Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 1

Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 1 came out last week and I’ve had some time to test it. From what I have noticed, the biggest change is the new black interface. It looks nice but still needs some tweaks to be perfect. (like on the Update Manager the progress bar makes it so the text can’t be read very easy)

My favorite part is you can run it on Virtual PC without a lot of effort. Here’s how you do it:

1. Download Ubuntu from here: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/alpha1
2. Install it on a virtual machine
3. When it starts for the first time and it says GRUB loading press ESC for the menu or something like that, press ESC fast
4. Press e to edit the options
5. Select kernel and press e again
6. Type vga=791 clock=pit
7. Press ENTER
8. Press b to boot
9. It will take a while to boot but with it does you will see a colorful screen. Press CTRL-ALT-F1
10. Now it’s time to fix the display, type sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
11. Scroll down until you see the line that says Screen
12. Add the line below Device: DefaultDepth               16
13. Press CTRL-O (the letter O)
14. Press CTRL-X
15. Now to save the options we added at startup type: sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst
16. Scroll to the part below ## ## END DEFAULT OPTIONS ## ## and where it says kernel. It should be the first one. Go to the end of that and type vga=791 clock=pit
17. Press CTRL-O (the letter O)
18. Press CTRL-X
19. Type sudo reboot
20. This time when it boots, do not press anything. If you did everything right, it should boot just fine.