Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ipex)

thefinalstage · 14-10-2008 09:54AM #1

I installed this version yesterday over version 8.04 and it is brilliant.

There were lots of little things that did not work under 8.04 but do under 8.10.

Now, the laptop I am using is a Sony vgn-nr21z and there are few things on it. Like a light under the wireless switch that shows if wireless is connected. It now actually turns on and off. Ubuntu before was not able to manage the battery life properly so I got maybe 40 minutes on a full charge now I am up to 1 hour and 30 minutes doing the same things. This release seems to have proper support for nVidia graphics cards too. Before upgrading I had starcraft installed under Wine and it ran slower then geriatric sprinter. Now the playback is smooth and the sound is crisp also, it plays in full screen.

Only one downside was the network manager. It no longer could connect to my wpa network but I quickly got around that by installing and using wicd instead. check it out if you get the chance!

An Fear Aniar · 14-10-2008 11:12AM

I tried it out. Worked well with the Live CD but when I installed it on one of my partitions the keyboard and mouse no longer worked.

It's been reported as a bug, possibly to do with the Nvidia card I have. I've heard the beta is not working so well with Nvidia cards just now.

I hear the load-cycle-count problem has been fixed in Intrepid as well.

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An Fear Aniar · 20-10-2008 01:57PM

+UPDATE+

They fixed that bug and I tried it out last night. Straight away I saw somew great speed improvements. Programs open way faster, bootup and shutdown much faster.

I like!!!

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Khannie · 20-10-2008 09:18PM

Gonna wait for the full release. To be honest I've been unimpressed with the 64bit version of 8.04 that I'm using in work, for work stuff. I've found the system unresponsive a number of times when it shouldn't be. (2.4GHz dual core, 4G of ram, 2hdd's).

generalmiaow · 25-10-2008 12:13PM

I am most happy with it. I actually like the new network manager. The one thing I'm disappointed by is that it looks mostly the same. I would love to see it look like those mockups of what it should look like. I will definitely continue to use Ubuntu.

Orion · 25-10-2008 12:42PM

Khannie wrote: »

Gonna wait for the full release. To be honest I've been unimpressed with the 64bit version of 8.04 that I'm using in work, for work stuff. I've found the system unresponsive a number of times when it shouldn't be. (2.4GHz dual core, 4G of ram, 2hdd's).

Ditto. I've 8.04 64 on my HTPC and I'm having lots of problems. Next weekend I'll be installing 8.10 32-bit.

stereo_steve · 25-10-2008 03:46PM

Working great for me anyway ...

smoke.me.a.kipper · 29-10-2008 07:10AM

As a recent convert to Ubuntu, i found 8.10 works alot better on my laptop than 8.04. Much easier install and more things worked 'out of the box' so to speak (ie my nvidia card). its also nice to have sound

Khannie · 29-10-2008 01:04PM

Going to install xubuntu 8.10 on an old machine tomorrow. Also going to stick it on my work laptop (which is low spec) and see how it fares v's XP. I tried out the pre-release on a VM and it was fairly decent.

Orion · 30-10-2008 05:43PM

Final version released today.

The i386 and AMD64 versions of the desktop cd are mirrored at http://unreal.ie/downloads?dir=/misc - might be faster than HEANET this weekend.

[edit]I've put the alternate CD versions there too.

pickarooney · 30-10-2008 10:17PM

Is it advisable to upgrade from a (fairly fresh) Hardy install to Intrepid without a CD, just apt-get dist-upgrade or whatever?

Tillotson · 31-10-2008 06:36PM

Switched a few days ago. Fairly happy, nothing to get excited about though
One niggley problem.
When I log in it takes a good 20 seconds for the desktop to load if I have compiz enabled.
I miss my wobbly windows.
Bug had been reported so I'll just have to wait.

Orion · 31-10-2008 06:48PM

pickarooney wrote: »

Is it advisable to upgrade from a (fairly fresh) Hardy install to Intrepid without a CD, just apt-get dist-upgrade or whatever?

