Linux Is Lovely, Part 11.10

I started this round with Ubuntu a month or two ago, and already we have a new release. I have been getting update notices for a week or so, but I have been putting them off: I don't know if I am ready for another set of problems with Adobe's stuff. This morning though there is a new notice: new version, not just a few patches. I decide to install it. Who knows? Maybe it will fix some of the problems I've been having. Maybe not, but nothing worse than tracking down the root cause of a problem only to find out it's been fixed by some update you haven't installed. So I installed it, and then I filed this notice with Launchpad (don't know if you will be able to see it without registering):

No major problems on Zotac ZBOX. Installation went smoothly and system rebooted successfully on first attempt.

I did notice a couple of things:
- the window that pops up announcing this thing (is it an upgrade or an installation, or an installation of an upgrade?) cannot be resized.
- complete upgrade took between one and two hours. Took one hour (!) just to do the download. I suspect the server of being the bottleneck. Might have been deliberate as this is the first day this thing is available.
- 40 minutes into the one hour download it stopped and asked a question. Something about if I wanted to replace a preferences file. For grins I say show me the differences, and it shows me an encrypted version of the differences between the two files. Really ugly, but mostly a really bad place to ask a question like this. Ask it before you start, or after you have completed the download. Or maybe this was a deliberate attempt to ease the load on the server?
- at one point a terminal window opened and started reporting errors. Something about how it couldn't create such and such a file. Scrolled on and on and on. Infinite number of files would be my guess.
- the terminal window expanded past the bottom edge of the screen. If there had been anything down there I needed to click, I would have been in trouble.
- wanted my password when I rebooted. Does this mean I am logged on as super? Regular login is not supposed to have a password. If I was super, that would be cool, then I wouldn't have to type sudo before every command I issue in the terminal window.

 Now that it's installed I've noticed a couple of other things. Then Firefox menu bar is gone. Don't know if I need it. We shall see. The other thing is a row of icons along the left hand edge of the screen. Since screens are getting wider, it makes sense to put things there, rather than to slice a band off the top or bottom of the screen just to hold a couple of items. Screen space is still valuable, best not to waste it.