A common issue many have when installing Ubuntu in Virtualbox is that the default virtual resolution is limited to a maxium of 800×600. By installing the Guest Additions that come with Virtualbox, you can easily get any screen res you want. See video for details.

THIS VIDEO IS AVAILABLE IN HD RESOLUTION. Click here to go to the YouTube page and click the “HD” link in the video player.

Note: My upgrade didn’t work but my new 8.10 Ubuntu is freshly installed. Here are the immediate things I noticed from my initial use of the OS:

Above: When I customize my appearance settings to “Subpixel smoothing (LCDs)”, “Slight” is now automatically selected and this is cool. Saves me a few clicks.

Above: You can now create a bootable USB stick of Ubuntu natively within the OS. (System, Administration, Create a USB startup disk). All OSes should have this feature, period.

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The Ubuntu 8.10 default wallpaper is the I’ve seen since “Dawn of Ubuntu”.

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The Partition Manager (GParted) is now much more graphical in the best possible way. The previous one was functional but a bit difficult to understand what it was doing. This one, however, shows everything in a clear concise manner. Very much appreciated.

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Above: Deskbar now operates much better. For those that use Launchy in Windows (which I do all the time) or Spotlight in OS X, Deskbar is now up to par with the others. Works very nicely and is buttoned up compared to what was in the 8.04 Ubuntu release.

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Above: At the top right (in the default desktop), the icon is redesigned in a way that totally makes sense. Gone is the green “running man”. A red universal power button now shows that on click is a simplified drop-down menu. You absolutely cannot mistake this for anything else (whereas with the “running man” you could). This is a good design choice.

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Several pop-up dialogs in the panel tray have been re-worded. For example, a wireless network is now labeled as a “hidden network”. For wireless routers that don’t broadcast their names, this makes sense to call it hidden.

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Above: Panels can now be “permanently” locked. Right click any panel and look for the “Allow panel to be moved” option. This is good to have so panels aren’t accidentally moved.

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I am still learning the ins and outs of the Ubuntu 8.10 OS but so far I can say yes, it’s easier to use compared to 8.04. There are lots of nice little touches here and there that make this a more enjoyable computing experience.

Note that I didn’t say enjoyable Linux experience – just computing.

Version 8.10 is good step forward in having a Linux based OS where you simply don’t have to care what the engine running it is.

Put another way: You could put someone in front of Ubuntu and that someone could use this OS without having to know nor care that it’s Linux.

As far as a desktop computing OS goes, that’s the ultimate goal. You should not have to ever think about the engine. You should be able to just turn it on and just do what you do with a computer, because said honestly you can cackle on all you want about Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux, but at the end of the day people will use whatever it takes to get the job done.

Ubuntu 8.10 definitely gets the job done.

If you tried 8.04 and were a bit turned off by the rough edges, many of those edges have been smoothed out with 8.10.

The upgrade did not go so well. Actually, that’s an understatement. It went horribly, horribly wrong.

Here’s how everything went down:

Per the instructions on the Ubuntu web site, I followed the upgrade notes for a network installation to the letter.

During the upgrade process, it timed out at least a dozen times. This is totally understandable since it was the first day of release and the servers were getting hammered like crazy, so I just dealt with it and reinitialized the update manager whenever it timed out. No big deal. The manager simply picked up where it left off and didn’t re-download everything each time (nice perk).

Being that it was going to take a really long time for all this stuff to complete, I just let the computer sit and retrieve the files it needed to apply them once the time-outs stopped. Then I went to bed.

When I woke up this morning I go to take a look and there was an error. The network applet had some type of issue and said it "could not continue" and ended with an OK button. However, the update did complete. Again, no big deal.

The cleanup process started and finished without issue.

Ubuntu then prompted to reboot. All righty then, let’s go. I click the button to restart.

Here’s what happened on restart:

The system starts. First it states that 8.04 is still there on my dual-boot setup.

"Wha..?"

Um.. okay. That shouldn’t be there – and there’s no 8.10 choices. I figured maybe it just didn’t rewrite the menu.lst file? I have no idea.

I go to boot. Splash screen comes up, finishes, and…

No GUI.

It tries, the screen blinks a few times (that’s the GUI trying to load) and then…

Nothing. Black screen. No prompt.

I ctrl-alt-del, the OS stops the services and reboots properly. I choose to go into "recovery mode" to see if I can manually get the GUI started from the prompt.

I get to a prompt, manually try to start the GUI, and…

Nothing. Blink, blink, blink… prompt.

This is not good.

The GUI absolutely would not start no matter what I did. It wouldn’t even default to a "safe" mode (where the graphics suck but at least it starts so you can fix it later).

It didn’t matter if I deleted my conf file for X because and did startx from a prompt because X simply decided "I’m not working. Sorry. You lose."

My Ubuntu install is now unusable. X wasn’t playing nice and nothing I did would get it to start.

And for you Linux zealots that say "RECONFIG FROM THE PROMPT!" This is supposed to be an easy network upgrade. I have no time to be messing around at a prompt for something that should have been 100% automatic with no screw-ups.

In short, my Ubuntu was FUBAR.

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At this point I still want to get 8.10 on the system, so I boot into a "Live" mode to see what I can do. I can’t do a full guided install because XP Pro is still on the other partition.

