Has it been 6 months already? Time flies when you are having fun or when you are very busy, it seems. The Dutch and English announcements can be found on the official Ubuntu wiki as well as the Dutch and English release notes. Another great upgrade, loaded with new stuff and changes. Here are some tips to get you through the potentially “rough” part of it

Fast upgrade

I gave a friend of mine a great tip. That tip enabled him to upgrade his system in less than an hour and downloading the updates took less than 10 minutes (at about 1.6 MB/s). I told him that the default is to use the official nl.archive.ubuntu.com as an update source and he should use an alternate local mirror if the main one is slow. Just add a line to your /etc/hosts :

ip.of.the.alternate.mirror nl.archive.ubuntu.com

Do not forget to undo this after the upgrade though

GNOME-RDP

Apparently the GNOME-RDP database “breaks” again if you upgrade. This bugreport also contained the “fix” (by Mick K), but make sure sqlite and sqlite3 are installed:

sudo apt-get install sqlite sqlite3
cp ~/.gnome-rdp.db ~/.gnome-rdp.db.backup
mv ~/.gnome-rdp.db ~/.gnome-rdp.db.old
# Open GNOME-RDP to create and initialize a new database and then close the application:
gnome-rdp
sqlite ~/.gnome-rdp.db.old “.dump session” | fgrep INSERT | sqlite3 ~/.gnome-rdp.db
# Keyring support slows it down a lot (and produces errors) so disable it:
sqlite3 ~/.gnome-rdp.db “INSERT INTO appOptions VALUES(‘UseKeyring’,'False’);”

Note: please keep your backup file in place (an extra backup is never a bad thing), since GNOME-RDP seems to have database issues when upgrading. I can not ensure this is ‘the’ best way to fix your current database, so use with caution.

Compiz and Intel

I suddenly found myself unable to enable compiz (“Blacklisted PCIID ’8086:2a02′ found”). After a quick Launchpad error search I found this bug which referenced the Dell site, which eventually contained the workaround. Just edit /etc/xdg/compiz/compiz-manager and add the following line:

SKIP_CHECKS=”yes”

CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE

I really do NOT get this. This shortcut was disabled because some people accidentally triggered it and this restarts X. Which idiot accidentally presses CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE? Anyway, this is how you get the famous shortcut back and working as intended:

sudo dontzap –disable

Eventually I also got convinced to use GNOME-Do (Launchpad)  and I do not regret it. I use the keyboard even more and use the mouse less, what is there not to love? You can even enable searching your bookmarks, contacts etc. which means that you can open up a conversation window or an e-mail draft right away (yes, it is that easy). Unfortunately all the really cool stuff is still upstream, so if you want to latest/greatest version you have 3 options available:

1. Download it from the website (don’t do it, you want the packaged/maintained version)
2. Use the PPA of the GNOME Do Core Team to get the latest upstream version which is packaged (I used this version which is for those of us who like to live on the edge)
3. Upgrade to Jaunty (the release is only 2 days away!)

If you choose option 2), I can give you this small how-to:

1. Add the PPA’s key to your system:
   

   sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com a5d19fdcaa6abb440cd3464628a8205077558dd0

   Source

2. Add the repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list
   

   deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
   deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

3. Update your cache and install
   

   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gnome-do gnome-do-plugins

Note for 64-bit users! There is a bug in Launchpad’s ppa that causes 64-bit mono package builds to fail, but David was in the marines for 12 years and only learned one thing- Leave no man behind. This message doesn’t apply to plugins, however. Plugins are architecture independent and build fine in the PPA. You should use plugins from the PPA, and for core we’ve got a package for you at http://launchpad.net/do/+download (source)