Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 3 + Ext 4

[mmesantos1]

Ok ran movie from hulu and ran in high res: 480P, fullscreen. I did not have any issues running the video. So I am not getting this same issue Exploder.

[exploder]

They seemed to have fixed the problem.

[AK Dave]

Jaunty-64 on ext4
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
logout/login change session = kde

Really liking KDE4 right now. I still have a Daryna-KDE partition on the workhorse laptop, but have only occasionally booted to it in the last 6 months. I've been bouncing between gnome and xfce use, mostly gnome since xfce has troubles on small netbook screens. Which is funky, since you'd think xfce would rule netbooks but it has a harder time with 600pixel height screens and my netbook scene is 3 netbooks drifting between 7 users so its just easier to say "this is how it is".

I wasn't expecting to be impressed with kde4. This makes the 5th time I've installed anything with kde4 and for once I don't want to scrap it. Maybe at first when it took forever to get me to the desktop for the first time, but after that its all good.

I agree with exploder: jaunty kubuntu will make a nice base for gloria kde. Now, if we can just see a gloria kde 64.

Oh, thats the other thing. Jaunty-64 is the first 64bit Ubuntu since Gutsy that I haven't had a slew of problems with immediately.

Incidentally: Hulu video, fullscreen, and jerkiness. Doesn't happen anymore. Zero. Zip. Its gorgeous. HD fullscreen is a little jerky; SD fullscreen is flawless. This is from kde4, and I do have desktop effects enabled.
Caveat: 5meg/sec cable modem

[exploder]

This review sums up th shape Jaunty is currently in. I agree with the comments regarding graphics drivers and Compiz.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/ubuntu-9-4.html

[Katzedecimal]

Yow. I agree too, those are showstoppers for me. I disagree with the author about living without Compiz -- for me, Compiz is the candy reward for learning to use Linux! Compiz is one of the things that encouraged me to try Linux Mint and it's been bait on the hook for many of the people I've shown Mint to. 3D and high-power graphics have been the standard for so many years now, an inability to display them properly is unacceptable, especially in a distribution that has previously handled them just fine. The irony is Ubuntu's stated goal of giving Microsoft some solid competition -- yeah good luck with that if you can't run your industry-standard video card properly!

[AK Dave]

The bit about compiz is misleading. The reviewer tested two laptops and makes sweeping conclusions based on that. Bad journalism. I have two laptops (a Gateway 15" and a Dell Mini9) both with Jaunty and compiz runs fine on BOTH of them.

It is known, documented, and well explained that Jaunty steps forward with Xorg 1.6 and that the new Xorg will require video driver rewrites and updates. Which, if you'll notice, haven't happened yet. Well, thats not GOING to happen until we get at least a RC1 and probably won't happen until AFTER the release. Why? Because we're still in BETA, the code isn't locked down, and nobody writing closed source binaries is going to release to the wild for an unstable product. You'll kindly also note than Virtualbox is only available for Jaunty in OSE (not PUEL), and on down the line third-party NON REPOSITORY packages that have Gutsy and Hardy and Intrepid debs and packages don't have anything for Jaunty. Yet.

The Mini9 w/ Jaunty gets 530-580 fps from glxgears w/o compiz, and 500-530fps with compiz. Which I leave at "normal" unless I'm watching a movie.

[mmesantos1]

The bit about compiz is misleading. The reviewer tested two laptops and makes sweeping conclusions based on that. Bad journalism. I have two laptops (a Gateway 15" and a Dell Mini9) both with Jaunty and compiz runs fine on BOTH of them.

It is known, documented, and well explained that Jaunty steps forward with Xorg 1.6 and that the new Xorg will require video driver rewrites and updates. Which, if you'll notice, haven't happened yet. Well, thats not GOING to happen until we get at least a RC1 and probably won't happen until AFTER the release. Why? Because we're still in BETA, the code isn't locked down, and nobody writing closed source binaries is going to release to the wild for an unstable product. You'll kindly also note than Virtualbox is only available for Jaunty in OSE (not PUEL), and on down the line third-party NON REPOSITORY packages that have Gutsy and Hardy and Intrepid debs and packages don't have anything for Jaunty. Yet.

The Mini9 w/ Jaunty gets 530-580 fps from glxgears w/o compiz, and 500-530fps with compiz. Which I leave at "normal" unless I'm watching a movie.

I have to agree with AK Dave. I have not had any real issues with Compiz at this time. The article seems either dated or biased to his PC's.

