Ubuntu Linux 10.4 LTS out now!

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Hi everyone!

Ubuntu Linux 10.4 LTS is out now. Wanted to know if anyone has given it a whirl. I have downloaded the 32 bit ISO, but have not burned and installed yet. I always like to try the new release, but I never use it very much. My wife has a new Toshiba laptop, and she gave me her old one, a 1.6 Ghz Core Duo, XPMCE, 120 GB HD and 2 GB ram. I am thinking about wiping it and installing 10.4 LTS. I normally dual boot on an XP laptop just to play with the new release.

I have read that 10.4 LTS is excellent. Can anyone report one way or another yet?

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Hi everyone!

Ubuntu Linux 10.4 LTS is out now. Wanted to know if anyone has given it a whirl. I have downloaded the 32 bit ISO, but have not burned and installed yet. I always like to try the new release, but I never use it very much. My wife has a new Toshiba laptop, and she gave me her old one, a 1.6 Ghz Core Duo, XPMCE, 120 GB HD and 2 GB ram. I am thinking about wiping it and installing 10.4 LTS. I normally dual boot on an XP laptop just to play with the new release.

[/I have read that 10.4 LTS is excellent. Can anyone report one way or another yet? ]

Gerald Shepard,
Hello, Haven’t and have no plans to (don’t like brown) but…….. Linux Mint Isadora RC 9 has also been released http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=1386 and plan to give “9” a try (soon as i can find the time) maybe it will help with my wireless problems… among others Regards Fred

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Hi Fred,

I did not know Mint Linux 9 RC was available now. Thanks for the info. By the way, whenever I install the latest Ubuntu to play with, I always enable Compiz so I can add eye candy to the GUI, and I also download a bunch of different wallpapers. I do this mainly so I don’t have to look at brown all the time!

However to get the best effects, you have to enable the restricted video drivers.

Did you read my suggestion on Grandpa Bill’s thread about your wireless issue? When I installed Linux Mint 8, they had two available proprietary drivers for me to choose. I hooked up the Ethernet cable and downloaded/installed one and it did not work. Then I removed it and downloaded/installed the other and bingo, it worked fine. Just a thought.
Their forum should be helpful in this matter.

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Gerald,
Hello, Thanks for the reply… My wireless problem is an intermittent (and crazy) one. been posting on mint for a while and….. no joy Seems some modems don’t play nice with either Ubuntu or Mint. Also i have a lot to learn about Linux and command line interface.Check out The Mint “cosmos wallpaper” AWESOME The Screen shot is just one of them ( i have added them to my Vista Wallpaper slide show) Regards Fred

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I have read that 10.4 LTS is excellent. Can anyone report one way or another yet?

I downloaded the 32-bit 10.04 Live CD the day after it was released and tried it out. Was happy enough with it that I replaced Ubuntu 9.04 with 10.04 on my HP laptop (AMD 1.8Ghz, 4GB RAM). I had skipped 9.10 because it would not recognize my video card nor wireless card and thus did not offer to install proprietary drivers. Also, 9.10 had problems with my sound card. 10.4 offered to install the proprietary drivers and the sound works just fine. I am very happy with the update. By the way, my laptop dual boost Ubuntu and Windows 7.

One of these days I will also update my desktop to 64-bit 10.04.

By the way, the default color scheme in 10.4 is black (or dark grey) not brown.

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Hi Peter, thanks for the heads up on 10.4! And I am glad to hear they have changed the default color scheme.

I think I may have to dual boot rather than dedicating the Toshiba wholly to Ubuntu. My wife still has SPSS 17 statistical software (the license on this software prohibits it being moved to a different computer) on it she does not want removed. The license expires in July, so that is my new window of opportunity to follow thru with my plan. As I don’t want to wait that long, I’ll go with dual boot for a while. I have never dedicated a laptop solely to a non-Windows OS, so that will be a new one for me. But I really do not need another Windows laptop.

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Besides dual booting, I also run VMWare Server 2 under Win7 with an Ubuntu client, works fairly well (the performance is much better than the XP client VM I also have set up). But I do tend to boot into Ubuntu on my laptop as often as I boot into Win7, but that is mainly because what I do on my laptop (browse the web, watch movies, etc) can be as easily done in Linux as in Windows. On my desktop I rarely boot into Linux because my typical activities (editing videos and photos, gaming) are not conducive to Linux.

