Too bloated – Ubuntu now comes in many flavors and for anyone who is at least at an intermediate level, turning off or even removing unneeded services or applications should not be an issue.

Slow compared to other distros – aside from the previous point, Ubuntu has also sped up its boot time quite a bit with the Jaunty Jackalope 9.04 release.

Not enough packages available – with the usage of universe and multiverse, you can obtain just about any application you need.

Bloated default kernel – Ubuntu has improved its core kernel quite a bit over the years and there is a way to recompile the default Ubuntu kernel to suit your needs if you are that picky (if Im not doing it, you probably don’t need to).

Not flashy enough – Ubuntu’s use of compiz and it’s improved grub splash image are sleek and seemless.

64 bit – Ubuntu’s 64 bit version is as polished as any other distros these days.

Community – Ubuntu has a wealth of information on their forums that is useful not only for Ubuntu for other Linux distros.

Benchmarking – when anyone does benchmarking, Ubuntu is the version that just about everyone uses so you get to see what your OS can do and how it compares.

Safe upgrading – Although Ubuntu doesn’t have a rolling release style of upgrading, it does have a graphical upgrade tool (update-manager) which makes moving to the next major release quite painless. I have thoroughly used Ubuntu through alpha, beta and offical releases and I can say that by the time the official release comes around, there are fewers issues upgrading with Ubuntu than even its own derivatives.

I’ve been a long time user of a distro that afforded me all of the control I wanted over the years, but ultimately, now after several years of Ubuntu polishing, that control is no longer an advantage. It’s time to make the switch. At this time, there is no other distro that meets the mark on as many levels as the product of Canonical. It’s clear that they are here to stay and have conjured up a well oiled machine that continues to glide smoothly across the Linux landscape. Ubuntu is not just worthy of converting Windows users, it is worthy of converting most Linux users.

The web interface is professional in appearance (along with the Community edition, there is an Enterprise version as well) and had many features built right in that were convenient to install. I decided to try it out. As part of this upgrade, I decided to use a gigabit (10/100/1000) network card for my LAN so what I could get better internal speed for copying files within my network. Along with that, I bought a gigabit switch as well. I chose the intel GT nic (many other gigabit cards were not compatible including a Dlink one I tried and a Linksys one that I researched and noticed would not work) and I bought a green friendly Dlink gigabit switch.

The install went fine however, I would have liked to see better instructions along the way. For someone who may not be familiar with setting up a home gateway/router, it could be very confusing. At times, I was unsure what the prompts were asking me and yet I was quite familiar with what I wanted to do. I could imagine some people giving up after not knowing what information to enter. Once done, I removed my previous box which had served me well and replaced it with something a bit more powerful but still not a powerhouse: P3 450 mhz, 256mb ram and a 12 gb HD. I could have used more ram but the motherboard was picky and would accept certain types. I tried several banks but was only successful getting 256 to work. I decided to give it a shot anyway although the recommended amount was 512 for a network of under 5 users. Instantly after plugging everything in and power cycling my cable modem, I was able to visit the Clark Connect internal web interface.

Some of the added features that I can now use are intrusion detection (snort) which IP Cop did have built in but my previous box could not realistically run as well as Windows File Sharing (samba), Web Proxy Filter, Content Filter, Web Server, Mail Server, FTP Server as well as a DHCP server and Name Server. I may not use all of these services, but it would be easy to try them as the built in software retrieval method will download the appropriate packages after simply checking off a corresponding box.

I am still in a testing phase with Clark Connect but so far it has been reliable, fast and easy to use. I like the web interface and the ability to configure things further should I desire. If you have a reasonably decent older box at home that you want to make use of, I would highly recommend trying out Clark Connect and if you want something that can run on older hardware like my P166, then IP Cop could be for you. On older machines, several services may not run well or be practical such as snort intrusion detection. Research the sites and consider replacing that standard big name hardware router if you are having issues with it. You may never use one again as in my case.

A coworker had mentioned wanting to get an LCD tv but was on a tight budget so I had found some great deals several months back but he didn’t have the cash to pick one up. I subsequently stopped looking around. Eventually my own LCD monitor’s condition worsened to the point where I thought about replacing it. I opted for the idea of getting an LCD TV. This is to be used in my room and I could get cable working there as well as a bonus. I was flipping through a flyer for the source and first noticed a Sony Bravia 32″ on sale for $599 which was $200 off the original price. I decided to go online and look at it in more detail. I searched for the TV and sorted by price and ended up finding an LG 32″ which was originally $849 on for $599 also. Having just recently upgraded my main TV to an LG 47″, I decided that the 32″ LG would be best for me so I bought it.

Now, onto the geek stuff… My main concern was the limited resolution compared to my previous 22″. The new LG, even though it was 32″, was limited to a resolution of 1360×768. I was concerned that this might be too large compared to the 1920×1200 resolution I was getting from my 22″. It ended up being fine and I am writing this entry on the new LCD. The color is fantastic and it’s great to have such a nice big screen. It doesn’t look ridiculous on my desk as it only a 32″. It also helps with playing games like Fofix (Frets on Fire fork). All 4 operating systems look great on the screen as well.

I would definitely recommend going with an LCD TV with a larger screen size for a computer, if you can afford a few exra dollars.  It is definitely worthwhile. Now, what do I do with that damaged 22″ inch LCD?

Finally, after all of these releases, I encountered a problem that I could not seem to fix entirely. Not surprisingly, it was with Nvidia. The issue that I noticed was that I was not able to play any 3D accelerated games in full screen. I am not talking about high level graphically demanding games but rather Frets on Fire. I even installed a derivative of Tuxracer from the Ubuntu repos to test and it would not work either.

Normally I would have continued attacking the issue, but I really wanted to get Frets on Fire but mainly the fork called Fofix working. So, instead, I installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 8.10 on a different partition for testing. I had testing the same software on a couple of different machines running the same version of Ubuntu and one even contained an Nvidia graphics card. Both worked fine. In fact, the full screen mode had been working fine on my own install until a recent upgrade.

The main issue was with the /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 file which apparently was owned by both the Ubuntu Nvidia package and one called libgl1-mesa-glx. The issue was reported as a bug. My system was actually a 32 bit install but no matter what I tried, I could not fix this issue. I tried using aptitude, dpkg and apt-get along with synaptic to force and overwrite just about anything that I thought would fix the issue. In the end, I figured that after numerous alpha and beta transitions it might be time to try a new install. So, I installed Ubuntu 8.10 final release on a different partition and everything seemed to work as planned. I did uninstall network manager and manually edit the /etc/network/interfaces file in order to achieve using a fixed IP address. Network manager seemed to allow me to edit the settings, but didn’t seem to change them properly. For example, there is no much thing as a Netmask value known as “24″, yet every time I entered 255.255.255.0, that’s what it returned. Network manager is fairly advanced in some respects, but in other ways, it needs a lot of work.

With my fresh install, I have Frets on Fire working and Fofix fires right up in full screen. I had no trouble installing the Nvidia driver provided by the Ubuntu repositories as well. My old install must contain some old files or rules that interfere. Yes, I did use the “Cruft Remover” which is a handy new tool but that didn’t solve this particular problem.

I am fairly confident that had I not taken my install through all of the alpha and beta releases that I would not have encountered this issue. It also makes it nearly impossible to get help on it as not many people would be so masochistic. I am not sure what I will do with my current previous Ubuntu install. I may just keep it around for non-production use and to see the new features only and leave my new install for official releases only.

One of the bonuses with the new install is a faster boot time, nicer and more modern boot screen. In the meantime, I can try a really thorough clean up on my previous install and see what happens from there.

The Install – It couldn’t get any easier than the method DreamLinux uses. After booting the Live CD, there is one screen where you can decide on your partitions and whether or not you want to use a bootloader or not and adding a user of your choice. Although it might have been nice to have a bit more configuration settings such as package selection, I tend to find package selection with preconfigured desktop distros to be more of a hassle. The DreamLinux team did a nice job of keeping things simple.

