Gnome recently announced version 2.12 of their desktop environment, along with a demo CD. Ubuntu recently announced a preview release of Breezy Badger which includes Gnome 2.12.

I downloaded the Gnome 2.12 demo CD and was really impressed with the combination of utility and aesthetic appeal. I’ve been running Ubuntu Hoary on my laptop for a couple of months now and have worked hard to get everything configured and installed to my liking. I’ve been telling myself that I would just wait for Breezy to be officially and formally released rather than install a pre-release, but when I saw the Gnome 2.12 demo CD, I just couldn’t help myself. I just had to install it. I’ve got issues. I know.

So, I burned a CD of the latest Ubuntu preview release and popped the CD back in just to see if it burned. (You may be wondering why I didn’t just update my sources.list file and do an `apt-get dist-upgrade` rather than reinstalling. My reason is, I want a fresh start. I know that a lot if this will mean deleting a bunch of dot files and dot directories in my home directory, but I’m going to get rid of some of the stuff I want to get away from.) It burned and I was a little surprised when Gnome popped a friendly little message saying that it detected a Ubuntu install CD and asked if I wanted to upgrade. I decided to let it try. It failed partway through on some gcc stuff, so I decided to reboot and do it the old fashioned way.

I saw the standard Ubuntu plain console installer and started answering questions. The installer bombed out on me while trying to install the base system….twice. It appears I got a bad burn on the install CD. Fortunately, I had made an install CD for someone else the other day, so I decided to use it. I popped that CD in, rebooted, and everything is working well. That could explain the error I had earlier installing the base system.

The install is well on its way, and all is looking good. I hope this doesn’t wreck my system. And if it does, I hope the backup of my home directory burned better than the Ubuntu CD did this morning…