David Versus Two Goliaths

Apple will release its OS X 10.6 “Snow Loepard” in September and not long after, on October 22nd, Microsoft’s  Windows 7 will be released. A week later Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” is scheduled to be unleashed. We all know that Windows 7 will be used by more people than Ubuntu and OS X but will it be a better operating system?

I have tried the beta & the release candidate of Windows 7 and from what I have seen it is a far better OS than the doomed Vista. I do not own an Apple computer so I have not tried OS X. For those users that are still using Windows XP and do not want to leave their comfort zone, October will be a great month for updating to Windows 7, so save up your money kiddies because a full fledged copy of Windows 7 will cost you between $49.99 and $199.99 US, if you believe the rumours flying on the web. OS X is reported to cost $29.99.

I have chosen Ubuntu almost 3 years ago and I will keep on using it. I use Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Ubuntu netbook remix. I use Ubuntu more often but I seem to prefer the feel and look of Kubuntu. I prefer the professional look of KDE 4.2.4 over gnome 2.26, that is my opinion and we are all allowed to have opinions. One of the advantages of Ubuntu is that it is free.

I will not run out and purchase a copy of Windows 7 when it does come out in October and chances are that I will not purchase a Mac just to try out OS X, but I will update my Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10. I hope more people try Ubuntu and stick with it because it is a great operating system with a lot of advantages over the other two I have mentioned.

As a member of the Ubuntu community I must, as we all should, help new users with any problems they may have switching from Windows and OS X. We must be patient if we want Ubuntu or any other version of GNU/Linux to make it in the mainstream. It can be done, strike that, it will be done. All we need is educating the general public and perseverance.

Banshee 1.4 And iPods Are Like Mixing Oil And Water: It Does Not Work!

I’m not a happy camper as I am writing this.  I simply wanted to add some music to my iPod.  Gtkpod froze and my computer was heating up.  Must be a bug.  Rhythymbox works but I decide to try Banshee 1.4, Bad idea!  I am able to load new music fine.  I unplug the iPod after it says that I can disconnect it.  No music on the ‘pod.  What is going on?  Plug the iPod and I can see the music so I disconnect it once more and still no music.  I restart the ‘pod by pressing the “Menu” and “Select” buttons simultaneously.  The iPod restarts, still no music.  I am pissed off!

I connect the iPod back to the computer and  I “Drag’N'Drop” the songs, all 11016 of them, on my laptop.  I don’t feel like pulling out all my CDs and ripping them again so that I can place them in the ‘pod.  I boot Windows XP from the only computer that I own which still has Windows on it and do a factory reset on the iPod using iTunes.

I spend several hours, over several days loading up my iPod with music.  I used Rhythymbox Music Player to load the music in the ‘Pod.  I have to mention that this post has been written in three steps:  the first paragraph was written when my iPod “lost” all of it’s songs two weeks ago.  The second paragraph and the first sentence of the third paragraph was written a week later.  The rest was written today the day I published the post.

I now know that Banshee 1.4 is the culprit in losing all the songs.  I taught that maybe gtkpod was since it had frozen and I had to terminate it because my computer was overheating.  It took all my courage to try uploading songs in my iPod using Banshee and it worked but when I eject the ‘Pod it says that I have “0 songs”.  I know for a fact that I have 11037 on it since I just loaded 21 songs using Banshee 1.4.  Damn, damn, damn.  I plugin the iPod to my laptop.  I launch Rhythymbox.  I see all 11037 songs.  I play one of the songs I just uploaded using Banshee.  It plays fine.  I unplug the iPod and low and behold all my songs are there.  I am so glad, that I am glad, that I’m glad; to quote Cream.  I must dig out their CD and add that song to my iPod.  So I have learned that I cannot use Banshee as my all purpose music player/iPod loader.  I must keep on using Rhythymbox.

I really liked Banshee 1.4 but I cannot use it because of this problem.  If you do not have an iPod I whole heartily recommend it, but if you do I cannot recommend it. Apparently I am the only person that has this problem since I cannot find anybody else on the web with the same problem.  I wonder if it is because I have the 64 bit version of intrepid installed?

If you know of a solution please leave a comment, thanks.

