Author Topic: Ubuntu 9.04: Thoughts and experiences (Read 15752 times)

wreckedcarzz · « **on:** April 16, 2009, 10:10 PM »

I am going cold turkey on my laptop from Vista to Ubuntu 9.04 and was hoping some fellow members could give me some insight as to what is new, broken, problematic and helpful in Ubuntu's latest RC.

My one negative experience so far (install is at 66% as I type this):
During my 1st install attempt (boot from disk, then run installer manually) the installer encountered an error and went "nuts" for lack of better words. The 2nd time (thus far successful), I chose to install directly from the disk menu, but this time I did NOT check the option to import my Vista account's Firefox data - so might wanna watch for that.

Anyone have any insight, experiences or suggestions? I need this laptop just for work (my sister will hate me, no more Sims 2), so I need it to be fully functional and ready to work at any given moment (Sleep did not work in 8.10). Anything that can be done to ensure this, I will gladly attempt

Last second edit: It took 2 DVDs (first was bad) and 3 (THREE) install attempts to get Ubuntu installed.

Also, at the reboot screen for the Live CD, it only showed "and press ENTER to continue." $:-\$

EDIT: Another problem: To install proprietary drivers for my Linksys WPC300N (yes, Broadcom, ugh) Ubuntu "downloaded" them. Uhh... HELLO? (Wired connection worked great for this after I laughed about the lack of a connection)

zridling · « **Reply #1 on:** April 16, 2009, 10:53 PM »

I wouldn't know. You might be better off pushing this onto the Ubuntu forums. Oddly, of my several computers, only one has liked Ubuntu/kubuntu. The hardware is just not compatible. If I flip over to sidux, Fedora, or even openSUSE, everything works, including printers, a camera, and a pretty new HP scanner. Given that most all drivers are proprietary, this will always be a problem until the industry stops reinventing the [driver] wheel with every new component.

40hz · « **Reply #2 on:** April 17, 2009, 01:10 AM »

Dumb as it may sound, I tend to skip the odd-numbered releases. I never seem to have very much luck with them. Not that they don't work. It's just that they always seem to have more odd-ball problems. I'm at that stage of my life where the 'thrill' of wrestling with some FOSS technical issues is long gone.

I sometimes wonder if the odd releases are the ones where Canonical pushes the features envelope, and the even releases are where they regroup and get things tidied up.

Three install attempts is pretty spooky.

Even allowing for one miss due to a faulty CD, it's still one too many for a distro that's going to be put on a 'work' laptop.

I follow a simple rule for new distributions. If the initial installation doesn't go smoothly*, I just drop it and wait for the next release. Or move on to something else...

I'd be more inclined to go with Zaine's suggestion and think seriously about using openSUSE instead of Ubuntu 9.04 at this point. He's absolutely right about openSUSE when he said: everything works. I've had very good luck running SUSE on laptops.

* Ok...ok..make that "mostly smoothly." This is Linux we're talking about.

housetier · « **Reply #3 on:** April 17, 2009, 08:18 AM »

Except for a misconfigured wireless lan driver my experience has been excellent.

You should, however, wait for the stable release, because there are still bugs to be weeded out.

Did you make a backup?

wreckedcarzz · « **Reply #4 on:** April 17, 2009, 05:33 PM »

@housetier
I did not do what would be considered a "backup"; just the files in my/sister's profile directories. The laptop was running Vista Home Premium and choking to death on it (512MB and no money to upgrade = sure fire way to kill my HD via swap), and there was nothing really worth backing up on it anyways.

