Another week gone bye-bye, another Week in Review. Ubuntu 9.10 was the star of the week of course, but we also talked about language, the HTC Hero, and wall warts. Yes we did.
Apple, Psystar: Purism & Confidence – A couple of years ago, a professor at my university had a very interesting thought exchange with the class I was in. We were a small group, and I knew most of them, they were my friends. Anyway, we had a talk about language purism – not an unimportant subject if you study English in The Netherlands.
Microsoft To Open up Outlook .pst Format – Anyone who has ever dealt with Microsoft Outlook will know the .pst file format – it’s the binary, undocumented file in which all data from Outlook is stored – emails, contacts, calendar, you name it, it’s in there. Microsoft has announced that it will release detailed technical documentation on the Outlook .pst data format.
We Hate the Wall Wart – The “wall wart” is one of humanity’s worst inventions (not counting all of the inventions that are actually intended to kill and maim each other, I’ll admit). AC-plug power supplies are a cheap workaround to various engineering, economic, and regulatory problems that manufacturers face, and they solve those problems by pushing them off onto end users. So what can we do about it? OSNews takes a look at an ingenious workaround to the Wall Wart problem, and some hopeful trends that might make them a thing of the past.
How Computers Are Changing Language – In the comments on our editorial about language purism and the Psystar case, it became quite clear that language is a subject almost everyone has an opinion on – not odd if you consider that language is at the very centre of what makes us “human”. Since this appears to be a popular subject, let’s talk about the influence computing has had on two very minor aspects of the Dutch language.
Qt4 Ported to Haiku, Developer Preview Release Available – The Haiku alpha is barely out the door, and we already have another important news item about the open source reimplementation of the BeOS. About 18 months ago, Evgeny Abdraimov started porting the Qt4 graphical toolkit to Haiku, and now, we ave some seriously epic screenshots showing a multitude of Qt4 applications running in Haiku, as well as a developer preview release.
Rebel EFI Allegedly Contains OSS Code Covered Under APSL – When Psystar announced it Rebel EFI package, the company was quickly accused of simply taking open source code, repackaging it, and selling it for USD 50. While selling open source code is not a problem, not making the source code available if the license demands it is. Netkas, famous OSX86 hacker, and a Russian site are now claiming they have found the smoking gun.
Ubuntu 9.10 Released – We’re a little late, but Real Life got in the way, so here we finally are. Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, announced today that Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop Edition has been released. This version focusses on improvements in cloud computing on the server using Eucalyptus, further improvements in boot speed, as well as development on Netbook Remix. The related KDE, Xfce, and other variants have been released as well. Update by ELQ: Just a quick note to say that one of my Creative Commons videos was selected to be part of Ubuntu’s Free Culture Showcase package that comes by default with the new Ubuntu version!
Microsoft’s Signature Initiative: Crapware-Free Computers – We all know that Microsoft doesn’t actually make computers. It makes the software, and then lets an almost infinite amount of manufacturers build computers that can run its software. These manufacturers often make a mess of things, delivering computers filled to the brim with crapware. What would happen if Microsoft made computers? Well, for one, they would be void of crapware. Two, they would help users install the software they want before leaving the store – including software from competitors.
Hewlett Packard Superdome Demo Day – I had the pleasure earlier this month of attending a demo day at HP’s Cupertino campus to commemorate the ten year anniversary of the Superdome server, see what’s new in the high-end server market and learn about what’s going on with HP-UX.
Review: HTC Hero – PureMobile sent us in the GSM version of the HTC Hero, one of the most popular Android-based smartphones out there. There are already a number of in-depth reviews about this phone out there (here’s one), but here’s my own take on what I liked, and what I disliked.
I made the mistake of deciding to do a distro upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10. DON’T try that. It might work, or it might fail horribly and leave you with a barely usable installation like it did me
I’m beginning to think I’ll wait until 9.10.2. Wasn’t there such a thing with 9.04? Besides, I’m having enough fun trying to get Snow Leopard to work properly for me.