[AK Dave]

Anything written about Jaunty will be "dated" by the time it is posted. Thats how fast development is happening with it. You can 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade' every 4-12 hours and see big piles of updates each time. Usually it is the same packages updating each time. Thats a sure sign of active development. If you can keep an uptime of >48hrs on Jaunty right now thats only because you're not upgrading regularly. If you are, you'll be asked to reboot.

My workhorse laptop, the one that I keep at home as a desktop computer, runs 64bit Jaunty with kubuntu-desktop installed on top, and I routinely use that machine in KDE4 with full desktop extensions ("compiz" for KDE4). Flawless. Awesome. Driver? opensource radeon. The only features missing, that I've noted are that the opensource radeon driver doesn't support suspend or hibernate. I think I can cope with that for now.

[mmesantos1]

Screen shot of Ubuntu 9.04.

[AK Dave]

Very nice! I especially like the icon set.

[mmesantos1]

Very nice! I especially like the icon set.

Thanks AK Dave!

[mmesantos1]

I am now running Ubuntu 9.04 RC. So far no regression found. I am also running Netbook remix on my desktop and it runs well. I did this in case Mint decides not make a CE of that. It ran very sluggish until I installed the proprietary driver. After that is runs very good. Interesting GUI. I can tell it is taylord for the smaller display of the netbooks. Ran the updates for today and still everything is running well. Did a fresh install for the RC. Well that is all I have for now. Can't wait to see what Mint will do with 9.04!

[AK Dave]

Jaunty on 2 machines:
i386 w/ ubuntu-netbook-remix on the netbook
amd64 w/ kubuntu-desktop on the laptop

Dang I really wish KDE was Mint. As nice as KDE4 has become, I can't stand it if it isn't Minted.

Noticed a quirk with UNR and desktop mode switching. Not a good idea if compiz is enabled. This might have been fixed. Also not a good idea if you've installed HP's glassy_bleu theme. They don't get along, you'll bork your desktop a little. In both cases the "fix" was as simple as disable compiz and use a stock Ubuntu theme then toggle the desktop switch a couple times. My biggest beef with this process is that toggling from UNR to standard gnome resets your panel options; the nicest "feature" of this is that doing so resets your gnome panel options.

Jaunty on the netbook was installed with encrypted /home. This is a stock install option for Jaunty, but in the beta and RC there is a parameter to pass to the kernel on install to make this available. I don't recall it. Google it. Anyways, virtualbox runs fine on the netbook EXCEPT if the vdi is being loaded from an encrypted folder. Bad idea.

My solution to all of the above:
I have my primary user login, encrypted, with its own /home and stock gnome, I have a guest account enabled that defaults to UNR, I have a secondary user login, encrypted, that is symlinked to the primary user login /home, and I have a vbox-user account (in addition to the group) that is un-encrypted and exists only to store the XP Pro vdi that I use. I login to the primary account for a gnome experience, and when I click the icon to directly launch my vdi it just reads it from the vbox-user account /home (unencrypted) and I'm happy. I can switch-user to the secondary user account, logging in to a UNR desktop, for a UNR experience. I could login direct to the secondary user account and use virtualbox from there instead, or access anything in the primary user /home.

[midas]

Yes, I also was very curious and downloaded Kubuntu 9.04 rc edition also. Goodness...it is the most responsive system I ever used. Everything is working fine only konqueror will freeze sometimes. It is easy to discuss the pros and cons of Gnome or KDE...but it seems the underlaying system of KDE (Qt 4,5) is a very lean and stable system now. I hope Gnome can optimize their own system in the very near future. Because otherwise they surely will be lagging behind too much. Wasn't it Schuttleworth himself who was saying that one day he hoped gnome would use Qt also for their base? In short, I am quite impressed.

[mmesantos1]

There are supposed to be some big changes in Gnome 3. At least that is what I read on OS News web page. Here is what I read from there page:

GNOME 3.0 To Get GNOME Shell, Zeitgeist
"posted by Thom Holwerda on Thu 2nd Apr 2009 16:12 UTC, submitted by Rahul
IconOnly a few days ago, we ran an article on the future of KDE and GNOME, and which of the two had the brighter future based on their developmental processes. Barely has that discussion ended, or the GNOME engineering team comes with a pretty daunting plan to introduce a fairly massive reworking of the GNOME interface for GNOME 3.0 (2.30). Read on for the details.

The proposed plan encompasses quite a few aspects of the GNOME platform, but the most user-visible one is of course the reworking of the interface, thanks to a project called GNOME Shell, developed by Red Hat employee Owen Taylor. It's more than just a replacement for the window manager and panel, though.

