Ubuntu 9.10 has been released

[End User]

Ubuntu 9.10 is now available for download:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

I've been running pre-release versions of it in VMs on my Windows 7 gaming rig and on my MacBook Pro (via rEFIt) for the past month and I love it. I've decided to take a leap and replace my main desktop machine, a Dual 2.7 G5, with an Ubuntu 9.10 rig (the dream of Apple releasing a consumer tower is dead). At least I can finally make use of the cast off parts from my gaming rig upgrades.

[grantmeaname]

I'm waiting for the JBI verdict on this one...

[Pagey]

Don't forget to hit the mirrors!

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors

[notfred]

I put the Beta of Edubuntu on a PC for my kids a couple of weeks ago. It hasn't crashed yet

[emkubed]

I put the Beta of Edubuntu on a PC for my kids a couple of weeks ago. It hasn't crashed yet

How do you find Edubuntu more suitable for your kids than vanilla (or is that orange-chocolate) Ubuntu? I have 2 young children and was thinking of putting 9.10 on a little Shuttle for them. Convince me.

[cubical10]

Once again, for some reason the torrent links for UNR are buried and nearly impossible to find.
Direct download from my local mirror, 9k, stopped that waste of time.
Via torrent, download ~675kB/s

http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu-releases/9.10/ubuntu-9.10-netbook-remix-i386.iso.torrent

[notfred]

I put the Beta of Edubuntu on a PC for my kids a couple of weeks ago. It hasn't crashed yet

How do you find Edubuntu more suitable for your kids than vanilla (or is that orange-chocolate) Ubuntu? I have 2 young children and was thinking of putting 9.10 on a little Shuttle for them. Convince me.

It's basically the same as the standard Ubuntu but with a bunch of educational packages (GCompris) and some extra games thrown in. My 5 yr old is addicted to playing on it now just trying the various GCompris packages.

[BlackJammy]

Once again, for some reason the torrent links for UNR are buried and nearly impossible to find.
Direct download from my local mirror, 9k, stopped that waste of time.
Via torrent, download ~675kB/s

http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu-releases/9.10/ubuntu-9.10-netbook-remix-i386.iso.torrent

Heh, I downloaded both 32-and 64-bit versions from Sweden. Got 800kb/s.

[just brew it!]

I tried the beta and RC briefly in a VM; hopefully I will have time to take it for a serious spin (on real hardware) this weekend.

I'm grabbing the ISOs from the mirror at Argonne National Labs, which is really close to where I live; I don't seem to be having any speed problems.

I added 9.10 to my nightly apt-mirror job a couple of weeks ago, so my local copy of the 9.10 repository is already all synced up. (This should make installation of any optional packages nearly instantaneous...)

[etilena]

Once again, for some reason the torrent links for UNR are buried and nearly impossible to find.
Direct download from my local mirror, 9k, stopped that waste of time.
Via torrent, download ~675kB/s

http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu-releases/9.10/ubuntu-9.10-netbook-remix-i386.iso.torrent

Thanks for the link. Will be trying to install it on my Eee PC tonight.

Wonder if I will see any performance gains over 9.04.

[cheesyking]

Once again, for some reason the torrent links for UNR are buried and nearly impossible to find.
Direct download from my local mirror, 9k, stopped that waste of time.
Via torrent, download ~675kB/s

http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu-releases/9.10/ubuntu-9.10-netbook-remix-i386.iso.torrent

Thanks for the link. Will be trying to install it on my Eee PC tonight.

Wonder if I will see any performance gains over 9.04.

It seems a lot quicker on my aspire one... I think this release finally brings the fix for intel graphics, so that's probably a big part.

Battery life seems better too... the battery that 9.04 estimated at giving 6+ hours is now estimated at 8+. OK so I haven't bothered to time it but there is a very noticeable improvement

[grantmeaname]

This is the first release that's met my very narrow picky requirements!! I'm a huge fan, naturally. I've set in to customizing everything now that I can use my display as a display with the laptop shut.

[DancinJack]

I'm posting from it now. Seems to be quite a bit quicker than 9.04. Off to try and break it!

[just brew it!]

I'm posting from it now. Seems to be quite a bit quicker than 9.04. Off to try and break it!

Yes, even in a VM it seemed to boot fast and was very responsive. I'm torn between cobbling together a test system to try it on first, or just throwing it onto my main desktop and crossing my fingers...

[DancinJack]

I'm posting from it now. Seems to be quite a bit quicker than 9.04. Off to try and break it!

Yes, even in a VM it seemed to boot fast and was very responsive. I'm torn between cobbling together a test system to try it on first, or just throwing it onto my main desktop and crossing my fingers...

Really I don't see a reason to not throw it onto your main desktop. Seems quite stable, and seriously it's really fast.

