Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail Released

http://releases.ubuntu.com/raring/

by zeis • 13 years ago

368 288 13 years ago

releases.ubuntu.com

roevhat• 13 years ago

Who will be upgrading from 12.04? :-)

Icer5k• 13 years ago

I'd imagine most people on 12.04 will stick with it until 14.04 comes out. 12.04 is an LTS release, and is supported for 3-5 years from the release date where 12.10 through 13.10 are normal releases, and are only supported for 9 months from release.

However, anyone on 12.10 should be able to "do-release-upgrade" and upgrade themselves to 13.04.

bad_user• 13 years ago

I wanted to stay on 12.04, however 12.10 came with the option to encrypt your whole hard-disk straight from the installer with dm-crypt, which is much better than ecryptfs, at least when it comes to performance. And manually encrypting your hard-disk with dm-crypt can be quite painful.

The downside of that is that 12.10 and non-LTS versions in general only get bug fixes for critical bugs, otherwise the bug fix is the upgrade to the next version, in this case 13.04. So you end up on the upgrade treadmill, whether you want it or not.

I'm waiting for a month at least before installing any new Ubuntu version though. At release they tend to be a little unstable.

kijin• 13 years ago

Minor correction: 13.04 and 13.10 will only be supported for 9 months, but 12.10 will be supported for 18 months.

nisa• 13 years ago

Ubuntu backports newer kernel versions and xorg packages[1]. I hope this will land in precise soon. That's good enough for me + the additional ppa here and there. I won't be upgrading to anything non-LTS on any non home machine again. It's not worth the pain.

1: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack

Zigurd2• 13 years ago

I did and am very pleased. Unity actually works. Suspend works. It's fast and smooth.

My only problems were in installing it on a new laptop. I wanted to dual-boot Windows 8 and Ubuntu. No dice. Turn off signed booting, wipe the weird set of partitions Sony uses for Win 8 and then things went smoothly. I'm keeping the old machine for Windows 7.

Random_Person• 13 years ago

Did you upgrade or format/install? I'm pondering it now. I've had quite a few system hangs lately and am wondering if I should even attempt the upgrade to 12.10

buster• 13 years ago

Now what about releease notes? :-) (edit: some information is here https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/TechnicalOverview )

Currently i am thinking of switching to LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) because i don't really like the way Ubuntu is going with Unity, Mir, upstart, doing too much stuff on its own.

Anyone with experience from LMDE here? Is it stable? Pros? Cons?

qznc• 13 years ago

I switch to Korora for my laptop. It is basically the Mint of Fedora. Quite happy so far.

My feeling is that Fedora has the better engineering, but Ubuntu has better polish. Korora puts some icing on top: good font rendering, Adobe Reader, Skype, nvidia drivers.

Fedora stays closer to upstream than Ubuntu. They just package Gnome 3 for example.

https://kororaproject.org/

dumi2• 13 years ago

I'm using openSuse. It's fast and stable. Ubuntu Gnome ( http://ubuntugnome.org/ ) is also a good choice, but its not pure gnome as always.

Surio2• 13 years ago

openSUSE: Did you have problems with speed? Or nepomunk? I was eager to have a go when it came out (12.3), and has been a very raggedy experience for me so far. nepomunk constantly crashes, the system is veeery slow (on KDE at least) etc.

fakeer2• 13 years ago

Used it sometime ago. It was good. Sane. Beautiful with quite normal decisions regarding what users want/need, contrary to Ubuntu's what we want users to want/need. Stable. Loved the way it worked just out of the box.

And the best thing was it didn't depend on Ubuntu. I said this because I liked even Mint Desktop better than Ubuntu which it was based upon.

Since then I've switched to some other OS.

vacri3• 13 years ago

I was on LMDE a year or two ago. I still found it a little 'one-step-removed'. Cinnamon is in the Debian repos now - just use Debian testing or unstable.

claudius9• 13 years ago

rmadison claims that it is only in sid, which is an important distinction, as current testing will soon be released as Wheezy.

simon_weber• 13 years ago

I tried stock Mint for some time, but found it buggy. I was a longtime Ubuntu user before that, having switched for reasons similar to yours.

Since then I've moved on to CrunchBang [0], which I absolutely love. For me, it hits the sweet spot of having everything I need without all the extra pizzazz (cruft?) of something like Ubuntu or Mint.

[0] http://crunchbang.org

Surio2• 13 years ago

I've liked ubuntu and actually still use it.

I started using #! sometime ago. I agree with the lightweight aspect of it very much. One session on openSUSE on KDE reminds me of how lightweight crunchbang is :-D

For people already on non-ubuntu debian systems, I would recommend taking a spin on it.

kintamanimatt4• 13 years ago

It was buggy when Cinnamon was new, but now it's really quite stable and proves to be no more or less buggy than stock Ubuntu or any other distro. There were bizarre memory leaks in Cinnamon but those were fixed a long time ago.