So far the only other problem I have encountered is that Suspend (aka Sleep, Stand By, etc) fails still. HOWEVER, that is offset by the blazing fast bootup time compared to 8.10:

Bootup takes about 20 seconds from power-to-cursor; I timed it once getting 23 power-to-login screen
Shutdown takes about 15 seconds from clicking "Shut Down" at the 60 second time prompt, to being completely off (power light off)

@zaine/40hz
I have put Ubuntu 7.04-8.10 on all but two computers in the house (5 total), and have had little problems except Sleep and WiFi - I've only used Ubuntu/Xubuntu, Knoppix, Debian and a couple other distros, having the best "experience" (not reformatting within a week) with Ubuntu. This install was just a bad run of luck, but it is working great now. If I hit some more problems (post-final release) I'll look at some other options and see how they work

EDIT: For grammar

mwang · « **Reply #5 on:** April 18, 2009, 11:31 AM »

I upgraded from 8.10 to 9.04 betas on my notebook (not brave enough to try it on my server yet), and have been taking all updates since. Boot time has gone down from 1 min. to 45 sec., so it's been good for me.

invenit · « **Reply #6 on:** April 18, 2009, 02:24 PM »

Anyone have any insight, experiences or suggestions?

I upgraded my Dell Dimension 3000 from intrepid to jaunty this week. Everything was cool until I went to the Archeology Channel. The upgrade borked my multimedia big-time. Flash was easy enough to fix; I installed RealPlayer and that took care of anything with real or wmv format; mpg format (among others), however, was a no-go. Consulted the forums--nothing.

OTOH, the experience was not altogether negative: I wiped the drive and installed CrunchBang. Totally works.

(I'll check on 9.04 again after it goes final.)

Edvard · « **Reply #7 on:** April 20, 2009, 11:02 AM »

So far, I've been ok. All my hardware works fine (though I'd KILL for a decent video card...) and almost ANYTHING would be better than 8.10 at this point. $:-\$

I tried Debian 5.0 and Sidux just to see if they were worth the fuss and damn was it fast, but there was no realtime kernel available, which is essential for multimedia, so that went away.
Apparently, there is some testing and progress in the dev channels WRT getting an 'official' realtime kernel for Debian, but bring up the subject on the forums and you get nothing but elitism and name-calling.
What a turn-off.

OpenSuse has a realtime kernel available with lots of community development behind it, good to see. Maybe I'll give that a shot. Then again, maybe not. I have never felt the love from an rpm-based distro, and there is no Xfce flavor.
Hm... is there an option to do a 'base' installation and then add the Xfce? Looks like there is..

So far, my main gripes with 8.10 have been alleviated in 9.04 (shutdown, network manager), although IMHO the *buntus as a whole could stand a little fat trimmed off.

wreckedcarzz · « **Reply #8 on:** April 20, 2009, 06:47 PM »

Update: Personally, I've been enjoying the switch so far - still don't have suspend/hibernate working, but mostly everything else is going smoothly. The only problem I have is that everytime I open Rythmbox, it bugs me to find some codecs, but then complains that it can't find any

$:-\$ not a big deal though. I've jumped into working on a modification for Ubuntu for some friends of mine, learning a bit more about what makes it tick. You can learn a lot when you know where look.

zridling · « **Reply #9 on:** April 20, 2009, 10:29 PM »

I have put Ubuntu 7.04-8.10 on all but two computers in the house (5 total), and have had little problems except Sleep and WiFi - I've only used Ubuntu/Xubuntu, Knoppix, Debian and a couple other distros, having the best "experience" (not reformatting within a week) with Ubuntu. This install was just a bad run of luck, but it is working great now. If I hit some more problems (post-final release) I'll look at some other options and see how they work.
-wreckedcarzz (April 17, 2009, 05:33 PM)

And that's just it; there's nothing wrong with Ubuntu, just my old hardware. I've loaded it on others' laptops and it ran great over the last several releases.

Edvard · « **Reply #10 on:** April 24, 2009, 01:16 PM »

So it looks like the official release came out today (yesterday by somebody's calendar

).
Servers are giving me a page load error so they're obviously hammered.

I installed the last Xubuntu 9.04 beta and found a reasonably fast mirror for the updates so I'll stick with that.

So far I haven't noticed anything bad. I'll post again if anything comes up.

