Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Monday 20 April 2009, 11:36 AM
New Ubuntu 9.04 installed - not many dead
And the hot news? There is no hot news. I typed in the single command needed to start the process for the pre-launch release candidate, and went off to make the tea. The upgrade downloaded the new files, disabled networking, rearranged the furniture, asked a couple of questions about modified files it wouldn't explain and I didn't understand (so I said yes), asked for a restart, and there it was. Half an hour sipping Earl Grey installed six months of work.
The network disconnection isn't something I remember happening before, when you could carry on browsing even as the world changed beneath your feet. But it makes a great deal of sense: just try and characterise the security threat profile when you're upgrading your network stack while connected. Like a crab shedding its shell, you're better off hiding under a rock until the carapace hardens again.
The new Ubuntu? Looks identical, works identically, is practically identical. The only immediate difference visible is the new notification system in the new Gnome, where black boxes pop up in the top right hand corner to tell you, er, things. So far, that seems to be used by email and IM clients - but not Tweetdeck (I presume because Air doesn't know about it), which throws its own black boxes with its own tales of things up into the same top right hand corner, there to do battle with Ubuntu's own. Of the faster boot time, I cannot say - I haven't timed it, and it was plenty fast already.
New filing system? I wasn't that bored. I will try that - and the various beneath-the-hood changes - on a clean machine later. This was an upgrade to a working system, and the fiddling about can come later.
But the most important news is that there was no news. My standard Ubuntu system at home is a beginning-to-show-its-age Samsung laptop, with a once-was-whizzy ATI graphics chip and a few mild quirks around the audio. The upgrade from 7.10 to 8.04 broke video and audio rather badly; 8.04 to 8.10 rather less so, but still with plenty of fun and games (mostly orbiting around ATI).
This time, nothing. Even VMware, which in the past has collapsed into a twitching heap of tentacles on kernal upgrades - moreover, the sort of twitching heap that is deuced difficult to remove before you can apply the fixes - seemed unaffected by the upgrade. My XP virtual machine started up, if anything, smoother than before: I'm used to the start-up music stuttering if I background the VM during boot; this time, it played perfectly.
I upgraded at 6:30. I turned off at midnight (another wild evening), having forgotten I'd done it. Fantastic.
There is an argument - for want of a better word - among creationists, that while microevolution is possible (small features may change between generations of living beings), macroevolution (ie, a dog to a horse) is impossible. The biologist's world-weary reply is, well, a dog never becomes a horse. Things do change gradually - and if they diverge enough, then one day you'll have a dog and a horse from a common ancestor. In short, there is no 'macroevolution'.
Looking at the experience of changing little and often compared to hugely but ten times as infrequently, I must say that the Ubuntu way is more natural, more evolutionary and certainly less disruptive. Whether that is a good pointer towards the survival of the fittest - we'll just have to wait and see.
It's worked before.
PreviousComments on this post
Very nice.
That definitely beats Windows XP, Vista and Win7 all of which require 8 pieces of info to install and start.
user name
user password
Admin password
computer name
time zone
CDROM key code
Do you want to install Windows Update?
Home or office network?
Windows as an upgrade still requires the last 3 items in one form or another.
I think 9.04 is shaping up to be the best Ubuntu release so far.
> Looks identical, works identically, is practically identical.
Without meaning to sound facetious, is it _worth_ upgrading?! See, I was going to spend this upcoming sunny weekend, but I might not bother...
Well, depends. It's a painless process (one thing did break, but was easy to fix) and it feels a lot smoother and more solid. Haven't worked out why that is yet; some response times have probably improved, but it's difficult to quantify.
As always, if you've got a perfectly good set-up then you can take your time until something suggests itself as a good reason to upgrade. I'm probably going to go a step further and change to ext4 over the weekend, to see if that's even better - I'll do some before and after timing.
Jake - If you are not having any specific problems with Intrepid, and if you are not missing any drivers, then I would say it is a toss-up if it is worth it, and if you did decided to do it, it should be on a nasty, rainy weekend, rather than use a nice weekend for a limited gain.
Jaunty boots much faster than Intrepid, but how often do you have to sit through booting? The new notification and update system really is nicer, but the old one was adequate, and we are used to it. There are updated drivers, and this was the big one for me, because Jaunty includes a working driver for the Chrome 9 video adapter in my HP 2133 Mini-Note. If you aren't having driver problems, well... The Linux kernel and X server have both been updated, but again, unless you specifically need some part of the new functionality, I don't know of any critical "fixes" in either one.
In summary, I would say that I wouldn't skip Jauntly altogether, but in most cases I wouldn't rush (or sacrifice a nice weekend) to get it installed, either.
I just realized that in all of this discussion, we haven't mentioned one very important difference. Ubuntu 8.10 still includes OpenOffice 2.4, while Ubuntu 9.04 includes OpenOffice 3.0. This alone should make 9.04 worth the upgrade for a lot of people.
jw
I upgraded to a Release Candidate at home and was so impressed I did the same at work, breaking my usual wait and see attitude.
It seems much more polished, much snappier and fixes some annoying compiz bugs in Ibex. Best release yet? I also really appreciate the fact the vmware player now sorts itself out after kernel upgrades
Only thing is I swear that Banshee music playback occasionally jumps.
Tried the RC, it would only boot in safe mode. But that is better than (latest betas of) LinuxMint or Fedora which would only display in the first 50-200 pixels of the screen. Re-tried Ubuntu 8.10 and that booted up straight to the desktop without a hitch.
So sadly I will have to wait until the final release, before wondering whether my XP days are finally over.
Planado, what kind of computer, display adapter, screen and resolution are you using?
jw
jw: OpenOffice 3 and work-displacement has persuaded me to pop the installer on ;)
Rupert: would be interesting to hear of your experiences of ext4; I guess a bundle of Cumulative Improvements can make a difference to the user experience.
I have purloined one of those spiffy Intel SSDs, which will be the focal point of some multi-OS, multi-disk format weekend shenanigans. I may also, if I've got time, shove 8.10 and 9.04 onto dual-boot and see if I can quantify why there's such a detectable difference.
You know, reviewing stuff the old way! Ah, does heart good.
Hey jw. Setup's an intel dual-e2200, 2gb ram, 750mb hdd, 22" tft with a max res of 1680 * 1050.