There is an ongoing issue with Mint Update, but I'm aware a patch has been submitted. In the meantime I just run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y && exit` every day. (For whatever reason kernel updates get held back if apt-get upgrade is run instead of apt-get dist-upgrade.)

Mint is awesome and one of the better distros out there. Linux Mint 15 looks like it's going to be a decent improvement too.

dave1010uk2• 13 years ago

I've switched all my desktop/laptop installs to Xubuntu. All you need to do is "sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop" and you get a nice, fast, clean desktop. It's also easy to switch back to Ubuntu and, as it's just a remix of Ubuntu, 99% of all the packages just work, support documentation is still valid and practically shares the same user base.

Xubuntu is still lead by Ubuntu though and it currently uses upstart. I'm not sure if Xubuntu will use Mir in the future.

barbs• 13 years ago

I second Xubuntu. Still the distro I use on my linux machine to this day. I actually tried Linux Mint Debian Edition. I think the two main things that turned me off were its inferior support for particular third-party programs (I think they were Skype or Wine), and its general feel (font and window management seemed rough). This was about a year ago I think, so YMMV

csense2• 13 years ago

The parent comment made me check out the official site.

The top feature on this page is a deal-breaker for me: http://xfce.org/about/tour

A Linux distro with no local man pages? Seriously? I sometimes use my laptop in places that don't have wifi. Not to mention the fact that the online manpages may become out of sync with upstream, or that the online manpage may describe a different version than what you have installed locally, e.g. if you're using an LTS version that's years old...

etfb• 13 years ago

My experience with Mint less than a year ago was that the Cinnamon interface was so bugridden I actually looked forward to going back to Unity. The only real bug I've encountered in Unity is the integration between it and LibreOffice that renders menu keyboard shortcuts inoperative (Alt+F doesn't open the File menu, and so on). It's a known problem but the Ubuntu, Debian, Unity, Gnome, LibreOffice and OpenOffice people all keep passing the buck and nobody is considering it a high enough priority to get in there and fix it.

If Unity had a functional Alt+Tab interface (swapping between open windows instead of open applications) I'd have no further complaints at all. I've grown used to it. Can't wait to see how 13.04 improves things.

yebyen• 13 years ago

Alt+Tab is done the same way in Gnome 3, that is, if you don't know about Alt+`, you're going to have a bad time.

Honestly I try to use E17 whenever possible (there is a bug against vmware player that makes it impossible to use them together at length, virt-manager and kvm-spice is only so helpful in comparison, but that means for me it's mostly E17 and some time in another system with Windows loaded in a VM)

In E17 the Alt+Tab behavior works as described (within the current desktop only, to keep large numbers of windows manageable... this may be an option, if you want Alt+Tab to switch between all open windows, there are a lot of options)

I know it's fashionable to use the desktop environment that comes with your distribution/pick a distro that has the DE you want, but I like to push E17 at every opportunity, it can usually be installed in any distro without too much trouble, and especially now that you can't claim it will "never be released" there should be stable packages in your modern repos :)

I don't care too much about the next Ubuntu release personally, I am waiting for eLive Gem ~3.0 (whatever version is next) on Debian Wheezy which should be out soon!

RyanMcGreal• 13 years ago

I used Cinnamon for a while, and occasionally the desktop would freeze and I'd have to restart X.

Matt_Cutts• 13 years ago

Cinnamon has gotten much better. You might want to give it another shot.

pnathan• 13 years ago

I've switched from Ubuntu to Bodhi and then to Gentoo. Much more enjoyable experience for my power-user needs.

josteink• 13 years ago

It does feel slightly odd to (finally) have arm listed as an available architecture for the images. And I say that as someone who has run Ubuntu on my "Android tablet".

I guess I'm just not yet used to "proper Linux" being something you can download for embedded-type architectures and devices without heading to XDA first.

Still. Definitely Good to see Ubuntu expanding support to the sort of devices which are actually new and interesting.

0x0• 13 years ago

That's been a common sight for Debian users for ages :)

http://www.debian.org/ports/ http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.7/

jcastro2• 13 years ago

Ubuntu's had ARM images for going on like 4 years now!

ThePinion• 13 years ago

I've been using it for a month and haven't regret a single second of it. by the way, Nexus 7 and other MTP device users: plug your device in and enjoy full read write support by default :)

jaibot• 13 years ago

Finally!

Newky• 13 years ago

Wow, thats a great new feature.

This is one thing that really infuriates me about new android devices. Their lack of syncing support with linux boxes.

Does anyone know if this support is something that can be backported to 12.04?

austinbirch• 13 years ago

I had some success following this[1], though it didn’t seem to handle transferring lots of files at once very well.

[1] http://www.webupd8.org/2013/01/upgrade-to-gvfs-with-mtp-supp...

fixedd• 13 years ago

Adding support was pretty trivial in the past, install a package and edit a config file. Just google your device + ubuntu and you'll more than likely find instructions.

w1ntermute2• 13 years ago

> Nexus 7 and other MTP device users: plug your device in and enjoy full read write support by default :)

Is browsing/copying laggy or slow at all, like on Windows 7?

jebblue9• 13 years ago

What is this MTP crap? With my Nexus One I could plug into any Windows or Linux machine and transfer files. With my new Nexus 4, uhm nope. Not without hassle. It sounds like MTP doesn't work all that well and you have to upgrade to the new Ubuntu get it. I would bet that the next Google series of phones won't allow any such mounting. Maybe not even any local storage on the phones. Everything on their servers, their "cloud". It's starting to piss me off.

