Gutsy Gibbon better than Hardy Heron?

[Nostromo]

Although I have used all the other versions of Ubuntu on my 32-bit computers, I found, whatever the version number, I have never really taken to the distro, it never felt 'right'. Hardy Heron 64 bit first Ubuntu variant I tried (live CD) on this computer, and I installed immediately I saw it in action. And installed, it's brilliant, everything works as it should, it's rock solid, and lightning fast with full desktop effects. I think the only time I've needed to use the command line is to add Fortune to the user console, and add repos to Synaptic, otherwise configuration was negligible. For instance, I have two printers attached to this machine one is a HP colour printer and the second is a Brother B&W laser, the drivers for both were installed via Synaptic without problem. Ditto the Nvidia video card drivers, Intel HD audio worked 'out of the box', and Ubuntu automagically set the screen resolution on my HP widescreen monitor, how easy can Linux get? I mean, that's easier than installing Windows drivers, right?I got my Linux start on SuSE Linux 9.1 and I'm familiar (but not expert) with various flavours of Linux but eventually I found the need (at least on my main machine) for a Linux OS with long term support which works well with 64-bit processors: Ubuntu 8.04 64 bit ticks every box. Hardy Heron 64 bit is a truly stunning distro, the best Linux OS I have ever used, bar none!And that last statement is saying something, because I've had the privilege of running some really great Linux distros!

[Urmas]

The release will stay as is. The ony time I have seen an ubuntu re-released is with the recent refresh of Dapper. Other than that, new ISOs are not created until the next version comes out.Adam

Nope:

We also committed, for the first time, to a regular set of point releases for 8.04 LTS. These will start three months after the LTS, and be repeated every six months until the next LTS is out. These point releases will include support for new hardware as well as rolling up all the updates published in that series to date. So a fresh install of a point release will work on newer hardware and will also not require a big download of additional updates.

( http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/146 )

[mhbell]

The release will stay as is. The ony time I have seen an ubuntu re-released is with the recent refresh of Dapper. Other than that, new ISOs are not created until the next version comes out.Adam

You are correct Adam as that is my experiance too. a good example I reinstalled Gutsy 7.10 from a fresh downloaded ISO and after install there were 362 MB of updates from the repo's. They do not update the ISO's, only the updates in the repo's.Mel

[Urmas]

Mel,Read the above link. What you say is true with "normal" versions (such as Gutsy), but Hardy's ISO is going to be updated four times.

[zlim]

Mel, thanks for the link. That's what I need - a page for a dummy who forgets from every distro what I need to do to try and get something to load on my laptop (which hates everything <sigh>). I guess because it is from 2001, it needs an older distro with not many bells and whistles. But if I go for old, then there isn't much hope that I can get the wifi working, which is why I'd want the distro on the notebook - surfing in linux at a hotspot.

[mhbell]

Mel,Read the above link. What you say is true with "normal" versions (such as Gutsy), but Hardy's ISO is going to be updated four times.

Thanks for the heads up. I was not aware of that.Mel

[striker]

What's wrong with good ol' GG ?

[porthugh]

I wondered why nobody congratulated me for pointing out this web review/comparison of gg and hh in an earlier post on the first page of this thread.Well darn me if I have only just noticed I forgot to include the link!!I'll try again and then go and run round the coastal railway line a couple of times before plunging into our icy south pacific water, see if that won't make me pay better attention.Right here is the linkhttp://www.techsupportalert.com/review-ubu...hardy-heron.htm

[zlim]

Thanks porthugh. That sort of echoed my own experiences with Ubuntu. Sad really because Ubuntu's first CD worked and was the one that got me interested in trying linux because it seemed doable for me.I also like his conclusion

Better OptionsFor many months, PCLinuxOS has held the top slot at http://www.distrowatch.com . The reason? PCLOS is a whole lot easier than Ubuntu to get working properly. So is Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu.

