View Full Version : Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 4 - Hardy Heron
Sooo, I have given Ubuntu another chance to impress me after the disasters that were 7.04 and 7.10.
Downloaded and booted the LiveCD (veery slow mirrors for the download, it would seem). First impressions? They have the decent fonts installed by default - this means that there is no longer the frankly awful default pointer (the 8.04 one looks nice and crisp just like a windows pointer) and the fonts are VASTLY improved.
It is BLISTERINGLY fast - anyone who remembers the difference between 6.04 and 6.10 will liken the new boot time difference to that. Its staggeringly fast to boot, it boots faster than anything I have ever seen, ever - including my K800i, T-Mobile Compact II, iAudio X5 etc etc. We are talking less than 20s from me pressing my power button to the Gnome login screen. Seriously impressive.
I dont have an nVidia card (actually an Intel card, which has caused me problems in the past) but still my 1680x1050 resolution was discovered automatically, which is a big jump from the nonsense of previous versions I have had to endure.
Nautilus is horribly broken, but this isn't a surprise given the changes that have been made to the underlying systems.
I will report back some more on things I find that are good or bad, but so far I am reasonably impressed.
If you have a spare PC or the time for setting up a virtual machine, I would do it :)
The graphics out of the box niceness is down to the fact they're (as far as they can) stripping out all their auto-detect stuff and letting X do it itself. Indeed they want to run without an xorg.conf entirely unless something needs overriding - and I believe that's almost done.
As for Nautilus, they're using GVFS in Hardy so I imagine it's something to do with that. The next alpha is due next week iirc, I've got it flagged at work to do some testing :)
It's looking good though. The blueprints (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy) list some neat stuff (one step domain joining and authentication for example, which is absolutely necessary if it's to tempt Windows admins). Just gotta hope they tick most of them off :)
[edit]Alpha 5 on the 21st (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardyReleaseSchedule) :)
Well you'll be pleased to know that the update manager is fully working in 8.04 as it points at the dev repositories for Hardy and has told me that I have 297 updates waiting :p
One of my mates (who has a ridiculous connection and works for Sun anyway) has installed it and installed all of the updates and it has all worked so hopefully it will eventually roll to the full release without KOing my system :p
Guy I work with stuck with Edgy from alpha and it was fine so I'd hope so - so long as they dont do anything drastic with X now. Iirc, he had to manually apply so Gnome things as they were pushed out (theme, and some new defaults), but nothing dramatic :)
LeperousDust
17-02-2008, 20:51
Sounds good, i may end up giving this a go when i get my partitions sorted out right. I don't really use my computer for much (web, coding, music, the usual) so it makes sense to get working on a linux install...
Are you sure you are prepared to get an Alpha install on the go? Things are likely not to work and with the new GVFS etc, data loss is distinctly possible...
I wouldn't say data loss, but certainly a bumpy ride with a couple of things!
Pretty sure partner isnt setup for Hardy yet, so you wouldn't have Opera unless you compiled it yourself either ;)
LeperousDust
17-02-2008, 21:44
Data loss i wouldn't be worried about, i have little data i care about, that of which i do is backup up in other places...
I wouldn't be relying on it at all, since i'd still have Vista running side by side. But if its going to be endless hassle which it sounds like it may be, i probably dont have the time for it, nor the knowledge. I'm just use to alphas that obviously should be called alphas! The linux world is very different ;).
//Edit: i meant shouldn't be called alphas
I think that's a little harsh ;) During the Alpha stage the focus is on everyone getting their own stuff sorted, so they're not talking as much. Things often dont work together as they will in the gold release but you'd certainly be able to install and use it for basic functionality.
But if you're not comfortable under the hood in Linux then I'd say it's worth waiting until at least beta.
I'd say that was a fair statement from Daz there :)
Data loss speculation was purely down to the advisory on the Alpha release page about Nautilus causing potential data loss scenarios at the moment, thats all :)
LeperousDust
17-02-2008, 22:34
yeah sorry i meant what ive used as alphas shouldn't be called them...
I'd love to be comfortable under the hood, but alas i'm definately not, i'll wait for the beta at least then, i'm really not in the mood for too much hassle and i dont have much of a clue as to how most of ubuntu works unfortunately although i wish i had the time to fart around because it does actually interest me...
If anyone is currently trying to install Hardy, and gets a GRUB error near the end, reinstall but keep it away from the 'net. It seems there's a GRUB update that gets downloaded and promptly barfs. I've just spent the last two days battling with Hardy Server which used to install fine but (using the same CD) started to refuse at the final hurdle.
You may have to hand-edit /etc/network/interfaces if you do this to fix the network, but that's not hard.
Dunno if it's been reported. Hope so.
Dunno if it's been reported. Hope so.
Reported it?
Was going to plonk this in a VBox for a bit and have a play. What's the situation with upgrading from Gutsy? Is there any upgrade or is it a fresh install needed?
Yes, you can upgrade. Instructions are on ubuntu.com
>> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HardyUpgrades
Did that last night Mark and it all started up fine. Then it said it was going to take an hour and 30 mins and I couldn't be bothered to wait up. I set the computer to shutdown after 2 hours 30 mins but something obviously held up the install as it doesn't boot now ;D
Good job I was only mucking about on my VBox install :D
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