Nican• 13 years ago

Is it possible to make an update from 12.10 without having to reinstall the system?

EDIT: "sudo do-release-upgrade -d" did the trick. I will keep updated on progress.

chipaca• 13 years ago

You shouldn't need the -d, because it's no longer the development release.

k__• 13 years ago

Am I now able to install it in addition to an UEFI Win8 installation without any tricks?

csmattryder• 13 years ago

Doesn't seem to be any point for me [1], I don't use Python, or Libreoffice. And I use gnome-session-fallback, can't stand Unity, and just wish they'd give me an OOBE setting for having an 'old-school' Gnome 3 session!

Although Linux 3.8.8 might well make me upgrade.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/TechnicalOverview

Kurtz79• 13 years ago

Don't update, then, and use whatever distribution suits you better. It's one the greatest things about Linux, choice.

No change/upgrade will ever fit every user. I use Python, Libreoffice (not that these are really dependant of the new release) and I like Unity, can't wait to try it out.

gizmo6863• 13 years ago

You do not have to change distributions because you do not like the desktop, you can simply install another one.

drivebyacct23• 13 years ago

There is a GNOME flavor of Ubuntu. You can simply install `sudo apt-get install gnome-shell`.

cpa• 13 years ago

Changelog: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/TechnicalOverview#New...

stefanve• 13 years ago

I played with the beta and I have to say that it is way more polished than 12.04/12.10. I have played for many years with Linux (since early 1990s) but it was always to much of a hazel to use it as my main os. But since 12.04 I fully switched from OSX to Ubuntu the only thing I kind of missed was the polish of osx. 13.04 makes lots of things nicer and more fluid. I actually like Ubuntu better than osx. One thing left to do is to get some descent icons and getting rid of the default orange :)

Shish2k2• 13 years ago

Speaking of which, one thing that most people coming to ubuntu from windows and OSX often don't spot (which I think you have, but I post mostly for the benefit of other readers) - Ubuntu, much as canonical has done a lot of custom work on it, is still linux. You can customise it in pretty much any and every way that you want. You can even not use Unity at all if you don't like it -- no reason to throw out all the great foundations and switch to a different distro just because you don't like one of the default UI settings :P

(There are several valid reasons for switching from one linux distro to another, it just makes me sad to see so many "I don't like Unity so I'm moving to Gentoo" posts -_-)

kostya-kow3• 13 years ago

It is still possible to customize Ubuntu, but you cannot customize Unity itself. It is no longer the goal of canonical. Canonical is trying to make an OS for an average person, who doesn't care about customization. Power users (ie normal GNU/Linux users) are not their target audience.

kunai5• 13 years ago

> no reason to throw out all the great foundations and switch to a different distro just because you don't like one of the default UI settings

Installing Cinnamon on Ubuntu was broken, and many things didn't integrate like they did with the default install, which is why I just switched to Mint in the first place rather than screwing around with UI settings.

I got fed up with the DEs and switched to #! after about 2 months.

I still think it's Openbox, Wmaker, or die.

droelf• 13 years ago

if you want nice icons i can only recommend faenza from tiheum, he also has a ppa.

http://tiheum.deviantart.com/art/Faenza-Icons-173323228 https://launchpad.net/~tiheum/+archive/equinox

fsiefken• 13 years ago

If you don't like orange, take a look at Lubuntu 13.04. It has nice minimal icon set and is blue instead of orange.

progrock3• 13 years ago

Yeah it's fugly by half (Ubuntu that is). And I once even liked the browns! I prefer the subdued themes. I'm almost happy with Bluebird and Xfce, but I still have theme/colour scheme issues. I'm forever hoping for a pretty and consistent interface throughout Ubuntu.

khyryk• 13 years ago

One could first try installing Advanced Settings from the Ubuntu Software Center and playing around with the GTK+ theme and the icon theme.

BenoitEssiambre3• 13 years ago

It's weird, I've been on Linux for almost 20 years and Ubuntu as my main computer for 10 and for me it's the opposite. I find OSX has finally almost caught up to Linux with Mountain Lion.

It's crazy how many OSX features come from the unix world but in a delayed, better looking fashion.

The last missing major piece for OSX was good multiple workspace management, which came in the form of mission control and the touchpad gestures that makes it so efficient. I don't know if its any good with a mouse though.

Efficient multiple workspaces is a critical productivity feature for me. It's like having multiple monitors without having to carry a desk and a bunch of monitors with me all the time.

The previous OSX implementation called 'spaces' took too many actions to switch workspaces unless you had your hands on the keyboard and had setup shortcuts. This made OSX unusable to me.

