Software: Hardy Heron - Ubuntu 8.04

Coming home to a new Linux distribution was almost as pleasing as coming home to a tidy office and bedroom (Spode tip: always tidy the house before you go on holiday!). Hardy Heron is the next Long Term Support release of Ubuntu, since 6.06. Frankly, I have found Gutsy to be such a damned good release, Ubuntu has a lot to live up to.

My main machine has 64-Bit Ubuntu on it, and the HP laptop I've been using had 32-Bit, both 7.10, Gutsy Gibbon. I felt these should be my first test beds.

Karlson, my over the road internet proxy, was smart enough to set up an apt-cache. This is essentially an apt proxy, so if a package is already downloaded, it hands it straight to you across the network. If it isn't, it downloads it, and it stays there for the next person. Updating multiple machines, this made my life a lot easier. Using a focussed wireless antennae I managed to boost my signal strength somewhat and that also improved update speeds - getting in the region of 2MB/s downloading locally over the wireless.

Starting with the HP laptop, I don't know what I did when I was in Italy, but I managed to upset it somewhat, no longer connecting to the network either wired or wirelessly, or even mounting any flash drives. I did run out of power at a couple of points, so there could have been hard drive corruption, but more than likely, I just changed something I shouldn't have. However, booting into rescue mode and setting an IP manually, I managed to get the machine onto the local network. From there, I did a manual "apt-get dist-upgrade" after adjusted the aptitude sources list first.

This churned away, pulling the packages down, before failing with the error:

apt-get

failed trying to overwrite '/usr/share/applications/screensavers/ubuntu_theme.desktop', which is also in package gnome-screensaver

I felt overwriting this file (essentially a shortcut) wouldn't be too detrimental, so manually installed the package:

Then I simply re-ran apt-get dist-upgrade, but with an "-f" switch. After a while, it was finished and rebooted. All my previous woes were fixed and my upgrade successful.

I then went through the same process with my 64-Bit machine, which took a little longer as the packages weren't already cached. Curiously, I came across the same ubuntu_theme.desktop error, which I couldn't find documented anywhere on the web, so I don't know what I'm doing that's so special. However, after this, it booted up fine without fail.

One of the big reasons I moved to Ubuntu was the ability to do a distribution upgrade, so I was glad that it went (fairly) flawlessly.

So what changes have I noticed? Well, oddly, the first thing I noticed was that "Restricted Drivers Manager" has been renamed to "Hardware Drivers". But even odder is the fact that the change has only been made in the 32-Bit version.

Firefox has been changed from version 2.0 to 3.0 Beta 5. At first, I thought it was a strange choice for an LTS release to have a beta product, but as someone pointed out in this piece describing a little more about the new release, FireFox 2.0 may have been a final product but it was still pretty flakey and unstable, so even thought FF3 is in beta, it's still a more stable version.

It's my first use of FireFox 3, and I have to admit, it has a lot of features that I really like!

OpenOffice has been updated to version 2.4, but I imagine we won't notice much difference until version 3.0. Pidgin has been updated to a newer version too, that I'm finding very frustrating as you can no longer resize the input portion of the window.

Doing multiple file copies, instead of having multiple copy windows open, someone finally had the sensible idea of just having all the windows amalgamate into one - much like a download manager would. That's a nice touch.

One major change I've noticed while administering, is the "unlock" button. This basically elevates you to root, so you can adjust settings that need elevation. This has the benefit that some applications you can launch without root access, merely to read data (which is often desired), without having the login.

On the HP notebook, Desktop Effects (wobbly windows etc.) worked out of the box, which was nice to see. But it still didn't support the Broadcom wireless card. Doing this still involves using ndiswrapper. A graphical tool for working with ndiswrapper, that literally involves pointing to the Windows drivers, would be a really positive step for Ubuntu.

One of the bigger changes has been moving the sound over to the PulseAudio system. This is something that happened in Fedora 8 too, and caused me problems then. In Ubuntu, it's receiving nothing but complaints, especially with people suggesting it is a beta solution, and shouldn't be in an LTS release. Hardy won't become LTS until June, so there is still a small amount of time to iron out these bugs, but I have to admit I wonder if it's a wise choice. ALSA does seem to do a pretty good job by itself.

I have turned off Pulse Audio, but even without it, my onboard sound is now incredibly unhappy with pops and clicks all over the place. I have a suspicion I need to increase the audio buffering on my card, but I don't have time right now to go fiddling with ALSA configuration. I'm going to put up with it for a couple of days and see if someone in the Ubuntu forums comes up with a solution. I might also try the 32-Bit Live CD to see if the problem is still there.

Overall, there are a few tweaks here and there, but it doesn't feel hugely different to Gutsy, which was already a pretty fine distribution. Some of the changes that have been made, are at the installation phase, such as the ability to install straight away without loading the entire Live CD (which can take a while). So at some point I'll be giving a fresh install a go.

This article suggests that power consumption has Vista beat, and this article whets my appetite for a new type of SSD.

Your Google is as good as mine.

Yeah, I feel the same way. There was nothing wrong with my machine

If there is one thing I have learned from this - is to boot from the Live CD and check it out first. Maybe do that Ivan? If all is well, upgrade