#Ubuntu 10.10 Upgrade Experience

Maybe someone will benefit from it :). I'm not a linux power user; in fact I barely have a grasp of the basics. After a couple of years using maemo I have learned a few things but it will take a lot of learning because I achieve even the title of Beginner - lol.

First, I've been running 10.4 (Lucid Lynx) on my Acer Netbook AOD250-1584 since last spring and have, over the summer, grown to love it more and more as I've learned to detest Windows more and more. There is only one thing that I can't do on linux that I need Windows for, and that is connect to the internet using the USB stick when we're out somewhere. And Pete reports that Netflix doesn't support linux for watching movies, although he can check the account and order movies and such - just can't watch the ones online. (I haven't had such issues with fancast or hulu that I can recall.)

So when Ubuntu 10.10 was due out, I was looking forward to it with great anticipation. There weren't that many changes over 10.4 really (and 10.4 is the LTS - long term support - version), but still. it was just the idea of the shiny new toy, you know?

So last weekend I did all of my updates as instructed, then checked for new updates and got the message that 10.10 was ready, so I clicked on it to update. It started out with a bang, I was so excited...but then there were hang-ups, and one thing after another...after 3 hours I shut down in the "middle" of the upgrade and went to bed.

Of course I ended up losing much of my email for the last week or 2 that I hadn't backed up yet, but that wasn't too major since I don't use email as heavily as I always have...actually I hardly use it at all anymore. So not a biggie.

On Monday I installed from scratch after having to use Windows for my job all day, which only served to remind me of why I hated it so much. Everything takes 20 times as long, there are crashes when you least expect them, the screen keeps locking up, multimedia files are laggy...just a train wreck. So I was happy to get it installed, nice and fresh. (And the good thing about Ubuntu is that it installs into a single folder, no tentacles such as Windows has into every crack and crevice and dark corner of the computer; so I copied the important files onto my external drive and just deleted the folder before installing from scratch.)

Worked a charm! Like the difference between driving down a dirt road in a Chevette or gliding down an open highway in a Mercedes. Ubuntu glides.

Tuesday however I discovered sound issues with Skype, which I use frequently every day. Not good. Started doing some research, starting with the Skype site. What it told me to do I didn't understand all that well, and as the week went on I was busy and didn't mess with it again until Friday. Then I found a forum that suggested not using the newest version of Skype (2.1.0.8something), and going back to the previous one (2.1.0.47). Did that, made a few tweaks, and Bob's your uncle. (I'm noticing on the forums that a lot of people are having sound issues of some sort with 10.10, so at least I'm not alone.)

So now things are running smoothly, and all told it was pretty easy. And while there aren't a whole lot of earth-shattering changes (I love the new default font though) I'm happy with it.

Windows? You can have it. I like booting up in less than 30 seconds (rather than 8 minutes), firefox popping open in 5 seconds (instead of 4 minutes), the system shutting down in 7 seconds (as opposed to nearly 2 minutes), smooth rendering of YouTubes and other multimedia files, reliability, the utter lack of crashes in the software, and huge array of available programs - mostly free - that handle every one of my computing tasks...yeah, you can keep your Windows :).