Ubuntu Update Manager fails to download packages

I am having an issue with my Ubuntu installation (11.04) where once laptop is suspended, it never wakes-up. I can repro this by simply putting it to sleep by hitting Fn+F4. The only solution I could find is pressing Power button for 5 secs to completely power it off.

I checked Bug reports at launchpad.net. Although I see several people reported it, they see it on different hardware. So, I will file a bug report but wanted to make sure I have all the updates.

When I brought up "Update Manager", it showed me a couple of updates but when I click to install them I got an error:

"failed to download packages, check you internet connection".

Message may be a bit misleading as it suggest connectivity is the issue but in fact solution was simply clicking "Check" button to refresh list of available updates.

Fedora 15

It's been five years since I switched from Fedora to Ubuntu. I wanted to see where Fedora is these days, so downloaded and run Fedora 15 (F15) Live CD. A couple of first impression notes below...

Installation:
I let the live CD boot and run F15. It comes with Gnome 3.0 and here is a link to Gnome 3.0 cheat sheet. I then chose to install it on disk using the link in "Activities" > "Applications".

I chose to partition manually, allowed 500MB for /Boot and 30GB for / as I wanted to use the rest for Ubuntu.

Installation was quick. Wizard is designed to warn on things like missing /swap partition, weak passwords etc. I also liked the fact that it was able to detect Time Zone correctly (in contrast to Macs usually defaulting to West Coast and requiring me to choose East Coast). Good job overall.

Software Update:
ISOs are not frequently updated but when I install Ubuntu it checks with its repos as soon as internet connectivity is established and almost immediately Software Update icon is displayed. I waited a bit expecting the same thing to happen with Fedora, it did not. So I ran "Software Update" and of course there were tons of updates available.  Lo and behold, I got a cryptic "Transaction error" message as soon as I clicked update:

"Transaction error could not add package update for fedora-release-rawhide-15-3(noarch)updates: fedora-release-rawhide-15-3.noarch"

I looked through the list of updates, found the one that read "Fedora release files | fedora-release-15-3 (noarch)" and unchecked it. That did the trick and all other updates installed without any issues. However, error was still there when I tried to update after a reboot!

So, I looked it up on Fedora forums and apparently there is a thread here. First message is from June, so this is issue has been around for at least two months but not yet fixed. As a workaround, you can drop to a terminal window and type the following:

sudo yum update

Sounds easy enough, but as some people pointed out, this is a terrible welcome message for a newcomer to the platform. People expect things to "just work" these days and are less likely to cut Fedora a slack.

Network:
Although, there was no network connectivity until I selected my wireless, Fedora had no issues remembering and connecting to my wifi network afterwards (see this Apple thread if you are wondering where that comment come from). Yet, I think from a usability perspective, I would want OS to ask me to choose a connection upon first login if it detects a wifi connection.

Speaking of network, "Nautilus" > "Browse Network" failed to detect my QNAP samba shares but I was able to click "Go" > "Location"  and access public shares by typing:

smb://myqnap/public

Power Management:
It looks like Power Management is a bit aggressive Out of Box as in OS X. If you do not use your machine for about 20secs, screen becomes darker. Fully charged laptop claimed it would drain in about 2hrs but I am yet to test how fast it discharges under my normal usage.

GUI/General:

Ubuntu has live, warm colors (I like "Orange") out of box (OOB), Fedora has "grey" as its primary color. I think it's a bad choice as it fails to give a polished look when you log in for the first time. Yes, it's of course easy to change this and some Linux-fans loath eye-candy but first-impression matters.

Gnome 3.0 is a radical change from past. It's annoying for to save something into ~/Desktop folder only to find that it does not show up on the Desktop. I know the arguments against it but we will see if this heavy-handed approach will work (I am betting it will not as it creates confusion).

Also, there is just "Log Out" option when you click your name on top right (I can follow the logic), but that means you have to log-out first and then reboot/shut-down. Well, the option to power off is actually there but hidden, so you need to use "Alt" key. Alternatively, you can hit Alt+F2 and type
reboot

Simply typing the following would not work as you must be root.

shutdown

You can hit Windows key to bring up OS X's spotlight-like search tool where you can type

terminal

and then

sudo shutdown

Tiring? Yeah! It does not really matter that much on a mobile platform as people would usually prefer to put the machine to sleep anyway, which may be one of the reasons why shutdown is not there, but seems counter-intuitive on a desktop platform.

One last 'annoyance' was the absence of 'minimize window' button. Well, to be clear, I am not even talking about what happens when you happen to click "Help > About" in Firefox, where you end up with a modal window which you can only get rid of by hitting 'escape' on keyboard, as there is no button to click but windows that have a button are missing minimize and maximize buttons.

By default, Windows only have "close"  (X) button.

It's not that difficult to add them using  "gconf-editor", which you must install via add/remove programs or simply by typing the following in terminal window:

sudo yum install gconf-editor

See the screenshot on the line you need to edit. Log out, log back in and you have the minimize, maximize buttons. You can even shift them from right to the left like Ubuntu by changing the location of ":" like the following:

close,minimize,maximize:

Well, these are just a couple of  my first-impression notes. Ars Technica also has two good articles to read "Fedora - first Look" and "Gnome review". There is a lot of talk about the new systemd, and I am looking forward to checking it out.

Ubuntu Unity

I love Ubuntu but I had a hard time selling Ubuntu Unity today...

