In the wee hours of last Sunday morning, I decided to take the plunge and upgrade my copy of Ubuntu Linux. I’d been using the previous major release (7.10) since it came out, eight months ago. I’d wanted to wait and upgrade Mini-mEee to 8.04 first, before subjecting my main work system to it, but that didn’t work out.

There are a lot of improvements, both major and minor, in this version. Compiz, the fancy-graphic-effects system, seems a lot nicer now, as well as fixing at least one odd-looking visual bug. Scanning drives on boot (only needed on occasion) is now shown graphically instead of in text-mode. The Sudoku program is much improved as well (which is nice, since I like puzzling through it on occasion). The audio on my USB expansion bar automatically works now.

There was a major problem with it though. After the upgrade, my Project X test programs wouldn’t run. I spent most of a day trying various things to track the problem down, finally running across a post on the Ubuntu forums that said there was a bug in the closed-source Nvidia driver, and that I could work around it by switching to an older version of it. That required a simple change, and I’m happy with the result.

I’m also happy with the program that I specifically wanted to upgrade for: Avant Window Navigator (AWN). Although it appears to be pure eye-candy, it’s quite useful as well. I’ve replaced the bottom Ubuntu panel on both of my systems with it. My only real complaint about it is that you can’t reposition the bar yet — on my dual-screen system, it appears at the bottom of the upper screen, and I’d like to have it at the bottom of the lower one instead. But that’s apparently scheduled for the next major release.

All in all, a very successful (and useful) upgrade.