Reilly2040's Blog

I got around to quickly installing Intrepid on my laptop last night, but with the usual mixed results sadly.

Most hardware was detected and works out of the box no problem (graphics, sound etc), but networking is still an issue. The restricted drivers manager did ID my wireless card no problem and installed the driver for it, so that side of things is working, but the actual connection to my wifi network is still problematic. Network manager does seem happy that its connected, but I’m assuming the WPA encryption is still failing, as I can’t actually do anything with the connection.

Ethernet’s proving an issue with this new release as well. Whenever I reboot and want to use an ethernet cable, I’ve got to re-enter all the details. The new network manager (which I’m not actually that impressed by, I don’t think the interface is as obvious to use as the old manager) doesn’t seem to be saving the settings properly. Although I presume that’s something I can fix by setting up the config files manually, since it works fine in my upgraded main PC.

I’ve not really mucked about with it much yet, this is just first-install impressions.  To be honest though, aside from the issues with the network manager, the wifi stuff is exactly the same kind of problem I’ve been having with other releases, so I don’t think that’s anything to do with Intrepid.  Its something more fundemental that’s going wrong I feel.

Well, as the countdown I posted on the blog should be indicating, Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex was released today.

I’m always quick to nab new updates and try out the new stuff, so I upgraded my PC straight away, and the good news is that so far it seems to have been a painless process. The new Gnome theme feels a little more polished, but other than the general stability I’ve not played with it much. Of course, given that previous upgrades have tended to break something (the 7.xx series tended to break my sound, fortunately something that the 8.xx series has fixed), the main thing for me is the upgrade has been smooth. The only bit of weirdness so far is that the window title bars sometimes go a bit weird on me, but there’s nothing major going wrong.