Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft report
I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 6.10, Edgy Eft. Overall, the differences were minor, but there were a few things that have caused me some major grief. There were also a couple of nice additions. Here’s my view.
Things that were broke
- Splash screens – The splash screens at boot and shutdown have disappeared. Now there is just a blank screen. This hasn’t effected usability, but it is a minor annoyance. On the upside, boot and shutdown seem to take less time.
- Songbird – My Songbird install was broken. The app would open, but it wouldn’t play any songs. I just got an error message. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling several times, but it was no use. I’m was unable to diagnose the problem.
- X – My x.org install was corrupted. I suppose this is because I had the nVidia binary drivers installed. It was simple to go back into my config file and correct the issue, but this would be a non-trivial fix for a novice. This one smacked of “not ready for primetime.”
- Flash – The upgrade removed my install of the Beta 9.0 Flash player and replaced it with the old version 7. Of course everyone knows that the Linux version 7 Flash player doesn’t work, so that was a no go. Also in the upgrade Firefox was upped to 2.0 and it appears that the Beta 9.0 Flash player doesn’t play well with it at all (pun intended). It caused a lot of random slowness and crashes. Boooo!!!
- Plugins – Most of my plugins for Firefox didn’t work for some reason. I downloaded Automatix and installed most of them. This seemed to help some, but some things are still broke.
- ET – Enemy Territory no longer works. I’m sure it has something to do with my video settings or drivers, but I have been unable to diagnose the problem so far.
Things I liked
- Fonts – There were some new fonts in Firefox. They are much better than the old fonts and much easier to read.
- Firefox – They included the 2.0 version of Firefox. I was impressed considering how close the Edgy release was to the Firefox 2.0 release.
- Mail Notification – Somehow the Mail Notification app got installed and works on my computer. Previously I had set it up, but never ran it since it didn’t seem to work.
Conclusion
Overall, I could probably have done without this upgrade. The issues with Flash have really hurt usability since so many sites these days rely on it. As you can see from this list, my cons outweigh the pros 2 to 1. I find myself needing to use my Windows laptop more often than I did before the upgrade and I don’t care for that. If you have some insights on the problems I listed or want to share your opinion, leave a comment.