[wibeasley]

I'm torn between cobbling together a test system to try it on first, or just throwing it onto my main desktop and crossing my fingers...

What do you use for backups? I'm starting to use PartImage, but I don't have any allegiance built up yet.

[Blazex]

got it running on my laptop, a few tweaks here and there, originally it wouldnt let me get gstreamer packages until i opened synaptic and did a manual check and it finally downloaded the info for everything in synaptic instead of what was just on the system and managed to get it rolling from here.

[pedro]

Seems very polished thus far.

Google Chrome >>> Firefox.

Q: I'm running the RC - do I need to d/l and install the final release or will my RC be 'morphed' into the final release thru' updates?

[grantmeaname]

This is the first release that's met my very narrow picky requirements!! I'm a huge fan, naturally. I've set in to customizing everything now that I can use my display as a display with the laptop shut.

Now it refuses to work. Anyone know what CRTC 135 is and why gdm can't set it?
Edit: And Catalyst Control Center refuses to start in "Administrative" mode, also known as the only mode with any configurable options.
And gdm only disables my external screen, regardless of which screen I set to "on" and which screen I set to the unrelated status of "off".
And I'm still having a CRTC 135 error when it decides it can't do anything. Except that when my mouse goes near the balloon it disappears until I move my mouse away.

P.S. Mine is taking forever to shut down. Is that supposed to be even remotely as quick as boot up?

[notfred]

I'm grabbing the ISOs from the mirror at Argonne National Labs, which is really close to where I live; I don't seem to be having any speed problems.

I added 9.10 to my nightly apt-mirror job a couple of weeks ago, so my local copy of the 9.10 repository is already all synced up. (This should make installation of any optional packages nearly instantaneous...)

If you have a local apt-mirror, why bother downloading the ISOs? You can just install from your local mirror:

1) Ensure that your mirror includes "karmic main/debian-installer restricted/debian-installer"
2) Grab the network boot files from http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/ ... s/netboot/ and dump them in your tftpboot directory.
3) Network boot your box and when it asks which location to install from, point it to your mirror.

I did this and with my GigE LAN, the downloading of the packages was very quick, it took far longer (about 3x longer) to actually unpack and install them than it did to download them. Went from a bare PC to up and running very quickly.

[notfred]

Q: I'm running the RC - do I need to d/l and install the final release or will my RC be 'morphed' into the final release thru' updates?

It should just morph through the updates. If there was anything screwy in the install (extra packages or missing packages or something wacky in disk layout) you will not get those fixed through the updates and will have to fix manually or reinstall, but if you aren't having any problems then I would say you are good to go.

[pedro]

Q: I'm running the RC - do I need to d/l and install the final release or will my RC be 'morphed' into the final release thru' updates?

It should just morph through the updates. If there was anything screwy in the install (extra packages or missing packages or something wacky in disk layout) you will not get those fixed through the updates and will have to fix manually or reinstall, but if you aren't having any problems then I would say you are good to go.

thanks very much

[notfred]

Now it refuses to work. Anyone know what CRTC 135 is and why gdm can't set it?

From a quick Google, I think it is the display controller output (as in CRT Controller) and has properties about size of display and how it is rotated. As you've been playing around with display layouts, that makes some sense. Sorry but I'm not sure how to fix it, if you have no GUI at all, you can always look for the instructions on how to reset all the X display settings in Ubuntu and start again.

P.S. Mine is taking forever to shut down. Is that supposed to be even remotely as quick as boot up?

Definitely something wrong there. On all 4 of my Ubuntu systems, shutdown is significantly faster than boot up. You could try switching to the text console (Ctrl-Alt-F1), login as your self and then do "sudo poweroff" and see if it will show what is taking a long time to die.

[henry44]

And still cuts the battery life of my Lenovo X200 from 7-8 hours to 4-5 hours. Looks like no Linux joy for me

[just brew it!]

Yes, even in a VM it seemed to boot fast and was very responsive. I'm torn between cobbling together a test system to try it on first, or just throwing it onto my main desktop and crossing my fingers...

Really I don't see a reason to not throw it onto your main desktop. Seems quite stable, and seriously it's really fast.

Yeah, I'm going to do that shortly. The plan is to install to a different hard drive though, to make it easy to go back just in case. I'd prefer not to do an in-place upgrade; I did that with the 8.10 -> 9.04 transition, and while it mostly went OK, there were a few things that just seemed a little squirrely afterwards and took a bit of tweaking to get sorted out. So I've decided to do a clean install for 9.10.

What do you use for backups? I'm starting to use PartImage, but I don't have any allegiance built up yet.

I back up by doing an rsync over to another box. I also just set up a drive dock, so I will be periodically taking snapshots to external drives for extra insurance.

