LWN.net News from the source
| From: | Steve Langasek <steve.langasek-AT-ubuntu.com> | |
| To: | ubuntu-announce-AT-lists.ubuntu.com | |
| Subject: | Announcing the Release Candidate for Ubuntu 7.10 | |
| Date: | Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:21:05 -0700 | |
| Message-ID: | <20071011212105.GA21492@dario.dodds.net> | |
| Archive-link: | Article |
The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the Release Candidate for version 7.10 of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Gobuntu, and Xubuntu codenamed "Gutsy Gibbon". The Release Candidate includes installable live Desktop CDs, server images, alternate text-mode installation CDs, and an upgrade wizard for users of the current stable release. We consider this release candidate to be complete, stable, and suitable for testing by any user. The final release of version 7.10 is scheduled for 18 October 2007 and will be supported for 18 months on both desktops and servers. Users requiring a longer support lifetime on servers may choose to continue using Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, with security support until 2011, rather than upgrade to 7.10. Before installing or upgrading to Ubuntu 7.10 please read https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GutsyReleaseNotes About The Release Candidate --------------------------- The purpose of the Release Candidate is to solicit one last round of testing before the final release. Here are ways that you can help: * Upgrade from Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Edubuntu 7.04 to the Release Candidate by following the instructions given above. * Participate in installation testing using the Release Candidate CD images, by following the testing and reporting instructions at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/ISO Desktop highlights ------------------ Compiz Fusion: This innovative compositing window manager enables 3-D desktop effects that let users work with, and see, their desktops in completely new ways. Printer installation: In GNOME, printers are automatically configured for use as soon as they are connected. Free Flash support with Gnash: Ubuntu 7.10 leads the pack with a preview of this Flash browser plugin. Although still actively in development and not yet fully supported by Ubuntu, Gnash gives a glimpse into the future of free Flash, bringing partial Flash support to 64-bit desktop systems. Automated Firefox plugin installation: Beyond the addition of Gnash, Firefox in Ubuntu now supports automatic installation of popular plugins through the standard Ubuntu package repositories, for a richer web-browsing experience with the integrated security support of the rest of the Ubuntu system. Server highlights ----------------- AppArmor: This easy-to-deploy kernel technology limits the resources an application is allowed to access and can be used to provide an added layer of protection against undiscovered security vulnerabilities in applications. Pre-configured installation options: Mail Server, Print Server, Database Server, and File Server options join existing LAMP and DNS options for pre-configured installations, easing the deployment of common server configurations. Edubuntu highlights ------------------- Faster thin clients: Thin clients have been sped up significantly through the use of compressed images. Updated login manager: The thin-client login manager has been completely reworked, with themes for all Ubuntu flavors, support for autologin, and optional unencrypted graphics transport for improved performance on slower hardware. Kubuntu highlights ------------------ As well as the above desktop highlights, the following new features are specific to KDE users: Dolphin file manager: This updated file manager gives Ubuntu users a glimpse of the upcoming KDE 4. Strigi desktop search: Another pillar of KDE 4 available now in Kubuntu. Restricted-manager: Kubuntu 7.10 includes a KDE front-end for easy installation of proprietary drivers, complementing the existing GNOME front-end. Please see https://wiki.kubuntu.org/GutsyGibbon/RC/Kubuntu for details. Gobuntu highlights ------------------ Gobuntu 7.10 is the debut full release of the Ubuntu version that is composed entirely of open source non-restricted software. For experienced Linux enthusiasts, Gobuntu will act as the test bed for developing a user-friendly operating system with no compromise in terms of the open source philosophy. This initial release comes without any software from the restricted component, and with artwork for usplash and the isolinux CD bootloader. The full release notes can be found at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/710rc To Get the Ubuntu 7.10 Release Candidate CD ------------------------------------------- To perform a new installation or try out 7.10 "live" from CD, download the Ubuntu 7.10 Release Candidate (choose the mirror closest to you): Europe: http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Sweden) http://nl.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (The Netherlands) http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/linux/ubuntu-releases/7.10 (The Netherlands) http://ie.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Ireland) http://it.