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Jaunty Alpha 5 Ramblings

Mar 06, 2009  By Phil Hughes

I seldom try an Alpha release of Kubuntu, and if I did, I would load it on my trusty "for testing only" old ThinkPad. But, I managed to screw up KDE on my ASUS "I usually use it on the road" laptop. Maybe it was time.

I looked, and sure enough, /home was on a separate partition on the ASUS—something I generally do on a production system even though the Kubuntu default is just one partition. So, I figured worst case was that I would try Jaunty and then go back to something that worked.

Well, so far, I am pleased. Of particular note is:

  • The new network manager makes a lot more sense.
  • KDE 4.2 looks like something you don't need to apologize for.
  • Strange devices (such as a Bluetooth adapter I had sitting around) seem to get recognized just fine.

The installer is even a bit nicer. For example, the time zone selection now graphically shows the time zones in different colors—minor but just a nice touch.

Bottom line: if you have too much time on your hands or you have lunched your OS and it is on a different partition, Jaunty Alpha 5 looks like it is worth a try.

______________________

Phil Hughes

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Love Jaunty but trashed my Vista partition

hotrod's picture
Submitted by hotrod (not verified) on Thu, 04/09/2009 - 13:45.

I have never used an alpha or beta before but used Kubuntu 8.04 and then 8.10 and loved them. So I partitioned my work Vista machine and loaded 8.10 on it. Guess what? It looked like crap because it has an Intel video card. I got tired of graphics garbage and found out online that 8.10 inexplicably doesn't like Intel graphics so tried going back to 8.04 (format/fresh install), but hated going back to KDE3 so tried the KDE4 for 8.04 and it never really worked right. So I noticed that Jaunty was supposed to work with Intel (again) so I loaded up Alpha 6, since it's just a partition, right? Works great was was fine for a week or so until I went into the Windows partition in Dolphin to grab some files from "the other side". Next time I tried to boot Vista... no dice, "System Volume Information is corrupt". Have tried all the repair options to no avail. At least I can still get to the partition fine from Jaunty, so I copied all my data over to the Jaunty partition and I'm going to reload Vista... Except now the PC will not boot to or read the Vista CD at all! I can read any other CD just fine and boot from Ubuntu CDs but not from the actual Windows CD. Go figure.

At least Jaunty works well enough. I have installed it at home dual-boot on my old XP machine and haven't had any problems, though it's a little slower than 8.10 on the old Athlon 1Ghz.

Jaunty Alpha

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 03/30/2009 - 10:08.

My experience couldn't have been worse. Not only did the alpha Kubuntu fail to meet most of my expectations, I found the install very prone to lock up. (read I have an OLD athlon XP PC)

A agree with the above posts, new releases in Ubuntu have given me rise to start to look elsewhere for a desktop. Jaunty pushed me right over the top. Debian for me, at least for now.

The myriad of non-supported software which used to work but now fails is a little disconcerting. I really believe a PC that can't auto-sense Flash player failure, and Java coding failure, leaves the OS a bit lacking. And looking and working for days to correct these issues, versus a repository autoloader or some such, leaves the community working a lot harder than likely necessary.

Since these are click and corrected in MS, it's embarrassing spending hard time correcting issues that used to work in Ubuntu and now fail.

The boot loader on the Live CD I used erased my partitions (and yes, I validated the CD it had no errors), even after I cancelled the install due to my personal inability to have the installer leave my second SATA drive alone. I used to have a dual boot system, the alpha Live CD deleted this, and the bravo hard drive partition, effectively deleting my working desktop.

I know there's a reason we call it alpha software. Still, the ext4 file system never resulted in a speed increase or a stable platform, and after then resetting via the CD back to ext3, I never got the system acting stable. I actually saw just the opposite, the ext4 system install while on the wired LAN was unbearably slow at any web page access. Looked like dial up from 10 years ago. Never found out why, as the system was anything but stable.

I do use a US Robotics wireless PCI card, whose driver (TI ACX111) needs to be set manually, my bad, still, it's been working on an Ubuntu desktop for over a year, so I figure that one piece of hardware likely didn't cause the issues I saw.

I also use a BOSE USB drive external sound card, and was again disappointed that despite Debian Lenny recognizing the card and working fine, the Kubuntu offering still fails to run the BOSE system under anything other than OSS (Why???)

I seem to be in a minority here, so I hope others don't have the issues I had. Just so I don't get too flamed, I did attempt to report all of this via developer back channel, but those uploads all failed, so whatever my system was doing, it never got a chance to tell the developers. but I won't shirk my duty, hpefully this will help someone to correct some issues.

Just installed Kubuntu

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 03/09/2009 - 07:15.

Just installed Kubuntu Jaunty. It is blazing fast with the new ext4 file system. The previous release 8.10 was no good. Lots of lock-ups & it was very slow & blotchy. Can't wait for the final release but this version is way more stable & faster than the 8.10. Great job guys

Jaunty Alpha

Carl Snyder's picture
Submitted by Carl Snyder (not verified) on Sun, 03/08/2009 - 16:52.

I normally don't install Alphas, and try not to install Betas on a production machine. Unfortunately, when I had had good luck with 7.10, I installed 8.04 LTS within a week of its release. 8.04 felt more like a Beta on my production machine than a released version, and it wasn't until July that enough revisions had occurred to make Hardy Heron feel more like a stable release. I then proceeded to crash my Hardy install in October, 2 weeks before the Intrepid Ibex release, so I thought, WTH, and installed Intrepid. Intrepid also had what I would call 'growing pains' until about January, when enough revisions had been gone through that most of the application mix was stable. I have stuck it out without going to Debian, Mandriva, or OpenSUSE (I have tried all three on my hardware, if not extensively, and they seem to work as well for me as Ubuntu) for most of my needed applications, but I have been tempted.

I like Ubuntu. I especially like the Ubuntu Forums, but I think I may wait until June or later to update to Jaunty Jackalope. No one has indicated, but have they got Jack and either ALSA or PulseAudio to play nicely together on Jaunty? How about, have they got better support for some of the 6200 nVidia cards in X? Those are problem areas which have almost driven me away.

the one for MID devices

costea's picture
Submitted by costea (not verified) on Sat, 03/07/2009 - 10:21.

the one for MID devices seems to me exceptionally fast, too bad you can't install things like mysql on it...
the one for netbook remix, is also much faster than the ordinary desktop-jaunty, and behaves like the full desktop version with regard to "sudo app-get install mysql5"
I would love to see the MID version capable of "sudo app-get install mysql5";
I am also very curious aboat the version for ARM processors; I haven't tried this one yet, but I'm dying to...

Jaunty Alpha 5

M1G's picture
Submitted by M1G (not verified) on Fri, 03/06/2009 - 23:12.

I also never use Alphas but pulled the trigger with Ubuntu Jaunty Alpha 5. Several things seem faster but most noticeable for me is the better rendered font on my LCD screen. It is hard to describe but visually feels more polished than prior versions.

ext4

St.chris's picture
Submitted by St.chris (not verified) on Fri, 03/06/2009 - 12:17.

Hi Phil,

I'm also using Jaunty Alpha 5 and I find it has minor but good improvements. I think one improvement you might have missed is the ext4 file-system (you don't mention anything about it). My system is noticeably faster in booting up, as well as when starting applications.

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