The two big parts of GNOME Shell are the panel and "overlay". The panel is pretty much self-explanatory. It sits at the top of the screen, and houses the activities button (which activates the overlay) and the system tray, user name, and clock stuff. The overlay is a bit difficult to put into words, so I think pointing you to the screenshot is a much better idea. What you are seeing on the left is the sidebar, which displays most recently opened applications and documents, but of course you can also use the search field to locate your applications and files. On the right, you see your desktops, so you can organise your applications and desktops.

Obviously, GNOME Shell supplements the user interface with subtle effects and animations, all written in JavaScript and Clutter (it uses a special MetaCity branch for now, but will fork the MetaCity code later on). Owen Taylor also wrote an email detailing the future of GNOME Shell and MetaCity.

There's more to this plan than just the interface. Another major pillar of GNOME 3.0 would be Zeitgeist, a new approach to managing and finding files by using tags, bookmarks, and timelines (an .ogv video shows off how it works).

There is a big advantage to working with GNOME Shell and Zeitgeist: both have already been in development for a while, and already have working code and have seen lots of development. This means that GNOME 3.0 will be less about "starting", and more about "finishing".

The GNOME foundation will also be cleaned up and streamlined. What this means is that deprecated libraries will be removed from the platform, so that people will stop coding against them. They will also "create a staging area in the platform for libraries that aim to be in our platform but do not offer enough guarantees at the moment (like GStreamer): this will send a clear message on what should be used". Other aspects include more focus on new technologies (like Clutter) and more clarity on what external dependencies should be used. Applications will have to be adapted for these changes, of course.

The GNOME team is currently not sure yet whether or not to include the "old" MetaCity/panel in GNOME 3.0. It would make sense to do so to make the transition an easier one, but it might also hinder adoption of the new technologies and ideas.

I'm glad that the GNOME community finally decided on a good roadmap for the future. It's also clear that they have chosen a very practical approach, by focussing on technologies that are already in heavy development, with code available, which gives the plan a major headstart. It's also good to see they aren't just copying the competition, but have clearly chosen a path of their own, one that seems to fit within the current GNOME ideology."

[midas]

Thank you mmesantos1for pointing out the developements behind gome. As always...the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Next year will be a very interesting year for linuxland I guess

[mmesantos1]

Thank you mmesantos1for pointing out the developements behind gome. As always...the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Next year will be a very interesting year for linuxland I guess

Your Welcome Midas. I am looking forward to the new gnome. I hope it will be a step in the right direction for gnome.

[badmotor]

For me Jaunty 9.04 has been a most anticipated and most disappointing release. My machines both have Intel graphics (don't alot of people?) and the drivers that came with Jaunty are all screwy. 3D effects don't work, and flash is all choppy. After a couple of hours trying workarounds to no avail, I threw my hands up in the air and gave up. It should "just work"? What a joke.

[mmesantos1]

For me Jaunty 9.04 has been a most anticipated and most disappointing release. My machines both have Intel graphics (don't alot of people?) and the drivers that came with Jaunty are all screwy. 3D effects don't work, and flash is all choppy. After a couple of hours trying workarounds to no avail, I threw my hands up in the air and gave up. It should "just work"? What a joke.

Well I do not have your graphics chip set but if you could give me the model of your graphics contoler and what version of Ubuntu you were running, I.E. Gnome, KDE, XFCE. And also if it was 32bit or 64 bit. I will see what I can find out for you.

[AK Dave]

For me Jaunty 9.04 has been a most anticipated and most disappointing release.

Did you read the release notes before installing?

Jaunty uses X.org server 1.6 which is known to break just about every single video driver out there that predates it. Its a big step forward for X.org just like KDE4 was a big step for KDE. Every time X.org is updated, video drivers are broken. Widespread problem. Known issue. Predicted 6 months ago. Known to be an issue. Guaranteed to be a problem.

The FOSS community has stepped up with some really good open source drivers for a lot of hardware. They're not as good as the closed source drivers. The development on the closed source drivers has lagged precisely because Ubuntu is one of the first to cut the bleeding edge with X.org 1.6. Now that Jaunty is released, I fully expect Intel and nVidia and ATI to catch up. When? Soon. Guess: weeks-to-months, but likely before Karmic comes out in Oct. ATI will probably be first, because they release new drivers very often (too often), and nVidia will probably be last because they only release every 1-3 years when they feel it is absolutely necessary, but Intel's will probably be pretty darn solid when they come out. When, not if. When.

If this is unacceptable, you are ENCOURAGED BY CANONICAL to not use Jaunty. Complaining does not help.