Death before decaf.

I was deciding if I wanted to take advantage of running on a 64bit kernel on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, and I really had no reason to stick with 32bit. 64bit allows better performance, and has been reported to be as stable as 32bit while being faster.

I have been hesitant about upgrading in the past to 64bit for a number of reasons:  application support, driver support, flash support, etc.  Doing some reading lately (here, and here), I decided it’s time to leave 32bit in the dust and jump on the 64bit bandwagon.  If my hardware supports it, why not?

The next question I had was with my encrypted /home partition.  Is it as easy as reinstalling with the same options (read on, you’ll find out!)?  Will I have to copy my data elsewhere and copy back over when I’m done?  Can I upgrade in-place or do I have to reinstall entirely?  Is my laptop going to asplode?

My partitioning is as follows:

Screenshot--dev-sda - GParted

I was concerned about not having 64bit Karmic Koala pick-up/use my encrypted home directory automatically on login.  I decided to throw up a virtual machine of Karmic with the /home on a separate partition and used the encryption option on the user-creation box.  I then reinstalled the 64bit version on top of that using the same /home mountpoint, formatting the / mountpoint, installed with the same encryption option selected, and checked to see that a document that I had created on the Desktop was still there.  Lo-and-behold (where did that saying come from, anyway?) I had success!  The only thing left to do was the actual upgrade.

Before you start, make sure you have a proper backup of your data.  There’s the steps I used:

• Downloaded the 64bit ISO and installed that to my USB drive
• Booted from the USB drive
• Formatted /dev/sda1 as ext4 and set mountpoint as /, used /dev/sda5 as ext4 and set mountpoint /home (do not format this)
• Used the same username, password, checked the “automatically decrypt” option on the user creation form
• Install!

I logged in and all of my settings and data were there as expected.  I only had to reinstall some programs that aren’t installed by default that I use, (chromium-browser, skype, etc).   Also, I am a good boy and have a backup of my home directory (which I can discuss in a later post) just in case it went bad.

I can now ride the wave of the future (with style) on 64bit Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala! I hope this may be of use for some people.

The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer.  It will become Canonical’s eleventh release of the distribution and will likely be supported until April 2011.  With this newest release, Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, you will notice differences ascetically, and there are also underlying differences in the nuts-n-bolts of things.

I’m not going to make this a technical review, I’d just like to get down to the fun.

I thought it would be a good idea to get some people together for a Release Party for the northern Wisconsin/northeastern Minnesota area to celebrate this fantastic release.  Bring your friends, family, coworkers, even your boss!

Here’s some details:

• Friday, November 6 th, 2009
• 7pm-10pm? (or whenever)
• The Shack @ 3301 Belknap St. Superior, WI 54880
• You don’t have to be 21 to attend
• Wear your Ubuntu gear if you have it, bring laughs, stories, experiences, and prepare to meet some new people
• There is a restaurant if you’re hungry, also soda and a bar (if you’re over 21)

Please click here for a map and RSVP form.

I hope to see you there!