Migrating my Dell laptop to Ubuntu 9.10 64bit

I have used 64bit Fedora before on a works workstation, but I haven't until now decide to move any of my personal workstations to a 64 bit operating system. Well , as always with these decisions, there have been a couple of events that make this move now easier, though I fully suspect I will hit the odd road bump on the way.

The three main announcements that have changed my mind are - Adobe have a 64bit version of the flash player available , and both Firefox and Chromium/Chrome are available in 64bit versions. I know there are some applications like Adobe Air that are stubbornly remaining 32bit for now, but you can work around this with 32bit libraries. This is not ideal, but I can live with it for now.

I have this morning burnt the beta to a USB pen drive to test the Dell XPS 1330, and all went well, with the wireless connecting instantly and I was browsing the web within seconds of the OS booting. I downloaded the 64bit version of the flash player and it worked with both Chromium and Firefox. The one thing I noticed was how rapid the system worked, considering it was working in Live mode from a USB pen drive. This could be a combination of the new version of Ubuntu and the native 64bit applications, but time will tell on that one.

I now have to back up all the "stuff" I have managed to collect in /home over the last couple of years , and then I will blow away the currently install OS and give Ubuntu 64bit the harddisk, and unless I hit any really major problems, I 'm going to stick with this as it really does seem silly to be running a 32bit OS on the latest 64bit hardware.

I will post again shortly after the upgrade and on any issues I hit on the road.

Ubuntu 9.04 on my Dell XPS 1330 - A fine combination

I have been installing this version of Ubuntu from the early Alpha releases to help with testing on all the various machines that I use on a daily basis, including several virtual servers. I think some of the biggest changes in this release are on the server version, but I'm talking about the desktop release in this post.

My Asus Eeepc 1000 really likes this version, and I have been running that from an SD card for over a week now without any issues, so I thought it about time to upgrade my other laptop.

I decided to upgrade my Dell on the way into work the other morning, and the install was completely painless and without a single hitch. That in itself was interesting, I selected the "update-manager -d" approach , and once all the files were download onto the laptop, I just closed the lid and put it in my rucksack and headed to work. When I arrived in the office, I just opened the lid, and clicked on the question waiting for me. It then finished in a couple of minutes, very impressive and flexible.


As with many other versions of Ubuntu, it is evolution rather than revolution, and all the changes are welcome, and just work well together.

A new version of Open Office, that is faster to load and run, a new file system, Ext4, if you want to be really cutting edge with your performance. The new notification system is slick and looks impressive.and the Gnome team have added several nice new features to this version, look here for detailed release notes on that Gnome 2.26 release notes

The new kernel offers many improvements, especially with WiFi and inclusion of a testing version of btrfs file system, for those really adventurous. This new file system is the open source's response to Sun's ZFS, so it is worth keeping an eye on developments, and it is under heavy development.

The start up and shut down speed of the latest release is impressive on this laptop, and the suspend works perfectly. These are key features for a laptop operating system, so they are gratefully received.

I'm currently testing Firefox beta 3.1 r3 on this install, and that also runs without any hitch or issue, and I have just installed the latest version of VMware workstation 6.52, that supports Ubuntu 9.04 as a guest.

I was expecting the some issues, but I can report that putting this latest release, even in this beta form is so simple and straight forward, I would recommend the upgrade.

This is a fine release, and it works perfectly on this laptop, so I would get ready with either your CD burning software or your favourite upgrade tool for the 26th April, as you will want to get this installed as soon as it is released.