benjarvis.org

My Hardy Heron Experience.

The dust has finally settled and I have everything exactly the way I like it. I’m very picky about my Linux setup and I have my preferences for various apps. Ubuntu gives you passable default apps in the default install, but I’m a creature of habit and I like to use familiar apps. After some tweaking, I think I’m ready to discuss the upgrade.

The upgrade went more or less smoothly, but there were a few bumps in the road. First, Ubuntu has a habit of removing certain apps and installing apps you removed (the ones that are part of the default install) to complete the upgrade. In my case, since I use wicd instead of Network Manager, I had a bitch of a time getting my wireless working again after the reboot. I had to connect to the wireless from the command-line using ifconfig/iwconfig and then install wicd with synaptic. It wasn’t hard, but it was a bit of a pain. Once wicd was installed, the network was working fine. Next I noticed that the Emerald theme wasn’t showing up (the Clearlooks Metacity theme that I had as my back up was loading). When I went to the Emerald theme manager and selected the theme, Emerald failed to load it. After much googling, I found that Compiz had somehow reset the preferred window manager from Emerald to Metacity. To fix this I went in to “System->Preferences->Advanced Desktop Effects Settings->Extras->Window Decoration” and put “emerald –replace” in the “Command” field. After that my Emerald theme showed up. You can find my Emerald themes here. After that was fixed I could concentrate and began the task of installing the removed programs, removing the unwanted programs, and trimming the fat. This was a good time to clean up the ol’ home directory. I deleted the .confs of all the programs I no longer used and deleted ones that I figured could use a regenerated conf. I still need to figure out the VGA code for grub to give me my 1280×800 console again. I found it once, but my googling has so far been unsuccessful.

I’m a little upset that they went with the Firefox 3 beta. It runs fine, but my windows partition has 2.0.14 and they share a profile. It doesn’t mess up anything important, but I’ve had cookie issues. If I log in to a site in one version, it will persist as long as I don’t start up the other version. Then the cookies or something get reset and I have to log in again. However eventually, 3 will go gold and both versions will sync up.

I’m interested in PulseAudio. I don’t know exactly what it does, but I’m interested in anything that tries to improve sound on Linux. I got 3D windows to work on Compiz. This is the little plugin that makes it look like your app windows are floating over the desktop when you do a cube rotate. It looks cool. Aside from all that, I don’t see a whole lot of difference. I suppose that is better than it being slower or something. At least I know it’s patched and will be supported for 3 years.

Final verdict? Hardy Heron works great. Stable. No real problems…once I tied up all the upgrade’s loose ends. I’m sure those that do a clean install will have a very smooth time of it. To be honest, I’m amazed that the upgrade works at all. In the Windows world, you take your chances when you do an upgrade. So yay Ubuntu, keep up the good work!