Another of probably a few linux posts today

So I found my first issue.  As its a new installation of Firefox (3.0 Beta 5), there’s no flash support.  No problem, since Firefox prompts you to install the Flash player, and even gives a few options of different ones to try.

Being a freedom-hater (and wanting to go with the known quantity) I installed the non-free Adobe plugin.

Which worked except there was no sound while Youtube videos were playing.

A quick search of Ubuntu Forums threw up this thread.  Essentially (for anyone else with this problem), all you have to do is fire up Synaptec and install libflashsupport.

Nice easy fix

Wow, that was surprisingly painless.

I had tried to upgrade my installation last night, but the servers were clearly choked with people upgrading, and it was getting nowhere, so I figured I’d wait until this morning while America was still asleep.

I kicked off the upgrade this morning, left it to its own devices for an hour and a half, and when I came back (aside from asking me if I wanted to change or keep a few config files) it was ready to reboot.

I did then have the minor issue that it hadn’t replaced Mandriva’s boot loader, but that actually makes sense.  I booted into Mandriva and updated the grub config to pick up the new Ubuntu entries and rebooted.

I must say, so far I’m impressed.  As I’ve mentioned before, the hallmark of the 7 series releases was to kill my soundcard off.  This time my sound was present and correct on booting.  My Nvidia drivers, Compiz settings, internet settings, multimedia codecs all seem to have survived the upgrade.

Its easily the smoothest one I’ve done yet.  It’ll be interesting to play with it properly, but so far I’m very impressed.  This is definitely how it should be.