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Operating Systems Software Debian Linux

Why Is The Ubuntu Hoary Beta Release A Milestone? 30

Posted by timothy from the it-doesn't-weigh-enough-to-be-a-planet dept.
Mayank Sharma writes "As reported earlier on /., Ubuntu released the "beta" Live CD of their next version, Hoary Hedgehog. While, there have been several Ubuntu reviews after that, no one seems to have covered why the release was an important one. Here I review the CD and, based on a irc conversation with Jeff Waugh, try to explain why this CD is a milestone for the Ubuntu project."
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Why Is The Ubuntu Hoary Beta Release A Milestone? More

Why Is The Ubuntu Hoary Beta Release A Milestone?

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  • looks like his review is beta too.

  • Article Text (Score:2, Informative)

    by Johnny Doughnuts ( 767951 ) *
    The community's new candidate for the poster child distribution, Ubuntu, recently unveiled the Live CD of its second version code-named "Hoary Hedgehog". Meant for people who like to be on the bleeding edge (and can live with the few odd bugs), Hoary might not be the distro for the virgin Linux user. But that's just one argument against a dozen which shout "Grandma use Hoary".

    Anyways, the final Hoary is still a couple of months away with its release scheduled in April 2005. What we have here is the Live C

    • Re:manual mounts are what's wrong with Linux! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "To use your partitions, create appropriate directories under /mnt and mount the device manually."

      That is exactly the thing keeping me from switching to Linux. I recently tried Suse 9.1 Pro, and Mandrake 10.1 Community. Both detected all of my hardware fine with the exception of my external hard drives(USB2.0, 160GB drives formatted with FAT32).

      Everytime I try to switch to Linux there is always one piece of hardware that doesn't work, and everytime I give up after spending a week trying to get it to w

      • Ummm... granted you will need to set it up once by creating an fstab entry (one line in a file, easy to edit) and set the device in the GNOME "mount button" properties window, there is such a thing. Also, if you know that a newly inserted device will take /dev/foo, you can somehow set it up to be automounted on insert, like can be done with a CD-ROM drive.

    • Why MP3s aren't a double-click away from working. (Score:4, Informative)

      by jbn-o ( 555068 ) <mail@digitalcitizen.info> on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @07:39PM (#11556629) Homepage

      There is Rhythmbox and Totem Movie Player and both have important plug-ins/codecs missing for playing MPEGs or MP3s and there's no other MP3 player.

      This seems like a bad thing at first blush, but it's a good thing that Ubuntu is not distributing software that some users can't redistribute (notably, users in countries burdened with software patents, like US users).

      It's a real hassle to not be able to double-click on a file and have it do the right thing immediately, but there is a good reason for not including MP3 software: (for those who aren't aware of this) MP3 is patent-encumbered. In some countries all implementations of MP3 are covered by patents held by the Fraunhofer corporation and patent licenses are acquired through Thomson. If you want to merely share a verbatim copy of a GPL'd MP3 player with your friend (again, in some countries), you need a license [mp3licensing.com].

      This restriction makes the software non-free for some users, despite the license. This is why free software proponents endorse the use of unencumbered protocols and file formats to do the same job. Ogg Vorbis is a fine replacement and most reviews I've read say that the Vorbis codec sounds better than MP3, or can sound just as bad but with a smaller file size. Have a friend set up a blind test for you [xiph.org] and figure out what you like.

      There are restrictions on various other kinds of formats too, and there are unencumbered replacements for most of them.

  • Random factoid (Score:5, Funny)

    by xgamer04 ( 248962 ) <xgamer04@NosPam.yahoo.com> on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @04:19PM (#11554327)
    Ubuntu was the theme of the 2003 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's national youth gathering [elca.org].

    -offtopic? check
    -non-negative comment about christians? check

    mod shield, activate!

  • Answer (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The previous CD was based on Morphix (a more-modular spin-off of Knoppix) while this one shares a lot of code with the install CD from the kernel up. Ubuntu now uses the same kernel everywhere, on the live CD, the installer and when installed. Additionally, the Hoary installer itself is a tiny bootstrap program, which is highly extensible, relatively easy to modify, and extraordinarily clever says jdub. And yes, Ubuntu now has a Live CD for every architecture they support, i386, AMD64 and PowerPC.

  • So what was so special/milestone-ish? The fact that it uses the same kernel? The artile really was NOT englightening.
  • I read the review. And I already like Ubuntu. But why is this release a milestone? What do I get over and above Warty Warthog?
    • You get a bit newer software, and even X.org, I think. Nothing revolutionary, and the article doesn't at all answer the question it claims to answer... (I have long since given up on Slashdot's quality control. This is a non-story.)
    • I guess, as someone else mentinoed, it's the part about the live cd using the same kernal as the installer cd. But others do this, like Mepis. I guess it's a milestone for them.

      More of a milestone, I would think, is that there's one for ppc as well which, despite this next article [slashdot.org] would make it the first graphical live cd for ppc
    • The switch to x.org was important to me, because it contains a fix that allows me to use opengl without crashing my system. And a much much greater percentage of the packages I install actually show up in the gnome menu.

      The Warty Warthog was a very popular release. So they've probably had a surge of feedback and support for the Hoary release.

      The upgrade was pretty painless. Just had to edit /etc/apt/sources.list and change warty to hoary. Synaptic failed and caused a mess, but running apt-get dist-upgrade
    • That's easy - its FAR more compatible. My case is a good example. I have a laptop with some rather, er, odd hardware, like my Radeon 320M IGP.

      The old Warty Warthog LiveCD didn't even boot - I got a black screen.

      This new LiveCD worked perfectly and even detected my touchpad's on/off button! (Something no other distro I've tried has ever done.)

      It worked so flawlessly, in fact, that I decided to install Ubuntu. I'm using it right now, in fact. Its just so... perfect. The default configuration is so wonderfu
  • I've been using Ubuntu for the last 5 months now and I can say that the new Live CD is excellent. There were a lot of rough edges in the get-go, but it's all coming together. I tried using some KDE distros to begin with and I found them to be too involved with impressing the eye. Gnome in Ubuntu is set up very well with enough to look at to make you feel at home (such as in a windows/mac environment), but only so much so that you can do what you need to do and get it done fast. BTW, the article was not

  • Well (Score:1)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 )
    I posted this in my journal here, but I might as well rant in public too. What the hell is up with Ubuntu? I tried to download it, there's only one US mirror, which I got 20KB/sec on. Other mirrors weren't much faster.

    So I figure I'd get the torrent. 5 hours later and still zero seeds, 0 progress on the amd64 iso.

    Screw it. This "large user base" apparently is in someone's head, because no one seems to be willing to distribute this distro.

  • And, why, exactly, Is Hoary "Important?" (Score:3)

    by Anna Merikin ( 529843 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @06:01PM (#11555451) Journal
    Unless I missed something obvious, the article never specifies why this release is important enough to warrant a /. article on its importance.

    Great: a new ubuntu (I am just about to install the first one.) So I searched the article for ONE reason why I should skip Warty and download Hoary in vain.

    Grumble, grumble... "The state of journalism nowadays...."
    • The difference is: "Ubuntu now has a Live CD for every architecture they support, i386, AMD64 and PowerPC." Oh live CD x 3 that's new! "Additionally, the Hoary installer itself is a tiny bootstrap program, which is highly extensible, relatively easy to modify, and extraordinarily clever says jdub." That's important. Oh that bit about "jdub, being a GNOME developer as well, mentioned how the Ubuntu modifications (fixes and changes) are going upstream into GNOME. sharing the modifications upstream is import

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