Ibex Quite Mundane To Install

I have installed Ubuntu 8.10 code name Intrepid Ibex on three computers. I upgraded two computers from Ubuntu 8.04. I installed Kubuntu 8.10 on a computer. No major situations to report. It has become very mundane to install Ubuntu or even upgrade. There is no reason for the regular Joe not to install Ubuntu on their “Windows” computer. Come on haven’t you heard we are living in a new era first Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, now switch to Ubuntu!

I have two computers that I still have not did the upgrade; the eeePC, I’ll do it when I can spare time. The other I will not upgrade until the gpac package is fixed. I use this computer to remux HD movies so that my Xbox 360 can play them and with mp4box that is included in the gpac package available with Ibex I cannot remux the HD movies

I almost forgot to mention that I have installed the 64 bit version of Ibex on most of the computers. 32 bit computing is so twentieth century

On an other note here is a great Matrix/Windows parody, I know that most of you must have seen it, this is for those who haven’t, enjoy.

Goodbye Kubuntu, Hello OpenSUSE

I removed Kubuntu 8.04 KDE 4 remix and installed openSUSE with KDE 4.  My first impression was:  Wow this looks great.  OpenSUSE looks very polished compared with Kubuntu.  Everything works as it should,  I am impressed.  I have been using it for a few days and I was thinking off going back to Kubuntu because I know it better and can get things done faster with it until today.  On my Kubuntu box with KDE 3.5.8 I can’t get my Kafeine player to do anything.  This bug only affects Kubuntu, why?  I tried every fix I could find on the net, nothing works.  OpenSUSE works, why not Kubuntu?

I decided to keep openSUSE 11 KDE 4 on one box, Ubuntu on the laptop, Ubuntu on the eeePC and on the last box I’ll be getting rid of Kubuntu 3.5.9 and going with something else.  I am debating between GoblinX and Elive.  Both of them have new releases this week and I have been waiting for both of them to try them out.  One of them will be left on a computer for longer than a few days, I don’t know which one yet but I will find out pretty soon.

I really like Ubuntu they have a fine product but I cannot use Kubuntu anymore or until Canonical decides to put more resources towards it.

Avant Windows Navigator on The eeePC

I decided to try Avant Windows Navigator on my laptop and eeePC.  I sort of like Apple’s dock.  After working with it on my laptop for a day I installed it the eeePC.  I figured that it would give me more real estate on the small desktop. It did.  Do I like it or not?  That is the question.

I was undecided if I would keep it or not on both computers until I tried to play video on the eeePC.  The eeePC froze!  I could move the mouse but if I clicked on something nothing happened!  At first I didn’t know what was the cause but when I asked myself what did I change that could have caused this to happen the only answer I could come up with was Avant.  Before I removed Avant I had to make sure that was the cause.  After I turned off the computer by holding down the power button, I turned it back on and tried the video again and it froze.  Turn off, turn on computer quit Avant Windows Navigator tried video and it works perfectly like before.  I knew then without a doubt that Avant was the problem.  I decide to turn avant back on one more time and try playing video before taking drastic measures.  The eeePC froze again.

I had to make a decision.  Do I keep Avant or not.  If I keep it on the eeePC I have to spend sometime trying to fix it so that I can enjoy video on the small PC or completely forget watching video on the eeePC.  I chose the easiest option for myself, I removed Avant from the eeePC.  I did not like it enough to convince me to invest the time debugging it.

I do not have this problem with my laptop, so as I am writing this it is still on that computer.  I have been using it for that last few days and will leave it on for at least a complete week before I make my final decision if I keep it or not.  At the moment I don’t see any advantage to keep it maybe I will change my mind later on I have been known to do that at times.

Banshee Media Player a Winner Without DAAP

I have tried Banshee 1.0 as my music player for a few days and I would use it as if I could play music from another computer on it but since DAAP does not work I have to pass.  On my Ubuntu laptop I have tried Rhythmbox, Exaile and now Banshee, I always go back to Rhythmbox, in my case it pretty much does whatever I need.  On Kubuntu computers I of course use Amarok.  I hope that the Banshee developers can fix the issues they have with DAAP because they have created a winner.

I keep all my media on a server so that I can access it from any of my computers. I need a player that has DAAP capability.  Exaile sometimes acts up when I try to import music from the server.  Well that’s my two cents worth.

