Beta spotting: rhea upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 Beta 1

-
Well, I stuck my neck out again and upgraded rhea, running Ubuntu 7.10, with Ubuntu 8.04 using the command 'upgrade-manager -d'. And in spite of what the upgrade dialog says, it took twice as long to download and install everything.


So far, I've discovered that sound is broken (nothing will play) and Totem, because of the sound problem, will not play back any video. VLC works fine in its place. Everything else works as near as I can tell, especially Compiz. Rhea has the nVidia 7600GS video card, and the restricted drivers provided by Ubuntu work flawlessly with Compiz providing a smooth and satisfying experience.

As an experiment I booted rhea with the Ubuntu 8.04 beta live cd, and sound works. So something during the upgrade farkled up the sound. I have a number of choices at this point:
  1. Live with it and hope that future upgrades magically fix the sound problem without breaking anything else.
  2. Do a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.04 beta and then accept the upgrades up until release.
  3. Re-install Ubuntu 7.10 yet again, gaining further experience in that arena.
  4. Accept greater risk and install openSUSE 11 alpha 3, thus moving back to the Dark Side.
Since it's Easter weekend (this is Good Friday), I'm going to punt and just let it ride through the weekend. After all gcc was upgraded to 4.2.3 (after it was discovered that 4.3.0 exposed a but in the kernel) and Java is at version 1.6.0_04 build 12. Playing with the shiney new tools will keep me happy for the time being.

Comments

  1. TonyMarch 22, 2008

    Bill,

    I am a recent "convert" to Linux generally and Ubuntu specifically. I am a non-geek; however my experience with Ubuntu 7.10 has been great. Your blog has been so informative concerning 8.04 alphas and now beta. I appreciate all your work. Thanks!
    Tony

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

All comments are checked. Comment SPAM will be blocked and deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

A Decade Long Religious Con Job

-
Image
I rarely write inflammatory (what some might call trolling) titles to a post, but this building you see before you deserves it. I've been seeing this building next to I-4 just east of Altamonte/436 and Crane's Roost for nearly 12 years, and never knew who owned it. Today on a trip up to Lake Mary with my wife I saw it yet again. That's when I told her I wanted to stop by on the way back and poke around the property, and photograph any parts of it if I could. What I discovered was this still unfinished eighteen story (I counted) white elephant, overgrown with weeds and yet still under slow-motion construction. It looks impressive with its exterior glass curtain walls, but that impression is quickly lost when you see the unfinished lower stories and look inside to the unfinished interior spaces. A quick check via Google leads to an article written in 2010 by the Orlando Sentinel about the Majesty Tower. Based on what I read in the article it's owned by SuperChannel
Read more

Ten Reasons to Ignore Ten Reasons to Dump Windows and Use Linux

-
There is a tradition amongst the hard-core Linux aficionados to extol Linux's various virtues as a list of 10 or more reasons to substitute (as in "dump") an existing Windows installation with Linux. There's no reason to point them all out; a simple Google search (" 10 reasons to use Linux ") will provide you with such lists stretching back through the years, as well as hours of entertainment. One very recent list caught my eye over the weekend, published by PCWorld. Their article, " Ten Reasons to Dump Windows and Use Linux ", seems to have hit a nerve with me. Normally I just ignore such journalistic pap, since the majority of it comes courtesy of one ill-informed blog or another (such as this one). But in this instance a "real" publication put some time and journalistic "credibility" into this list, which places it in front of a wider audience than the typical blog poist (again, such as this one). So let's consider al
Read more

Former Eclipse user re-evaluates Eclipse 3.3M5

-
Image
I've been using NetBeans for a while now, starting with version 4.2 in beta. One of NetBeans' key selling points (in my not-so-humble-opinion) is Java GUI building with Matisse . That feature continues to be quite powerful and unrivaled, especially for a free-as-in-beer IDE. I even wrote a lovely paean to the wonders of NetBeans and why I moved away away from Eclipse to NetBeans . Now, it looks like I may have to eat some of those tastefully written words. What you're looking at above is a complete Ruby on Rails project hosted and running within Eclipse 3.3 Milestone 5 on Windows XP. Milestone 5 was released this past Friday, February 9th. I installed it Saturday, and then went on a plugin hunt to fill out additional features and capabilities. Why did I decide to re-install Eclipse, especially a milestone? So that I could get a complete integrated development and test capability in one convenient package for Ruby on Rails. Like a lot of other folks I've been playing
Read more