Upgrading – DreamLinux includes the Synaptic package manager. It was very easy to upgrade, although there were a great deal of packages to update after my install. I have yet to figure out how to get my Nvidia drivers installed despite reading forum tips and google searches. The upgrades took a while to complete, but it wasn’t too painful with a decent internet connection…

Sound and Video Menu – I was pleasantly surprised to see some of the applications preinstalled. It is very rare one ever sees either Mplayer or Easytag included with a default install and DreamLinux had both. Also included is Avidemux and Brasero is listed for burning…

Also worth mentioning is the fact that Sound Juicer was included and had a preset for creating mp3 files from cd’s which had not been included in the past. It seems to be a change in Sound Juicer but it’s definitely nice to have an application provided that does not require any intervention to add mp3 profiles as previous versions of Sound Juicer demanded…

Making Things Easier – A few things that are included in DreamLinux that some users may appreciate in terms of getting things running right away include a Gmail check application, The Gimp remodeled with the GimpShop configuration to make it work more like photoshop…

Extras – DreamLinux includes some extra configuration tools aside from its own control center as well. Of note, there is a simple colored folders window that allows you to change your aesthetic preference. Also, there is a built in tool for getting wireless drivers working that may need to load the Windows original using Ndiswrapper. This should be included in any distro that is looking to attract more users to switch to Linux.

In addition, you can see throughout the screenshots that DreamLinux uses AWN (Avant Window Navigator) as the dock at the bottom. I remember using a Gdesklets dock many years ago that I eventually became frustrated with because it broke with every Gdesklets upgrade. I can’t comment at all on AWN but I’ve seen it around more often recently so hopefully it is more stable than I remember Gdesklets.

Issues – The only issue I really ran into was trying to get my Nvidia drivers installed. I eventually deferred to trying the binary driver from the Nvidia site. Even when I tried to get back to a tty, the screen just went multicolored and did not seem to allow it. I also attempted to boot into single user mode and was unsuccessful with that. While compiz is provided with DreamLinux, it isn’t of much use without providing an easy way to get drivers working fully.

Overall – DreamLinux may not be considered unique to some because it uses Debian packages as a backend and this seems to be an ever-growing prevalence among startup distros; however, there are some unique characteristics about DreamLinux that make it worth checking out. DreamLinux uses the testing branch of Debian so it is more up to date than a lot of other distros. This means that you get all of the new features of applications, but there is also a risk of instability that is inherited. DreamLinux also has some cosmetic differences such as sing the AWN and also its own configuration tools and choice of applications. For any Linux enthusiast I would say it is worth installing and testing. I probably wouldn’t recommend it for production machines at least not until I’ve done more testing. There is more documentation and extra screenshots on the DreamLinux documentation page.

]]> http://easylinuxguide.com/blog/2008/09/28/dreamlinux-3-review/feed/ 2 http://easylinuxguide.com/blog/2008/09/20/carrier-instant-messenger-upgraded-to-25/ http://easylinuxguide.com/blog/2008/09/20/carrier-instant-messenger-upgraded-to-25/#comments Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:58:04 +0000 easylinuxguide http://easylinuxguide.com/blog/?p=211 It took a while and surely some people gave up on the project because of the wait, but Carrier has finally been upgraded to version 2.5. This is is significant because the previous version of 2.4.1 had stopped working with the MSN protocol, rendering it useless for anyone who exclusively used those accounts. Version 2.4.1 was released in April and somewhere along the line, the MSN protocol changed and despite requests in the forums, things seemed at a standstill. It wasn’t until late August that the software was updated. There are a lot of great reasons in theory to support the Carrier project, but ultimately we all need a working IM. I even explored the use of Empathy which is going to be the default IM application in future releases of Gnome. It shows a lot of promise and is being developed actively and upgraded regularly which is great. The main difference or advantage between Empathy and traditional IMs is that it will support voice chat and also integrate into Gnome’s environment. An example of this would be that you would see an icon to call someone from within the Evolution email client. It will take some time to move things forward but the future does look promising for Empathy and Gnome.

In terms of the future of Carrier, we can only hope that the recent past is not an indication of future development. Carrier has a great opportunity to attract users. It won’t attract as many as it did when it initially started though since one of the main reasons for its creation was to enable the text resizing box during chats and secondly Pidgin is still the defacto IM client included with a lot of distros. While a lot of Linux users will put forth the extra effort to replace Pidgin with Carrier if they feel strongly enough about it, for most people, they are likely to leave well enough alone.

I am not giving up on Carrier yet though. The current version took a bit long for my liking to be released, but it’s here now and it works very well.

My advice for the developers at Carrier would be to make packages readily available for various distros including the most up to date version and make them easy to find on the website. For example. the preamble for the Ubuntu version still links to version 2.4.1. Also, keep up to date and respond to people in the forums more regularly. After all, from your main stanza on the homepage, you indicate: “What makes us different from the official client, is that we work for you.” If that is truly the case, then it needs to be demonstrated fully.

I had recently installed FreeBSD and as in the past, eventually became tired of the ports system so I decided use that disk space to install something else. I had recently been fairly bored with Operating Systems so I was a bit more flexible with trying out something else. In came the Elyssa  0.5 Revision 1 Gnome version of Linux Mint…

The Install

Installation is quite easy, pretty much the same as Ubuntu where you can install it from the live cd boot. It offers custom partitioning which is a must and also adds some extra configurations post install like a small window box for setting up your optional root password and such.

Applications

The usual line up you would expect is here. You get the Gimp for detailed image editing, Brasero for cd/dvd burning, Firefox, Openoffice, Pidgin, Transmission (for torrents), Rhythmbox for audio, Totem for video and a host of other Administrative configuration tools. Linux Mint adds a few extras as well in their control center such as Envy for propritary drivers and also a tool for managing Windows Wireless drivers which I personally think should be default on any distro wanting to gain mass acceptance.

Package Management

Mint comes with its own method of updating but also includes Synaptic which is great to have some variety but could be confusing to newer users who may not know which one to use. I know Ubuntu has both Synaptic and also the Update Manager which are both great tools, but it might be better to combine them into one since they can do some of the same things. Of course its up to the user to decide which is best and choice is always nice, but perhaps having a one time wizard after the install to configure your preference would be a good idea. Having said all that, I’ve had Linux Mint installed for a couple weeks at least and using Synaptic I have noticed that there have not been many updates at all. I will need to look into this more, but I would have thought that there would have been more package updates at least for the applications.

Stability and Performance

Overall, I have found Linux Mint very stable and actually it is faster than I expected. I would definitely say it is faster than Ubuntu even. This was rather surprising to me as I had a preconceived notion that it would be slower if anything since it had some of its own tools added and had a reputation for being more complete out of the box after the install.

Longevity

A lot of times I install distros and then later on, I will install something else over top of it. I don’t plan on doing this with Linux Mint. I am interested in seeing how well it gets maintained, updated and enhanced.

Overall

If you are considering installing a new distro and want something easy with good performance, Linux Mint is definitely worth a look. The only concern I have with it compared to Ubuntu is longevity. I hope it continues to be maintained. Canonical has proven that they are here to stay with offering 5 years of support for each of their LTS versions of Ubuntu. I hope Linux Mint can enjoy the same kind of long term success.

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.

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.

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

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.

With all of that said, I believe that the text area resizing feature was once again added in a later release. While sometimes I can be forgiving, there is a fundamental reason why I choose to use Linux that I really appreciate which is not being force fed any features or lack thereof. It is for this reason that I quickly adopted the fork of Pidgin called FunPidgin. Funpidgin developers advertise on their site that “Unlike the Pidgin developers, we believe the user should have the final say in what goes into the program.” To me, this is a huge selling point. Even though the Pidgin developers may have added in the said feature in the end after a ridiculously long standoff, the feeling that this disregard for the average user still lingers strongly enough for me that I will likely never return to the original especially as long as there is an alternative and one with several more features at that!

I have recently uploaded the necessary packages to switch to Carrier on the ELG Arch Linux repositories for those in the know. This is available on 32 bit and 64 bit repos. For those who just want to install it manually, you will now need two packages: Webkit and Carrier for 32 bit systems from this directory and Webkit and Carrier for 64 bit systems from this directory. These can be installed using pacman -U pkgname in the corresponding order. Special thanks to Connor Behan who is one of the developers for FunPidgin/Carrier and put the effort into making a pkgbuild for Arch Linux users.

Among many reasons why I use Linux is the freedom from the large proprietary company that invariably will shove their ideas down their throat akin to a mother bird feeding her young worms or perhaps unsavory droppings.

I have been doing PC work on the side for many years so I have to admit that I am quite tired of XP so that is one bias of mine. I have read criticisms aplenty about Vista citing its incompatibility with software and hardware along with its UAC (which prompts the user to approve any admin actions) and flashy Aero theme which many have scorned for eating up too many resources. While there is some truth to all of those claims and others, I am not going to regurgitate them here.

