Ubuntu 8.04 First Impressions Follow Up

In my last post, I stated that there were some issues with the latest release of Ubuntu, namely 8.04 or Hardy Heron. But all is not lost!

The first fix I got working was the "no sound in flash" issue. Granted some people may feel that's not a "show stopper" error or problem or issue, but you do have to admit, it is a pretty big issue. Anyway, to state again: HERE IS THE FIX FOR NO SOUND IN FLASH FOR UBUNTU 8.04 HARDY HERON:


$ sudo apt-get install libflashsupport


I then restarted Firefox and viola, sound in flash worked.

Now the second issue that I had was a show stopper. The issue I had was my wireless didn't work, and wasn't recognized by Ubuntu. That is a big issue if you ask me, and it turns out other people had similar issues as well. When I trolled the forums trying to find a fix for my wireless, there were a few threads dealing with this issue and they suggested a couple of things. One (which I did not do) was to install the 'ndiswrapper', another was to install some backports, which I did do. To do this, enter this following command:


$ sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-hardy


After I did that, I restarted and my wireless STILL didn't work, so I did some more trolling. One person in the forums suggested that perhaps the wireless had become disabled in the BIOS. Hey, these are computers we're talking about here, stranger things have happened. Anyway, I rebooted again and double and triple checked my BIOS to make sure that my wireless enabled, and it was.

So after that, went back to the forums and did more reading. One person said his wireless was also disabled, and he re-enabled it by just hitting his wireless on/off button on his laptop during boot. So this morning I said "Why not? What can it hurt?". Rebooted, checked BIOS again to make sure the wireless was indeed enabled, and then just kept hitting my wireless on/off button. No lights turned on UNTIL I got to the main login screen for Ubuntu. I thought "OK, maybe just the light came on", so I logged in waited for everything to load and then clicked on the Network Manager and selected my wireless connection and it connected. To test, I unplugged the wired connection and proceeded to surf the net.

This post is proof that my wireless is working, because if my wireless is not working, then how the hell am I connected to my server and entering this text?

All in all, there are a few issues this release of Ubuntu has, one I would call a show stopper which is pretty major in my opinion. But on the whole, the fix was kind of retarded, but it works and I'll take it. Everything else about Hardy is awesome. The new version of Gnome is fantastic and it seems like all the software, backend and user programs, have been updated to the newest (or very recent) versions. I know I'm going to continue to enjoy this release for a while, and since it's an LTS (long term support) release, then it's going to be supported for the next three years.