Ubuntu Ibex 8.10 Beta
Last night I upgraded my laptop's o/s to the new Ibex 8.10 release, not yet official still in beta but so far very stable.
This can be done via,
sudo update-manager -d
...then choosing the new distribution 8.10 from the top of the update manager dialog, you'll need about 1 hour for it to download & install. Be around for some of the dialogs; one of which will ask you if you want to merge or replace your network script (i clicked merge) after which you should be ok.
It comes with a lot of new updates and a major interface overhaul.
There's now a fallback linux kernel if the main one should fail (like ArchLinux), more windows-like logout panel, better hibernation and a new theme called NewHuman (see screenshot above).
Along with this there's available from the repository,
- VLC 0.94 (with a more graphical control panel)
- GIMP 2.6 (much more professional)
- Gnome 2.24 (with tabbed browsing)
- GEdit 2.24
...and a ton of other newer packages, Mercurial is also updated along with the Kernel so any new hardware should be properly recognised.
After the install I had to reboot obviously, on rebooting my wifi no longer worked, so after another reboot that came back. Did an update & upgrade for any newer packages and so far other than the battery indicator applet crashing a couple of times nothing majorly serious.
Eclipse is still at 3.2 in the repository, along with NetBeans at 6.1 so that's a little bit of a bummer. However NetBeans does come with an easier installer so just grab the latest nightly build for that, Eclipse Ganymede and 3.2 are proving a little flakey at the moment.
Interface-wise it is a heck of a lot better than the previous release and although unofficially available I would recommend grabbing a copy, definitely worth the effort.
Update
Just done an update,
- In the repositories is Flash Player 10.
- On bootup instead of saying 'kernel alive.. etc..', they've replaced it with 'Starting up...'; nice.
- The Installer is now graphical with a very osx partition manager and new logout screens and graphics.
- On that end when you login the screen doesn't go blank then show the desktop but stay Ubuntu Brown then show the desktop.
- Stick a dvd in first-time and like Windows it'll ask you what you want to open it with, vlc, totem, etc.
- Plus you've got some nice new default wallpapers available.
Did have a problem with the NewHuman theme, after doing a safe-upgrade I lost the theme, although I did find a replacement;
- Dust Theme
..you need to download the Murrine debian package for the distro you're using, install it, then download + install the Dust Theme.
Other than that this release is shaping up pretty nicely!
OpenOffice 3
Found this good guide to replacing OpenOffice 2.4.1 with the latest 3.0 release, pretty simple.
Basically add this to your repository then update and upgrade & you should have the new build.
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main
Firefox 3.1 alpha
Add this to your repository to grab Firefox 3.1
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/fta/ubuntu intrepid main
John Antoni Griffiths
E-mail john@johnantoni.com
