As luck would have it, I decided today that I wanted to switch from using the fgrlx proprietary ATI video graphics driver to the preferable open source driver radeon.
Like most of the luck I've had, it was not without a challenge - or with surprises!
When I switched video drivers, my X11 screen was fuzzy. After some research, it appeared that the most appropriate next step was to upgrade the kernel. So I did, and it worked (works). But what about Firefox 4?
Firefox 4 is an amazing upgrade. Little did I know that upgrading to Firefox 4 would transition my state to an X server without any input capabilities - i.e. UPGRADE TO 10.10 - mouse and keyboard not working. Right - nowhere and nohow.
What next? A recovery boot - netroot - to upgrade everything to the "N-stage" of Ubuntu:
apt-get dist-upgrade
A long time later... my machine boots up... and works... but my AWESOME WINDOW MANAGER is GONE!!!!
But wait, this environment is not bad. Wow, its good!
So after enjoying natty for a moment, I found myself wanting AWESOMe back immensely, so I found this, which brought me back to normal gnome, but no awesome. Ugh.
I shouldn't have scorned so easily - its actually not that difficult to get the Lua-energized Awesome window manager cooperating with Gnome in ubuntu 11.xometin aka natty the narwhale.
Or at least it wasn't too bad for me. Here's what I wrote on launchpad:
Albert Lash wrote 2 hours ago: #7 Same here... I upgraded to FF4, then had to upgrade to natty, enjoyed the new GUI for a bit, then needed my awesome wm back, so I logged into Ubuntu Gnome classic from gdm, only to find awesome gone. :-( Hopefully I can figure it out. If I do, I'll post back. If I can't, I'll check back! Albert Lash wrote 2 hours ago: #8 That wasn't so bad... I restarted, chose awesome from the environment menu option list at the bottom of the login screen - that produced awesome, but no gnome, so I restarted, chose Ubuntu Classic - (not the "no effects" choice). Note: I also set awesome as my window manager again with gconf in the midst of all that: https://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Quickly_Setting_up_Awesome_with_Gnome
¥