There's been a (little) bit of publicity about the Karmic Koala in the UK this week, so I thought that I'd see what all the fuss was about. I first installed Ubuntu on my trusty DELL Dimension 8400 in September last year after trashing the hard drive. I thought that the project would prove to be no more than an interesting experiment or, at worst, an amusing diversion, but I was wrong: over the last twelve months, Ubuntu has become my primary OS (giving my seven year old DELL (and my 40+ year old brain) a new lease of life), so it was not without some trepidation that I decided to explore my first major Ubuntu upgrade.

My original distro was the 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) and, with the exception of security and stability updates, I have not found it necessary to upgrade since that first install. This is not an ideal starting point as the recommended upgrade process is incremental, meaning that I faced either the prospect of three significant upgrades to get to the 9.10 version released on 29th October (thus preserving my files and settings) or performing a clean install (resulting in the loss of all files and settings stored on the hard drive) of the new OS. A third option could have been a dual-boot arrangement, but that seemed a bit messy to me. After some thought, I decided to follow the incremental route and downloaded the files for 8.10 (around 800MB). This was a seamless upgrade and, after some minor tweaking, the OS functioned as if nothing (much) had happened. So far, so good! On to the next version, the Jaunty Jackalope (9.04): it was here that I hit my first problem. The pre-installation validation sequence indicated that my graphics card was not supported and that I could have problems with the upgrade. At this point I got decidedly nervous and thought it best to abandon my project before bricking my PC, until I remembered Ubuntu's brilliant Live CD. Live CD is a sort of try before you buy (except of course, Ubuntu is free!) feature that runs the OS on your PC from the CD rather than installing it to your hard drive (you can also achieve this using a USB pen drive). That's not the only advantage: downloading the complete version rather than the upgrade is significantly quicker (about eight times faster in my case) and, if you download the files in Ubuntu, there's no checksum process or specialist CD burning software to worry about (as there is in Windows). So, I downloaded 9.10 and burned my disk. After half an hour running the new distro on the PC, I could find no problems with the graphics card or any other hardware, so I decide on a clean install.

It's here that I hit my second problem! You'll remember that I initially decided to follow the incremental upgrade route because in so doing, I'd preserve my files and settings: well, I changed my approach mid-project without giving sufficient thought to the consequences. Sure, a clean install is faster, more efficient and easier (a clear opportunity) but, after all is said and done, it is a clean install and formatting the hard drive is part of the process (a clear risk). Fortunately, the upgrade was painless and, so far at least, I like the new OS. Moreover, I'm bright enough to have copied all of my files (Documents, Pictures, Music, etc) before installing the upgrade, so all of my important stuff was protected and accessible. However, my software and settings have all disappeared during the upgrade as you would expect.

Clearly, I can re-install my software easily (it's freely available and free of charge after all), but rebuilding my Favourite websites and email accounts manually in Opera is a pain! Moreover, remembering to change the permissions on the raw1394 file (for my digital camera) and allowing access to the network drive and network printer through the firewall has severely tested my patience over the last two days. I've also experienced a small but irritating problem with Tellico (a library application), that I think will require manually rebuilding a database of more than five hundred entries. The lesson is clear – BACKUP everything and do it often!

Notwithstanding these minor inconveniences, Ubuntu 9.10 (all 4GB including swap) is running contentedly on my PC and upgrading has cost me nothing in additional capital. Indeed, so far my “experiment” costs have yet to exceed my original outlay of a replacement hard drive and some cheap speakers (if you don't count Ubuntu Unleashed) and I have a state of the art system that boots faster and is more secure than anything that Microsoft has to offer. Compare these advantages to the upgrade price of Windows 7 (Home Premium) of £149.99 and the astonishing 16GB of disk space required to run it!

The rrp for Microsoft Office Professional 2007 is £449.99 (OpenOffice, the open source equivalent is free) and the rrp of Microsoft Project standard 2007 is £479.97 (OpenProj is free): isn't it time to consider Linux as a credible alternative in small business environments?

Labels: Computers, Project, Software