Ubuntu 8.04 LTS installation conclusion.

After installing the system on both of my machines, I concluded that the installation was a success for myself, but the upgrade has some issues. Granted that I probably had some errors that other people will not have because I performed all of the operations right when the distribution was first released, and now there have been several updates to the upgrade tool. So, lets dive into exactly what I am talking about.

Dell Inspiron 5100:

This computer is currently running a triple-boot configuration. I have 4 partitions: Windows, root, home, and swap. The boot loader is installed to the MBR (Master Boot Record), and I performed a standard install and a Wubi install. Both of the installs are successful, however the ATI Mobility drivers are still not perfect. Because I am not allowing myself to perform command line repairs to any machines I have not gotten my S-Video port to work, nor have I gotten 3D acceleration to work properly. I admit that the fix for this is a simple one line edit to the x11 config file, but a novice user should not have to do that, so graphics are considered a failure.

Other than that the two installations came out nearly identical with a slight performance decrease in the Wubi install. I have to say the process is great for those that want to install an OS without knowing what they are doing, nor commiting to any permanent changes to the machine, but some users with older computers may run into issues. Typically you will want to have a minimum of 15 - 20 Gigabytes available on your machine. This way you will insure that you have enough memory to perform the install and work with some of the applicaitons, but more memory is always better. Over all, the Wubi install is easy and great, but I find myself caught up on the graphics issue.

Lenovo 3000 N200:

I have upgraded this machine a few times now. Normally the upgrade process runs fairly smooth, however after this upgrade I am seeing a decrease in performance, unstable applicaitons, and bugs that are popping up from apps that have been running fine for a while. Graphics performance on the Intel chipset are running fine, althought I hear that NVidia cards are the only way to go if you want S-Video functionality out of the box. I have a feeling that the upgrade process is less buggy now that a few of the bugs I ran into have been resolved as fixed on Launchpad.

Other issues I was having include a sound issue where the headphone port does not automatically mute/unmute the laptop's speakers. My usual fix of running a script that downloads and re-compiles the alsa drivers does not seem to work, but I don't actually want to go to the command line, so I have been living with it.

I have been contemplating re-formatting this machine and starting over with a fresh install to work out the bugs. I think that the released updates should solve all the issues I am having, but I have notices that bugs still seem to pop up with every ditrbution upgrade.

Other than that, I am happy with the changes. Exile is a great media player, and the "dynamic" playlist feature means that the music will never stop until I hit stop. Firefox 3 Beta 5 is quick and runs great, however I am having issues with google toolbar's incompatability. It was also disappointing to find out that many of the firefox plugins that I use don't work in the beta, but with firefox 2 installed I can get by.

In conclusion, The installation of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS seems to be more stable than the distribution upgrade. Most of the improvements in the OS invole look and feel or ease of use. The ditribution is getting closer to the goal of being a user friendly system for normal desktop users. There is a little room for improvement, but it is getting better.

So, that is a quick review of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. If you have any comments suggestions or questions, please give me something to write about that people want to read.

Later,

SteveO