Opinions on Hardy Heron (8.04) beta?

[GFree]

The HH beta was released last week. I'm going to be trying it soon, but I thought I'd ask here for people's opinions on how it worked for them. There are far too many zealots in the official Ubuntu forums to get any critical analysis of the beta, so maybe things will be a bit more balanced here. :)

[computoman]

I have heard that people really like it, but most of them are ubuntu types anyway. A few people said they have some audio issues. There is supposed to be real compatitibilty with windows active directory and the like for easier integration into the workplace. I may throw it on a box eventually to look at. I am beginning to use more bsd, debian and mepis rather that ubuntu though. I still prefer fedora, centos, or redhat though.

[GFree]

OK, well I've tried the 64-bit version it on my Toshiba Satellite Pro A200, and this is what I noticed:

* The Fn keys finally work, in that I can change the laptop brightness and mute the sound using them like I can in Windows.

* My Intel X3100 finally has support for xv output when Compiz Fusion is running, meaning I can view videos at the same times as running all the flashy stuff. However, the colors are totally stuffed and highly oversaturated using xv, so it's kinda pointless. No-doubt a bug to be fixed.

* I like the tweaked GTk theme. Feels a touch nicer than Gutsy.

* Some things stuff up though. I tried launching the GDM manager and it just flicked the hard drive continuously until I rebooted. Firefox 3.0b4 is still damn slow to change text sizes with, whereas it works beautifully in Windows. There's also an issue with the timezone management and automatically setting the time from a time server - doesn't seem to be an option for it any longer.

* Fonts are still crap, particularly in Firefox. They're also somewhat too big by default. This laptop has a small screen, and I can fit more window elements on a screen in Vista than I can in Ubuntu due to the default fonts of each. It can be fixed of course, but still, out of the box is important to work on.

* Compiz is better integrated into Ubuntu. Quite useful.

* Some packages broke when I tried updating them, but updating a second time fixed them. I guess there's a bug where some packages are being installed in the wrong order.

Overall, it looks promising. Still taking time to reach the level of support in Windows though. I'm honestly surprised simple video playback's so hard these days. I know it's primarily due to Intel drivers, but damnit, it works beautifully in Windows. I want a SUPERIOR experience in Linux. How long that'll take, we'll see.

[computoman]

Usually the problem for linux users not getting the latest multimedia is not the driver issue, but a legal rights issue. Programmers are encumbered by the U.S. microsoft oriented copyright and patent law rhetoric. If you are in an unnamed foreign country where u.s. laws do not apply, then this is not a problem. Multimedia in linux is awesome there. It is reported that Dell is now shipping legal media playback software with their linux systems for u.s. use.

[saxe83]

HH freakin rules!!! I'm rocking the beta and I'm happy as can be.

[abic@ophymx.com]

... A few people said they have some audio issues...

It's supposed to be using Pulse Audio now instead of ESD and direct alsa, which not all apps support even though it's supposed to be a drop-in replacement to ESD. Have people played around with the default settings on this? I'm interested to find out how well it'll all integrate together, cause I'd like to see a nice simple interface to adjust the volume on any and all audio apps. (IE. silent firefox flash ads while I have my music pumped up.)

[computoman]

I have heard that hh has a bigger repository for software than gutsy does. All the sysadmins i know who use ubuntu for servers are bugging me to try it. I guess I have to try it now. qemu here we go.

[computoman]

Hardy Heron is not just for standard pc's anymore.
If you have ppc, ps3, or etc you can get the cd's here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/daily/current/
live:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/daily-live/20080405/



Just in case, here are the intel downloads:
http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/hardy/beta

[tehBoris]

Hardy Heron is not just for standard pc's anymore.
If you have ppc, ps3, or etc you can get the cd's here:

That's the thing that confuses me a little. Ubuntu stopped producing the PPC version around 6.10 (probably because the Macs where Intel based from now on). They brought it back, and I'm not sure why. I know the PS3 uses a PPC chip, but they have a specific version for the PS3. May be they did it because it's of little effort to produce the proper PPC version having made the one for the PS3 (probably just a quick kernel, xorg config and xorg driver swap).

[computoman]

I thought they had discontinued it also, but it really has been there all along being hidden. I run gutsy edubuntu on my g3 tower and I will not put hh on it for now. Rumor has it that it will be in fact discontinued along with the spartk after this lts ubuntu. I have an old white desktop g3 that I may make as a media server for my brother. That will be a challenge. I have not played with the ubuntu ppc hh server yet, but I have played with the intel version.

[jdhore]

I thought they had discontinued it also, but it really has been there all along being hidden. I run gutsy edubuntu on my g3 tower and I will not put hh on it for now. Rumor has it that it will be in fact discontinued along with the spartk after this lts ubuntu. I have an old white desktop g3 that I may make as a media server for my brother. That will be a challenge. I have not played with the ubuntu ppc hh server yet, but I have played with the intel version.

I agree...I thought they said they would discontinue the PPC version after Hardy, but i think Debian is the optimal distro for PPC simply because it's supported it for YEARS and it will prolly continue supporting it for a very long time in the future...as Debian still supports Motorola 68000 which...pretty much no one used after Apple went to PPC.


