Ubuntu Kubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

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Since Ubuntu 7.04 I am using Linux on my Company Laptop, a Dell Latitude D630. I still recall the initial pain of installing Ubuntu on, what turn out to be, brand new Intel Graphic and Sound chips. It took me a few weeks to get Linux operating well in an all Windows Corporate Environment and addressing some of the hardware configuration shortcomings (actually its less a Linux fault then something we would expect HW vendors to worry about).

One of the things, which really bogged me down in the early version was I could not get the second Monitor working on my laptop. Sound also was a longer term issue. To ease Corporate Windows Network integration I used MS Office/Outlook via my Virtualbox Windows XP Virtual Machine. Life on my laptop really become great with 7.10 and the X-Server upgrade. Easy dual monitors, plug'n'play worked (Urandr). I moved actually away from VirtualBox to Evolution for my Outlook email. Initially I tried Kontact - a great user interface and great to use - and also Thunderbird with Lightening. However, both package can not error free send Outlook Calendar invites. Everyone who works in a 99% Windows/Outlook/Exchange Environment will appreciate, that this simply won't work. Hence I moved to Evolution. The Exchange connector is slow and freezes the application once in a while (Webdav/screen scraping into OutlookWebAccess and hence is fully Outlook compliant). 2-3 Functions just caused the crash as a feature ... The User Interface is sluggish and not pretty as well. Even with 7.10 sound had to be enabled on my laptop with 3 distinct terminal commands, to initialize the appropriate sound driver into the kernel. 7.10 also brought an installer feature to automatically setup an encrypted disk partition (the operating system remains unencrypted, but the /home directory with all data is encrypted against a boot password). Very good for corporate laptop users. And now 8.04! I spare you the easily readable specs. My first attempt was 8.04 with KDE4 (The newly improved Kubuntu KDE4 environment). That was not a good idea. I had some User Interface configuration issues and while the original screen setup looks nice, with all the application being not yet implemented using the KDE4 user interface libraries, it is not beneficial actually. As in the long run I really like the KDE4 environment I decided to install Kubuntu 8.04 with KDE3 (the standard release). Personally I like the configuration approach and user interface of KDE above the Gnome user interface, which is provided with the standard Ubuntu release. Although its probably not a to big a difference.

The installation was flawless. 8.04 Alternate Installer (to get disk encryption) worked without any issue. I mean better then a Mac or Windows installer. It just worked.

A week later I have to say, that the basic system has some minor challenges. Due to some of the components changing for some hardware components it could be, that 8.04 works differently or does not work, as intended. There is a lot to say about earlier upgrades and I guess, like for commercial products, no one starts using new products before Service Pack 1. The "final release" is the new beta nowadays. The reason being, that the complexity of the product and sub products is so high, that many things just come out later.

Anyhow, the only issue I had was that Urandr does not work in the current version. Alberto is working on update. In the meantime dual monitor is work best with use xrandr in the command line. Means in the xorg.conf the virtual statement needs to be added, in accordance with the max monitor specs of the extended desktop. After logging in and out (no restart required) one can execute xrandr in the command line and turn on the second screen in extended mode vs clone mode (which works automatically).

I did try the pre-pared control panel by KDE for that and for my Laptop this did not work. I saw similar news from others. I guess with Urandr etc upgrade this will be resolved. Urandr is nice because of the profiles (can be stored) and the cool user interface. I am not sure why the build control panel did not work for me. I did not have the time to try out. I know the xrandr route from prior version of Ubuntu and went that way immediately.

The new Evolution Version is significantly much better. More stable, more performant and also the Exchange plugin does a better job of managing data dalays. It still looks the same, but it is actually well usable now - vs not usable before. That said I wish Kontact or Thunderbrid/Lightening would live up to the taks of full integration with Outlook (Email and Calendar), as the User Interface is better and the overall PIM functionality is seriously much better. I also installed Pidgin - we are using SameTime and I need the ST/Meanwhile plugin - which also has some user interface updates making it a bitter nicer to use.

Other then that: Don't expect 8.04 to be different or magic somehow. Just find a very mature, faster, stable, and well refined (fine tuned?) operating system and next generation tools of the typical Ubuntu add'on packages (eg, Evolution.) I do recommend it! Especially if you are covered on your hardware.

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