Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex Beta - First Impressions

I decided not to wait to install the latest version of Ubuntu, the Intrepid Ibex, so I took the plunge with the beta, and got wet!

Installations was a breeze, running the command update-manager -d runs the update manager, which does the whole thing for you, after all was installed, I had to reboot, which I did.

Everything looked the same as my setup did in Hardy, it looked like everything was fine and dandy. First of all, the restricted drivers toolbox popped up, prompting me to instll the latest nVidia graphics driver, 177. No problem….or so I thought….

After rebooting with the new driver enabled, everything looked fine, but sounded awful! My laptops’ fan was going ballistic! Checking the temperature showed it to be at 20 degrees C and falling! It was loud and worrying. Needless to say, I rolled back to the previous driver and all was fine again.

The second thing I noticed, was my fingerprint reader had stopped working, and had to be reconfigured. Hmm I thought, a couple of problems….

Next to fail was a beloved script, rapidshare-dl. Which for some reason would not download from rapidshare. It still won’t, I’m baffled as to why. I’ve switched to Aria for the time being, which is a great little program.

By now I was getting a little peeved and packed up, left college and made my way home. I took out my laptop to find that Network Manager didn’t like my home network!!! For some reason it seemed convinced that I am using WPA2 Enterprise security and doesn’t listen to me when I tell it otherwise! I’ve installed Wicd as a wifi manager now, and it will hopefully solve the problem.

Ok, so there have been a few bugs, nothing world shattering, but annoying none the less. Obviously it is to be expected, as it is a beta, but the annoying thing is, the updates haven’t done me any good, todays batch for example, broke the nVidia driver again, which necessated 2 restarts, and for some reason, Settings -> Appearance is not working at the moment, making my lovingly crafted, futurelooks based desktop look fugly!

I know this has been a rant, but it has been a well warrented one. For the time beng, stick with Hardy Heron, at least until the full version of Intrepid is released. I think I will probably back up my /home and try a fresh install, and see do the issues repeat themselves. I am not writing off Intrepid yet, but I wouldn’t recommend doing an upgrade to the beta. Not in the slightest!