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Dapper Drake Hits Ubuntu Servers 259

Posted by CowboyNeal from the new-and-improved dept.
linuxbeta writes "Ubuntu 6.04 (Dapper Drake) daily builds have hit the Ubuntu servers. Dapper's goals: Substantial polish and integration, software discovery and installation, make network-wide enterprise updates easy to manage, consider LSB and related certification standards and support for deployment of Dapper on mission-critical servers. Screenshots have already surfaced."
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Dapper Drake Hits Ubuntu Servers More

Dapper Drake Hits Ubuntu Servers

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  • VIA C3 Bug (Score:2, Informative)

    by Ed Almos ( 584864 )
    I sure hope that they've fixed the VIA C3 bug that was present on the last distribution, 'Breezy Badger'. I tried installing it on an 800MHz C3 system and it was unstable to the point of being unusable. I can't remember the exact details, something about the C3 missing one of the Pentium instructions.

    Ed Almos

  • Screenshots show nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nharmon ( 97591 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @12:04PM (#14015466)
    Is it just me, or do the screenshots not really show anything new? I mean Ubuntu is cool and all, but these are just screenshots of Ubuntu, and does not even include the new enterprise management stuff.
    • I agree...there seems to be nothing new from the screenshots. But I know there is something to be appreciated as compared to the last releases. What about Kubuntu? Should we expect KDE 3.5? When it comes to Ubuntu, I only touch the KDE based one. And with superkaramba to be integrated, nothing compares to it.

      One thing though...I love the Tahoma and Times New Roman fonts. Unfortunately, I have to copy them from Windows make my environment look good. The Tahoma font itself is very small 252 kb I wonder why n

    • Re:Screenshots show nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Homology ( 639438 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @12:57PM (#14015701)
      Is it just me, or do the screenshots not really show anything new? I mean Ubuntu is cool and all, but these are just screenshots of Ubuntu, and does not even include the new enterprise management stuff.

      Yet another "review" of yet another Linux distro consisting mostly of screenshots Gnome/KDE along with the installer. They are all so very superficial, and quite frankly, quite booring. I'm pretty sure that the distro maintainers are not that happy themselves with these "reviews".

      As an example, this is almost never seen in a review: Upgrading a machine (desktop/server/whatever) from and older version to the newest version and reviewing that. Or reviewing the package lifecycle in a version of a distro (does the upgrades work? breakes anything? Are upgrades properly tested by the distro/package maintainers? etc etc).

      • I second that. It's impossible to get a good impression of a distro, unless you've used it for at least one upgrade cycle. First, because you get to see how package management works in practice (not just how shiny the GUI is). Secondly, because if you use it that long, you'll get used to it, and not get hit by difficulties that are simply artifacts of your expectations. Thirdly, because if you use it that long, you'll get an impression of what it's actually like to _use_ the system, rather than just having
  • OK, I see a new installer has been released. Any word on how it compares to other installers? It looks pretty much like the Debian installer, and the (gulp) RedHat installation has been pretty easy for some time.

    What's the "killer feature" for this installer?

    • Re:Ok, it's been released... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Saturday November 12, 2005 @12:32PM (#14015600) Homepage
      Why does an installer need a "killer feature"? Isn't it enough that it's an easy/efficient/effective means of getting the system installed?

    • Re:Ok, it's been released... (Score:4, Informative)

      by cmdr_tofu ( 826352 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @12:38PM (#14015625) Homepage
      Well having done over 400 Debian installs and 1 Ubuntu install (Breezy Badger), I feel comfortable saying that the installs are different. Sure you have the comfortable and simple Debian CUI, but you do not have to answer any questions! I think the entire installation asked me about 4 questions. It is easier than a Redhat install, but you get the advantage of the Debian package pool and the Debian package system. One oft overlooked feature of Debian is the sheer number of quality tested packages available. The installer works as well as Redhat's but you end up with a better system that has much more software easily available through apt. Ubuntu has a long way to go before it can come close to Debian's track record, but I think it's off to a good start.

