The stable version of the newest Ubuntu version Gutsy Gibbon will be released in October 2007. I could not wait that long however. And since the third alpha of Ubuntu 7.10 was recently released, I figured let's give it a shot. Testing alpha releases (especially from Ubuntu ) is like looking into the crystal ball of technology. This is how I upgraded and got compiz working again.

 

If you're going to upgrade to Gutsy checkout:  5 tips for upgrading any ubuntu. Or, if you're running compiz-fusion check out how to upgrade to gutsy with compiz-fusion!

 

This article is not an how to, it's a description of my struggle to get Gutsy (that's still under development, and will be for the next 4 months) running on my system. Please do not just copy & paste this and think it will work for you as well, because you can seriously mess up your system. This is intended to inspire and help others who are experienced users and also interested in running ALPHA releases to get a sneak peak into the future.

The upgrade

10:30 - preparations

I have a lot of custom apt sources (automatix, beryl, nvidia drivers, codecs, fonts) but these are all Feisty specific, so first I have to backup my customized sources.list:

sudo cp -af /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.feistybackup

And then reset it to a normal Feisty list:

sudo echo "# normal ubuntu
deb http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty-security main restricted universe multiverse
" > /etc/apt/sources.list

Now let's make sure my current Feisty release is up to date before upgrading to the next level:

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude dist-upgrade

"No need to upgrade any packages". Alright.

 

10:50 - let's do this!

Time for the next big step, this will actually start the upgrade:

gksudo "update-manager -d"

It tells me there is an Ubuntu 7.10 version available, do I want to upgrade? Hell yea!

Update Manager warned me about removing some packages (like desktop-effects, beryl, etc). I just clicked Remove.

 

11:08 - the moment of thruth

The system wanted to reboot. Fair enough

 

11:10 - apport

I'm getting 2 errors, I submitted the problem information to Ubuntu to help them with their bugfixes (this system works very snappy and un-intrusive, that's one noticeable improvement already).

 

11:11 - the moment of thruth v2.0

I wondered if these errors will be here next time I reboot. Let's try this now.
Rebooting.

 

11:14 - easy fix

The error about the gnome-panel has been automagically fixed! Great!

Now only the restricted-manager error remains. Rest of the system seems to be fine on first sight. So I ran the restricted-manager program from within a terminal to see what went wrong:

sudo restricted-manager

And I googled on UnboundLocalError: local variable 'modules' referenced before assignment. Seems this is a known bug, with a fix in progress. They also offered a patch, it just didn't make it to the repositories yet. So I applied the patch by editting /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/RestrictedManager/lrm_driver.py and adding

modules=[]

to line 61 like this:

Done. Rebooting.

 

11:28 - victory!

The restricted-manager error is gone. Now lets try out my new Gutsy Gibbon! First thing I'm curious about is if I can get the eyecandy to work (compiz or "Desktop Effects" comes standard with Gutsy I thought).

 

11:30 - the moment of thruth v3.0

I found a new and improved menu item "Appearance" with several tabs to manage the entire Look & Feel of Ubuntu, it's got a tab for Desktop Effects, and a button, Enable Desktop Effects. Could it be this easy?

Apparently not :), so let's see what packages provide this gtk-window-decorator that we're missing

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install apt-file
sudo apt-file update
sudo apt-file search gtk-window-decorator

It reports it's in the package compiz-gnome. Alright, let's install it:

sudo aptitude install compiz-gnome

It reports the package is broken. And that I should downgrade it, this could have something to do with my customized repositories I told you about earlier, because as you can see by the "~3v1" suffix, my packages come from the Treviño’s Ubuntu Feisty Repository:

 

11:39 - package conflicts

Desktop Effects still doesn't work, maybe I there still are more packages from the custom Treviño’s Ubuntu Feisty Repository on my system:

