James Friesen's Tech Blog

Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” Release Candidate – Installation Notes

By admin, October 25, 2009 13:11

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Released to the public on October 22 Canonical’s latest and greatest Ubuntu yet “Karmic Koala 9.10“. For many folks using a Linux distribution probably ranks up there with a visit to the dentist, but I have to say that as the kernel keeps improving in leaps and bounds the software wrapped around it can just work on the majority of hardware without issue.

Sure many folks may try it out and find out that it ‘does not work’ with their specific hardware, but compared with last years 8.10 the numbers are down with the sad exception of two particular vendors; ATI and Intel. ATI recently dropped support for much of their older hardware, but then released a new series of drivers that do support. Thankfully using the older drivers or using the open source communities versions can at least get them working, if you have problems with the more supported drivers. Intel on the other hand has basically thrust it’s middle finger up at the linux community with a blatant refusal to provide open source to allow many distributions to be able to integrate support, so for many it means booting to a broken system, and downloading proprietary drivers and praying it works. Obviously this isn’t the end of the world, but from my perspective a seriously ‘good’ reason to avoid using Intel hardware, especially if you want to use wine to run Windows games or applications, you’d do so much better with non-Intel chipsets. nVidia has the best support out of the box for most people not only linux users, but also windows users that it’s becoming a staple requirement. Don’t get me wrong, Intel does provide drivers, but do not expect them to work directly from installation. In some cases the generic drivers get installed and it works, in other cases you’re faced with non-working hardware and off to the various support forums seeking a solution. Thankfully they are available.

In my situation I decided to get a new laptop and specifically bought a Compaq CQ60 which features NO Intel or ATI hardware, simply so I could avoid any hassles. I’m pretty good at fixing these issues, but if I am spending money and the amount is equal, why buy something with hardware that will not work? So without further adieu, I release my notes on installing Ubuntu 9.10 x64 on this laptop.

Downloading the RC release was very simple, however at this time you’d do well to avoid the mirrors. The mirrors which allow direct downloads are heavily over-worked and can result in downloads that are very slow and may corrupt. If you do go this route be prepared to wait a full day before you can burn it to CD for installing. Also ensure you run a md5sum check on the downloaded file to ensure it did not get corrupted during the process. If it did you’re going to have to start a new download all over again.

For faster downloads I highly recommend using bittorrent. “No it’s not illegal”; I find myself having to say this over and over, oh and I should say also “No it’s not full of leachers”. This time of year seeders exceed leachers by upwards of 2:1 or more. The bittorrent downloads are very fast, mine usually exceed 1.5MBit/sec virtually crushing all the direct download methods, and meaning I can start burning my CD in about 30 minutes, not 24 hours or more from now. Bittorent also ensures a ‘corruption-free’ download since the error correction is built in, but it never hurts to verify using md5sum anyways. In my mind only ignorant fools would choose direct download.

Now that I’ve got the CD downloaded, I should mention I chose the ‘Desktop’ version. Ubuntu also offers ‘Server’ and ‘Alternate’. Server allows you to install into a non-windowed environment and features better server hardware support, though I’m finding this point harder and harder to prove, so if I’m wrong keep that in mind The Alternate provides a more advanced installer for various platforms, for instance the Sony Playstation 3 that the desktop version simply will not work on. I used to install the Alternate all the time since I always found myself tweaking the installer, but I now either pick the desktop or server versions as appropriate for the machine.

I also picked the x64 or 64-bit version since my laptop features an AMD 64bit CPU with two cores, and I expect to double the ram in the near future I want to ensure I can use it all regardless of the OS I’m running. So lets go ahead with my installation notes, keep in mind I’ve already downloaded, verified and burned the CD. Yes folks Ubuntu still comes on a CD not a DVD, though there IS a DVD version should you wish to download one.

09:10am: Boot System with Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic x64

09:15am: Finished answering the basic questions and copying files

09:35am: Install completed and desktop boots up.

09:36am: Confirm all hardware has been detected and working, with one minor exception; The nVidia drivers were not installed but Xorg is running with ‘Generic’ drivers.

09:40am: Installed the nvidia 185 drivers and rebooted (not necessary, but I wanted to test a fresh boot also), and all hardware working.

09:55am: After installing the medibuntu.org repository to be able to install all the media-related packages primarily for Flash video and DVD playback support, everything worked except DVD playback (using ‘bought’ DVD’s not home made. These work fine). Could not get any DVD/movie I own to play without some problem.

So, the entire fresh install took about 25 minutes to install, and with no major problems. One minor ‘generic’ video driver issue to resolve, and then adding the media repo’s and failing to get working DVD which appears to be a bug and not a general ‘does not work’ problem took about 20 minutes to resolve, or simply accept that it doesn’t work in the case of DVD playback. For the record I noticed ‘no change’ from beta to RC as far as the install was concerned, although I did notice other improvements.

So I’m now a happy Ubuntu laptop user, and was absolutely STUNNED at how quickly this machine boots. Vista used to take about 4-5 minutes on the same machine, Windows 7 takes nearly 3 minutes, but Ubuntu literally boots in about 30 seconds. Of course I’m not factoring in how long it takes me to enter the password in any case, just the time from powerup to desktop. The fact that all my hardware worked immediately without debugging or troubleshooting any hardware was a blessing. I do want to remind the reader that this is a reality for some folks, but others may describe this as a horror story, but compared to my installs looking backward in time its just getting better and better.

So, if you are not interested in playing with beta’s and release candidates, Ubuntu 9.10 officially gets released on October 29th. However many will tell you not to ‘rush’ out and get it as the first week after release will see many, many bug fixes. IF that doesn’t dissuade you then feel free to enjoy the freedom of using Open source software, and the stability and security of a great distribution like Ubuntu.

If you have any questions I’d be happy to provide any answers I have to you. Just post a comment. Of course you’ll need to create a ‘free’ account here to do so.

Happy Ubuntu’ing!!

P.S. Don’t forget to check out my blog on the official release day, I will be posting this with pictures as a walkthrough for the new users out there.