Ubuntu For Free » Hardy Heron

Upgrade from Gutsy to Hardy

admin — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:50:26 +0000

I have admittedly put it off for way too long. The recent OpenSSL Vulnerability with weak keys prompted me to change that on one of my systems. I was forced to use dist-upgrade when OpenSSL would not update, leaving me to continuously recreating weak keys. While I normally update packages using the command line, I was hesitant of using the GUI for Adept Manager. My previous attempts with dist-upgrade have all been failures (From Edgy to Feisty to Gutsy…) so I was not really expecting a smoothe transition. I used the GUI Adept Manager because it was the recommended method per the Kubuntu Hardy Heron upgrade documentation. Adept immediately gave me an error and closed the first time I tried. I rebooted and tried again with the same error. I kept trying, and it finally decided it would do it…and it did it well. I rebooted and I was almost unable to tell any difference. I did notice I had the new wallpaper available, but otherwise, OpenSSL let me create new, uncompromised keys… and that was what was important to me. It was so painless, I felt brave and tried it on another server. This time, no error message, and it upgraded just as easily. I still have one workstation remaining on Gutsy, a laptop that I don’t have any pressing need to update. The slow server took about two hours to update, and the faster one took about one hour.

Updates for KDE4 Reveal Fewer Crashes and The Same Big Problems

admin — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:53:11 +0000

There’s been many updates to KDE4, and while spending another day with KDE4 yesterday, I was relieved to find many of the segfaults and KDE crash errors had been resolved. I was disappointed to not be able to find any way of saving my session for KDE4, other than it saving my previous session. I use Manually saved sessions because of convenience and consistency on all my workstations and servers. I was also still unable to lock my workstation.

Kubuntu Update Hardy Alpha 6

admin — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:56:12 +0000

It has been a month since I last wrote about Kubuntu, and there have been some promising updates. First, the update to Hardy Alpha 6 puts us one milestone closer to the first beta release. While today is supposed to be the Beta Release, I’m still awaiting for an announcement on the official home page. Currently there are two different LiveCD’s for HA6. One with KDE3.5 and another with KDE4.

Kubuntu Hardy Heron Alpha 3 is now available.

admin — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 05:17:00 +0000

While preparing some disks for my friends, I noticed that Hardy Heron Alpha 3 is available for download.

Kubuntu LTS Put On Hold for Hardy Heron

admin — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 20:07:29 +0000

There’s been a great rift with the Canonical Community as of late surrounding Kubuntu. The update from KDE 3.5 to KDE 4.0 is such a great shift that Canonical feels they’re unable to commit to Long Term Support for Kubuntu 8.04. Frankly, I don’ blame them. This is a pretty good move for them as far as any business relationships and future investors.

I don’t think it’s a problem. However, you kind of have to wonder how it affects the users who install using Ubuntu 8.04 and then add the kubuntu-desktop package, or will it be disabled?

Others have noted that there’s been a lack of reports from users with their experience regarding Hardy Heron. I noticed the torrent activity was kind of slacking. This is an excellent time for us to step up the testing on this. I suggest testing the .ISO image from a LiveCD and from some sort of virtualization application, such as VMWare or VirtualBox. If you’ve got the resources, it’s definitely appreciated for a full install and all the reports that you get from that experience.

I’ve encountered a few bugs that I’ve reported at Launchpad. Here I found other users reporting the same kind of problems I experienced. I wasn’t able to find the bug reports doing a simple search, instead it found them for me when I attempted to report the bugs, so go ahead and just attempt to report the bug you encounter. If it doesn’t find it for you, someone will catch it in triage. So, to re-iterate. If you haven’t tried it yet, go ahead and take the time. This is one of the easiest ways to contribute to the community.

Hardy Heron Alpha 2 Bugs and Fixes

admin — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 07:31:42 +0000

I tried out the new Hardy Heron Alpha 2 release of Kubuntu today and was kind of disappointed and kind of pleased. The wireless card, a broadcomm based 43xx Dell 1390 adapter still is not automatically installed properly. I didn’t bother getting it to work because I was disappointed the scroll function doesn’t work with my Touchpad on my Dell Inspiron 1520. I did however notice that it seemed my sound was fixed.