I've installed every version of Ubuntu released in the last four years and enjoyed it getting more and more user-friendly. I was so comfortable with it that I removed windows XP from my father-in-law's laptop and replaced it with Ubuntu about a year ago. I had to spent a couple of hours with him to set him up  but that was all to it. He has been using it happily since then.. And I have the piece of mind as I am no longer worried he will be getting malware / viruses on his laptop which is connected to my home network.

At the end of April, Ubuntu released 11.04. I upgraded my laptop but left his laptop alone. Ubuntu 11.04 release brought a radical GUI change named Ubuntu-Unity. Personally, I did not find it too difficult to use although it did not seem to me that it made things any easier than they used to be.

Today, we upgraded my father-in-law's laptop to Ubuntu 11.04 as well. I let him use it for a while and it's been absolute nightmare for him. He hated the new interface, it was way too confusing for him. One of the reason for the new interface was to simplify the interface and make it easy to find things. Unfortunately, his experience was exact opposite. So, I rolled him back to Classic Ubuntu (Gnome) interface. You can find detailed instructions here to roll back.

"The new, highly simplified desktop interface “borrowed consciously” from “other successful platforms,” including Windows and Mac OS X, Shuttleworth said." according to eweek.com.

So, I will have him try OS X to see if he is going to have the same challenges. If he can use OS X just fine, then maybe these borrowed ideas were not implemented well enough in Unity.

Update [08/01/2011]: He found OS X easier to use than Unity.

Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) Test Drive

Ubuntu 7.10 was released yesterday. Below is my first hand impression of new release. The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, if you will...

Getting the image:
I tried all North America mirrors to find a fast image download site but I guess because of first day rush, all were slow, download speeds around 50 KB/s. After a couple of hours, I was able to access Georgia Tech mirror which let me download at speeds of 2MB/s, so I got the image in a matter of mins.

I usually use Lauchpad.net to order my free copies of Ubuntu, which is an awesome feature of Ubuntu Distro.

Because of firewall rules, I could not use torrents in my environment. Not sure how that would change my experience.

One thing I noticed was that Europe/Asia had a lot more mirrors and when I tried them I got almost the same download speeds: ~50KB/s. I hope more 'fast' mirrors are added for North America soon.

Installation:
Ubuntu installs were always good but not without hickups... When I was reading reviews, I had read something like 'Installation was even easier than Vista'. I attest to that now.

I decided to wipe out earlier version and install it on my IBM T40. I popped in the CD, live-cd install completed in a few mins. Then I clicked install shortcut on the desktop and installation started.

In all installs up to this version, time would always be incorrect, this worked fine. Install time was short and I had to click 'next' a couple of times to confirm keyboard, regions etc and enter username/pwd.

Devices:
When I say devices, I should confess that I don't really have a lot of devices to check the functionality. What has always been painful for me was Wireless Access. I have a netgear wireless card, which was automatically recognized, drivers were installed and was ready for me to use after reboot.

The only thing I noticed was, it was not available during install and at some point Ubuntu install warned me that I did not have internet connectivity, so Security Repositories/Updates would not be available at the time. No biggie.

Post-Install:
One of the exciting things I saw in 10 rocking features in 10 days series of articles was about Tight integration of Firefox with Ubuntu. So when I browsed to blogger site, firefox popped up a message for "missing plugin".

Unfortunately, things did not work as advertised after that. Flash Plugin was supposed to be installed seemlessly. Instead I got an error when I tried to install it.

In fact, once I clicked "close", it told me that plugin was installed and I needed to restart firefox. Of course, that was not true...

I also tried Firefox > Tool > Addons to install some plugins like GreaseMonkey but no luck there either. It kept on complaining about source not being available. If you look carefully, you will notice a type in "available".

I know some may think I am just being picky now, but I hate to see such typos as it gives you the impression of sloppiness. Ubuntu is a 'high-quality' distro, such small stuff does therefore matter (at least to me).

I am not sure if this is a bug or if there is some back-end issues here though. Because I also got a "Service Outage" page when I was trying to get some more explanation on what's going on.

Anyway, I am sure I can still download and install these stuff manually as I used to.

Screen Resolution: It always bothered me with Ubuntu/linux installs not to be able to easily increase screen resolution from current setting. Ok, "easily" is a relative term. Because normally, you would edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and then logout / log back in to see changes. That's a "no no".

In fact, in Ubuntu preview, Lifehacker touched upon this point: "It might not seem like a revolutionary feature, but users can now change their screen resolutions and refresh rates without having to log out or hack around in terminal."

I think it should be like in Windows, where all resolutions are listed and when users chooses one, it's tested and user is asked to confirm if it was OK. This is still missing from "easy-to-use" Ubuntu and require a bit more tech skills.

OK, I guess I will post more when I have more time in my hands to play with it. This is it for the time being. Oh, before I forget, I loved the fact that Compiz is the default window manager in Ubuntu now:)

Edit 10/22/2007: I am having an issue with Ubuntu start up. It does not start properly and a black screen is displayed. I play with the mouse and touch a few keys, I see HD activity in the meantime and after a minute or so logon screen shows up. I have an ATI card on this IBM T40 laptop, not sure what exactly is causing this but no update has resolved the issue yet.

Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) has officially been released!

The beta and the wait is over. Ubuntu 7.04 has been released and is available for immediate download.

Release notes for Ubuntu 7.04

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