Ubuntu 10.04 Update: Networking

Not sure if this is an issue with the Lynx or with the fact that it's a VM (VMware Workstation 7). I've noticed over the past few days that networking's been spotty at best. Web pages take forever to load or the pages don't load and the connection times out. Same for twitter in twittergadget and Gwibber. Tried both the Firefox and Chromium browsers thinking it would make a difference but nada, tostada.

I'm aware that there's a wireless networking problem associated with the Lynx, but I'm using a strictly wired LAN with a DSL connection to hit the Internet. I can "refresh" the connection by rebooting the Ubuntu VM, but as of today, the connection only lasts a few minutes before it starts acting dodgy again.

Ubuntu itself is set to acquire a dynamic IP address and as a VM, it's network adapter uses NAT. The other VMs (Windows machines) aren't experiencing any similar problems. Also, my host PC and other computers on the LAN aren't having a problem. If it was just a Firefox issue, I'd suspect the problem listed at Ubuntugeek.com might be it, but not with Chromium showing the same behavior.

Any ideas?

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx First Impressions

Yeah, I know. There are about a million blog articles of this nature floating around on the web, but what the heck. Blogging is all about freedom of speech and expression of opinions and ideas. Here's what I've got so far on the Lucid Lynx.

First off, I was amazed by the fact that I could quickly and easily download the ISO for the 32-bit desktop. It was only about 24 hours after the initial release when I gave it a shot, and there were no delays at all. I find torrents obnoxious, so I did the straight download directly from Ubuntu.com. No muss, no fuss.

I joke that I don't try a new Windows desktop OS until the first service pack is released. That's usually pretty good advice, but even with Linux, I don't download and install a brand new release of a distro on my production machine. In this case, I ran the ISO directly in VMware Workstation 7 to give it a shot. I used the easy install option just for giggles. This bypasses the manual configuration for the OS which isn't always a good idea, but I figured the worst that could happen is that I'd experience a major fubar and have to blow away the VM.

Everything worked well. Installation was quick and the current version of VMware Workstation automatically installs VMware Tools for Linux, so it's an almost totally hands off experience. Then, when the GUI came up, I hit a snag. The mouse worked fine, but the keyboard was totally non-responsive. This could have been an Ubuntu issue, a VMware issue, or maybe wireless Dell keyboards just don't work and play well with Ubuntu. I fired up Google and started my search.

I found just about a ton of posts in different threads at the Ubuntu forums including this one and this one. They all give more or less the same advice about solutions, but I specifically referenced a thread dealing with Ubuntu 10.04 and VMware Player, which worked out for me just fine. After using the virtual keyboard option to enter my password, I was able to login and thereafter, my wireless keyboard behaved as expected.

I haven't had a lot of time to play with the Lucid Lynx VM as yet, but there were a few things I took care of right away. First, I installed Ubuntu Tweak, if for no other reason, than to be able to put a folder for my home directory on the desktop. It offers a lot of other great features as well, but it disappoints me that so many simple configuration options don't come with Ubuntu "off-the-rack".

There are a large number of "what to do after you install Ubuntu 10.04" blogs and tutorials around, and I chose the one featured at my-guides.net because it seemed to be reasonably comprehensive and wasn't afraid to use the apt-get system to tweak Ubuntu.

I didn't follow most of the steps in the tutorial, at least so far, but I did run sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras to enable Adobe Flash Player, JRE with Firefox plug-ins, and a few other things. I might even get around to installing the Google Chrome browser just to try it out on Linux, but Firefox serves me for now.

Oh, and I installed GIMP, which was a breeze using the Ubuntu Software Centre. I'll post more details as I get the chance to do something more substantial with the Lynx.

Is the Release of Ubuntu 10.04 Delayed?

Update: http://releases.ubuntu.com/lucid/

Today is Thursday, April 29, 2010. It's almost half past six in the morning in the western United States where I live. I started looking about the web for announcements of the production release of Ubuntu 10.04. I didn't find them. Given the time difference between me and Canonical, I figured the mirrors for the production download would be available by now. I decided to go to the source but the Ubuntu Home page still announces Ubuntu 9.10 as the latest production release. I double checked the release schedule and it does say the Lynx should be at final release on the 29th. Am I being impatient?

After I wrote the above paragraph on the news page at the Linux Tutorial, I went to work, still thinking I was being impatient and that the announcement of the release could be forthcoming. I checked again when I got to my workstation and still no change of news. I fired up Google and started searching. Then I found a notice saying [i855] 10.04 rc boots into black/blank screen. I read a number of the comments associated with this announcement (they are legion, so I didn't read all of them. One of the latest, posted yesterday, revealed the following (and the spelling errors are the sole property of the comment writer:

It is critical. People have a bricked laptop after the update. That´s the worst case scenario. Another console aware friend even called me since switchting to the terminal didn´t work as well and he´s a unix guy and had never heard of ubuntus safemode. It´s really pretty bad. Lucid is an aweseom release but this bug is a showstopper imho.

Let´s keep the fingers crossed someone has the balls to delay it. But I doubt it.

Searching for more information, I hit a page at ubuntuforums.org that seems to be more up to date. In fact, the thread is so active that all you have to do is refresh your browser every minute or so to see new posts.

Amid the various posts are specific links to download Ubuntu desktop, both the 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Don't ask me why this information is so hard to find at ubuntu.com.

Just for giggles, I clicked the available link to download 32-bit Ubuntu desktop and of course, the page was amazingly slow to load, and when it did, I only saw this: ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved. In other words, any one with an Internet connection is trying to be the first to download the 10.04 ISO from the mirrors. Good luck with that.

A lot of the posts on the ubuntuforums.org thread dedicated to today's (pending) release state that the links for downloading both the 64-bit and 32- bit versions of Ubuntu keep timing out. Either there's a problem with the release and this is Canonical's method if dealing with it, or the release is available and too many people are trying to download at the same time.

Guess we'll have to wait. The thread on the Ubuntu Forums about the Lucid Lynx release is up to 63 pages as I write this, but another page is added every minute or so. If you want to keep up with the minute-by-minute developments, feel free to visit the thread and watch the progress. For all practical purposes though, you might want to wait and attempt to locate and download Ubuntu 10.04 LTS tomorrow or the next day.

Addendum: I also found some information of a possible release delay at launchpad.net.