So, I downloaded and installed Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Herd 5 this morning. I downloaded Herd 4, but never had a chance to actually install it. Given that I was having pretty good luck with Herd 3, other than the installer being a bit odd at times, I wasn’t in a hurry to drop it anyway.
The first thing I noticed is that the Herd 5 installer seems to work, even the partitioner. Note that under Herd 3 I was using the Alternate Install (text mode) disc, and with Herd 5 I’m using the main image (GNOME installer).
I had heard from Bryan and Chris at the Linux Action Show that Canonical had decided to include Compiz, but not enable it by default. Even though the installation of Beryl was pretty easy, it was still a manual process which involved changing my repositories, downloading packages, and editing configuration files. Given that I had successfully installed Beryl on Herd 3, I was curious to give Compiz a try, especially if it was installed by default (because, I admit, I am lazy).
It worked like a charm. Clicking System, Preferences, Desktop Effects, and clicking the button to “Enable Desktop Effects” was all I had to do. Very nice. I’m not sure I like the default Compiz settings, because the window snapping feature acted a bit funny when I tried to move windows. Once I realized what it was doing, it wasn’t a big deal, but by default, when I tried to drag Firefox to the top of the screen, it snapped back down about half an inch on my screen. I had to resize the window a bit to get it to stay where I wanted to.
Evolution now works! I fired it up, and connected to my Exchange server in under a minute. Amazing what happens when you can specify the server that you want to use…
As for migrating my stuff, I see that my documents made it over, so what was in the? “My Documents” folder under Windows is now in my “Documents” folder on Ubuntu. I see that Gaim recognizes my username on AIM, but I couldn’t figure out how to sign on to that account without deleting it and manually entering my username and password. It turns out, that this was actually a problem with Compiz. Gaim was working fine, but with the Desktop Effects enabled, all of the Gaim windows showed up empty, with no text wherever there should have been text. When this happened in another application, I decided to try disabling Compiz, which fixed the issue. I’m thinking I know why it’s not enabled by default.
Unfortunately I had not installed an email client on the Windows partition, so I couldn’t test its migration of my mail settings from Outlook or Thunderbird.
All in all, I’m seeing definite progress, and can’t wait until the real release next month.
The personal blog of Peter Nikolaidis