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Setting up Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS “Lucid Lynx” has been released, featuring faster boot performance, a complete new theme, integration with social networking sites and Ubuntu One, the Ubuntu One Music Store, an improved Software Center, and the PiTiVi video editor. Read the press release for more detail on what’s new, and read the release notes for known issues with this new version.

I’ve been following the development of 10.04 on my netbook, but today I performed a fresh installation on it and my main desktop system. Here are my thoughts so far.

Eee PC 901 Netbook

My netbook has been getting better and better with recent Ubuntu releases. Installation is easy thanks to the Startup Disk Creator tool included in Ubuntu which lets me put the installer on an SD card. All the hardware works perfectly.

I’ve actually been running the development version of Ubuntu 10.04 on this system since alpha 1, so I thought there was a bug when after installing the final release I didn’t get any desktop effects. The desktop effects settings are grayed out. After a bit a digging I found that Compiz was not even installed. I haven’t found any information about this, but it appears that the netbook edition no longer includes desktop effects.

During the alpha releases I was using the full Ubuntu desktop rather than the netbook edition because when I installed the netbook installer was not available yet. The netbook edition is touted as being even faster, so I installed that instead when the final release was available.

I set up my wireless network as usual, but found that Ubuntu would not connect to it when I logged in or woke up from suspend. For some reason the “connect automatically” option was not set. I removed the network and re-added it and the option was set this time.

The netbook boots very quickly; if I look away I’ll miss the boot entirely. The boot splash is hardly necessary on this machine.

Dell Dimension 9200

My desktop system has been working great with Ubuntu for many releases now, and this is no exception. After fixing a hardware issue with my CD drive (the old Ubuntu system wouldn’t recognize blank CDs and I got I/O errors from the live CD, checking the SATA cable fixed it), the installation went smoothly. Everything on the system works. This is the first time I’ve installed 64-bit Ubuntu on this system.

On systems with Nvidia graphics, Ubuntu now defaults to the open source nouveau driver. It provides 2D acceleration and kernel mode setting (flicker-free booting) support, but no 3D acceleration at this time. After installing the Nvidia restricted driver, which lacks kernel mode setting, the boot splash is very low resolution and low colour.

General Notes

I can’t wait until I can remove the notification area entirely and replace it with the indicator applet. The indicator applet allows “scrubbing” between different items, and includes no inconsistent right and left click menus. So far the network manager applet is the only item running that has not been ported, and it still includes different right and left click menus!

It’s nice to have a default theme that I can not only live with, but find to be high quality. Parting with the consistent gray panel icons for another theme would be tough.

I was running Ubuntu 9.10 will PulseAudio disabled for a long time. It fixed a lot of stuff but it broke some Ubuntu things, so I’d rather not have to do that. In 10.04, so far it seems that some problems have been fixed, and some remain.

The new Simple Scan utility is awesome, it’s so much better than what there was before.

This is the first time I’ve used 64-bit Ubuntu. I was reading a while ago that there’s actually a performance advantage to running 64-bit when you can. So far everything seems to just work, including running 32-bit applications.

Some of the first applications I installed:

  1. Google Chrome: I install the version from Google so I can keep up with updates from the beta channel. Installing Google’s package will add their repository automatically.
  2. GNOME Do: the super-spacebar key combination is in my muscle memory so I can’t live without this application launcher.
  3. KeePassX: what I use securely store my passwords.
  4. Ubuntu Restricted Extras: the quickest way to install Flash, Java, web fonts, audio/video codecs, and more.
  5. rdiff-backup: my backup software of choice. I also remembered to restore my crontab to keep my automated backups going.
  6. Gmail Notifier: a Gmail notifier that’s integrated with Ubuntu. It pops up a notification when new mail arrives in my Gmail inbox, and lights up the messaging indicator.
  7. GIMP: the powerful image editor. Don’t forget you have to install it yourself now that it’s not included.
  8. WINE: run the occasional Windows application in Ubuntu. Add the WINE PPA to get new versions as they are released.

I’ll have lots to write about over the next few days as I finish getting set up.

Archived Comments

lionbeast

funny think is one of the first thing i did is try simple scan followed by the immediate install of xsane. simple scan isn’t the worst program for scanning purpose if you work in an office…but it is way behind xsane for professional work.

ion_ronson

There are more bugs besides those mentioned above: the bootscreen (and sometimes shutdown problem) and the impossibility to drag windows to another desktop if compiz is enabled, by moving them off-screen or dragging them on the pager applet (this last one works if 3d effects are disabled).

With Ati Radeon 3470, Ubuntu doesn’t work well at all:
- without the proprietary fglrx driver, there is no bootsplash (which in itself wouldn’t be so bad, since it boots very fast, but also it doesn’t shutdown), but it moves pretty well once inside Gnome; Possible solution: to enable nomodeset=1 in grub (search the ubuntu forums for details)
- with the proprietary fglrx driver from the ubuntu repository, the bootsplash appears (although with corrupted image), shutdown also works, but 2d performance is awful (in metacity), and 3d with compiz enabled is slower than it was in Karmic.

Fr33d0m

I have a Dell XPS M1330 with an Intel GM965 chipset. I was surprised that Compiz didn’t work and that the custom icons I made for CheckGmail appeared to no longer have a transparent background. Also strangely enough my Administration menu has NVIDIA X Server settings

Yes the system is faster, but Karmic wasn’t slow at all. There isn’t anything new that I would consider even remotely useful in this release so Back to Karmic I will go until I find a new distro that doesn’t break video every other release.

That said, I do like the appearance changes–except for the position of the close button.

Fr33d0m

In the comments of this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1469475&page=3

It is apparent that the NVIDIA drivers need to be removed for Compiz to work so the regression for the Intel drivers must have been fixed.

As for the panel icon backgrounds, there is a debian bug report on a similar issue but the CheckGmail faq says their icon cannot be transparent (interestingly since it was in Karmic). I’ve also read forum posts and Launchpad posts that seem to indicate the Liferea icon background was fixed.

So I am still hanging on, I can use the Human theme and the background issue is indistinguishable. I just didn’t want bright gray panels distracting the rest of the desktop. Still this seems to not be an Ubuntu or specifically a Lucid issue as much as it is either a Gnome issue or an application specific issue.

poltiser

Nvidia 9500 GT 1 GB does not work!!!
It gives random puzzle of the desktop cut to rectangles and crushes the system (32 bit and 64 bit versions alike)…
Thunderbird lost lightning…
Bad things…
:-(

TN-048

I installed Ubuntu 10.04 on my desktop, and within a week GNOME failed me. I love KDE so I just installed the kubuntu-desktop package and haven’t had any problems since. :P

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