Upgraded my laptop to Lucid Lynx...

I finally upgraded my laptop from Karmic -> Lucid today. If you've read my last post here about my initial reservations on upgrading to Lucid and how I checked if my laptop was affected by booting up the Lucid live CD, I am happy to report that I successfully upgraded to Lucid. The only problem I had after the upgrade was Plymouth not showing me the startup animation.

First thing I did was install the ppa-purge utility (see my blog post here). I then systematically checked the entries in /etc/apt/source.list and all the .list files in /etc/apt/source.list.d and purged all the PPA (Personal Package Archives) I was using and replacing them with official Karmic versions from the Ubuntu repository.

I then downloaded the ubuntu-10.04-alternate-i386.iso file from one of Ubuntu's mirror sites and following the instructions here, upgraded my setup to Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx).

I rebooted the computer and did another update (since there are updates to some of the packages since the release on 29-Apr-2010) in a terminal shell by typing:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Everything worked correctly as expected except by Plymouth. A quick Google search landed me here and my setup works exactly as expected.

I am now a happy lemming lynx. :)

Upgrading problems for Intel Graphic owners to Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx...

I am usually one of the first few people to upgrade my Ubuntu installation every time Canonical releases a new build of Ubuntu. However, I had noticed a few users having problems with their upgrades and decided to "wait and see".

There are now quite a few users reporting that Intel Graphic owners have problems with the KMS (Kernel Mode Switch) with the new kernels. I strongly suggest owners to wait until this problem is resolved and stick with Karmic Koala until then. You can find out more about this issue at the ubuntuforums.org site with a Google query here.

I've read some websites saying that there is a quick fix to the problem where the kernel switches off KMS on known problematic graphic chipsets. Though this makes it easier to move from Karmic to Lucid, I'm personally going to wait until the problem is fixed (fixed with functionality, not fixed by switching the function off on problem machines). You can read about this workaround here.

Upgrading from Karmic Koala to Lucid Lynx...

Now that Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) is out, I am sure most users will want to upgrade their Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) to the new and improved. My advise to new users or those unfamiliar with the terminal bash shell to wait for other more experienced users to upgrade and see if they encounter any problems. If they have a similar setup or hardware as you have, then read or wait till the problem is solved. You can quickly check how by using Google and doing a query like this.

For the power users and those familiar with the workings of Ubuntu, you most probably also use a lot of PPAs (Personal Package Archives) either from Launchpad or some other repository. In case you didn't know, upgrading your Karmic to Lucid will result in:

1. The upgrade will disable all non-Ubuntu repositories from your source.list file or source.list.d folder.
   
2. The applications/packages that you have already installed may not work correctly, break, and/or damage your setup after the upgrade due to architecture differences or dependencies.

The easiest way for a Karmic user to ensure that their upgrade to Lynx is successful, is to first make a backup copy of their source.list file and sources.list.d folder. Then remove all software installed by the PPA and reinstall the same software from the Ubuntu repositories.

This used to be quite a laborious task as this was usually done manually. Now, you can use a program called ppa-purge which you can get for Karmic only here. Once you have installed this, simply type:

ppa-purge ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa

Replace "ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa" with the PPAs that you use. This will remove the installed applications from the said repository, remove the repository reference from Ubuntu and then reinstall the official supported version of the same application from Ubuntu's repository.

Once you have cleaned up all your PPAs, you can safely upgrade to Lucid Lynx. Once there, you can simply enable your favorite PPAs from your source.list and source.list.d folder and replace the keyword karmic with lucid. Before doing so, I strongly suggest you visit each developer's PPA page to see if they have a better version of the same software that the Ubuntu repositories has before upgrading to the PPA version.

I am not giving detailed steps for this post as this post is meant for power users who should know what I am talking about.

Installing Firefox 3.6 into Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic)

If you are like me and constantly want the latest version of everything in your Ubuntu installation, you will most probably want to install Firefox 3.6 into your Ubuntu installation. You first have the add in the Mozilla Team's firefox-stable repository by typing the following in a terminal shell:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable

Once you have that entry in your source.list file, you will need to update the available installers with the command:

sudo apt-get update

Now you can simply get firefox 3.6 installed with the command:

sudo apt-get install firefox-3.6

Warning, this will remove your current installation of Firefox.

:::::::::::: For older Ubuntu users :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

If you are a Jaunty, Intrepid or Hardy user, you will need to edit the source.list file by typing the following into the terminal shell:

gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

You then need to add in the following two lines at the end of the file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mozillateam/firefox-stable/ubuntu BUILDNAME main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/mozillateam/firefox-stable/ubuntu BUILDNAME main

Remember to replace the name BUILDNAME, with jaunty, intrepid or hardy (depending on which version of Ubuntu you have installed).

You will then need to import the correct public key so that Ubuntu will trust the repository. To do that, please read my earlier post on Getting the public key of a Ubuntu repository.

Again, once you have done the above, you will need to issue the command for Ubuntu to update and install the repository data and install Firefox 3.6:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox-3.6

You now have Firefox 3.6 installed. :)

eee-control for Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

I have been waiting patiently for Grigori Goronzy, the developer of eee-control to release a version of the utility for Karmic Koala (URL http://greg.geekmind.org/eee-control/). However, three weeks since Karmic was released, Grigori has yet to release an update.

Dan Amlund has downloaded the latest version Grigori released for Jaunty Jackalope (0.9.4) and fixed it so that it will install on Karmic Koala. I have installed iton my EeePC 701 and everything seems to be working (your mileage may vary).

To get Dan's version of eee-control which works on Karmic Koala,visit Ubuntu Geek's article at URL http://www.ubuntugeek.com/howto-install-eee-control-in-ubuntu-9-10-karmic.html