My experience with Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Kola

This week I decided to try out the Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala RC.
I downloaded the ISO and burnt it to CD.

I backed up my important files in case I decided to install the RC.

I booted my computer from the Ubuntu 9.10 CD.


When it booted, I noticed it had a new bootsplash which was visually very
different from Ubuntu 9.04's bootsplash.

In the bootsplash first a black screen with a large white Ubuntu logo appeared,
then another screen appeared.

The new bootsplash kind of looks like Apple Mac OS X's bootsplash.


After the bootsplash the livecd brought the desktop.

Everything looked okay except the background. It was black.
Desktop effects were working (switching virtual desktops made the switching virtual desktops effect appear.

I right-clicked the desktop and clicked 'change desktop background'.

I selected another background but the desktop background still remained black.


I went to System>Preferences>Appearance and turned off desktop effects.

After turning off desktop effects the background became normal.


I tried setting up my wireless internet connection and it worked.



I thought that maybe the problem of the background becoming black when
desktop effects are switched on would go away if I installed Ubuntu 9.10 RC
to my hard disk.

I installed Ubuntu 9.10 RC to my hard disk, and rebooted my computer.



After my computer booted and I logged in, the desktop appeared.

But the background was black.

So I disabled desktop effects and the background became normal.


I set up my wireless internet connection.




Then I tested Firefox and it was working properly.



I opened Synaptic package manager and installed the following packages:

VLC media player
ffmpeg
gstreamer plugins bad
gstreamer plugins ugly
Flash player and plugin


I opened a video on my hard disk with VLC and it played properly.

Then I watched a Youtube video with Firefox and it played properly.



After that, I installed KDE by installing the kubuntu-desktop package.

I logged out of GNOME and into KDE,


When KDE loaded, I turned on KDE's desktop effects using KDE's System settings tool.

When I turned on desktop effects, KDE's background became black.

When I turned off desktop effects, KDE's background became normal.



I thought that maybe if I install all the updates for my system, the desktop effects
black background problem would go away.

So I installed all the updates and rebooted.


But after rebooting the problem was still there on both GNOME and KDE.





Conclusion:

Besides the problem of the background becoming black if desktop effects are turned on, everything else seemed to be working fine.

Screenshot of my Ubuntu 9.10 desktop

Vim

Today I am going to write about the text editor Vim.

Vim, and Emacs, are considered to be the best advanced text editors available for Linux and UNIX.

Vim is a cross-platform (Versions of it are available for Linux, Mac and Windows), feature-rich, and highly configurable text editor.

Although the main Vim software is command-line based, there is a graphical version of Vim, called Gvim, which is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows.


Vim's usage is different from other text editors.

Although Vim's usage may seem confusing at first, after learning it a user can be much more productive with Vim than with any other text editor.

Vim is usually available in most default Linux distributions.

Vim is also pre-installed on Mac OS X.

A Windows version of VIm can be downloaded for free.



Vim has three modes, normal, insert, and visual.

Normal mode is used for performing operations on text, and insert mode is used for writing text.

There are many online Vim tutorials.

One good free ebook to tech yourself Vim is A Byte of Vim.