keithspg
May 3rd, 2010, 04:44 PM
Well, I spend a big chunk of the weekend getting this set up. I fully expected problems but was surprised at what I found. To me, this does not seem ready for prime time and am certain that these will be fixed over time.
1) The boot graphics modules and such need to be fixed. This is a grub2 + uvesa/vesa/vga16fb module issue. With 9.10, it booted with vesa (or it could be forced to boot with a vesa module with "vga=xxx") and with a tweak, it worked consistently. Also with 9.10, you could force it to boot with uvesa with a couple tweaks as well (http://harrison3001.blogspot.com/2009/09/grub-2-graphical-boot-tips-to-set.html)
With 10.04 (oob), I get no boot messages or splash when I have my boot parameter set to splash. lsmod reveals that a different driver, vga16fb, is now being loaded as well as vesa. At the grub prompt, vbeinfo does not even show a native 1280x1024x24 or 32? This with an Nvidia quadro 700 card and a dvi flat panel with that native resolution of 1280x1024? This does work at this resolution with vga... I performed the uvesa mods outlined above and get it to be more consistent, but it is not right (see #2 below) and I still get no splash or boot messages and nothing at all until I get to a GDM login. I expected that uvesa would be the module loaded if a graphic console is used and was surprised at this. This seems quite confused to me.
2)User switching does not work. Switching to another user switches to a 640x480 graphic screen. Once another user is selected, all video goes away. Need to hold power button to force a reboot. This is probably related to number 1.
That is it for the basic system stuff. The rest are 3rd party apps or other things I noticed.
3) Nanny does not work if installed. I get the icons but no dialog box. had to 'completely remove' via synaptic. I'll try it again when it updates.
4) Virtual box is woefully out of date when installed, no USB support. Uninstalled and installed the karmic deb from the virtualbox site. Works well, though there is a complaint about the kernel being too new and some issue. I have not noticed any problems running XP in virtualbox with this configuration. I understand this is not expected to be perfect, but it is so widely used that I thought someone would have mentioned this...
5) Skype beta works but all menu boxes are greyed out until hovered over. Also non-free and beta, so this is not unexpected that there would be some problems.
6) I have high hopes of BT being more stable than before but have not tried it yet.
I am sure there are more, but this is what I remember from the late nights. I am toying with enabling lucid proposed and seeing what happens, but am worried about breaking things and not being to get to where I am right now which is reasonably functional if not perfect. I feel that 9.10 is more consistent and polished. 10.04 could have used a few month more of development , IMO.
Keith
1) The boot graphics modules and such need to be fixed. This is a grub2 + uvesa/vesa/vga16fb module issue. With 9.10, it booted with vesa (or it could be forced to boot with a vesa module with "vga=xxx") and with a tweak, it worked consistently. Also with 9.10, you could force it to boot with uvesa with a couple tweaks as well (http://harrison3001.blogspot.com/2009/09/grub-2-graphical-boot-tips-to-set.html)
With 10.04 (oob), I get no boot messages or splash when I have my boot parameter set to splash. lsmod reveals that a different driver, vga16fb, is now being loaded as well as vesa. At the grub prompt, vbeinfo does not even show a native 1280x1024x24 or 32? This with an Nvidia quadro 700 card and a dvi flat panel with that native resolution of 1280x1024? This does work at this resolution with vga... I performed the uvesa mods outlined above and get it to be more consistent, but it is not right (see #2 below) and I still get no splash or boot messages and nothing at all until I get to a GDM login. I expected that uvesa would be the module loaded if a graphic console is used and was surprised at this. This seems quite confused to me.
2)User switching does not work. Switching to another user switches to a 640x480 graphic screen. Once another user is selected, all video goes away. Need to hold power button to force a reboot. This is probably related to number 1.
That is it for the basic system stuff. The rest are 3rd party apps or other things I noticed.
3) Nanny does not work if installed. I get the icons but no dialog box. had to 'completely remove' via synaptic. I'll try it again when it updates.
4) Virtual box is woefully out of date when installed, no USB support. Uninstalled and installed the karmic deb from the virtualbox site. Works well, though there is a complaint about the kernel being too new and some issue. I have not noticed any problems running XP in virtualbox with this configuration. I understand this is not expected to be perfect, but it is so widely used that I thought someone would have mentioned this...
5) Skype beta works but all menu boxes are greyed out until hovered over. Also non-free and beta, so this is not unexpected that there would be some problems.
6) I have high hopes of BT being more stable than before but have not tried it yet.
I am sure there are more, but this is what I remember from the late nights. I am toying with enabling lucid proposed and seeing what happens, but am worried about breaking things and not being to get to where I am right now which is reasonably functional if not perfect. I feel that 9.10 is more consistent and polished. 10.04 could have used a few month more of development , IMO.
Keith