Yep, that's pretty much my own dumb stupid fault. Lets remove all of them

sudo aptitude purge beryl-core beryl-plugins beryl-plugins-data \
beryl-settings beryl-settings-bindings compiz-config-gnome \
compiz-fusion-plugins-extra compiz-fusion-plugins-main \
compiz-fusion-plugins-unsupported compiz-gtk \
compizconfig-settings-manager emerald kiba-dock kiba-plugins \
kiba-settings kino libakamaru0 libberyldecoration0 \
libberylsettings0 libcompizconfig-backend-gconf libcompizconfig0 \
libdecoration0 libemeraldengine0 python-compizconfig

And reinstall the packages I think I need from the official Gutsy repository:

sudo aptitude install compiz compiz-fusion-plugins-extra \
compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-gnome compiz-plugins \
gnome-compiz-manager libcompizconfig-backend-gconf 

 

11:50 - still no good?

Ok, that worked perfectly. But now when I click the Enable Desktop Effects button, it is still generating a crash report:

 

12:00 - xorg.conf

I'm not going to click on Enable Desktop Effects anymore, because that hides a lot of errors. Let's just run compiz it from a terminal window:

/usr/bin/compiz.real --ignore-desktop-hints \
--indirect-rendering --replace ccp

It's giving me errors like: /usr/bin/compiz.real: No GLXFBConfig for depth 32

But wait, I've seen this before, back in the days with Beryl we could fix this with 2 rules in the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Under my nvidia device section, I'll add 2 options:

Option         "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
Option         "DisableGLXRootClipping" "True"

And I'm giving the system a reboot, just in case... That did !!!

 

12:02 - victory v2.0!!

Awesome! My Gibbon is showing off her first Desktop Effects, shake it baby!

 

A-OKAY! :D

Got Gutsy working, with the oh-so important eyecandy. And did I mention that it's all working smoothly on my 2 monitors? That's right, dualheaded without any problems. I'm going to play around a little more.

12:20 - freezes

The system is hanging for a second, every half minute or so. Very annoying. I'm going to run

top

From a terminal to see if I can find out which process causes this.

12:27 - die, beagle

It seems to be beagled. Beagle is a program that indexes your instant messages, emails, Open Office documents etc, so that you can search & find them very fast. That's cool, but this version seems to be indexing too aggressively for me, so for the time being I'm going to kill it:

killall -9 beagled

 

12:50 - conclusion

That worked brilliantly! With Beagle being dead now,  the system is very responsive, feels snappy and I can get back to work :)

I have to say I'm quite happy with the system (for) now. As you may have noticed it's not a seamless upgrade, but that was to be expected since the stable release it not until October.

But hey, if you're a bit into Ubuntu like me and you're not running a production machine, these findings may help you when trying Gutsy as well!

If I run into strange or cool things after this upgrade, I'll update this article in the aftermath. Cheers!

 

The aftermath

update #1 - I like the new Gimp 2.3!

It's got a lot of improvements like a new resize method, and the general look & feel have improved greatly.

update #2 - still going strong!

I've got Gutsy Gibbon running for a day now and everything is still working like a charm. The Desktop Effects are simple but nice, and rock solid.

update #3 - first real problem since the installation

After Gutsy has been running very smoothly and snappy the last couple of days, I figured it was time for a reboot. But after I logged in, the system pretty much halted. I could still enter the console however with CTRL+ALT+F2, and it was only after I killed compiz.real:

killall -9 compiz.real

and switch back to Gnome with ALT+F7, that the system continued to boot. Then when I turned Desktop Effects off, and then on however, compiz just ran normally again. Strange..

update #4 - font size

The fontsize in Gnome is very big, but in Firefox it's very small!!. I fixed this using the DPI settings in both applications. In Firefox I type:

about:config

Then in Filter I type:

layout.css.dpi

I click on that setting and change -1 to 0.
This conforms the Firefox DPI setting to Gnome's. Now let's change the Gnome DPI setting in the System menu under Appearance, Fonts, Details. I set it to a Resolution of 86 dots per inch which is fine for me, but may be different for everybody. Default is 96 I believe.
Seems to be a known bug by the way.