Karmic: IPv6 Woes – Long as I Can See the Light

I did a great deal of searching in regards to the slowness issues and the IPv6 DNS issues in Ubuntu 9.10. As with any issues in Ubuntu I am always happy as Long as I Can See the Light and Lucky for me JoeHacker left a candle in the window.

Using yout favorite editor using sudo, edit /etc/default/grub and change:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash”
to
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”ipv6.disable=1 quiet splash”
then
sudo update-grub

This worked wonders for me in my test VM and I will soon test this on my main machine. Despite the fact that I was not born with a silver spoon in hand Joe’s advice has made me feel like a Fortunate Son. One important note is that this may not be an issue with Ubuntu, but an issue with how IPv6 DNS requests are being handled by my router.

Karmic experience: Its been a hard days night

On Friday I updated my main machine to Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) and the experience was a Hard Days Night. Perhaps if there was a little bit more cowbell I would have overlooked the current warts; either way this is not a Hello, Goodbye post, but a We Can Work It Out post.

Issues encountered:

• Evolution backup would not restore. The Karmic version (2.28.1) did not like the backup file from Jaunty (2.26.1). I booted up Fedora 11 which used (2.26.3) and restored the backup with success. I then did a backup from Fedora (2.26.3) and successfully restored the backup in Karmic (2.28.1). I guess some times it good to Come Together with other distros
• Evolution and Firefox were ‘slow’ resolving DNS names. I found several posts, launchpad questions and launchpad bugs about this one. One that was reported back in August. There are people blaming this on lack of IPv6 support in certain home routers and diverting any blame from Ubuntu. Let It Be they say. I am not The Fool on the Hill, but I realize that in the large scheme of people adopting Ubuntu this is an issue that should be dealt with in the OS, not by having end users told to replace their routers or hold a Internet protest
• Using WYSIWYG rich text editors like found in WordPress on Firefox 3.5 still involves a delay while trying to Get Back by using backspace while the same process on OS X or Windows does not suffer this issue

The good things:

• I like the new icon theme – it is the best default look Ubuntu has had since I started down the Long and Winding Road with Ubuntu
• Firefox 3.5 appears to be much faster in general usage and In My Life having tabs enabled by default is a great thing
• Intel graphics are finally good enough that it does not make me think of using an Old Brown Shoe; I have a Ticket to Ride now

In short there are some small warts, but I am in love with Karmic and I Feel Fine.