      • Re:Ok, it's been released... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by LnxAddct ( 679316 ) <sgk25@drexel.edu> on Saturday November 12, 2005 @02:59PM (#14016258)
        Its funny how you just assume Debian provides a "better system". I used to run Fedora and Debian side by side, but anything other than Debian stable would break my system monthly. I had a lot of things installed on it, but nothing too exotic. I got sick of going to #debian and getting blasted for expecting stability if I'm not running Debian Stable, and than being told to fix it myself or that I should have read < insert link > before I went updating. The truth is that the Debian community is a bunch of elitists. My Fedora server just runs nice and silent without me having to do anything, updates itself and things don't break because the packages are well tested. Debian has reported several times that they are running short on help, they don't have the resources to put quality into their 10,000 packages. Fedora comes with a standard yum repository that has thousands of apps, and adding a second repo, like DAG's or the soon to released RPMForge, puts the number of available apps on par, if not above, that of Debian. As it stands right now, all my servers and laptop run Fedora. Debian doesn't cut it anymore, and Ubuntu isn't server oriented, but even on the desktop side of things Ubuntu doesn't take security serious enough. Also, you can praise apt all you want, but as anyone who has any experience with it knows, the second apt breaks it breaks like hell and does not want to be fixed. Its crazy that some users in #debian told me they've spent weeks figuring out what was wrong and fixing apt and that I should just do the same if it breaks. Screw that, things like that don't happen on Fedora. And as far as installing goes... Ubunutu is not easier and is severly lacking. To install than Red Hat is easy as hell even if you're installing it on a few hundred machines at once, the gui, text mode, or kickstart are all easy to work with.
        Regards,
        Steve
        • I agree debian are sometimes a bunch of elitists... depends on who you deal with (OTOH compared to BSD they're positively laid back... A friend of mine once asked a question simple on a BSD list - he had to send me the transcript as I didn't believe the response when he told me about it).

          But to say it takes 'days' to fix an apt problem is just pure exaggeration - I've rarely had anything take more than a few minutes. Compared to RPM hell (go to rpmfind.net, download package, shit it needs another package,
      • ``Ubuntu has a long way to go before it can come close to Debian's track record, but I think it's off to a good start.''

        If you add the Universe and Multiverse repositories, the numbers are pretty close. I've got a little over 20000 packages listed on both Ubuntu (Breezy) and Debian (Sid).

        The difference is mostly in how you like your packages. If you like your packages to be extremely well tested and don't like changing your configuration too often, Debian stable is the way to go (until the next release, you
    • The Ubuntu installer is actually easier than the RedHat one. Why does it need to be running in graphics mode?

  • oblig (Score:3, Funny)

    by BushCheney08 ( 917605 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @12:05PM (#14015480)
    I hate the Drake!

  • Pointless (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MoogMan ( 442253 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @12:12PM (#14015515)
    I don't really see the point of screenshots or reviews at this time. It's way too early for it to have changed much - visually - (if at all) since Breezy.
  • I'm excited to hear about a new release of my current favorite desktop linux distro. However, can the brown default theme please die? I realize that the goal of Ubuntu is "linux for human beings", and utilizing what appears to be human skin tones for a theme is an interesting idea, but it just doesn't work. Look at some well designed color schemes, like OS X's Aqua, or even... (don't shoot me please!) Windows XP's Luna. They both utilize neutral grays, a lot of blue, and other primary colors. That much brow
    • "Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". Ubuntu also means "I am what I am because of who we all are."
    • Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A lot of people complain about the Windows default theme (Fisher Price and Teletubbies combined). I rather like the earthy theme of Ubuntu. It's only a couple of mouse clicks to change it - just as it's only a couple of mouse clicks to change from the much disliked Windows teletubbies theme.

  • Polish (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Saturday November 12, 2005 @12:26PM (#14015571) Homepage
    Dapper's goals: Substantial polish and integration

    Glad to hear it. I love Ubuntu. In my experience, it's the easiest and most reliable Linux distro to setup and maintain. Apt is great, and Synaptic makes it easy. A lot of things are just done the right way.

    However, being a new distro, it's lacked a little polish here and there. Nothing big, but just the sort of thing where, if I were to set my parents up on a Linux machine, I'd be more confident in the presentation that SuSE or Fedora provide. I'd be really confident that Ubuntu would work correctly, and it might be my choice of distros for that reason, but I'd be more confident that Fedora would *look* like a professionally-created OS.

    So I think polish is a good place to focus right now.

    • Just to point out that you can already get the Aqua and Luna themes for Gnome. The brown theme isn't that bad, and you can change it easily enough.

      Heck, Doesn't Ubuntu come with the standard Gnome themes too? Why not take 5 seconds to switch it to Clearlooks or one of the other themes that look great in Gnome?

      If the default theme is the basis of deciding on which OS you'd use, XP would be the worse OS in history. Lokks like computers by Fisher Price.
      • I'm not talking about the themes, though I guess it's possible that the themes could be polished a bit too. I guess I am talking a bit about visual stuff, like the fonts are somehow bad in Ubuntu. I'm and really sure how to explain, but they don't look right. When browing in Firefox, when I select text, the kerning changes. Don't know why, but all the text just shifts around.