Instead, I’d like to discuss the mistake that Microsoft made that people don’t really talk about. Microsoft has made a huge mistake with their system requirements for Vista which they have posted on their own website. Microsoft claims the following as minimum requirements:

• A modern processor (at least 800MHz).
• 512 MB of system memory.
• A graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable.

To me, this is plain foolish. Sure, a major criticism of the masses prior to Vista being released was their crazy hardware expectations. Realistically, I do not find the requirements to run Vista unreasonable – and I’m not even talking about the ones Microsoft recommends. I’m talking about what I would recommend:

• CPU preferably dual core but at least 2 Ghz or equivalent if not dual core
• 2GB of memory
• An add on graphics card with at least 256mb of its own memory manufactured within the last 2 years

I know there can be some scrutiny over these recommendations, however; times have changed and while some people may expect a new operating system to run on even lower specified hardware than one may currently own, newer features sometimes require more power. Vista Aero is a much nicer and more professional looking interface than XP in my opinion. It was time for the masses that use Windows to evolve. Of course I am not going to complain about those users who moved to Linux or Mac either

The point of what I’m saying goes back to Microsoft making a poor decision about their hardware specifications and then communicating this to the Vendors. Here is an example: I recently worked on a computer where someone said they hated the installed Vista mainly because it was too slow. The first thing I noticed was that this brand new machine was that it had only 512mb of memory. It had an AMD 3800 Sempron processor and an onboard video card. To me, Microsoft is basically asking the user to get frustrated with this setup. I bet if I upgraded the ram to 2gb even, the user would have a much different experience. Also, if I added a modern video card independent of being onboard, it would not only improve the resolution but also the usability of the interface by quite a bit.

If Microsoft really wanted Vista to be successul then they should have made the requirements higher and enforced vendors to do the same. If every PC shipped with Vista had a decent processor, adequate ram and a proper video card, the reviews for Vista may have taken a different tone. I’m sure people would criticized the OS for demanding too much, but realistically speaking, Apple doesn’t release any new machines with poor specifications that cause OSX to run sluggishly so perhaps Microsoft would just be lumped into the same category. I think perhaps being seen as a bit of a standoffish or expectant company for requiring higher specs would have been much better than the collective masses viewing its release as a failure.

This blog post was written on a Linux machine, but I would have done it on a Vista machine instead of an XP machine given the proper hardware if those two were my only choices.

Is Vista truly a failure or was its inauspicious release just doomed to failure based on performance issues due to weak hardware causing the masses to snowball negative publicity until it was buried?

I received some responses to my article and decided that I could look into the distros that I had listed under the CD/DVD method in more detail to see where they stood. This article is about Mandriva.

As a disclaimer, Mandrake/Mandriva and I historically did not get along well. Back in the days when the defacto easy distro race was between Red Hat and Mandrake, I always managed to get Red Hat to work very well, but I could never get Mandrake (then) to work properly. I knew people who swore by it, but it was never a good fit for me. I don’t have any bias toward Mandrake/Mandriva these days though as I don’t use it regularly on any of my boxes.

Due to my inactivity with Mandriva, I feel quite apt to evaluate it from a newbie perspective which is ideal for the type of experiment I am conducting – What it is like for a newbie to upgrade Mandriva to the latest version?

I have to also admit that I was given some tips via email on certain commands and such so I may appear a bit more familiar with things than my inexperience with Mandriva realistically would have elicited.

On to the test….

The first thing I did (upon recommendation) was download Mandriva 2008.0 Live CD for Gnome and the aim was upgrade it to Mandriva 2008.1. The point of this test is not to evaluate Mandriva as a distro, but I will make some comments along the way about my observations.

I managed to install Mandriva to my system and generally speaking the install went well. There is a very convenient Install button the desktop which was nice to see as that seems to be quite a friendly method. I was also impressed that not only did the live cd recognize that I had an Nvidia graphics card, but it also loaded the driver for me. So far, so good. I set up custom partitioning as I typically do. I recall feeling a bit off about the partitioning wizard though. Unfortunately I did not do any screenshots, but it seemed a bit too quick on formatting without double checking with the user on whether that was really what they wanted. A confirmation would help, I think. I can’t really dwell on it though since I didn’t take any screenshots of that scenario. The install went well otherwise and was done in about 5-10 mins on my AMD XP 3800 with 4GB memory. One thing that really bothered me was that I was forced to install a bootloader. I was given the option to install to the mbr or any other partition I wanted, but there was no option to bypass installing a bootloader. Maybe this was added to the 2008.1 installer? I added Mandriva to my bootloader on a different distro and was able to boot up fine.

Upon booting up for the first time I had to go through the paces of a first time boot configuration wizard. I have seen this before with other distros so it was no big deal. There was a small part about registering with Mandriva which made me feel like it was a bit commercial but there was an option to skip it so that was short lived.

When I arrived at the desktop, I was surprised to see some really odds things which I will list here (click on the text in each line for corresponding screenshots):

• Only 1GB of my 4GB of Memory was recognized (high memory support enabled in kernel by default?)
• Fonts were set at 60 DPI (I changed them to 96 and things were much better)
• Nvidia Driver was running but maybe my monitor detection didn’t work so well as my 22″ LCD had a max resolution of 1024×768. I ended up editing the xorg.conf file to get 1680×1050.
• The special Mandriva Gnome menu had some major redundancies here and here.

And onto the upgrade procedure. I didn’t see any pop up in the Gnome toolbar or anywhere in the menu indicating how to move to the next version. It was recommended to me to use the easyrpmi website to upgrade my version. I proceeded to (text is linked to screenshots again):

(keep in mind that I needed to use the “old” easyurpmi website since I was using 2008.0 or older)

• Pick the version of Mandriva I was using
• Select the Mirrors and Repositories I wanted
• Copy and Paste the output provided by the website into a root terminal

I was already feeling that this was quite the laborious process compared to other methods, but I continued on, undaunted and determined to give a fair evaluation.

I opened a terminal and became the almighty root user and copied the information as instructed. It went through some terminal lines and then stopped after only updating 2 additional packages – one of which was urpmi. I decided that I was going to try the same command again. This time it wanted to update 216 packages – now we’re getting somewhere. I let all of the packages update and rebooted for good measure and was disappointed when I didn’t see any evidence of being at the aim of 2008.1. So, I made sure my updates were completely done but that didn’t make any difference:

• My kernel was old
• My Firefox version was old
• My Gnome version was old
• My Nvidia driver was outdated
• My release was still at 2008.0

Easily, I am no expert at Mandriva, but I have been using Linux for several years (although anyone who reads this article only would think I’m a newbie for sure), however; the idea for this test was for a new user to the distro to be able to upgrade to the next version. I wasn’t able to do it so that doesn’t bode well for total neophtyes in my opinion. I know that I could have missed some steps or done some things wrong, there is no doubt about that, however; the point is that I should be able to do this upgrade notwithstanding or at least that was my hope. Any distro with rolling release cycles (although perhaps more difficult to set up, will automatically update you to the next version and while they may not do so in a 100% problem fashion all the time, I find them generally very stable). Ubuntu, for example, that has Update Manager which is a built in upgrade system and alerts you to moving to the next available version (not just package updates).

Mandriva could really use a step up in this department if it wants to capture more new users, but of course, that all depends on the intentions of the powers that be at Mandriva. If that is not the goal, then so be it, but it would be a great feature to add nonetheless.

The good news is that Mandriva is almost there. They have a graphical update tool that integrates nicely into the Gnome toolbar (green circular checkmark beside the volume speaker icon) and also some decent output of what is available for updating. The part that is missing is how to get to the next version.

I sincerely hope this is something that gets added to the Mandriva distribution as it will make it more accessible to more users.

I’m going to classify three categories here. The first is the rolling release cycle which basically renders a new ISO of the latest version which is only really useful to new installs because the distro gets automatically updated to the latest version through the package manager on an ongoing basis so there is no need for anything else.  The second is the distro specific upgrade tool. The third is the cd/dvd method. I know I will miss quite a few derivatives and such but you get the point.

Here are the categories…

Rolling Release

Arch
Gentoo
Slackware?
Others?

Upgrade Tool

Debian (dist-upgrade)
Ubuntu (GUI upgrade tool)

CD/DVD Method

Fedora?
SuSE?
Mandriva?

As far as I last checked, these were correct. I personally prefer the rolling release cycle method, but I do really appreciate that Debian and Ubuntu have their respective methods. I keep an Ubuntu install around on a backup box just to stay acclimated with how it is progressing and I do like it very much overall. I just prefer Arch as it seems to have less interference of built in system tools which is to my liking.

