::A Geek in Korea::

I knew that Ubuntu’s latest version was out soon due to their oh-so-logical numbering system. My version, Hardy Heron 8.04 had been installed for six months, so all needed to do was find out when the final version of the next release, Intrepid Ibex was due in October (8.10). The final release for the Ibex is on October 30th, but when I opened by browser I discovered the release candidate was available.

I took that this was a sign that perhaps I should just go ahead and update anyway. I took the appropriate steps to upgrade my entire system. I pressed “Alt+F2″ and then typed:

“update-manager –devel-release”.

That’s it.

The update manager then popped up. Having specificied I wanted to upgrade despite it being a development build, it downloaded the entire set of packages, prepared my system for the upgrade, got rid of all the redundant and old programs I used, installed up to date software, and told me what it was doing. Hands off upgrading for the win.

All I had to do was let it run in the background, then click “okay” a few times as it made all the right choices for me. SWEET. It was a while downloading despite my connection, but other than that, flawless. When I rebooted, I got a common error. Nautilus the file browser was hanging because the programs they picked to start up were different than the list I was using previously, so I didn’t get any desktop icons. The rest of the upgrade worked flawlessly. I added Nautilus to my sessions menu to have it boot up at start. I also added “scim” back to my sessions menu so that I could type in Korean. That worked just like it should as well. This would have taken me days to work out when I first started using Linux, but I fixed it between my house chores. Awesome.

The biggest differences are Gnome Do, and the enhanced print manager are sitting in my system tray at the moment. Gnome Do is an uber-keyboard shortcut program like launchy for Windows, but I can’t see myself using it that much. Half the time figuring it out takes longer than launching the program itself. Until I get used to it, it might just be a neat little toy. The printer program looks really improved from the previous program, but usually I just copy stuff or do simple printing. If I need to do any scanning or anything more advanced I’ll use it. I’m a bit disappointed that OpenOffice included in the release is only 2.4. OpenOffice 3.0 is what I’ve been using this week at work and it seems stable and nice despite it taking AGES to load up on a Windows XP machine.

Other than that, post-upgrade there is a NOTICIBLE speed increase in Firefox rendering and an increased zippiness in the overall GUI. I’m impressed with the solid upgrade. Virtualbox, something that was a headache to upgrade last time around, has a new version out that works perfectly with the upgrade as well, so I won’t have my wife complaining about a lack of access to Windows XP Internet Explorer this time around either.

There doesn’t seem to be anything radically different than the last release, but it seems really nice and stable at the moment. Considering this computer is nearly 3 years old, but is getting faster and more functional with every release of Ubuntu, I’m very happy. I could go on using a computer of this speed for Internet browsing and writing this website more or less forever. Not having to pay for an upgraded OS every year or so is a great treat.