Edit : It seems that people are agreeing with me about Edgy!
Yesterday I took the plunge and upgraded Ubuntu Dapper to Ubuntu Edgy. Edgy is a small ‘testing’ version of Ubuntu and they expect to release one every 6 months or so. At the same time, they’re supporting Ubuntu Dapper for 3 years, so I assume that in a year or two they’ll release another ‘major’ version.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Ubuntu and I love Linux for the fact that people all over the world have actually given up their time (almost all of them unpaid) to come together and create a free OS for people to use. Ubuntu is, in my opinion, the easiest to use, with free support and the best features out of the box. Plus, because it uses Aptitude (apt-get), you can install pretty much any piece of software with minimal fuss. You simply add a new repository to your list (if necessary), then browse for the software and ask Ubuntu to install it. If you’re using a Vanilla version of the OS (which someone without much Linux experience would be) then it would work perfectly. Of course, I’m not using a Vanilla version… oops.
The new upgrade features:
- GNOME 2.16
- Substantially faster startup and shutdown with eye-catching high-resolution graphics
- Firefox 2.0
- Evolution 2.8.1 (the new version of an email client similiar to Microsoft Outlook)
- Tomboy, an easy-to-use and efficient note-taking too
- F-Spot, a photo management tool that enables tagging, photo editing and automatic uploading to on-line web management sites such as Flickr
I’ve yet to use Tomboy or F-Spot, but I’ll probably post something about them if they’re any good!
The official way to upgrade is apparently to use the following:
gksu "update-manager -c"
This asks you for your password and then presents you with an ‘upgrade’ button. I assume the reason this was done is because this isn’t really an ‘official’ version of the OS. It’ll only be supported for 6 months, so you have to know what you’re doing and want to upgrade.
Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, I’ve modified my installation of Ubuntu quite a bit. For example, I’ve installed Opera, which the Ubuntu team obviously didn’t expect. This caused a clash in the Synaptic Package Manager. Quite simply, if you have Opera and want to upgrade, it’s easier to remove your ‘opera’ or ‘opera-static’ package before you upgrade and re-install it afterwards. You don’t lose your configuration or settings in Opera. This problem is caused by the fact that Ubuntu Edgy wants to have /usr/X11R6/bin as a symlink, but Opera has installed a file in the bin directory. If you remove Opera, this isn’t an issue. Once Opera is reinstalled, things are quite happy again.
The upgrade asks, on several occasions, if you want to replace or keep your modified config files for certain packages. I compared them all and replaced most of them with the new versions to ensure my upgrade worked perfectly. Once this all completes, you reboot and…
… well there’s a nice (ish) new boot screen, but the text telling you the status of the boot process is lost, which is a little unfortunate. Still, not a big problem. Unfortunately I can’t login - it gives me an error to do with keytouch:
/etc/X11/Xsession.d/39keytouch-acpid: 2: Syntax error: "&" unexpected
which is fixed by removing keytouch and the keytouch files from /etc/X11/Xsession.d.
So now I can login, but there’s no window manager (Metacity) and no task bars. Apparently this is caused by some sort of difference in my profile. I’m still not sure what the difference was, but after removing several unnecessary configuration files (compared with a new account) I finally get a normal Gnome desktop. It really shouldn’t have been that difficult, but it’s hard to say as I can’t remember exactly which files I removed. They seemed like good choices at the time… I’ve got a backup of my old profile, so I could do a comparison and post up which files were removed.
But there’s yet another problem. Apparently, because Ubuntu Edgy supports aiglx, my fglrx graphics card drivers don’t work anymore. Thankfully the fix is quite simple. I have to add:
Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "disable"
EndSection
to the bottom of my /etc/X11/Xorg.conf file.
Well things seem to be ok now. There’s still a few rough patches here and there, but I have a working desktop. It’s obvious that Edgy is, well, ‘edgy’ and not a proper public release, but I’ve survived intact. Hopefully my information here will go on to help someone.