Unfortunately, Ubuntu also regressed by getting rid of the single-click workspace switcher (which was working beautifully since like 1995) and doing a multi-workspace UI that resembles Lion's 'spaces'. However, I was able to remedy this by setting my middle mouse button to bring up the workspace switcher which is really fast.

The other Ubuntu regression which annoys me to no end and again is the same in OSX is that clicking on a dock icon when you are in a workspace and there is an instance of the app opened in another workspace makes you automatically jump to the other one instead of opening a new instance in the current workspace.

This assumes I separate applications on a per workspace basis which is stupid. I already have a dock to get access to different applications. Workspaces are used to separate projects or workflows.

Each workspace needs its own browser window that holds the tabs related to the project being worked on and also its own terminals and text editors. I don't want to be yanked out of a context because I tried opening an editor and there wasn't one already in the workspace.

Hopefully this is eventually fixed in both OSX and Ubuntu.

dhimes2• 13 years ago

I've always just used ctrl-alt-arrow for ubuntu (and other nixes)- add a shift and the current window comes along for a ride. When did this break? (I'm still on 12.04 LTS)

jcastro2• 13 years ago

> The other Ubuntu regression which annoys me to no end and again is the same in OSX is that clicking on a dock icon when you are in a workspace and there is an instance of the app opened in another workspace makes you automatically jump to the other one instead of opening a new instance in the current workspace.

If you middle click the icon it will open a new one instead of taking you to an existing one.

eggoa• 13 years ago

"too much of a hazel"? What does this mean?

portmanteaufu• 13 years ago

I suspect he meant "too much of a hassle." I like his version too.

dumi2• 13 years ago

Anybody have the link for Ubuntu Gnome 13.04 release note or for download links?

shritesh• 13 years ago

Here you go, http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-gnome/releases/raring/relea...

This is the closest to any release notes: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/ReleaseNotes#Ubuntu_G...

StavrosK2• 13 years ago

Does anyone know if this will run on the Raspberry Pi (at least the Ubuntu Mini version)?

fakeer2• 13 years ago

Any particular reason or use case for this?

A friend has received his Pi yesterday, hasn't set it up. Can ask him to try it :-)

shrikant• 13 years ago

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/848154

Looks like it never will, unless there's a Raspberry Pi with an ARMv7 (or up) arch.

Is there any particular reason you want it though? I use Raspbian on mine, and it works just fine. I couldn't be arsed with a GUI though, since the RasPi is just too underpowered to run a GUI alongside all the other crap I have running on it.

StavrosK2• 13 years ago

Not really, just because of familiarity with Ubuntu Server. Raspbian has been pretty great so far, no complaints here.

rdale• 13 years ago

No it won't because the Raspberry Pi uses an older ARMv6 CPU type that isn't supported by Ubuntu.

dbond• 13 years ago

Raspberry pi has an arm6 chip I think and the minimum for ubuntu is arm7. It could be done but the OS would require considerable modification.

vy8vWJlco2• 13 years ago

They supposedly address the privacy bug:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/04/ubuntu_13_04_review/

vy8vWJlco2• 13 years ago

Well, I wish I saw the other review (or downloaded it) before getting my hopes up. It looks like they didn't fix f*ck all.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/25/ubuntu_13_04_review/

Note to self: continue to expect the worst in people.

(Edit: no malice understood, just brooding...)

takluyver7• 13 years ago

There's a simple off switch for all online results in the dash, and it works. The dash is being improved so you can disable individual result sources, but that work wasn't ready in time for this release. I don't think there's any particular malice in the delay.

Skalman• 13 years ago

They still haven't updated the main page, nor the download page - http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop still suggests to get Ubuntu 12.10.

Keyframe• 13 years ago

I was looking around youtube for unity videos and found Richard Stallman talk about Ubuntu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP8CNp-vksc

drivebyacct23• 13 years ago

Seriously, can anyone tell me if they fixed the partitioner? I spent enough times dd-ing and rebooting before giving up. :(

apawloski• 13 years ago

I haven't had a problem with the partitioner in years. What was your experience?

drivebyacct23• 13 years ago

There were a number of dupes of this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1080...

Looks like it was fixed at the last second.

eli_gottlieb• 13 years ago

  esennesh@lap282:~$ sudo do-release-upgrade
  Checking for a new Ubuntu release
  No new release found

kodisha• 13 years ago

Their timing, especially for us in Europe is really bad.

If they announce update it should be available for us before we start doing actual work.

sold2• 13 years ago

They didn't announce the new version. The post is premature.

wpietri2• 13 years ago

This now is working for me.

Osmium• 13 years ago

In case anyone else was wondering what the difference was between the Mac and non-Mac releases is:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/37999/what-is-different-about...

legierski• 13 years ago

Can't wait to get back from work to update from 12.10 !

niggler• 13 years ago

What happens after the Z release (coming up in 5 years)?

autotravis• 13 years ago

Aardvark

jfoster2• 13 years ago

Perhaps they start from A again. If they really want to challenge themselves they should start with Aa.

teach• 13 years ago

An 'A' release, probably. I suspect they'll be like hurricane naming in that regard.

lacker• 13 years ago

Aahing Aardvark

anoncow5• 13 years ago

Oohing Oompaloompahs

smithzvk• 13 years ago

Why do they still recommend 32 bit for everybody?