        It seems to me, also, that the new bootup splash screen could use a little work. It'd be nice to tighten up the grub>boot spl

        • When browing in Firefox, when I select text, the kerning changes. Don't know why, but all the text just shifts around.

          This is actually a Firefox bug, not an issue with Gnome (or Ubuntu). Firefox has all it's own text rendering code and doesn't use pango.

          It seems to me, also, that the new bootup splash screen could use a little work. It'd be nice to tighten up the grub>boot splash>Xorg loading so that it appears to be a single, nice looking loadup.

          Agreed, although I prefer to not have the framebu

          • This is actually a Firefox bug, not an issue with Gnome (or Ubuntu). Firefox has all it's own text rendering code and doesn't use pango.

            Whatever it is, I don't experience this problem with either Fedora or SuSE.

            Agreed, although I prefer to not have the framebuffer at all.

            Well, I'm sure it's a matter of preference and priorities. Of course, if you're setting up a server, for example, who cares about splash screens, right? But if I'm setting up a desktop for normal users (or even myself), my ideal would

    • Honestly? Lack of polish would be the last thing I could say against Ubuntu. In my experience (I used Warty and Hoary, now I'm running Kubuntu, which is completely different story), Ubuntu is one of the most polished distros of all. They really made an effort to make everything fit together, strip out as much of the confusing stuff as possible (installer questions, non-GNOME apps, tasksel, ...). You just pop in the CD, answer a few questions, and a long time later (it takes rather long to install), you get

  • Theme (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rathehun ( 818491 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @12:29PM (#14015586) Homepage
    Jeez, ~30 posts, and already people are complaining about Gnome, and the Ubuntu theme. You know what? I like it. I'm sure there are other people who do as well.

    How hard is it to change? Two levels down, IIRC, and you don't have to click apply, unlike on my XP machine. The brown theme is minimalist, it's earthy, and it's a *really* welcome change from the stupid industrial blue/grey offend no-one look of a corporate release.

    To reply to another post, the XP Blue theme sucks big time, but the Energy Blue one, which comes as default (I believe) with Media Center, is rather easy on the eyes. However, I really, would NOT mind a Gnome themed desktop, and if I could use it without the need for a stupid hack like WindowsBlinds/ThemeXP/whateverthefuck, I would.

    I really don't know why there is such a big fuss. Change it if you like. Use Kubuntu.

    Sheesh.

    • You the brown seems to get people stirred up for some reason. I don't like it personally but it's not rocket science to change and it does make the distro distinctive, which these days, is something unique.
    • I really don't know why there is such a big fuss.

      Personally I think the deafult win2k background was the best, it's so ugly I just have to change it, which I assumed was the point. You just don't get more incentive than that. Then I looked at other people and realized they didn't. So a good default theme is actually important, as trivial as it might seen to the people here.
    • Jeez, ~30 posts, and already people are complaining about Gnome, and the Ubuntu theme.

      You should be happy about that! After all, if that's all they find to complain about, it's got to be a damn good release...

    • I like Ubuntu theme, but not the GNOME f dialogs. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I like the brown theme too.
      It has a 'let us stick together and respect the nature' feel.
      However (unrelated to Ubuntu) I agree with a comment above about the gnome file selection dialog.
      It is terribly unintuitive and ugly. I have initiated a lot of people to GNU/Linux, and I've shown both KDE and GNOME. Some like one, some the other.
      However I noticed that novices which chose GNOME spend a lot more time in GNOME file selection dialogs.
      Priority one for the usability of a file selection dialog is shortening the

  • My take on ubuntu. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lussarn ( 105276 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @12:45PM (#14015647)
    I recently switched to use ubuntu in my desktops (from gentoo). It's been mostly painless but there are gotchas with breezy 5.10.

    Multimedia support is close to non existant. I have source installed mplayer, dvd::rip and avidemux (And a few libraries they depend on). That brought multimedia up to par with my gentoo install altough much more hassle than gentoo.

    Default kernel is non preemptible which just sucks if you like me do some heavy multitasking. It's not unusual for me to have 5 mencoders or a couple of compiles going and without preemptible kernel the system is close to non responsive, the problems show up even if you only encode one movie. A kernel compile fixes the problems but some people probably don't want to recompile the kernel (Or have the skill to do so).

    Default firefox is slow. For some reason the default firefox is amazingly slugish. I downloaded a new from mozilla.org and problem is fixed. Still annoying.

    Gentoo has amazinlgy good documentation. Not something against ubuntu but coming from Gentoo it's a big loss.

