The last time I blogged about Ubuntu Desktop, either I didn't explain the problems I was having sufficiently, or people just don't get it and react. I try to make what I write clear enough for those new to Linux, but that may make it seem like I'm not very experienced with Linux, even though I have been actively abusing it since 1995. I have decided to just keep on writing and let the chips fall where they may.
This post shouldn't raise the ire of most people though, because unlike many Ubuntu veterans and rookies alike, I have had very little, if any, problems with Karmic Koala, much to my delight. Though I should point out, even with the problems I had with Jaunty, I still ran it on all of the systems I'm mentioning here. I also manage twenty Sun workstations that have been happily running Jaunty with none of the problems I had with my home system. My home system is a Dell XPS 420 with an ATI graphics card. I first upgraded, rather installed Ubuntu 9.10, and restored my data backup from 9.04. I created user accounts and the previous fix to the gnome-system-tools made this uneventful. Installing the multimedia and third-party software is incredibly easy now. The best guide for multimedia and add-on software I have found is over at my-guides.net. Once I had everything running smoothly I decided to take a chance and install the proprietary ATI drivers. I had nothing but problems with the ATI drivers in 9.04. This time however, it all worked without a hitch. I have full eye-candy and VLC plays videos smoothly with no problems. The final big test was Brasero, which was a giant headache with Jaunty. I burned an audio CD with the Normalize Plug-in and it worked like a charm. Well over a month later, Karmic Koala has been trouble free.
Karmic Koala Eye Candy
The next test was my netbook, an Acer Aspire One with a 160 gigabyte hard drive. This system started out life with Windows XP being immediately replaced with Fedora 10 XFCE Respin, then Easy Peasy, which I was happy with. Then with the delays of Easy Peasy 2.0, I decide to try Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) 9.04, which I was satisfied with. Again, with a completely new install, I upgraded to UNR 9.10. The install was trouble free and the new interface has improved a great deal. The only downside is the built-in web cam still doesn't record video very well, making it essentially unusable. Not needing the web cam, I haven't spent any time troubleshooting it, and is a non-issue for me. The one manual tweak that needed to be done was configuring the Acer fan control kernel module, acerhdf, which was loaded on boot but not enabled.
The last system to be converted was my work desktop, a Dell Optiplex 755 with Intel graphics. It was a dual boot system with Windows Vista Business and Ubuntu 9.04. Two problems made me upgrade this system sooner than the winter break I had planned on. The anti-virus that I was using brought Vista to its knees. Though the version of the anti-virus was not the latest, it was a supported version for Vista. Luckily I was able to boot into Ubuntu to complete the work I needed to do, accessing the NTFS volume. Then I started having problems with Firefox on Ubuntu locking up and I had to repeatedly kill Firefox and restart it. I didn't have the patience to isolate the problem so I decided that I needed to wipe out Vista anyway, and installed Karmic for a third time. Again, trouble free and this time no dual booting. Instead, I have Windows 7 running in VirtualBox. Since this is a work machine, I have no advanced graphics installed and can manage both my Windows servers and Linux servers.
Three different systems with three different uses, all worked splendidly well with Karmic Koala. All of my previous issues fixed and no new ones have raised their ugly heads. Not being an LTS version of Ubuntu, this version has worked very well. There are many reasons why a particular distribution version works error free on some systems and dies a miserable death on others. Hardware compatibility is probably the major reason followed by specific software bugs. I recently purchased a notebook computer and it will dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu, mainly because the consulting work I occasionally do requires Windows. Due to the Windows requirement and running multiple virtual machines for Linux servers, Windows servers and Windows clients for testing, along with network and monitoring tools, a netbook isn't up to the task. When I purchased the laptop, I did exactly what I tell clients and friends not to do. I purchased the system without first researching hardware compatibility. After the machine arrived I then decided to see what problems were in store. I did find out that there is a bug in the X.org driver that can be worked around and the wireless card isn't supported out of the box. At least I know what I have to look forward to, and nothing that is insurmountable. I should have Karmic running soon on a fourth machine.
I agree
I put Karmic on my EeePC 901 first, no problems, great. Not as fast as the Arch Linux that was on there before, but I wanted to play with Quickly. On the other hand, Karmic does very fast sleeps, so startup isn't a problem.
Next was the desktop, smooth no problems. I restart and GDM comes up. Guess what, I could finally read the fonts on it. Yes, somewhere a patch fixed the issue of the fonts not showing up well on HDTV's.
So a big success on my end for 9.10.
