Saturday, April 19, 2014

Upgrading to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

It's that time again.

Ah~ freshly minted Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
With the release of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS it's time to upgrade my Ubuntu 13.10 setup to the fresh release. This time I've opted for the in-place upgrade using the LiveCD. It's much faster than upgrading using Software Updater, of course, since all the core files are already on the DVD.

The upgrade


Things went nice and smooth with the upgrade. My files didn't get chewed and spit on, my wallpaper's still intact, and the system seems to run much more smoothly than 13.10. This is a pretty awesome release so far.

First impressions

Performance-wise, 14.04 is way better than 13.10. I've been using the open source drivers since my last clean install of 13.10 and I can tell you there's moments when I know I'm not getting everything out of that HD7750. The Ubuntu Dash isn't completely smooth, and the most obvious is when you launch LibreOffice Calc and have to wait a minute or two while the UI is not responding. Now, even Calc is ready to go the moment the UI is visible.

Personal files and settings remained intact, as I mentioned earlier. Your music library is still the same, Thunderbird feeds and Firefox bookmarks are still where they're supposed to be. Basically, backup before starting the upgrade (just in case) but no need to panic if you realised you've forgotten to back something up.

Some obvious changes

New Rhythmbox UI. Looks a bit less cluttered.
Rhythmbox looks a bit different from before. There's less color now and icons are more... Ubuntu-ish?

There's a new lock screen that fades smoothly into your desktop. I like that a lot.

Turn on integrated menus in the Appearance Behaviour tab.
The new integrated menus won't be there (the upgrade didn't wipe personal settings remember?) so to turn that on head over to Settings->Appearance and check out the Behaviour tab. You can set it to show menus in the title bar easily if that's your preference. That's what I'll be using for the time being. Let's see if it sticks.

Software installed from 3rd party repositories are obviously gone (Handbrake, for example). It'll take a while for them to catch up.

Post-upgrade

Everything looks like it's running as they're supposed to. I wasn't paying attention but I think it took less than half an hour to upgrade the system? That's just awesome! This may be the smoothest and fastest upgrade I've experienced (Windows included). While Ubuntu's had smooth upgrades before, it's never been this quick mainly since I've been using Update Manager/Software Updater which required downloading gigabytes worth of packages as part of the process.

Upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04 now I you haven't already.

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