However, if memory serves me correctly, Fedora, SuSE and Mandriva all use the CD/DVD method. I know that Fedora can be upgraded through Yum but it is almost expected to have broken packages that need to be manually removed before the upgrade.

Maybe it’s just me but I find it unacceptable that any major Linux distro would expect someone to have to download a CD/DVD in order to upgrade. With today’s fast internet speeds and powerful systems, having the option and the convenience of issuing a few simple terminal commands (apt-get dist-upgrade, pacman -Syu etc) seems like a requisite feature. While I do think it is a good idea to release a CD/DVD (for dial up users etc), each major distro should have a built in option that is expected to work well to get the user to the next release version. I look at some of these major distros and really appreciate the work they put into not only making their product better, but also fixing bugs in desktop environments and keep getting blocked by this absence of a proper upgrade method when I think about the potential they could have to be on one of my backup boxes for more than just a testing stint or perhaps on one of my customer’s machines. I have installed Ubuntu for several customers and find it easy to upgrade and maintain. I could even log in remotely and do the upgrade process for them or even walk them through the literal handful of button clicks to do it themselves. Then I think about what it would be like if that was not an option and the CD/DVD method was the only safe way to upgrade. I would need to download it and burn it myself and then go over to their place and run the install and sit and wait for it to make sure everything went well. I am talking about doing this sort of thing for Linux neophytes.

Of course there is the supposition that there aren’t any decisive deal-breakers between the majors anymore which is why I can pick on something like an upgrade process. All of them basically use a fairly new kernel, new desktop environments and offer the user the choice when installing. They all seem to have access to using a variety of different file systems (not that a lot of people seem to care about that much anymore except for expert users). All have done well to make a large amount of major packages available to their users and each comes with a decent set of GUI configuration tools. I suppose I could mention that some come with all of the codecs needed to play mp3’s and videos, but that is more of a legal issue so I am giving it a mulligan.  There really isn’t much that distinguishes each of the majors from one another anymore other than say the distro artwork, the installer (seems all of them are easy enough these days) and perhaps which parent company with which it is associated. It seems to me that with all of the effort put into making a complete distro, an easy upgrade process should come as a staple item.

On a positive note, my personal litmus test for determining the quality of a distro is whether I believe I could use it long term if my precious Arch was no longer available. I am happy to say that I have no intention of doing any distro hopping for my main boxes. I’ve been running Arch solid without a reinstall for around 5 years amidst many hardware changes. However, I do feel like I would have a nice choice between some really well polished distros out there if my selection was limited. All things considered, since each seems to be on a fairly level playing field, the one that would win out would be one with an easy way to upgrade. In the course of using Ubuntu on a backup box, I’ve noticed that not only was I able to upgrade from each major release to the next, but I was also able to run through all of the alpha testing which was great (much fewer issues with the alpha releases than I expected by the way).

For any major out there — please remove your deal-breaker if you are only offering your users the CD/DVD method for upgrading. Give the users a proper, tested choice to upgrade via the internet.

OK, I’m done.

One of the major advantages of using Firefox is the accessibility to a variety of great add-ons. One of the major disadvantages is that some of these add-ons don’t get updated as frequently as you may like. Here are the add-ons I used and results of upgrading:

FireFTP is an FTP client built into FireFox. There was only a development version that was compatible with FF3 until a new release on June 17th. I like using this built in plugin as it provides the basic but necessary features. It would have been nice to have a proper release during the earlier FF3 betas, but at least the developer came through once the official FF3 came out.

AdBlock Plus is a great plugin that not only can block ads and flash content but also consequently makes web browsing faster due to not loading unnecessary garbage. This is one of the best plugins available and perhaps even a necessity. If I recall correctly, this plugin was available during the beta stages as well.

TabMix Plus became a quick favorite of mine after I realized that Tabbrowser Preferences was a dead product as it hadn’t been updated since October of 2006. It was a great plugin that offered the ability to open a new tab using your homepage instead of just a blank page. This was really the main option I wanted. Unfortunately, since it has not been updated, it is no longer compatible with FF3. I ended up finding TabMix Plus when I was looking through the add-on page for Tabbrowser Preferences. I’ve come to like TabMix Plus better in many ways. It has numerous more options and does of course include the homepage new tab option. Right now it seems only a development build is available, but at least it works fine with FF3. You can download the development build here.

Download StatusBar is something I’ve been using for quite a while. It is a highly configurable download bar that appears in the bottom left of the FF window and shows you progress of your downloads. It is quite handy and a lot more elegant and less clunky than the separate download window that FF provides. This add-on works fine with FF3.

Overall, I’m a bit disappointed in some ways with the lack of development of some of the plugins, but one has to remember that these are hobbiest projects sometimes so therefore there cannot be expecations placed on the developers to get these updated. It would be nice to have a smoother upgrade including all of the previous add-ons but it is nice to find ones that are equivalent or even better such as the case for me.

Either way, find a way to upgrade to FF3 and find comparable or better plugins as the upgrade to FF3 is worth it.

This stance of ensuring users’ sentiments were slated as secondary irritated many users. It bothered people enough that they sought out a way to fix this problem themselves. There was a plugin developed and another hack to get the resizing text box function to work again. Funpidgin incorporates the text box resizing plugin as an option for the user. This would have been incredibly easy for the Pidgin developers to do as well, however; it seems that they took a philosophical hardline and decided not to included as they considered their new predictive automatically resizing text box to be more advanced. Some users felt that this sentiment sent a strong ‘we know what is better for you than you do’ message, driving them to make negative comments and move away from Pidgin software.

The Funpidin developers have promised to listen to the users and take their requests seriously. Luckily because we are dealing with open source, we have this option for all users.

Ultimately, the choice is yours. I made my choice. I am chatting with friends using Funpidgin right now. I probably will never use the original Pidgin ever again.

1 – Open Avidemux and load your video (say yes to any messages that come up).

2 – From the “Auto” menu at the top, select PSP (H.264) and then click on OK (you can change your resolution if you want, but I leave it as high quality). (screenshot shown below)

3 – Change the “Format” from PSP to MP4 and then save your video as an .mp4 file extension (the encoding process will begin). Click image below to enlarge.

Once completed, you get an mp4 file that you can play on your PS3. The encoding time involved will vary based on the quality you select, how much of a conversion needs to be done from the previous video and also the size of the previous video. It would be great if the finefolks at Avidemux would add this preset the Auto menu or let you add your own Custom Auto settings to the menu.
My testing was done on an AMD Dual Core machine with 4GB of memory using the 64 bit version of Arch Linux.

After further testing I have found that the key is make sure you select MPEG-4 AVC x264 for the video and FAAC for the audio and MP4 as the container. As long as you select these settings, your encoded video should play fine on your PS3. The PSP Hi-Res auto setting is great to use as a guideline, but just keep in mind that the video will be resized to 720×480 so if you don’t want the re-size to take place, then set the controls yourself.

The last system I bought (not including my PSP) was an Xbox (not 360). In its original state, the Xbox was not extremely useful to me other than using it for games. The reason for me actually getting an Xbox was due to me learning that it could be used for more than just a gaming machine, if it was altered by doing a software modification and installing Linux on it. This would allow for homebrew apps to be installed and would also allow it to serve as a conduit between a home server and a TV in terms of streaming media files (movies, music, photos). It also had a built in weather forecast and also the ability to play non-original games (copied). Of course, I would never do such a thing, but clearly some users would consider this an advantage. Moving on to newer technology…

One of the major disadvantages of buying anything made by a large company is that they tend to restrict a lot of features on it due to property protection. While this is understandable, it really restricts the user at times. The following information discusses the PS3’s native capabilities. I have done absolutely nothing to change any of the stock items. All of these features are included out of the box! This is what really impressed me about the PS3:

Sony’s PS3 gives the user a lot of control and here are some examples:

• Easy to swap out hard drive. The PS3 comes with a serial ata hard drive which is easily accessible and also easily changed by the user if desired. If for example, you purchase a PS3 with a 40GB hard drive and want more space, Sony includes a backup utility for your files and also will prompt you to format the new drive when installed. From there, all of your previous files can be restored.
• Install Linux. Sony even has an option right in their menu that allows you to install any version of Linux you like as long as it is compatible with the PS3. What a great way to support open source!
• Play your media files across your network through your PS3. The PS3 firmware update 2.0 added support for the Divx codec (which was a huge reason for my purchase) so that most video files can now be played. I suspect that Sony will add more when requested in the future.
• Standard USB ports. Instead of inventing some odd input, Sony chose to use standard USB ports for connecting their controllers and accessories. Did I mention that you can connect a USB keyboard and mouse and use that to browse the internet with the built in browser? Also, you can plug in any USB external device (flashdrive, hard drive etc) and copy files to it.