[Frank Golden]

Dapper is still available for download as well as all the other Ubuntu flavors after it. Breezy Badger and Hoary Hedgehog the versions prior to Dapper are available as well. Just Google for them by their codename i.e: Dapper, breezy etc. Dapper is up to version 6.06.2 LTS.If you already have dapper installed and have been updating faithfully then you are already at 6.06.2 LTS.If you download the .iso you will get the 6.06.2 version.The same applies to Hardy in that updating an existing install should get you the latest version.As Urmas pointed out the plan is to have 4 "point" versions of the Hardy .iso before the next release approximately 6 months from now.The latest .iso is Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and the next "point" release will probably be Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS.The LTS stands for Long Term Support.

Edited May 23, 2008 by Frank Golden

[striker]

Thanks porthugh, great! Finally the proof I' m not alone.Here are my main points of disgression and pulling hair out, as mentioned in the above link:1.The fonts are still awful, even after installing msttcorefonts and Redhat Liberation fonts. The fonts in Firefox are the worst I’ve seen in almost a decade.How true, they give you headaches within minutes, utterly crap that is.2. I can’t get WIFI to work on Hardy.Again, how true: I've got three cards over here, one build in in the notebook (fully linux supported) and two different and fully linux supported PCMCIA Cards: whatever you do and which ever manual or tutor you follow, in the end it's still no dice. Crap that is.3. Ubuntu also gets up my nose for demanding my password for every task.Indeed, but I can live with that. However, what I can' t live with is the stupid behaviour of asking me every so much minutes to put in my password in the keyring for my gmail account, whatever you click for radio buttons - remember once, for always or whatever - it seems to have alzheimer disease. It's indeed Oliver Hardy behaviour.4. Hardy fails to activate the swap partition, at every install. You have to manually enable it in fstab. Oh, it's a feature? Come on, KMA, crap it is again.5. Try to install java in FF on a 64bit machine so that it works .... mission impossible, even with Ubuntu-restricted-extras. 6. Hardy leaves installed packages where it should remove them. Example: install the Ubuntu-restricted-extras package, it contains the msttcorefonts.Next: (or so you wish after a reboot ) uninstall the Ubuntu-restricted-extras package using the remove completely option. Now when that job has finished, open up synaptic again and search for msttcorefonts: they're still installed. I wonder what else the heck Hardy leaves on my system. Here you have it. Sorry for those people reading this which have zilch problems. But stop shouting that loud about how great Hardy is, simply because it isn't.There are other contenders out there who do a much better job and don't shout that loud how great they are.Now some positives.fonts overall : don' t install the msttcorefonts. Something in Hardy is broken, I suspect the font caching but I' m not sure, doesn't matter what it is anyway. If you do install those msttcorefonts, all fonts system wide get fuzzy and you won' t be able to correct that which whatever method you try.the fonts in FF: the setting I found to get good enough fonts (using notebooks display at 1680x1050 60Hz) : Bitstream Vera Sans (whatever you choose, select a ' sans' type for best results. Then in Edit > Preferences > tab Content > Fonts and Colors, tab Advanced > uncheck Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above.Printer set up and installation of drivers: in short it's a snap. Kudos here !initial Screen and Resolution and refresh rate detection at install time:what I found out is that it behaves perfectly on my notebook. I installed the thing at least 10 times for testing purposes and it never missed. No need for proprietary drivers. Kudos again!Proprietary display drivers aka ATI (fglrx):Don' t install the fglrx if there' s no need for it. When you do, you'll see all fonts getting a few pixels going down, making the overall look somewhat fuzzy, unsharp and out of control, out of setting. You can see this the best (to see what I mean to know what to look for) when you're logging in: type in the username and the password, the latter will be out of the box for a couple of pixels.So if there' s no need for 3D or intensive gaming, skip the fglrx driver. If you don' t need it don't install it. So, that was my rant for today, the real first one since 2003. Get over it.

[raymac46]

Striker, thank you for a most useful and interesting post.I did take your advice about setting up the Bitstream Vera Sans fonts in Firefox and on the system in general and I must say this is the best I have ever seen Firefox look on my system since I got the new desktop. That even goes back to Gutsy and FF 2.0X. However with my ATI 690G chipset and Radeon X1250 graphics the fglrx driver gives far superior results. Fonts are much clearer and sharper than with the open source ati driver. And I do like a little eyecandy. No wobbly windows or spinning cubes but a little animation is fun. I hope I haven't been guilty of stating that Ubuntu is the greatest. I have used it for a few years and learned about some of its strange characteristics. I should never EVER recommend it as a entry Linux distro for a new user. Certainly the default WIFI Manager is horrible and only a manual setup has ever worked for me. It is a pretty good distro for my wife's use though. She enjoys it, knowing I have taken the trouble to get it working fine before she logs on.

