Ubuntu 7.10

Last week, Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon” was released. I started the upgrade procedure yesterday.

Now, the upgrade procedure is one of the things I have a serious gripe with about Ubuntu. You can’t just start it upgrading and then leave it for the duration. You actually have to be there the entire time, in case some stupid confirmation dialog comes up asking you if you want to (for example) overwrite a custom configuration file (If you have a customised apache2 configuration file, for example I’ve added mod_dav_svn to mine). If a confirmation dialog box pops up, it actually halts the entire installation process while it waits for you to select an option.

What Ubuntu really needs is a checkbox that says “Do not interrupt me during this upgrade” (or something like that). The default options should be enough. For example, in the case of a customised configuration file, it could save the updated file to config_file.new and leave you a message at the end of the installation telling you to check it.

If they absolutely *must* have confirmation dialogs, could they make it “non-blocking”, i.e. the installation will continue? Or at least, put all the steps which require confirmation in one place, i.e. at the beginning / end? Leaving Ubuntu to upgrade overnight or during the day, only to find out that it requires confirmation, is incredibly annoying and I think deserves special attention.

Aaaanyway. Apart from that, Ubuntu 7.10 seems to be pretty good so far. They’ve given it another visual makeover, and the new features list looks pretty decent (for example, auto-configuration of printers).

So if you’re a Ubuntu user, there’s no reason not to upgrade! The only thing to mention is, your system will probably run at 100% CPU usage for a while after upgrading. This is due to a service called tracker, which is a file indexer. It initially has to run through all of your files, which takes up the time. Once the files have all been scanned, however, I think it doesn’t use much CPU. Just in case you’re wondering why your CPU is being hammered after upgrading!