So into the Partition Manger I go (GParted).

From there I just delete the Ubuntu partition stuff, make a new ext3 with the free space left and that did the trick. Wrote the partition, started the install and the guided portion of the installation liked that just fine and resized everything appropriately.

At that point I installed 8.10. Went thru without a hitch.

On reboot, now it looks proper. I see my 8.10 choices and the XP Pro choice on first boot.

I boot into Ubuntu and it’s fine. No problems at all. Booted right up. No fuss, no muss.

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This was the first (and most likely last) time I will ever attempt to upgrade an OS solely by means of internet if I have the choice. It just didn’t work after it was done. Everything transferred over but somewhere along the line some scripts didn’t finish, or maybe some files got corrupt during transfer.

I have no idea what happened – and to be honest I don’t care. All I know is that I followed the instructions exactly, and it failed miserably.

The next time I upgrade Ubuntu I’m absolutely not doing a network install. I was able to wipe out my existing 8.04 install for 8.10 because it was less than a week old so I didn’t lose anything.

But if this were a primary install with lots of data on it, yeah I would have been able to retrieve from a live mode and backup appropriately, but said honestly I would have been 100% ticked off.

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Even with this bad experience of upgrading, I’m still using Ubuntu anyway. I wanted to see if I could actually upgrade an entire OS with internet and internet alone. Well.. that didn’t work – but that’s okay. It was cool to try.

You live and learn I guess. My lesson learned is that it is better to upgrade an operating system using physical media.

IMPORTANT NOTE: My experience is (probably) going to be extremely isolated. I can pretty much guarantee that almost nobody else is going to have the problems I did. Do not take this article as a reason not to attempt an upgrade or not to use Ubuntu.

However I would recommend not doing it the internet way. Using the Alternative CD/DVD method is the way to go.

At the present time I’m trying to upgrade my Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10 but the servers holding the files are getting slammed right now (first day of release – it’s expected).

You can upgrade your Ubuntu 100% from the internet just by clicking a few options and letting the update manager do its thing. See video below for details – it’s super-easy (but takes forever at present because everybody is trying to download it right now). Continued

An anonymous reader on Slashdot wrote that based on exhaustive benchmark testing, the upcoming v8.10 of Ubuntu Linux is noticeably slower in some areas compared to previous releases (namely v7.04).

"Linux" and "Slower" never fall within the same sentence, but they do now.

To calm the masses out there, no, Ubuntu 8.10 will not be a crawling nightmare of computer slowness. Not by a long shot. It’s still going to be quite speedy in its operation overall, not to worry.

But it has been proven to be slower to its predecessors and therein lies the concern.

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Reading the article about the benchmark testing just goes to prove that the other shoe has finally dropped, so to speak.

Windows Vista is slower compared to XP. Mac OS X Leopard wasn’t exactly stellar in its performance over Tiger. And now the arguably most popular Linux distribution Ubuntu is showing early on that slowness with new releases can’t even escape the mighty Linux.

Linux zealots would scream loudly that "UBUNTU ISN’T THE ONLY DISTRO, YA KNOW.." Yes, I know this. There are 300+ distros in existence presently – but Ubuntu is the one people pay attention to the most. So go back to your Slackware – I already know that’s fast.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel to all this.

Newer releases of operating systems – no matter whom it comes from – will be lighter in the future. All OSes at this stage in the game are at their fattest and that’s simply not where computing is going.

It’s probably safe to say that Linux and Microsoft will be cutting the fat first, followed shortly afterwards by Apple.

On the Microsoft side it’s already been reported with Windows 7 that it will not be bundled with specific apps to trim it down to get to what matters (and be able to release it quicker).

Linux already has super-light distros. As a matter of fact you can go super-light with Fluxbuntu. (I’ve used fluxbox before and yeah, it’s tough to find a GUI faster than that.)

However, it would be nice if a very well known distro like Ubuntu had an official (as in from Canonical) Desktop Edition release like "Desktop Ubuntu Light" or something similar. I’m referring to an ISO people could download that has basically only the bare essentials without having to download an alternative distro or "build" it yourself, so to speak. And I’m referring to a true light Desktop Edition, not a Server Edition pretending to be Desktop.

People in the Linux know understand this wouldn’t be difficult to create or distribute at all because you’re just cutting the fat out of the distro.

Apple is also getting into the game of going lighter. Their own OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard page states "Taking a break from adding new features" and "Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X" which strongly indicates the OS doesn’t need anything new, rather it needs to cut the fat out and optimize rather than stuff it up with stuff nobody will use.

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We’re going lighter, people. All the desktop OS offerings are heading that direction. It won’t happen this year but it may in late 2009 or early 2010.

We will go back to operating systems (no matter which you choose to use) that prioritize speed and efficiency first for a better computing experience.

Thankfully, the three major OS offerings will all be doing this. Even though they’re all too fattened up at the moment, sit tight because better stuff will be coming along.

Until then we’ll have to plod thru the slowness..

..even if you use Ubuntu.

In a few days Ubuntu 8.10 will be released. For those following Ubuntu news, you already knew about this. But for those that weren’t, now you know.

Some are wondering what some of the new/improved/updated features in 8.10 will be compared to 8.04.

Here’s a short list (not a full list – just some of the newer features I noticed personally): Continued