Upgrading is fine. Only thing to be aware of is any non-repository software that you have installed. You may need to remove it first then reinstall it. For example I remove the Ubuntu Open Office installation and install the latest version manually - I'll have to uninstall it before upgrade.

pickarooney · 01-11-2008 01:00AM

I ran a distribution upgrade from Adept. After about five minutes I got a message saying that there was no compatible driver for my nvidia graphics card included in Intrepid, though there had been in Hardy...

Absolutely ridiculous.

An Fear Aniar · 01-11-2008 01:21AM

pickarooney wrote: »

I ran a distribution upgrade from Adept. After about five minutes I got a message saying that there was no compatible driver for my nvidia graphics card included in Intrepid, though there had been in Hardy...

Absolutely ridiculous.

My nvidia card worked fine. There was a choice of two drivers. I did a fresh install from CD. I see lots of people on ubuntuforums always saying that distribution upgrades can be messy and buggy and they always advise to do a fresh install.

I have a GeForce 8400.

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Orion · 01-11-2008 01:32AM

Envy ftw

pickarooney · 01-11-2008 10:26AM

I know I can fix it up in about ten minutes with a bit of fiddling, but the point is that it's fundamentally idiotic to release an upgrade which will break the video display of a user with a running Hardy system. It's typical of Ubuntu releases - for some reason they insist on bringing them out every six months on the dot whether they're finished or not to the detriment of novice users.

An Fear Aniar · 01-11-2008 02:29PM

Yeah, it seems pretty stupid. They put something in the release notes about Nvidia:

nVidia "legacy" video support

The 71 and 96 series of proprietary nVidia drivers, as provided by the nvidia-glx-legacy and nvidia-glx packages in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, are not compatible with the X.Org included in Ubuntu 8.10. Users with the nVidia TNT, TNT2, TNT Ultra, GeForce, GeForce2, GeForce3, and GeForce4 chipsets are affected and will be transitioned on upgrade to the free nv driver instead. This driver does not support 3D acceleration.

Users of other nVidia chipsets that are supported by the 173 or 177 driver series will be transitioned to the nvidia-glx-173 or nvidia-glx-177 package instead. However, unlike drivers 96 and 71, drivers 173 and 177 are only compatible with CPUs that support SSE (e.g. Intel Pentium III, AMD Athlon XP or higher). Systems with older CPUs will also be transitioned to the nv driver on upgrade.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810

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pickarooney · 03-11-2008 10:43PM

"Transitioned" - because "downgraded" sounds so negative.

pickarooney · 08-11-2008 02:11PM

Finally got it installed at the 4th attempt and all I can say is WTFF?
All my menus, wallpaper, shortcuts, file associations, themes have been removed and replaced with a ****ty approximation of Vista... absolutely incredible. I assume it's gone and isntalled KDE4 without so much as a by your leave and got rid of my entire setup.

I thought Kubuntu upgrades couldn't get any worse than Gutsy, but this just blows my mind.

Sherifu · 08-11-2008 02:17PM

I've been trying it out in a virtual machine on and off. I like dark room and the new network manager is long overdue.

sound_wave · 08-11-2008 03:27PM

pickarooney wrote: »

Finally got it installed at the 4th attempt and all I can say is WTFF?
All my menus, wallpaper, shortcuts, file associations, themes have been removed and replaced with a ****ty approximation of Vista... absolutely incredible. I assume it's gone and isntalled KDE4 without so much as a by your leave and got rid of my entire setup.

I thought Kubuntu upgrades couldn't get any worse than Gutsy, but this just blows my mind.

In my experience Kubuntu has always been a little lacking when compated to Ubuntu. But yeah KDE 4 just blows IMHO.

mach1982 · 11-11-2008 08:54PM

I install it last weekend on my p4 512 laptop( wiping windows completely) and i have to say i like it a lot .I had no problems my bluetooth keyboard from lildl works better in Ubuntu than in windows.

