Time for me, a not-on-the-bleeding-edge user, to upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04. I had problems using 9.10 on my Toshiba laptop due to problems in support for the Intel 5100 AGN wireless adapter. Various bugs were reported regarding Linux support for that product. I've been running 9.04 on the Toshiba and 9.10 on the Acer netbook. Oddly, 9.04 supports the 5100 AGN just fine, while later releases do not.
The Toshiba is my main workhorse, and I use the Acer for presentations and meetings as well as a host for a Windows XP instance that I need for two particular applications. Because it's easy to install Ubuntu alongside Windows using Wubi, I decided to approach the upgrade cautiously by installing on the Acer first. My thought was this would minimize the risk of messing up my primary machine. This approach would not tell me whether 10.04 supported the 5100 AGN wireless adapter, or whether it would be possible to get the 64-bit version of Adobe Flash Player working, but it would at least identify any major issues with the new release.
The Wubi install is different from a straight install from an iso disk. I booted into Windows XP, downloaded the Wubi installer, and ran it with
wubi --32bitThe installer recognized that Ubuntu was already installed and offered to remove it. I chose Yes, the installer removed Ubuntu 9.10, and exited. I ran the command a second time, exactly the same way, and this time it downloaded the installation files and proceeded with the installation. This took quite a while, but completed without any problems.
The first thing I noticed was that it was hard for me to read the display and to distinguish the edges of windows. It seems the default desktop theme for 10.04, Ambiance, is based on a color palette of black, dark black, deep black, and pitch black. I changed the desktop theme to Radiance, which has a lighter color palette. The default on 9.04, Human, was not listed as an option. Radiance is similar.
Now that I could read the display, the next order of business was to slow down the mouse a bit. By default, 10.04 ships with the mouse set to very fast and very sensitive; that is, the sliders are about half-way between minimum and maximum. I changed the settings to be more compatible with my slow, old hands, after some difficulty in making the mouse cursor land where I wanted it.
The next thing I noticed was that .bash_aliases is called by default from .bashrc. In 9.04, those lines are commented out by default in .bashrc. I think the 10.04 default makes more sense. I put some of my favorite aliases into .bash_aliases and began to check out the new version of Ubuntu.
Next: Ubuntu 10.04 upgrade on Acer netbook: Adobe Flash Player
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