    Main reason for switching was getting a reasonably new gnome desktop with good package stability. With gentoo you have a too much of a moving system with new releases of packages way too often and too inconsistently. So far ubuntu has been great in that regard.

    All in all it's one of the best desktop distros right now.

    • Re:My take on ubuntu. (Score:5, Informative)

      by RandomJoe ( 814420 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @02:26PM (#14016094)
      I've been dabbling with it (can't quite bring myself to let go of Slackware on my laptop!) and have a comment on one of your items:

      Multimedia support is close to non existant. I have source installed mplayer, dvd::rip and avidemux (And a few libraries they depend on). That brought multimedia up to par with my gentoo install altough much more hassle than gentoo.

      At first it seemed this was the case to me as well, but I have found that many (all?) of the items in "multiverse" - including Mplayer, dvd libraries, etc - don't show up in the basic/default package installer. If I search there, either nothing appears or it shows up grayed out. If I switch to the "advanced" mode and search, everything shows up (with multiple versions even) and I can get it all installed. The only thing not available in the repository was libdvdcss (think that's the name) due to legal issues but libdvdread spit out some instructions when I ran mplayer on how to install that with a supplied shell script.

      I was quite pleased - I have a 1GHz desktop leftover from work that I installed 5.10 on, and once I found the above got Mplayer working easily. In far less time (not to mention frustration) than I've ever spent before I was watching and ripping DVDs. Very nice. This machine is now probably destined to replace my "TV computer" out in the living room.

      I haven't used it enough yet to comment on anything else, it seemed quite speedy enough to me considering the computer. I'm just about willing to install it on the laptop - that'll be the real test for me.

    • I'm in a similar boat -- I recently got an AMD64 laptop and I decided to try Ubuntu's 64 bit support. I was pretty impressed, but I decided to stick with Gentoo anyway (which I run on my tower box). The reason why is that I do a lot of multimedia development, which Ubuntu does not handle very well without some work. It seemed to me that if I was going to futz around with kernels and device drivers and compiling non-Ubuntu-friendly software, I might as well stick to the environment I'm good at. :)

      That's n
    • It seems some of your problems might be solved with a little help from the excellent Ubuntu Guide [ubuntuguide.org] and Ubuntu Forums [ubuntuforums.org]. Packages like DVD::Rip and avidemux sit in some repos that are turned off by default (at least DVD::Rip is; haven't checked avidemux as I pulled my deb install from a forum user). A quick edit to /etc/apt/sources.list and an apt-get update should help.

      Ubuntu Guide has a lot of great tutorials for practical tasks (e.g. -- getting DVD functionality to work, setting up DHCP client, installin

  • Seems to be a long lasting release of Ubuntu (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ace Rimmer ( 179561 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @12:48PM (#14015663)
    There are a few features which would be really nice [missing in comparison in other distros] -- but not planned:

    • A possibility of an offline installation. One can't setup Ubuntu well without Internet access. It would bevery useful for example if one could choose "extra" packages not found on official CD (at least some i18n stuff and reasonable multimedia). At least you would be able to pre-download packages (and all dependent packages! before installation). This would be also pretty nice for multiple installations (small bussines usage).

    • An automatical detection of BIOS RAID during installation process (a pretty common thing on modern computers and usually well supported in Linux). Now you have to do really nasty hacks to get it working (see ahref=https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FakeRaidHowto/rel=ur l2html-13444 [slashdot.org]https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FakeRaidHowto/ > ).

    • A possiblity to switch all bindings from one app to another of your preference. You can now do it for WWW and email. It would be great to have it for text (gvim anyone? ;), video (xine/mplayer), audio (xmms) instead of politically correct but unusable default applications.

    • Reasonably restrictively set firewall setup by default (maybe shorewall)

    • A good backup application (at least system recovery, etc settings snapshots, home dirs backup).

    • Some sort of graphical system messages reporter for desktop users (sniffing logs, reporting serious problems). Something like security update icon on the top bar). Smarttools should also really be installed by default.

    • Disabling completely disfunctional features like "hibernate" on standard desktops ... I installed Ubuntu at least 20 times on different hw and I haven't found a PC on which this would not cause a complete hang up.



    Anyway, Ubuntu is a really great distro. I've moved from Debian to Mandrake (now Mandriva) becouse of outdated packages needed for a workstation ... now I'm back (even though to its desktop cousin). It's becouse it is much simpler and most of things just work out of the (unlike mdk, gentoo and others.) -- and still can be tweaked easily by a poweruser!

    • # Disabling completely disfunctional features like "hibernate" on standard desktops ... I installed Ubuntu at least 20 times on different hw and I haven't found a PC on which this would not cause a complete hang up.

