The Heron has *crash* landed? [LWN.net]

The Heron has crash landed?

Posted Apr 25, 2008 9:41 UTC (Fri) by ste (guest, #51764)
Parent article: The Heron has landed

Given the unhappy comments I've already read on LWN and that there's already word of the maintenance release, it sounds like this particular Heron has has a bit of a crash landing.

I specify what we run on our workstations at work and we currently run Edgy (the previous LTS release). I've been waiting for this new LTS release in anticipation of upgrading everyone. Now I'm hesitant to do that. I've been running Gutsy at home without major incident, so perhaps I should target the next upgrade on that instead?

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The Heron has landed?

Posted Apr 25, 2008 10:26 UTC (Fri) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]

First of all, Dapper was the previous LTS release. Edgy's security support is just ending,
it's a normal release.

Secondly, there have been a few vocal comments about specific problems with specific hardware,
as always, but I haven't notice any general increase of problems. Mainly it seems better
compared to gutsy with regards to regressions.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people are probably already happy 8.04 LTS users, and
millions are on their way. The fact that there is a maintenance release is simply because it
_is_ a long-term supported release, and likewise 6.06 LTS had 6.06.1 (and now 6.06.2 for the
server). 8.04.1 will eg. have all the security updates done to that date, to prevent new
installations needing hundreds of megabytes of downloads. Also, it does naturally give an
opportunity to fix more installer bugs.

The Heron has landed?

Posted Apr 26, 2008 8:19 UTC (Sat) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

I've installed Hardy beta without any problems (in a new partition) and it worked well, e.g.
Compiz worked out of the box on my rather old ATI 9250 graphics card, for the first time.

However, I will wait a month or so before upgrading my main desktop box.  Although Hardy is
LTS it's still a little rough around the edges in some places, as with any new distro release
(except perhaps Debian stable which is not as easy to install and not as polished for desktop
end users) - e.g. Hardy  includes Firefox 3 beta, so waiting for that to be released and
included by Hardy would be a good idea.

The Heron has landed?

Posted Apr 26, 2008 20:58 UTC (Sat) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link]

> Hardy  includes Firefox 3 beta, so waiting for that to be released and included by Hardy
would be a good idea.

I believe there are firefox2-* packages as well.

The Heron has landed?

Posted May 3, 2008 0:47 UTC (Sat) by kevinbsmith (subscriber, #4778) [Link]

I upgraded my laptop to Heron a few days before the official release. This 2.5 year old laptop
was bought with Ubuntu pre-installed, and has gone through each upgrade since.

Right after the upgrade to Heron, there were a few glitches, including Compiz disabling the
ability to drag apps between desktops. And pidgin has some annoying new quirks. But all in
all, it seems like a nice stable release. Not a lot that is WAY better, but lots of subtle
improvements.

The Heron has *crash* landed?

Posted Apr 25, 2008 10:27 UTC (Fri) by dwalters (subscriber, #4207) [Link]

I presume you meant to say that you run Dapper (which is the previous LTS release), not Edgy.

I too specify what is run on the developer workstations at work, and based on the press
release, I'm undoubtedly going to wait until the July point-release is out before upgrading
everybody's desktops.

For the family PCs at home (which were also running Dapper), however, I decided to take the
plunge and I upgraded them from Dapper to Hardy last night.

I wish I hadn't. Now I've got audio problems to deal with in Totem (playing DVDs and movie
files), Rhythmbox, Skype, and Flash (watching YouTube videos).

:-(

The Heron has *crash* landed?

Posted Apr 25, 2008 11:13 UTC (Fri) by net_bh (subscriber, #28735) [Link]

I wish I hadn't. Now I've got audio problems to deal with in Totem (playing DVDs and movie files), Rhythmbox, Skype, and Flash (watching YouTube videos).

All seem to be related to the move to Pulseaudio. Fedora is going to have these problems too, until Skype and Adobe fix their stuff to support pulseaudio.

There are already workarounds, though. So it shouldn't be too bad hopefully.

PuleAudio

Posted Apr 25, 2008 22:09 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

It seems silly to me to expect Skype and Adobe to change their stuff for 
PulseAudio, rather than PulseAudio providing a means to properly work with 
things that aren't PA-aware.

Remember that when ALSA came along intending to replace OSS, ALSA included 
an OSS compatibility layer.  And other audio daemons I've used, such as 
arts, include wrapper programs so that programs that aren't arts-aware (or 
whatever-aware) work properly.

PuleAudio

Posted Apr 26, 2008 11:53 UTC (Sat) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link]

PulseAudio does provide compatibility support for previous sound APIs, including esound, alsa
and oss.  There are notes about a lot of this at http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/PerfectSetup.

Lennart has done a lot of work towards making PulseAudio work with everything, but there is a
limit to what he can do for proprietary apps.  It seems that Skype are the only people in a
position to make Skype work with PA.

The Heron has *crash* landed?

Posted Apr 25, 2008 12:10 UTC (Fri) by ste (guest, #51764) [Link]

Yes, my mistake: I mean't Dapper not Edgy.

I'm with you: I'm going to hold off for a while longer. I find it ironic, 
that I specify Kubuntu rather than Debian so that we can be a bit more 
up-to-date, yet now I'm holding back any way. Makes me wonder if I should 
just stick with Debain for the desktop (all our server are Debian and I'm 
sticking with that).

I tend to go for the current stable Kubuntu realease at home too. Last 
time (Gutsy) the audio messed me around a bit. Now that everything is 
stable with Skype, Flash etc I don't like the sound (pun, harhar) of 
what's to come with Heron...

The Heron has *crash* landed?

Posted Apr 28, 2008 19:39 UTC (Mon) by im14u2c (subscriber, #5246) [Link]

You know... the last LTS was 6.06, not 6.04 as was the original intention. Now 8.04 is going to have a point release in July. Maybe they'd've been better off just making Hardy Heron 8.06 also, so they wouldn't have the distraction of an iffy release in April?

The Heron has *crash* landed?

Posted Apr 25, 2008 12:13 UTC (Fri) by spotter (subscriber, #12199) [Link]

edgy was not an LTS release.  Dapper was the last (and first) LTS release

The Heron has *crash* landed?

Posted Apr 26, 2008 2:43 UTC (Sat) by jbailey (subscriber, #16890) [Link]

When Dapper was released, there was alot of questions about when new installers and CDs would
be pressed that fixed known installation bugs.  It took Canonical a long time to produce an
image that would load on a large number of servers out there.  The announcement of the point
release isn't a statement of "this release is bad", so much as "as this point, you can expect
a new installer image to work from." with all the bugs that are fixed after general deployment
rolled into it.

It's actually a really good thing for the customers.  So, start your lab testing now with the
released version, and if you don't find bugs then great.  Otherwise, report them (via the
public Launchpad or through the support organisation with a contract) and the use the .1
release.

(obDisclosure, I used to work for Canonical)