The LXF Test: Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)

The clocks went back last weekend, which means that the nights are darker, the days are colder and it's only a few days before children start banging on our front door expecting chocolate. It also means that another Ubuntu release is due, since their releases always take place in April and October. In anticipation of this, we thought we would address a few pertinent questions: like is it any good, what has changed since the last release and what artificially alliterative name will they use this time?

The answer to the last question is the easiest: Ubuntu 8.10 is Intrepid Ibex. There isn't a great deal of difference between the Ibex and the Heron (the Ubuntu versions, that is), but that can be seen as a positive. Ubuntu has matured now, and as a product matures, improvements become more incremental - it's only washing powder that shows such immense improvements with each new release (or advertising campaign).

Download options

Canonical has been steadily increasing the number of different download options and the Ibex adds a couple more. First you have the Desktop CDs, in 32 and 64 bit variants. This is the standard Ubuntu Live CD with an installer to effectively dump the Live disc's root filesystem to your hard drive. It doesn't give a lot of choices, but then a distro on a single CD doesn't have space for many alternatives to let you choose from. On the plus side, this installation method is fast and fuss-free and generally gives a working system with the minimum of hassle.

The Server install CDs (32 and 64 bit again) are, not surprisingly, for installing Ubuntu on servers. This is a proper server setup, with a text mode installer and no GUI on the end result either. Omitting several hundred megabytes of GNOME leaves space for an awful lot of server software. The Alternate install CD also uses a text installer, but installs a desktop system. It provides more options than the standard installation, so if you want to replicate installations, use RAID and/or LVM or install on systems with limited memory, this may the the one to use.

The explosion in the netbook market has resulted in a new "Mobile USB image" option. This is an image file you dump to a USB flash drive that installs a system targeted at netbooks (or UMPCs or whatever you want to call them). The use of a USB drive means you don't need an external CD/DVD drive to install to your favourite mini laptop. Going even smaller is the "MID USB image" aimed at handheld devices, defined as having 4-7 inch touch-screens and using the Low Power Intel architecture. We didn't try this last alternative, but the netbook version worked on an Eee PC 900 - although the Live version did not setup the wireless connection. It is good to see distros focussing on this type of hardware, and others are bound to follow.

A dedicated release for netbooks shows how far this hardware
has come in just a year. (Click for bigger)

It is also possible to upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 without reinstalling. Run the Update Manager and it will tell you that a new release is available; press the Upgrade button to do so.

Installation

There are a few tweaks to the installer. The partition manager is much nicer, showing a graphical representation of the disk as it is now and will be after repartitioning. The installer still insists on dumping everything in the root directory by default. It is possible to create a separate /home using the manual partitioning option, but this really should be the default setting. Expecting people to backup all their personal files before installation and restore them after, or worse still, lose everything, is really not acceptable.

The installer is largely unchanged, but the graphical disk
representation in the partitioner is well done.

On the other hand, the Ubuntu installer is one of the few that recognises other Linux installations as well as Windows and sets up a suitable boot menu. When creating your first user, there is an option to have them automatically logged into the desktop when you boot. This option was available post-install with previous releases, but you had to go digging through the preferences windows to find it. For a single user computer in a secure location, say a personal desktop at home, this is a handy time saver. Be careful about using it on a computer that others may have access to, like a laptop.

What's new?

The software used in the distro has been updated; see the box for the versions of key packages. The OpenOffice.org version is disappointing, but the rest are right up to date. The new X.org is interesting because it has better support for autodetecting input and display devices and can often run without any configuration file, but Ubuntu has also added a failsafe setup, so you should get a minimal desktop if X cannot detect your hardware, instead of being dumped to a text login with no idea what to do next.

NetworkManager now supports PPP and 3G GSM connections, which is important with mobile broadband becoming so prevalent. This worked extremely well: we plugged in a Huawei modem and Ubuntu recognised it and offered to configure it. After selecting the correct provider, the NetworkManager menu contained an option to connect to this, in between the wired connection and the various wireless networks it had detected. Choosing this had us online in a couple of seconds - that's exactly how this sort of thing is supposed to work, so transparently that you hardly realise it is working.

Mobile broadband modems are now detected and set up
automatically, with connections handled by Network Manager.

One of the problems with installing an updated kernel with any distro is that any third party drivers, like MadWifi or Nvidia, won't work with the new kernel until they have been recompiled, a task made more difficult by the lack of an internet connection of X display if you rebooted before doing so. Intrepid Ibex uses Dell's DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) system to automatically rebuild any such modules when you install a new kernel, making kernel updates as seamless as any other software package.

Encrypted private directories are now supported thanks to the ecryptfs kernel module, a useful addition for those that work for the security services and travel by train. Use Synaptic to install ecryptfs-utils and run ecryptfs-setup-private to set up an encrypted Private directory in your home.

The Totem video player has a plugin to handle BBC content. This is not the DRMed iPlayer content but a different collection of BBC programming, including the radio podcasts and an increasing selection of video content. Much of this is available to users outside of the UK, unlike iPlayer which blocks non-UK IP addresses. This plugin has been developed in conjunction with the BBC, which is good both for the plugin (less chance of the rug being pulled out from under it by a protocol change) and the prospects of more BBC sanctioned Linux development.

You can now view BBC content in Totem.

A good evolution

Ubuntu 8.04 was one of of Ubuntu's LTS (Long Term Support) releases that come with three years of support, compared with the shorter lifetime of the other releases. Every third version is an LTS release, so those wanting a stable, supported platform for production use may need to stick with Hardy Heron for another year. This is not a bad reflection on the Ibex, nor an implication of instability. Stable in this context means "unchanging" and not "likely to fall over just before you save your work".

Kubuntu 8.10 includes the KDE 4.1 desktop.

Overall, Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex is a good, polished release. We had no reliability niggles during testing and performance was as good as ever. Many of the changes, while small in themselves, improve the user experience and especially make things easier for those new to Linux. Those, arguably, are Ubuntu's strongest niche's, so improvements in this area are both expected and welcome. With one or two reservations, this is a decent, but not dramatic, step forward. The support for netbooks is also a good sign of where things are going. We will have more to say on Ubuntu 8.10 in Linux Format magazine soon - but first impressions are definitely favourable.