After what seems like several years, the Ubuntu Forums has finally been upgraded to vBulletin v4. I’d like to thank s.fox, coffecat, Elfy and Merk42 as well as Canonical IS for all their hard work to make the transition fairly painless, and for updating the Forum theme. There are still some functions missing, but for the most part the Forum works as it always has.

the screenshot is what the Forums currently look like when you first log on, we will be doing a bit of tweaking to the theme, as we have had some suggestions that the theme as it is may be a bit to bright for some users.

I would also like to welcome Sef and Merk42 to the Forums Council as our two newest Admins, we now have a full slate of seven members, and hope to have a Forum Council meeting in the next few weeks, now that the upgrade has been done.

There has been a lot of talk about Ubuntu dropping the alternate installation ISO. I decided to do a run through of the install process using the mini/netinst.iso. For many of you that have used the alternate installation iso, most of this will be familiar.

On boot, you will be greeted with the option to:

• Install
• Command-line Install
• Advanced Options
• Help

For this run through, I’ll use the install option. Once you have selected the install type, you will see the language selection screen:

After selecting your preferred language, you will be asked to select your country.

Now that you’ve selected your country, you are given the option to automatically or manually detect your keyboard. In my case I chose to use the manual selection:

Next:

And:

Next you’ll be asked to enter a hostname for your system, the default is ubuntu, in my case I set it to quantal:

After you’ve set the hostname, choose an Ubuntu archive mirror that is close to you. In my case I chose Canada:

You should now be shown the archive you will be using:

You will be asked to set up an HTTP proxy if you need one to access the outside world:

After automatically setting up your network connection, additional components are downloaded  and installed:

Once the additional components have been downloaded and installed, you will be asked to create a user account, enter whatever name you’d like to use:

Then set a user name for your newly created account:

Next, you will be asked to create a password for your user:

Enter your password again:

You are now given the option to encrypt your home directory:

I chose not to create an encrypted home directory. You will be asked to confirm your time zone next:

Once you have confirmed your time zone, you will be taken to the partitioning portion of the installation:

If you select manual partitioning, you are offered some additional choices:

• Configure software Raid
• Configure Logical Volume Manager
• Configure Encrypted Volumes
• Configure ISCSI Volumes

In my case for this demonstration I selected Guided partitioning. You can see  the process setup / and swap partitions:

The next screen asks you to confirm your partitioning scheme:

The next few screens show the packages being downloaded and installed. First the base system:

Then apt is setup:

After apt has been setup, you are asked how you would like to receive updates:

The next screen is a menu of installation choices. For this installation I chose the Ubuntu-desktop:

The process will now spend a few minutes creating a list of packages it needs to download. As you can see from the screenshot, 1182 packages need to be downloaded and installed. The estimated download time was fairly close. If you have something else that needs doing, now is a good time to do it.

Note: I pay for a 7.5Mbps internet connection, but typically according to speedtest.net my download speeds are about 15-18Mbps. Depending on your network connections download times will vary:

Once all the packages have been downloaded and installed, it’s time for grub to be installed:

As this is a fresh installation, and the only one on this system, grub will be installed to the MBR of the first hard drive:

We’re almost done, the last thing that needs to be done, is set the system clock:

Finally, reboot into your new system:

If every thing went the way it should, the first screen after boot, should be the login screen:

Login, and enjoy your newly installed system:

Hopefully this run through has put some of the fears to rest, that there isn’t an alternative to the Live CD when it comes to doing an installation.

If you run into any problems, feel free to log on to the U+1 (Quantal Quetzal) sub-forum, your problem may have already been solved.

Welcome to my weekly update, of what is happening in the Ubuntu Forums U+1 sub-forum.

This week there has been some discussion on the reduction of boot times with the latest kernel

Boot time under 12 seconds

Of course boot times are all over the place, so there so far hasn’t really been a consensus of whether boot times are truly shorter or not.:

Theming is broken for many people, there have been some work-a-rounds suggested in this thread:

Ambiance theme doesn’t apply to all apps?

There also seems to be a problem for some, getting WINE installed on Quantal:

Has anyone been able to install WINE?

Although the thread is marked as Solved, some are still having problems.

Some of the forum community members are having a problem running gnome-shell:

Gnome-Shell won’t load anymore, so I’m stuck with Unity

As always, you can drop by the sub-forum, just to say Hi, or if you have a problem, there already may be a solution here

Welcome to another update from the Ubuntu +1 sub-forum. This week there has been a discussion on the affects of udisk2 on the way Quantal deals with usb connected storage devices.

Media – Multiple Launcher entries

There has also been quite a discussion on graphics drivers, both AMD/ATI and Nvidia:

fglrx with kernel 3.4

Starting with 3.5 kernel…

Changes in the latest version of Nautilus has created some discussion, as well as a bug report:

Nautilus 3.5.2 – automatically shortened pathbar/addressbar’s item name

On a different note, Nick Skaggs has asked for help testing the latest iso images in advance of the Alpha 2 release on June 285th, with milestone testing starting on June 25th. Be sure to report your findings on the QA testing tracker

As always, if you have a problem with Quantal, drop by the Sub-forum, as your question may already have been answered.

