I'm running Kubuntu on a few machines:
1) Ancient Sony laptop: P3, shared-memory 828-based video, 512MB RAM (my travel lappy)
2) AMD 64 4000+, 2GB RAM, 512MB nVidia 8400GS, 2x 256MB nVidia 5500 (my work PC with some fairly unusual setup)
3) Intel C2D E8400, 4GB RAM, 512MB nVidia 9800GT (my home PC, dual-boot Windows for gaming)
#1: Lappy - CLEAN install
This one had been running on Hardy because soon after, xorg dropped the i810 driver and it simply broke video on that laptop. Lucid is the first one where it works again, so I wiped it clean and reinstalled from scratch without a hitch. It actually feels a bit faster than Hardy, though I had problems with that "Semantic Desktop" crud using up all CPU. So I removed that, now it all works fine. The one thing that gave me headaches was the ZyXEL wireless card. Until I figured out I needed to install a proprietary firmware package...
#2: Home PC - CLEAN install
I expected trouble with this one: It's got a SATA SSD and an old IDE HD. Windows and Linux are both installed on the IDE, the SSD only holds games. However, Jaunty and Karmic both blew that up. The SSD was seen as primary, and as a result Windows would not boot unless I did some Grub rearranging. Lucid however installed Grub in a way that actually worked out of the box. Thanks to the nVidia proprietary drivers, Plymouth didn't work well from the get-go. Since I generally despise graphical loaders anyway, no big deal. Disabled it, problem solved. I want to see what happens when the system boots.
#3: Work PC - UPGRATE ONLY
This one was trouble. During upgrade, the upgrade manager crashed with an obscure script error, leaving me with a half-installed system. "Thankfully" that wasn't the first time I encountered anything like that, so I did a quick "apt-get -f install", "update-initramfs -u" and "update-grub"... rebooted, all's fine.
One month later...
I've switched to PulseAudio on all my machines because it simply works better for me - in most cases. One area where it never worked right was Wine, and Lucid fixed that. It works flawlessly for me. Aside from the firmware prob on the lappy, I was particularly impressed by the SATA/IDE combo working without me doing anything.
So far I've not found much that doesn't work. For the lappy, it's a god-sent to be able to be updated again. The home PC is mainly used for telecommuting, so it connects to the office VPN via PPTP, mounts the remote shares via SSHFS and it all works flawlessly. The semantic desktop crap annoys the hell out of me, so I might kill it for good. Same for KBluetooth - I don't need it, but can't just remove it (remove tries to totally take out the desktop entirely).
The work PC is iffy insofar as it runs 6 screens with 2 independent login terminals (each with their own keyboard and mouse). That has caused probs in the past, but it went well enough. I expect someday it'll fail. However, it works.
One gripe is the still-abysmal knetworkmanager. I've so far not been able to set a static IP on it. I always have to edit the interface file directly.
Another gripe is the generally sorry state of Linux sound. On my home PC I have multiple inputs and outputs. Which program uses which is very VERY hard to configure. Even most sound programs don't support selecting the output specifically, including Amarok. That's a sorry state of affairs indeed.
Then there is keyboard support. On my home PC and on the lappy, khotkeys doesn't work. At all. On my work PC it does. Why? Don't know yet. All the special shortcut keys on my home keyboard also do not work. I know how to fix that, but haven't gotten around it as without khotkeys it won't do me any good anyway.
Then this semantic desktop stuff... I've listened to the excited presentations, and color me stupid - I cannot see one single possible benefit for it. At all. Right now all it does is eat up CPU and IO resources.
Overall, Lucid works about as good as Karmic, better in some areas.
1) Ancient Sony laptop: P3, shared-memory 828-based video, 512MB RAM (my travel lappy)
2) AMD 64 4000+, 2GB RAM, 512MB nVidia 8400GS, 2x 256MB nVidia 5500 (my work PC with some fairly unusual setup)
3) Intel C2D E8400, 4GB RAM, 512MB nVidia 9800GT (my home PC, dual-boot Windows for gaming)
#1: Lappy - CLEAN install
This one had been running on Hardy because soon after, xorg dropped the i810 driver and it simply broke video on that laptop. Lucid is the first one where it works again, so I wiped it clean and reinstalled from scratch without a hitch. It actually feels a bit faster than Hardy, though I had problems with that "Semantic Desktop" crud using up all CPU. So I removed that, now it all works fine. The one thing that gave me headaches was the ZyXEL wireless card. Until I figured out I needed to install a proprietary firmware package...
#2: Home PC - CLEAN install
I expected trouble with this one: It's got a SATA SSD and an old IDE HD. Windows and Linux are both installed on the IDE, the SSD only holds games. However, Jaunty and Karmic both blew that up. The SSD was seen as primary, and as a result Windows would not boot unless I did some Grub rearranging. Lucid however installed Grub in a way that actually worked out of the box. Thanks to the nVidia proprietary drivers, Plymouth didn't work well from the get-go. Since I generally despise graphical loaders anyway, no big deal. Disabled it, problem solved. I want to see what happens when the system boots.
#3: Work PC - UPGRATE ONLY
This one was trouble. During upgrade, the upgrade manager crashed with an obscure script error, leaving me with a half-installed system. "Thankfully" that wasn't the first time I encountered anything like that, so I did a quick "apt-get -f install", "update-initramfs -u" and "update-grub"... rebooted, all's fine.
One month later...
I've switched to PulseAudio on all my machines because it simply works better for me - in most cases. One area where it never worked right was Wine, and Lucid fixed that. It works flawlessly for me. Aside from the firmware prob on the lappy, I was particularly impressed by the SATA/IDE combo working without me doing anything.
So far I've not found much that doesn't work. For the lappy, it's a god-sent to be able to be updated again. The home PC is mainly used for telecommuting, so it connects to the office VPN via PPTP, mounts the remote shares via SSHFS and it all works flawlessly. The semantic desktop crap annoys the hell out of me, so I might kill it for good. Same for KBluetooth - I don't need it, but can't just remove it (remove tries to totally take out the desktop entirely).
The work PC is iffy insofar as it runs 6 screens with 2 independent login terminals (each with their own keyboard and mouse). That has caused probs in the past, but it went well enough. I expect someday it'll fail. However, it works.
One gripe is the still-abysmal knetworkmanager. I've so far not been able to set a static IP on it. I always have to edit the interface file directly.
Another gripe is the generally sorry state of Linux sound. On my home PC I have multiple inputs and outputs. Which program uses which is very VERY hard to configure. Even most sound programs don't support selecting the output specifically, including Amarok. That's a sorry state of affairs indeed.
Then there is keyboard support. On my home PC and on the lappy, khotkeys doesn't work. At all. On my work PC it does. Why? Don't know yet. All the special shortcut keys on my home keyboard also do not work. I know how to fix that, but haven't gotten around it as without khotkeys it won't do me any good anyway.
Then this semantic desktop stuff... I've listened to the excited presentations, and color me stupid - I cannot see one single possible benefit for it. At all. Right now all it does is eat up CPU and IO resources.
Overall, Lucid works about as good as Karmic, better in some areas.
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