Back To Firefox

After a few days of using Epiphany on my laptop I decided to go back to Firefox 3. I can live without all the extensions but I can’t live with the random crashes. While using Epiphany with several tabs open it crashes for no reason. As I stated in the last post Firefox 3 beta 5 freezes but not as often as Epiphany crashes.

Ideally I would prefer to use Epiphany because it is the web browser designed specially for gnome, but because of an annoying bug I have to use something else. Once the bug is fixed I won’t hesitate changing back to it.

Epiphany in Ubuntu

I have written about browsers before. Now that I am using the newest versions of Ubuntu, it is time to speak about them once again. In Ubuntu Firefox 3 beta 5 is the default web browser. Before I updated my Ubuntu computers I was using epiphany. The reason I was using Epiphany because I found it faster than Firefox and less memory use. The only issue I have with Epiphany is less extensions than Firefox. I had run the Betas of Ubuntu and had freezes and crashes both with Firefox and Epiphany. When I did a fresh install of Ubuntu on three computers, I decided to give this newer version of Firefox a chance. After two weeks I’ll be going back to Epiphany. Firefox still freezes and I prefer the feel of Epiphany, maybe I’ll go back to Firefox once they are done testing it and are in the official release.

In my Kubuntu installs I am using Konqueror. I had said that Konqueror is slow. Not anymore, Konqueror is faster than anything I have tried. I don’t know what the did but it worked. I do have issues with the KDE 4 version on Konqueror, such as not being able to play streaming audio. I have no such problems with Konqueror in KDE 3.5.9. At work I have installed Safari from Apple to give it a go, but I haven’t done any thing with it yet.

I haven’t been using Opera since updating my computers, but as soon as I finish this post I’ll be installing it on the KDE 4 computer and hopefully It’ll have streaming audio working. I’ll let you know.

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.

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.

Re-Arranging My Computers

Last week I installed GoblinX on one of my computer and after a few hours experimenting with it I decided that it was not for me.  The only time I could get things done I had to run it as root.  I did not like the fact that I had to run it with this lack of security.  I’ll be using the live Cd thought it has some interesting features like HDremaster.  I also like that I can use what ever desktop environment I want.  I think that GoblinX is designed to be used as a live CD.

I installed Foresight 2.0 for another few hours.  I like the new features in Gnome 2.22, but since I am already using Gnome in Ubuntu I decided to remove Foresight and wait for Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron to try out Gnome 2.22, only a bit more than a month to wait.

I settled with the installation of Kubuntu 7.10. So I now have KDE 4.0.2 with Kubuntu 8.04 Alpha, I am going to use both new releases of Kubuntu when they come out until I can truly say that KDE 4 meets all my requirement.  Well that is it for this installment.

The Geubuntu Failure

In Geubuntu, for one reason or another, the repositories for Geubuntu and Enlightenment are not there. Last night I added them and updated my system. I also screwed up my system. The Gnome panel at the top of the desktop was hiding but not coming back. I was pissed off because I could not get it back so the simplest thing to do was to re-install and start over. I am used to this so I decided to give Elive another chase. I shouldn’t says another chance, I should say a fair chance. I installed it and low and behold the screen resolution was perfect. I followed the same instructions as with Geubuntu to get the Thunar File Manager able to view the other computers in my network.

I’ll continue to “play” around with Elive and keep you up to date.

The Elive Failure

Thank goodness one of my resolutions for this year was not to run Elive for six month. Yesterday I got rid of it and replaced it with geubuntu. This was all the Thunar file manager’s fault. Thunar has no native network ability. As you regular readers know I have several computers and I want to be able to use any file from any computer no matter which computer I am using at the time. With Thunar I could not do it, at first. I found a helpful guide that explained how to do this for Xubuntu. I wanted a quick fix to this situation and when after about 15 minutes of trying to change my previlege I simply gave up and said to myself “self, this guide is for Xubuntu it should work for Geubuntu,” I did not have to twist my arm within 20 minutes I had Geubuntu installed. After another half hour, I had to install all the updates and nvidia driver, I had the same problem.

