Ubuntu 9.10: First Impressions

16 Years Ago khess 7 921 Views

Ubuntu has redeemed itself with its latest version 9.10 (Karmic Koala). I took a look at Ubuntu 9.10 on October 1st and have been playing around with it for a few days. My first impression is that it is good stuff--seriously good stuff. From the new, updated installer to the faster boot times, I'm impressed. Way to go Ubuntu developers, you deserve applause for this one.

I didn't think that Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) was all that great. There weren't enough improvements over 8.10 to justify a whole new distribution or wasting a cute name on it.

Karmic Koala's installer is the best I've ever seen on any Linux distribution. It's fast, nice to look at and, most important of all, it's easy for people who might be new to Linux. Click through a few screens; enter your name, login name, password and computer name--and away you go toward having a new Ubuntu system. The more difficult part for most users will be the download, burning of the ISO image to a CD and changing their BIOS to boot from the CD/DVD drive.

Boot times are also much improved. This isn't necessarily limited to just Ubuntu as several Linux distribution developers have been working toward shortening your wait time in the boot department.

Once inside GNOME, you recognize all the familiar desktop items. Nothing new going on here although you might notice a few cosmetic changes with your startup screen and desktop background. I'd have to say though, that the improvements made are well worth the wait from older versions.

If you've been waiting to jump in to Ubuntu, Karmic Koala is the place to do it. And if you have an older versions, this is the one to upgrade to. Wait for the production-level release to come out later this month because right now the 9.10 distro is still in beta.

One word sums up this Karmic Koala Ubuntu incarnation: Super.

Have you tried Karmic Koala yet? Write back and tell me your first impressions.

Dani AI

Generated 10 Months Ago

Quick, practical follow‑up for anyone testing or upgrading to Karmic (notes drawn from , , and others): a few regressions showed up in early builds but there are simple workarounds for the common pain points (login screen/auth prompts, graphics drivers, Empathy/battery quirks). Below are focused fixes you can apply without reformatting.

GDM / PolicyKit (login‑screen unlocks, “remember” missing)

GDM’s settings dialog uses PolicyKit for auth; running gdmsetup with plain sudo can fail (it’s not designed to use sudo). See the reported GDM auth issue for details. (bugs.launchpad.net)
If PolicyKit prompts won’t “remember” an authorization, create a local .pkla entry so your user gets a remembered authorization (or session‑long keep). Example (adjust Identity and Action to match the action you find with pkaction/by inspecting /usr/share/polkit-1/actions):
```
[Allow user to change power settings]
Identity=unix-user:yourusername
Action=org.freedesktop.devicekit.power.*;org.freedesktop.upower.*
ResultActive=auth_admin_keep
```
Save as /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/10-allow-power.pkla. See the polkit local authority docs for the format and options. (freedesktop.org)

Graphics (ATI/Nvidia) and wireless

Use the “Additional Drivers” (Jockey) manager first — it installs tested binary drivers for your hardware. If you try third‑party tools (Envy/EnvyNG) be prepared to uninstall before switching methods. (help.ubuntu.com)
If a proprietary ATI (fglrx) install breaks X, purge it and restore the open stack with these commands, then reboot:
```
sudo apt-get remove --purge xorg-driver-fglrx fglrx*
sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-core
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
sudo reboot
```
See the Ubuntu X troubleshooting notes for the full procedure and caveats. (wiki.ubuntu.com)
Broadcom wireless often needs the STA package (bcmwl-kernel-source) or the b43 firmware; use the Additional Drivers tool or the BinaryDriverHowto for step details. (help.ubuntu.com)

Empathy crashes, battery time estimates, and filing bugs

Empathy had several crash reports in Karmic; updating packages or switching to Pidgin is a reliable fallback while upstream fixes land. If Empathy crashes, collect a crash report with ubuntu-bug empathy so maintainers get logs. (bugs.launchpad.net)
Battery “hours/minutes” is an estimate (GNOME/UPower learns over time); wildly incorrect values were tracked as bugs — if you see nonsense values, let the system run on battery for a while and file a bug if it never stabilizes. (help.gnome.org)

Quick checklist before upgrading: full backup of /home and configs; test the live CD/VM on your hardware; check Additional Drivers immediately after install; install updates before adding third‑party drivers; file a Launchpad/ubuntu-bug for reproducible problems.

