Ubuntu Tutorials

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.

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Many of you know that I’m a dvorak user. Yeah, I use that funny keyboard layout that makes others want to pull their hair out (or punch my lights out!) anytime they sit down to use my machine. It has been just over a year now and I can’t imagine switching back to qwerty. For more information on this funny layout called dvorak, check out the DVZine.org website.

One question that I get all the time is “How do I switch they keyboard mapping?”, which I thought I would answer here.

Change per Session

To change the keyboard mapping on a per-session basis (it will revert once you logout), is by using the setxkbmap utility. To switch to dvorak using setxkbmap, you would type:

setxkbmap dvorak

To switch back to qwerty layout (try) type:

setxkbmap us

System Wide

To make these changes system wide, assuming you’re using Ubuntu, you can use the following:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

This will re-install the console-tools package, which will remap your keyboard layout if you select something different. You’ll likely want to select all the default options, other than toggling between US and Dvorak.

Disclaimer: if you set your mapping to Dvorak and can’t switch back its not my fault . Visit the DVzine website for a key mapping for help.

Since my conversion to Dvorak last week I’ve found myself needing to practice as much as possible to retrain myself on a new keyboard layout. My day to day requires quite a bit, but there are also those times when I find I just need some good old fashioned training. For that I use gtypist.

Gtypist supports both QWERTY and awesome–err, I mean, Dvorak layouts so you can practice whichever you prefer. I had used the program from time to time before my switch to test my speed and accuracy. I’m now using it for practice.

To install gtypist you’ll want to install the gtypist package using your favorite method (command line via aptitude or GUI via Synaptic).

sudo aptitude install gtypist

You can run gtypist by using that same command or offer some arguments such as those listed below.

gtypist -e % : default acceptable error percentage (0 - 100, defaults at 3%)

gtypist -s : silent mode. If you find yourself making a lot of errors it can get annoying!

This will come in handy for any of you other brave souls that want to take on the challenge. I know it really is helping me. I’m up to 60wpm on some tests after only a week of use!