blag/post/ubuntu-karmic-upgrade-issues.mdwn

   1 [[!meta title="Ubuntu Karmic upgrade issues"]]
   2 [[!meta date="2010-01-17"]]
   3 [[!meta author="rohieb"]]
   4 [[!meta license="CC-BY-SA 3.0"]]
   5
   6 Thinking of the phrase “never change a running system” I am usually not
   7 very keen on updating my Ubuntu system to a new distribution. However,
   8 not every new software version is available from the backports, so
   9 finally, I saw myself forced to upgrade to Karmic Koala.
  10
  11 I instantly regretted it. Of course, I appreciate all the new software,
  12 but as in every upgrade I ever made (and I probably should know by now
  13 -.-), there are a few things that were annoying me or are still doing
  14 it:
  15
  16 *   kaffeine-1.0~pre is not even as useful as 0.8.7 from jaunty: While
  17     staying in touch with the main KDE (4) line, the developers seemed to
  18     completely remove the Playback -> Video menu, so it is not possible
  19     anymore to toggle deinterlacing, or any other video filter, which is
  20     very annoying for DVB-T.  I filed a [bug report][1] on that.
  21     Futhermore, my DVB-T channels were lost, so I had to rescan them.
  22
  23 *   The notifications displayed by notify-osd somehow have wandered from
  24     the upper right edge towards the middle right. This seems to be fixed
  25     now, as pointed out in the [bug report][2], but somehow this fix never
  26     got onto my system, though the changelog of notify-osd says so…
  27     Additionally, the notifications for received messages in Pidgin do not
  28     hide anymore if I actually read the messages, they persist until their
  29     default timeout has elapsed. And they even show up now when my IM
  30     status is on “Do not Disturb” – this was not the case (just as I
  31     expected it) in jaunty.
  32
  33 *   Icons in GTK menus are now hidden by default, which seemed very
  34     unfamiliar to me, since I always used them as an orientation guide,
  35     especcially in the Firefox search plugin menu. You can show them again
  36     in the System -> Preferences -> Appearance applet on the Interface tab
  37     by selecting “Show icons in menus”.
  38
  39 *   GDM is no longer customizable through themes. It just doesn’t support
  40     it, as it seems to be a [complete rewrite][3]. IMHO just another
  41     Unmature Software Thing.
  42
  43     **Edit:** I just found out that it is also not able to start GDM in
  44     Xnest, as I usually did for testing:
  45
  46         $ gdmflexiserver --xnest
  47         ** (gdmflexiserver:5916): WARNING **: Not yet implemented
  48
  49 *   And finally, my customized GNOME window theme (based on Clearlooks)
  50     was broken :-( I am very confident that the color of selected text was
  51     not the same color in the title bar, but now both seem to be the same
  52     color. This is really bad, as for the title bar, I used to have a
  53     darker shade of orange than for selected text. OK, changing to another
  54     theme may be simple, but until now, I haven’t found anything I like
  55     best.
  56
  57 [1]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kaffeine/+bug/499938
  58 [2]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/notify-osd/+bug/419894
  59 [3]: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7854130
  60
  61 [[!tag Ubuntu fix rant Ubuntu Ubuntu_Jaunty Ubuntu_Karmic upgrade]]