40hz · « **Reply #11 on:** April 24, 2009, 06:19 PM »

Did they finally get their hassles with Pulse Audio sound fixed?

mnemonic · « **Reply #12 on:** April 25, 2009, 05:29 AM »

I *really* like the new version - nothing much new, but it just feels slicker and looks better. I've got no idea what they've done to the latest version of Gnome, but it's come on a way. I haven't used it for any reasonable length of time since 7.10, but everything seems that bit easier - setting-up wireless works (I found it simpler to set-up than wireless on Vista), folder sharing is now accessed from the right-click menu (rather than having to manually edit Samba config files) and booting with the ext4 filesystem is now *really* fast (my 4-year old Athlon 64 gets to the logon screen in 25 seconds).

This seems like a solid release, but there's still Linux's old issue - if the application isn't in Synaptic, it's complicated to install as you have to go into the terminal and type...

invenit · « **Reply #13 on:** April 27, 2009, 02:14 AM »

I'll check on 9.04 again after it goes final.

Jaunty installed fine on my IBM Intellistation Z Pro.

This is an amazing release.

Edvard · « **Reply #14 on:** April 27, 2009, 01:24 PM »

Did they finally get their hassles with Pulse Audio sound fixed?
-40hz (April 24, 2009, 06:19 PM)

As I am running Xubuntu, I don't have to deal with PulseAudio.

...yet.

I will install PulseAudio when:
[1] They pull my cold, dead fingers off my keyboard.
[2] Pulse Audio transcends itself to become the audio system instead of an ugly hack on top of the existing one.

OK, OK, I understand it is currently the only way to get multiple audio streams reliably and it has come a long way since becoming the default audio system for Ubuntu (probably the BIGGEST reason why. All those noobs complaining will get anybody bugfixing in a hurry...).
It's STILL an ugly hack.
I don't blame the developers for doing their best to come up with an audio system that (mostly) just works, it's been needed for quite some time, I just seriously doubt that doing it this way is the best solution in the long-term.

Anyway, 9.04 is humming along just fine on my aging system.

40hz · « **Reply #15 on:** April 27, 2009, 03:28 PM »

OK. Curiosity finally got the better of me. I installed Xubuntu last night. This was a clean install onto an empty drive.

It took three tries using the same CD, which tested out fine (media, and filescan) BTW.

First installation hung when it went to install GRUB. The second install went OK until I tried to get updates, at which point it went into a tailspin and trashed something. A subsequent reboot hung each time while trying to start the Xserver. I checked xorg.conf, but there was nothing in it to indicate a problem there. Found nothing much useful in any of the logs to indicate what the problem might have been. If I entered a startx command once I was logged into text mode, I'd just get a command prompt back after about ten seconds with no error message.

At this point I figured I'd give it one more try. That's when it got weird.

The third installation went absolutely smooth. No problems, lags, or errors anywhere. Xserver started normally and the desktop came up just fine. Everything seemed to be working correctly, except for my sound card, which stopped working right after I installed PulseAudio. (So what else is new right?). I eventually got the sound restored after some research and configuration noodling - but the resulting sound output is now producing occasional bits of static and an annoying amount of distortion on audio playback. This is particularly annoying because this same machine has excellent audio quality when running under Hardy Heron.

Serves me right for breaking my 'rule' (more of a guideline really) about problematic installations.

Oh well.

-----

Addenda: I just discovered the CD that I was using for the installation was burned at 40X. I know from experience that the machine I installed Xubuntu on has a no-name CD-RW drive that doesn't like to read anything much faster than 32X even though the drive can supposedly handle as high as 52X. Since I decided to reinstall Xubuntu one more time, I cooked up a new installation CD at 16X and everything went perfectly the first time.

I should have known.

