Karmic Koala, the alias for release 9.10 of Ubuntu Linux, was published last week.

Until now, I had been running version 8.04 (Hardy Heron) and had passed on the two successive releases (Intrepid Ibex, v8.10, and Jaunty Jackalope, v9.04). The manufacturers of my laptop had advised that those newer versions, both of which were available when I purchased 5 months ago, had lackluster support for my video card.

So I waited.

A few days before Karmic released, I saw that NVidia had released a new version of the drivers for my video card — now was the time, it would seem.

I downloaded a live CD of both 9.04 and 9.10, to compare, and checked it out.

Wow.

Jaunty (9.04) was ok — it looked basically the same as what I already had, but perhaps with some updates. But Karmic…wow. They have revamped many of the icons, visual elements, and verbiage used. There are new applications. There is now a free cloud service to do document synchronization across computers. The more I used it, the more I liked — it seems like this time around, Canonical (the publishers) have started to bring everything together cohesively.

Based on what I’ve seen so far, Ubuntu is nearly ready for the mainstream; it’s far easier to use. While there are still plenty of advanced things that are POSSIBLE to do, they are very rarely required.

This post is the first of a miniseries documenting the various features, some tricks and ways to integrate the software to (theoretically) increase productivity. Before I get to the good stuff, let’s talk about the installation:

There was a minor SNAFU when I installed it, but I’m pretty sure that it was my fault.

Upgrade Oops

See, there is this nice feature of Ubuntu where you can upgrade versions (8.04 -> 8.10, for example) just by clicking a button. While you’re going about your business, Ubuntu downloads the newer version in the background, copies the files, and handles the upgrade. I’ve done it a few time before and have not had any problems with it — of course every other time I was upgrading only ONCE at a time.

To go from 8.04 to 9.10 I had to go through all the intermediary versions, successively. So 8.04 had to become 8.10 first, and then 9.04… etc. I started on Thursday evening; the first upgrade took about 2.5 hrs. I started the second one and went to bed. It was finished in the morning. When I got to work, I fired it up and ran it in the background while I worked. It got about 2/3 of the way through and hung — no more progress. Whoops.

I think if I had done all patch upgrades FIRST through the updater, before taking that last step, I wouldn’t have had that problem. Oh well. C’est la vie.

So since that failed, it would be a clean install (“Clean Install” means “from a CD” in this case). I backed up my /home/ folder, booted into the LiveCD and resized my partitions (if I’m doing a full wipe, why not, right?). This was actually the most time-consuming step — it took about 3 or 4 hrs to do that.

But don’t worry…

It’s worth noting that for most people, everything I just discussed would probably not happen. First time users will just do a regular installation which doesn’t require re-sizing the partitions, and continuous users will probably upgrade as upgrades become available, meaning there will be plenty of patches in between.

The Installation

This was completely painless. You answer some very basic questions (What timezone? What spoken language? What’s your name?) And it installs the rest. I think the whole install took maybe 15 minutes?

There are advanced options, of course — you can do some creative partitioning / mounting if you want. But you also have the option of simply using the whole hard drive.

It is entirely reasonable that an average computer user would be able to make it through the installation easily. This is a stark contrast to the first time I used Linux, back in 1996 (Slackware distro… I still have the discs somewhere!). It was an NCurses (text-menu) based installation and you had to select your packages from this giNORmous list, many with cryptic names. Partitioning was required since you had to at least make a swap partition.

It’s come a long way.

First Bootup

a sample GRUB loader (not mine, but it looks similar)

With the installation completed, the computer restarts and loads for the first time. Before you see any colorful logos, a GRUB menu shows up and allows you to choose (if you want) where / how you want to boot.

In my case, since I have a small Windows XP partition (there are a couple games and applications that are not yet fully-supported in WinE), Windows XP shows up as one of the options.

What’s really cool though, is that I did not have to tell Ubuntu I have Windows on there — it found it, configured GRUB for it, and even made it accessible from Linux, all automatically!

Ubuntu will auto-select after 10 seconds of inactivity, and continue to boot.

The loading screen and login screen have been revamped significantly — no longer a black background with orange / yellow text — it’s now a gradiated brown with white glowing text. Very cool.

From boot till login, it takes a little under 1 minute.

The default wallpaper is new, but the real shiny-newness is most noticeable in the icon changes. Every version up until 9.04 used the same basic icon theme — it’s been re-vamped! Nice!

The Evolution calendar now gets its own button (a small mail icon by the date) which also includes the “Empathy” chat client (more on THAT later). Bluetooth, volume control, and network monitor were all were they should be, just with a new look.

Wi-fi (Intel WLAN 4965 AGN) detected all networks, and automatically connected to our network (strongest signal). Sound worked out of the box. Video was FUNCTIONAL (1680×1050) but not fully accelerated — still needed to tell it to install my video drivers. (more later)

Everything was pretty much working from the start, as it should.

Adding Packages

a

On previous versions of Ubuntu, the “Add/Remove Programs..” feature allowed you easy access to install / uninstall software apps. It was pretty user friendly and had a decent interface. I liked it.

It’s gone.

But now, it’s replaced with a much slicker more friendly-named app called “Ubuntu Software Center.”

Pictured left are, top to bottom, the main USC screen, then the list in the “Accessories” category, and then the application listing for one of the applications (Gnome-do, in this case).

Functionally, it’s almost the same. The old way involved checking and unchecking the different apps, then clicking “Apply” to make all changes as a batch. The new way is to click on “Install” on each item, causing the USC to install the app immediately in the background. It’s a slight increase in efficiency, I suppose.

One really nice feature of the new version, though, is the screen shots; You can see what the program looks like before loading it. “Community ratings” are now gone, but screenshots are a welcome replacement, I suppose.

Getting Video Acceleration Turned On

This is surprisingly easy.

I happen to know my video card is an NVidia card (a 512MB Geforce 9600M GT). If you aren’t sure, you can open up a shell and type “lspci”, without quotes. Look for “vga compatible controller”.

Anyways — I opened the USC and typed “nvidia” — one of the options was “Hardware drivers”. Install that.

Now click on “System -> Administration -> Hardware drivers” and select the recommend option (the 185 release, in my case). There’s a description that lists all the compatible devices; I double-checked to make sure mine was listed.

Reboot when finished, then PROFIT!

What’s To Come

I’ve got a bunch of other things to go over that I’ve discovered while exploring KK this morning. Including:

• Integrating GMail, GCal, and GTalk into the desktop natively
• Playing music with rhythmbox &  last.fm
• UbuntuOne cloud integration & the CouchDB
• Firefox Win: integration with Google Reader, Adobe Flash 64bit, Google Gears 64bit, Bookmark syncing with the cloud
• Using Gnome-do for Twitter (and other stuff)
• Getting DirectX fired up in Wine; gaming
• more!

Popularity: 3% [?]