The Playstation 3 is technologically superior to any other gaming system on the market.

• The 3.2Ghz processor boasts 8 cores so there will be no shortage of power anytime soon.
• The Graphics processor is also multi core
• Includes Blu-Ray for both games and movies. Recently Blu-Ray unofficially cemented its place in the future of media. The massive storage capacity allows for game content which means better resolutions on games and sharper movies.

The Playstation 3 offers many cost effective values to the user:

• FREE online gameplay. Yes, Xbox zealots will find some way to criticize the quality of this, but the mere fact that Sony made the effort on behalf of their customers to do this instead of imposing a monthly fee is a great thing in my opinion. In terms of the quality, I’ve used it for several games it it seems perfectly fine to me.
• The Playstation store is a button click away from loading which does have very inexpensive older titles for purchase as well as game add-ons. Also, you can download FREE Blu-Ray previews, game demos and movie trailers.

Sony cures Cancer!! OK, well, not exactly, but they are at least doing something to help — or allowing you the chance to help.

• Sony includes a built in option to use Folding at Home which is a way to use this incredibly powerful processor to do the work of complex computer equations that are helping to find the cure for many diseases. This again, is totally free. Over one million users are signed into Folding at Home through the PS3.

Someone recently asked me which system to get. I answered by saying that they are all good systems and I stand by that. It really depends on what you want to do with the machine. For example, due to the fact that the Wii and Xbox 360 have been out longer, they have a lot more games. Another factor is that the game developers will need more time to be able to use the power of the PS3. Since I am not a hardcore gamer, this is something I don’t mind waiting for. Having said that, I currently own four games: Tiger Woods 2008, Assassin’s Creed, Ratchet and Clank – Tools of Destruction and Burnout Paradise. All of these titles look amazing and are a lot of fun to play. Even the games I have downloaded are very engaging.

Ultimately it’s your choice to decide on whether you want one of these systems and also which one suits you best, however; it is very hard to beat the PS3 when you measure its all around usability.

I came across this really cool theme with icons used in a version of Linux called Ubuntu Studio. I didn’t really care much for their default background and splash screen, but their theming inside the DE was very nice. The screenshot above illustrates the gray with blue mix which also is used in the drop down menus. I find this easy on the eyes aesthetically but also literally. I’ve applied this to the Ubuntu install I have as well as other distributions I use. The packages can be found on the universe/multiverse repositories of Ubuntu so it is very simple to install. For anyone using a different distribution, you can simply use the .deb file and extract it and look for the icons and theme directories and then copy them into your respective local user hidden directories. To make this easy, I’ve uploaded a compressed file containing only the icons and theme directories which can be found here Once downloaded you would need to copy the contents of each directory into the matching hidden directories in your /home/user/ if that’s where you want them. For example:

(extract the directories first and open a terminal in the same directory)

cp -R icons/*  /home/username/.icons/

cp -R themes/* /home/username/.themes/

(or you can just use GUI copy and paste)

Once this is done you should be able to choose this theme by going to System > Preferences > Appearance and looking for the theme in there.

When finished, you will have a very nice DE to use as seen in the screenshot above!

It is faster, but it was a recent install so I have further testing to do to see how much faster it is. I have it quite optimized though running Arch Linux with a custom 64 bit kernel on their 64 bit OS. I am running Gnome on the desktop and have beryl enabled which runs seamlessly. Switching workspaces appears better than instantaneous if there is such a thing.

The installation went smoothly other than one thing which was my board reverting back to using the onboard video somehow. Also, I have a PCI-e Nvidia card in this box which I had to remove after setting up the bios as my 22″ LCD didn’t seem to detect the signal from the DVI connection. So, I powered off and removed the PCI-e card, connected to the onboard vga port and powered on, changed the bios setting, powered the system off, then re-inserted the PCI-e card, plugged the DVI cable into the PCI-e card, then powered back on and it worked. It was a bit of a hassle and unexpected, but I figured it out.

Linux VS. Windows…

Linux — Prior to installing the new CPU, I recompiled my Linux kernel with the latest version, ensuring I had the correct options for the new CPU in place and downloaded the new Nvidia driver so it was ready to install when I booted back into my system. My kernel booted up fine and I was able to install the Nvidia driver without issue. I would say this took about 10 minutes including the kernel compile and driver install. (The Ubuntu 64 and FC7 64 installs on the same box booted up as if nothing was changed due to using a stock kernel and accompanying Nvidia driver distro package).

Windows — It boots up to the login screen (does not show my username) and just sits there. It will more than likely require a reinstall or I may just ditch it altogether as it is only on that machine should I need to do work for a customer who uses proprietary software. Thanks Microsoft, what versatility!

I will define Distro Ditching as the abandonment of one’s choice of distro on a main machine or computer that is used regularly (not a test box) where the switching may be considered either chronic or due to seemingly minor reasons.

So, now that I’ve qualified the expression, let me give some more information. First, I would never criticize someone for trying out a new operating system as this has many possible benefits (of course depending on the user). These benefits include learning new processes and understanding a different system as well as being able to troubleshoot in a variety of operating systems. This can really help one get a better understanding of how computers work under the hood on both a software and hardware level.  Also, the exposure to many variances gives someone more of an opportunity to grasp a preference for a specific style of OS.

What are some examples of Distro Ditching? I specifically called it Distro Ditching because of the nature or conditions under which the change takes place. There have been circumstances for various Linux users where they have found through trying a different distro that one satisfies their needs more than another. I experienced this myself several years ago while trying out a plethora of distros. I can remember changing from SuSE to Gentoo to Red Hat and at the onset of Fedora, I switched to Arch. None of these choices were on a whim or without much thought even though I was a new user. Each suited my needs better each time I changed. The testament to that is my use of Arch Linux as my primary distro on several machines for around 3 years now.

It seemed to me, that it was normal to go through the ritual of learning this different OS and facing the unsuspected belittling on certain nasty IRC chats and forum members and if you survived such rite of passage, you came out on the other side only the wiser. There appeared to be a sense of branding in this experience that was worthwhile.

Lately, this rite of passage appears to be lost. I am not saying that people do not encounter struggles with learning a new OS, only that perhaps the overall reaction may be different. People are too fast to give up and throw in the towel. This may mean switching back to Windows or Mac or it could mean wiping off that hard drive only to try a different version of Linux that may or may not magically satisfy all computer needs.

Where does this all or nothing mentality come from? It could be a derivative of the distros getting more automated so users have come to expect the transition to require less adjustment. This could be taken as a compliment I suppose. Perhaps it is a perpetual motion machine sharing the option to say uncle early as normalcy. Of course the risk in this is cheating themselves of the learning experience. There was a time (and it is still my opinion) that any Linux user after a short period of time needs to learn to compile his own kernel as this is a fundamental aspect of the inherent value of using Linux.

Fast food distro society? Are people less patient in the Linux world overall lately? While strides have been taken to make processes (installations, adding packages, configurations etc) easier, it doesn’t mean that the value of learning what is underneath is gone. Typically, it is human nature to only put as much energy as is required into a task.

So what? The risk is that anyone who can’t be bothered to learn what’s under the hood will cheat themselves of the ability to troubleshoot their choice of OS. Linux will give you logical error messages most times that can point you in the right direction of providing a fix should it arise, unlike other OS’s that give useless error messages, blue colorized screens that are not usable or useful or just do nothing at all in return except not provide the requested result.

Old school? Yeah, I can admit I am a bit old school, although I began using Linux only about 4 or 5 years ago. I consider the learning experience, while frustrating at times, the most valuable experience in terms of computers that one could endure.

The journey or the destination? Those fast food OS types get to experience plenty of destinations due to the vast array of Linux flavors. The unfortunate part is because of the tendency to participate in Distro Ditching, the destination is often short-lived and under appreciated.

[ELG64]

Server = http://easylinuxguide.com/downloads/archpkgs/ELG64

I have tested this out on my own 64 bit install and it works fine. This is also indexed so you can download just one or two packages manually if you want as well. I look forward to being able to do other things with our new host. Hopefully this is just the beginning.