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I ran into a fairly significant glitch: my battery time is reduced by 33%. With 9.04 I got about 2 hrs of battery time. With 10.04 I get only 80 minutes. For the record, I get 2 hrs on Windows 7.

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I ran into a fairly significant glitch: my battery time is reduced by 33%. With 9.04 I got about 2 hrs of battery time. With 10.04 I get only 80 minutes. For the record, I get 2 hrs on Windows 7.

I hope Ubuntu gets that fixed real soon, particularly since this is an LTS release. They are usually pretty good about updates.

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I did a straight in-place upgrade from 9.10 to 10.04.

I am using a Toshiba Satellite 120Gb HDD with 2Gb RAM and I haven’t seen any real issues yet.

The only issue I have seen so far is part of the “menu” bar at the top developing a bit of a snow effect. I shrug this off to the fact that I was in the processing of pooching my 9.10 installation and I was talking a lot of screenshots for an instruction manual when this situation occurred. So it could be just some stupid glitch somewhere which was potentially caused by myself.

I am fairly happy with 10.04 so far.

In fact, 10.04 surprised me the first time I logged in. It informed me that my battery may be part of the batch(es) of batteries which Sony recalled about 2 years ago.

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I did a straight in-place upgrade from 9.10 to 10.04.

I am using a Toshiba Satellite 120Gb HDD with 2Gb RAM and I haven’t seen any real issues yet.

What model Toshiba Satellite are you using? It sounds very similar to the one I plan to use with 10.4 (my specs are in the post 1). At one time I dual booted PCLinuxOS 2007 on another Toshiba and really liked that one. I removed it when the 2009 version came out, but I found I did not like that one as much.

I dual boot Mint LInux 8 with Vista Home Premium 32 bit. I like it, but like my previous experience with Ubuntu 9.10, it does not see my Windows PCs on my home network. I went through the changes required to see and share files with the Windows machines on the Ubuntu Forums, and everything worked well. I went through the same procedures for Mint Linux and I still cannot see my other computers. I am hoping 10.4 will be just as functional as 9.10 in this regard.

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Hi, Gerald, et al.
I’ve been using Lucid 64 since 4/29 and generally liking it. Themes and wallpaper are easily changed. Installed Ailurus Ubuntu tweaker to help out with a few things so I didn’t have to pop the hood, so to speak.
Did an in-place upgrade from Karmic (which used to run as a vm under VirtualBox under Vista) which I moved to a new partition on a second drive. Smooth upgrade. Used Partition Magic and Drive Image XML running off a spare NTFS partition under a Reatogo boot CD to move stuff around. Took more time and fnorting around than I cared for, but painless for all of that.

Ubuntu is, at least for the moment (getting Civ4 withdrawal and can’t get it running [yet?] under Wine) my sole OS – my Vista HP 64 lives only as an image. (My fault, tried to do too much at one time and munged it’s partition….)

I’ve been running multi-boot setups since ’04 with various OSes, and with virt machines since ’06. It can be fun. Also frustrating. In general I’m increasingly impressed with the several newer, mostly mainstream, Linux releases, and particularly, for my needs, with Ubuntu. Hardware and networking have been no problem, and with Lucid, shutdown and startup are downright snappy.

After running mostly on Windows since ’01 (Atari ST TOSes before that) I’m sad to say that despite missing two games (three, when Civ5 comes out), the ‘comfort’ of long association and accommodation, and keeping up on things to help out family, friends, and a few business folks, I’m probably going to make Ubuntu Linux my main OS.

Running on a budget home-build: Gigabyte mobo 780 chipset in a HAF 922, Phenom 9350, 8GB RAM, 4.1TB over four HDD.

I guess that I’d like all this a bit more with a better budget – and if I really knew what I was doing.

If one has a little time and some curiousity, I heartily recommend looking at and trying out stuff; today’s utilities and virtual machine managers and such make it all pretty easy.

Cheers and good luck!

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Hi, Gerald, et al.
I’ve been using Lucid 64 since 4/29 and generally liking it. Themes and wallpaper are easily changed. Installed Ailurus Ubuntu tweaker to help out with a few things so I didn’t have to pop the hood, so to speak.

I’ve not heard of Lucid. What is that distro based on? Debian, Mandriva, or …..? I might need to expand my horizons and try Lucid.

