Switching to Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Alpha 3

As I wrote yesterday, my laptop is running an Ubuntu 9.10 that has basically been around since 7.10 or 8.04 and has been incrementally upgraded through 8.10, 9.04 and lately 9.10. And I have installed and removed a number of programs. Which all means that there must be residual files, that are no longer needed.

The laptop is not a new machine as you can imagine. The battery is getting closer to the end of it\s life cycle as it has maybe 20-25% of it's capacity left giving about 20 mins of standard work (no heavy I/O esp optical drive, not full CPU load).


The hard disc drive is a mere 60 GB and my Ubuntu co-habits with a Windows XP installation as well as the pre-load/recovery partition. All-in-all this leaves just under 20 GB for Ubuntu. As I have 1.5 GB of memory onboard I have allocated just over 1.5 GB for the swap partition so that it is possible to suspend to disc. So that leaves about 18 GB for both the / and /home partitions. This is currently split 6/12 GB which I think I will keep for the time being.

I need the following software packages for my everyday use:

• Internet
• Firefox
• Chromium
• Office/productivity
• Evolution
• OpenOffice
• Programming
• Eclipse
• Android SDK

In addition I need the following programs often enough that I am going to put them on my laptop:

• Graphics
• GIMP
• Internet
• Skype
• Empathy
• Ubuntu One
• XChat
• Sound & Video
• Gnome Subtitles
• NtEd or GNU Denemo
• OpenShot Video Editor
• Pitivi Video Editor
• System Tools
• Virtual Box
• Wine
• Test Drive

Luckily a number of these programmes are already present on the standard Lucid Lynx installation:

• Internet
• Empathy
• Firefox
• Ubuntu One
• Office/Productivity
• OpenOffice
• Evolution
•  Sound & Video
• Pitivi Video Editor

Most of the remaining programmes are available as packages, only the Android SDK is not.

I have been wondering whether I should install Eclipse as a .deb package or from the .tar.gz-ball from the Eclipse web site. I think I will end up installing the Ubuntu .deb package, leaving only the Android SDK to be installed from .tar.gz

I also plan to remove the games.

I am writing this blog on the Live CD of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Alpha 3 and while I have only used it briefly it seems to be working reasonably well.

Before I am going to re/install, I need to make a backup of my important files from my /home.

I will return with a review of Lucid Lynx in a couple of weeks.