JonnyReeves.co.uk

Ubuntu Upgrade to 7.04

April 19th is a landmark occasion of the Ubuntu Distribution of Linux. The new release of 7.04 may not bring so much in the way of features but it does have a certain “Coming of Age” quality to it.

I only run Linux on my laptop at home after our experiment with Linux on the desktop wasn’t met with success. I wasn’t planning on upgrading from Ubuntu 6.10 to 7.04 in the near future because of the lack of a CD-ROM drive for my laptop (well, more the lack of a power supply for my Lacie Firewire CD-RW). As a result, I was pleasantly surprised to see Ubuntu’s update manager pop up in the corner of my screen telling me that a new ‘distribution release 7.04′ was available complete with a nice chunky (got to love the Gnome) “Upgrade” button begging to be pressed.

The installers first step was to pull down the “Upgrade Assistant” which ‘guides you through the install process’. Now my laptop is not the fastest (733mhz P3) but this step took an age before the assistant actually appeared. Top indicated that the CPU was having a bit of a nap, so I presume the delay was due to the sheer number of “updaters” eagerly following the same path as myself.

I gave up for the night and tried upgrading again a few days later.  This time the Update Assistant appears immediately, a good sign!  The update took about 60 mins to download all the packages and update them, upon completing I was asked to restart the system.  During the update I was still able to use Firefox to browse the web, a privilege that would certainly be unheard of on any other major OS!

My initial impression of 7.04 is that not much has changed, the new control pannel is quite snazzy (not that I need to make much use of it now my laptop has been set up) and Wireless Access Points are now automatically detected (no more dropping down to the terminal to switch!).