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Italy) http://gb.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Great Britain) http://de.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Germany) http://fr.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (France) Asia/Pacific: http://tw.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Taiwan) http://mirror.optus.net/ubuntu-releases/7.10 (Australia) Africa: http://za.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (South Africa) North America: http://ca.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Canada) http://releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (United States) South America: http://br.releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Brazil) Rest of the world: http://releases.ubuntu.com/7.10 (Great Britain) Please download using Bittorrent if possible. For more information about using Bittorrent, see: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BitTorrent Upgrading from Ubuntu 7.04 -------------------------- To upgrade from Ubuntu 7.04 to Ubuntu 7.10 Release Candidate, follow these instructions: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GutsyUpgrades Feedback and Helping -------------------- If you would like to help shape Ubuntu to better meet your future needs, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate/ Your comments, bug reports, patches, and suggestions will help turn this release into the best release of Ubuntu ever. Please report bugs through the Launchpad bug tracker: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/gutsy/+bugs If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug but aren't sure, first try asking on the #ubuntu IRC channel on FreeNode, on the Ubuntu Users mailing list, or on the Ubuntu forums: http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users http://www.ubuntuforums.org/ More Information ---------------- Ubuntu is a Linux distribution for your desktop, laptop, thin client, and server, with a fast and easy install. Ubuntu comes in several variants, including Ubuntu Desktop, Server, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and Xubuntu. The Ubuntu project makes no distinction between a free edition and an enterprise edition - this is our best work and it is freely available. Used by businesses, home users, schools, and governments around the world, Ubuntu offers regular releases, a tight selection of excellent packages installed by default and professional commercial technical support from Canonical Ltd and hundreds of other companies. You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this preview release on our website, IRC channel, and wiki. If you are new to Ubuntu, please visit: http://www.ubuntu.com/ To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu's very low volume announcement list at: http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 12, 2007 15:21 UTC (Fri) by 3vi1 (guest, #39830) [Link]
I've been using the Kubuntu flavor of 7.10 since Tribe 1 and can say from my experience that this is a *great* release for desktop users. I think it's finally reached the ease-of-use that has been Mandrake/Mandriva's forte for years. It's stable, yet it still provides you with a lot of good builds for bleeding edge packages.
Now, I just want them to release an updated CD for the PS3 with the -23 kernel/working WiFi. :)
Slightly OT: I highly recommend downloading the torrents, and then getting it with an app like KTorrent. There are a lot of people sharing right now; it took less than 12 mins for me to download the 694MB AMD64 CD that way (I guess SuddenLink wasn't blowing smoke about increasing their customers download speeds), and I'll be sharing that at least 3x over.
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 12, 2007 17:21 UTC (Fri) by alspnost (guest, #2763) [Link]
Flakey as hell so far :-( Say what you want, but I'm not imagining it! I've had lots of application crashes, massive memory usage, random breakage, and basically every sort of problem under the sun. Incidentally, I'm running the 64-bit version - perhaps the 32-bit one is OK?I've run every Ubuntu since Dapper, and I've noticed that alternative releases are the good ones. Dapper was solid, Edgy was flakey and had weird problems and regressions; Feisty was excellent, and by far the best release so far. This one is flakey once again, and full of problems that didn't exist in Feisty. I wish it wasn't so, but there we are....
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 12, 2007 19:14 UTC (Fri) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link]
> Flakey as hell so far :-( Incidentally, I'm running the 64-bit version - perhaps the 32-bit one is OK?
Yes, that would be my guess. Ubuntu is not a distro that focuses on getting 64-bit up to par with 32-bit. Unsurprisingly, I believe that 64-bit users are fairly rare on Ubuntu.
Which isn't that surprising, since I tend to believe most 64-bit use is on servers, and Ubuntu is generally perceived as a desktop distro.
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 12, 2007 20:51 UTC (Fri) by sveinrn (guest, #2827) [Link]
I have not tested the release candidate yet.
