Skype

Skype was having video problems.
Video was transmitting with no problem, but I could only see a white rectangle.

Problem was a conflict with Cairo-dock. This needs to be run in non-GL mode.
System/Preferences/Start-up programmes.
Edit the command for Cairo dock from cairo-dock -o to cairo-dock -c.

Now it works fine.

Upgrade from Karmic to Lucid

Fairly painless upgrade. Basically it all just worked, including wireless settings. Very impressive.

First problem - Mozilla Sunbird was classed as obsolete and removed. This meant I had no access to my todo list. On the other hand, when I installed Lightning into Thunderbird, it found the todo list I had lost access to last month on the last upgrade when Lightning was made incompatible with the version of Thunderbird I had. I store calendars online using Google, but there doesn't seem to be a todo list option there so the list has to be stored locally.

Solution - download Sunbird from the Mozilla website.
- this picked up my previous profile
- export the calendar with the todo list embedded
- open lightning and import the .ics file, into the offline calendar.

Future proof - export Lightning profile when backing up.

Email scanning

Having installed ClamAV and ClamTK, I was disappointed they don't provide email scanning for Thunderbird.

Installing the clamdrib extension for Thunderbird and following the instructions here mean that every email that is previewed or opened gets scanned. Note - incoming emails don't get checked until you try and open them.

Not perfect, but better than nothing.

Rhythmbox

So it turns out that Rhythmbox stores its files here:

~\.local\share\rhythmbox

I have my playlists back again!

Rebuild to install Ubuntu 9.10

This all went very smoothly.
First - completed a backup of the entire home directory (including all hidden files/folders) onto our new external hard drive.

Repartitioned to separate \ and \home. Given \ 50GB and \home about 100GB I think. This will make future upgrades/rebuilds easier I hope.

Fresh install of Ubuntu 9.10. using the dvd from Linux Format 127
Used cable to connect to network to get updates, including the Broadcom wireless driver. This didn't work 6 months ago, but does now. Other hardware driver used is the recommended NVidia one.

Copied home directory back - omitting most hidden files to start with. Need to copy .mozilla and .mozilla-thunderbird to get back firefox and thunderbird settings. Also in .gnome2 the folder for fspot was copied (no need to retag photos!) and a couple of others.

Used solutions from previous posts to sort out correct sound output to headphone jack, installation of flock browser.

Installed Cairo/glx dock and the compiz settings manager. Tweaked desktop settings to make it look pretty.