Ubuntu 6.10 - Edgy Eft

[bigtomrodney]

I decided to beat the rush this week so I installed the Edgy Eft RC. That way I'll only be waiting on a few patches on release day.

Just a few thoughts. I like the artwork, though they could have changed the default wallpaper. Even slightly....

Automatix is not at v2.0 and is the perfect companion as usual. Of course it's not packaged with Ubuntu but it should be the first thing you download

Edgy ships with Xorg 7.1 so that means AIGLX is installed by default. This is good news if you want to run Compiz or Beryl. There is a snag though, at least there may be for nVidia users. In order to run AIGLX on nVidia you need the latest beta drivers (9xxx). If you install the linux-restricted-modules you will have an nVidia driver install plus the usual other modules. This is my problem. I use an Atheros based chipset in my wifi. So I need to install the restricted modules. Unfortunately installing the latest nVidia beta driver will cause conflicts with these restricted modules. I've tried a few different things but I think for the moment I'm stuck with choosing between Compiz or Wifi. Funcion over form is the way so wifi needs to run. I'm sure this will be fixed when the 9xxx drivers are added to the repostiories, but I wonder if it might not be a better idea to offer these modules as seperate packages.

(Sure I could compile madwifi, but with distros heavily based on packet managers I don't see the point of having source builds after automatic updates).


Asides from that it's pretty nice so far. Running Firefox 2.0, a few other updates like new splash screen. I'm dissappointed in the Upstart performance. Boot time is exactly the same for me and this was the one feature I was looking forward to.

Biggest question of all though - Why the hell aren't they using NetworkManager? This release is supposed to be about new technologies!

All that said, I actually like this release so far. I'll update as I go and spot the high points and lows.

[antidrugue]

for the moment I'm stuck with choosing between Compiz or Wifi. Funcion over form is the way so wifi needs to run. I'm sure this will be fixed when the 9xxx drivers are added to the repostiories, but I wonder if it might not be a better idea to offer these modules as seperate packages.

Why not use XGL instead then ? It works with NVIDIA stable drivers.
http://wiki.beryl-project.org/index....buntu/Edgy/XGL

I'm dissappointed in the Upstart performance. Boot time is exactly the same for me and this was the one feature I was looking forward to.

I can assure the Ubuntu default kernel would not load as fast using "sysvinit" (instead of "upstart"). I did experiment with Ubuntu 6.10 myself, and it loads incredibly fast with a custom kernel. For example, Ubuntu still has debugging turned on in their default kernels, and has abandonned preemption (a feature Dapper kernel had).

Anyway, "upstart" is not just about boot times, as it is even suppose to replace "cron", "atd", "anacron" and "inetd" in Ubuntu 7.04.

Biggest question of all though - Why the hell aren't they using NetworkManager? This release is supposed to be about new technologies!

Like it or not, NetworkManager is still not ready for prime time in my opinion. For example, it only supports DHCP and doesn't offer a way to assign a static IP address.

Still, overall I think Edgy is definitely a step forward from Dapper.

[bigtomrodney]

I've been using Ubuntu for months, this was actually installed on a machine that wass running Dapper since it was released. I'm looking into XGL but some of the repositories I used to use seem to have removed it in favour of newer Xorg (and hence AIGLX) packages). I'll keep looking.

I know Upstart is about replacing a lot of thebackend services, but for an end user the biggest change would be boot time. For me it takes 3 seconds less than the Dapper install. Not a lot I'm sure you'll agree.

NetworkManager is for quick management. I agree it should add a mechanism for static IPs but there's no reason it can't run alongside the existing setup. SUSE provide this, and even with NetworkManager running I can still use ifconfig and the usual tools to configure the network. Devices like wifi adapters really need an interface like NM because they are intended for mobile use, so editing an interface file everytime you move isn't much good.

Anyway, I'm off to find an XGL repository so I can get back to where I was with Dapper.