I have been using 64 whenever possible. I wonder if any weird behavior can be attributed to it?

mclemme2• 13 years ago

Been using 64-bit for the last 5-6 years I think, never experienced any major issues with it. Only weird isses I've had were browser plugins (java and flash), which were a bit dodgy on 64-bit, but that was years ago.

columbo• 13 years ago

It's actually just poor wording: http://askubuntu.com/questions/1441/why-does-ubuntu-download...

kintamanimatt4• 13 years ago

A few drivers and Flash used to have issues with the 64-bit versions. Also 32-bit works everywhere, whereas 64-bit doesn't. Ubuntu tries to be n00b-friendly and recommending the 32-bit version stacks the odds in Canonical's favor that inexperienced users will have a better first impression during install and first use.

jbicha• 13 years ago

We've now crossed a threshold as there are millions of Windows 8 computers with UEFI by default which won't boot 32-bit operating systems by default.

fulafel• 13 years ago

Last I looked, they had ~30% of users running on 64-bit incapable hardware, and they don't want to ask techincal hardware questions on the download page. For example Intel Atom CPUs only got 64-bit relatively recently, the earlier netbook generations were 32-bit only.

Edit: found the source. It was actually 25%, a year ago. And the other reason was that the error message when trying 64-bit on incapable hardware was very cryptic. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2012-April/03...

mclemme2• 13 years ago

The minimal CD can be found here:

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/raring/main/installer...

Always use that instead of the official desktop CDs, to avoid all the extra programs that I never need.

Unosolo• 13 years ago

Poor GPU support (lack of drivers) is still a major deal-breaker for home and media use. As of now hardware should still be selected on the basis of available driver support and it's a major obstacle and the situation doesn't seem to have improved significantly since 3-5 years ago.

kostya-kow3• 13 years ago

All the hardware I purchased in the past several years works with most GNU/Linux distros. There is some minor problems sometimes, but usually they do not force me to purchase hardware specifically for it.

xradionut2• 13 years ago

The only problem I have is with the Nvidia drivers, especially Optimus/separate video card on my laptop which doesn't work. :(

But the stock Intel driver works well enough, just don't want to figure out what sort of CLI cargo cult fixing it will take to get it going.

alirov2• 13 years ago

Have you tried using bumblebee[1]? I use it on my Samsung QX411 which has an NVidia GeForce GT 525M video card along with the onboard Intel. The Intel card is used by default at all times. If you want to run a program using the NVidia card, just prepend 'optirun' to the command.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee

takluyver7• 13 years ago

I suspect it can't improve much more without a paradigm shift. That could be OEMs shipping Linux pre-installed along with working hardware and the necessary drivers. Or it could be having a better abstraction so that Nvidia & ATI can keep parts of their drivers closed without the regular version mismatches with the open source world. I think that's part of Canonical's plans for Mir.

jebblue9• 13 years ago

My new GTX card works great, Steam games (that have been ported to Linux), Minecraft (awesome!), all run great?

dave1010uk2• 13 years ago

Warning: according to the known issues in the release log [0]:

* Skype won't start (without a fix [1])

* Google Chrome won't install (without a fix [2])

[0] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/ReleaseNotes

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/skype/+bug/1155327

[2] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=226002#c...

kostya-kow3• 13 years ago

I don't use Skype (imo.im works much better, and you don't have to install any programs), so I don't know anything about it, but Chrome seems to work.

prawks• 13 years ago

Thanks for the plug, imo.im looks really cool! Can't believe I didn't know about it before.

indeyets• 13 years ago

imo.im and similar services have one disadvantage: you give keys to all of your communications to additional 3rd party (as if microsoft wasn't enough)

madsravn• 13 years ago

Why can't I find a download link for linux anywhere?

Oh, there is no download for linux... I'm not much for browser chatting.

keverets• 13 years ago

Jitsi (jitsi.org) does video calling over Jabber and others.

Though it's not web based like imo.im, you also don't have to give your access credentials to a third party.

kizza• 13 years ago

I'm using Chromium from the Ubuntu repository, which is good enough for me until they get it sorted out.

jfoster2• 13 years ago

Sounds like you could also use the dev channel Chrome.

pilooch• 13 years ago

I've upgrade a couple of days ago. Skype works fine, I'm using version 4.1.0.20, not sure if it was upgraded during the process.

Chromium works fine.

simoncion• 13 years ago

I dunno what happens if you install them after you upgreade, but google-chrome and chromium still work for me, as I installed them long before this upgrade. :)

macco• 13 years ago

With chrome it is just in packaging problem - thus chrome is not open source nobody can fix it on their own.

claudius9• 13 years ago

The Skype bug looks like a Multiarch problem and there appears to be a workaround in the bug report:

    LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa/libGL.so.1 skype

which is trivial to implement either in a custom .desktop file dropped in ~/.local/share/applications or a custom launch script in /usr/local/bin (or whatever comes before /usr/bin in your path).

