5:40 pm -- started the upgrade to Kubuntu 9.04. Started Adept, clicked Fetch Updates, waited a minute or two, clicked the Version Upgrade button, followed the instructions.
5:43 pm -- got this message: "This computer is currently using the AMD 'fglrx' graphics driver. No version of this driver is available that works with your hardware in Ubuntu 9.04. Do you want to continue?" Well, crap. I wonder if the open driver will work. It has been less than adequate in the past. Guess I'll give it a shot.
5:45 pm -- "Some third party sources were disabled." I'll have to remember to enable them again later. Good thing I'm writing a blog entry about this upgrade. Waiting for fetching of "new software channels".
5:49 pm -- "Do you want to start the upgrade?" I tried to copy the details, but the control wouldn't let me. I checked, it says nothing about removing Acroread nor xscreensaver. I checked these because these are two apps that previous upgrades have silently removed without asking. 1852 MB of files to download, estimated 3 hours 32 minutes.
6:00 pm -- 21 hours remaining...
6:30 pm -- 4%, 6 hours remaining...
7:18 pm -- 6%, 1 day, 17 hours remaining... I just love these time estimates!
7:38 pm -- 8%, 4 hours remaining...
...
I went to bed since it was still downloading at 11 pm. This morning, my laptop was toast. The screensaver kept telling me that I had a bad password, without ever having a chance to enter the password. Nothing to do but cycle the off button. No joy. I tried the rescue option, and tried to fix the packages, but X wouldn't work, networking wouldn't work, nothing worked.
So I downloaded the install CD on my wife's computer, burned a disk, and installed. Pretty slick! Instead of trying to do an upgrade, I wiped my Windows partition and did a clean install there.
The first thing I noticed was the network manager doesn't work. Well, it comes on, it gives you the impression you are entering settings for the network, but there is no way to actually make the connections start. I ended up doing all the network configuration by hand with the configuration files. As usual, I had to install the proprietary driver for my wireless card to get it to work.
Adjustments and installs:
1. Installed Firefox 3 and Thunderbird. I kept my old home directory, so the settings transfered with no problem. Installed Flash.
2. Installed Java 5 and 6 so all my Java apps run fine.
3. Installed Zenburn theme in Konsole. I can't find a Zenburn color scheme for KDE 4, so I used Wonton Soup.
4. Installed OpenOffice and AbiWord.
Tips:
1. KDE 4 has a new app launcher called Kickoff. You can toggle between the classic menu style and the new style by right-clicking on the "K" and choose from the popup menu.
2. You can resize the panel by right clicking on it, choosing Panel Options, Panel Settings, the grab the "Height" and drag to the height you want.
3. You can put the panel on the side by doing the same thing as "Height" but drag "Screen Edge".
4. You can add quick launch buttons to the panel from the Kickoff app launcher. Just right click on the app in Kickoff and choose "add to panel".
5. I added a second panel on the left edge of the screen to hold icons for those apps that I use all the time. Right click on the desktop and choose Add Panel. Move the panel to the left edge, adjust the width, choose More Settings, choose Maximize. It took me a little while to figure out how to add app icons to the panel -- right click on the app launcher (the K in the lower left corner), choose Menu Editor, then drag and drop from the menu editor to the panel.
