Under a Gibbous Moon

I have used Linux, in various distributions (Mandrake, Lindos, Red Hat, DSL, SuSe, Ubuntu), over the years and one thing has remained the same. Windows might have DLL hell but Linux has dependency hell.

Dependency hell? This occurs when you need to make sure that you have all the possible libraries needed to run (or just compile) a particular program. Of course, those dependencies require their own dependencies which in turn have their own dependencies until it spirals completely out of control and you end up with something that looks like the organizational chart for a multinational conglomerate. (continue reading…)

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Ok, yes that was terrible.

I have recently updated to the beta version of Ubuntu 9.10, also known as Karmic Koala. Overall, I have been very happy with the latest upgrade. I can’t say that it boots up any faster, but there is a definite improvement in speed. On an even better note, this is the first version of Ubuntu that the sleep function actually… functions. Oddly the hibernate does not, but I have filed a bug report so maybe it will be fixed by Lucid Lynx ;)

The update from Jaunty Jackalope went mostly smoothly; oddly enough restart Firefox twice to get my settings to show up. Handbrake is broken for some reason, seems to be some error with GTK.

The wifi drive actually stable now and does not shut down randomly when running a lot of data through it. The volume settings are much simplified and actually work properly with my laptops hot keys. One really nice thing is the integration with Empathy into the GUI. Makes having an IM program much less intrusive.

The biggest disappoint I had was Ubuntu’s much vaunted leap to the cloud with Ubuntu One. In theory, it works seamlessly with Karmic Koala. After signing up for an account (2GB is free) and registering your computer; any files placed in a folder called Ubuntu One in the home directory will then be synchronized with the cloud. For me though, it did not work, the sync program claims all the files have been synched and the folders that I have placed in the Ubuntu One folder are there, but none of the actually files have been uploaded.

The newest version of Ubuntu is definitely a step forward for Canonical. With the 29 October release of the Karmic Koala hopefully some of the bugs mentioned about will have been worked out. Ubuntu One would be nice if it works but since it is a feature I didn’t have before, I can’t say that I am missing it now.

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