Especially interesting with this release was the netbook edition with its new, much-vaunted Unity interface.   Regular readers will know that a few months back I finally decided to nuke the default Xandros install on my trusty EeePC 700 and install the 10.04 netbook remix, and boy was I happy with it.

So with 10.10 coming out, I was keen to upgrade and play with the new interface.  Unfortunately being an old EeePC 700, a default install fills my measly 4Gb hard disc to the point where a normal upgrade is impossible.  Thankfully I don’t keep any files on my EeePC (its just for web browsing anyway, so hard disc space isn’t much of an issue), so I decided it’d be easy to just wipe and install 10.10.

So I downloaded and setup a USB stick (as with 10.04, a superb and painless process, top marks to those that wrote the installer) and as I tend to do, I booted up to have a play with the new system prior to installing.

Oh dear.

I have to say, it took only about 5 minutes playing with it, before I decided I thought Unity was terrible and I’d be better sticking with 10.04.

The redesign of the interface, removes the various panels of launchers from the previous release, and instead you get an empty desktop with the new launcher panel down the left hand side.   Immediately brought to mind was Apple’s OSX.  The launcher panel I found very evocative of the panel found in Apple’s OS (albeit shifted from the bottom of the screen to the left.   You could also make easy comparisons with older Window Managers like AfterSTEP or WindowMaker, although the scrolling animation used by the launchers is more evocative of Apple’s.

However my first problem was: “where is everything?”  In 10.04 (see left) there were clear sections of applications laid out, with launchers in each section.  In Unity, its no where near as obvious.  For example, I thought I’d try and find the Administration section, and to be honest, I’m still not completely sure where it is.  Admittedly, I was running off of a USB stick, but the panel response was clunky (probably down to the USB stick to be fair), and within the 5 minutes I ran it, it completely crashed once.  Not a brilliant first impression.

Thinking I’d try clicking on the “Applications” button, I was presented with a panel (on the surface slightly similar to the panels in the old interface), however within it was what could only be desribed as a screen dump of all my apps.  It just looked like a mess, and there was no way I was going to find anything in it.  I’m not completely sure what I’d been expecting, but I guess at least the apps sorted into categories.

So far so bad.  Aside from the key apps that you can easily find at the top of the launchers, finding things seems difficult, and its crashed once.

To test out things, I decided to run Firefox, to see how the new interface handled the screen real estate.  I’d alway been quite pleased with how Ubuntu 10.04 combined the top menu bar and the top of the window decorations (such as the close button) in order to save a bit of screen space.

Oh dear.  Another disaster.  On running Firefox, the immediate killer issue was that the launcher panel remains fixed on the left hand side of the screen.  So even maximised, the browser couldn’t take up the full width of my screen.

Now, I’m on a EeePC 700.  That means I’ve only got an 800 wide display.  So losing any of the width at all is a major issue with the OS.  This was pretty much the final straw for me, and I decided to stick with Ubuntu 10.04, which I’ve been incredibly happy with.   Granted, it could be argued that I didn’t give Unity much time to grow on me, but then, the immediate reaction was so bad (and I’m especially including the crash in that), and I have to think about the fact I’m not the only one using this netbook.  So if I’m struggling to find things in Unity, how will the other users cope?  Nope, sorry Canonical, but I think I’ll give Unity some settling in time before it’s something I’ll adopt.

Fortunately 10.04 was an LTS release, so I’m good for the next 18 months at least.

Taking a quick look at Ubuntu Forums, and various news stories, I see that there seem to be quite a few users with similar complaints about 10.10 and Unity, so I hope Canonical take it all on board, and work out the issues for 11.04.  I’m not against a new interface, but I found Unity to be a step backwards in usability, however I’ll happily check out the 11.04 netbook release to see what its like there.  In the meantime maybe I’ll see if there’s any demonstration videos or something online that’ll convince me to give Unity another chance.

As for 10.10 itself?  I must admit I’ve not gotten around to upgrading my main laptop, so I’ll be doing that over the weekend to see what the desktop release has to offer.

And therein lay the problem.  The default Xandros installation provided a good frontend, but to be honest, the update mechanism wasn’t great, and the updates I had managed to install on getting the netbook had pretty much pushed the storage capacity to straining point.

That was fine at the time, but 2 years on, not having been able to install updates was a bit concerning. Not to mention some websites were starting to complain about the outdated version of Firefox.