And what is Ailurus Ubuntu tweaker? Have not heard of that either. Would it help me tweak things so I can see and share files with the Windows machines on my home network? I am having a little trouble with Mint Linux 8 in that regard, but maybe Ailurus would be risky on Mint since it is a modified Ubuntu.

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I recently installed ubuntu 10.004 on an old Toshiba 5005-S504. In trying to install from a 10.04 cd, the video would not work. However, I installed version 8.04 successfully and then upgraded to 10.04. The video works fine with the 10.04 upgraded from 8.04. The only thing that doesn’t work is the PCI wi-fi card — the computer is so old that it has no built-in wi-fi. However, the card, although recognized under Windows XP, would not connect to a network, so the problem may be the card as much as ubuntu.

I highly recommend ubuntu on old laptops like this one. Windows XP was taking so long to boot and programs ran so slowly, that the machine was essentially unusable. I was going to reinstall XP from recovery disks (and then have to install multiple service packs, etc.) to try to make it usable, but I figured it might end up being just as slow after all the service packs were added, so I decided to try ubuntu on it first. The machine now boots reasonably quickly and if great for (wired) internet access, e-mail, etc.

Bob

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I recently installed ubuntu 10.004 on an old Toshiba 5005-S504. In trying to install from a 10.04 cd, the video would not work. However, I installed version 8.04 successfully and then upgraded to 10.04. The video works fine with the 10.04 upgraded from 8.04. The only thing that doesn’t work is the PCI wi-fi card — the computer is so old that it has no built-in wi-fi. However, the card, although recognized under Windows XP, would not connect to a network, so the problem may be the card as much as ubuntu.

Hi Bob, and welcome to the Lounge!

I realize from what you said that your wireless card may have a hardware issue, but have you checked out the Ubuntu forums to see if they have any information on your wireless card? Might be worth a shot. If so, if you need a working card, perhaps you can find one on eBay for next to nothing. I found an unused 3DFX 3000 video card on eBay for $15 when I rebuilt an old Pentium 2 desktop to play some vintage Glide API games such as Red Baron 3D.

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Hello all U’u users.

Just my 2¢ here. I also loaded U’u 10.04 but I will not use it other than as a toy. It will not recognize my two scanners, a Canon LiDE 100 and a 35mm *ION slide scanner. Too bad !

Nice of them to have this “non-installable” list, I now know that I am pursueing a lost game.

Have a nice summer Penguins !

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I had an issue with upgrading from 9.10 to 10.4 using the Update Manager. I installed 10.4 using a disk with the “alternate” image, rather than doing a clean install, so my documents and settings would be unchanged. While I’ve had no real issues with most operations, I now have problems with the system not shutting down on “reboot” or “shutdown” commands after periods of extended use. Also be aware that from 9.10 on, Grub2 is the default boot manager. While techies may favor this move, as an occasional user of Ubuntu, I don’t care for the new version. The previous version of Grub was much easier to configure/customize, especially the number of kernels that would display on the boot up screen, of which I now have several appearing.

I suspect a clean install would have prevented my shutdown problem from occurring. I’m also considering replacing Grub2 with the earlier version.

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I suspect a clean install would have prevented my shutdown problem from occurring. I’m also considering replacing Grub2 with the earlier version.

While I have noticed some have had absolutely no negative issues with doing upgrade installs, I have gone that route with Ubuntu and another popular Linux distro and had real problems as a result. Now I only do clean installs when I want a new version of Ubuntu. I keep backups of data and it only takes a short time to restore those files when I finish a clean install and confirm all hardware functioning to my expectations.

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I have the v10.04 LAMP server installed on a Dell Poweredge 300SC (PIII with 1 gig of ram). there was a lot of trouble installing Winamin prerequisites as the links to the MD5-Pearl were no good, but otherwise it seems to work fine after the workarounds.

the Gnome desktop (normally not on a server flavor) came with a full install of Open Office and Firefox. some folks have commented there are problems with Mozilla handling PHP scripts, but i got mine working ok.

I don’t know of any Microsoft product that would work this well on hardware this old.

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Yes, I have given it a fairly lengthy try, and I do not like it at all compared with Ubuntu 9.1. Firefox 3.6.3 is much slower for me than Firefox 3.5.x. 10.04 has a number of idiosyncrasies that were never in 9.1 that have to be tweaked. Not only that, but when I did an update last night and got a new kernel as part of the download, it messed up my sources.list and I have spent all day screwing around with that before i got it fixed . . .

