Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Benchmarked and Reviewed 164
tc6669 writes "Tom's Hardware just posted an interesting review of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. It includes an expanded set of OS benchmarks that they also performed on the previous LTS release (8.04), to see just how much the mainstream Linux distro has progressed in two years."
Upgrading in place from the previous LTS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Upgrading in place from the previous LTS? (Score:5, Interesting)
That is a recipe for tragedy. The operating system itself upgrades perfectly well, but the GConf schemas are subtly incompatible and the GNOME people couldn't care less about solving this problem. If you're going from Hardy to Lucid I highly recommend a nuke-and-pave install and copy your homedir from a backup, without any of the dotfiles.
I had a great deal of mysterious behavior on my laptop that was upgraded to every Ubuntu release since Hardy, and all of that stuff disappeared when I reinstalled and got rid of all my dotfiles.
Reset Gnome (Score:5, Interesting)
After a couple of weeks, I did something that made my bottom panel disappear. I couldn't get it back, so I deleted my
I do something similar... (Score:3, Interesting)
But it's a little bit in-between.
I do a fresh install, but maintain my /home partition as-is. I make my regular username my default root-accessible (via gksu/sudo) one, but then once I've installed, I create a new user named after the release (hardy, jaunty, lucid, etc.). Then, I log into my default account. Using the icons on my desktop, I then install my non-standard apps (audacity, gimp, vlc, easytag, nicotine, etc.).
Once I've basically got my computer up to where I was before, then I log into my version-specific account which creates a fresh profile, and I start to check out the differences - themes, feature updates, new defaults - for all my apps I regularly use. If I see anything I like, I hop over to my default profile and adjust. If I see anything I don't, then I just don't bother changing my current settings.
Has worked fantastic for my last 3 upgrades (please note that I never go with mid-release upgrades.... while the .04 series almost always include a ton of improvements, I find more often than not the .10 upgrades will break at least one thing).
Intel Video Finally Working Well (Score:4, Interesting)
For the last several releases, Ubuntu has dealt very poorly with Intel video cards. Now to be fair, this isn't entirely their fault; they were impacted by the switch to DRI2, GEM, Modesetting, etc. However they haven't handled it gracefully. I have three systems -- HTPC (Dell Studio Hybrid), laptop (Lenovo SL400), and a netbook (Acer Aspire One) -- that use the i915 driver, and both 9.04 and 9.10 were horrible (no 3D acceleration, poor 2D performance, etc.). In fact 9.10 (and possibly 9.04) required me to pass a kernel parameter to disable modesetting (i915.modeset=0) to even get to a GUI to install.
I realize there were workarounds and hacks, to get reasonable performance from the Intel cards with the previous two releases, but nothing I found seemed simple or fully addressed the issue. This was largely due to some of the fixes requiring newer kernels and since Ubuntu isn't a rolling release distro, that would make fixing things much more difficult. My personal laptop (T400, also with a i915 video card) runs Gentoo, and I had fixed all the Intel video issues several months earlier.
Fortunately 10.04 seems to have gotten everything back to working well again, and hopefully all the changes will be worth it in the future.
Went Back to 9.04 (Score:1, Interesting)
Last Advice (Score:3, Interesting)
My last bit of advice is to watch the video on YouTube from gotbletu [youtube.com]. He has tons of Ubuntu how-to videos. He's slightly profane, but very informative.
I use the Kubuntu 10.04 version instead (Score:5, Interesting)
Being somewhat nervous about upgrading, I kept my old version of Kubuntu 9.10 and installed a fresh clean copy of Kubuntu 10.04 onto a different partition. That way I knew that I could always go back to my older version, if I needed to.
I am one of the few people who insists on using different wallpaper for each of my virtual desktops. After installing Kubuntu 10.04, I had trouble figuring out how to get it to allow me to use different wallpaper for each of my virtual desktops. The way to enable doing that had changed since Kubuntu 9.10. I eventually found how to do that by clicking "Settings," then "System Settings," then "Desktop," then "Multiple Desktops," then checking the box for "different activity for each desktop." After doing that, I went to each virtual desktop and right clicked on a blank portion of the screen and then selected the "Desktop Activity Settings." I chose my favorite wallpaper from there.
I don't care very much what default software they include with Kubuntu, since I know what programs I prefer and can quickly and easily download and install them for free from the official Ubuntu repositories. There are hundreds of free Linux programs available from the official repositories. I prefer to use Synaptic to download those programs, because it is an easy to use point and click front end for apt-get. I have not yet tried using KPackageKit instead, which comes already installed with Kubuntu. When I first installed Kubuntu 10.04, I used apt-get to download the Synaptic package manager, and then used Synaptic to install every other favorite free program of mine.
I have been happily using Linux on the desktop for about 10 years now, but, I am not a computer expert. Kubuntu 10.04 seems to perform quite well on my several year old AMD 64 X2 4200+ computer. Unlike the earlier Kubuntu 9.10, I have not yet found any bugs or other problems with Kubuntu 10.04.
Re:FINAL VERDICT: Not much has improved. (Score:3, Interesting)
Violation of freedom of speech: deleting posts, which didn't happen. Exercising your freedom of ignoring other people's speech: browsing at +2.
Deleting posts != free speech violation.
You have the right to free speech. You don't have a right to post on Slashdot--a network owned by someone else, and more than you'd have the right to spray paint a message on your neighbors house. It wouldn't be a violation if he repainted his house. If you want free speech on the web, go buy your own domain name, load your own discussion or blog software onto your own server.
That's what I do. Of course my free speech will last up until approximately 5 requests a second, then my old POS server will catch on fire.