But I have been using the 64-bit version of Ubuntu for some time now on my destkop, I think it must be a couple of years. And I have experienced very few problems. The only annoying thing is that some of the plugins for Firefox, particularly the flash player, is only available as 32-bit versions.
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 13, 2007 9:58 UTC (Sat) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]
I've been running 64-bit Ubuntu for ca. two years without problems. Currently running 7.10 on my desktop for about two weeks, and everything has been rock solid. Usually problems are related to a specific piece of hardware and the driver that is using it. In case there are closed source drivers like ATI fglrx driver in use, it's recommended to try without them.
I've Radeon X800 and running with full + tweaked compiz fusion desktop, using the default, open source drivers.
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 13, 2007 15:16 UTC (Sat) by ArbitraryConstant (guest, #42725) [Link]
I don't run a 64-bit version because of software compatibility. IMO most packages could remain 32-bit, this would reduce compatibility issues (eg browser plugins). There's ways around that... but I wouldn't be using Ubuntu if I were interested in finding ways around things.
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 14, 2007 9:40 UTC (Sun) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]
There are generally no compatibility problems except for closed source software. And closed source is a problem that is getting addressed by writing free software instead all the time. That said, the 32-bit version is generally recommended for ordinary people, because of the remaining needs for closed source.
In Ubuntu 7.10, the most common problem for ordinary people who run 64-bit Ubuntu has been solved, since the non-free Adobe Flash plugin has been tweaked to work in a 64-bit environment with the automatic usage of nspluginwrapper. Also Gnash is now for the first time a real alternative for some of the Flash usage, and for the next version it's going to be even better.
Additionally, Icedtea will offer Java plugin, there are test packages in the universe repository in Ubuntu 7.10.
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 15, 2007 9:02 UTC (Mon) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
"Most packages"? You have a very unusual computer system my friend.
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 13, 2007 6:11 UTC (Sat) by zooko (guest, #2589) [Link]
Do you have some links to the bug tracking database, the way madscientist did, below?
I'm assuming that since you take time to write comments on LWN about bugs, that you also take time to write comments in the Ubuntu bug tracking database about them.
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 13, 2007 21:26 UTC (Sat) by hein.zelle (guest, #33324) [Link]
Hah. Sorry to be a bit bitter and off-topic about that, but really: of the 4 bugs or so I've reported to ubuntu, at least 3 of them have remained at "unconfirmed" status for over a year, despite being confirmed by other people in comments. When I just re-opened a bug (was asked to by the maintainer if it persisted) I was told "that doesn't help, you have to now try it in 7.10 first". Thanks, but no thanks, I'll wait until 7.10 is released before I try it at work just to confirm a bug that's over a year old and trivial to reproduce.
The ubuntu bug-tracking and handling is in my experience far from perfect, so far. I've reverted to reporting bugs to debian and the upstream bug databases when I'm short on time.
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 14, 2007 21:41 UTC (Sun) by sladen (subscriber, #27402) [Link]
Four years of SCO avoiding "specificality" got annoying, so from:
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 15, 2007 8:50 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]
Lucky zelle. A bug I reported (38442) has not been solved yet, after 18 months and 26 duplicates. And it affects installation on some machines with newer graphic cards, so there must be a lot of novices out there that couldn't try Ubuntu because of this.Not very encouraging.
about the Ubuntu bug tracking process (with specific instances!)
Posted Oct 15, 2007 13:46 UTC (Mon) by zooko (guest, #2589) [Link]
What would it take to fix 38442, I wonder? Have ubiquity (whatever that is) try a higher-resolution by default?
Here is my list of bug reports and patches at launchpad.
The worst one is 6032 (wow, only 4 digits -- that was a long time ago). Oh! I see that someone has suggested a work-around. I'll try that. Bug #6032 makes me sad because my son was four years old when I reported that bug, and now he's six years old and all this time his computer has been soundless. Of course, this is a lot more my responsibility than Ubuntu's. Or perhaps I should say: it is a lot more my responsibility than the responsibility of some person who might feel motivated to fix reported Ubuntu bugs.
