Re: [tlug] Ubtuntu 8.04 -> 8.10 Upgrade Pain

["Ian Barwick" <barwick@example.com>]

2009/1/3 Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>:

> The main one for me seems to be changes in the gnome session manager and
> associated tools. It seems that between the 2.22 and 2.24 versions of
> gnome, they've dropped the ability of the session manager actually to
> manage sessions. In the session properties tool, the "current session"
> tab is now gone, my .gnome2/session file is being ignored, under the
> "Session Options" tab, the "Remember Currently Running Applications"
> button now gives a "not implemented" error when pushed, and I can't just
> use "fvwm --replace" to replace the window manager. This seems like a
> bit of a regression to me.

I've recently installed Ubuntu 8.10 (fresh installation, successor to
a somewhat decrepit 6.10, from the DVD on the 2009.1 edition of Nikkei
Linux, which includes some extra Japanese packages), and one of the
annoyances is that while it's possible to map the caps lock key to
CTRL in the Keyboard preferences utility, the setting isn't remembered
unless the Keyboard preferences utility is started. Putting

    Option      "XkbOptions" "ctrl:nocaps"

in xorg.conf doesn't seem to help here either :(.

> It's looking at this point as if they've gone to making everything
> happen at startup time.

I'm not sure if it's an Ubuntu thing or an Xorg thing, but I was
somewhat bemused to find an effectively empty xorg.conf file. It seems
settings are dynamically detected, which comes as a bit of a culture
shock; fine if it works but the built-in Intel graphics chipset (I'm
using an older unmodified Dell box here) wasn't being recognized and
it was defaulting to the VESA driver, and there doesn't seem to be any
way using the Ubuntu utilities to explicitly set particular Xorg
options. Copying the relevant section from the old installation fixed
the problem though (but despite turning off the Compiz whizbang stuff
it still feels a bit sluggish, but maybe that's just the builtin
graphics?).

Ian Barwick