So I decided last night I’d upgrade my Ubuntu desktop to the latest release…
The upgrade process itself was quite painless, but the post-upgrade “cleanup” is driving me mad.
After rebooting into the new version of Ubuntu the audio had stopped working. Loading up alsamixer from the command line and playing around with it for a while eventually resolved that.. though it was pretty much a case of “hit and miss” working out which option would resolved it.
So now I have sound again…
Tracker shipped without a full set of binaries and was eating CPU (see bug report here)
What I didn’t have, either, was the ability to click on links in Thunderbird. Sure, I could click on them, but nothing happened. The resolution to that issue was to do a fresh install of Thunderbird, as I may have had an “odd” version installed (no idea how, but since it’s now working I’m not going to complain too loudly!)
Evolution, which would have been an option to consider instead of Thunderbird, does not support Microsoft Exchange 2007, so that’s no use to me either.
I watch video files using VLC, but that’s also changed quite annoyingly, so instead of having the player controls in the same window as the video you’re watching, you now end up with two windows. I spent about half an hour trying to work out if there was some sane way of changing that behaviour, but I still haven’t found it.
Other annoyances …
Every time anyone logs onto MSN or ICQ you get a disproportionately large notification on your screen.
There are probably loads of really nice features in the latest release, but I wouldn’t rush to do an upgrade
Kae Verens says
Another one is Amarok – the new version is /totally/ different from the old one, which my wife did not like after the upgrade had finished.
the fact that the audio stopped working annoyed her as well (fixed by replacing the gstreamer connection with a xine connection)
Michele Neylon says
Kae
If I have the time / energy I might do a clean install to see if it makes any difference, but I don’t think it will.
Maybe it’s time to switch distros again …
Michele
Kevin Dowling says
I only run Ubuntu on my Macbook Pro through VMWare Fusion when I have to, so my experience is slim. However, a friend (who unashamedly owns a netbook – samsung nc10) showed me the “netbook” UI which is fantastic. Built to run smooth on Atom processors, and works beautifully. Better then any other “netbook-friendly” OS I’ve seen. So, I wonder if that’s what Ubuntu’s development team have been busying themselves with, rather then actually having complete focus on the “full” OS…
Daniel says
The Netbook Remix interface is really nice, I’ve been using it for a month now (installed an alpha version) in my Aspire One, and I don’t have any complaints.
oneafrikan says
hey guys,
anyone having any issues with shortcuts not working?
alt+tab and workspace switching (ctrl+alt+left/right) not working for me.
also, after rebooting, windows appear top left, with no window borders….
don’t think it’s an fglrx issue, so hoping someone might know something I don’t! 😉
g