I started off my morning with some Ubuntu 7.10 action since the first Beta had just been released. I downloaded the 688MB ISO image, burned it to CD, and got started immediately with the Live CD. It took a few minutes for it to boot up, but that’s expected since I’m running the operating system off of the CD I burned. I contemplated upgrading my current Ubuntu 7.04 installation with this version, but I didn’t want to risk the instability.
As soon as Ubuntu started up I was able to select my wireless network. Occasionally in the past it has had issues recognizing my wireless card, but this time it did a great job. It managed to pull in all of the networks in the vicinity:
UPDATE:We have put together guides on enabling restricted drivers in Ubuntu and how to enable Compiz Fusion in Ubuntu 7.10! We also wrote a complete Kubuntu 7.10 review.
There are several new features in Ubuntu 7.10, and here’s an overview of them:
- Compiz Fusion – I tried this on my laptop but couldn’t get it to work for the life of me. Every time I tried to enable the “Extra” option the configuration screen would freeze up. This could be because I was running the Live CD, but I’m not ready to give up my stable Ubuntu installation yet to see if that was the root of the cause. To try and enable it yourself just go to System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects -> Extra.
- Desktop Search – The desktop search is a nice addition to Ubuntu, and makes it much easier to find what you’re looking for.
- Fast user switching – I didn’t have multiple users on the computer to test this out with, but I’m guessing that it will be nice in those instances.
- GUI for Screen Configuration – I was really excited about this because Ubuntu has always had a hard time recognizing my native widescreen monitor resolution. My native resolution is 1680×1050, and the closest I could get is 1600×1200. I tried switching the drivers for my ATI graphics card, changing screen models, and just about everything, but it had its heart set on not giving in to the widescreen resolution. :(
- Automatic printer installation and non-free device drivers – Printers are now automatically setup when they are plugged in, and restricted drivers can now be installed in just a few clicks. This is great news for anyone with a wireless card from Broadcom!
- NTFS writing – Users can now read and write to NTFS partitions. I tried to do this, but again, I was running the Live CD which wouldn’t let me mount the Windows drive. So for right now I will assume that it works. :)
- And more…
It’s still a bit early for me to give an official thumbs up, but I would say things are looking pretty good. The final release is due out in October, and at that time I’ll go ahead and upgrade my current installation. Hopefully that will solve any of the issues that I was having with the Live CD version.
I too also have downloaded the live CD but I really don’t want replace my 7.04 stable installation till this gets out of beta and is released. But the live CD does make a good way to test out what we can look forward to.
Hey Ryan, what is the date of the Gutsy Release? Just wondering. Thanks!
Maybe overkill for you, but you could create a disk image with qemu (qemu-img -create -fmt vmdk ubuntu_7_10.vmdk 5G) and then use VM, QEMU, VirtualBox. Boot into the live cd, install to the disk image you created, and then see what kind of hardware differences there might be with an install. Doesn’t really help all that much assess performance as it is a virtual machine but is better than live cd.
18th October 2007
I can’t wait for the stable release. I would be using Ubuntu right now if I could’ve gotten my sound card to work. I posted numerous topics oin the ubuntuforums website but no-one could help or tell me how to get it working. If this release supports my sound card, I’ll never use windows on my laptop again.
I see that the Ubuntu Team would not be able to squeeze in KDE 4 in Kubuntu 7.10. That would have been real nice. Any Kubuntu Specific Notes( Gutsy) would be well Appreciated.
I love being able to pop something in, play around with it, and then go back to the stable version without having to worry what it might have screwed up. Whoever thought up the idea of a Live CD is a genius!
You can probably get a good idea of whether it will work with the current state that it is in. Just give the Live CD a whirl if you’re curious right now.
I do have a virtual machine system setup that I could try that on, but the experience I’ll have with that probably won’t be as good as a Live CD. The graphics drivers are often recognized differently than that of your computer’s graphics cards, and therefore won’t allow the advanced Compiz Fusion functions.
