Ubuntu 8.10: Intrepid Ibex Review
I've been using Ubuntu for about a year now, and have found that overall, it is a reliable "it just works" distro that still gives me plenty of room to tweak without having to worry about fixing any mistakes I may make. Before I used Ubuntu I was a hardcore Slackware and FreeBSD user, but as my professional obligations grew and grew, I needed a distro that I could reliably set up quickly on varying configurations (and I wanted something with decent package management - Slack's options just didn't cut it for safe dep. management).
For those of you who have been living under a rock, Ubuntu is a friendly open-source ("free as in beer") focused Linux distribution based on Debian. It uses the Gnome desktop environment by default, but you can grab variants that use XFCE or KDE, too.
Lets cut to the chase: I recently bought a laptop to replace my nearly-dead (power supply failure) IBM Thinkpad T43. Of course, being a fan of Thinkpads, I bought another one - this time, a T400. The key things to note are that I went with the basic PCI Integrated Wlan (based on the Atheros chipset) and the integrated Intel graphics (4500HD). I regret not going with the higher end ATI card now, having learned that Photoshop CS4 can make use of the GPU. Oh well, live and learn.
Ubuntu 8.04 had too many issues for me to want to go through the pain of setting it up (didn't detect the video for X, nor Wifi), so I waited patiently until 8.10 officially came out (I try to avoid RCs, except in the case of FreeBSD). 8.10, however, worked fairly well.
I installed via Wubi, which allows me to create a virtual drive in my Windows install and saves me the hassle of repartitioning (meaning scrapping the Ubuntu install to free up space is as easy as going to Add/Remove Programs and clicking "Uninstall" on Ubuntu). I need to maintain my Windows install due to wild software requirements (Photoshop 6, Illustrator CS2, Cooledit Pro 1.2, and a few more apps) that don't always work well under Wine. Plus, its always nice to be able to test my websites and web apps under IE itself, rather than having to use a screenshot proxy service that'll just show me layout errors and not interactivity tests.
The install process was straightforward and reliable, with no hitches. Once I finished the install (which was fairly fast, and didn't require much on my part), I logged in and was presented with the desktop..
..Which incorrectly detected my resolution.
This was the perfect opportunity to test the new resolution switcher built in to the DE/WM. I crank it open, and it shows me a number of resolutions - none of which are native.
I've got a widescreen laptop, which runs natively at 1440x900. Looking at the switches and dials available on the dialog, I uncheck "Mirror Screens" - ok, now 1440x900 is available. I click it, hit "Apply", and.. Now my gnome panels are floating in odd positions. The top bar doesn't quite fill the full width of the screen, and the bottom is floating an inch or two above the bottom of the screen. I unlock the panels and try to move them, getting the bottom panel to fit perfectly.. The top one, however, won't budge. I uncheck "Expand" in the panel properties, and it is floating on the top just a little to the left.
Ok, that's an odd bug, but it doesn't seem to affect the functionality, so we'll move on.
First time I get presented with a gksudo prompt, however, I get bothered a little more - the screen dimming only dims a portion of the screen.
Once again, this is just a minor graphical glitch - it doesn't appear to affect functionality, so we'll move on. Compiz works fine out of the box, with settings cranked up to max.
Next, to resolve the other problem - wifi. Thankfully, someone else did all the hard work for me and wrote up a guide. There was one minor mistake, however, that most regular Linux users will catch - when it has you run "make install" for the madwifi drivers, you should be running "sudo make install" (since it requires write access to protected folders).
Not everything is smiles and sunshine in the world of wifi on the Madwifi drivers, however; I've discovered that my signal strength is severely impaired compared to wifi under Windows. Testing this in my local coffee shop, an area I normally have great signal strength at under Windows XP using the pre-installed drivers can't even obtain an IP through DHCP under Ubuntu. Moving closer to the AP helped, but I'm still getting dropped connections while writing this blog post.
Overall, however, I'll say Intrepid Ibex was a step in the right direction. The newer features did come with new bugs, however, that will hopefully be resolved in short order.
For those of you who have been living under a rock, Ubuntu is a friendly open-source ("free as in beer") focused Linux distribution based on Debian. It uses the Gnome desktop environment by default, but you can grab variants that use XFCE or KDE, too.
Lets cut to the chase: I recently bought a laptop to replace my nearly-dead (power supply failure) IBM Thinkpad T43. Of course, being a fan of Thinkpads, I bought another one - this time, a T400. The key things to note are that I went with the basic PCI Integrated Wlan (based on the Atheros chipset) and the integrated Intel graphics (4500HD). I regret not going with the higher end ATI card now, having learned that Photoshop CS4 can make use of the GPU. Oh well, live and learn.
Ubuntu 8.04 had too many issues for me to want to go through the pain of setting it up (didn't detect the video for X, nor Wifi), so I waited patiently until 8.10 officially came out (I try to avoid RCs, except in the case of FreeBSD). 8.10, however, worked fairly well.
I installed via Wubi, which allows me to create a virtual drive in my Windows install and saves me the hassle of repartitioning (meaning scrapping the Ubuntu install to free up space is as easy as going to Add/Remove Programs and clicking "Uninstall" on Ubuntu). I need to maintain my Windows install due to wild software requirements (Photoshop 6, Illustrator CS2, Cooledit Pro 1.2, and a few more apps) that don't always work well under Wine. Plus, its always nice to be able to test my websites and web apps under IE itself, rather than having to use a screenshot proxy service that'll just show me layout errors and not interactivity tests.
The install process was straightforward and reliable, with no hitches. Once I finished the install (which was fairly fast, and didn't require much on my part), I logged in and was presented with the desktop..
..Which incorrectly detected my resolution.
This was the perfect opportunity to test the new resolution switcher built in to the DE/WM. I crank it open, and it shows me a number of resolutions - none of which are native.
I've got a widescreen laptop, which runs natively at 1440x900. Looking at the switches and dials available on the dialog, I uncheck "Mirror Screens" - ok, now 1440x900 is available. I click it, hit "Apply", and.. Now my gnome panels are floating in odd positions. The top bar doesn't quite fill the full width of the screen, and the bottom is floating an inch or two above the bottom of the screen. I unlock the panels and try to move them, getting the bottom panel to fit perfectly.. The top one, however, won't budge. I uncheck "Expand" in the panel properties, and it is floating on the top just a little to the left.
Ok, that's an odd bug, but it doesn't seem to affect the functionality, so we'll move on.
First time I get presented with a gksudo prompt, however, I get bothered a little more - the screen dimming only dims a portion of the screen.
Once again, this is just a minor graphical glitch - it doesn't appear to affect functionality, so we'll move on. Compiz works fine out of the box, with settings cranked up to max.
Next, to resolve the other problem - wifi. Thankfully, someone else did all the hard work for me and wrote up a guide. There was one minor mistake, however, that most regular Linux users will catch - when it has you run "make install" for the madwifi drivers, you should be running "sudo make install" (since it requires write access to protected folders).
Not everything is smiles and sunshine in the world of wifi on the Madwifi drivers, however; I've discovered that my signal strength is severely impaired compared to wifi under Windows. Testing this in my local coffee shop, an area I normally have great signal strength at under Windows XP using the pre-installed drivers can't even obtain an IP through DHCP under Ubuntu. Moving closer to the AP helped, but I'm still getting dropped connections while writing this blog post.
Overall, however, I'll say Intrepid Ibex was a step in the right direction. The newer features did come with new bugs, however, that will hopefully be resolved in short order.
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