[Urmas]

37 updates this morning... including THIS:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; fi-FI; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052909 Firefox/3.0

Now then... I know it's "only" RC, but WHERE ARE ALL THE (2.0 -> 3.0) UPDATED THEMES??? (all the themes & extensions I had running in 3.0 beta 5 seem to work, though).

[Frank Golden]

37 updates this morning... including THIS: Now then... I know it's "only" RC, but WHERE ARE ALL THE (2.0 -> 3.0) UPDATED THEMES??? (all the themes & extensions I had running in 3.0 beta 5 seem to work, though).

Hi Urmas, What repo are you using? I did updates today and I didn't see any FF3 RC update. I still have the beta version. I even tried a Finnish repo with no luck.

[Urmas]

Hi Urmas, What repo are you using?

I'm living dangerously... I've enabled the "proposed" updates. "Backports", even, when I'm bored.

[Frank Golden]

I'm living dangerously... I've enabled the "proposed" updates. "Backports", even, when I'm bored.

Thank Urmas! I've had the backports enabled since I installed hardy. Didn't think to enable "proposed".Doing update of 101 packages now, hope nothing breaks. I can always partimage if it does. Edited May 30, 2008 by Frank Golden

[Urmas]

... hope nothing breaks. I can always partimage if it does.

Frank? FRANK? You there??? Here's what MIGHT happen every now and then: your Update Manager tells you that you can do a "partial upgrade" ONLY; next, you go to Synaptic for more info... Synaptic'll tell you it wants to uninstall some packages you REALLY don't want to uninstall. Haste makes waste; rather than borking your system just because a package with dependency issues has hit proposed/backports updates, wait a day or two... unless you're itching to use partimage, of course.

[Frank Golden]

Frank? FRANK? You there??? Here's what MIGHT happen every now and then: your Update Manager tells you that you can do a "partial upgrade" ONLY; next, you go to Synaptic for more info... Synaptic'll tell you it wants to uninstall some packages you REALLY don't want to uninstall. Haste makes waste; rather than borking your system just because a package with dependency issues has hit proposed/backports updates, wait a day or two... unless you're itching to use partimage, of course.

Hi Urmas, Sounds like "you've been there done that". I just now experienced what you describe. My solution was to cancel the "upgrade" and unselect the proposed box in the repo settings. All I really wanted was was the FF3 RC anyway.Don't really want to partimage at this point especially since the image is a day or two old.I will give the present install some time to prove out then I will make a new image.The initial updates FF3 etc. went real well however. Thanks Edited May 31, 2008 by Frank Golden

[Urmas]

Hi Urmas, Sounds like "you've been there done that".

A couple of times. Today's miskin is caused by OpenOffice packages, Just do whatever [individual] updates you want with proposed/backported updates enabled... after you're done, disable them in Synaptic until next time.

[Frank Golden]

A couple of times. Today's miskin is caused by OpenOffice packages, Just do whatever [individual] updates you want with proposed/backported updates enabled... after you're done, disable them in Synaptic until next time.

Yeah, Open office is the culprit. Must be a major upgrade. Probably to allow reading the "great new proprietary file extensions" the latest M$ office is using.

[daihard]

I happen to see more messages stating Hardy is buggy, GG was better, and more of this statements. Personally I have had a couple of problems with Hardy too when I had it installed, but I don't have any experience with Gutsy. (my last experience with Ubuntu goes way back to Dapper) Anyway, what's your opinion on this : was GG indeed better than HH ?

It's been a while since I visited this forum the last time. I found this thread interesting, partly because I've been using Hardy (Kubuntu) for the last couple of weeks. I can't really compare Hardy with the previous distros because Hardy is the only Ubuntu/Kubuntu distro that I've seriously used. That said, I haven't found anything particularly annoying about Hardy. It detected my NIC, printer, scanner, and pretty much everything else on the fly. Setting up the Japanese input editor was a little task - it's much easier on Fedora - but I managed it. Overall, I consider Hardy a very good distro.