• Message Tags: Create your own tags for organizing email. Messages can be assigned any number of tags. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize email.
• Visual Theme: Thunderbird 2’s theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability and maximize screen real estate.
• Session History Navigation: Back and Forward buttons allow navigation through message history.
• Advanced Folder Views: Customize the folder pane to show favorite, unread or recent folders.
• Easy Access to Popular Web Mail Services: Gmail and .Mac users can access their accounts in Thunderbird by simply providing their user names and passwords.
• Improved Support For Extensions: Extensions can now add custom columns to the message list pane in addition to storing custom message data in the mail database.
• Improved New Mail Notification Alerts: New mail alerts include information such as the subject, sender and message preview text.
• Folder Summary Popups: Mouse over a folder with new messages to see a summary of the new messages in that folder.
• Saved Search Folder Performance: Search results for saved search folders are now cached, improving folder loading performance.
• Find As You Type: Finds and highlights message text as you type.
• Improved Filing Tools: Recent folder menu items for moving and copying messages to recently used folders. Move / Copy again functionality.
• Updates to the Extension System: The extension system has been updated to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions.
• New Windows installer: Based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, the new Windows installer resolves many long-standing issues.
• Windows Vista Support: Many enhancements and fixes for Windows Vista.

One of the perks for me is that the Arch package list RSS Feed now works, it was the only feed that didn’t work and probably the one I wanted most to work. Nonetheless, it was nice to see Thunderbird go to version 2 as Firefox has been at 2 stable for quite a while.

The new version includes several new qualities including:

• Blu-ray and HD DVD data recording support
• Upgrade to GTK 2.0
• Improved graphical user interface similar to the look and feel of the current Nero Burning ROM 7 edition
• Unicode support in all languages currently supported by Nero 7 Premium Reloaded

I typically use Gnomebaker, but it’s good to have options. NeroLinux 3 is a step in the right direction. The software has evolved nicely.

The latest version 7.04 offers an improved splash screen to open the festivities. The live cd even seems to run faster than its predecessor which again indicates that Ubuntu is not only about major changes but also refinements. Other notable features that make life easier include:

• 2.6.20 kernel
• Gnome 2.18
• restricted drivers manager (shows up in your taskbar and prompts for installation of drivers such as Nvidia, super easy and convenient)
• Windows Migration tool makes copying settings during the install easy from that “other” OS
• Improved Network Manager including better wireless config with wpa security
• Easy Codec Installation (probably the major complaint about the last release even though it really wasn’t difficult, but codec addition has been made even simpler)
• Built in Beryl. Perhaps taking the cue from Fedora on this one, there is an easy way to enable Beryl settings from within the Gnome Environment

Overall, a nice improvement over the last quality release. Ubuntu continues to help move Linux in the right direction. If you are interested in trying out a distro, Ubuntu is definitely recommended. It’s no wonder why those Ubuntu people are smiling so much.

On a side note, I would like to thank those programmers and developers that write clean code and make package building easy for people like me, whether this is incidental or not, it is appreciated. Also, when download locations or the way a package is built gets changed frequently, it makes it not only more difficult and tedious to build your application but some people may even consider it too much of a bother and not even build it anymore. Take it however you like, but if you want your hard work on an application to be widely used please take the following into consideration:

• Try to use a fairly standard way of building your package such as make/make install or setup.py
• Unless you are switching to a better way to build your code, don’t change the build style
• Pick a naming scheme that is typical for building – using all lowercase, no spaces or odd symbols
• Although it is somewhat out of your control, try to keep your application on the same server

Thanks to all of those people who develop such amazing free applications for all of us to use. The GPL is a fantastic thing but it wouldn’t do much without all of those people (almost all unpaid and still have to work a full time job otherwise) who allow everyone the benefit of using such well developed software!

Anyway, back to the hard drive. I managed to pick up a brand new Samsung 100GB drive at 5400rpm for $120 Canadian. This was a reasonable price. This upgrade was justifiable for a few reasons: 1 – it was a huge upgrade in a space going from a 20 to a 100 which meant that I could put a lot more of my music on it and assorted files and not worry about running out of space, 2- it would enable a more reasonable opportunity to multiboot on this portable device, 3 – a speed increase in the sense that my previous drive was only spinning at 4200 rpm. It has worked out great overall and I would recommend it to anyone wanting more space. The hard drives are universal so as long as you get sata or pata that is compatible with your laptop, then the rest is easy. My hard drive was very easy to remove and replace. Although I did end up reinstalling Linux, it was very easy to backup my original data across the network and then copy it back after the reinstall. I do notice a difference in speed.

For my leftover 20GB previous drive, I went out and picked up a 2.5″ external casing which is very small and can fit into most jacket pockets. This was around $20 Canadian. Now I can use this drive as a portable device if I like. When I decide to get a new laptop, I can also transfer this 100GB to it down the road if I want so the investment is something that can be relatively long lasting.

• Very easy to customize hotkeys using the ~/.fluxbox/keys file including setting up hotkeys for mpc which does an excellent job at controlling mpd (Music Player Daemon). Also, the Ctrl, Alt and Windows Keys can be used in conjunction with any command you choose to enter.

• The ’startup’ file allows you to add in any program or command to start when fluxbox starts. This again, is fully customizable.

• My favorite feature of Fluxbox that I found was being able to fuse any application with another using the tab option. You can middle click and drag the tab at the top left of any window and attach it to another open one. This is especially good for multiple terminal windows if you are using something like Eterm. I find that using Nautilus with the –no-desktop flag and tabbing 3 or 4 of these together is very convenient when you need to view different directories quickly or copy and paste between each of them.

As always the ‘menu’ file is one of the most flexible of any Window Manager. You can enter virtually any command you like. As long as you have your permissions set accordingly, you may set your mount, eject as well as shutdown and restart.

Probably one of the biggest advantages of Fluxbox is the speed it affords you. When you open windows for most applications, they snap right open. Fluxbox may take a little bit of extra time to set up to your liking but it is definitely worth it. If you like fluxbox but really like to have the applets from gnome, you can simply add gnome-applets & to your ~/.fluxbox/startup file and you are all set. Using Flux on a new system will demonstrate the speed and efficiency while using it on an older system will make it a lot more usable and responsive.

I first started using Linux about 4 or 5 years ago and the first distro I tried was SuSE which was freshly around version 8 at the time. I won’t get into my distro experience which includes installation of over 50 distinct versions, but I can say that I have encountered my fair share of package management systems. While it is true that ‘dependency hell’ was a valid term at one time, referring to virtually any distro as suffering from a current state of dependency hell is absolutely unfounded and downright foolish. This is especially true Fedora Core 5/6 which uses RPMs.

Let’s backtrack for a few moments here and talk about package management and how it works. The truth is that there are several different types of package extensions and each version of Linux makes its choice of which one to endorse. Sometimes this means creating its own entirely from scratch and sometimes it means ‘borrowing’ someone else’s and using it (as long it complies with the GPL). With the exception of source based distributions which compile each package from its source code, each version of Linux uses a compressed package containing files that when installed for lac of better terms, extract into their predestined directories. The installation is really that simple. It’s in how you come to obtain the packages that causes the confusion. This means that the fact that one distro uses RPM verses PKG or DEB makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. It is in how the package lists are generated, which packages are available on the selected server and how well maintained those servers are that makes all the difference.

RPM got a bad name simply because it was the package of choice of Red Hat which years ago had a poorly maintained package management system. People directed the term “dependency hell” at RPMs simply because of its association. In recent years, Red Hat and the community based extension of itself referred to as Fedora have evolved vastly, improving their repositories to include all required packages needed by installation candidates. I never hear about missing packages or missing dependencies with Fedora.

All that is needed, if you so choose, is to enable a couple of extra repos to get specialized packages if they are not available on the main server. So, you say this is still a pain to have to do this and therefore it is dependency hell? Well, Ubuntu does the same thing and it uses DEBs as their package set and it seems to work the exact same way and no one refers to Ubuntu or Debian based distros as suffering from ‘dependency hell’. Again, saying anything relating to Fedora and tying in the term dependency hell is simply guilt by association and this is an antiquated tradition as it hasn’t even been close to being a problem for several years.

