Upgrade to Kubuntu 6.06.1 LTS complete

I recently migrated from Kubuntu 5.10 (breezy badger) to Kubuntu 6.06.1 LTS (dapper drake) as a wipe-and-reload deal: I bought a new hard drive, stuck it in first position, installed Kubuntu fresh, and then copied my /home/user files and various other directories over manually. The previous HD will remain pristine until I have verified all files are moved and properly backed up; then it becomes disc 2 in a RAID 1 setup.

6.06 was a big enough upgrade to justify the additional downtime. Previously, I had run the very straightforward apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade process, which worked flawlessly (once I fixed my /etc/apt/sources.list file). I also plan on using 6.06 for probably a full year - I may completely skip 6.10 (edgy eft).

A few issues:

  • I use ATI's video cards. I manually changed /etc/X11/xorg.conf to use the radeon driver instead of the ati driver installed by default, because ati failed to show the X session. Because I could use the same CD as a "Live" and "Install" disc, I knew about this problem before installing.
  • In xorg.conf, removed references to a wacom tablet - don't have one, don't need one, wondering why the install added one.
  • Adding a printer failed when installing the driver; sudo foomatic-cleanupdrivers fixed it.

Nice features:

  • 6.06 is noticeably faster than 5.10. Menus are snappier, feedback happens quicker.
  • Eye candy is nice in some places, and downright helpful in others (hovering over the desktop squares in the taskbar produces a tooltip listing all the open programs for that desktop).

End notes:

  • Starting from scratch was definitely the right choice.
  • Maintaining a text list of every installed package is a system administrator's duty and one of the most helpful things for the next upgrade.
  • Kubuntu rocks.

Written by Andrew Ittner in misc on Thu 07 September 2006. Tags: open source, technology