Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Upgrading an old Compaq Ipaq from Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger to 8.10 Intrepid Ibex

First time here? Check out the site's "greatest hits" or read a post from the archives. Feel free to leave a comment or ask a question, and consider subscribing to the latest posts via RSS or e-mail. Thanks for visiting!

« The Weekly Source Code 37 - Geolocation/... | Main | Christmas Cards Made Easy - Shutterfly, ... »

Upgrading an old Compaq Ipaq from Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger to 8.10 Intrepid Ibex

Posted in Musings.

I've got an old Compaq Ipaq that I gave my then 10 year old niece to play with. I put Ubuntu 5.10 "Breezy Badger" on it. Fast forward to today, and she wants it refreshed. It hasn't been on the Internet for 3 years so it doesn't have any updates. I remember years ago that Ubuntu had an update manager so I figured it'd be pretty straight forward. It wasn't really, but it was manageable.

It took a minute to remember that Ubuntu has LTS (Long Term Support) versions, and then it has intermediate versions. I could have just paved her machine, but she'd customized a lot of it, and I didn't feel like the hassle of starting from scratch.

You can upgrade from any version to the next LTS easily, then hop between LTS major versions. That means I needed to run three upgrades:

5.1 -> 6.06.2 LTS
6.06.2 LTS->8.04.1
8.04.1->8.10

First I updated her /etc/apt/sources.list file and changed every "breezy" to "dapper."

An hour later, I was on 6.06. Reboot. Then I used the Update Manager to get me to 8.04…churn churn churn. Then Reboot. Then Update Manager to 8.10, hour later, and she was fully up to date.

I then added all the Edubuntu educational applications from a downloaded and burned CD. Now, to figure out why the sound no longer works. ;)

Posted at 2008-12-02 12:38 AM by Scott
Comments [12]
Permalink

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 2:12:04 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

So how's performance? (comparatively)

Wait... don't you work for Microsoft?

Fowl

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 2:16:26 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

The perf is about the same. I didn't notice anything bad or good. I DID notice the sound card died as they moved from ALSA to PulseAudio.

Scott Hanselman

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 3:19:10 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

All those upgrades and only sound broke?

I'm impressed in the sense that I would have expected network card, graphics driver, IDE chipset support and a few other basic things to go as well :)

Although I must say its amusing that PulseAudio is the New New hotness. I remember when ESD was dropped for ALSA, now they're back to the ESD model, rebranded as PulseAudio.

Jarasu

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 4:56:17 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Sound in 8.1 is a cluster----. But other than that, I've really been happy with it (more so than 8.04).

http://kentb.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 5:17:41 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Its good to see a Microsoft employee openly admit that they have used other operating systems. Next thing you know someone from Microsoft may admit that they use google and have a blackberry...LOL

I always enjoy reading your blog. Keep up the good work.

Mike Ceranski

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 11:49:07 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Jarasu - Heh. I'm not sure how much more broke, but at least I didn't have to reconfigure X *again* for picking the wrong resolution.

KentB - Yes, there are no words to describe how truly epically screwed up sound is in 8.10. I would have stayed on 8.04 if I'd known. I'm shocked that we can't get SOUND right in this day. At least they know it.

MikeC - ;)

Scott Hanselman

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 1:50:08 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Scott, can you please specify what model the Compaq Ipaq was? Thank you.

Martin C

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 4:09:42 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I've had problems with the sound in 8.10 on all of my machines that have Intel based audio. There are some workarounds in the forums if you search on it, but nothing that's worked for me so far.

Ryan Brady

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 4:35:42 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I must be the only one with sound that worked out of the box ;). Heck, even the advanced visual effects worked on the (at least) 2 generations ago integrated Intel GFX!

Wireless, on the other hand needed a Internet connection to install the restricted drivers... What is the old adage about the chicken and the egg again?...

Fowl

Wednesday, December 03, 2008 9:49:14 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Scott,

What sort of CPU does that old Ipaq have? I have an old Windows 98 PC that my kids would like to use and I want to repave it with a more robust OS. I've always wanted to install Ubuntu and I would like to know hwo ti behaves on older machines.

Chris Miller

Wednesday, December 03, 2008 10:26:55 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Chris - It's a PIII 400Mhz with 384Megs of RAM. Very modest. Works fine.

Scott Hanselman

Wednesday, December 03, 2008 10:34:02 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Thanks Scott, that's pretty close to the specs on the boat anchor that I'm going to repave.

Chris Miller

OpenID
Please login with either your OpenID above, or your details below.
Name
E-mail	(will show your gravatar icon)
Home page

	Remember Me
Comment (Some html is allowed: `a@href@title, b, blockquote@cite, em, i, pre, strike, strong, sub, super, u`) where the @ means "attribute." For example, you can use <a href="" title=""> or <blockquote cite="Scott">.

Live Comment Preview