S
Stephan Rose
Thought I'd share this even though it's not Vista related, hence marked OT
for those who want to skip it.
Was running Ubuntu 6.10, now running 7.04 (beta)...
Clean install? No. In-Place upgrade.
Download time? ~25 minutes.
Install time? ~20 minutes.
Bumps in the road? One that I expected to hit.
The bump I hit being the nVidia driver I am running. New version of ubuntu
uses a newer Kernel (with some nice support for Virtualization and VMWare
so I can run Windows where it belongs...in a window) and due to that reason
my nVidia driver being compiled for the previous kernel won't run with the
new kernel. I kind of expected to hit this bump but I kept the nVidia
driver installed just to see how it would be handled.
On reboot, got an error message in text mode that the driver failed to start
up and got dumped to the command line. Preferable over Windows' simply
locking up or bluescreening I think.
So 10 seconds later, since I do know how, I changed to the generic vesa
driver and turned off my second display. I realize though that editing a
text file can be beyond the abilities of the average user and that is
something that needs to change. I am not going to disagree there. And
before you point at "hardware support issues" ..don't respond yet. Keep
reading. I am not done yet.
Reboot...boots up fine..log into desktop fine. On first glance, everything
short of my video driver appears functional. So next I go to test out the
new feature not present in any previous releases: Restricted Driver Manager
located in the System->Administration Menu.
First time around it complained to me that the restricted modules package
was missing. Don't know if that is just a beta bug (package not being
installed automatically) or if the package is intended to not be installed
automatically since Ubuntu favors non-proprietary stuff. Regardless, a few
mouse clicks later package is installed via the package manager. Though I
will say that there is some room for improvement here as it could offer to
automatically install the package instead of me having to do so.
So after the soooo "excruciating" task of selecting the package and clicking
the install button, I go back to the restricted driver manager. Comes right
up...and what do we have here! A little list box, with a column listing my
devices that have restricted (proprietary) drivers available. Only one in
my case, my video card! Also shows version information, which was 9755 and
next to that is a little checkbox for "enable". Click it...it downloads the
driver...and then asks me to reboot.
Reboot my system..and here I am running with the 9755, most-recent linux
version, driver from nVidia and all it took to install it was a few mouse
clicks. Also means that on future OS upgrades, I no longer need to worry
about my video driver anymore like I had to do this time since now it will
automatically upgrade together with the OS.
See, *this* is the kind of stuff that impresses me! Every single piece of
software I have still works. All my desktop settings are still intact and
my desktop is still the way I want it. All my hardware works and the last
remnants of semi-"difficult" driver installation (nvidia) are now gone. No
more command lines to install video drivers. Just click it and enable it...
From what I understand by reading the website, codecs are also exceedingly
easier to install now. Shouldn't even need Automatix anymore I think. It
supposedly has something similar now to how the restricted driver install
works for codecs that comes up when trying to play a file that has the
needed codec missing. I can't test this though as I already have all codecs
installed.
I find improvements like that to be far more impressive than useless
eye-candy UI, exceedingly high hardware requirements and very poor software
compatibility such as what Vista offers.
Another nice new feature of my new kernel? Kernel Virtualization Support for
VM Ware so starting with version 6.0 of VMWare I can take advantage of the
hardware support my CPU has for virtualization and really put windows where
it belongs...into a window. =) Fitting place for it isn't it?
--
Stephan
2003 Yamaha R6
å›ã®ã“ã¨æ€ã„出ã™æ—¥ãªã‚“ã¦ãªã„ã®ã¯
å›ã®ã“ã¨å¿˜ã‚ŒãŸã¨ããŒãªã„ã‹ã‚‰
for those who want to skip it.
Was running Ubuntu 6.10, now running 7.04 (beta)...
Clean install? No. In-Place upgrade.
Download time? ~25 minutes.
Install time? ~20 minutes.
Bumps in the road? One that I expected to hit.
The bump I hit being the nVidia driver I am running. New version of ubuntu
uses a newer Kernel (with some nice support for Virtualization and VMWare
so I can run Windows where it belongs...in a window) and due to that reason
my nVidia driver being compiled for the previous kernel won't run with the
new kernel. I kind of expected to hit this bump but I kept the nVidia
driver installed just to see how it would be handled.
On reboot, got an error message in text mode that the driver failed to start
up and got dumped to the command line. Preferable over Windows' simply
locking up or bluescreening I think.
So 10 seconds later, since I do know how, I changed to the generic vesa
driver and turned off my second display. I realize though that editing a
text file can be beyond the abilities of the average user and that is
something that needs to change. I am not going to disagree there. And
before you point at "hardware support issues" ..don't respond yet. Keep
reading. I am not done yet.
Reboot...boots up fine..log into desktop fine. On first glance, everything
short of my video driver appears functional. So next I go to test out the
new feature not present in any previous releases: Restricted Driver Manager
located in the System->Administration Menu.
First time around it complained to me that the restricted modules package
was missing. Don't know if that is just a beta bug (package not being
installed automatically) or if the package is intended to not be installed
automatically since Ubuntu favors non-proprietary stuff. Regardless, a few
mouse clicks later package is installed via the package manager. Though I
will say that there is some room for improvement here as it could offer to
automatically install the package instead of me having to do so.
So after the soooo "excruciating" task of selecting the package and clicking
the install button, I go back to the restricted driver manager. Comes right
up...and what do we have here! A little list box, with a column listing my
devices that have restricted (proprietary) drivers available. Only one in
my case, my video card! Also shows version information, which was 9755 and
next to that is a little checkbox for "enable". Click it...it downloads the
driver...and then asks me to reboot.
Reboot my system..and here I am running with the 9755, most-recent linux
version, driver from nVidia and all it took to install it was a few mouse
clicks. Also means that on future OS upgrades, I no longer need to worry
about my video driver anymore like I had to do this time since now it will
automatically upgrade together with the OS.
See, *this* is the kind of stuff that impresses me! Every single piece of
software I have still works. All my desktop settings are still intact and
my desktop is still the way I want it. All my hardware works and the last
remnants of semi-"difficult" driver installation (nvidia) are now gone. No
more command lines to install video drivers. Just click it and enable it...
From what I understand by reading the website, codecs are also exceedingly
easier to install now. Shouldn't even need Automatix anymore I think. It
supposedly has something similar now to how the restricted driver install
works for codecs that comes up when trying to play a file that has the
needed codec missing. I can't test this though as I already have all codecs
installed.
I find improvements like that to be far more impressive than useless
eye-candy UI, exceedingly high hardware requirements and very poor software
compatibility such as what Vista offers.
Another nice new feature of my new kernel? Kernel Virtualization Support for
VM Ware so starting with version 6.0 of VMWare I can take advantage of the
hardware support my CPU has for virtualization and really put windows where
it belongs...into a window. =) Fitting place for it isn't it?
--
Stephan
2003 Yamaha R6
å›ã®ã“ã¨æ€ã„出ã™æ—¥ãªã‚“ã¦ãªã„ã®ã¯
å›ã®ã“ã¨å¿˜ã‚ŒãŸã¨ããŒãªã„ã‹ã‚‰