There’s obviously still plenty of work to be done on this, so we need everyone to try downloading it and report the bugs and issues that they find.

Init: Error parsing configuration no such file or directory

admin — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 20:39:54 +0000

I recently got a new Dell laptop, an Inspiron 1520. It came pre-loaded of course with Vista. I of course wanted Kubuntu on it, and that’s been an adventure.

Now… first things first. I setup the notebook using Vista and made sure that everything worked. Fortunately, everything worked… and worked perfectly.

Next, I moved into using GParted/CloneZilla from their LiveCD so that I can resize the NTFS partition. At first when I opened it, I noticed that it had a couple of partitions, including a recovery partition, the OS partition, and two others that I was uncertain of their purpose. It’s my first Dell, so I left those alone for now.

I resized the largest partition, the one used by Windows, so that I would have enough free room to support Ubuntu and all my desired files. I rebooted and attempted to let Vista load. Windows Vista noticed something had changed and spent the next 25 minutes checking integrity. It then allowed me to proceed to log in and everything again worked as expected.

I rebooted to use the GParted LiveCD again, this time with the intention of creating my desired partitions and this is where the problem began. I was unable to create any additional partitions because Dell had created all 4 partitions as Primary partitions, and that’s the limit. I opted to delete the last partition on the drive for convenience. The unallocated space was before this partition, so it just made the most since and required the least amount of data to be moved. I later found out this partition held the wonderful MediaDirect 3.0 software, that must be reinstalled prior to any OS.

I put the Hardy Heron Alpha1 disk in the tray, rebooted, and allowed it to install. I could not let it use a guided setup because I wanted /home on a separate partition. I also chose to put /etc on it’s own separate partition, and the Install program let me do it.

After rebooting, on the Ubuntu loading screen with the sliding orange progress bar, my caps lock and scroll lock lights begin to blink/flash. I rebooted and chose the Recovery mode from GRUB. This time, I see where it stops and it shows this error:

init: error parsing configuartions no such file or directory.

After searching the internet for reports of bugs with the flashing lights, I found a bunch of irrelevant stuff. Searching for the specific error message, I found the problem in a this bug report on Launchpad.

I re-installed and put /etc on the same partition as / and it now boots properly into Hardy Heron.

It seems that /etc can’t be on it’s own partition. Who knew? Not me. Not the install program. To me, it’s a bug that it wasn’t able to tell me : DO NOT install /etc on a separate partition.

Now that it boots, my next step is to get the wireless and audio working.

Hardy Heron Coming Soon

admin — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 21:18:06 +0000

With the release of Hardy Heron’s Alpha1 ISO, I thought it wise to check the release schedule as I’m trying to get a friend switched, and he’s got the Feisty disk. I did get the Kubuntu Hardy disk burned for him.

Having two computers, I’m ready to begin testing Hardy on one of them… I think… I may try it in a virtual machine. That would prompt me to setup VMWare again so that I can test it out in a virtual machine.

One of the things I’m looking forward to is the inclusion of KDE4. KDE’s my preferred desktop environment and I really only started using it with 3.5, so I’ve got high hopes.

I also hope that there’s some big advances on Dolphin. Since it’s included as the default file manager, I’m finding myself using it from time to time. It occasionally errors out and closes/disappears and I find that irritating, but I’ve found it’s interface quick and responsive. The shortcut keys for view changing save me from doing the hunt-click-hold target on the toolbar.

Also excitement-worthy is the new mega Debian Merge. I noticed that the Debian Merge is coming and bringing with it a list of new applications (that I still cannot find). Perhaps it will put an end to having to compile transkode and some others.

With April 2008 less than 6 months away, the release of Hardy’s just around the corner. I plan to try testing out the Hardy Alpha1 LiveCD over the weekend, and will report back with my findings.