More on topic, my opinion of Hardy: Simply put, i think it's probably the worst release of Ubuntu yet and it shows if you look just a bit, the incompetence of the Ubuntu developers. I'll start with the Ubuntu developers stupidity cuz...That's more fun. In Hardy, between Alpha 6 and the Beta, there was a kernel update...The developer who pushed the kernel to the repos *whoops* FORGOT TO ENABLE ANY SOUND SUPPORT AT ALL. So they had to back out the kernel, and 8 hours later, there was a fixed kernel. I'm sorry, maybe i'm not a "uber developer" like the Ubuntu devs, but if you're uploading something to the repos...you REALLY should test it yourself on a box or 2 first to make sure there aren't any extremely obvious problems (I'd say that would be an obvious problem)...Also, about a week after the "broken sound kernel" hit, a glibc/libc6 update hit...Broke everything...no apps would run, you couldn't chroot in to fix it...If you did the update, the only way to fix it was to either have kept a terminal window open and downgrade the package or to do a reinstall...If this happened around Alpha 1 or 2, that would be understandable, but it happened just before the Beta Freeze. In all my years of running Debian (Testing and Unstable) and my year or 2 of running ArchLinux, no breakages that massive have ever occurred. What makes that fact worse is that Debian devs and Arch devs "volunteer", Ubuntu devs are PAID...and the still screw up that badly...wow.....

Barring the Developer stupidity, as far as Hardy itself...It's pretty bad...Sure, compiz is nice, GNOME 2.22 is decent, the 2.6.24 kernel is pretty fast with CFS and all, but according to the Ubuntu forums and Launchpad and my experiences with it, there are still many issues with it and i HIGHLY doubt that all these issues will be fixed by Final Freeze in 4 days...Up until i reformatted after the Beta, i was having an error where 1 failed fsck on boot check failed 2 months ago and I had to tell it to exit the "recovery console" so i could actually use it...Also, i'm a Skype user, and with PulseAudio, Skype no longer works...Instead of the PulseAudio people making a work-around for apps that require direct access to ALSA or the Ubuntu devs doing it, no one's fixing it and they're all blaming the crappy, closed-source nature of Skype.

In short, The shittiness of Vista made me leave Windows for Linux, the shittiness of Hardy made me leave Ubuntu for Debian and Arch.

As a sidenote, Ubuntu is decent at what it does: A distro for newbs, a distro for lazy people (the group i'm in) and a good crossover distro for Windows-Linux switchers. Nothing else.

[computoman]

I do have debian lenny on the linksys nslu2 as a server and it is rock stable. Linksys lost a winner when they did not contunue with that kind of system. The nas200 was a joke but in the right direction. It should of had the internal makeup like the nslu2 for tweaking. I also run debian on some low end systems to keep them usable. Unbuntu does have some non-standard quirks and you have to do a bit of tweaking. I can not wait for the new version of debian. This internet machine and a couple of servers run gutsy ubuntu. I do not have time to play with hardy heron on a desktop yet, People who run 64 bit machines seem to be the ones with the best feedback for hardy heron.

[tokenuser]

I know the PS3 uses a PPC chip, but they have a specific version for the PS3. May be they did it because it's of little effort to produce the proper PPC version having made the one for the PS3 (probably just a quick kernel, xorg config and xorg driver swap).PS3 does not use a PPC chip (though it was based on PPC to some extent). Its a new architecture entirely (Cell Processor).

[tehBoris]

Cell combines a general-purpose Power Architecture core of modest performance with streamlined coprocessing elements which greatly accelerate multimedia and vector processing applications, as well as many other forms of dedicated computation.

Is quoting Wikipedia really a quote?

Well, they have properly referenced their source, so I guess so in this case: http://www.research.ibm.com/people/m/mikeg/papers/2006_ieeemicro.pdf

[computoman]

the ps3 and supporting architecture is different enough to still be soft of powerpc based but not the same as the old ppc systems. it is a powerpc on steroids,

[engrpiman]

I have had great luck with HH beta. I had an update break my OS once but that was fixed with in a day. I been using it for about a month and I am impressed with the usability . While I am a Linux noob I am learning fast. I find my self using the command prompt more and more but I still require the Gnome for things like internet / Email and Maple ( yes I am a math nerd).

This all started when I took a Computer Science course in c++ and realized that windows was not going to work so I started using Emacs and g++. then I migrated to LaTeX and well all this Terminal usage had started to impact my computing habits.

The only problem I have with HH is that I can't set my second display to is native resolution (1280x1024) with maintaining my notebook resolution of (1280x900). Please PM me (or email) if you have a solution to this.

I have also learned a lot about how to fix the x-system and other things because I have enough knowledge and skill to break things. The good thing is that I am learning how to fix all the problems now when they have little effect.

[computoman]

I set up a local repo for hh. It is awesome to be able to do a network install locally. I am beginning to like hh better.

[computoman]

I just installed Ubuntu Hardy Heron on a 300+ mhz imac. The installer did not do a very good job with the ati video card. In fact X did not work at all. After a bit of research I finally have it working. I am amazed at what linux can do with older machines, but I would not wish that much fun with the imac on a newbie.