are certified jsut on some version of a distro -- I don't care about "certified" as long as I can make things work but others do. I *have* had things work with one version and break with the next though, meaning without versions I'd be pretty screwed. I've also had cases of newly introduced bugs, where knowing I have a definite baseline to fall back on was comforting. Two examples --

    My Mini uses the dreaded GMA500. It ships with drivers for Ubuntu 8.04, newer Ubuntu versions use newer X.Org versions (and no GMA500 driver included), so without "versions" I'd have to quit upgrading at that point, or risk having the X server ripped out from under my drivers, breaking them. There's seperate hacked drivers for 9.04, 9.10 and 10.04, meaning without versions I would have had my video break at least 3 times.

    Second example -- NetBSD. I had a copy running on a NEC MobilePro 770, with a 2GB CF card shoved into it and PCMCIA wireless. So, after a while I installed the newest NetBSD onto the card, only to find that the CompactFlash support is broken. I tried to install the older one -- still broken. As it turns out, they are more branches than actual versions, there's no way to install a definitive "version" of it, it just pulls all the latest updates for that branch, and older updates are generally not even available. So the CompactFlash breakage was backported to every branch I tried.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      @Henry Wertz

      That's interesting but there are a couple flaws in your logic. First example it is the updated Xorg that broke your drivers. In a non-versioned environment you would downgrade Xorg again if you found it broke anything, without changing anything else or having to reinstall. Problem solved.

      For NetBSD this does not apply as it is not a collection of differently versioned packages. Userspace utilities and the kernel are developed together, so it is not possible to update them adhoc.

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    2. A J Stiles
      Reply Icon

      Any reason why

      Is there any reason why the GMA500 driver from the Ubuntu 8.04 X.Org source tree can't be built under 10.10?

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  19. Trixr
    Unhappy

    Not that simple...

    My upgrade to the 10.10 beta succeeded in b0rking my grub loader, due its prompting me in the middle of install about a trivial change I had made (to the screen resolution), and prompting again as to the location it should be installed in. Whatever I chose was the wrong choice (I thought it was hd0,0, but whatever) - nothing logical like putting it back where it was without prompting.

    After fixing that little problem (after several hours), and at least being able to boot into Windows, Xorg is not working. Last time I at least was able to logon to the gui (even with a vile screen resolution) and install envy-ng to obtain the correct ATI driver. Not now - it struggles for a few minutes and then dumps me back to the shell. It's a Dell XPS that I've had for over a year - hardly bleeding edge.

    I like Ubuntu, but this kind of thing is immensely offputting - I'm not a Linux expert, but I do know the basics, and if I can't do a simple upgrade, I feel sorry for new users.

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  20. Matt_W

    Progress...?

    I've been using Ubuntu at home since Dapper, generally have few problems, but for some reason the upgrade option never worked - to go up a version I'd always have to download and burn a CD and install from that.

    This time it worked, I was delighted. Then again when I started it up I get a pretty dramatic freeze - so the thing is effectively bricked.

    Aside: One thing I would like fixed - (it might be fixed, I just can't use the bl**dy thing!) the problems with playing DVDs - since 10.04 I haven't been able to play DVDs smoothly - I did have to play around with DMA settings to get it to work pre 10, but those changes did nothing.

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  21. Greg J Preece

    KNetworkManager

    Not had time to play with Maverick on my laptop until today, so I hadn't noticed the new KNetworkManager. That thing is SWEET! Took them long enough to make a proper network manager, but this time they've really got it right. Nice and clear, easy to use, and optional levels of detail for the techies amongst us. Absolutely love it - a small but superbly done upgrade.

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  22. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Pointless article

    Late to the party, but heck, what a totally negative pointless article.

    As many commenters have noted, partitioning is, for the majority of uses, a thing of the past.

    The author fails to understand just how clever Canonical are being here - it's not about bleeding edge, it's not about appealing to the 'geeks' - it's about offering the masses a quality operating system - a *free* alternative, that's easy to install, easy to use and pleasing to the eye.

    I've been following Ubuntu since it's inception and it's always been a case of steady, reliable updates, innovation, embracing and nurturing Open Source and above all, respecting that's there's as many different types of users as there are linux distributions!

    What irks me the most, is the ridiculous title "date with destiny missed" - who thought that stupid one up? Heck, if you had more reason than just 'partitioning' for this supposed 'destiny', maybe it would sound right.

    Blegh. FAIL.

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  23. Mahou Saru

    Well my lappy only need 2 partitions...

    Boot and an encrypted partition to hold a LVM (which contains swap and home)...

    Since encryption = fragile data, I always back it up so recovery shouldn't be an issue.

    Issues with a full partition? A non issue as I don't run as root!

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