A simple matter of…

Well I’ve taken the plunge and started to run Ubuntu on my laptop instead of Debian. My Desktop machine still runs Debian though.

The reason I’ve done this is because I’d like to support members of HantsLUG better – it’s all very well being able to hack the text files apart, but end users generally prefer “click on this”

Overall I’m pretty impressed, but then you’d expect that! So let’s go through the problems:
* Broadcom 4300 wireless driver didn’t set essid properly (it only had the first letter)
** this is driver bug IIRC – a kernel upgrade will fix it
** actually, 2.6.20 didn’t fix it – but running “iwconfig eth1 essid ….” would set it correctly
** ah, needed to put firmware in place (aptitude install bcm43xx-fwcutter)
*** would be nice if this was done automatically as part of restricted drivers
* LVM install broke badlly since the machine already had LVM on it
** had to fix by running lvcreate on the command line and waiting 3mins per LV (#105623)
* the drum rattle when gdm is a bit sudden – it made me jump
** turn off via system->administration->login window->accessibility
* font on the gdm login wasn’t right – it was chopping off the bottom few pixels (1440×1050 screen)
* the 30 second music when you login – please just bin it (sorry Pete!)
** I _know_ I’m logged in – I just typed in my password
** It’s incredibly embarassing if you are on the train or whatever
** It’s never been smart or clever, just irritating to everyone else
** system->preferences->sound
* update manager failed
** “Could not download all repository indexes” (fair enough – I had a routing issue)
** “Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock” .. (should not have been displayed IMO, presumably this arose since the update failed since I’d typed my password in correctly)
* retrying after fixing this, I received warnings that the files could not be authenticated
** apt-key list showed Ubuntu Archive Automatic Signing Key, Ubuntu CD Image Automatic Signing Key
* another retry and now it showed 63 items to update, not 12 (hmm, maybe the 2nd update only partial suceeded)
** no warnings about keys this time
* upgrade was finally okay
* and remove the shutdown music (again, I know, I clicked the button)

Beryl has gone on (had to drop colour depth to 16 which makes things look a bit naff, buy hey). Now to restore all my old files…