My disclaimer is that I have no vested interest in Fedora Core itself. While I do think it has improved vastly over the years and it is a fairly robust Linux distro these days, I do not use it as a main distro. My distro of choice is Arch Linux. I am no fanboy, I tell it like it is. People can use what they want and what suits their needs. For me, that is Arch. I have installed Ubuntu on several boxes for people who want to try out a distro and even Arch in a few cases. The bottom line is to be able to describe the advantages and disadvantages of different distros based on what the user needs, not based on what you may have heard as a trendy expression. There are plenty of ways to improve Linux by offering concrete and useful suggestions instead of throwing out blanket expressions that don’t even apply to today’s current Linux userbase. Dependency hell is a thing of the past, leave it there, let it die and move forward.

The entire setup took me about 10 minutes. It was about 5 minutes to rearrange some internal drives and then I had to set up the partition on the new drive. I used cfdisk to create the partition and I used the terminal to create the filesystem:

cfdisk /dev/hdb

mkreiserfs /dev/hdb1

Then it was just a matter of editing my fstab so that it could automatically mount and then I just started copying files over which didn’t take long at all.

I did end up going with another IDE drive as I did not have any more free sata ports and I found that getting a sata controller proved to be more of a hassle and more costly than just buying another drive outright.

The other major change was the relocating of the sata and pata drivers. Serial ata will no longer be located under low level scsi drivers, but instead under its own section. This was an inevitability due to sata catching on and being used more frequently. It’s nice to see some good changes in this release. Excellent work kernel devs!

The Diagnostic

I probably won’t recall all of the details but I will provide some information on what has preoccupied me for the last several days. One of the first things I did was a Google search on the issue that had apparently plagued this machine for about 2 years or more and caused frustration to its owner and others who had tried to fix it. My first Google search produced that originally there had been a class action suit against the makers of Emachines for rampant overheating issues. The end result was compensation offered on 3 tiers depending on how many times the unit had been unsuccessfully repaired or you could choose a repair. By the time I got the laptop it was about a week and a half past the due date to apply for this restitution. I advised the owner to call in anyway if desired to see if anything could be done.

The Repair

I did find a nice forum post on how to clean the internal fan which tended to alleviate the overheating issues for a lot of owners. It seemed fairly straightforward and since it was past its due date for the class action suit, I figured I might as well try it. The fan turned out to be quite dirty so once it was reassembled, it not only didn’t seem to get as hot, but also was quieter. The next day I was using the laptop while lying on my couch and I noticed the strangest thing. I was connected wired to my network and was talking to some friends on messenger and I noticed a very strange occurrence. When I pressed enter, my message would just stay where I typed it instead of going above to the body of the conversation. Then I instinctively picked up the laptop and was looking under it and such and when I returned to the screen I noticed my message had sent. I repeated this a few more times and noticed that the message would send almost immediately once I lifted it off my lap. So, something was still not right. I decided to do further testing. I ran the Maxtor Power Max Utility to test the drive which works on almost any manufacturer of hard drive. It came back with errors on several tests. Since I was given permission to erase the drive, I thought I would try a zero fill (low level format) which I have seen rescue several drives over the years – this failed also. I had never seen this test fail before. With the hard drive test not going well and the strange activity, I knew in order to eliminate some variables, the drive needed to be replaced. So off I went to my local computer store and managed to pick up a supposed 20Gb drive which actually turned out to be a 6Gb instead. I am keeping in mind while doing all of this work that I am trying to get this laptop into a condition to where I would be interested in buying it.

The Setup

Once I replaced the drive, things seemed much better. I used the laptop for quite a while with a nice trim Arch Linux install and it was working fine. I used it all day for probably about 14 hours off and on. At the end of the night, it mysteriously shut right now from out of nowhere. Was this due to overheating? Perhaps – the underside of the laptop was extremely hot. I knew the hard drive was not the issue. It could be in much better condition but still struggling to stay cool. More testing is needed. I did manage to get a moral victory tonight though – I got wireless working. It comes with a broadcom internal wireless card and used bcm4306 chipset which I loaded through ndiswrapper. I had tried ndiswrapper v. 1.26 the previous night and it would not pick up my access point. It was suggested to try the latest 1.28 version (thanks Brad!) and it went ahead and loaded up fine. It’s nice to have one less cord. It’s also nice to be able to have wireless working in the sense that it wasn’t a high priority due to all of the hardware issues which means that perhaps a lot of them have cleared up.

The (in)decision

All in all, it is a nice laptop with very decent specs. It was purchased about 3 years ago as a state of the art machine with a 15.4 widescreen (quite uncommon then), 20Gb hard drive, dvd rom and cd burner, internal wireless, 3 usb ports, modem, wired nic, firewire, 512mb ram (odd config – one 256 soldered on and a 256 added as there is only one ram slot and only upgradeable to a max of 768 – the upgrade would be worthwhile though) and the cpu is an AMD Athlon XP 2400 (1.8Ghz). It does run well, but I am still wavering on buying it. New laptops are very cheap these days and I don’t really need a new laptop by any means, I don’t need any computer related things to be honest, but if it is a decent deal and I get working, I may consider it.

ln -s /usr/lib/libdbus-1.so.3 /usr/lib/libdbus-1.so.2

I was then able to log into my desktop fine. There were no issues at all on my main system. Gnome 2.16 is very nice. The Gnome dev team is doing great work and improving on Gnome with every release. There was a time back before 2.14 when I didn’t really like Gnome much at all, but it has been my default desktop since 2.14 and there is no sign of changing that.

So I did an actual install and the live cd experience is totally different from the install. The install does in fact boast a faster boot up time than its predecessor. The desktop is once again very clean and functional as well as responsive. I still did some customization with BUM (Boot Up Manager) and editing services. I’m not sure how many people need to have bluetooth enabled by default for example. This helped to optimize things even more. With Ubuntu 6.16 using the Gnome desktop, you get the feeling that it is getting closer to an expected standard. The people at Ubuntu do a nice job of not breaking what is already working.

I attempted an install of Fedora Core 6. I say attempted because when it was about 90% done installing the necessary files, a tear fell from my LCD indicating that the package for the optional Gnome Applet “Byzanz” was corrupted. Fedora proceeded to implode at that point. Although I did not check the md5sums and also neglected to run the check disk option prior to the install, I have never had a problem with a bad burn. Ignoring those obvious factors, wouldn’t it be nice if the Fedora Core installer was smart enough to know that byzanz was a file that was hardly required to run the system. I could definitely understand a missing or corrupted kernel, but there are many packages that do not have anything else that depends on them whereas skipping such a package would make no difference whatsoever. I will likely try the install again and select less packages and see what happens. I did also check the md5sum and it was different than what was on the site; however, I downloaded it twice, it came up with both ISO’s having the exact same md5sum so it is more likely that the wrong md5sum was published on the ftp.

• Built in Phishing Protection
• Search suggestions now appear with search history in the search box for Google, Yahoo! and Answers.com
• Changes to tabbed browsing behavior
• Ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs
• Better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
• Inline spell checking in text boxes
• Search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
• New microsummaries feature for bookmarks
• Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
• New combined and improved Add-Ons manager for extensions and themes
• New Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System
• Support for JavaScript 1.7
• Support for client-side session and persistent storage
• Extended search plugin format
• Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
• Support for SVG text using svg:textPath

I have tried it out on a couple of boxes and it does seem very nice. I am missing support for one of my favorite extensions though – tabbrowser preferences. Hopefully there will be a build for 2.0 soon. It would have been an even better idea to just build that component into the browser itself, it seems so functional and fundamental.  As of October 24, 2006 – a new tabbrowser preferences was built: v. 1.3 which now works with Firefox 2.0. Thanks!

• choose where on your computer you would like to store your downloaded videos
• select how long you want to keep these files (a matter of days or you can choose to remove them yourself)
• create your own channel presets – over 600 channels from which to choose
• control your downloads of your chosen shows to grab each new episode when it comes out or capture all
• search for videos by popularity, date or browse categories
• a built in video player that actually seems to work quite well

I would definitely recommend checking out Democracy. It is available for Linux, Windows and Mac.

The first step was deciding on whether I would even bother to install Windows again as naturally it prompted to self-destruct as expected when I changed motherboards. This is just one of the disadvantages of using Windows over Linux. I couldn’t really justify re-installing Windows, but eventually did decide on keeping a copy of it around and justified this by at least installing the 64 bit version.