The only positive thing I can say for 10.04 over 9.1 (for me) is the fact that it boots up and shuts down slightly faster, but the slowness of Firefox 3.6 makes browsing the Web almost unbearable. However, I have heard from other Linux users that swear that Firefox 3.6 is faster for them, but having tried the new PCLinuxOS 2010 also, I found Firefox 3.6 equally slow there, so it apparently is not a distro related thing; why it is so slow for me, I don’t know. And since I tried PCLinuxOS on two different computers in both the Kde 4 version (don’t think much of Kde 4) and the Gnome version, I don’t see how it can be a hardware related thing either.

I have gone back to Ubuntu 9.1 and am going to wait awhile longer. I had thought if I installed 10.04 and it worked well, I could relax and not have to worry about 9.1 losing its support in less than a year . . .

Fortunately, I installed 10.04 on my test computer that I use primarily for non on-line apps like photo editing, etc., so it is dual boot, and I set the computer to default to Windows.

Mint Linux 9 final (not RC1) should be out by next week and I may try that since it is so much easier and faster to install when you don’t have to mess around with all the “restricted” stuff to get streaming media to work.

krt

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First of all I want to thank everyone who has posted here. It has been fun. Second, I have forgotten my manners to some of you, and I want to welcome Kermidge, FLJack, Owen Mould, and Karl Tipple to the Lounge! I always try to make first (and second) time posters feel welcome in the Lounge. (If I have overlooked any others in this thread, please forgive me, still sleepy – no coffee yet.

While WS Lounge is a Windows forum group, I was pleasantly surprised to see an Other Os’es forum when I first browsed here. I am a lifelong Windows guy, and at this point would never consider abandoning Windows for numerous reasons, I still enjoy dabbling and experimenting with other OS’es. Like Jean, I feel like I have a new toy to play with (no disrespect intended to the more serious Linux users). BTW Jean, have you checked Ubuntu forums for info on your hardware? There is much I like about Linux, and there are some things I do not like about Linux, but this is not the appropriate time to delve into that stream.

I am not an expert with Ubuntu (or Windows) by any stretch of the imagination. However, there were a couple of things mentioned by some of you first time posters that I will comment on in case you have not yet found a resolution to some issues mentioned.

First, FLJack, you mentioned Grub2 and having a bunch of earlier kernels still listed in your menu. When I first noticed the changes Ubuntu made in grub, I was less than excited myself. I have found the Ubuntu forums to be my best friend when I have questions. If you write down everything appearing in your grub menu, go to Synaptic Package Manager after booting, you can search for each of the kernels by number to uninstall them one by one. When they are uninstalled, the menu will automatically be updated. That said, most advise that when a kernel update occurs to leave the most recent kernel in the menu just in case the new kernel has some show stopper bugs. If some flaky behavior shows up, you can reboot and select the second kernel to boot and you should be able to run stable until updates fix the new kernel. I usually wait a few weeks before I uninstall the kernel that has just been superseded.

Owen, I’m with you on how Linux works great on old hardware, giving what many would consider “throw aways” a new lease on life.

Karl, I can relate to the constant tweaking to get things right! I remember there was one Ubuntu release that just got things right without a lot of fuss, but I cannot remember the version number. I believe it was one of the releases in 2009. I finally got around to installing 10.4 on my Toshiba laptop yesterday afternoon. At first I was very impressed. All my hardware was detected and set up worked like a charm. However, integration into my home network was a Royal Pain! After much forum searching and tweaking, all the pieces of the puzzle finally came together and now Ubuntu can see and read my XP and Windows 7 shares. However, my XP and Windows 7 machines are oblivious to the Ubuntu laptop, and so far I have not been able to resolve this. My only reason for wanting to resolve the issue is just so I can learn how to do it. If I do get this figured out, I will probably disable (change the workgroup name in Ubuntu again) the ability as I really do not care to permanently set up file sharing between Windows and Ubuntu. Compiz came installed with 10.4 as it did with 9.10 if I remember correctly. The only thing missing was the Compiz Control Manager where you can choose features and invoke the various eye candy nuggets. I also installed several themes and icon sets so I can have a new look once in a while.

I will probably stick with 10.4 as it is the first LTS released in two years . I like the idea of getting update support for three years with this edition.

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Thank you for the welcome.

I will probably stick with 10.4 as it is the first LTS released in two years . I like the idea of getting update support for three years with this edition.

