Ubuntu 8.10 is a really solid release

[Deja Q]

The firewall has to be enabled manually, but otherwise it's a breeze. Even installing nVidia drivers is a pleasure (no more command line torture; v177 was downloaded and installed in real time)

:party:

[DainBramaged]

1. I was just going to play with 8.04.2 because it has longer support life

Am I wasting my time? And should I just go right to 8.10?

[Deja Q]

2. Good question. It depends on your needs.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading is their official page. I didn't even know about the Long Term Support releases.

If you're planning on sticking with one version for a very long time and see no need to upgrade to every new version, and everything suits your needs, I'd stay with 8.04.

I personally am an early adopter who enjoys living dangerously; when a new release comes out, I will backup, reformat, and replace my .home directory after the new OS reinstall. Apart from SUSE 11.1, I've never had any issues with new distros being buggy or so bad I had to downgrade, and the new features and revisions tend to have at least one little addition I've appreciated.

But especially with 9.04 about to be released (April 23?), you might want to wait. Especially if 9.04 will be a LTS release as well (I currently do not know, but a brief google search suggests it will be a LTS) I'm curious as to what new features will be implemented (Ext4 might be one of them, which is claimed to be faster than Ext3, but that's just a vague memory right now.)

I can say that Ubuntu 8.10, when benchmarked against 8.04, is marginally slower (from milliseconds to several seconds depending on application). Performance being #2 in my book, you might want to install and stick with 8.04.

[Deja Q]

3. Addendum: Wait for 9.04 and use EXT4 file system!

Ext4 is confirmed, and it's been suggested that 9.04 will be a tightened up release, with a lot of performance improvements. (Coming from Vista myself, I had no idea 8.10 was so slow when compared to 8.04, but it's all good... :) )

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/01/super-fast-ext4-filesystem-arrives-in-ubuntu-9-04.ars
Sweet...... EXT4 being a true journaling file system, you never have to worry about fragmentation. Unlike Winbloat...

[DainBramaged]

4. TANKS, I burned an 8.04.2 image a few minutes ago

so I may just install it anyway. I have lots of "orphans" to test it on. And a bunch of old small hard drives that I can choose from to use up.

[Deja Q]

5. Cool -- also, an errata on my part...

9.04 beta is coming out in late April (27th). Not the actual gold release. :( :( :(

Definitely looking forward to it...

[DainBramaged]

6. Got home a little bit ago, catching up, will try to install this week.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

7. Your right, it is nice, ant the best thing is everything works!

BTW Do you know about Ubuntu 8.10 Ultimate Edition 2.1, 64 bit http://ultimateedition.info/ultimate-edition-21

I've been using Ubuntu 8.10 Ultimate Edition 1.9, 32 bit then I discovered their was a 64 bit... very nice indeed. I played a HD movie on this Linux box and it played smooth as glass,, My housemate's PC is very close in specs but has windows XP Pro 32 bit and it was choppy, even after downloading all the right codets(?).

Both computers have 4 gigs memory. I think mine played the movie better because it is 64 bit Linux system.









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