It is a about time I come clean and share my experience with Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon).

As you will have guessed from the tone of my previous posts I have been very impressed with the Ubuntu OS since moving over (completely) a few months ago. So it was with great excitement that I began the upgrade to Gutsy.

The upgrade itself was bit of a struggle, but this was to be expected as everyone wanted to upgrade at the same time. My specific problem was that half way though (about 400MB) my connection would go down for some reason. After the second time this happened I decided to download ‘alternate’ version, basically a CD-ROM image designed to upgrade computers not connected to the Internet. This worked first time.

With the newly burned CD (checked for integrity) I proceeded to upgrade 7.04 to 7.10. Like the first time I installed Ubuntu this went smoothly without any problems. Once complete I connected to the net and found another 110MB +/- of upgraded for my system. Again, no issues!

Then the big nasty surprise…compiz (the funky graphics) did not work. Trying to turn them on at any level was like watching paint dry. Everything was slow and sluggish. Worse, it still is! From what I can figure out from weeks of scouring the web my (and many others) graphics cards are likely to have been ‘blacklisted’, which means that there is a chance that compiz (in conjunction with other things) could cause a crash so the graphics do not worked until the problem is fixed. There is an option to by-pass this and use them anyway, but I have not risked that yet.

Other then the graphics everything works perfect. A few things have been streamlined and a few new handy GUI’s have been thrown in. All-in-all, a very good package. My enthusiasm is slightly curbed because I do miss compiz. But with any luck one day there will be an update and my screens will be all bouncy again…I do love the bouncy!

Moving swiftly on, I still believe Ubuntu to be the best OS out there when you look at value for money…at ‘FREE’ it is simply unbeatable. The support that is provided by the Forums is brilliant, somebody seems to know how to figure out your problem. So stop wondering and give Ubuntu a try, you certainly have nothing to lose!

Open source for open minds!