At this point I should mention that I had another situation with elive that at first I was going to live with but with the “non”-file sharing between computers made this unacceptable. For one reason or another I could not get the screen resolution to work with elive. On this computer I am using a LCD monitor that has a resolution of 1440×900. In elive when I set this as my resolution my monitor was to small, what I mean is that I was not seeing the complete screen. As I moved my cursor to the edge of the screen I would see that part of the screen. I had tried changing the video driver but to no avail so I set it up to 1280×800 and only at this resolution was I able to see the complete desktop on my screen. It looked distorted of course. In Geubuntu after installing the “resricted” nvidia driver I could see the desktop as it should be in wonderful wide screen 1440×900 resolution. Just this has made it worth while to switch to Geubuntu. Now back to the Thunar situation.

I followed the instructions that I had found for Xubuntu, until it says to go in the Users and Group. Geubuntu has no Users and Group in the system menu. I screwed around a bit and figured how to change my previlege so that I could use the fuse file system. I haven’t figured out how to auto start fusesmb yet, all I have to do is run the command: “fusesmb /media/network” and it works. I have to remember to do this when I start up the computer.

Out With The Old In With The New

Everybody has new years resolution and I am no exception. The problem with resolutions is that almost everybody keep their resolution for a few days and then they give up. I have done this and so have you, don’t deny it it’s not becoming of you.

I have a few that I hope I will not break them. You might be asking yourself what this has to do with this blog. Well one of my resolution concerns this blog. I hope not only to tell you of my adventures with computing, I will try to educate you in the ways of linux. I will try to have one post a month explaining how I did something with linux.

Well with that out in the open I have to do it now. That is it for this time. I guess this will be the last post for 2007.

Happy New Year everybody and I will forgive you if you don’t keep your resolutions because heaven knows I might not keep mine.

I Have Seen the Light with Enlightenment

I have been experimenting with both Geubuntu and Elive-Gem the last few days and I am quite intrigued. I have been using Virtualbox trying them out and I like what I have seen so far. Yesterday I was off from work and played around with both and I was so impressed with Geubuntu that I was one mouse click away from installing it one my laptop. I was to lazy to back up the files from my /home directory to my /storage one, so I did not install it. I wait a bit before I decide to take the plunge. I can’t install Elive-Gem on the laptop because it won’t support my wifi or audio card.

Both these operating systems use Enlightenment as there windows manager and it is different from everything I have seen so far. Maybe I’ll install it on my eldest desktop, but not now, I wanted to try KDE 4.0 first when it comes out in January.

In the last two post I mentioned that I have been trying out other web browsers than the top two. Here are my finding. On the laptop I am using Epiphany with a bunch of there extensions. On this computer I am not missing Firefox at all, to tell you the truth I prefer Epiphany. On my Kubuntu box I have been using Konqueror which I find slow but I still enjoy it. I would choose Firefox over it. On my Ubuntu 64bit computer I have kept Firefox but I installed the 32bit version so that the flash player plug in could work. I might switch over to Epiphany on this computer. On this same computer I have XP with which I tried Maxthon and since I don’t use XP often I find alright but I haven’t used it to its full potential. At work I now use Opera and I am very impressed with it, it is very fast I would recommend it to anybody wanting to get rid of bloated browsers.

I guess my time is up for today.

Gutsy Again

I don’t remember if I mentioned in one of the Gusty Gibbons posts that when one of my computer was freezing with Ubuntu installed on it I switched it to Kubuntu before I found out that it was a freak combination of my video card and motherboard. I was a bit disappointed because I wanted Ubuntu and Gnome on my newer desktop computer and Kubuntu on my oldest computer. On Monday I decided to switch them over with a complete Installation.

On the oldest computer, Newman, everything went fine as expected. This is the computer on which I am try Konqueror as a web browser, a bit more on that later. I am pretty much an expert on installing Kubuntu/Ubuntu and setting them up the way I like ‘em. Installing Ubuntu on the newer desktop was another story.

I Had been thinking of trying the 64bit version of Ubuntu. On monday a few hours after switching Newman from Ubuntu to Kubuntu I decided to Sidney, the desktop, to Ubuntu 7.10 64bit. I downloaded the installation cd, popped it in and restarted the computer. After choosing to install I get a black screen, no signal detected, damn. After a few Google searches I found out there is a bug. I decide to install using the alternative CD, I hope this will work. It does install. I won’t go through it step by step because we would be here for hours and we don’t want that do we?

