Yesterday the Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” release candidate was released. I’m happy to say it doesn’t suck. My two biggest gripes with Ubuntu were the shoddy implementation of pulseaudio and hard drive heat issues with my laptop.
Well, the latter hasn’t been fixed per se, I just finally realized it was due to a power management change early this year. Setting hdparm -B 128 from Ubuntu’s default of 254 brought temperatures down to an acceptable level (no more than 50C idle @ 128 versus 58C idle at 254). Making setting permanent was as simple as setting apm = 128 in /etc/hdparm.conf. Silly me for not trying hard enough earlier.
And finally, I no longer have to fight with or disable pulseaudio, for now it actually works out of the box. As opposed to fiddling with config files before saying “screw it” and purging it from my system, now it takes all of four clicks for my 4.1 surround sound to be recognized. There are some things in which I’m willing to devote hours tinkering with before it’s tailored to my needs and working properly. Sound is not one of those things.
Also new with 9.10 is the replacement of SCIM by iBus. iBus doesn’t annoy me like SCIM did. This is good.
That is all.