Most of us had a good experience installing alpha 1, and now we’re looking forward to some breakage since alpha 1 has been released.

You can read about our experiences with the alpha 1 release here:

Alpha 1 Officially Released

There have been several comments on how much better Unity seems to run:

Unity Very Snappy

There was a thread started, that I think is worth keeping an eye on, it concerns ths gnome only version of Quantal:

GNObuntu ?

There is still a discussion going on about the expected future Quantal kernel:

Starting with 3.5 kernel…

There is also an issue that affects some users and wireless with the latest kernel update:

Anyone noticing terrible wireless performance on new 3.4 kernel

This issue seems to have escalated since network-manager was update.

As always, if you have a problem with Quantal, or if you just want to participate in some of the discussions, drop by the Ubuntu +1 (Quantal Quetzal) sub-forum, and join in the fun.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted, because honestly there just isn’t much going on in the sub-forum. With alpha 1 coming on June 7th, there is a bit more activity this week.

There is a dicussion of problems creating a usuable installation using the Startup Disk Creator utility:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1993115

Quite a few forum community members have been having problems reporting bugs, because of a problem with apport, that seems to be fixed now:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1983990

One of our forum community member had a question about using a Live DVD to run Quantal, and do updates:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1993704

As always drop by the Ubuntu +1 (Quantal Quetzal) sub-forum if you are having any problems running Quantal.

This is going to be just a short update, as I guess most of the developers are still suffering from their UDS-Q hangover.

There was a call for testing that went out on Tuesday for PulseAudio 2.0. So far there haven’t been any big problems.

The Software Center, crashing was a problem for quite a few users, fortunately mc4man found a solution, that solved the crashing problem.

We also discussed some of the upcoming changes being proposed for this development cycle.

As always, if you have a problem with Quantal, please drop by the sub-forum as we will be able to help you solve it.

I didn’t post last week, because honestly there isn’t much going on in the development sub-forum. Once UDS-Q is over I expect things to get hot & heavy again.

There was a concern brought up by one of the staff members, about how new users are treated, when they ask a question about a testing version. Usually the question is posted in the wrong place to start with, hopefully by moving the sub-forum to the Main Category section of the forum, will make it easier to find. Invariably the first comment to paraphrase, will be “Why are you using a testing version, from your post count and join date, it doesn’t look like you have enough experience to be running Quantal”

forestpiskie linked to an email on the UK Ubuntu mailing from a new user that was turned off by the reception he got. I’d like to stop this from happening again. We as experienced users should try to determine if the user, is running Quantal because they want to help test it, or if they are using it because they think that it is the latest and greatest.

If the user is running Quantal, because they think it’s the latest and greatest, and have no intention of reporting bugs, we should gently suggest that they will have a better experience using 12.04. If on the other hand, they are running Quantal because they want to help make it better, and are willing to learn, we should encourage them as much as possible.

Always keep in mind we were once newbies too, we have all learned quite a bit by running a development version, and we should pass this knowledge on to new users.

Feel free to drop by the Ubuntu +1 (Quantal Quetzal) sub-forum if you run into any problems.

With the release of 12.04 yesterday, we have opened a new sub-forum for the Quantal Quetzal development cycle. The sub-forum has moved into the Main Support Categories Section of the forum. Quite a few of use have updated our Precise installs to Quantal:

cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=12.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=quantal
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu quantal (development branch)"

Let the breakage begin is a mantra in the testing sub-forum. The Precise development cycle was a bit boring without any major breakage, like in past release cycles, so we are all looking for a bit of excitement this time around.

Even though development doesn’t officially begin until after UDS-Q, updates are coming through already. For those that would like to run a development release, run the following command to update your sources.list to the quantal repositories:

sudo sed -i 's/precise/quantal/g' /etc/apt/sources.list

Then run:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Once you run the above commands, you may run into an error that says The Repositories Have Been Changed. To rectify the error, have a look at arpnaut’s post here

I invite you to drop by our new sub-forum, just to say Hi, or to get help with a problem.

Things are winding down, as the Precise final release gets closer. There are still a few threads of interest showing up among the repeat questions, for instance:

Only one CPU shows on P-4 dual core

There have been a few threads about resource usage in Precise, this is one on a perceived memory leak in Untiy:

Unity memory leak

and another on high cpu usage:

Precise; using high CPU, runs hot, laggy

There is also an interesting discussion on creating .desktop, launchers and quicklists:

.desktop files, Launchers, and Quicklists in 12.04

That’s all for this week, if you have any problems with Precise, drop by Ubuntu +1 (Precise Pangolin), as your question may have already been answered.