Tech Explorer

Yesterday I took a deep breath and migrated my laptop to the latest Ubuntu release, Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). The fact that it is still a beta gave me some concern. In all the time I’ve used Ubuntu I haven’t experienced any major issues, and I wanted to refresh the OS on my laptop anyway, so I took the plunge.

So far everything has been working really well and my faith in the OS was rewarded, everything I’ve wanted to do has just worked.  Except for a few minor issues with, mainly with Java based applications. I put these issues down to Java though, not the underlying OS.

The first issue is with printing, but the workaround I’ve written about before fixed it for me.  The second issue was a display issue that I’ve also written about before.

Essentially the issue comes down to the fact that Java doesn’t play nice when used in conjunction with the Compiz window manager. Unfortunately the workaround I wrote about before doesn’t appear to work all the time.

Fortunately for me I saw this post entitled “Toggle Compiz with Fusion-icon in Ubuntu 8.04“, by Tom on his blog Tombuntu. I found it via the Planet Ubuntu Users feed. With the little Compiz Fusion Icon I can switch between Compiz and Metacity very easily. Java doesn’t have the same issues with Metacity as it does with Compiz.

The “Great Blue Heron” photo was uploaded to Flickr by Thomas Quine and found via the everystockphoto.com search engine.