Upgraded to Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10)

As you are aware that Ubuntu brings in a new version every six months. Ubuntu released its new version on 28 October 2009. The new version is Ubuntu 9.10 and is also named Karmic Koala. I downloaded the new version within twenty four hours of release. Download was not slow, which I feared due to rush of people to download at the same time. The download was smooth and I burnt the image on to a CD.

After burning the CD, I had to decide whether to upgrade the existing Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) or do a clean install. I considered the pros and cons of a clean install. They are given below:

• Pro:
• Clean install will have ext4 file system. This file system provides speed to the OS. Upgrade will not change existing ext3 file system. To change it to ext4, one needs to tweak a lot manually and there is no guarantee that it will upgrade all apps also to ext4 system
• Clean install have many updated apps in its default installation. There may not be a need to install some apps separately.
• Configurations of some manually installed apps may get corrupted during upgrades. They may not work properly after upgrade. They may as well require new install.
• Cons::
• Drivers of some of PC accessories have to be installed manually and configured again. It is a bit painful.
• All apps that I used, which are not part of default installation of OS, would require to be installed and configured. They are laborious considering the number of apps that I have been using.

Having considered pros and cons, I decided to go for a clean install. I wanted to have ex4 file system and I did not want to go through pains of tweaks in upgrade process.

Having decided the installation process, I started my clean install for a dual boot with existing XP. Here, I encountered a funny problem. When I came to partitioning section, I deleted old partitions of Jaunty Jackalope. I started creating new partitions. The first partition, I created was "/" (root), a primary partition. Then I created "swap". The dialog did not give me option to chose type of partition (primary or logical). After creation of second partition, the system made the balance space as "unusable". I tried many times (without formatting) to create four partitions similar to my early installations. I failed. After some digging in the net, I found that the hard drives are programmed to accept only four primary partitions. The problem was not related to Ubuntu or my lack of knowledge on Ubuntu installations. It is something to do with the setup of hard drives. I could not reconcile to this logic, since I had only two primary partitions other than to be installed one. After some thoughts, I came up with a cheat. I created partitions other than root with selection of "logical" option. The installation allowed me to do this. I created root partition last as primary one. then, the installation went smooth.

After the installation, the first thing I wanted was my network connection to work. As usual, my network adapter was not recognized by system. I added ndiswrapper through Ubuntu software center. I did not require CLI (command ling interface). After installation of ndiswrapper, a menu item named "Windows Wireless Drivers" got added to System>Administration menu. I clicked this menu item. A dialog box appeared and asked me include required inf file. I added this, but the driver did not get installed. I adopted old method of applying the driver through CLI. It worked.

I have a working system now with a capability to connect to the net through a wireless network. I will record my experiences with other activities after installation in my next blog. Now, Ubuntu is really fast. It boots up fast. It closes fast. Even the applications load quickly. I can feel it. It is definitely faster than my other system Windows XP.