My Ubuntu Blog

I am Muslim and we don’t really celebrate Christmas here in Pakistan. So Satanic or Christian doesn’t matter to me. But since downloading the Satanic Edition was easier I decided to give it a try, besides I was already feeling like downloading some new wallpapers for a change and this Satanic Edition is nothing more than a bundle of hot evil graphics.

It looks great and the idea of having something Evil on our desktops is nothing new, people had been downloading strippers to their desktops for ages so why not the Satan himself?

I haven’t upgraded to Edgy yet. I really want to but I am afraid to loose the stability, usefulness and the charm of Dapper that comes with Long Term Support. I was looking around to see what kind of trouble people facing while upgrading to Edgy from Dapper. To my surprise, there is a whole lot of users out there who had bad experiences while upgrading to Edgy. Looking at these complains on Ubuntu forums, Slashdot and blogosphere, I decided to compile a list of links that might offer some help to those who want to troubleshoot their Upgrade Disaster.

Debian Admin has a wonderful article about Ubuntu Edgy upgrade problems and their solutions. If your issue is not listed there then you can add it in comments or move on to the Ubuntu forums.

In the sub-forum Installation and Upgrades, you will find plenty of solutions. It is good to search the forum and the best way to do it is to search for the error you recieve during your upgrade failure by typing the error in the search box. While browsing the forum, I found quite interesting bits about Edgy upgrade issues in the First sticky thread of the sub-forum, titled “PLEASE use the official upgrade method! (if you decide to upgrade)“. Like I found that the first recommended method described on EdgyUpgrades wiki page does not work for Xubuntu. After further more research I found people who upgraded from Clean 6.06 to 6.10 without using any third party tools and causing any harm to their Ubuntu System’s health and still they faced trouble.

Dennis talked about the issue of unhealthy Ubuntu systems and how they interrupt between distribution upgrades. Dennis presents a list of signs to identify a possibly unhealthy system. He writes:

What makes an Ubuntu system unhealthy, you’d say – well here are a few examples:

• Automatix/easyubuntu/fasterdapper
• Third party packages
• checkinstall’ed or alien’ed packages

The problem is that many people think that Automatix, EasyUbuntu, fasterdapper, and other such tools are the easiest and quick ways to configure their systems for multimedia and everything else. Since these tools are mentioned throughout Ubuntu forums and has their Wiki pages in Community Documentation, newbies usually assume that it is safe to use them and they can undo these actions just as easily as they perform them. Looking at the Ubuntu forum’s edgy upgrade troubleshooting thread, it seems untrue.

It makes users like me wonder, how we might go about customizing our Ubuntu system in a safe and healthy manner. We need a solution which does not create problems with future upgrades and could easily be undone if needed. Some ways to resolve this issue were suggested in the discussion on Dennis’ post. These include a Ubuntu Health Checker, warnings on using scripts such as those mentioned above and providing properly integrated Ubuntu alternates to these tools. I particularly found Joey Stanford’s Distribution Upgrade technique more useful, but it needs a fast working Internet connection.

I am excited all over again on the new release of Ubuntu. Expected to be released next month but the beta version is currently availabe for download. It has:

• Firefox 2.0 RC 1 (code named: Bon Echo):
  • New Theme (Tangerine) and user interface have been updated to improve usability.
  • It has inline spell check support in web forms.
  • You can now restore session that crashed.
  • Bebuilt in phishing protection, Phishing Protection warns users when they encounter suspected Web forgeries, and offers to return the user to their home page. Phishing Protection is turned on by default, and works by checking sites against either a local or online list of known phishing sites. This list is automatically downloaded and regularly updated when the Phishing Protection feature is enabled.
  • Enhanced search engine management with built in OpenSearch support
  • Improved tab support: By default, Firefox will open links in new tabs instead of new windows. Each tab will now have a close tab button and users who open more tabs than can fit in a single window will see arrows on the left and right side of the tab strip. Epiphany had these features since some time now. and I found them very useful. History menu will keep a list of recently closed tabs, and a shortcut lets users quickly re-open an accidentally closed tab.
  • Improved support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds.
• GNOME 2.16: I am currently using Gnome 2.14.3, so I checked out whats new in Gnome.
  • Laptop support has improved with the integration of power management support. Since I don’t use a laptop so I don’t think that this tool would benefit me anyways. But it is quite obvious that it is going to help lots of other users.
  • A new utility Baobab now displays Disk usage, available free space and other useful information about your hard disks. Particularly useful for me.
  • Totem has new support for reading and writing XSPF playlists, an open standard allowing people to share playlists.
  • You can now preview a screensaver in fullscreen. Just a few days ago I was showing screensavers to my younger brother we talked about this feature and now it is made available.
  • You can now also use Reminder Notes from existing GroupWise accounts by using Evolution. I don’t use Evolution, I use Thunderbird + Gmail.
  • Improvements in menus, graphics and eye candy.
• OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 RC 2: I checked OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 RC 2, OpenOffice.org says “The software is not recommended for production deployment at this stage.” I am sure that Ubuntu maintainers had some solid reasons for this upgrade. Ubuntu Edgy Beta’s release notes mention this upgrade as “This is mostly a security and bugfix release, dealing with specific issues regarding sandboxing of Java applets and macros.”
• F-spot has replaced gthumb. F-spot allows easy tagging, editing and uploading to various online photo websites, including Flickr. Hence, making the photo sharing easier.
• Faster Boot and shut down with new Upstart – init. On my machine Ubuntu shut downs quickly but it takes a long time to boot. I have tried many solutions to improve this but still it is not fast enough.