Ubuntu Lucid checkup — my now-healthy desktop

Having successfully bricked not one but two Linux/Unix installations in the same month (Debian Lenny-to-Squeeze and FreeBSD 7.3-release), I jumped on the Ubuntu Lucid bandwagon early — starting with one of the alpha releases.

I don't normally do this kind of thing and recommend that current or prospective Ubuntu users wait a month or even two after a given release before installing or upgrading.

But I had an empty laptop, needed an OS and figured that Ubuntu Lucid (10.04) was a long-term-support release and might not cause me too much pain.

Well, over the course of the waning days of the alpha (I tested the alpha image in the live environment but installed from a beta), through the beta and now weeks into the release, I've had a few issues to deal with, needing to tweak grub2, Ubuntu One, Gwibber, Totem and various GNOME settings.

But things have settled in a bit, and I'm productive and generally enjoying using the distribution and all that comes with it.

There have been more than a few bug-fixes since the release date, and most have directly benefited me, so I thank the Ubuntu developers for all of those patches.

I originally committed myself to a month in Ubuntu Lucid, but I can see staying here longer. It looks good (especially with the Radiance theme that I'm using to replace the darker Ambiance default), runs well and at this point isn't throwing any bugs or breakage at me that I can't handle.

Of all the problems I've faced, the Totem fixes have been the most welcome. I couldn't run the player at all in FreeBSD, even though it was perfect in Debian Lenny.

Both my "blank screen" and YouTube plugin problems have been solved in recent updates.

Xorg has been running well. Finally the kernel knows to turn off kernel mode setting for this i830 chipset (even though I had been turning if off in Grub for the past few months). Still no Compiz for this video chip (82830 CGC), a feature I had in Ubuntu 8.04 but don't really miss. It would be nice to have the option, though.

I somehow messed up my Gwibber-Me Menu hookup, and over maybe a dozen posts and many dozen tweets have chronicled the solution I figured out.