Brief Hardy Heron notes
April 28, 2008 — nsaundersNothing exciting - just a couple of notes on the Ubuntu upgrade experience from 7.10 to 8.04.
- Machine #1: LG Express Dual T1-72C1A laptop, Intel GMA950 graphics card
Pretty much a flawless upgrade
- Machine #2: Desktop cobbled together with all sorts of bits over the years; problem feature being ATI Radeon 9600XT graphics card
- Garbled screen on reboot; my own fault due to multiple, conflicting fglrx + compiz modules; went for a clean install
- Seems Ubuntu have packaged a working fglrx + compiz combo; X11 radeon used by default but gives you the option to switch to fglrx on first login; works fine with compiz (except for known GL flicker problem), even has TV-OUT!
- Compiz ccsm (advanced manager), emerald decorator and tray icon (fusion-icon) not installed by default
- System in general pretty snappy; Firefox 3 a revelation
I’m amazed at the improvement in Firefox 3. Slow page loading that I’d attributed to poor internet connections or bad graphics card configuration was, in fact, poor Firefox 2 rendering.
Downside: very few extensions compatible - seems odd, given that FF3 has been in beta quite a while. There are hacks to use your old ones, but I don’t recommend them. Good news: the extension that I can’t live without (del.icio.us) has an FF3 version here. The new mysocial24×7 works too.
April 29, 2008 at 1:05 am
re: Firefox 3. Beta 5 is quite snappy on GG, too. You might also want to try Flock, an FF fork with memory holes plugged etc.
Quite snappy in either case!
April 29, 2008 at 10:19 am
Yeah, I’m running FF3 on the work machine with GG (which I don’t dare upgrade just yet!) In fact the cynic in me wonders if HH is just GG + FF3.
I tried Flock a while ago and liked it a lot; although I don’t really see how it differs to FF + a bunch of extensions in terms of functionality.
April 29, 2008 at 1:21 pm
I’m not yet sure it does - it’s a little smoother, and doesn’t have the FF boot lag/tab lag/”jet” (running too long) lag. However, I’m (i) comparing to FF2 and (ii) haven’t stress-tested the bugger yet.
Google spreadsheets is marginally less awful in Flock, too.
C