In a bid to resurrect my kogan agora pro netbook to a usable state, I decided to upgrade to the lastest version of ubuntu, karmic koala, which has just gone beta.
sudo update-manager -d
This will kick off the update manager, and provide you with a single button to upgrade to version 9.10. After 30 minutes or so, you should be rebooting into a new kernel, and the new ubuntu.
The usual suspects that needed attention in the past (read: the touchpad and wireless networking) were both still working, and had obviously remained configured from the previous version.
Whilst I say “working”, the wireless adapter is connecting to my home wireless access point however the signal is still low and not picking up neighbouring APs.
There has been some improvements though. The physical wifi button is no longer a “glorified light switch“, as it was so well put by Andrew. Pressing the button results in the card shutting off.
The second welcome surprise is the return of “resume from suspend”. After changing the wifi card recently myself and others discovered the netbook would not resume from suspend. This now appears to have resolved itself.
The netbook remix interface is looking much fresher, as you can see in the screenshots attached below.
The only qualm I have so far with karmic and the netbook remix itself is that I cannot seem to locate the shutdown icon in the menus or interface. This may be because I upgraded from 9.04, but as it is beta I will wait and see, and use the physical netbook power button to bring up the shutdown options.
Another note to add – GRUB2 and EXT4, whilst being the new defaults in ubuntu 9.10, are not automatically upgraded:
ext4 by default
The new “ext4″ filesystem is used by default for new installations with Ubuntu 9.10 Beta; of course, other filesystems are still available via the manual partitioner. Existing filesystems will not be upgraded.
GRUB 2 by default
GRUB 2 is the default boot loader for new installations with Ubuntu 9.10 Beta, replacing the previous GRUB “Legacy” boot loader. Existing systems will not be upgraded to GRUB 2 at this time, as automatically reinstalling the boot loader is an inherently risky operation.
A comment in a previous blog entry on this site asks how to configure the touchpad in GRUB2. I am yet to investigate this, however is anyone has any info, please post below.
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