Cthulhu_• 13 years ago

Trivial maybe if you're a power user that knows Linux and Gnome's desktop shortcuts by heart and isn't afraid of hacking, but definitely not for the regular user Ubuntu was intended for a long time ago.

anoncow5• 13 years ago

Will this be fixed in an upcoming ubuntu or skype update?

username111• 13 years ago

Regarding google chrome it has been fixed on the unstable channel for a while now.

mindstab3• 13 years ago

"Actually, having a workaround by definition lessens the severity, as if someone wants to still run Skype, they can."

I don't think everyone is on the same page about Ubuntu being a consumer distro and not a hacker's only distro... I have definitely noticed a decrease in the stability of Ubuntu releases over the years and it's attitudes like this that seem to be in part responsible for it.

EDIT:

Oh I kept reading, this is better:

"Rainer, a better solution for international calls is to stop using Skype (which is closed source, and frequently has problems with its Linux client) and change to a service that supports standard protocols (SIP etc.), e.g. using Ekiga"

Yes, the client should change their software and infrastructure to better suit your product...

This makes it pretty much impossible for me to "sell" Ubuntu to any of my friends who aren't programmers AND tinkerers (many of my programers are too busy being productive to be interested in dicking around with making things work anymore, and increasingly I hold this view).

orangethirty3• 13 years ago

I once bought a laptop which ran Windows 7. The Wifi did not work due to their drivers being broken.

kunai5• 13 years ago

> many of my programers are too busy being productive to be interested in dicking around with making things work anymore, and increasingly I hold this view

This. I switched to OS X from Ubuntu about a few months ago simply because of this reason. I was too tired of tinkering and configuring endless .conf files, adjusting my GNOME/Xfce panel layouts for optimum productivity, and changing my display manager because all of them sucked.

In my final days with Linux I was running Ubuntu Minimal with twm -- I went completely old-school. Fewer things at the core, fewer things to go wrong.

I caved and bought a MacBook Air. While I miss the endless configurability of Linux, I find that most of the time I spend trying to configure OS X is only spent to make things more suitable for my workflow -- changing the number of desktops I have, changing the applications in my dock, or adjusting Exposé to show all app windows.

I never have to configure something because it breaks or isn't compatible with something else. I could have gone the FreeBSD way, but then, well, you know. OS X just works. As a Ruby and Java developer I find it perfect. I probably will try the 13.04 release on the Mac (I tried the beta and liked it), and I'll see how it goes.

It looks like a solid release, so I'd really like to keep it (but I probably won't because I'm cheap and only have the 120gig SSD).

jneen2• 13 years ago

Guys, Skype is owned by Microsoft, and the Linux version hasn't been touched in like 2 years. I'm frankly not surprised it's b0rked.

So... yes, the user should use software that isn't deprecating support for their platform.

kfcm• 13 years ago

>many of my programers are too busy being productive to be interested in dicking around with making things work anymore, and increasingly I hold this view

This is a sign of maturity. Time is our one true finite resource, and we need to prioritize what we do with it.

clauretano• 13 years ago

At least they're consistent in not liking Microsoft.

Ubuntu bug #1, for reference https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

pekk2• 13 years ago

Ubuntu has no control over the Skype project. They aren't obligated to support every third-party product when it is impossible to do this.

I don't think this is the problem with recent Ubuntu releases.

readme3• 13 years ago

So, a "hacker's distro" should have bugs in it? No thanks, I'll take functional software.

maxcan• 13 years ago

To be fair, I have definitely noted a decrease in stability of OSX releases of the last few years too.

JDShu• 13 years ago

"Yes, the client should change their software and infrastructure to better suit your product..."

The person you quoted isn't even a developer as far as I can tell.

anoncow5• 13 years ago

Both bugs appear to be things which a future ubuntu or chrome/skype update should fix. Please correct me if I am wrong.

jebblue9• 13 years ago

Linux haters can't stand that Ubuntu can release new OS versions so often. OTOH, I'm tired of the chase and from now on will just stick with the LTS releases. If I were a some years younger though, I'd be there in the thick of every release. Kudos to the makers and the doers of Ubuntu. RedHat, where were/are you.

ing33k• 13 years ago

any knows fixes for spotify ?

emidln• 13 years ago

I don't recall needing any fixes for it, but it crashed randomly enough (and not just on Ubuntu) that I switched to their web client.

Poyeyo3• 13 years ago

VMware tools will also not install.

readme3• 13 years ago

This is why I don't use Ubuntu anymore. Every single release they roll out has serious issues interrupting a normal user's workflow.

Ubuntu, if you're reading this: please consider testing your releases more thoroughly.

readme3• 13 years ago

Maybe Canonical is releasing bugs on purpose to compete with Microsoft.

flexterra• 13 years ago

Ubuntu names...