Yes, that is why I was in such a hurry to try it! But as I stated above, Firefox 3.6 is very slow for me. Tried Opera, but I cannot get the media player to work there.

I think there is a separate repository link one can install that will “officially install it” and I am off to look for that.

Karl

Edit: Well the respositories for Ubuntu 10.04 no longer include Opera, they only go up to 9.1. So I made a link between mplayer and Opera and it now works, but that is no real solution because Opera 10.1 will probably be out of date before Ubuntu 9.1 is . . .

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I love Linux – switched 2 releases ago-
Why?
when there are problems with getting simple updates on MS to install, plus everytime you need an update or help = $$$
Enough became enough – wife still has her boxes on MS- XP & Vista – no she does not like 7
But if you can do DOS commands- yes I go back to the dinosaurs you can have fun if you are willing to do a lot- with thought-
This was VERY premeditated but I still made errors & corrected them
BUT- open office and firefox are my proof
Yes there are some who have no patience for newbies & others who act like we are crazy- but I have not lost anything that I have not been able to replace

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I see that Linux Mint 9has been released now, this is based on Ubuntu 10.4.

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Gerald,

Thanks for the info in your reply of May 15. I’m sorry I didn’t respond sooner, but I’ve been traveling.

While the method you suggest removes the kernels and modifies the boot screen, my desire is to leave the kernels and just edit the boot screen so they do not appear as options. In doing so, they do not clutter the boot screen, but are available should there be any issues with newer kernels. In Grub, this modification was very easy, but in Grub 2, it seems it is not. I had been looking through the Ubuntu and Grub forums prior to my original post, but had not come across a solution as yet. While this may seem like an irritant, this is actually one of the things I enjoy about Linux is the constant learning process. Also, as mentioned buy others, it repurposes old machines quite well.

Thanks again for your help.

FLJack

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While the method you suggest removes the kernels and modifies the boot screen, my desire is to leave the kernels and just edit the boot screen so they do not appear as options. In doing so, they do not clutter the boot screen, but are available should there be any issues with newer kernels. In Grub, this modification was very easy, but in Grub 2, it seems it is not.

That is correct, Grub 2 uses scripts that scan your drives looking for OSes and automatically builds the menu. There are a few things you can do about it, though:

option a) Rename the undesired kernels. You can always restore the original name if you want to run it in the future. Or you can load it right from the Grub menu at boot time (choose to edit the latest kernel boot selection and change the lines that mention the kernel files to reference the renamed kernel file). If you go this route, it might be a good idea the first print out the grub.cfg file so that you can reference the commands for loading the kernel. After renaming the file, remember to run grub-mkconfig so that the menu get regenerated. And this fact (that you have to manually run grub-mkconfig) brings us to the second option…

option b) Edit the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file. Yes, I know that there is a note at the top of that file saying not to do this because the file is generated, but the generation happens manually not automatically. Once you edit the file, the boot menu will stay as you changed it until either you run grub-mkconfig or a new kernel gets installed by the update app (in which case the update runs grub-mkconfig). Then you can simply edit the file again. A hassle, but doable.

option c) Edit the /etc/grug.d/10_linux script to eliminate all but the latest kernel. Be careful when doing this, if you screw it up you will lose all of the Ubuntu kernel entries in the boot menu (print out a the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, that way you can always manually enter in the command from the boot menu to get back into the system). I recommend that you copy 10_linux as 15_linux and edit 10_linus until you have verified that your changes are correct – the 15_linux entry will still present all of the kernels in the event that you screw up 10_linux. And don’t forget the run grub-mkconfig to generate the grub.cfg file. Actually, you should verify the menu.cfg file before rebooting to make sure things are OK.

Personally, I use option b. I dislike how Grub 2 builds the boot menu and prefer to personalize it more than what Grub2’s scripts allow. I also keep a backup copy of grub.cfg which I can restore (after making the proper edits) when an updated kernel gets installed. In one way I like that the Grub developers have attempted to automate what was a very error-prone task; a task that if you did it wrong left your system pretty much unbootable. On the other hand, I dislike that they took away my ability to set up the boot menu as I like (or more accurately, made it more difficult). It seems like the Linux developers are following the lead of Microsoft in showing disregard for power users.

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Peter,

Thank you very much for the pointers above. I had attempted “option b” but was unsuccessful. I’ll give it another go. If I still have issues, there are the other two options you present. Thanks again.

FLJack

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