Yesterday afternoon, I turned on the laptop to make sure my files were in order for today, and I saw a large number of updates were available. Now, I had just had a huge update on Friday, all KDE-related packages because (from what I gather) a new minor KDE release just made its way into the repos. Now, partway through this update, I get asked to upgrade to Feisty.
Now, to review the background on my laptop's install, when I decided to put 'nix on it, I had a number of problems with getting the wireless working, and I found myself bouncing back and forth between an actual Kubuntu installation and Linux Mint Bianca (which was supposed to have some wireless drivers for ndiswrapper pre-loaded). By the time I found the solution to my wireless problems (a trivial step left out of most howto's on the forums), Linux Mint was on there. I could have turned right around and installed Kubuntu, but that would have meant yet another install, which is just time-consuming, so I left Linux Mint on, and just installed the kubuntu-desktop meta-package so that I could try out KDE (which was the actual goal).
So, I'm upgrading to Feisty (the next Ubuntu releass, due out in April), likely the Herd 5 test release, from a distro based on Ubuntu, not Ubuntu itself. I figure, the upgrade dialogue will tell me what packages may break, and I can back out if it looks to be problematic. Everything looks ok, so I let it go. About halfway through, the upgrade fails, and I get tossed back to X. I decide to reboot because Adept is still occupied, and I find that my installation is now broken.
Given that the thing is fucked, I decide, what the hell, I may as well put a clean Kubuntu install since I know all the fixes I need to implement to get everything working. Everything goes fine, except for getting the wrong wireless driver from Dell, but once I got the right one, it was ok. Wireless is up, i've added the non-free repos, and installed the non-free plugins and codecs I use all the time. I connect to my home wifi network without any issues. Connecting at school was going to be the real test, but I was confident everything would be fine.
When Linux Mint was on there, connecting at school was a pain. Not every time, but the first time and any time it had been too long and the setting got buried, I had to go through the same song and dance over again. See, Tulane doesn't broadcast its ESSID, so you have to tell the wireless software to look for it. In Linux Mint, this meant going to the command line to set the ESSID manually, and usually logging out once or twice to reset the connection and make sure it really "took" by checking the wifi manager. Today, started out much the same. The scan showed no network called "tulane," so I open konsole for a command line and change the ESSID. I've got kwifimanager open to display signal strength, and I go to open the wifi manager that actually works to see if I've got a connection, not expecting to have one. By the time the wifi manager comes up, kwifimanager is telling me that it has full signal, so I check the wifi manager, and sure enough, connected to tulane, at full strength. No logging out to reset anything, it just worked.
I honestly don't know what Kubuntu has over Linux Mint in that department, but I'm kind of glad I had to do the re-install. Since I'm constantly moving files between computers, it's hard for me to lose any data, especially on the laptop which is usually not up-to-date on the weekend, only during the week. I had no trouble with roaming in Linux Mint, so I have no worries about Kubuntu now. I was looking forward to Feisty because I had seen some developers claiming that wifi roaming worked better, but now I'm entirely happy with Edgy, and I can only hope Feisty makes it even easier.
And before anyone comes down on having to go to the command line, let me tell you that BASH commands are very intuitive, and all you have to do if unsure of options or syntax is just hit up the man page.
I still don't think I like KDE as much as Gnome, but I'm going to keep using both to see if it's a matter of getting used to one rather than another.
Now, to review the background on my laptop's install, when I decided to put 'nix on it, I had a number of problems with getting the wireless working, and I found myself bouncing back and forth between an actual Kubuntu installation and Linux Mint Bianca (which was supposed to have some wireless drivers for ndiswrapper pre-loaded). By the time I found the solution to my wireless problems (a trivial step left out of most howto's on the forums), Linux Mint was on there. I could have turned right around and installed Kubuntu, but that would have meant yet another install, which is just time-consuming, so I left Linux Mint on, and just installed the kubuntu-desktop meta-package so that I could try out KDE (which was the actual goal).
So, I'm upgrading to Feisty (the next Ubuntu releass, due out in April), likely the Herd 5 test release, from a distro based on Ubuntu, not Ubuntu itself. I figure, the upgrade dialogue will tell me what packages may break, and I can back out if it looks to be problematic. Everything looks ok, so I let it go. About halfway through, the upgrade fails, and I get tossed back to X. I decide to reboot because Adept is still occupied, and I find that my installation is now broken.
Given that the thing is fucked, I decide, what the hell, I may as well put a clean Kubuntu install since I know all the fixes I need to implement to get everything working. Everything goes fine, except for getting the wrong wireless driver from Dell, but once I got the right one, it was ok. Wireless is up, i've added the non-free repos, and installed the non-free plugins and codecs I use all the time. I connect to my home wifi network without any issues. Connecting at school was going to be the real test, but I was confident everything would be fine.
When Linux Mint was on there, connecting at school was a pain. Not every time, but the first time and any time it had been too long and the setting got buried, I had to go through the same song and dance over again. See, Tulane doesn't broadcast its ESSID, so you have to tell the wireless software to look for it. In Linux Mint, this meant going to the command line to set the ESSID manually, and usually logging out once or twice to reset the connection and make sure it really "took" by checking the wifi manager. Today, started out much the same. The scan showed no network called "tulane," so I open konsole for a command line and change the ESSID. I've got kwifimanager open to display signal strength, and I go to open the wifi manager that actually works to see if I've got a connection, not expecting to have one. By the time the wifi manager comes up, kwifimanager is telling me that it has full signal, so I check the wifi manager, and sure enough, connected to tulane, at full strength. No logging out to reset anything, it just worked.
I honestly don't know what Kubuntu has over Linux Mint in that department, but I'm kind of glad I had to do the re-install. Since I'm constantly moving files between computers, it's hard for me to lose any data, especially on the laptop which is usually not up-to-date on the weekend, only during the week. I had no trouble with roaming in Linux Mint, so I have no worries about Kubuntu now. I was looking forward to Feisty because I had seen some developers claiming that wifi roaming worked better, but now I'm entirely happy with Edgy, and I can only hope Feisty makes it even easier.
And before anyone comes down on having to go to the command line, let me tell you that BASH commands are very intuitive, and all you have to do if unsure of options or syntax is just hit up the man page.
I still don't think I like KDE as much as Gnome, but I'm going to keep using both to see if it's a matter of getting used to one rather than another.
salem:
I'm glad you liked my set! 
