Ubuntu 8.10 Preview

[Superego]

A preview of Intrepid Ibex. Not sure about the color schemes (not a big of dark themes) but that's a trivial point. I'm curious to see how well they do with the subnotebooks and PDAs.

[voneschenbach]

Glad to hear they are working on faster boot - 8.04 loads pretty slowly, even on newer machines |

[ZaZ]

I like darker themes, but I'm not big on brown. I'd agree better battery life for notebooks out of the box would make a better argument for it.

[tarvoke]

KDE users beware!

I put 8.10 on my x31 using the do-release-upgrade network method. that went fine.

8.10 does not have kde3! it's not so much that I dislike kde4 (although I still do) but that it is still missing important functionality.

at least in 8.04 there is the option to choose between kde3 and kde4 (assuming you installed it) when you login. in 8.10 there is not; it has a couple kde3 libraries that contain necessary pieces for kde4, but that's it. the intrepid repository has none of the kde3 packages.

maybe someone will put together a backports (forwardports?!) repository of kde3, officially or unofficially. but unless that happens or until kde4 gets to 100% functionality, I will stick with 8.04 (and occasionally update my kernel from 8.10)

/rant

[jglen490]

I am looking forward to Intrepid Ibex myself, as a current Gutsy user, but with a little "trepidation" about KDE. The problem is not with (K)ubuntu, per se, but with KDE since they are moving away from version 3 towards 4. KDE3 is simply not getting continued support, except perhaps security issues, so Canonical is not going to spend a lot of effort for (K)ubuntu either. Stability is always a problem when moving on to a whole new baseline.

In my opinion, it is much too early to actually adopt 8.10, unless you have the system space, and the time, to be a tester. But it'll be interesting to watch.

I have a T20, so there are automatically ACPI issues with the age of the BIOS - even with the latest update. That issue can be worked, usually by just using APM, and including an entry in /etc/modules. There are some ACPI updates available for the older IBM BIOS, but in general the older IBM platform works well.

[aceo07]

I just installed alpha 2, which was released yesterday. I haven't noticed any issues yet. Compiz doesn't work on my X40 though.

I haven't noticed any major differences from 8.04. Though the login sound has a lot of static.

[tarvoke]

well canonical will support 8.04.x for 3 years on the desktop version. so they'll be looking at security and more general bugs even in kde3 and passing that upstream and probably still doing a little work of their own to help out. kde3 likely won't be getting any crazy new features but it won't be abandoned either, that's what the LTS classification means.

that will be fine for me, until(/if?) kde4 becomes completely usable. and of course I will be taking kernels from intrepid and possibly other things.

I used to take every kubuntu bleeding edge version and live with it day to day, but lack of kde3 really kills that for me.

[tarvoke]

oh and yes I have noticed that the 8.10 sound system in general is a bit glitchy... line noise when nothing is happening, some static when something is happening.

[jglen490]

Actually the KDE3/KDE4 problem is the reason the Kubuntu 8.04 is NOT LTS while Ubuntu 8.04 IS LTS. There will be no upgrades from KDE3, except security issues, from either KDE or Canonical.

[tarvoke]

you know, you're right -- I had just assumed. hell. the last kubuntu LTS was 6.06, they did decide against it for 8.04. hell.

altho since you can install all of kde3 in regular ubuntu 8.04 LTS, I wonder how that affects them. maybe it doesn't at all.

[jglen490]

Probably, the Ubuntu parts would continue to be treated as LTS, but anything related to KDE would not. But that's just my guess, and leave the rest up to the lawyers!!. Canonical kinda got caught in the corner on that deal. Anyway, it'll all sort out someday .