Ubuntu 10.04 upgrade on Toshiba Satellite: Prep and basic install

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The "upgrade" consisted of a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.04. To prepare for the install, I did the following:

1. Cleaned up files and directories.
2. Moved Gnome .desktop files for certain apps from /usr/share/applications to ~/.local/share/applications.
3. Backed up my /home and /usr directories to an external hard drive

I learned a couple of lessons in the past few months of using Ubuntu. First, I learned that it's possible to define .desktop files under one's home directory. I moved some of these so that they could be backed up and restored with my /home directory. I also learned that there's no particular benefit in a separate partition for /usr.

Before committing to the new release, I ran 10.04 from the installation disk without doing the actual install. I was pleased to see that the 5100 AGN wireless adapter was supported. Everything looked okay to go forward with the installation.

Based on lessons learned, I defined partitions as follows:

ext4    30.0 GB    /        /dev/sda1
ext4   362 GB    /home    /dev/sda6
swap     8 GB             /dev/sda5

The installation went smoothly. I restored /home from the backup.

I checked to see if 10.04 might support the integrated Bluetooth adapter in the laptop, but unfortunately it does not.

I opened a presentation file that contains images to see whether the bug related to hardware graphics acceleration had been fixed in OpenOffice 3.2. Yes!

I opened Firefox and saw that it is now branded as Firefox instead of Shiretoko. Good! I went to http://www.xmarks.com and installed the plug-in, then synced my bookmarks.

On the local system, I went to System -> Preferences -> Appearance and changed the Theme to Radiance.

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