Karmic Koala: The best Ubuntu Linux ever?

[pokerfan]

Looking forward to this release...

October 6, 2009
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Computerworld

I've looked at hundreds of Linux distributions over the years. Some of them have been awful. Many have been OK. And, a few have been great. Based on my early look at Karmic Koala, Ubuntu 9.10, I think we've got a very strong Linux desktop distribution coming down the way.

Before jumping into my early review, let me say that while I like Ubuntu, I'm not an Ubuntu fanboy. I also like Fedora, openSUSE, Mint, and MEPIS to name a few Linux distributions that I use on a regular basis.

What caught my eye with this version of Ubuntu is that, especially for a beta, it's a remarkably attractive and smooth-running Linux distribution. I first installed it as a virtual machine with Sun's VirtualBox on a Gateway DX4710-09. This computer uses an Intel Dual Core 2.5GHz E5200 processor. I have the 64-bit version of the new Ubuntu 2GBs of RAM and a 10GB virtual drive. In addition, I installed the Koala on a Dell Inspiron 530S. This low-end PC is powered by a 2.2-GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800-MHz front-side bus. The test machine had 4GB of RAM, a 500GB SATA (Serial ATA) drive, and an Integrated Intel 3100 GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) chip set.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/14871/karmic_koala_the_best_ubuntu_linux_ever?source=rss_vnichols">More...

[SKKY]

1. I just did a clean install, upgrading from 9.04...

...so far it seems good enough. Perhaps it was just me, but the boot time seemed less in 9.04 than 9.10. I thought that was something Ubuntu was seriously looking at.

[struggle4progress]

2. I tried to do the upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10-beta on one of my ubuntu installations

but it failed :(

[pokerfan]

6. I just downloaded the iso from bit torrent

What a concept. A perfectly legal torrent! I wanted a disk version anyway to hand out to my friends who are tormented by Windows. And I wanted a 'clean' install as this version is moving to ext4. I am also rearranging some drives so I figured this is as good of a time as any to start from scratch.

http://isohunt.com/torrent_details/138556137

There are over 6,000 seeders last time I checked so it downloaded pretty much at my connection speed. Canonical suggests that people use bit torrent where possible to ease the pressure on their servers.

[struggle4progress]

8. Well, I probably should have gone the clean install route: upgrading has been a gigantic PITA

After my first upgrade attempt failed, I left the machine off for six weeks and just now got back to the upgrade attempt. I have been engaged in an endless cycle:

Update the current version, then attempt a partial upgrade

Each partial upgrade fails, but the subsequent update attempt finds more and more packages to update: 15, 42, ..., 159, 643, ...

The first cycle produced an instruction to restart, which didn't do much; in several subsequent cycles, I received several got warnings that the machine might be in an unstable state; after that, for a while, the machine cheerfully told me all my software was up-to-date, having been last updated "47 days ago"; then some standard progress-bar graphics stopped showing up; then the machine finally cheerfully told me all my software was up-to-date, having been last updated "an hour ago" -- and now the partial upgrade function finally seems to be doing something (other than complaining, for this or that reason, that it can't do the partial upgrade it had just offered to do) ... Finally, another Restart instruction, a brand new startup screen ... followed by endless blinking gibberish. Shut down. Restart. It looks like 9.10 might really be installed!

urghh

[hobbit709]

3. Tried it on my Compaq laptop.

Found all the hardware including wireless-doesn't turn on the wireless light but I can live with that.

Damn thing came with Vista and I couldn't find XP X64 drivers for the sound and wireless and Compaq only wants to list Vista drivers for that model. I mean, a dual core Athlon and 4Gb RAM and I can't find drivers for a 64 bit OS.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

4. Computerworld writers may be out of touch with reality

"This low-end PC is powered by a 2.2-GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800-MHz front-side bus. The test machine had 4GB of RAM"

The writer has no clue what "low-end" means.
:rofl:

(running Ubuntu 9.04 on a 900mhz computer with 500MB of RAM, and happy with it so far)

:hi:

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

5. I got an "invite" to upgrade to 9.10 karmic koala

Am hitting the "upgrade" button.

Hope to see you all on the other side.

:hi:

[backscatter712]

7. I put Karmic on my laptop.

It's working great so far - very smooth install, performance is nice, previous problems with things like suspend and hibernate have been fixed, and those functions Just Work.

[struggle4progress]

9. Some glitches in the 9.04 to 9.10 upgrade:

The bootloader isn't correctly updated. It's hacked. The 9.04 splash comes up first, then then 9.10 splash

If I don't click on the desktop shortly after it comes up, the system goes haywire and I get a gibberish screen

Remnants of some splash graphics continue to appear in the menubar

[RoyGBiv]

10. Thanks for the report on that ...

Grub is completely changed apparently, and I was wondering what people's experiences with this would be. I've heard faint rumblings of problems with those who've taken the upgrade route.

Since I have all my data sequestered in its own partitions, I tend to do the clean install anyway. I've been told I'm nuts for doing this, but this is the kind of thing I've feared happening.

Have you converted any of your file systems to ext4? I'm similarly concerned about that. Some people have reported buggy behavior with ext4 and large files, and I have a lot of large files I use.

[struggle4progress]

11. I haven't tried ext4. I don't have 16gb file systems or 2gb files, so ext3 suffices.