Hardy Install Fest

The Heron was released last week and I haven’t said a word about it.  Well I have a bit busy installing it on several computers. I have installed Ubuntu on three computers. I have installed Kubuntu on two computers, one with KDE 3.5.9 and the other with KDE 4.0.2.  All went well with the installations except for a stupid mistake I made because I was not paying attention.  I accidentally erased a drive containing data that I wanted to save.  I checked of ext2 instead of ext3 on this drive and lost all the information on it.  I was fairly pissed off at myself at the time but there is nothing I can do now.  What is done is done.

One of the installs was for another co-worker and I am glad that I did not have to install Windows again. GNU/Linux is a pleasure to install whilst Windows is hard work to install.  By the end of the weekend I have two more installs to do and then I rest for a while.

If you haven’t tried Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu/Mythbuntu/…buntu now is the time.  It is a great distribution.

eeePC Video With Compiz-Fusion

Last time when I left you I still had to figure out how to get my video working on the eeePC when with either the Metisse or Compiz-Fusion activated in the Mandriva 2008.1 operating system.  I am glad to say that after a bid of searching I figure it out thanks to the Compiz-Fusion forum and google.  I should really say that I got it working with Compiz-Fusion not Metisse yet.  After using it for a little while I turned of the 3D effects because it was slowing down the eeePC.  I’ll only use it to impress friends, family and people that I`ll try to convert to GNU/Linux from Windows.

I’ll never go back to Windows in its present form.  Next Month will mark two full years with a GNU/Linux operating system as my personal choice.  I’ve tried a few distribution, starting with openSUSE and at the moment using Ubuntu and Kubuntu and Mandriva.  I’ve tried Fedora, Elive, GoblniX, openGEU, linux mint and Foresight.  I even tried the Xandros on my eeePC.  I have tried a few BSD Unix distributions.  All these “alternative” operating systems are a lot more secure than Windows.  They are cheaper than Windows.  Almost every applications in Linux are free, well the ones I use are.  No anti virus to install.  Computers that are older than five years are still usable. With that said I can safely say that their is no way that I’ll return to Windows in its present form.

The main reason that a lot of people hate Windows Vista so much is that it is different from Windows XP and a lot of computer users do not want to learn how to do things differently.  They want to use the path with the least resistance.  This is also the major reason that GNU/Linux is still a marginal operating system.   It is great that eeePC comes with Linux.  Dell comes with Ubuntu pre-install.  I think that if Windows does come out with Windows 7 next year it will get a lot of people switching to Linux. 

The time is now to switch to a GNU/Linux operating system.  If you are on the fence trying to decide just go for it, and stick with it for a few months and you will be glad you did.  It does not matter which one you choose they are all fine distributions.  With the money you save by not buying software you can buy a Video Console for all your gaming needs.  This is the only shortfall Linux has in my opinion.  It is getting better but it is not there yet.

Mandriva 2008.1 On eeePC

I finished the internet install of Mandriva 2008.1 on my eeePC.  I ended the last post with 2hrs and 43 minutes left in the install of Mandriva according to the GUI.  I think that I have been through a time warp because it only took an hour to finish the install.  It took a total of 2hrs and 15 minutes for the install.  I tried it out and almost everything worked.  I did not realise that the internet install was the free install and instead of having the nonfree-flash application it had the gnash.  Gnash still has bugs.  When I was trying the Metisse window manager I could not play video, all I got was a black screen, the same can be said when I was using Compiz-Fusion.

I took a break and went to donate blood.  Please do the same.  When I got back home I decided to re install Mandrake 2008.1 the One version not the Free version.  I used an external CD this time and the install only took about 10 minutes.  This time I can view video on YouTube but I still did not have video when I used Metisse or Compiz-Fusion.  I disabled the 3D effects since the eeepc will be my portable video player.

