lessons learned from upgrading to ubuntu 11.10

remember,  i upgraded to ubuntu 11.10 and was not happy with it. well, you learn from your mistakes.
i faced many issues like app installations not working, forced to use unity (there's nothing wrong with unity, it's just runs little slow on my old laptop). i couldn't get my macbuntu working on 11.10. i hated the slow boot (i googled, boot time has increased), my eclipse didn't work with adt, and the overall experience was slow.

i switched to xfce looking for performance, it looks little boring except for the cpu and mem usgae bars on top, they really look cool to me. it's little irritating as even for screenshot i've to go to programs and pull out screenshot utility and then take one instead of just pressing prtsc.

see my ugly responsive desktop.

desktop in xfce

another look at my desktop

as you can see, i'm trying to switch to lxde, i really don't have idea about that but i'm trying everything to make my desktop look cooler. i tried gnome3 but couldn't get rid of unity launcher.

i'm going to logout and then swithc in lxde and add some screen shots again.

lxde is blazing fast.
            i've never seen such a fast login on any linux desktop environment.
                                                                                                                    -aakash (23rd oct, 2011)


it's totally similar to what i had in windows (which is given in its review). it's bit uglier like xfce but way faster than anything. i'll try to look for theme file for making it look cool.

for now it looks like this

lot like windows but blazing fast desktop environment: lxde!

well, here's the list of things i learned from all this upgrade from 11.04 to 11.10

1. wait for some time after the next release is available. don't just update on the day of launch, it's not apple!
2. google about what things work and what not. your computer as you would have customized for years with apps and theme might behave abnormally with next update. wait for sometimes and let people review and check out. you can review on your own using virtual machines (if you have one and post about them). remember, it's a community thing.
3. specifically for themes: check compatibility and issues before upgrading. gtk+ based theme work most of the times but still confirm.
4. source links and keys (the way ubuntu manages software center) might get corrupt due to upgrade errors, after upgrade regenerate all keys for sources.
5. experimenting is good but not when you can't have downtime. i learned it the hard way. i still look for close button on left.
6. try to keep yourself in ubuntu lts builds. they are the most stable ones. ;)

let me know your experiences of upgrading to ubuntu 11.10.