So being the good little Ubuntu fanboy I am, I thought “sod it, lets give this Netbook remix a whirl”.

Wow. Was I impressed. Now, when it comes to installing on a netbook, you’re thrown an immediate problem. No CD drive. However, Ubuntu’s download page came with great, simple instructions. Download the iso image, insert a USB stick of sufficient size, then download and run a neat little utility that sets up the USB stick with the equivalent of a liveCD. From there, just use the USB stick on the netbook like you would a normal Ubuntu LiveCD to test and install the new OS.

I was really impressed by how painless the whole process was. Granted, I knew from my laptop what installing Ubuntu was like, but I’d been braced for the netbook install to be more complicated.

Once it was installed, the good experience continued.  Canonical really have done a brilliant job of converting Ubuntu to work within the confines of a netbook.   The launcher interface is clean and easy-to-use, and apps make the most of the available screen space, running maximised with the OS’s application menu bar doubling as the usual title bar for applications (and so containing things like the close button).  Software updates and installation are handled just the same as on the main version of Ubuntu, and getting Chromium installed was simple.

Given the tight confines of my netbook (the previously mentioned 7inch screen and 4Gb hard disc) it would’ve been easy for me to run into problems, given how quickly the netbook market evolved to use higher specced machines, but nope, Ubuntu Netbook Remix runs as easily as it installed.  All the hardware worked straight out of the box (so to speak) and I’ve now got the reassurance of knowing all my software is being kept up-to-date.

As is normal, a new release of Ubuntu always captures a lot of attention, and with this release, it was nice not to just see a lot of fuss in the Linux community, but also in the wider media, such as the story here on the BBC News.  With all the fuss over Windows 7′s release the other week, and Snow Leopard a short while ago, it was nice to see Karmic picking up some attention as well in the mainstream press.

As for myself, the installation went pretty well (albeit slowly, the joys of upgrading on launch night).  Unlike the Jaunty upgrade, I did have a few issues post-reboot.  Firstly being that my wifi was knackered (eventually diagnosed to the return of an old DNS issue – instead of my router, I used the direct IPs of my ISP’s servers and it was sorted), and secondly that flash wasn’t working (uninstall, reinstall, sorted).   Fairly minor issues all in, and fixed pretty easily.

Aside from those teething problems, I’ve been pretty happy with Karmic so far.  The new boot screen is very nice indeed, and while only a purely cosmetic change, does help the product feel more professional and polished.  I’ve had a quick shot of the new software centre, and it seems to do the job nicely.  I had no real complaints with Synaptic, but if this makes it even easier to add new software to an Ubuntu installation, then that’s no bad thing (since software installation is always one of the hurdles that gets called out in reviews for people switching from Windows).

I’ve also been trying out Ubuntu One, the new cloud storage application.  I’ve found it really easy to setup and use, perhaps helped by my existing Launchpad account, meaning I had one less stage to contend with.  The web gateway lets me access my files on non-Ubuntu machines, and I’ve got some files and my Tomboy notes synchronising nicely.  Perhaps the only other thing I’d like to see is synchronisation with other mail applications.  While Evolution is the default mail and calendar tool in Ubuntu, I’ve always preferred Thunderbird (with the lightning plugin for calendar).  I’ve not yet tried out sharing files with other users, but if the rest of the system is anything to go by, I imagine it’ll be pretty painless.

Overall so far, I’m pretty happy with Karmic.   For me, much like Jaunty before it, it adds another level of polish to the distribution.  There’s perhaps been nothing Earth-shattering that’s impacted me with the upgrade, but then Jaunty had pretty much ticked all my boxes previously anyway.

Fortunately all seems to have gone smoothly. All the main stuff was working happily on reboot, even my wifi. I’m not sure what’s actually been changed in this release, so I’ll need to go through it more thoroughly at somepoint, but I really like the new theme on the login screen. The only downside is that I feel it makes the GTK theme used for the main desktop look a bit older by comparison. The darker theme now used for the login screen is a lot fresher.

The much-vaunted notification system is very nice indeed.  I’ve only had notifications relating to Pidgin so far, but the effect is really nice with a semi-transparent box in the top right of the screen appearing with the contact’s avatar and their status change or message.