I’ll probably take a look at Kubuntu 7.10 when the next Beta comes out. That way they are spaced out a bit. :) I can only take booting up to a Live CD so much.
I’ve found the ubuntuforums aren’t exactly flooded with people wanting to respond. I’ve posted questions there with no replies, too.
7.10 looks good.
Is anybody out there who can help to make wireless work on a Dell laptop, Inspiron 4150.
It would be nice to know exactly what is the hardware you have tested. This report could give the false idea that every wireless card will be detected and every widescreen display will be false configured.
I have a laptop Dell Inspiron 4150 pentium 4, 1.69GHz with 512Mb memory, and a wireless internal “Dell TrueMobile 1180 internal 802.11b Mini PCI card” made by Broadcom, driver version 3.8.27.0 , date 7/9/2002 .
I’d like a custom Live and Install CDs to make that happen. Thanks in advance.
Is there any chance Ubuntu 7.10 will work out-of-the-box in Virtual PC 2007?
You can try out in the Ubuntu forums, but my support capabilities with Ubuntu is pretty limited.
I assume that you were talking to me, and my laptop is a Dell Inspiron 6100 with an Intel wireless card. It’s about as standard as you can get, which makes it even more shocking that I couldn’t get it to work.
I actually think that it does work with Virtual PC. Check this out:
[arcanecode.wordpress.com]
To the user thats trying to get there wireless Dell internal
wireless card to work with ubuntu! its a real pain to get it
going that is why i dont use Ubuntu otherwise I would! best
solution is to just swap out that broadcom wireless card and
buy a supported card for ubuntu .
I’ve been thinking of trying Ubuntu for a long time. This may give me the push to do just that.
don’t take this the wrong way, but what exactly was the point of this.
booting a liveCD and posting some screenshots is hardly a review in my world, any moron can do that ….and did.
What cards(miniPCI cards) do you guys know, that can I swap it with, and make my laptop work wireless. Or for instance, if any other (LinuxOS variations)desktops may work with my present card, let me know. I’m strugle with this isue for long time. Please ask everybody else in some other forums that you may know about. Is it there any other miniPCI cards, (out there), in the whole world, that it may work wireless with a LinuxOS desktop, if any? Pleeease help. Thanks a milion.
Here is a tutorial on how to get a Broadcom card to work- [ubuntuforums.org]
I have a different card but Ndiswrapper + Windows XP driver got it working.
Live CD’s are awesome. I’m convinced my hard drive has some physical damage from when my power supply went bad (I know it fried my video card) and my XP and Kubuntu installs are both broken but I can still use my computer. I just had my Kubuntu 7.04 Live CD running for almost a week before it finally crashed.
What a pointless review, if you are going to write a review about something like Compiz Fusion, then at least do it properly.
Of course Compiz Fusion isn’t going to work from a Live CD, it is something that should only be tested once the Operating System has been installed on the Hard Disk for it to make full use of your computers hardware. Otherwise, it’d be freaking slow as a wet week and you’d go deaf from the DVD drive spinning up and down all the time.
Also, you need to manually enable your video cards restricted (commercial) drivers before you can even use Compiz Fusion (System -> Administration -> Restricted Drivers Manager). These drivers aren’t enabled by default. :oops:
:mrgreen:
Well, I figured if Mandriva could enable similar effects on their Live CD then it shouldn’t be a problem with Ubuntu.
Tried that, too.
How are, comercial restricted videocards, enabled? How do you enable them manually?
Not directly out of the box but pretty close, you have to run in safe graphics mode, and there’s a tweak you need to do to get the mouse working.
I’ve got step by step instructons at:
[arcanecode.wordpress.com]
Hope it helps…
You should see this icon in the tray: [ubuntu.com]
To all of the people looking to enable restricted drivers read this post:
[cybernetnews.com]