Ubuntu (trial post on my findings for Karmic Koala)

I might be a tad late trying Karmic, the new version comes out tomorrow.

First, Wubi installed Ubuntu Karmic Koala as a dual boot on my Windows7 drive, no problem. It automatically grabbed the 64 bit version to match my Windows system and I may have been better off choosing 32. I'm not sure and this would be a long involved story so just be aware. 64 is running fine by the way. If you want something other than what Windows is using, you must make a selection (probably download the version and point Wubi to it).

Accessing data on NTFS disks was in the past tricky in Linux. Now it's a piece of cake. Go to places and data and there it is. Ubuntu may have been doing this for awhile.

In Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala the internet could be slow. The fix is easy but it took me awhile to find it. Enter the OpenDNS numbers in the DNS server for your router and/or wireless adapter. Here are the numbers: 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220, For my simple needs this fixed things. Others may have needed further massaging. Here is an example of someone needing more settings.

By the way, I am constructing this post in Bilbo Blogger (now called Blogilo). The name change is a shame. I love the name Bilbo Blogger. Look up Bilbo in the Ubuntu Software Center and install it. Bilbo is still cranking away trying to upload so I grabber the HTML and pasted it into Blogger manually. Maybe it is a Hobbit thing. I will probably use ScribeFire in the future.

I could not get the display settings to advanced until I let Ubuntu update so just do it. Run Update Manager. Karmic now has many updates. Now my windows wiggle.

Wireless auto connected on Karmic. Jaunty (previous version) required manual connection (click a button). I like the auto connect, my memory is short and it keeps me from troubleshooting my wireless unnecessarily.

Cropping an image is easy with F-Spot but you must open F-Spot from the Applications menu. If you right click the image then choose F-Spot, only a simple viewer activates. F-Spot Photo Manager does a few adjustments but the crop is handy for blog posting. Use Gimp for more complicated functions. The first time Gimp opens it takes awhile to register things. After that Gimp opens quickly.

As I find things I may come back and mention them. Tomorrow I will probably try Lucid Lynx but the downloading will be intense. If Wubi for Lucid is not up then I will wait, unless I can just update the current install. Who knows?

Install software from ???? The more obvious stuff is easy. But there are curious locations for software and upgrades. After my experience with Bilbo for instance, I tried BloGTK. It was available in the Synaptics Package Manager so I installed it. According to the BloGTK page there was a newer version. Some day I will figure out how to do this stuff with the command line. But for now I found the location of the update and added it to Synaptic. Note the screen shot. OK, it's impossible to read, but you get the idea (so right click and view will ya). The software site gives you the location and you enter the location into Synaptic. But forget BloGTK, it is painfully primitive.

Here is a link for Linux info. from Tom's Hardware recently. And here.
This is developing into a link list:
10 things to do after 10.04 install