Not perfect for me
I have a Dell Studio XPS 16 with ATI Mobility 3670 HD card. Neither suspend nor resume works. Its tough to have a laptop and not be able to suspend or resume. I also had to apply the no-backfill server patch to get fix an issue where window maximize/resize took seconds to perform
Very nice OS
+1
Kola is one of the best OS i ever seen ...everything just works
9.10 grub
I guess you guys have been lucky
One machine installed and wouldn't boot until the grub-mkconfig_lib file was edited, (remove line 174) and then run dpkg-reconfigure grub pc. My laptop went ok for a few weeks until it suffered the same problem, oddly, not immediately following an update??. apart from an issue getting the wireless card to work, a small issue with jockey I believe, needs a kick to get it started, it has worked OK. I now have the alternate install disks in 32 and 64 bit:-)
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+1 for a flawless Karmic
+1 for a flawless Karmic install and user experience.
I have one old laptop and an Eee PC 901. Upgraded both to grub2, then did fresh installs of Karmic (been a computer tech for 15 years. I will *never* do an in place upgrade!). Been bulletproof so far.
Hamish
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Happy Karmic works for you
I am very glad Karmic works for you, but for me and many others this last version of Ubuntu was a nightmare. I could not get a stable install.
You seem to be implying that those who have problems are either lying or just too ignorant to properly install Ubuntu. Why should Karmic take more knowledge to install than Jaunty or previous versions -- unless there are some serious regressions.
I have not had any issues with Ubuntu (except 7.04) until Karmic. For me, it is the end of the Ubuntu road. I am learning the ins and outs of Debian (Lenny). In a way, this is a good thing.
re: Happy Karmic works for you
"You seem to be implying that those who have problems are either lying or just too ignorant to properly install Ubuntu."
On the contrary, what I am saying is that, though other people have had problems with this version, I have not, as oppsed to Jaunty which I did have a lot of problems with. As I said in the post: "There are many reasons why a particular distribution version works error free on some systems and dies a miserable death on others. Hardware compatibility is probably the major reason followed by specific software bugs." It was not my intention to demean any users.
It is important to note that this is not an LTS (Long Term Support) release, and I would expect more stability and less hardware compatibility issues in the next version, which will be LTS.
Ken
I've been using Ubuntu since
I've been using Ubuntu since not long after the first release. I've seen a lot of comments from users saying they expect LTS releases to be more stable. My personal experience is that I can't really tell the difference. LTS releases are released on the same 6 month schedule and with more or less the same methods as any other release. My experience is that around 2-3 months after a release enough bugs are fixed to make the release somewhat usable. The current system leads to a lot of regressions...even in LTS releases.
I am
If he is not implying that, I am. I have installed Karmic on 17 different
machines and had no trouble at all. From 7'' netbooks to 64 bit workstations.
Either people get broken downloaded packages, or try to mess up with the
standard setup without proper knowledge, and by that get in trouble.
Thanks for the positive aspects!
I also want lo shout out loud that Karmic works flawlessly on the 4 very different laptops I installed it. Great release!
Well said...
I'm in a similar situation to you, I've been using Karmic on my laptop (which is my main machine when it comes to actual user interaction) since alpha 4, with very few serious issues.
I upgraded my desktop/server from Jaunty when Karmic went stable, again without real issue, there was the usual fun with nvidia/restricted-drivers-manager not picking up the latest driver immediately, but thats not that much of a problem.
I did a clean install on the laptop, as it'd been running a dev version, no problems there too.
And it's not like I run a standard setup on either machine, both are now using gnome-shell, chromium & docky all via PPA's.
I see all these posts from people with problems, it confuses the hell out of me as I've had none. (There was something wrong with suspend/gnome-power-manager, but that came in with an update, that was def post-install.)
Like you, I've been using Linux of one flavour or another for over 10 years (started in '97, got rid of the dual-boot in '99, never actually ran Win98) perhaps, having lived through the years when linux driver availability with a joke, we're both so used to buying "linux-friendly" hardware that we do it without thought these days, whereas newcomers to the *buntu scene never experienced that pain so have bought stuff that just doesn't work quite as well/isn't as heavily tested?
Just a theory..
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I'm With You
I've installed Xubuntu 9.10 on several machines ranging from my old PIII laptop to much more modern machines with no real issues. Love it. Keep up the good work.
Karmic - yep, on the whole it
Karmic - yep, on the whole it has been one fine experience. I had a bit of a funny time of it not automounting USB drives but this seemed to fix itself after I had opened and closed Disk Utility in Administration. Other than that, on three Thinkpad laptops of varying vintage it has upgraded or installed very well. Liking it!