The Blog Starts
Posted 04-02-2006 at 11:45 PM by Freemor
Hi Everyone,
I've decided that since LQ is generous enough to offer this space and since I presently have some time to devote to such endevours That I would write a Blog about Life in Ubuntu 6.04 (Dapper Drake).
A quick bit of background first.
I have been using Linux for many years and Ubuntu since 5.04
The upgrade path I took to dapper was editing /etc/apt/sources.list
and then apt-get dist-upgrading (in init 1).
I think synaptic might have been a little neater but the upgrade worked fine.
I have been in Dapper since Flight 5
So now onto life in Dapper so far..
I was pleasently suprised by how stable it was for something that came with the usual warnings and caveats about it still being an "Alpha" level product.
The only real problems I have had so far is the qdvdauthor is so unstable currently it is impossible to author a DVD (no biggie I just put in DVDStyler and that worked fine with one minor adjustment to the settings.). The other more annoying problem is that gpilotd seems to be quite twitchy currently I had to drop the speed (serial port) to 57600 as it would not work at all at 115200. It is still finicky but workable.
On the minor annoyances/CBB side (CBB = could be better). Evolution calendar events now trigger the new notification system (which is really nice) but at the same time the regular evolution apointment notice pops up, thus having two notices for the same event on the screen at the same time.. seems a little redundant but I'm sure they are working on it. Would be nice to see it working so that the new notification pops up and clicking on that brings up the standard evolution appointment notice.
The other CBB is that their new network manager system currently fails to see static ip'd eth0 as a network connection and so the (very nice) nm-applet tells me I have no viable network even thought I'm connected.. I've reconfigured it back to using DHCP just so the system is happy (and so I could see how it preforms). I for one tend to dislike such auto-magic system configuring type things (I'm used to configuring such things myself from the command line if need be.. and tend to see such things as one more thing to go wrong). I do however understand that not everyone in the world want to learn how to configure their network settings and that such things will greatly enhance the appeal of linux/Ubuntu to the general user. I guess the only thing I'd like to see is an easy to access way to disable the auto-configure feature if desired.
Other then those two or three fairly trivial problems Dapper has been a wonderful experience so far. Considering that Dapper is currently classed "alpha" the above glitches barely rate mentioning. The positives you ask... well
The entire system seems much more "perky". One can definitely notice the work that was done to enhance speed/preformance in the system.
The new deskbar applet is great.
The many new features in Gnome 2.14 are both useful and easy to access.
Totem with the new GStreamer 10.0 is much nicer then with Gstreamer 8.0. many of the Sync problems have disappeared and once one adds in the optional codec packages it seems to handle most things (although I'm still trying to figure out what I'm missing to get it to play CSS encrypted DVD's (everything else on my system plays then mplayer, ogle, etc, just not totem).
The new layout of the menus (where system tools are etc.) is much more uniform and easier to find certian things. (brings to mind another minor CBB the system log viewer seems to lack horizontal scroll bars for viewing long lines in the log. Annoying but not tragic)
Stable, Stable, Stable.. havent had one single crash or system hang even though it is still considered "Alpha"
As thing progress and as I have more time to check out various apps I'll add more blog entries. Until then.. Take Care and Happy hacking
I've decided that since LQ is generous enough to offer this space and since I presently have some time to devote to such endevours That I would write a Blog about Life in Ubuntu 6.04 (Dapper Drake).
A quick bit of background first.
I have been using Linux for many years and Ubuntu since 5.04
The upgrade path I took to dapper was editing /etc/apt/sources.list
and then apt-get dist-upgrading (in init 1).
I think synaptic might have been a little neater but the upgrade worked fine.
I have been in Dapper since Flight 5
So now onto life in Dapper so far..
I was pleasently suprised by how stable it was for something that came with the usual warnings and caveats about it still being an "Alpha" level product.
The only real problems I have had so far is the qdvdauthor is so unstable currently it is impossible to author a DVD (no biggie I just put in DVDStyler and that worked fine with one minor adjustment to the settings.). The other more annoying problem is that gpilotd seems to be quite twitchy currently I had to drop the speed (serial port) to 57600 as it would not work at all at 115200. It is still finicky but workable.
On the minor annoyances/CBB side (CBB = could be better). Evolution calendar events now trigger the new notification system (which is really nice) but at the same time the regular evolution apointment notice pops up, thus having two notices for the same event on the screen at the same time.. seems a little redundant but I'm sure they are working on it. Would be nice to see it working so that the new notification pops up and clicking on that brings up the standard evolution appointment notice.
The other CBB is that their new network manager system currently fails to see static ip'd eth0 as a network connection and so the (very nice) nm-applet tells me I have no viable network even thought I'm connected.. I've reconfigured it back to using DHCP just so the system is happy (and so I could see how it preforms). I for one tend to dislike such auto-magic system configuring type things (I'm used to configuring such things myself from the command line if need be.. and tend to see such things as one more thing to go wrong). I do however understand that not everyone in the world want to learn how to configure their network settings and that such things will greatly enhance the appeal of linux/Ubuntu to the general user. I guess the only thing I'd like to see is an easy to access way to disable the auto-configure feature if desired.
Other then those two or three fairly trivial problems Dapper has been a wonderful experience so far. Considering that Dapper is currently classed "alpha" the above glitches barely rate mentioning. The positives you ask... well
The entire system seems much more "perky". One can definitely notice the work that was done to enhance speed/preformance in the system.
The new deskbar applet is great.
The many new features in Gnome 2.14 are both useful and easy to access.
Totem with the new GStreamer 10.0 is much nicer then with Gstreamer 8.0. many of the Sync problems have disappeared and once one adds in the optional codec packages it seems to handle most things (although I'm still trying to figure out what I'm missing to get it to play CSS encrypted DVD's (everything else on my system plays then mplayer, ogle, etc, just not totem).
The new layout of the menus (where system tools are etc.) is much more uniform and easier to find certian things. (brings to mind another minor CBB the system log viewer seems to lack horizontal scroll bars for viewing long lines in the log. Annoying but not tragic)
Stable, Stable, Stable.. havent had one single crash or system hang even though it is still considered "Alpha"
As thing progress and as I have more time to check out various apps I'll add more blog entries. Until then.. Take Care and Happy hacking