I really value the way that conveniently shareable (and cross-site) references allow us to denote launchpad.net tickets in our lwn.net discussions. Hooray for conveniently shareable references!
about the Ubuntu bug tracking process (with specific instances!)
Posted Oct 15, 2007 14:35 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]
To solve the problem for 38442 it would only require to make the screen fit into a 640x480 window. Alternatively the developers might add scroll bars if the window is too big. Or a different layout might be tried out. Yet another thing is to modify GNOME so that the default button is always shown. A title bar to move the window around is another possibility. The drivers could also never resort to their default 640x480 VGA resolution, although this would exclude older machines.I don't know which solution is best, but I guess that at least the easy ones could be implemented in 20 minutes. One would think that a lot more time has been wasted just marking bugs as duplicates; and with 47 subscribers and importance "high" the problem has a certain impact. But whatever, I see that your list has not merited more attention.
I guess that supporting a whole distribution takes a lot of effort, so we have to be patient; but some things can get a little tiring.
about the Ubuntu bug tracking process (with specific instances!)
Posted Oct 15, 2007 14:59 UTC (Mon) by zooko (guest, #2589) [Link]
Maybe you and/or I could try implementing one of those solutions. Is it possible to squeeze and/or pare the information to make the whole thing fit in 640x480? What's currently in the window?
More generally, I think of Ubuntu, like Debian, as being largely a community effort. It isn't like I'm paying canonical to fix bugs for me.
about the Ubuntu bug tracking process (with specific instances!)
Posted Oct 15, 2007 20:33 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]
The window shows the language selection dialog, I think. Just tab your way around blindly and you can get past it.You are right, we are not paying and we could fix that package ourselves. However, it is an Ubuntu-generated package and furthermore we are unlikely to need the fix with a recognized graphics card. I also happen to know some workarounds (e.g. alt+drag moves the window), but feel that a lot of newbies may be turned away from this wonderful distro just because of this stupid issue.
Fixing it is not something I would like to do on my own when Canonical has a lot of employees to develop software (and with their own ideas about how to fix this particular bug, I imagine). Finding and reporting bugs is also a perfectly valid form of cooperation. What I fear is that Canonical is not putting as much effort into reported bugs as would be convenient.
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 15, 2007 12:20 UTC (Mon) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
'Fixed in upstream' doesn't help if the released Ubuntu version still has the bug. If the bug is fixed elsewhere but the Ubuntu maintainers haven't incorporated the fix into their distribution, doesn't that illustrate the point the other poster was making that their bug tracking is less than perfect?
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 15, 2007 12:36 UTC (Mon) by sladen (subscriber, #27402) [Link]
Perhaps "fixed upstream" could be better reworded as "fixed and in upstream".
Regardless of the distribution, it is easy to do a quick fix locally in the distribution. The harder part is getting that fix back in to Debian, then back in to upstream—the giving back part—so that everyone benefits.
Each of these steps requires opening an upstream bug report, linking them together, contacting the upstream maintainers... —Being fixed upstream should be the end-goal that all contributors aim for and a measurement of success for the rest.
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 15, 2007 16:27 UTC (Mon) by chaneau (subscriber, #6674) [Link]
I can confirm that it is a bit discouraging to report bugs, for example my Poweredge 2850 can't boot with linux-image-2.6.17-12-server(64) on edgy (dapper would not install) but they are quite happy with linux-image-2.6.17-11-server(64) (also from edgy), so I reported the bug but since the 30 of june nothing happened (new and undecided).
I know that Dell does not support Ubuntu (although the guy on the phone is more than willing to try and help) and that edgy should not be on a server and that the 64 bits edition of ubuntu is not very good and all that sort of things (for example who was the genius that decided in gutsy not to build fbcon in the kernel but as a module then to blacklist it ???).
Still I will stay with ubuntu, I really think the community is doing a fantastic job. besides Edubuntu for our schools has proven to be a big hit among the children, so much so that i start deploying thin-client based on Edubuntu next month here too.