My first impressions of Mandriva is nice looking and seems to do everything I want in a ultra portable notebook.  I have to figure out what to do with the video problem and that seems to be the only tweaking to be done.

eeePC Operating System Switching

I finally broke down and got myself an Asus eeePC 8G.  I actually got it last week.  I tries the Xandros Operating system that came with it for about 30 minutes and decided I wanted to be able to do more so I converted it to the advance desktop by following the instructions found here.  After a day with Xandros advance desktop, I decided to switch to eeeXubuntu.  I read several places that there were no updates available for the Xandros version on the eeePC, so I went with an Ubuntu derivative since I am well versed with Ubuntu.  If you need help install eeeXubuntu there is a great how to at eeeuser.com.

The first day I had eeeXubuntu I decided that I would try Compiz-fusion to get all the effects.  I don’t know what I did wrong but I lost all my borders and after playing with it for a few hours I got rid of the effects and back to the plain-jane XFCE desktop.  Everything works fine with eeeXubuntu after the user does a few tweaks.

The last few days I have been reading that Mandriva 2008.1 has complete eeePC support out of the box.  So today I decided to switch to Mandriva.  I have no USB DVD/CD drive therefore I have to do a network install.  Mandriva has instructions here and so does eeeUser.  I decided to go with the KDE desktop and I am installing it over the internet.  My internet speed is fast 5 Mbps but it is still going to take hours for the install.

Once the install is done I will have to trim it done by getting rid of application I will not use or cannot use like k3b the burning application.  I had some misgiving about installing Mandriva because it uses rpm packages and I did have dependencies problems in the past.  That was the main reason why I switched to Ubuntu from openSuse almost two years ago.  I am a glutton for punishment.

It has been one hour since I started the install and according to the install window on the eeePC I still have to wait 2hrs and 43min before the install is done.  I don’t think it’ll take that long, but what do I know?  I leave on this note and I will post the results when the install is done.

Windows XP on Noisy Computer

I am a glutton for punishment!  A co-worker asked me to clean up her computer and do what it is needed to make it go fast.  When I had time to do some work on it I turned it on.  Holy cow!  THE NOISE coming from the fan was unbelievable.  I have a computer that I found noisy but after hearing this computer my “noisy” computer can be considered whisper quiet.  I installed Windows XP on “Noisy” and the usual anti-virus and anti adware/spyware.  I set up a few accounts because this computer will be used as a family computer.  I set up Internet Explorer so that the younger members of the family could not access “adult” sites.  I had this computer going for about four hours and had a splitting headache.  This computer was producing so much heat I had to open a few windows to cool the apartment down.

Tomorrow I have to finish installing applications on this computer.  I hope it does not take too long because I can’t stand the noise coming from this computer.  I can’t even use my iPod because the noise drowns it out.  My neighbors have not complained yet but I am sure that they will if I don’t finish doing all the work as soon as possible.

p.s. I believe the computer was making a lot of noise because it wanted me to install Ubuntu or any other Linux operating system.

Hardy Heron Another Step Forward For Linux

Thursday after work I updated my laptop from Ubuntu 7.10 to Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron beta.  Everything went fine with the update.  I like the new Clock in which we get the weather and we can add cities from different time zones.  Transmission is the new bit torrent client, I haven’t tried it here But I had used it when I was running Elive on one of my computer.  I beleive that the powers that be who decides which applications should be installed by defaults, should look at Deluge as the bit torrent client of choice.  It is a full featured client and it is easy to use.  About two minutes ago I started using Gnome-do and I like it very much.  It is sort of like Katapult on the KDE desktop.  There are still some bug, like no hibernation on my laptop & Epiphany crashes for no apparent reason.  It is going to be a fine release once all the bugs are worked out.  If you are adventurous install it now but if you want to wait until it is perfected you only have to wait until April  24 2008.

After the seeing how smoothly Ubuntu was updated on my laptop, I decided to update my Kubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 beta.  I already am using the KDE 4.0.3 version of Kubuntu 8.04 so the next step was the KDE 3.5.9 version of Hardy Heron.  This time the update was very painful.  I had to install it from scratch after the update because I could not do anything with it.  Thank God for live cd’s because there were some data that I had not backed up before attempting this update.  From what I have been experiencing Kubuntu is buggier than Ubuntu.  The KDE 4 version of Kubuntu has less bugs from my experience.  Everything will be fixed by April 24th and both Kubuntu distros will be great.