My only comment is that it’d be nice to see other apps using it. Its not Ubuntu’s fault,and it is only a new system, so maybe it’ll be more heavily used as releases roll on, but having these nice pop-ups for Pidgin only draws attention to Skype and the like having pop ups appear on different parts of the screen and not looking as nice. It detracts from the integrated feel of the desktop, so I would like to see future versions of apps adopt it. That’s up to their developers though.

As always, I’m excited to see what the new distribution has to offer over the previous version, however this time I find this tinged with caution, as previously my main installation was on the second disk of my desktop PC, so if the upgrade broke anything, I could happily reboot into Windows and keep using the machine until I got it fixed.

Now however, my main installation is my laptop, which is 100% Ubuntu. And as long term readers (both of them ) will know, I’ve had a tortured history getting my wifi to work (not necessarily getting the card’s drivers setup, more the authentication to my home network that kept failing).

So do I grab the new distro based on the fact that it worked in Intrepid, and since its all setup and working, it should survive the upgrade, or do I hold off in the fear that the upgrade will knacker my network connectivity?

Odds on, I’m going to crack and risk the upgrade. Realistically the only thing that’s given me hassle in the past has been the wifi, so if that breaks, then I can switch to Ethernet to try and get it fixed (or pull files off the laptop prior to wiping and reinstalling).

Look forward to an “I broke my laptop” post tomorrow

Despite not working on its initial install, it now seems quite happy. I’m still not completely sure how well the default driver (b43-fwcutter) is supporting my card as, while the connection seems stable, the blue wifi light on my laptop keeps flicking on and off. Could just be an asthetic thing though, but I may try switching over the driver to ndiswrapper and seeing what happens.

Still, if this test install runs smoothly for the next week or so, I reckon I’ll completely repartition the laptop and setup Ubuntu Intrepid as its main OS. Which given how creaky the 3-and-a-half year old WinXP installation was getting will make me a lot happier. Looks like a win for the new network manager.

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.

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.

Fortunately getting it setup was fairly easy to do, but I decided that I really wanted to play with it a bit more, in terms of see how it can be extended, and setting up a customised theme.

This got me to thinking.  I’m the Subversion admin at work, and recently was on a course to that effect, and I figured, why not set up Subversion at home, and bung my laconica installation into it.  Similarly, as a result of the course, I’ve been looking at Trac (wiki and defect-tracking software), and so thought I may as well set that up to play with as well.

Both subversion and trac are easily installed via Synaptic, although its not the most recent versions (version 1.4.6 of Subversion and 0.10.4 of Trac), but for my purposes these are fine.

Fortunately, the Trac website has a handy FAQ I was able to use to help set both up.  Subversion worked pretty much out the box after installation, but I wanted to get it working with my Apache installation which this helped with.  The only issue I had was that the www-data group doesn’t seem to be working properly, and I can’t add my user to it.  So I created my own wwwusers group instead, which seemed to work ok.

The fun thing for me, was that in work I work in Windows, so most of my Subversion usage is via TortoiseSVN.  At home, in Linux, I wasn’t really sure about what GUIs to use.  I’ve installed a couple via Synaptic, but I ended up using the command-line to create the repository, the directory structure, import the code and create my branch to work on.   Good practise for me.

I don’t do a lot of development at home.  But I’m hoping that as I get my environment setup I’ll get more into it, and if nothing else this is good practise for me in building my admin skills rather than just being a desktop user of Ubuntu.

With ndiswrapper, I get my broadcom card’s drivers installed.  Near as I can tell, this definitely works.  The blue light comes on, and I can get my laptop connecting to my wifi either unencrypted, or using WEP.

However, I use WPA on my LAN, and I’m not particularly wanting to compromise it’s security.  And it seems to be at the WPA authentication that everything’s falling apart.  I’ve tried both ndiswrapper and the fwcutter drivers automatically installed by Ubuntu.  I’ve even borrowed a kernel-supported wireless PCMCIA card from a friend, and that had the same problem.

I’ve tried different distros, broadcasting my usually-hidden SSID (and that was a story within itself), and nothing seems to work.

At this point I’d be suspecting my router of being Linux unfriendly, except that my Xandros-powered EeePC talks to it no bother (after installing some of the updates).

Its been really doing my head in.  I’ve tried both the gnome network manager, and last night I tried wicd (which, having now played with it, I actually think is a bit nicer than the Gnome version).  At this point I’m wondering if manually configuring my wlan settings by hand is the way to go…

I reckon tonight I’ll need to sit down, note my network card details etc, and put a post up on Ubuntu Forums pleading for help.