Upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid

I upgraded my laptop (Lenovo x300) to Ubuntu 8.10 a few weeks ago. The rumour was that power management was better, and I was longing for a kernel that handled the sound on the x300 without a re-compile of the driver every time I updated the kernel.

The upgrade went smoothly, although it took a very long time. The default Ubuntu mirror for Canada seems to be very slow these days. (I've since switched to http://gpl.savoirfairelinux.net/pub/mirrors/ubuntu. It seems a lot faster.)

Two things I've had to work on. First, suspend and resume screws up the wireless until you add a line to /etc/pm/config.d/00sleep_module. First, you have to figure out which driver you're using for wireless. Do

lshw | more

Look for the line that says "wireless" by typing "/wireless" to the more prompt. Then look for the next line with "driver" in it. In my case it says "driver=iwlagn". So now edit the file and add the required line:

sudo gedit /etc/pm/config.d/00sleep_module

Add the following at the very end:

SUSPEND_MODULES="iwlagn"

The other problem was more mysterious. CBC Radio's website wouldn't play after upgrading to 8.10. It had worked for my in 8.04 after some fooling around, but I couldn't get it to work. I had given up after wasting almost a whole day on the problem. After a few software upgrades, it started to work. For the record, I'm using gnome-mplayer to play Windows Media Player material.

Geek Humour

Two jokes that are just so impossibly geeky that I have to repeat them. My apologies if they're so old you've seen them already.

There are 10 types of people in this world: Those who understand binary numbers and those who don't.

And

Heisenberg is speeding down the highway and is pulled over by the police. The officer comes up to his window and says, "Do you know how fast you were going sir?" Heisenberg replies, "No. But I know where I am."

Ba-da-bing.