Edvard · « **Reply #16 on:** April 27, 2009, 06:26 PM »

AHA! The old oops-I-burned-the-iso-too-fast error, eh? Good thing you caught it soon.
But why, pray tell, did you go and install PulseAudio? WhyWhyWhy?

kartal · « **Reply #17 on:** April 27, 2009, 06:46 PM »

I have triple boot on my macbook pro, mac-xp-ubuntu. All works great expecially Ubuntu worked right out of the box without needed any Mac drivers for the hardware. Under windows you definetely need Apple drivers to use sound, camera etc

40hz · « **Reply #18 on:** April 27, 2009, 09:17 PM »

AHA! The old oops-I-burned-the-iso-too-fast error, eh? Good thing you caught it soon.
But why, pray tell, did you go and install PulseAudio? WhyWhyWhy?
-Edvard (April 27, 2009, 06:26 PM)

I'm a closet masochist.

Actually more for R&D purposes than anything else. PulseAudio doesn't seem likely to go away no matter how much you or I would like it to so I'm trying to stay on top of where it's at each time a new mainstream distro comes out.

Basically, I wanted to see if it either: (a) worked -or- (b) I could get it to work under 9.04.

So far (for me at least) the answer to both questions is still: NO.

No problem. Now that I have a reliable installation CD

, I'll just load it up one more time.

Except without Pulse.

Edvard · « **Reply #19 on:** April 28, 2009, 10:41 AM »

Did you add yourself to the 'audio' group?

For years, no matter what distro I've been on, for some stooooooooopid reason I always have to do that for audio to work.
This time, everything ran ok until I tried to run jackd in realtime (with realtime kernel, natch).

40hz · « **Reply #20 on:** April 28, 2009, 11:16 AM »

Did you add yourself to the 'audio' group?

For years, no matter what distro I've been on, for some stooooooooopid reason I always have to do that for audio to work.
-Edvard (April 28, 2009, 10:41 AM)

Yes I did. Found out about that little detail the hard way just like everybody else.

This time, everything ran ok until I tried to run jackd in realtime (with realtime kernel, natch). :Thmbsup
-Edvard (April 28, 2009, 10:41 AM)

Don't know about you, but I think I'm going to stop screwing with the 'vanilla' releases of 'Buntu and just download UbuntuStudio after the 'rush' blows over. (That, or find out which BritNix magazine is including it on its cover DVD.

)

It has just about everything I could possibly want - including the realtime kernal - and it comes with Jack already configured.

Maybe next week...

Edvard · « **Reply #21 on:** April 28, 2009, 04:31 PM »

Adding myself to the 'audio' group was the only thing missing. Everything else is just experimenting inside Qjackctl until I get decent latency without xruns. (5.3 ms FTW!!!11!!11)

I've always wanted to try UbuntuStudio, but always thought it was best to install it as a dedicated DAW, not as a general desktop distro.

And, if you're a distro junkie like me, give 64Studio a try, I hear it's nice. I'm going to try it out once I get 9.04 installed as my main baby.

>>BACK ON TOPIC<<

I've noticed 9.04 has a little more 'snap' than 8.10, but not much. Synfigstudio is STILL broken even though a stable version has been available from the website since last year. Why even package and ship a broken version?
Jokosher works now (finally!!). I've been waiting at least 2 versions for that.
Everything else is chugging along smoothly. Network Manager appears to be fixed but I have now uninstalled it (fixed but still annoying as ever...) and went with a static config as I don't need wireless management.

housetier · « **Reply #22 on:** April 29, 2009, 04:36 AM »

synfigstudio is in the universe repository, which means it is not supported, hence does not receive as much QA checking as the "Main" repository.

You should still file bug reports against this package though.

Edvard · « **Reply #23 on:** April 29, 2009, 10:46 AM »

It's been bug-reported to death already:
https://bugs.launchp...figstudio/+bug/63477
https://bugs.launchp...igstudio/+bug/277926

Here's the noise:
http://www.google.co...untu+synfig+segfault

So it's been broken through 3 Ubuntu versions. Bad.

Jokosher was almost as bad, but apparently it worked just fine for some folks.