The screen resolution was screwed up! I have a 1680×1050 screen but all I was getting was 640×400! After fooling around with it a while I finally get to change it to the correct setting but I only get to see about a quarter of the screen and when I move my mouse to one of the edge I can view another part of the screen. I try several ways to fix this but to no avail. Being a fairly good problem solver, in my own mind, I decide to fix this in an unorthodox way. I decide to remove my video card and replace it with an older one.

During the installation I rechristened it Bubble Boy to continue the tradition of naming my computers after Seinfeld characters. My iPod is named after George’s Alis Art Vandelay. Anyway, Ubuntu was installed without a hitch. I installed nVidia propriety driver and a few other packages and then turned of the computer and replaced my new video card and voila everything works as it should. I should mention that Bubble Boy froze twice when I had the older video card in it and it never froze with the newer card.

Now I will be trying everything I can with the 64bit edition of Ubuntu and if anything interesting happens I be sure to mention it to you. The first step is to get flash player to work in FireFox.

I can’t install Opera since they don’t have a 64bit version but I have installed it the computer I use at work. I like it. I like it so much that I installed it in my Kubuntu box, Newman, along side Konqueror. I tried making Konqueror faster by following a few tweaks I found on the net. That did make Konqueror faster but Konqueror was so slow that it is still slow. I now use both Konqueror and Opera on that computer. On my laptop I am using Epiphany 95% of the time and 5% is FireFox. I am getting used to not using my FireFox extensions and learning to use Epiphany’s extension. I just added a few third party extensions and I am liking Epiphany more and more.

Well I have to call it a day if I want to get some work done on Bubble Boy tonight. I’ll keep you posted.

Browser Wars: The Unknowns

Before I start with this post I’ll just say that this is not the post that I was supposed to publish today. I had told you in a previous post that I was converting some Seinfeld episodes into iPod ready files. I decided to write a step by step account of this so that my fellow Ubuntu users could do the same thing whitout searching the web trying something and if that didn’t work search again. Well let me tell you That post was so long I think I could actually publish it as a book. My experience in reading blogs is that if a blog is overly long the reader tends to lose patient and not read it completely, so I decided to shelve it until I cut it down to a respectful size.

With that said on with this shorter post. I already mentioned in the past that I was trying out the Epiphany browser instead of my beloved Firefox. Lately I found that firefox was a behemoth of a browser almost as bad as Internet Explorer from our “friends” at Microsoft. Firefox in a linux environment is now slow as molasses. It actually works faster in Windows than Linux! I guess Firefox should be considered a Windows Browser that is ported to Linux.

Epiphany is a small web browser designed to work with the Gnome desktop. My first impressions of Epiphany is “damn this is fast”! It is a hell of a lot faster than Firefox. It has it’s own extensions, but not as many as Firefox. After using it a week I don’t miss my Firefox extensions, much. There is a short learning curve when changing to Epiphany but I think it is worth it. Today I decided to try Konqueror, as a web browser, on my Kubuntu computer, in fact I am writing this using Konqueror. Another learning curve. My first impression of Konqueror as a web browser is “damn this is slow”!

I still use Firefox on one of my computer and at work. At work we use Windows so I have to use something else than Internet Explorer. I was thinking of installing the Opera Browser. I think I’ll do that tomorrow since there is supposed to be a snow storm starting this evening and going through the night. Tomorrow it is going to be windy and I think that we won’t be busy. Maxthon is another alternative for Windows users. It uses the Explorer engine but it improves on it.

Who will win the browser wars? I certainly don’t know, but what I know is that Internet Explorer as all to lose and nothing to gain. It has already lost quite a bit and if Firefox improves itself when 3.0 comes out it has a fighting chance. I only hope they don’t forget us Linux users because without us firefox would not have had a fighting chance at the beginning.

A Formatting We Will Go…

Last week was a hectic week for my laptop. A very stressful week also. On Tuesday I had an appointment for an oil change and brake check up for my car. After this appointment I stopped at the cemetery where my father was buried. That night I had disturbing dreams of when my father was in the hospital and I couldn’t sleep anymore. So what did I do? I did something that I had been thinking about doing that last few weeks. I installed LinuxMint on kramer, the laptop.

By the time I had to go to work I had everything set up the way I liked it. I would put it through its pace that evening after work. After a few hours of “playing” with my new install and setting the layout as I liked it, I realised that It was exactly the same as Ubuntu once I had tweaked it. Why change Operating System when I was using the perfect one for my usage? So I flushed LinuxMint and installed Ubuntu once again.

