The upgrade took place the evening Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 was released. The upgrade took a long time primarily as the result of a slow internet connection. Total download size came to 830Mb of packages. Majority of the installation occurred while I slept, stopping only to ask me about modified configuration files and completed pretty quickly after. Following a  reboot, I found in the tradition of Ubuntu upgrades all my settings had been remembered; such as what applications were open, tabs open in FireFox and desktop effects.

Below are my very first impressions from the hours immediately following the upgrade, symbols indicating what I didn’t like, was uncertain about and liked.
- much, much longer boot time
- weak stability, crashed twice in a matter of hours after upgrade.
- current graphics card insufficient for advanced desktop effects.
~ FireFox 3 beta – url bar bulky, some beloved extensions aren’t supported,
+ better management of system resources, CPU less busy.
+ power management when using battery seems better – need to do more testing.
+ normal desktop effects more stable.

A month later

After a few minor updates the system has stablised considerably and I haven’t experienced any further crashes akin to the first few immediately following upgrade. I’ve discovered some very useful browser extensions which have somewhat replaced ones not yet supported by FF3.

Discovered that there are difficulties getting sound to work everywhere; I must choose whether to use sound in a browser or everywhere else. This is an ongoing annoyance which is somewhat circumvented by using Miro to watch youtube videos and downloading pod and vodcasts instead of streaming from websites. While not dissimilar to how I’d usually deal with such media, the limitations have changed my behaviour somewhat. I’m also required to restart X when I have to watch or listen to something in my broswer in order to be able to have sound in VLC, Miro or Rhythmbox after. Need to seek assistance with getting the sound problems fixed. I suspect if I change my audio server settings I can recify this problem. PulseAudio installation and configuration may demand a separate blog post.

Overall I’d have to say I’m reasonably content with Hardy, some of the limitations I’m experiencing are a result of my mildly dated hardware and not the operating system. I’ve also discovered applications that are equivalent to those enjoyed by my fellow Windows and Mac user friends. Expect a joyous update when I solve the current audio frustrations.

Then I can start playing with installing Linux. It was suggested I do some research to find out if I can run 2 distros that share the home directory between them. Will have to research and see. The reason for 2 distros is that people have had the most success with getting everything to work using Ubuntu but I had a bad experience with it once and am doubtful to try it again – though I suspect I will. I’m also wanting to put Fedora on there because it’s great and I know how most things work there. Decisions decisions.