As I skipped 7.10 “Gutsy” release, I preferred to do a fresh install from Hardy Heron LiveCD instead of two-step “Feisty » Gutsy » Hardy” network upgrade. I installed Hardy right into the existing Feisty partition replacing the old installation. Separate home partition was left untouched to keep all my personal preferences and data in new system.

It took ~25 minutes from booting the installation CD to logging into a working system.

Unsurprisingly good

No doubts, Kubuntu developers and packagers spent this year not for nothing. In general, Hardy is a better system than previous Kubuntu versions. It loads essentially faster and many little annoyances was fixed. Good job!

Hardware compatibility

Ubuntu systems are known to have great hardware support. As far back as 7.04 version, it recognized my hardware configuration including such exotic devices like DVB-card and CDMA modem without any problem. The only trouble was my HP LaserJet 1020 printer for which I had to install and configure foo2zjs package manually. So, it was nice to see it’s fixed in Hardy; now my printer is supported via native HP open source drivers and working out the box.

A bad surprise was that Hardy could not detect my monitor automatically and set failsafe 640×480 resolution as a result. It was strange as it was no problem with it in Feisty. Even when I’ve clicked “Detect monitor” button manually, it detected it as default “plug-n-play” monitor. I had to remember a model of my monitor and select it from the list. Not a big deal, but a pity though.

KDE 4

Looking great and nice but apparently, a lot of work is still needed there. Crashes are not unusual everywhere and the single Plasma panel looks more like a prototype than a part of a desktop for the real world. It’s half-baked, almost not configurable and I cannot setup a desktop I need for my tasks (IMHO, an essential fault for any Linux software).

So, I’m use the “solid rock” KDE 3.5.9 as a primary desktop environment for work and sometimes switch to KDE 4 just to get a feeling of  bleeding edge desktop technologies.

Grumbles

• Dolphin – I already grumbled at it and I still have no idea what are the reasons to have yet another desktop file manager. Konqueror was a default KDE file manager for years and a whole generation of Linux users grew up with an idea of this software inspired by Konq. Dolphin’s user experience is different in many ways and totally unusual for me (and I think, I’m not alone). No matter if Dolphin is good or bad, I need Konqueror, thanks!
• Samba didn’t see my home network after installation. And I was unsuccesfull to fix it using configuration GUI in KDE Control Center (though I’m not a sysadmin guru and might miss some options). Finally I managed to configure the network by manual editing ‘smb.conf’ taken file from a backup of previous installation. Maybe it sounds trivial for experienced network administrators, however I remember that I didn’t edit any configs to get Samba working in Kubuntu 7.04.

http://shipit.kubuntu.org

Thanks, Ubuntu!

I told I was not going to upgrade to Gutsy so far. Now I’m thinking that perhaps, I will need to do so because an important thing is going to happen soon – KDE 4 has been announced to be finally released in January, 2008. I am not sure it will be available through the Feisty repo’s.

Regarding the Gutsy received: It’s nice to see that you’ve got what you’ve ordered. Before, I’ve received Ubuntu (without “K”) disks instead of Kubuntu (with “K”) I needed. Also, it was delivered really quickly – about two weeks (yeah, quickly for my geographical location, of course). I was waiting for Feisty a month or so.

But hmm… they forgot the stickers! My Kubuntu (with “K”) box is still decorated with Ubuntu (without “K”) sticker :-)

http://shipit.ubuntu.com/

Thanks, Ubuntu!

[Upd]
Actually, I’ve requested Kubuntu disks :-) but, as I downloaded and installed it already, it doesn’t matter what to have as a souvenir… Thanks anyway!

The difference between good and not-so-good Linux distribution is how often you have to keep a hammer and file in your hands while making the system good for living. In this sense, Ubuntu is a good system.

The last week I’ve almost upgraded my fresh Kubuntu 7.04 installation to an environment where I could grow roots, work and live in peace. There are the things that I needed to install absolutely:

• Sun Java 5. I kindly appreciate efforts of the GNU Java projects (default in Ubuntu) but sorry, they cannot replace Sun’s implementation so far.
• Eclipse. I cannot program without it.
• Firefox. Konqueror is good, but many modern ajaxian web interfaces have problems with it. So, Fox rocks.
• Extra multimedia codecs. How could I live without my old huge MP3 collection?
• Apache, PHP and MySQL. I am a web-developer, huh.
• GIMP and Inkscape for graphics.
• And lots of other thingies.

First problems

Bug #91368. I was unable to fetch ‘universe’ packages list when ‘apt-get update’, because the downloaded gzip file was broken and stuck in the ‘/var/lib/apt/lists/partial’ dir. I removed it and tried to update again but it had no help – I got the same broken file. And it was happening only with the ‘universe’ list (maybe, ‘coz it was a largest one). Finally, I downloaded it with wget, gunzipped, renamed an moved into ‘list’ manually and it worked! Later I found on Ubuntu Forums that replacing ‘http:’ protocol to ‘ftp:’ everywhere in ‘sources.list’ fixes the problem. Sort of apt and proxy issue, I think.

Bug #102742. Not so critical but sad also – KNemo network monitor (a very useful thing that shows nice connection icons in the system tray, connection speed graphs and keeps network usage statistics) strangely eats up to 100% CPU time and makes the rest of the system crowling slowly. I didn’t see this behavior in my previous installations. I have no idea how to fix it, so, I simply turned it off waiting for update.

So far, it’s all.

Contents of the Desktop CD is not too rich but enough as a basic kit for the most of home/office tasks. Now I am in the process of installing all extra stuff I need and moving all my environment from old (Fedora) installation. So, my system is dual-booted until this process is done.

Unfortunately, I have a business trip next week so I will not be able to get into its installation quickly. The problem is to backup everything and invent optimal partitions scheme, ‘coz I don’t want to loose my working Fedora installation until new system is ready. Maybe, I even have to get a new harddrive.

So far, trying it from the CD. Looks good.