The last time I blogged about Ubuntu Desktop, either I didn't explain the problems I was having sufficiently, or people just don't get it and react.  I try to make what I write clear enough for those new to Linux, but that may make it seem like I'm not very experienced with Linux, even though I have been actively abusing it since 1995.  I have decided to just keep on writing and let the chips fall where they may.

This post shouldn't raise the ire of most people though, because unlike many Ubuntu veterans and rookies alike, I have had very little, if any, problems with Karmic Koala, much to my delight.  Though I should point out, even with the problems I had with Jaunty, I still ran it on all of the systems I'm mentioning here.  I also manage twenty Sun workstations that have been happily running Jaunty with none of the problems I had with my home system.  My home system is a Dell XPS 420 with an ATI graphics card.  I first upgraded, rather installed Ubuntu 9.10, and restored my data backup from 9.04.  I created user accounts and the previous fix to the gnome-system-tools made this uneventful.  Installing the multimedia and third-party software is incredibly easy now.  The best guide for multimedia and add-on software I have found is over at my-guides.net. Once I had everything running smoothly I decided to take a chance and install the proprietary ATI drivers.  I had nothing but problems with the ATI drivers in 9.04.  This time however, it all worked without a hitch.  I have full eye-candy and VLC plays videos smoothly with no problems.  The final big test was Brasero, which was a giant headache with Jaunty.  I burned an audio CD with the Normalize Plug-in and it worked like a charm.  Well over a month later, Karmic Koala has been trouble free.

Karmic Koala Eye Candy

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