Member #421368

16 Years Ago

Nice. Short and snappy. I can see that I need to buy this! (Hahaaa)

jbennet 1,618 Most Valuable Poster

16 Years Ago

Got to agree that the coming from 9.04, the installer and startup times were excellent, as was driver support.

However, a few niggles;

The power manager no longer tells me in hours and minutes how much battery i have.

They have butchered the GDM configuration screen. Its hard to change the login screen options now.

They have butchered the policykit aurthaurisations manager too. There is no button anymore to remember aurthaurisations, meaning i must enter my password every time i want to manually scale the CPU power on my laptop.

Also, im not a huge fan on the new theme. And empathy crashes CONSTANTLY.

But all in all i like it (mostly because it fixed 99% of the hardware bugs i had before)

Member #421368

16 Years Ago

jbennet: You should file bugs about the stuff you find annoying if you haven't already. Hopefully they'd be fixed by the time it's out.

peter_budo 2,532 Code tags enforcer

16 Years Ago

Finally something positive Ken, I was seriously tired of most topics unix vs windows, best unix gadget etc.

Did they improved support of graphic cards? Are wireless cards easier recognised or installed?

khess 95 Practically a Master Poster

16 Years Ago

It's still beta so there are some bugs. One I found is that if you install it in a VM, don't use a SCSI disk, use IDE for the VM's hard disk choice. It crashes and hangs if you don't. So far, I've had no issues. I forgot to mention too that ext4 is default filesystem on 9.10.

jbennet 1,618 Most Valuable Poster

16 Years Ago

Are wireless cards easier recognised or installed

My realtek and Intel (3945 abg laptop chipset) worked out of the box

Edited 16 Years Ago by jbennet because: n/a

joker40 0 Newbie Poster

16 Years Ago

thanks for the information .. and i m waiting for full version to download

jbennet 1,618 Most Valuable Poster

16 Years Ago

Will be released sometime around the end of the month

peter_budo 2,532 Code tags enforcer

16 Years Ago

My realtek and Intel (3945 abg laptop chipset) worked out of the box

Good to know that. I'm not gone mess up now my box as I'm looking for replacement soon, plus it would just get me another headache to get my currently open projects to different platform. However once new "baby" arrive it will be converted ;)

tonyt3 0 Newbie Poster

16 Years Ago

If you already have Ubuntu on your machine, you don't have to download the iso; you can simply click on " Upgrade " and go eat lunch. Everything on the desktop was still there on the reboot. very kool.
t

Crash~Override 0 Junior Poster

16 Years Ago

Agreed! I started using linux couple months back and after trying and trying different linux distributions I can concur that ubuntu karmic release is truly one of the most good amazing linux release! I would give 9/10 on the Graphics, and ease of use to ubuntu when compared with other linux distributions.

However no a side note, I think ATI and ubuntu both need to work together to provide better graphics driver...cuz i i absolutely hate the graphics for ati radeon hd3650 on ubuntu...it lags when i play any video

peter_budo 2,532 Code tags enforcer

16 Years Ago

Interesting, I have ATI 4650 and I do not see any issues with it. Did you had anything particular on mind Crash~Override?

Crash~Override 0 Junior Poster

16 Years Ago

well i actually installed the graphics card driver again this time using envy... or something and it seems to be working better but still not as good as on windows....

like when i am watching a video and than i minimize and maximize some other window say firefox than there is a bit pause in the video...also when i minimize the video for like say 3-5 seconds and than maximize it, the video screen goes blank its really buggy for some unknown reason

khakilang -3 Posting Pro in Training

16 Years Ago

I was impress when i first install 8.10 early this year than to 9.04 and now 9.10. It just like a over year compare to 8.10 and the improvement is awesome.

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