Of course they have implemented some new features and applications into Ubuntu. You can refer it to Ubuntu’s web site to learn more about these new features.

Here are some of them.

• Latest version of  Gnome, 2.26. This includes a CD Burning Application.
• Better Boot Performance. They have also changed the design of log-on screen. Instead of brown (ish) color scheme, they have chosen a darker tone close to black.
• New Style for notifications on desktop.

I upgraded my previous version of ubuntu to 9.04 beta.  The problem I had with Ubuntu 8.10 was that wireless manager was not working properly and it took me a while to figure it out.  The process of getting it working was frustrating.  But it didn’t happen with this new beta version.   Maybe it was because of my laptop, which I have to say that Ubuntu looks a lot nicer with good graphics.

Ubuntu has its advantages and disadvantages. All products may not function as they are supposed for all the time and when people encounter problems with Ubuntu, they got discouraged and switch back to Windows. The reason is that it’s not hard to resolve the problems but they think that it is.  That’s simply they are not familiar with the product and they don’t know how to get around.  It’s going to take some time for people to get used to this great product.

Countdown:

Ubuntu Logo

So I immediately upgraded my ubuntu to 8.10. Connecting to the Internet(wireless) is always an issue among the users. I should say “newbie/inexperienced users”. I couldn’t connect to the internet because my wifi driver was disabled. Ubuntu the system itself has not provided me with good information to enable it. It tells you how you can check whether it’s enabled or disabled, and that’s it. If it’s disabled, it doesn’t tell you how to enable it. Anyways, you need to go on to their support forums and see if someone has already posted about the issue you are having and chances are someone already have. So next step would be to see if your product matches with theirs. If it doesn’t match, you keep searching on forums and eventually you will have to post your own topic. Sometimes, you don’t even get a response to your post. This literally can take hours.

This is one of the things that I want to see in ubuntu. They should either make ubuntu come with everything ready to work or they should prepare better documentation for common cases.  Anyhow,  here is what I did to get my wireless working again.

Thanks to “Ayuthia” for his helpful posts.

sudo modprobe -r b43 b44 ssb wl
sudo modprobe ieee80211_crypt_tkip
sudo modprobe wl
sudo modprobe b44
sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

If you are like me, who doesn’t understand much from linux and ubuntu, you are going to need to search the ubuntu forums to find the right piece of code to execute in terminal. It’s pretty much try and fail until you find the right one.

Those five command lines fixed my problem but everytime I reboot ubuntu, it would require me to execute them again and to fix that problem, you need to edit “rc.local” file in the system. To do that;

You need to edit “rc.local” and add following code at the end.

Open terminal and type this
gksudo gedit/etc/rc.local

and add this just before “exit 0″

modprobe -r b43 b44 ssb wl
modprobe ieee80211_crypt_tkip
modprobe wl
modprobe b44
/etc/init.d/networking restart

After you save, you can restart your system. If you need further instructions, you should go ahead and post at ubuntu support forums. Also, here is my product info.
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:0b:00.0
logical name: eth1
version: 01
serial: 00:16:cf:71:b1:f1
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl ip=192.168.1.101 latency=0 module=wl multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg

As said, different devices require different installations. So good luck on searching the forums.

First thing you will notice that ubuntu has a new default background image.  First image is the new background.  Rest are just wallpapers that I found in background folder in ubuntu. This is also an upportunity for me to test Lightbox plugin I just installed.

To see these images in full size, just click on one of them and plugin should should take care of the rest. You can also use your array keys in your keybord to switch one to another.