After the Windows section was complete, it was time to work on my Arch Linux re-install. Arch Linux was installed on its own hard drive which made things easier. I always use the following partition style whenever available which makes life a lot easier such as in this situation:

• swap
• boot
• root
• home

These are all primary partitions. Extended partitions can be used, but primary tends to create a much cleaner situation. If I were to only have 3 primary partitions available, I would select this style:

• swap
• root
• home

Even though leaving boot out in this method, the separate home partition can pay off dividends such as in my recent situation. I did not reinstall my home partition whatsover to obtain the 64 bit version of Arch. I only installed the swap, boot and root partitiions. After the re-install, I found that all of my settings for all of my applications still existed. The one thing I did ensure of was that I used a custom 64 bit compiled kernel. The main thing to remember in regard to this is to enable hyperthreading in the kernel config as well as choose the correct processor. Else, I made sure that copied arch/x86_64/boot/bzImage to my /boot directory instead of the typical arch/i386/boot/bzImage file which would defeat the purpose of the 64 bit kernel compile.

What’s the difference? I do notice a fairly large difference in speed between my previous box parts (AMD 2600) and the new AMD 64 bit enabled 3200 processor with the optimizations. Not only is there is a difference in this configuration but I also did run the box with the 32 bit enabled system before I reinstalled and I have noticed a difference in speed there as well. While I didn’t run any certified benchmarks, I am noticing a difference empirically.

What happened to Ubuntu, FC5 and Frugal? I did erase these distros from the secondary slave drive on which they were installed in an attempt to install the X86 version of Mac OSX just for kicks, but it was unsuccessful (details in a future blog), but I may install the 64 bit versions of one or more of these other distros on that now empty hard drive.

Final opinion…  The combining factors made it all worth it in the end. The price of the hardware, the ease of installation, the effectiveness of the 64 bit version of Arch.

More to come on OSX86 later on.

Enjoy!

Firefox                      Opera
I created a second user to see if it was a system wide user and I first I thought it was only a user issue, but once I started changing themes around, it did the same thing with the other user. I thought it might have been the themes but then since Arch had upgraded some fonts lately I decided to look under Desktop > Preferences > Font and see if I had selected a custom font that was odd. Once there, I noticed that the “Best Shapes” selection was chosen. I changed the selection to “Subpixel Smoothing” for LCDs and then suddenly the disappearing text went away. I had changed the monitor on that box to an LCD about a month or two earlier and never thought to check that setting. It’s amazing how something so minute can make sure a difference. I always like knowing what the actual solution is. Hopefully this may help someone else.  Cheers!

Although I am a big fan of the Gnome Desktop, there are few glitches here and there that sometimes bother me. One such annoyance is that Gnome’s default CD ripper known as “Sound Juicer” does not appear to come with built in mp3 support. It does rip to flac and ogg though. While I do realize that some people use these formats, mp3 is still by far the most common audio compression filetype for the regular user so it absolutely perplexes me why the powers that be would not incorporate mp3 ripping support into this application. I read through some different threads on the net and some of them blame the user in the sense that gst-register was not run or that mp3 support packages were not installed. While these are slight factors (especially the latter), the major issue still remains even after these tasks are performed. I ended up finding a solution to this issue which requires some user patchwork but it is really straightforward.

I do have to give credit to the people on the Fedora Forums where I found this workaround. I will be using my own screenshots to show how to add mp3 to Sound Juicer. First, you need to open Sound Juicer, then click on Edit and then Preferences which will get you a new window. From here you can click on the Edit Profiles buttons and then New. The information you enter here will be up to you, but I set mine up with one new entry for a constant (not variable) bitrate of 128 kb/s for my PSP and another one for CD Rips I might do where I want to preserve a good amount of quality which I set to a bitrate of 192 kb/s. You may want to set yours up differently and that’s fine, please feel free to check out the guide for using the proper command syntax at the HydrogenAudio Lame Wiki.

It’s great to have this workaround, but what about adding it to the application itself? I have been using RipperX for a long time because of this but I will try out Sound Juicer now that it functions more like an actual cd ripper.

I have been using Evolution as a mail client for probably more than a year now. Personally, I’ve never had much use for the calendar, notes or any other feature in the application other than mail account management. To some it may seem obvious that a switch to Thunderbird would be sensible but old habits die hard sometimes and with the hope of Evolution coming out with some new features, I stuck it out for a while longer. However; last night I decided to set Thunderbird up and take a look at it at the very least.

A brief glance turns into a project… As I opened up Thunderbird and looked at the interface and the built in wizards for importing, suddenly the prospect of switching looked very appealing. The immediate standout differences were the ability to change your theme, add extensions, manage rss feeds (was something I was really hoping Evolution would have added) and the option to customize the toolbar were all selling features on making the switch.

Importing and Exporting… After several google searches and attempts to use the built in tools for Evolution and Firefox I quickly discovered there would be no effective way to move all of my settings from Evolution to Thunderbird through either of their built in wizards. This is something that both applications could use some work on (I can understand slightly why a developer may not consider how to move to a different application a huge priority but at least make it easy for people to move *to* your application). I ended up manually creating all my accounts all over again (6 in total) and I will need to create all new rules for anything that was previously set up but I can live with that. I basically moved everything from my hidden evolution home directory /home/username/.evolution/mail/local/Inbox/ (keep in mind that Evolution creates 4 files for each account but you need only move one which is the generic one named with only the account username) into the /home/username/.thunderbird/ *tokenstrangenumber*.default/mail/Local Folders/Inbox.sbd/ After this is done, you need to close Thunderbird and then restart it. You will then see all of your folders containing mail from Evolution appear at the bottom left of your Thunderbird Folders section. I just used drag and drop to move all of the copied mail folders into their respective account locations. The whole process didn’t take that long, but it was well worth it in the end.

What I really wanted to be able to do was combine viewing RSS feeds with also catching up on my mail. Evolution is yet to offer this feature but Thunderbird supports RSS feeds. Thankfully Thunderbird does have an RSS account creator and allows you to import a feedlist file. I had been previously using Liferea which is a very nice application in its own right, but since I could combine both features in one application, I imported my feedlist.opml (typically located in /home/username/.liferea/) and it came in nicely although it did not place everything into nicely orgranized folders as I had done in Liferea. A bit of renaming of the feeds in Thunderbird fixed this issue.

I mentioned before that I didn’t have any use for the calendar in Evolution. Although this is true, I did want something that could remind me of important and upcoming dates or events. I found a very useful Thunderbird extension for this (this can be used for Firefox as well if you prefer). The extension is called Reminder Fox — here is a pic of how it works:

This appears as a string in the bottom right hand corner and you can add events to it by clicking on it. To see what events are approaching, you need only hold your mouse cursor over it. This extension is simple, works well and does exactly what it is designed to do. Just what I wanted. I didn’t need a massive calendar program like the one in Evolution. As much as I like Gnome and will continue to use it, Evolution could use some improvement (I’ll save that for a future entry)

Once I had this set up, modified my theme to my liking, I had everything in place. All that is left to do is create my rules which shouldn’t take too long. Overall, it was well worth the migration.  I’ve been using Firefox for a long time now and make use of a lot of the extra features in it. It’s no surprise that Thunderbird has accomplished a similar degree of customization and effectiveness in its design.

Good:

* Nicely customized desktop

* Includes a lot of apps and games geared toward a school setting

* Includes the typical config tools to which people have grown accustomed from using debian / ubuntu based distros

* Uses the Gnome desktop

* Desktop speed quite usable once I disabled a bunch of services and upped memory to 192

Bad:

* Too many services enabled by default can slow down a system, I disabled about 6 that I found completely unnecessary even for admin types

* Preconfigured gui preferences for services and such are nice, but required me to su to root in term – opening them from a user level asked for a password which was rejected each time (yes, I created a root password prior to trying this)

* I never did end up getting sound working. The user was in the audio group by default which was good, but there was no alsaconf included to run (alsa-utils must not have been installed) and since I had no internet, I couldn’t try upgrading to see if that would fix it.

* I did actually try to get my usb-ethernet adapter to work but even though it showed under networking and I assigned an ip and confirmed the correct nameservers, I never was able to ping anything. It did load the correct module, but in the end I didn’t have all that much time to mess around with it so I left it as is.

Overall: I was reasonably impressed with the Desktop and Installation which was logical. Included apps were very specifically designed to usage which was expected. Not having any sound was fairly disappointing since it was a generic Soundblaster, although I have heard that these cards were a problem for Edubuntu. Maybe one day I will throw a network card into it and see if it resolves itself. I probably won’t touch this box for quite a while now so hopefully by the time I do, Edubuntu crew is still hard at work with development

There is also a new version of the best file manager out there released — emelfm2! Check it out.
Enjoy!