Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” upgrade notes

As experienced computer users know, the fresh-released versions of products are typically not very stable and reliable. It takes a few months (Typically until the x.1 version is released) for the product to really stabilize and become production-ready. This also seems to be true for Free and Open-Source software, though the maturing rate seems to be faster.

Knowing that, I typically wait a couple of months after an Ubuntu release before I take the time to upgrade. When it comes to Hardy Heron, the latest version of Ubuntu, a further reason not to upgrade was provided by the fact that up until now it didn’t include a stable version of Firefox.

I finally decided to take the time and upgrade the Ubuntu version on my personal home computer yesterday. The upgrade didn’t went as smoothly as I hoped it would. Most of the issues can be blamed on the manual tweaks I’ve made to my system. Not all, however.

Below is a list of the issues I’ve encountered during and after the upgrade, and the solutions I came up with (when applicable).

I got a letter from Amazon/Audible

Having heard them being promoted aggressively on almost all the Podcasts I frequent, and having recognized the practical comfort of audiobooks, I’ve been wondering about purchasing some audiobooks from Audible. However, I’ve heard that Audible uses DRM, even worse, they mandate the use of DRM even when the book author wishes otherwise. I find this to be unacceptable.

Therefore I was happy to take the opportunity offered by this page to make my voice heard.

I’ve followed the instructions on the page and and send a message to Amazon stating that while I’ll be happy to purchase audiobooks from Audible, I will not spend my money on such books if they are encumbered by DRM technology that by its very nature will limit my choice of audio players and operating systems (on the very least it will most probably not support the cheap mp3-only players on the market).

Today I got a reply from Amazon, I’ve posted the full text below.

The value of source code

While this article cites some valid, and rather well known and understood reasons for one to prefer open source products over closed-source ones, for me the value in source code is in far simpler reasoning:

Given the following facts:

1. All software today is released with bugs, even ones that have been discovered during the development process and are well known to the developers.
2. Software vendors are unwilling to commit to the applicability of their software products to any task, indeed they are usually not even willing to commit that no harm will come to the software`s user from using it to the purpose for which it was made.

It is clear to me that the only means left for a consumer of software to guarantee some kind of long-term value in the software for oneself is to have the source code, and therefore be able to adapt or have it adapted to one’s purpose without being dependent upon the whims of the original vendor.