Update [April 29 2010] – Lucid is finally out ! You can read about all the exciting features at Lucid’s site. The procedure to update remains the same. If you are in Beta 1 , Beta 2 or RC and kept yourself updated with Update Manager or apt-get you are fine. You already have all the latest packages. In fact , there was not much updates after the Lucid RC was released. So , go out install and have fun with Lucid !
Ubuntu’s latest release – Lucid Lynx is nearing final release and is now in beta 1. I wanted to test it out and report bugs if any. I had a bad experience when I upgraded from Jaunty to Karmic during its Alpha release which kinda broke my system. So this time I decided to wait till Lucid’s beta came. To know all about Lucid’s Beta 1 see here .
The steps to upgrade from Karmic to Lucid is relatively straightforward. Note : You can always wait till Apr 29 to get the stable Lucid. But if you want to get a kick out of trying the beta , do the following steps.
1) Type the following commands in the terminal
update-manager –d
2) It will show "New distribution release 10.04 LTS is available" . Click on the upgrade button.
3) Sit back and relax.
The upgrade went relatively smooth with no issues. But surprisingly it took a long time – almost 2 hours. It might probably be because , I was also doing some number crunching when the installation was going on. Another thing that surprised was that it downloaded almost 2 GB of different deb files. I am a software junkie and have a lot of software but still 2 GB was bit too high. Also after the files were downloaded, my Network manager killed itself , so I was without internet for some time till it completed installation and rebooted the machine. It could well be due to my configuration but it did give me some anxious moments of what to do if the update failed. After some nail biting , the update was successful.
New Features I liked
1. Booting speed
The first thing you will notice is the blazing bootup time. Linux by default has a fast boot time, but this is really fast. It was all the more incredible as I have a huge list of software/services that are started during boot. Great job guys !
2. New Open source driver for nVidia
Lucid has a new open source driver for nVidia called Nouveau . I was a bit jittery about its performance as my restricted nVidia driver was doing a great job. But , Nouveau is doing a good job and I have not seen any big issues so far.
3. Thunderbird 3
Another big change is Thunderbird 3. It has lot of good features like tabbed browsing , auto sync and stuff. I am still getting used to the new interface but it is a change for good. Most of my extensions dont work now but I hope it will change in the future.
4. Me Menu
Probably the coolest feature of all. Ubuntu now has a Me Menu option that consolidates all about you. You can read about the Me Menu proposal . It links all your chat accounts via Empathy. Also it links to other social network stuff like twitter,facebook, flickr etc using Gwibber. I am still experimenting with this stuff and not sure of all its potential. But integrating social network into an OS looks like an interesting idea.
I also used Me Menu as an excuse to migrate from Pidgin to Empathy. Empathy was made the official IM for Ubuntu in Karmic but I was hesitant to change as Pidgin worked well for me. But now with all the new features, Empathy has more to offer than Pidgin and I am now happily in Empathy’s fold. It does have some annoying features but I have not checked the net if it is possible to alter them.
There are some minor annoyances in Lucid . Probably the biggest was moving all the window options (maximize/minimize/close) to the left of the window instead of the right. I saw in the net some simple means to revert back to the old style. I intend to give it a week or two and if I still feel uncomfortable, I will revert it back.
There were quite some crashes – for me apache, opera and gwibber crashed but most of them recovered. I have raised these bugs in Launchpad so hopefully the issues are all fixed in final release.
Go ahead and give Lucid beta a try ! I am sure you will love it !
Update [April 12 2010] – Lucid Beta 2 is out. The procedure to update remains the same. If you are in Beta 1 and kept yourself updated using Update Manager or apt-get , you are fine. You will have the latest (Lucid beta2 ) packages.
Update [April 23 2010] – Lucid RC is out. The procedure to update remains the same. If you are in Beta 1 or Beta 2 and kept yourself updated with Update Manager or apt-get you are fine and have all the latest (Lucid RC) packages.
Update [Apr 30 2010] – A strange thing happened when I was helping my friend install Lucid. When I did Alt-F2 and entered the command, it did not recognize the Lucid version. But when I opened a terminal and entered the command (sudo update-manager –d) , it recognized it. Seems pretty strange to me ! In case, you also face this issue, you can try this alternate way. I am also not sure whether the “–d” options is still needed now that Lucid is officially released. But still it did not hurt 🙂
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[…] 4. Less is more. But still less There are lot of debates going about Lucid Lynx. This post discusses one issue which has got the most attention. PS : In case if you want to try out Lucid Lynx Beta1 check out my post – Upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) from Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) […]
Hey uhm when i type into the terminal the command line my update manager opens. it does not show any upgrades.
a) If you are in karmic (9.10) or in hardy LTS (8.04) then you will get the upgrade option. Else you may not see Lucid upgrade – this is my guess.
b) Also check the settings in Administration -> Software source . Make sure that in Ubuntu Software (main/universe etc) are checked. Also in Updates tab check the Release upgrade option.
I am not sure of the exact reason as -d option must override other settings. I will take some time to check for any solutions. Meanwhile , You can try asking in forums like ubuntuforums.
[…] seemed to lack lot of features at that time. After Lucid beta (shameless plug : check my post Upgrading to Lucid from Karmic if you want to try Lucid Lynx ) came , I decided to give Empathy a try again. This time, I […]
If I update to the beta from Karmic will I be able to update to the release version from the beta when it is available?
Hello,
If you are in beta, and you periodically run apt-get or the update manager to get the latest updates, then you will have the necessary packages versions for the release version.
For eg lets say package1 has version 1 in beta. During release candidate, the package version changed to 2 and no other packages were changed . Then all you need to do is just update package1 using apt-get or update-manager . No other update is necessary. you are now in release manager. The same thing happens for final release too. Some packages will be updated. You need not go through the process of update-manager -d again. After the final version is release on apr 29, your system will be automatically converted to LTS when you update the system.
In short, if you are in beta , then you can move to release candidate and the final release. The process is to update your system using apt-get or update manager. The word “development branch” that comes during bootup automatically goes away after apr 29.
Thanks for the help! I am currently upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 2 release. So, should work out fine!
Hello Tyson,
Glad that you are trying out Lucid Beta 2. Hope you had an excellent experience installing and using it !
I am using Karmic and update-manager -d does not show new distro. What could be the reason?
I am not sure why it does not show you Lucid. I can think of two things to do : Check the details in System -> Administration -> Software source : Updates Tab
a) Make sure that Important and Recommended updates are checked. Also if yours is not using server version of Ubuntu, then in “Release Upgrade”, Show new distribution releases : Select “normal releases” .
b) try update-manager –dist-upgrade