EasyLinuxGuide Blog

It seems that once again I’m going through one of my phases where I am getting antsy with operating systems lately. Here are the two main culprits:

Ubuntu  – I’ve done several installs for people lately on newer systems and they just work. Even webcams are working instantly right after installing ‘Cheese’.

Arch Linux – I’ve had Arch installed on several boxes at home for about 5 years. It runs solidly. I use custom kernels (2.6.26) and use 32 bit and 64 bit. I don’t need nor want to make any drastic changes to them.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing, in fact it is quite good, but it does take away the challenge I used to enjoy.

So, when I get into the mood to break something and then try to fix it, I think of using Ubuntu Alpha releases but as mentioned in an earlier post, even those don’t cause me any issues anymore.Moreso than fixing things I’d like to try something that offers some unique value in doing things differently.

I do try out some different distros here and there but I am not really finding anything unique enough to pique my interest. Recently I’ve tried OpenSolaris (just because) and it was a disaster and pretty much unusable (very slow package manager, missing common packages I wanted). I did an upgrade and it wouldn’t boot afterwards.  I also tried OpenSuSE 11, Mandriva Spring and Mint. That’s the story with Linux lately. At one time I did set up a box in only command line and I currently use a custom built Linux router as well. What else is there?

OK, so there is OSX. I’ve used OSX86 and it is a decent OS. I really don’t have anything negative to say about it. I do miss a lot of things that I have in Linux when I use OSX but I understand that it is a designed in a specific manner so I can’t criticize the product but perhaps the concept but I’m not even going to do that. The truth is that it’s decent enough, but doesn’t provide me with anything really interesting and innovative in terms of configuration and such. Also, I am of the belief to truly get the full OSX experience, one needs to switch over to it fully which I am not prepared to do right now and likely never.

In terms of Windows, I’ve made my comments on Vista already and I’m pretty tired of XP. In fact, I would be all over using Vista at work if the opportunity presented itself (assuming Linux was not an option either).

So, where does that leave things now? If anyone has any suggestions, I’m open to trying something out, but I’d like to try something that is unique somehow and offers some kind of benefit or optimization. I’ve tried just about every desktop environment and window manager as well.

Firstly, my initial disclaimer is that while there will be technical information in this article, it is also based on opinion and personal experience and therefore if anything, it is a personal account of the usefulness or lack thereof of a swap partition and thoughts, ideas and assertions are welcome.

When I first started using Linux many years ago (maybe 6 now), one its distinct unique qualities was the use of a Swap partition. Initially, I didn’t ask too many questions as I was eager to leave behind the OS that had caused me frustration over the past years. As time went on and I gained more experiences with Linux, I continually would use a swap partition on any new installs and would be asked by anyone for whom I created a set up about the reason for creating this swap partition.

In basic terms I was always told that the purpose of the swap partition was mainly to allow the system access to more memory if your RAM was used up. Therefore, this was useful on systems with low amounts of memory or on machines where there would be a lot of RAM usage thus causing it to be fully used and therefore require additional memory which swap would provide.

Even with older machines or ones lacking RAM, I observed that swap was barely used. Typically on systems with at least 1GB of RAM, I never see any swap used. I suppose this could happen if there was a great deal of memory usage due to intense audio, video, compiling or some other kind of processing.

Newer machines will often have 2 CPU cores and at least 1GB of ram and usually I recommend that at least 2GB of RAM is a decent amount for a newer machine. Considering the processing power and inexpensive nature of adding more RAM, what happens to swap? Swap once had a purpose on older machines but now it seems that it is not only becoming unnecessary but also a burden perhaps?

Swap can have some negative affects as well. With the size of new hard drives these days using up 512mb or 1GB or swap space is certainly not an issue but if you like to use all Primary Partitions like me, then all of a sudden out of the gate you are down 1 of 4 Primary Partitions used on a hard drive (I’ve heard there are ways around this but I am not including using third party software to create more Primary Partitions). So, for example, you are building a custom machine where you want several Primary partitions for a particular reason such as:

swap

/boot (to store your kernel and boot settings)

/ (your root filesystem)

/home (a separate home partition to keep your personal files on their own or even to share it with another distro installed on the same machine)

/var (separate log files or perhaps used for package building)

/usr (holds the majority of your application executables and global application settings in /usr/share)

/opt (could be used for applications you compile youself placed in a different directory other than /usr/ to keep them separated)

Clearly, partitioning is a personal choice and the decision is based upon your specific usage. However; if you use a swap partition, all of a sudden you are losing 1 primary partition. So, unless you create logical or extended partitions, it could be that one of your planned partitions is negated.

Swap Partition Pros:

May help speed up older machines lacking memory

May help speed up machines that require an industrial amount of processing (high tech audio, video or compiling) while performing other tasks

Makes your install ‘feel’ more like nix

Swap Partition Cons:

Uses up space and a primary partition

Disk Thrashing over time can damage your hard drive

Accessing the hard drive to use virtual memory is slower than RAM

Alternatives:

If you don’t want or need to use a swap partition, you can instead use a swap file. I am not going to post any links on how to do this right now, but if you do a web search for it, you can find lots of examples.

Although I do not plan on changing any of my current long running configurations as my swap partitions are typically the first partition in my table, I do not plan on using them anymore on any new systems – especially any that I plan on which I have multiboot configurations. I have one now where I can share the swap partition, but more than once I have wished that I did not create the swap partition in the first place. To me, there does not seem to be a need to use such a thing on a dual core machine with 4GB of RAM, better yet, it seems like a waste of a primary partition.