[striker]

Regarding the lousy fonts: I was able to solve that problem for once and for all. I have made a tutor for it which probably also goes for Debian 4.0r x series as well. Please note, it's for the default used in Ubuntu : gnome. Tutor is below.Howto: solve the fonts problem on Ubuntu 8.0.4 Hardy HeronAfter some fresh installs for testing purposes I was always struck with the bad font quality of HH.Installing the msttcorefonts showed a degradation in font quality instead of an improvement. In my case using the proprietary fglrx driver even worsened this.The system I use is a notebook with 1680 x 1050 / 60Hz resolution, 15.4†. No fglrx or nvidia stuff installed.The solution â€" after many trial and error â€" was this: install just one font (for web browsing because there it was where it was most visible (for FF, I use 2.0.0.14 and ditched the 3.0.5b)), Verdana.ttf. I copied the Verdana.ttf file to /home/user/verdana_font. Where to get this font? I leave it to you to hunt it down, at the time of this writing I've seen it freely available for download on the net.Make a couple of notes from the settings in System > Preferences > Appearance and its sub dialogs, before entering the below adjustments. This will give you the chance at the end to revert back to the settings used previously by your system. On with the tutorial now.Open up a terminal and:

$ sudo mkdir /usr/share/fonts/truetype/verdana $ cd /home/user/verdana_font $ sudo cp *.ttf /usr/share/fonts/truetype/verdana $ sudo fc-cache -f -v

Reboot to let the system read in the fonts, open up FF > Edit > Preferences > tab Content and change the Default Font just below the Fonts & Colors heading to verdana.The system fonts I use are as below:All sans 10, except Application Font = sans 9, Window Title Font = Sans Bold 10 and Fixed Width Font = monospace 10. Minimum font size on the Advanced tab = 12.Now the important other adjustments:In Gnome > System > Preferences > Appearance > tab Fonts:Beneath the Rendering section click the Details ... tab. Next see to it ' dots per inch' at Resolution is at the correct value, for my screen I happen to know it should be at 96, however I have recently tested some distros which reverted by default to 120 which results in way to huge fonts.Smoothing section : greyscaleHinting section : either None or Slight, set it to your preference while looking at the window in front of you : its contents changes too when adjusting. (it probably is set at Medium per default)Finally test some web pages with FF, look especially for these characters: k and x.Both of them should be visible without any fuzzy artifacts on the legs of these characters. I've noticed the k character is extremely sensible for this, so if the ' k' looks a bit fuzzy change the Hinting section contents above from say None to Slight, or even Medium if needed.That's it. It could very well be that you still have to adjust and readjust some fonts left and right on your system.That's probably due to the font caching system used, that's also why at the start of this little tutorial I recommended to make notes of the settings used at that moment, in order for you to have the possibility to revert back to system defaults. If so, don' t forget to delete the verdana directory in /usr/share/fonts/truetype incl. the verdana.ttf file in it, and afterwards reboot to let the system again read in the fonts.One side note : I happen to have experimented with Debian 4.0r1 an 4.0r3 which showed the same behavior with regard to the fonts, on that system they were bad too, just as fuzzy for some characters as described above for the k and the x. I suspect those systems would benefit from this tutor too, so if you happen to have it installed handle that system the same as this one above.

[daihard]

Regarding the lousy fonts: I was able to solve that problem for once and for all. I have made a tutor for it which probably also goes for Debian 4.0r x series as well.

Does your solution involve adding entries to the ~/.fonts.conf file? I had to do that in order to make the Japanese fonts look pretty on Hardy.

[striker]

Ah, you were faster than I was while adding the tutor in the above post. The answer is yes, but only one font, not all of them like those in the msttcorefonts. Again, just one, and most important play with the hinting settings in Appearances in the Preferences section of Gnome. (that's were the real secret lays)

[daihard]

Ah, you were faster than I was while adding the tutor in the above post. The answer is yes, but only one font, not all of them like those in the msttcorefonts. Again, just one, and most important play with the hinting settings in Appearances in the Preferences section of Gnome. (that's were the real secret lays)

Thanks! I am using Kubuntu so I need to figure out how to fine-tune the appearance myself. A very good instruction nonetheless.