Contrary to popular belief, upgrades from one version of Ubuntu to the next rarely if ever work correctly. I think because it could theoretically work for a select few people, the devs like to tout the process as foolproof for everybody. Hardly! Many people utilize PPA repositories or install software from source which could present problems when upgrading. I learned that lesson the hard way quite awhile ago and always do a fresh install.
I think rolling release distros are a better way to keep your system up to date without having to switch to a different repository every six month. Not newbie proof, of course.
I keep a separate /home partition. That means I can reformat / and install a new Linux OS (it doesn’t even have to be the same distribution as before) and just carry on from there. If the new OS doesn’t suit … I can just revert to the original, or indeed try another distribution.
It typically takes only about 30 miuntes to swap the distribution in the / partition like this. If you don’t want even that disruption, why not just stick with what you already have in the first place?
PS: My upgrade to Kubuntu 9.10 has gone flawlessly on each of four different machines to date.
Edited 2009-11-02 01:53 UTC
Seems a lot of trouble just to get a newer version. Pretty much Windowesque.
Keeping a separate /home partition is pretty good practice regardless, as it makes it easier to recover things if you accidentally blow up your linux. That, and keeping a regular backup of /etc
Also, installing Ubuntu is easy enough that upgrading and installing the new version from scratch are pretty much on par with each other. I’m going to have to reinstall this time, because my / partition is too full for an upgrade, and I fancy a bit of a spring clean (in winter) anyway.
According to the “How did your upgrade/installation go?” poll in the Ubuntu forums, fresh installations and upgrades aren’t that dissimilar.
I’ve had good luck, I suppose, even with some software added outside Synaptic, from 7.04 to 9.04. They seemed to get worse as time progressed. Of course, the Broadcom wireless drivers always seem to be a problem.
I’d second that. I’ve never succeeded in upgrading Ubuntu; something always goes wrong, and it’s something different each time. I must always do a clean install.
However, I’ve never had problems upgrading with rolling release distros (i.e. Arch Linux).
Really. That must be why I have distro upgraded my laptop since Intrepid and it is still working fine. I’m also using PPA’s without any problems when upgrading.
I cant recall when and where it has been touted as “foolproof for everybody”.
I don’t think any upgrade is fool proof for everyone. No matter what os, no matter what software, there’s just no way to take into account every possible configuration change one might have made. I’ve had Ubuntu upgrades work perfectly, and I’ve had them royally screw up. I’ve had the same experiences with Arch, Gentoo, Debian, OpenBSD, OS X, and certainly Windows just to name a few. Os upgrading will never be a completely smooth experience, there’s just too much that can’t be tested.
Worked fine for me. Used the alternate CD image (downloaded via BitTorrent, then mounted the ISO) instead of directly using the update manager for the upgrade.
I upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10. The only issue I had was that audio didn’t work. I had to uninstall pulse audio and uncheck the digital channel in kmixer and reboot. So far, everything seems to work. However, the sound is set at max and the volume control doesn’t seem to work in kmix.
I installed ubuntu 9.10 the first everything went ok.
I then had to shut down the pc when i turn the pc back
i get white ubuntu logo then the monitor screen turns
black an wont goto login page.
im on dell gx 260 intel onboard video
I hope this issue gets fixed
I drove myself crazy asking for help on irc chat
In my opinion its a ok release bug it has issues
There’s your problem. Ubuntu failed to properly test their high-profile release on what is probably the most common graphics chipset vendor (no numbers to back it up).
This could hurt ubuntu if they get the problem fixed.
Im not good at commandline.
someone said edit boot in kernel
vga = 720
Im totally lost when it come to that
There is a file /etc/default/grub . You need to be root to edit it, but it contains the default parameters to be passed to the kernel on boot.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1195275&highlight=customiz…
The line that you apparently want to edit is this one:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash”
Change it to read as follows:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash vga=720″
To do this, from your initial “black screen”, hit Alt-F1 to get to a vga command prompt. Log in. Then type:
sudo nano etc/default/grub
Change the line indicated above as shown. Hit Ctrl-X then Y to save the file.
Then type the following to update grub:
sudo update-grub
Once that is done, reboot (Ctrl-alt-del).