Ubuntu 8.04 released

Posted 14:09, 26/4/2008, in Ubuntu

Thursday saw the release of Ubuntu 8.04 (codenamed "hardy heron"). Since I had a load of new PC bits arrive yesterday, I had the opportunity to compare installation of both XP and Ubuntu from scratch on the same machine.

The XP installation took about 40 minutes (not including the initial disc format), during which there were a few interruptions where I had to select my country, language, keyboard layout etc. After it was completed, the machine booted into a very low resolution desktop with fairly sluggish graphics performance and no networking.

The Ubuntu installation on the other hand took 10 minutes (including the repartitioning), had fewer interruptions, and afterwards the machine booted into my screen's native resolution, and everything was working out of the box. The only thing I had to install was the non-free Nvidia drivers for my graphics card, which took a few clicks (no CDs or web searching required).

My only complaints about the Ubuntu installation process are the partioning screen, which still uses terminology that would scare off a lot of users. Since it can detect if any other operating systems are installed on the disc, really it should present some simple options like:

1. Install Ubuntu on disc XXX, alongside your current Microsoft Windows XP installation
2. Install Ubuntu on another disc (if there's more than one in the machine)
3. Replace your existing Microsoft Windows XP installation (warning about deleting data)

if the user chooses option 1 they're presented with the slider to control how much space each OS should use (and it should default at giving each 50% of the disc space).

Manual creation of partitions, and terminology like 'contiguous space' and 'swap' should be hidden behind an advanced/manual configuration screen.

Netbeans vs. Eclipse

I'm also considering switching from Eclipse to Netbeans for PHP development. I'm already using Netbeans for Ruby (i.e. Rails) stuff at work, and I've never been especially happy with Eclipse. It's not particularly easy to setup (largely because the Ubuntu respository holds version 3.2 which isn't compatible with the latest version of PDT), and generally the more plugins you seem to add to it, the more flakey it becomes.

Netbeans is certainly much easier to setup - the version from the repository works straight out of the box, and adding plugins is a simple as ticking the ones you want to install from a menu. I believe both apps are Java-based, but Netbeans generally feels more responsive, and there are fewer hangs whilst the app reparses some code.

However, the PHP plugin for Netbeans still seems to be in its infancy. Once installed, I opened a sample PHP file and was presented with a horrible lime green background behind all the code. Apparently this isn't something that can be changed in the preferences yet (!). The code was all shown in a serif font, even though the options had it set to use a monospaced one.