Initially I was going to write about how smooth even the Alpha upgrades were for Ubuntu even compared to full release versions of other distros, but instead I think I will do something more helpful – give people some tips on how to upgrade to the Alpha releases and move through the Betas without breaking their systems (at least not permanently anyway).

I think I’ve been testing the Ubuntu releases including all Alphas and Betas since probably Dapper Drake which was released in August of 2006. I do have to mention that I do not currently run Ubuntu as my main OS (Arch is awarded this position), however; I do support what Canonical is trying to do with Ubuntu and like to keep updated on its progress. So, the following are general tips on how to prevent breakage, fix issues and all the while enjoy the fact that you are running the most up to date version of Ubuntu available.

** Quick tip – do not delete your previous kernel and also backup your /etc/X11/xorg.conf to be extra safe

How do you upgrade to the next version when it is in Alpha or Beta?

You can do this in a couple of ways. If you prefer the graphical method, you can press Alt-F2 to bring up a run dialog box and type update-manager -d which will open up your Update Manager (assuming you have it installed) and give you the option to click on the button representing the next version. Another method is to use your terminal and type apt-get dist-upgrade which should find your latest version (although I have not tested this with Alphas so I cannot say for sure). As well, I believe that Synaptic would be able to get you to the next version as well even if it is a development version by allowing that preference.

Possible issue and their remedies:

Missing a dependency – Sometimes during upgrading, you will get a report that a dependency is missing. This is typically because the mirrors have not finished syncing. Your choices here are to simply wait until all of the packages are available (if you don’t clear your Apt cache then you can just download the missing packages instead of doing the whole lot again) or if you are really impatient, you can browse the various mirrors and try to download the individual packages and then install them using command line (dpkg -i pkgname) or by double clicking on the package icon which should prompt a GUI installer. Usually Apt is pretty good at giving you hints at how to fix the issue if one pops up so this is why I prefer to do these upgrades via the CLI (other than the initial upgrade to the next distro version).

Cannot Stop Service so Upgrade Fails – This has happened to me a few times. I like to run systems very optimized so I tend to eradicate services that I do not need. Although I can use B.U.M. to stop them, sometimes I prefer the old fashioned but more effective method of rc-update.d -f servicename remove which will remove the service from all runlevels and give you nice clear terminal output showing this has been done. While this is great for optimizing your system by ridding it of known unwanted services (ie – laptop services on a desktop), sometimes this causes some confusion when trying to move from one Ubuntu version to the next. I’ve seen Ubuntu try to stop a service and fail (because it was removed from runlevels or perhaps it isnt running) and then leave you in the cold. My solution for this is to simply repeat your original process of installing the service, allowing it to run temporarily and then disabling it after the upgrade. It is a bit tedious but it seems to get the job done.

Nvidia (I don’t use ATI) – I ALWAYS seem to run into an issue with Ubuntu and Nvidia during these upgrades. Between the combination of different kernel upgrades, restricted modules upgrades and the Nvidia driver upgrades, it tends to cause issues every single time I upgrade. I am happy to say that with Intrepid Ibex I only encountered one minor issue with this where I waited for a new repository sync and then my Nvidia driver worked. However, in the past I have had to go to the Nvidia website and manually install the driver. I would then keep testing the various incantations of the Ubuntu packaged Nvidia driver along with the linux-modules-restricted package with the corresponding kernel until it would work. The last time around was the worst as it only seemed to get resolved at Beta 3 if I recall correctly.

Application Issues – Well, these are testing versions of applications so I don’t expect perfection, but I will often get some really nice features that were not available in previous releases.

Xorg Issues – Very rarely but at least once I have had my X server screwed up by doing an upgrade. Nonetheless backing up your previous /etc/X11/xorg.conf as stated above is a good idea. This could mean no access to the proper resolution or even perhaps no access to X itself (dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg didn’t work).

That’s about all I can think of for now. Perhaps others have other issues they have run into? Maybe I forgot some that I experience, but these are the most common ones. None of them were showstoppers for me as I was able to fix them all or find a way around them. Not bad for Alphas. It seems it is becoming increasingly more difficult to find broken systems around my place. I used to enjoy playing around with them and getting them to work somehow. Ubuntu appears not to offer this feature (anymore?). For me, that can be a little bit disappointing in the sense that there isn’t much of a challenge, but overall its great because it means that the system is still fairly solid even in its most vulnerable state.

This has long been an annoyance to me and I ended up using a hack that is floating around various places on the net to in effect disable the Recent Documents from appearing:

the following needs to be done in a terminal as your regular user (not root) in your user’s home directory

rm .recently-used.xbel
mkdir .recently-used.xbel

This in effect will disable your Recent Documents from your Gnome Menu.

What is strange about this is that a bug report has been filed since early 2005 and then option has still not been added.

To do my part, I registered on the bugtracker and re-iterated the option. If you want this added then the only way is to let them know on the launchpad. If you find the exclusion of disabling this feature annoying then make a comment on the bug tracker. After all, complaining is better defended when you actually do something productive to change the original annoyance

Yes this is all over the internet but I am going to post it anyway and make it even more viral. BestBuy is selling Ubuntu. I’ve read a lot of comments on this happening including the comments by the people who have purchased this OS from the store. There are many different angles to take on this and everyone from a new user to a Linux guru will have his own thoughts. I personally see it as a good thing. Anything to help spread the popularity of Ubuntu and Linux in general is a step in the right direction. For a mere $19.99, a prospective user gets a retail copy (which most of us know you can download or order directly from Canonical for free but this is a physical copy right in a major outlet store).

Hopefully this sells well and BestBuy continue to do this. Apparently 60 days of support and a light booklet come with this edition. More pics can be found here and here.

I am considering buying one if I can find one around here just to offer support.