What's up with the Intrepid Ibex

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By Rebecca Sobol
September 10, 2008

Ubuntu's current development release is called the Intrepid Ibex, which is soon to become v8.10. The Alpha5 release was announced this week, which is pretty close to on schedule. One more alpha release is planned, followed by a single beta, and the final release should be available by October 30, 2008.

Looking at the blueprints for Intrepid we see a number of high priority items such as 3G networking, which will be integrated into NetworkManager. Another high priority item is an improved flash experience, which is aimed at improving the plugin finder wizard, better interaction with sites that use the flash detection kit, and an improved user-experience for selecting available alternatives. Internally there are the Package Status Pages, which are meant to provide a web page for each of the top 20-30 packages in Ubuntu showing bug counts and other vital signs and statistics.

What else is new in Intrepid? GNOME 2.23.91, X.Org server 7.4, Linux kernel 2.6.27, and Network Manager 0.7 are all being included. An encrypted private directory will also be added to each home directory. In addition, there's a Guest session available from the User Switcher panel applet to give temporary access with restricted privileges.

Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS) is also available in Intrepid. It allows kernel drivers to be automatically rebuilt when new kernels are released. This makes it possible for kernel package updates to be made available immediately without waiting for rebuilds of driver packages, and without third-party driver packages becoming out of date. Finally, the "Last successful boot" recovery entry retains a copy of your running kernel and makes it available from the boot loader. This makes it possible for old kernel packages to be safely auto-removed by the package manager, instead of being kept indefinitely.

Kubuntu will be using KDE4, with no plans to support KDE3. The Kubuntu wiki for Intrepid says, "KDE 3 is obsolete and largely unmaintained. Keeping with KDE 3 would offer no advantage over giving users Hardy."

Bug squashing has been ongoing, with a number of focused Hug Days. The latest of these will be held September 11 to focus on bugs that don't have a package assigned to them.

There are still a few known issues in the Alpha5 release, but overall the development is progressing nicely. Of course, if wild mountain goats are not your thing (however intrepid they might be), you can always wait for the more mythological Jaunty Jackalope, which will be in the planning stages at a Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) in Mountain View, California next December.

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KDE3 unmaintained?

Posted Sep 11, 2008 9:10 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

"KDE 3 is obsolete and largely unmaintained."

Is this really true? Did Ubuntu make the right decision, after all, in not shipping KDE 3 with their most recent long-term-support release?

KDE3 unmaintained?

Posted Sep 11, 2008 12:27 UTC (Thu) by rjdymond (guest, #51625) [Link]

If KDE3 is obsolete, then it has only become so very recently: 3.5.10 was released just a couple of weeks ago (26 August).

I smell hyperbole.

KDE3 unmaintained?

Posted Sep 16, 2008 19:36 UTC (Tue) by kitterma (guest, #4448) [Link]

Emphasis on 'largely'. Look at the amount of chang in 3.5.10 and 4.1.1 released about the same time. It's clear where upstream's focus is. Additionally, there are a lot of integration challenges with making KDE3 and KDE4 both installable. It would have been a lot more work that we didn't have the people to do. Additionally, some of the key infrastructure bits used in Kubuntu KDE3 (such as the Guidance display modules) are completely unmaintained and have been for some time.

KDE3 unmaintained?

Posted Sep 11, 2008 15:50 UTC (Thu) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

"Largely unmaintained" seems like an exaggeration, and in fact Kubuntu Intrepid will ship KDE3 apps where the KDE4 equivalents are not yet stable, as it says on this page.

What's up with the Intrepid Ibex

Posted Sep 11, 2008 15:52 UTC (Thu) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

The real question on NetworkManager is whether it will start working reliably - I've had to disable it even for the simple case of Ethernet connections, where it kept on getting in the way and breaking connections.

What's up with the Intrepid Ibex

Posted Sep 11, 2008 17:17 UTC (Thu) by sergey (guest, #31763) [Link]

My experience has been different. I've been using NM 0.6 for some time with the Atheros wireless chip (on an .11g connection mostly) and it's been quite stable. I have now switched to Intrepid Alpha 5 and kicked the old Madwifi driver out in favor of the one in 2.6.27. It's been working very well since then. In fact, connection is established almost instanteneously now. I am actually hoping NM 0.7 will consume less CPU, because 0.6 was, lets say, hungrier than "expected" in this regard :-).

What's up with the Intrepid Ibex

Posted Sep 15, 2008 22:04 UTC (Mon) by mlankhorst (subscriber, #52260) [Link]

Obvious typo: Hug days instead of Bug days.

I'm all for hug days though. :-)

What's up with the Intrepid Ibex

Posted Sep 15, 2008 22:35 UTC (Mon) by ris (editor, #5) [Link]

Not a typo. If you follow the link you'll see:

"The HugDay is a special day where the Ubuntu Community comes together
with a shared goal of triaging a specific package or set of packages.
Working together allows us to share knowledge and give some much needed
assistance to the Ubuntu Developers. The term HugDay is a spin on BugDay
but every time someone triages a bug, then someone else should hug
him/her. Why? This is a very special way for us to tell everyone that we
love contributions! And triaging bugs is a really big contribution."

Hug Day.

kde4 & nvidia mess

Posted Sep 23, 2008 14:27 UTC (Tue) by doc.twn (guest, #54139) [Link]

i'm using kde everyday at work for i don't know how many years now.
and i think that the kde community did a great job with kde4, at lot of innovation, unfortunately i'm stuck with KDE3 because of my NVIDIA card.

my laptop at the office, just like my pc at home, has an nvidia graphic card, and there are still *a lot* of problems with kde4 and nvidia cards.

as you can see on the following pages, it's a known problem, with no real solution until now:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=14
http://techbase.kde.org/User:Lemma/KDE4-NVIDIA
http://dot.kde.org/1200050369/1200126492/

i don't know if the problem is with KDE4 or the NVIDIA drivers, but bottom line for the moment is: if you have an nvidia card, all you'll get with kubuntu intrepid (kde4 only) is trouble.
kde4 is definately not ready for primetime on nvidia-equiped boxes