Anyway there is also a lot of room for improvement.
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 12, 2007 17:43 UTC (Fri) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link]
I'm on a 32bit system and just upgraded to Gutsy RC1 last night. Hit an immediate show-stopper in bug 115616 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.... but fixed it with the workaround there. Things seem to be working fine, but I can't get compiz "bling" to go; it works in that I get nice fading effects, etc. BUT when I enable it I lose all my window decorations, so I can't move windows, maximize/minimize/close them, etc.
I've only used it for a few hours but other than these two issues things SEEM to be working fine for me...
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 19, 2007 12:20 UTC (Fri) by DG (subscriber, #16978) [Link]
I hit that evms/udevd bug as well after upgrading our Thinkpad (R50e) to Gutsy last night. Thankfully I remembered reading your comment and the bug report with workaround(s). (apt-get remove evms) Thank you.
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 12, 2007 19:18 UTC (Fri) by dilinger (subscriber, #2867) [Link]
I installed the i386 version, and ran into a number of problems as well. Certainly not ready for end users yet.. I also find compiz incredibly annoying, but at least it's easy to turn off the bling.
These comments make me nervous...
Posted Oct 13, 2007 2:52 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
I currently have Feisty on my laptop. So now I have to decide... do I upgrade to Gutsy, or go back to Debian Etch? Opinions?
These comments make me nervous...
Posted Oct 13, 2007 6:04 UTC (Sat) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link]
Stick to Ubuntu. Debian-unstable better keeps up with incorporating fresh upstream software versions, while Ubuntu does more its own research and development. I liked upstart so much that migrated from Debian to Ubuntu on my portable usb-flash system. Still keep Deb-unstable on my home desktop.
These comments make me nervous...
Posted Oct 13, 2007 14:29 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
Deb-unstable is not an option for me. I want stability. So that's why I'm torn between Etch and Gutsy.
These comments make me nervous...
Posted Oct 13, 2007 16:40 UTC (Sat) by maks (subscriber, #32426) [Link]
stay on testing or currently named lenny.
These comments make me nervous...
Posted Oct 15, 2007 12:58 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
No, I need stability. Ah, well, I guess it's back to Debian and Etch. Ubuntu is very cool and spiffy, but their quality control is no match for Debian's, unfortunately.
These comments make me nervous...
Posted Oct 16, 2007 15:53 UTC (Tue) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link]
I think you've got the tradeoff exactly right. Ubuntu has a 6 month release cycle. They don't release "when it's ready", like Debian does; they release every 6 months (with the occasional rare exception, as with Dapper). So... you can stay with Debian (or use Ubuntu 6.06) and get older, but very well-tested software. Or you can go with Ubuntu latest and get pretty well tested and pretty stable software, with some glitches especially as you get farther from the mainstream setup, but with all the new features and toys. There's no such thing as a free lunch: if you want uber-stable you can't have cutting edge. That's just not how the world works, and it has nothing to do with Ubuntu; they do better than most (in my experience) at finding a happy medium... which is why they're so popular.
These comments make me nervous...
Posted Oct 16, 2007 17:36 UTC (Tue) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link]
There's no such thing as a free lunch
I know, I know, it's nothing to do with them, but I think Darl implanted a loud siren going off everytime I read that sentence. Damn you SCO, DAMN YOU!
These comments make me nervous...
Posted Oct 14, 2007 3:41 UTC (Sun) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]
If you have a PPC machine as I do, I would advise waiting for a while on Gutsy. There's more than a few glitches still floating around. For example, OpenOffice doesn't even install with Gutsy (in the release candidate at least) on PPC because there's a package version mismatch. I also had my (wired) network connection mysteriously refuse to work after a reboot (and I hadn't done anything wrt the network settings, and everything works fine in OS X.)
So I reinstalled Feisty, and I'm going to wait until maybe December to give it another go. Maybe they'll have got things smoothed out by then.
(Note that my experiences here may not be representative of the mainline i386 distribution--after all, the PPC platform is no longer an officially supported platform on Ubuntu.)
