Updating the Heron

I blogged a bit back about upgrading and installing Ubuntu's Hardy Heron and Mandriva 2008.1. I rather passed over the Ubuntu upgrade but as some issues have appeared, I'll make some comment just in case anyone else has these issues.

• Initially after the upgrade I was seeing the machine pausing and I was having to kill X in order to get a response. I dug a bit more deeply and discovered that there were some rather large log files in /var/log/gdm - I've using the ATI graphics driver and to solve the issue I''m including these lines in my xorg.conf file:

  option "no_dri" "yes"

  see the discussion here
• I was also having issues with sound due to the upgrade - sound is muted when I start up and I was finding that plugging in the headphones didn't mute the laptop speakers - wonderful for educating (or worrying - see my last.fm playlist!) my colleagues. This is on a HP nx6325 laptop For the moment I'm making sure my laptop has the headphones plugged in when I boot - not idea but it works for me! Googling suggests that a manual compile and install of the latest version of alsa may fix this. In the sound properties (gnome or kmix)I'm not seeing any option to enable speaker muting with headphones