I don’t know what I did but my laptop was sluggish and when I played video, the video was jerking and I tried a few things to repair it but to no avail. Friday evening I again re installed Gutsy Gibbon and now everything is up to par.

If you are switching to Linux for the first time I huge you to try out LinuxMint because it has everything you need installed. I you want a bit more control in what you are running go for Ubuntu.

iPod Troubles Will Drive You Insane

I know, I know that I have been lax in my blogging the last few weeks but I have good reasons for this. I was to write something about trying out Epiphany browser for gnome about two weeks ago but I did something stupid with my iPod. I decided to try Floola with the ‘Pod. I screwed it totally. It seem to work fine but it screwed up the artwork. What do I mean? Well the artwork did not match the song I was playing and there was no easy way to fix it so I initialize my iPod to the factory setting and started putting music back in. I now hate doing this. I had over 11 days of music in it!

After about a week and a half I had most of the songs back in and I was using the iPod as a memory stick to bring some files to work for a friend. I plugged it in the office computer and I was busy with customers and when I sat at the computer the ‘Pod was synced with my work computer. It was almost empty again. So last night I started installing songs back in the iPod. I am truly sick and tired of doing this. It was all my fault, damn me!

From what I saw of Floola it seems to be a good program, I recommend that you try it with an empty iPod so that you don’t screw it up. If after you installed a few different album with the covers these covers match with the songs, I think that a few of you would stick with it. One of the great features that floola had is that the program does not install in the computer so you can keep a copy in the iPod itself and install songs from any computer without installing an unwanted program on some one else’s computer.

I guess I have to continue putting more songs in my iPod so i”ll cut it short for this post. I promise you that you’ll have to wait a shorter time for my next post.

Parking Is Dangerous For Your Hard Drive

Three days ago on October 26th, I read about a bug with Ubuntu that would kill my hard drive within a year if left unchecked. I read someplace where someone says that it is the fault of the BIOS vendor and another place it is the fault of the hard drive vendor, yet another place says that it is Ubuntu’s fault. I don’t care who’s fault it is, we have to fix it and fix it ASAP.

The bug is that in laptops the HDD parks itself once a minute and according to most of the articles I read a HDD can do this 600000 which means that a hard disc drive will last a little less than 167 hours. In my case it is not as bad as that but my hard drive will only last 1 year if it continues at this rate.

When I first read this article I did not think that I was affected and that it was just a freaky thing happening to a few laptops. Yesterday I read more and started wondering if my computer was affected with this bug. I checked it and my computer was cycling once every two minutes or so, as I said not as bad as once a second but worrisome. I read of a few fixes but I didn’t really have the time to try them so I waited until this evening to give it a go.

Let me tell you that I was really worried this afternoon, not because that my hard disc drive might fail within a year but because I might have to remove Ubuntu and install XP on my laptop. I have tried the fixes and thank God they are working on my desktop. I am very happy right now, so happy that I want to jump around and yell “hee hah”, but I won’t.

Almost all the information I got to fix my problem I got it from here, thank you Roald Hopman (AKA Ubuntu Demon) if it wasn’t for you I would never have known what happenned to my HDD in a years time.

Gutsy Gibbon Up And Running

Gutsy Gibbon is up and running all the three musketeers, yeah that right I installed it on my lap-top, Kramer, last evening. Everything that I use regularly works, hee haa little doggies. I am very happy with this version of Ubuntu.

I had a freezing problem with one of my desktop computer, new-toy to be precise. I had installed Ubuntu on it Saturday and nVidia’s propriety driver and the computer was freezing. I found out Sunday that my graphic card (EVGA 7300GS) and motherboard (E9N) for one reason or another were not really compatible. When I installed the drivers for Windows XP there was a patch for the graphic card so XP works correctly. I tried a few fixes and they seemed to work, but after a while the computer freezes again.

I did not have this problem when I had Kubuntu on it, so guess what? I reformatted it with Kubuntu and christen it Sidney, and what the hell I reformatted precious with Ubuntu and named that one Newman. I did all of this Monday evening.

Today I finished tweaking all three computers and Sidney froze again. I removed the nVidia propriety drivers. It still froze. I was getting pissed off. I read in the nVidia forums that there is no solution for this problem. I have a solution I go and buy myself another video card a GeForce 8500GT. Now Sidney does not freeze. I am a few dollars poorer but I am Video rich.