Orion · 12-11-2008 12:32AM

installed it on the lappy - first impressions are good. It's a lot smoother. It takes a little longer to load after logging in that Gutsy or 8.04 Linux Mint but not too much. Still the same ****e with the BCM wireless cards tho (Dell Inspiron 6400) - had to install the firmware manually - that's just damn irritating. A newbie wouldn't even know how to find the syslog to get the url never mind want to have to do it. :mad:

But apart from that - it's good. I like the quick user switching - and the Guest login. Haven't played with it too much yet but I'm liking it.

Now if someone would just write a gnome version of Yakuake I'd be very happy - hate having to install all the KDE libraries

An Fear Aniar · 12-11-2008 12:48AM

I've installed Minefield (Firefox 3.1) and it's er, fast. Love it.

http://www.linuxhaxor.net/2008/09/28/firefox-minefield-faster-than-chrome/

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pickarooney · 12-11-2008 09:16PM

Got it up and running with Gnome now and have enabled compiz-fusion for the first time, although my laptop seems a little bit lightweight to cope with it. I've had a large number of applications crash (even small stuff like gedit hangs) but I have to give credit where credit is due - for the first time ever a linux distro has recognised my WiFi dongle and allowed me to connect to my router. Unfortunately the signal strength stays resolutely at 14-15% no matter how close the laptop is to the router, making it unusual, but it's a start!

deadpoet · 13-11-2008 10:09AM

Cant get my Ralink to work at all...ridiculous. Worked with 7.10 though...odd.

pickarooney · 20-11-2008 11:00PM

I reformatted my laptop and installed Xubuntu, for ****s and giggles and to see how fast it would run. Boot up and go to log in. Message tells me my preferred desktop environment (XFCE) is not available. Priceless!
So I go to install xubuntu-desktop, I'm told it's installed, reboot and choose xfce session. It logs me in... to GNOME.

Then of course it suggests I install some nvidia restricted drivers, asks me to reboot, and kills my X-Windows config. Fantastic.

What kind of retards make these installers?

Orion · 21-11-2008 12:46AM

The problem with the nvidia drivers is that they are proprietary. Ubuntu includes them but you have to activate them. It's part of the philosophy of open source - if you want to go closed source then you have to choose to do so. Personally I think they should activate them by default. Ubuntu is the newbie distro tbh (not an insult - I use Ubuntu) and if they want to make it easy for newbies then they have to get over this hump. IMO there's a difference between not installing proprietary software and not installing proprietary drivers.

No idea about the XFCE issues tho - only use XFCE on my Mythbuntu box and that was just cos it's the default.

@deadpoet: do a "tail /var/logs/syslog" and see if it mentioned a new firmware. If it does then go to the link - get it - install it. That's what I had to do for my BCM wireless nic. Again - I disagree with this for the same reasons as above.

pickarooney · 21-11-2008 08:34AM

Philosophy-wise, they seem to be deliberately saying 'look, shiny nVidia drivers that they won't open-source, you wnat 'em?' then childishly misconfiguring them so you're punished for choosing to use them. It's not as though they don't know exactly what will happen when user lambda activates nVidia's drivers and suddenly can't boot up his dekstop.

Xubuntu is based on XFCE, yet on a fresh install the user is told XFCE hasn't been installed. It's the same as installing Kubuntu and being told it doesn't come with KDE.

That said, the appear to have changed XFCE so that it's no longer XFCE but GNOME-slightly-lighter (there's no longer a right-click-on-desktop-for-applications-menu for example and it comes with a Gnome 'start-bar' by default.

Orion · 21-11-2008 10:56AM

pickarooney wrote: »

Philosophy-wise, they seem to be deliberately saying 'look, shiny nVidia drivers that they won't open-source, you wnat 'em?' then childishly misconfiguring them so you're punished for choosing to use them. It's not as though they don't know exactly what will happen when user lambda activates nVidia's drivers and suddenly can't boot up his dekstop.

I installed the restricted drivers and had no problems. Worked fine - set up Twinview etc no problems. But I do use Gnome. Never tried it in XFCE - not mad on it so don't use it.

Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ipex)

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