If you have a local apt-mirror, why bother downloading the ISOs? You can just install from your local mirror:

1) Ensure that your mirror includes "karmic main/debian-installer restricted/debian-installer"
2) Grab the network boot files from http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/ ... s/netboot/ and dump them in your tftpboot directory.
3) Network boot your box and when it asks which location to install from, point it to your mirror.

I did this and with my GigE LAN, the downloading of the packages was very quick, it took far longer (about 3x longer) to actually unpack and install them than it did to download them. Went from a bare PC to up and running very quickly.

Thanks for the tip. I may give that a try, even though I've already got the ISOs now.

Now it refuses to work. Anyone know what CRTC 135 is and why gdm can't set it?

From a quick Google, I think it is the display controller output (as in CRT Controller) and has properties about size of display and how it is rotated. As you've been playing around with display layouts, that makes some sense. Sorry but I'm not sure how to fix it, if you have no GUI at all, you can always look for the instructions on how to reset all the X display settings in Ubuntu and start again.

grantmeaname, are you using the ATI drivers from ATI's site, or the restricted drivers from Ubuntu's repository? (I assume you're not using the Open Source drivers, since you mention Catalyst Control Center...)

Speaking of broken video drivers, anyone care to comment on how well this release plays with nVidia's proprietary drivers? My main desktop currently has an nVidia card in it. 9.04 has been working OK with the proprietary drives in dual-head mode, other than the usual breakage whenever there's a kernel update (but once you've worked through that once, you know the drill and it ceases to be more than a minor annoyance).

[grantmeaname]

Now it refuses to work. Anyone know what CRTC 135 is and why gdm can't set it?

From a quick Google, I think it is the display controller output (as in CRT Controller) and has properties about size of display and how it is rotated. As you've been playing around with display layouts, that makes some sense.

That's about as far I got. I did eventually coax catalyst to start in administrative mode, so it's working despite that.

P.S. Mine is taking forever to shut down. Is that supposed to be even remotely as quick as boot up?

Definitely something wrong there. On all 4 of my Ubuntu systems, shutdown is significantly faster than boot up. You could try switching to the text console (Ctrl-Alt-F1), login as your self and then do "sudo poweroff" and see if it will show what is taking a long time to die.[/quote]

It's hanging on some error about a buffer and device loop0... next time I shut down I'll write down the message because "loop0 shutdown error" isn't getting me anywhere on Google.
It's good to know it's supposed to be quick.

grantmeaname, are you using the ATI drivers from ATI's site, or the restricted drivers from Ubuntu's repository? (I assume you're not using the Open Source drivers, since you mention Catalyst Control Center...)

I'm using the restricted drivers from ubuntu's repository. Should I be?

[just brew it!]

And still cuts the battery life of my Lenovo X200 from 7-8 hours to 4-5 hours. Looks like no Linux joy for me

Do you know if CPU power management is enabled? Does it seem to be running at full speed most of the time, or is it throttling down? There's a little tray app you can install (I forget the name off the top of my head) which will continuously display the current CPU frequency in the menu bar.

[just brew it!]

It's hanging on some error about a buffer and device loop0... next time I shut down I'll write down the message because "loop0 shutdown error" isn't getting me anywhere on Google.
It's good to know it's supposed to be quick.

The loop0 device is used to "loop" block devices to remap them to other devices. For example, if you directly mount an ISO image, that uses a loop device (because you're logically making a file on disk look like a CD/DVD drive). Not sure why there would be one in use when you shut down unless you're doing something unusual. (This isn't a wubi install is it? That might use a loop device for the root file system... not sure.)

grantmeaname, are you using the ATI drivers from ATI's site, or the restricted drivers from Ubuntu's repository? (I assume you're not using the Open Source drivers, since you mention Catalyst Control Center...)

I'm using the restricted drivers from ubuntu's repository. Should I be?

If your card is supported, then yeah that is probably your best bet. The tradeoff is that the ones from Ubuntu's restricted repository are more likely to play nice with Ubuntu; the ones from ATI's site are more likely to play nice with the latest cards (since they are usually a few versions ahead of the ones Ubuntu has tested and repackaged).

[grantmeaname]

This isn't a wubi install is it? That might use a loop device for the root file system... not sure.)

Yeah, it is...

[just brew it!]

This isn't a wubi install is it? That might use a loop device for the root file system... not sure.)

Yeah, it is...

That's probably the reason for the slow shutdown. Wubi needs to play some games to trick Ubuntu into thinking that a file on your Windows partition is a physical hard drive; this likely involves the use of a loopback block device. The error message you described is an indication that the tear-down of that loopback device probably isn't happening as cleanly as it should. (As far as the reason why the loopback tear-down is failing, I have no idea... I don't use wubi.)