3pt141592• 13 years ago

I've been using 13.04 on a new MacBook Pro for 2 months now. Everything is great except that I cannot seem to get sound working no matter what I try. It looks like it recognizes the hdmi sound output, but it can't seem to see the normal sound output. I am a sad man.

iso8859-13• 13 years ago

Did you see this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro ?

3pt141592• 13 years ago

Thank you very much! I don't think that this existed when I installed it, but I will try to get it working at some point when I don't have client work.

Thanks again!

luckystarr• 13 years ago

Just recently switched to Mint (Cinnamon) and found it to be quite good actually. Using the search via the start menu actually works! Can't say that this was always the case with Unity.

Florin_Andrei• 13 years ago

Running Ubuntu on a regular Dell laptop that is sometimes docked in a dual-monitor setup has been quite frustrating after versions 10 or 11 or so. I've had issues, repeatedly, with either setting up Unity for dual screen, or getting X to work at all. Going back to plain Gnome served as a partial workaround, until I switched to the new laptop - and then I started having issues initializing the screens after logging in (one of the screens would randomly remain blank when going into 1280x1024, I have to repeatedly logout/login to make it work).

Eventually, I gave Kubuntu 13.04 beta a try and, surprise, it works perfectly. No Unity nonsense, X works great.

It's a bit strange switching to KDE now. I've actually used KDE 1.0 back in the day, and Gnome 1.0. I've been a Gnome user most of this time. But now I'm starting to find even plain Gnome quite frustrating.

pkolaczk2• 13 years ago

The same problem here. If I start it docked with the lid closed, it doesn't get past the Ubuntu splash screen and hangs in some weird state where the only possibility is hard power-off. I have to start it with the lid open, then close it after logging into desktop and then manually setup the second external monitor, because although it detects it, it keeps it "disabled". This entirely sucks in 12.10 I hope 13.04 will be better, but I'm little reluctant to upgrade so early after upgrade to 12.10 broke my system.

reustle• 13 years ago

It's interesting to see that 13.04 comes with Mongo 2.2.4 pre-installed. If it's always running, it's going to make getting started with Mongo that much easier.

alyandon2• 13 years ago

Is it now possible to perform basic tasks like specifying font and icon sizes without installing third-party tweak tools or manually editing text files?

I know a lot of work goes into these releases but when basic desktop functionality has been missing/broken since the 11.x series and fails to be addressed with each new release it starts to become depressing.

bluedino2• 13 years ago

Ubuntu is a lot more tolerable when you just decide to live with the fonts, window decorations, icons, as the defaults. Just like you have to on the Mac.

I could tweak a Linux box all day long. On a Mac I just turn it on and go to work. Now the hard part is deciding between GNOME3, Unity, LXDE...

alyandon2• 13 years ago

I guess I find the icons and fonts sizes for the default Ubuntu desktop are (for lack of a better term) Fischer-Price sized and I just can't comfortably work with it.

While I can deal with installing additional packages in order to gain control over such settings it just strikes me as a little ironic that such things are not easily configurable in one of the major desktop focused Linux distributions.

anoncow5• 13 years ago

I wish the pay-what-you-want page earns ubuntu a decent sum. Go Canonical!

dguido• 13 years ago

Are there any security improvements worth mentioning in this release? Ubuntu used to be at the forefront of security on Linux and kept track of improvements made per release on their wiki. This effort seems to have stalled after the departure of key personnel and nothing has changed in a year or more.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Features

jdstrand• 13 years ago

The Security/Features page remains up to date (mostly, see below) and while new security features did not land in 13.04, a lot of work was done on client application isolation and better supporting using AppArmor with LXC. Many of these features will land in 13.10 and 14.04 LTS.

The list of applications compiled with PIE is not currently up to date, but is being worked on (part of the problem is a lot of developers started compiling their packages with PIE and we now have to find them. A nice problem to have :). Also note that incremental security features are not usually mentioned. For example, seccomp2 is used in a number of places now and AppArmor improvements such as mediation of mount or the upcoming DBus work are/will not be specifically mentioned.

mrinterweb3• 13 years ago

Just a word of warning to anyone who may be thinking of installing this release on a MacBook Pro w/retina. I don't believe there is a window manager available that will play nicely with high DPI. I do hope that the linux community is planning on better supporting very high resolution displays.

13.04 works absolutely wonderfully, on my 2012 MacBook Air. Everything works perfectly for me on that machine.

mindstab3• 13 years ago

How high resolution? My laptop looks great and works perfectly with Ubuntu @ 1920 x 1080. What doesn't work?

kunai5• 13 years ago

2880x1800. On a 15.4" screen, mind you...

As if that wasn't enough, the 13.3" version is 2560x1600. Which is completely insane.

socksy• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_Display — we're talking in the order of 2880 x 1800 for a 15" screen and 2560 x 1600 for a 13" screen. Linux window managers react by making everything tiny, which is not ideal.

