Brief Hardy Heron notes

/ nsaunders

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 mysocial24x7 works too.

3 thoughts on “Brief Hardy Heron notes”

  1. 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. 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. 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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