2008-12-10

After six weeks of Ubuntu 8.10 trials, I get reports of many customer trepidations of Intrepid Ibex.

I was (and remain) an avid Ubuntu fan. However, the constant tinkering with modified Linux internals brought back memories of Slackware days in the last decade of the 20^TH century … when much of my hardware investment was innaccessible – dilligent research and development advanced some, but not enough, into utilizing those precious packages of phenolic and silicon.

Upgrading Ubuntu

Every previous versions of Ubuntu introduced a bit of pain when upgrading their earlier incarnations. I abandoned the upgrade path for personal workstations – electing clean installs and imports of user data. However, I continue with "need to know" the trials of upgrading.

Upgrades promise easy transition for established Ubuntu users to advanced features. Each version of Ubuntu adds new or improved functionality. There are a constant developments with GUI and peripheral enhancements. More efficient algorithms evolve. Evolved softwares add dependencies on shared libraries and core functionalities. These demands, often, cannot retrofit in mature installations; but established users have valuable data investments. Upgrade capability represents Ubuntu's appreciation of that investment.

Upgrading, by design, leaves artifacts. In many cases, products of user software include references to aged support libraries. Some user software is forward compatibile; upgrading forward compatible software will be straight-forward and clean. Migration of old products with aging support libraries can involve human decision and cannot be reliably automated. Human decision adds complexity and frustration to the upgrade process.

Often, computer system firmware is flawed in initial design or documentation. With research and development, design flaws are detected and changed or accommodated. With research and development documentation is corrected. With research and development, behaviors of firmware applications change. Often, support for old firmware is dropped; computer systems with unsupported firmware become toys for übergeeks or abandoned in piles of forgotten hardware.

Intrepid Ibex was not exceptional to the upgrade trauma.

2008-10-06

Intrepid Ibex is coming. Canonical (Ubuntu) will be 4 years old on October 20. There will be news, there will be well-wishers, there will be parties … and soon there will be Intrepid Ibex. That's right! Intrepid will be the ninth (9^th) Ubuntu release, following tradition of semiannual releases which began with Warty Warthog (on 2004 Oct 20). The My^DLLURTH Intrepid Ibex party is not scheduled at this time. Stay tuned for developing news.

2008-04-24

Hardy Heron is available from mirror sites as of 2008-04-24.

We snagged a good alternate AMD64 image before the rush. The alternate i386 image was corrupt and another download of that image is in progress. The rush significantly reduces our download rate — an order of magnitude reduction.

2008-04-20

The Hardy Heron beta has been an interesting experience. Now we're ready to go live. The download will not impact your bank account, and the installation can be as simple as just booting from the CD and pressing the enter key a few times. Confidence is available for your installation process. My^DLLURTH is planning a Hardy Heron Camp on Saturday, 2008-04-26 at 10AM until 2PM.