el rinconcito

My beloved little yaller (yellow) Sylvania Meso netbook came with Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) Netbook Remix pre-installed. Just the other day, I was wondering WTF (where the f***) is an upgrade for that? Well, sure as shootin', the 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) just came out for it, too.

With the Netbook Remix, it won't auto upgrade like the standard *buntus will. You have to wipe and reinstall. I was worried about wiping a fully customized OEM install and replacing it with the generic download of 9.04, but everything actually works A-OK.

It was fast and easy. Here are the basic staps I used:

• I copied my home directory to a USB flash drive (one of these days I'll put it on it's own partition).
  
• I downloaded the updated Netbook Remix and wrote it to a flash drive using these instructions.
  
• Installed it.
  
• Copied my home directory back.
  
• Re-fetched my favorite apps.
  

Pros of the upgrade:

• WiFi works tons better. It was a buggy pain in the ass before.
  
• The desktop is very pretty, though it's Gnome and I tend to love KDE more.
  
• Everything runs fast and like a dream, as usual.
  

Cons of the upgrade:

• Windows don't always maximize correctly.
  
• Sound recorded from the microphone is herky-jerky.
  

Oh well, it will give me something to tweak. All in all the upgrade was painless and a lot of fun.

Here's the usual screenshot showing some favorite net apps. It's clickable for greater detail. Select "all sizes" after landing on the flickr page.