Ubuntu Tutorials

Yesterday I installed the Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” Beta release by way of the desktop (Live-CD) based installer. The installation was very clean and polished. It has been a while since I’ve used a graphical installer and I am pleased with the improvements that I found. It definitely rivals any “professional” or “enterprise” install session that I’ve ever seen, and easily beats them in terms of speed and ease. I’d like to give a short review of the Beta release and encourage everyone to try it and finalize any remaining bugs.

Installation

The installation was quick and painless. All of the questions were asked in the beginning and then the installer took over. During the installation messages were displayed regarding the benefits of Ubuntu and the software that it provided. Below are some screenshots of the installation process.

This is the initial installation screen. As you can see it offers a number of options including disk and memory checks, as well as booting off existing installations. I selected “Install Ubuntu” and hit [ENTER].

This appears to be the initial boot splash screen while the Live-CD installer is booting.

A preview of the new default wallpaper.

Welcome to the installer! Select your preferred language. This language will be used during and after the installation.

Select your timezone. I very much like this improved location selector tool. Instead of trying to find myself on a map that zooms in and out (you may remember what I’m referring to from previous releases), this simply slices up the world into timezones and allows you to select yours.

Select your keyboard layout. For US English standard qwerty layouts you can click forward. I needed to select “Choose your own:” and “USA – Dvorak” for my layout.

Partitioning was simple. I erased and used the entire disk.

Username information. Enter your full name, username and password information. Remember that this user will also act as the initial administrator.

I also like the addition of the “Require my password to log in and to decrypt my home folder” as well as the other options. I selected the last option and am using the encrypted home folder system.

Final review point before installation. From here you can still go back and make changes. Once you click install it should be hands free from here out.

Welcome to Ubuntu 9.10 – “Ubuntu is designed to be easy. Feel free to explore!”

Browse the web with Firefox

Relive Memories with F-Spot Photo Manager

Accessibility in Ubuntu

Control your digital life with Evolution

Keep in contact with Empathy IM

Office tools at your fingertips

Watch and listen on Ubuntu

Installing additional software

Getting Help with Ubuntu

Post Installation

Installation complete. At this point you can restart the machine and your installation should be done.

This is a screenshot of my final installation. I have changed the following:

• GNOME panels moved to top. Panel size 23px.
• All fonts set to Droid Sans 8pt.
• 96 DPI, LCD antialiasing
• Shiki Brave Theme
• Selected the space desktop wallpaper(s). These auto-rotate.
• Installed Gnome-Do, Dropbox and Chromium Browser

Conclusion

So far I think this release seems very polished. The graphics and artwork are very clean and professional. I had no trouble getting things installed properly, and I haven’t had any issues post-installation. The notification system appears to be a little more polished as compared to 9.04. We’ll see what my feelings are with continued use.

So far I am pleased with this release and would confidently suggest it to others, even if it is the Beta release.

Bugs

I did submit two bugs since I installed. I’ve listed them below for feedback, verification and hopefully closure:

• Required icon themes missing from included theme set – #440635
• GDM ignores keyboard layout selections for variants – #421212

I very briefly tried out the fifth alpha release of Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” tonite and I thought I would share some of my immediate impressions with the rest of you. To sum it up, I hope others are having better luck with it than I did.

System

The machine that I installed on is a Dell Latitude D630. That is a Core 2 Duo 2.10GHz, 2G RAM, 80G HDD, Integrated Intel video and Intel 3945ABG wireless adapter. It is pretty standard hardware as far as I’m concerned–the intel hardware is all supported just fine.

Negatives

I installed using the alpha 5 alternate installer (text based). I used LVM + encryption for my partitioning and otherwise used all default settings, but my problems started before the installer was even finished. Actually, I don’t know if I can accurately say that because the installer never actually did finish. It got to the point of adding the user(s) and then hung. I finally decided to reboot the machine and see what state it was in.. maybe it could be salvaged. Luckily it seemed to be in working bootable order. at least at first glance..

Some of you may remember that I’m a dvorak user. Most of the time this doesn’t cause any problems as I’m the only user on my machine and I can configure the keyboard anyway I’d like. There are those few exceptions however where it ends up causing issues. This was one of them.

When I tried logging into my new installation I noticed the keyboard settings weren’t in place. It was still trying to use qwerty, even though I had used dvorak throughout the installation. I tried setting it manually, which worked during my session, but didn’t persist. I even tried reinstalling the console-setup package to alter the system-wide keyboard. That didn’t seem to take effect either.

I noticed some other oddities as well, most of them linked back to the keyboard layout issue.

Positives

On the positive side I was very impressed with the improved boot time and splash screen. I didn’t time the boot, but I want to say the speed was improved. The graphics were also a bit cleaned up. Ohh, and the horrible GDM graphic from 9.04 was gone as well!

I was also glad to see that ext4 is the new default filesystem. I’ve been running ext4 since it become “stable” and I’ve had no problems with it at all. It is *much* faster than ext3 as well as most of the other common file systems.

The addition of GRUB2 will be very interesting I’m sure. I didn’t get to play with it much, but I’m glad to see that is finally being used. I understand there are a lot of technical improvements in GRUB2 vs the traditional “legacy” GRUB.

I also noticed that some of the issues I’ve had in the past with Intel video were gone. This is due to the replacement of EXA with UXA. For any of you Intel users, this is a big one to be excited about, particularly if you have issues currently on Ubuntu 9.04.

Conclusion

In conclusion I think there are going to be a lot of very noticeable improvements in Ubuntu 9.10 and I’ll be happy to use it. Based on my keyboard issues however it will be hard for me to use at this point. I’ve gone back to Ubuntu 9.04 for the meantime. Perhaps I’ll try it again when it hits Beta.

What regressions or improvements have you found with Ubuntu 9.10 releases? Are you excited to see it coming or are you going to be reluctant to upgrade? I’d really like to hear that other people are having better luck than I did. Chances are, considering my problems were dvorak related, you probably did.

For those of you that enjoy the bleeding edge and want to help test the next release of Ubuntu, the second Alpha release of 9.10 is now available. You should be warned that this release is not meant for the faint of heart or production machines. It will very likely break before it is done, leaving you with all kinds of interesting problems. On the other hand though, a little bleeding edge never killed anyone (plus, you learn a lot when things break).

Some of the upcoming features in Ubuntu 9.10 are:

• GNOME 2.27.1
• Linux Kernel 2.6.30
• New Intel Video Architecture (testing)
• New default compiler (GCC-4.4 vs GCC-4.3)
• EXT4 filesystem by default (I’m excited about this one!)
• Grub2 by default

If you’d like to help test this release you can find more information regarding known issues, download locations and how to report bugs here. Let the testing begin!