Brief Hardy Heron notes

Nothing 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.

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3 Responses to “Brief Hardy Heron notes”

  1. chris Says:

    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!

  2. nsaunders Says:

    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.

  3. chris Says:

    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

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