Review: Ubuntu 8.10 'Intrepid Ibex' Alpha 2 - 13/07/2008 by Andrew
Distro Review
Gaming on the Cutting Edge – Part 1
This review kicks off a multi-part review where I'll be looking at the up-coming releases from Ubuntu, Fedora, Open Suse and Mandriva. Alphas, Betas and Release Candidates are usually reserved for testers, developers or the Linux hardcore, though these early snapshots are just as important to the Linux gaming community. The reason for this is simple; Newer kernels support newer hardware and the newer the distro, the newer the packages (more importantly – game packages).
Gamers are hardware junkies. You'll never hear of a hardcore gamer that's still using a PII and a GeForce 2 MX – you're hardcore if you upgrade your PC components every couple of months or wait in anticipation for the next big graphics card coming from the Nvidia or AMD/ATI stables. This brings about a problem if the kernel you're using isn't going to support your brand new motherboard, soundcard or fancy network card (with a knife as a heatsink, no less). While you could roll your own kernel to get the support you need, most Linux users prefer to move to the next version of their distro of choice. This is where these reviews will come in handy, here you'll get to see what's new, what's the support like and how easy is it to install, suck down some game packages and frag the night away. On to the review...
Ubuntu 8.10 'Intrepid Ibex' Alpha 2
It seems like only last week that Ubuntu 8.04 (and family) was released and already news of the next version is filling Linux sites. Ubuntu 8.04 LTS was a great release and will have desktop support for the next 3 years. This sounds like great news, though you're only covered for security updates, you won't be getting the latest version of Nexuiz, OpenArena or your other favourite 'apt-gettable' game when you next apply the patches. Luckily for you these should be available in Ubuntu 8.10, though by the time this ships on the 31st of October they may soon be outdated.
To test this distribution I'll be using my dedicated test rig (as well as VMware Server for the initial screenshots) :
AMD Athlon 3200+ (2.0Ghz)
Gigabyte 939 Motherboard (GA-K8NSC-939)
2x512MB Geil DDR400 Dual Channel
Gigabyte 6600GT 256MB AGP 8x
LG DVD Burner (GSA-4163B)
Seagate 40GB 2MB cache ATA100
Onboard AC97
Logitech G15 keyboard + G5 mouse
Installation
I'm using the 64bit version of the 'Alternate' CD, which gives you the ability to setup RAID or to install on machines with not enough RAM to run the Live CD (requires 192MB+) the installation is no different to the previous version of Ubuntu. A very easy process, with the partitioning offering a 'Guided Install' which takes care of everything. The only issues I had were the G15 keyboard wouldn't work – forcing me to use a spare PS2 keyboard. The weird thing was that the G15 works for doing things like BIOS navigation, though as soon as the Live CD starts, no keyboard. Post installation the G15 worked again, so not sure what's to blame here.
Within an hour (YMMV) you're good to go. An automated reboot brings you up to the login screen – so far so good. On my VMware Server version, this is as far as you get, which is fine as from here on in screenshots are easy enough within Ubuntu itself. My monitor wasn't detected and as such, I was stuck with 800x600. No problem, this should be fixed up as soon as I apt-get the Nvidia restricted drivers...I hope...
Desktop, Graphics and Games
The wallpaper is still the default wallpaper from Hardy (Ubuntu 8.04), though expect this to change before the final version. One thing that's notably different is the colour scheme, which is now a dark grey rather than a very-light grey of previous versions. It takes some getting used to, but I for one like it. It's changeable anyway, so if you have your heart set on fluro green then go for it. The menu system hasn't changed from Hardy at this stage, and I doubt it will. It's clear, concise and easy to navigate. The Firefox default page is still pointing to 8.04, so there's clearly a bunch more cleaning up to be done, as we're still quite early in the alpha stage of 8.10.
Concerning the Nvidia restricted drivers (read: Nvidia non-opensource drivers), there seems to be an issue with this, so at this stage there's no simple way to enable the proprietary Nvidia drivers. This means my test machine was only able to push 94.6 frames per second in glxgears. Not cool. This means you'll need to download the latest Nvidia driver and install it manually. Not the end of the world, but definitely something that Ubuntu needs to rectify sooner rather than later.
The good news is that once you've done this, you're right to start downloading all the latest games. Nexuiz 2.4.2, OpenArena0.7.7, Warsow 0.42, Glest 3.1.2 and SuperTuxKart 0.5 are all available and are the latest versions (and are not available in the Hardy repositories – NOTE: This obviously isn't an exhaustive listing, though if it was in Hardy, chances are it's here and the latest possible version). Truly, if you want to stay cutting edge, you have to get your feet wet early to get the latest versions while they're hot.
The kernel is version 2.6.26 (up from 2.6.24 in Hardy), Firefox is version 3.0 (final), Gimp is 2.4.6, Gnome is 2.23.3, K3B is 1.0.5 and OpenOffice is 2.4.1. As the freeze on package updates is still a while off, expect these (including the game packages) to change over the next couple of months.
Bottom Line
Ubuntu 8.10 is nowhere near ready for public consumption. Diving in at this stage means you'll be sucking down updates like there is no tomorrow and running into the occasional hiccup. What you do get is a taste of what's to come as well as the ability to play with the latest packages and play online games without any server version incompatibility issues – so long as you manually install the restricted drivers yourself.
Wait a few more months and then dive in - the water is too murky just now.