These comments make me nervous...
Posted Oct 14, 2007 21:18 UTC (Sun) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]
Update of above post: apparently the OpenOffice issue has been fixed. However, since I've already installed Feisty, and it works just fine, I'm still going to wait till December, especially because of the disappearing network connection issue. If I don't have a net connection, I can't download any fixes. Bad news.
KDE & Compiz?
Posted Oct 14, 2007 19:23 UTC (Sun) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link]
I wonder - why is there no mention of using compiz with KDE? I'm sure it can be done, but Kubuntu provides (as far as I can tell) neither a GUI to configure it, nor a howto. There are some guides on the wiki, but they are all antique (referring to breezy/dapper), whereas if one already has a system running compiz with gnome, it should be trivial to enable it in KDE.
Incidentally, I do run 64-bit on my system; the primary advantage is to allow firefox to address > 4GB of swap, and leak as much memory as it wants.
KDE & Compiz?
Posted Oct 15, 2007 9:36 UTC (Mon) by tbleher (guest, #48307) [Link]
As I understand it, they are waiting for KDE 4.0, which will include a
KDE & Compiz?
Posted Oct 18, 2007 10:33 UTC (Thu) by hjernemadsen (subscriber, #5676) [Link]
The best information I have been able to find was this link: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3505975 That also corresponds with my own experiences. However when I tried it (almost a month ago), the kde-window-decorator kept crashing whenever I changed anything in the configuration. There have been quite a few updates to compiz since I tried it, but https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/129801 still isn't closed. So unless you use another window-decorator, I wouldn't recommend using compiz in kde in Gutsy yet.
Well I'm impressed
Posted Oct 16, 2007 10:14 UTC (Tue) by ringerc (subscriber, #3071) [Link]
I must say I'm impressed. It's the first time I've taken a serious look at Ubuntu, as I tend to use Debian or occasionally Fedora boxes. The combination of the good work the GNOME folks are doing on system management and the implicit focus on good defaults in ubuntu seem to pay off - it's pretty smooth even on my brand new XPS 1330 . The bluetooth mouse took a minute to figure out (bad user interface in the GNOME bluetooth applet - you have to use the services pane to configure it, not use "connect") and I still have no idea how to get sound through the bluetooth headset - but everything else just works. All the ACPI controls, etc, function as one would expect. I feel the lack of detailed power management control, too, but that's improving rapidly in Linux these days. Overall, this distro is well worth a play, especially for laptop Linux users.
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 17, 2007 18:07 UTC (Wed) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link]
Sadly, I experienced installation failure with 7.10. I was trying to put it on an older dual-p3 tyan board to act as fileserver. It seems that the DVD drive halted reading at libc6-udeb install time. After this, the cd-rom was practically dead and would require a reboot to recover. I poked around a bit and discovered that the hdparm -I reported the dvd-rom to be using UDMA5 mode. The drive was, however, connected by an ATA-40 cable and should never have been operated on mode higher than UDMA2. As an interesting test point, the system still contained the previous owner's debian 4.0 install, and the 2.6.15 kernel there correctly used UDMA2 mode and also operated the CD faultlessly. Somewhat bizarrely, the "CD check" identified the CD as faulty, but I'm certain it is not. The problem is that the CD check uses that kernel which has trouble driving the hardware; the CD itself is not faulty, and the hardware is not bad either. There is simply a regression since 2.6.15. Problems like these have plagued ubuntu installs for a while. Earliest google queries show that during 5.10 time it was required to turn DMA on for some drives to have them work. This time the DMA is on for sure, but it seems that the chipset is now badly programmed for extreme settings, if hdparm's report is correct. I was unable to make Ubuntu run the drive correctly despite trying to force the UDMA2 mode through hdparm -X66 command.
Ubuntu 7.10 release candidate available
Posted Oct 18, 2007 17:38 UTC (Thu) by zooko (guest, #2589) [Link]
Could you please give us a link to the launchpad ticket so that we can track this bug?
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