I've been postponing my upgrade from hardy heron to karmic koala for a long time. But because my laptop disk crash, somehow i've been forced to do it anyway :) So here is my experience...
Installation
The installation was easy and fast. Since I'm installing to another hardisk (used windows disk), i just used the default option and wipe the whole content of the disk.
After successfully installing karmic koala, now comes the detail part. I need to restore my data, since my previous hardisk luckily can be mount using ubuntu live cd, i just copy my home folder to a backup directory in the new one.
There's one problem though. Because in my previous installation I've installed Wine emulator, somehow some of my file was copied more than once. From the real path and from the wine path. Since i don't use Wine any longer, i think its better to remove .wine folder before start copying your old file.
Another thing you should notice when copying your old file is, you better do it with sudo. Because some of my file was created by root id, it failed to copy to the backup folder.
Program List - part 1
Before starting to install the programs there's one thing i like to mention. I use to manually modify the apt source list using vi to point to my favorite repository. But now i can do that through the synaptic manager repository settings. Since my favorite repository is available, one click would do the trick instead of copying several lines in the /etc/apt/sources.list :)
(a bit OOT, my favorite repository is dl2.foss-id.web.id, its blazing fast)
Here's the minimum list of program that i need to install after i finished my karmic installation :
- openssh
- pidgin
- rar plugin
- thunderbird mail client
- exaile (yes we can't live without mp3 anyomore :P)
- sun java 6
few of my own notes. Karmic comes with empathy as the default IM client. But it still lack many things, especially proxy option. Thats why i still need to install pidgin. Thunderbird is my default my client (and probably most people), Evolution is simply not my thing.
And for Exaile, i was using Amarok. But since it load many KDE library, i was looking for another alternative. Exaile seems nice enough. But the most important thing i missed from Amarok is the key binding to start and stop music using windows- z through b. If only another player incorpoorate this :(
The plugins
Yes, its not enough to simply install the programs, now everything come as a plugin :) For me it quite straigh forward, all i need is :
- Flash plugins, Flash Blocker Plugins, Ad Block Plus Plugin and Firebug plugins for my Firefox
- gstreamer for playing mp3 and mpeg files
Restoring
Well one thing i like about Firefox and Thunder bird, to restore all of your mail folder, rss, bookmark, etc. All you need to do is copy the old file and overwrite the old configuration. For thunderbird is a simple as this. copy the content of .mozilla-thunderbird from the old to the new one, open thunderbird and see all of your mail back to where it belongs. You can delete the new profile if you like.
For firefox you need to copy .mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini and .mozilla/firefox/[old profile folder] from the old one to the new one. I was using 3.0 and now 3.5 and the transition is very smoth, i even got my previous opened tab and history just like in my old hard disk :D
The UI
The default Karmic UI still feels somewhat clunky for my taste, so its time to tune it a little bit. I like putting all of bar on one place, preferably bottom. You used to able to do this by dragging the bar. But now you need to right click on the bar, choose properties, and choose the orientation to bottom.
The default ubuntu font is an eyesore to my taste, you can download your own font. There are 2 font that i like to mention, first is the sun font, the sans and serif is quite good. But for my karmic i like to try a new font, the droid font.
The droid font was designed for small system, so even in small display it doesn't break or become clunky. It fit perfeclty for my 14" laptop screen. To install it you just need too look for ttf-droid in the synaptic package manager.
After installing the droid font, you need to configure the appearance through System > Preference > Appearance > Fonts. My configuration is :
- Application fonts Droid Sans Japanese 8
- Document fonts Droid Sans Japanese 8
- Desktop fonts Droid Sans Japanese 8
- Window title fonts Droid Sans Bold 8
- Fixed width font Monospace 10
you need to change a little thing on Firefox to give it the finishing touch. Just go through firefox Edit > Preference > Content > Font. My Configuration is :
- Proportional Serif 15
- Serif Serif
- Sans-Serif Sans-Serif
- Monospace monospace 12
and Voila ... My Karmic Desktop is Prettier than my windows desktop :D
with this settings I've managed to continue my work, the other could be updated piece by piece, and here's some of the advanced part i've managed to set on the weekend.
Notification
Karmic comes with a new centralized notification, sometimes it can be very annoying, especially when you're using pidgin. It keeps popping every time my buddy sign on, combined with bad network, its a living hell for working. To solve this you need to configure your pidgin like this. Go to Tool ->Plugins -> 'Libnotify popups' -> Configure Plugin . And then remove 'Buddy signs on' checkbox.
LILO
My laptop is lenovo 3000 N200. Since Hardy Heron I've always get this problem. My DVD isn't detected on my Ubuntu, the funny thing I'm able to use the DVD for installation or using live cd.
It turn out i'm not the only one, lots of people having this kind of problem with this lenovo series. One of the solution is to set ACPI off in boot time, but has the risk of damaging the laptop in the long run. So i choose the other solution replacing grub with lilo as the boot loader.
Installing lilo is quite easy :
- Make sure you have live cd ready just incase anything happens
- Just go through synaptic and download the lilo package.
- Backup your /etc/fstab to lets say ~/backup/fstab.backup.
- Modify the fstab files so lilo would work, since lilo hasn't been updated to recognize UUID for the boot partition, you need to restore it to the old fasion way. For example like this
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
#
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 / ext4 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1 <--- the changes
#UUID=ca06fd83-becb-4012-8579-9e65662c9ef0 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda2
UUID=948b4626-2f62-40c0-bc92-6ee8b69af42e /media/hda2 reiserfs defaults 0 2
- after that run sudo liloconf, since i didn't use grub anymore i just rewrite the MBR
- and then restart
And finaly my DVD worked and I've managed to backup my work :D
One thing, the default lilo is very slow comparing to grub. It took about 2-3 minute to start while grub could do under 1 minute. There's a way to speed up Lilo boot up time, by using the compact mode. You just need to type this as root,
lilo -c -v
see /etc/lilo.conf and make sure there's line saying compact and its not commented. Then lilo would boot up pretty fast. Comparable with grub, the side note is, this solution is intended for FD, could have some problem with old hardware. But since my laptop is not that old, so far i haven't had a problem with it.
Network Management Applet
Well this is another pain in the ass , but this has been a very long post. So lets leave it as it is and save it for another time :D
- Adeu -
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