      I've found that it works, it's just ungodly slow, taking almost as much time to load as a full boot, which sort of defeats the point of hybernating.

      • Hibernating (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Crizp ( 216129 )
        I've recently gone all-Linux, and one of the features I miss (and I haven't seen it any place easy-to-get-to in the configs) is taking advantage of suspend-to-RAM functionality, instead of using that blasted temp file. It's so nice pressing the power button, and in a second and a half the desktop's there! No POST, no nothing, from a complete off state (except power to the MB's RAM)

        OK, so I haven't googled enough, and I suspect it's just a matter of executing the correct commands when the ACPI event is tr
    • In debian there is an /etc/alternatives directory which holds systemwide links like "x-window-manager" & "www-browser"... they're systemwide but they're something.

      Whats really needed on this account is better mime type support. Something to associate various types against each other. I propose we start an online web 2.0 folksonomy service for tagging our mime types.

      • Yes, I know of /etc/alternatives. It's quite usefull for shell apps and cmdline.

        But it is really not very useful when we are speaking of desktop environment. You're right that MIME system is mess. There is large number of MIME types which are essentially identical or at least always handled by the same application. And unfortunately not all core programs use it -- for instance firefox has it's own completely different mechanism. So not only you have to change a large portion of MIME associations (and the tr
    • The Ubuntu developers don't make it particularly easy to find, but they do have DVD releases [ubuntu.com] to download, which include much more software than the traditional CD image.
    • This isn't an RTFA slam -- I did have to scour the planning docs for this info, but it was enjoyable, so no complaints:

      -Firewalling: There is a planned implementation of some firewall for the Dapper (6.04) release. I assume this is a basic iptables mod, with some configurable frontend. They mentioned the name of a specific package, but I don't recall what.

      -Backup: There is also a planned implementation of backup software, very simple in implementation, but designed to be largely effective for most "aver
  • anyone know of a screen bug un Breezy? one where after a long period of inactivity the screen won't come back up?

    On Drake (sorta):

    read thru the few comments here so far... If you don't like Gnome then use Kubuntu or even just add KDE and have a choice. This is not an isse of the distro, but of you personal choice. Same applies to the theme. If you don't like it then stop being lazy and change it.... Jeez. maybe we need a tutorial added to it to teach people that they can do this and how...(rolls eyes)

    Readin
    • /. is no place for bug reports - use the very excellent malone!
    • Microsoft has sixty thousand employees worth of developer bandwidth. The question is, is each developer allowed the freedom necessary to see innovation?

      With Google, which Slashdot hails as the chief innovator, when someone has an idea about a new feature or product, they have two options: pursue it on their own, given their ~20% personal project time, or make a proposal and get a small group (usually around five people, from what I've heard) to at least make a mockup.

      With an operating system, inflexibility
  • I just received my Breezy Badger CDs via snailmail today, and Dapper Drake's already available? Great, just great.

  • kudos (Score:2)

    by rayde ( 738949 )
    "polish", "integration", "standards"....

    these are words that i think a whole damn lot of us have been waiting a long time to be able to use when describing a linux distribution. the ubuntu team really is making some progress, so kudos to them!

  • I just downloaded Ubuntu 5.10 about 20 minutes ago. I did wonder why the first mirror was so slow...
  • ...I get a pop-up with a fake "security warning" which got past Opera's "only requested pop-ups" block. I know it has nothign to do with the official product, but if you're going to basicly ad for it why not pick a site which makes you look remotely serious.
  • My first Linux distro was Red Hat's latest, 5.0. It came with the paperback entitled "Learn Linux in 24 Hours", by Bill Brush, IIRC.

    Ubuntu's console install looks exactly like RH 5.0's install console screens. They were klutzy then and they are klutzy now. They detract from Ubuntu's overall image, but once you realize how limited the GNOME desktop is you can understand the match.

  • Disappointing to see Dapper will still include those awful, tired (6 yrs?) old icons.

    Who really thinks of an old life-rescue ring when seeking help? When one wants to engage with an office productivity suite, do we think of an old typewriter? Scissors and Right Angle rule for 'Accessories'?? Nostalgia aside, it's time Ubuntu revisited 'polish' within a contemporary and aesthetic context.

    Placement of icons are also still ugly: look at the 'help' and WWW icons in the menubar of this screenshot [osdir.com]: they are
  • Quack quack quack. It's that ruddy duck again.

    Quack quack
    Who's there?
    Dapper
    Dapper who?
    Da person you are calling knows you are waiting

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