Thoughts on Ubuntu 10.04

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ald

172 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

SimWorks

#60894 5-May-2010 10:16

Its been a few days since they pressed the ISO for this so I thought I'd upgrade. Before this had been running a dual boot Windows/Ubuntu 9.04 system with default Ubuntu partitioning.

This time round I thought I'd mount my /home in a seperate partition. Followed some instructions online, pleased I backed up /home as the upshot of the later parts of the process weren't too spectacular. But it got far enough that when I installed 10.04 I was able to point /home at the new partition and when I booted up it all worked swimmingly. With /home now seperated from root future upgrades etc should be easy.

Nothing to report at this point - I'd heavily customised my 9.04 and so a stock 10.04 feels like a big step backwards but thats just because I'm not used to it. I'll report back at some point once I've added in the additional software sources, installed my standard apps, changed look and feel etc!

About the only thing that I have noticed is that booting up in 10.04 on my machine doesn't appear to be materially faster than in 9.04. 9.04 was drop dead fast anyway so for 10.04 to have been faster would have been a hard ask.

Anyone else done the update? Did you do a clean install like me? What are your first impressions?

Best regards,
Aaron Davidson.

SimWorks International Limited

www.simworks.com - New Zealands leading developer of mobile applications

rassnor

27 posts

Geek

#326875 5-May-2010 12:45

I've done a clean install of 10.4 on my laptop that was previously running 9.04 and there does seem to be a noticeable lag in doing a lot of common tasks that I didn't get with 9, but that could be attributed to the age of the laptop. I also have a development machine for LAMP work (running 9.10) that I haven't upgraded yet..and I might just leave it at that.
Out of the box, I love the way the UI looks, but I still go for the upper right hand corner to close windows. Probably want to change that before it drives me crazy.
I'm not sure what to make of the integrated "social networking" as I don't use any of that stuff. I guess its handy for those who feel they can't live without the world knowing what they're doing every minute of the day?
Honestly, I'm hard pressed to find a compelling reason to choose this version over 9.10 so far.

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ald

172 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

SimWorks

#326886 5-May-2010 12:57

The only reason I moved was basically because it was an LTS release so figured if I was going to move it would be worth moving to that. I'm with you on the social networking features - the only thing that I tend to use along those lines is Skype and of course its not supported by 10.04 social client (whatever the thing is called).

Best regards,
Aaron Davidson.

SimWorks International Limited

www.simworks.com - New Zealands leading developer of mobile applications

nikrolls

151 posts

Master Geek

#328046 8-May-2010 21:08

I've been running 10.04 in production on a couple of Dell Mini 9s here at home for quite a while now. I haven't upgraded my severs yet, but I will do that soon. It was a bit buggy at first but it was still in Alpha then, and it got much better very quickly.

I don't notice any speed improvements really in Jaunty as Karmic was already blinding. I gave the social features a go but really found that I needed to be able to switch off, and to be honest they're not really fully featured enough to be worth it yet. As whole though it's a very nice release and just 'feels better' than Karmic.

nikrolls

151 posts

Master Geek

#328053 8-May-2010 21:32

And by jaunty and Karmic I really meant Karmic and Lucid. Slip of the tongue there.

ald

172 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

SimWorks

#328439 10-May-2010 11:30

Playing around with Lucid I'm coming to like it more. Networking is better - 9.04 sort of supported my notebook LAN through my Dell port replicator. That is I got IM (Skype) but no other connectivity and nothing about the LAN port even turned up in network connections etc. Now Eth 0 shows up, is recognised as LAN, works fine, lets me tweak it etc. Nice to have gigabit networking again rather than relying on the much slower wifi! Haven't done much else yet so still a lot more to play around with.

Best regards,
Aaron Davidson.

SimWorks International Limited

www.simworks.com - New Zealands leading developer of mobile applications

dontpanic42

1574 posts

Uber Geek

#328482 10-May-2010 13:34

I decided to give 10.04 a whirl on the live CD. I found it pretty impressive, so created a slightly faster USB boot disc of it. Was still pretty impressed so went the whole hog and installed (Dual-boot with Windows 7) it on my laptop.

It seems pretty snappy. There appears to be an application installed (or available to download) for most of my daily computer needs.

On the responsiveness side of things:
When I first installed it everything was running lightning fast, but after a day or two of use there seems to be some lag (i.e. clicking the applications menu lags and doesn't display for a few seconds).

After installing the NVIDIA drivers, the enhanced UI effects are quite cool.

I have played around with the Rhythmbox music player, and also installed Songbird. Both are OK, but is there anything more similar to Winamp for Ubuntu?

One weird and annoying thing is when I shut Ubuntu down on my laptop, it seems to produce a crackling sound on the speakers just as it completely shuts down. Almost like a last gasp. Doesn't seem to do it on headphones, so maybe it is just a quirk, or the nature of the integrated sound controller.

Attempted to connect it to my windows network, but with not much success. Admittedly didn't try very hard, so will have another go soon.

Installed Google Chrome only to find that flash was not supported. After a bit of googling I found a "sort-of" fix for it. Now YouTube plays but it seems the buttons (i.e. the play/pause, volume buttons etc....) don't seem to work. Not just specific to YouTube either. The "test server" select buttons on speedtest.net don't work either. Maybe some tweaking is required. I've heard that there is a Chrome version coming out that will have integrated flash?

Overall though, I'd say it has impressed me more than I was expecting.

nikrolls

151 posts

Master Geek

#328487 10-May-2010 13:51

I'm using Chrome with full flash support myself. The best way to do it is install Adobe's Proprietary flash for now (available from the repository) and you have no problems. Speed isn't what it could be, but that's just a lack of Adobe support.

crispybbq

50 posts

Geek

#329388 12-May-2010 14:50

dontpanic: if by Winamp you mean Winamp 2, you could try Audacious2..