See http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=apple...

jjcm• 13 years ago

What he's referencing is displays that are meant to display the UI at twice the pixel density. It will run just fine on the macbook pro with the retina display, but it will run at a 1:1 density instead of a 2:1 density (which is what it's designed for). Here's a little image I drew quickly to illustrate: http://i.imgur.com/4gizfp0.png

On that screen size, OSX will appear like the top image on a non retina display, and like the middle image on a retina display. Ubuntu will display like the top image on a non retina display, but will appear like the bottom image on the retina display.

mrinterweb3• 13 years ago

As others have mentioned, the 2880x1800 resolution is unusable with a 1x1 pixel display. You can change this with "xrandr --output DP-2 --scale .5x.5" and that will cut the resolution in half, but everything is very fuzzy.

sutro• 13 years ago

Have they gotten rid of Unity yet? No?

Pass.

dombili• 13 years ago

It's not as bad as it used to be, actually. It used to be a deal breaker for me, but now even though I still don't like it, I don't mind it either.

SEMW2• 13 years ago

At the risk of stating the obvious:

sudo apt-get autoremove unity && sudo apt-get install [xubuntu-desktop|kubuntu-desktop|lubuntu-desktop|etc.]

Or just install the one you want in the first place: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ has images for all eight official Ubuntu flavours.

Seriously, it can't hurt you just by being in the repositories if you don't install it...

mrinterweb3• 13 years ago

I was very sceptical of Unity at first. When it was originally introduced in 11.04, it was obviously not ready for prime time. Unity is much more polished now. Unity used to be a resource hog and all kinds of glitchy. Now, Unity is efficient, stable, well thought out, and quite usable. I prefer it to Gnome Shell, KDE 4x, XFCE, Gnome 2, Mate, Cinnamon, and even Xmonad. I don't understand the disdain for Unity these days except for maybe the Amazon crap (which can be disabled).

anderspetersson• 13 years ago

All bugs has software.

Ologn• 13 years ago

I have been using it for about an hour on my x64 desktop. I was using Ubuntu 12.04 beforehand. The 12.04 is still on one of my disk partitions.

Canonical is apparently going more in the way of pre-installed crapware. There was an Amazon icon on my Launcher, which I removed. People have also been warning the Ubuntu Dash sends your searches to Amazon, I went to System Settings -> Privacy and removed that.

Haven't noticed that much. It may be a little faster, although my Ubuntu desktop usually runs faster when I reboot it, so I can't tell if it will stay this way yet. Doing horizontal resizing of windows seems a little more difficult, some setting must have changed. Firefox's plugin service seems hosed right now, maybe due to all the new Ubuntu installs. The Firefox edit window is acting a little odd as well. It has crapped out a few times in terms of display.

There were no workspaces until I turned them on in settings, they seem down on workspaces - something I had without a problem since fvwm back in the mid-1990s. Hopefully there will still be workspaces in the next Ubuntu version.

It seems like they've added a little more customization ability for the launcher, sizing the launcher, hiding the launcher etc. Or at least made it more obvious. It doesn't work that well but at least it's there.

I noticed they changed other things...grub now just says Ubuntu on top, and has simplified options under that. I guess I'll bump into more things as I go on.

jebblue9• 13 years ago

>> Canonical is apparently going more in the way of pre-installed crapware. There was an Amazon icon on my Launcher, which I removed. People have also been warning the Ubuntu Dash sends your searches to Amazon, I went to System Settings -> Privacy and removed that.

Thanks for the tips, when we move to 14.04 LTS we will need to know them.

>> There were no workspaces until I turned them on in settings, they seem down on workspaces - something I had without a problem since fvwm back in the mid-1990s. Hopefully there will still be workspaces in the next Ubuntu version.

Do you mean the cool workspace switcher on the Unity Launcher panel is going to be gone? That's odd.

takluyver7• 13 years ago

The workspace switcher is still available, and I don't think there are any plans to remove it. It's just disabled by default. I guess it's a mixture of saving space in the launcher and avoiding the potential confusion when new users hit the wrong button and suddenly see their windows vanish.

o0-0o• 13 years ago

Mmmm Debian based distros rock. That's why I run Debian

oddshocks2• 13 years ago

Ubuntu is spyware

oddshocks2• 13 years ago

Downvoting me doesn't change the fact that your OS sends search strings to Amazon

JeremyMorgan• 13 years ago

This version isn't so bad, only by comparison of the last two. I usually download and run each version for a few weeks for fun, I ran some beta builds of this one and didn't have any major problems.

The Unity interface still sucks but they're making some subtle changes that make it better. I still don't like it.

What worries me most about Ubuntu's rising popularity is the fact that they're trying so hard to nail the tablet market. I would like to see a good Linux distro reach the popularity Ubuntu has, but offer more flexibility and focus on the desktop. Linux Mint is making strides in this direction, and looks to be a very nice candidate for it.

My prognosis is much the same as it has been for a while now:

For goofing off / watching movies/ checking email - Ubuntu 13.04 will be great.

For productivity I'm still using Mint, Gentoo or Ubuntu 10.04

For a server it's Gentoo all the way.

Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail Released

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