I am tired so I’ll take a break and watch television and not touch any of my computers this evening. See you later.

Gutsy Gibbon Second & Third Steps

First off I’d like to say that I am sorry that I did not write on Friday, or yesterday, as promised in Gutsy Gibbon’s First Step. Friday was a very hectic days so when I got home I decided to take it easy and not work to hard on the computer, so all I do is transfer some files from New-Toy to Precious so I don’t have to do this on Saturday.

Yesterday when I got home from work I went back at it. My goal was to complete the Kubuntu 7.10 installation on Precious, install Windows XP (for Games) and Ubuntu 7.10 on New-Toy and if I still had it in me to install Ubuntu in Kramer the laptop.

The first thing I do is start my XP installation on New-Toy and while this is going on and on and on and on and on (get the point it is slow, painfully slooooooww) I install all the packages I can think of that I’ll need. Stuff like Samba, ssh, x2x (to be able to use one keyboard and mouse for more then one computer), gstreamer plugins, flash player, mencoder, mozilla-mplayer, gtkpod (for the iPod), GPixPod (again for the iPod), unrar, etc, etc, etc I am sure that I have forgotten a few packages but it is quite easy to install them when I’ll need them. I set up the desktop the way I like it. I don’t really like the wallpaper/desktop art but no more time to waste to change it at the moment.

I have to mention that when I used Dolphin, the new KDE file manager, I like the look and feel of it but there is no tab option like in Konquerer, the consolation is that there is split view where I can open two folders at the same time. I guess I’ll have to make due with that. In Konqueror I usually opened up to four folders at the time.

When XP is done installing I try to install NOD32 on it but my back up copy of the anti-virus is on Precious and I don’t have my Ethernet drivers installed. New-Toy as never had XP installed on it and I did not expect to install it on that computer so all the CDs are put away God knows where. So I have to download all the drivers I need from the net. I start the downloads and I start installing Ubuntu 7.10 on New-Toy. Same thing happened with the “Scanning the Mirror” being stuck at 82%. I watch television while I wait. When I go back to the computer everything is done in less time that Windows XP was “completely” installed.

I log in and I again get a restricted driver notice. I do install the nVidia driver so that I can use the desktop effects. The basic setting is, let us say, basic. I install the CompizConfig Settings Manager and set up the desktop effects to my liking. I again install all the packages I’ll be needing. I have to mention that both New-Toy and Precious had the correct screen resolution when the were turned on. This is the first time this happens for me since I apparently have abnormal monitors. Everything else is working, sound, Ethernet, modem, printers. I have to download and install drivers for my XP installation, which is simpler? My choice, on three computers, is easy.

I do change the wallpaper on New-Toy to Elephant, note to self find a blue Elephant wallpaper for Precious. Once everything is done on New-Toy Ubuntu. I restart the computer with XP to install the drivers. I spend the rest of the evening/night installing drivers, anti-virus, anti-spyware, a good firewall, burning software, updates and a secure web browser (Firefox). Time is up it is 11:30 and I call it a day.

This morning after I get home from my morning walk I decide to install Battlefeild 2 and Bioshock and a few more game on the XP partition. I try them out for several hours,in fact about 4 hours. I don’t play computer game very often but when I do I play them for way too long. Nothing creative done yet today except that now I am transfering files back to New-Toy from Precious and I am putting yet more music in my iPod, when will I listen to these songs? Soon I hope.

I decided not to install Gutsy on my laptop at them moment I wait until I have more time to devote to this endeavour. I guess that is it for this overlong post. From what I have seen Ubuntu has another great release under their belt. Now we have to get ready for Hardy Heron Ubuntu 8.04 when it comes out in April.

This has been posted to both my blogs, Adventures in Computing and No Name Blog. Usually this would only have been posted in the Adventures blog but I wanted to see how much traffic it would create on the No Name Blog.

Boring Update

In the last post I told you that I was upgrading to Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon Beta release. The upgrade went fine. The only problem I have is that I don’t have the time to try it out. Maybe I should have upgraded my laptop instead since I use this one everyday.

Last time I said that I’ll be installing Gutsy on my three computers the 20th and 21st of October, this hasn’t changed. What I decided to change is I’ll be installing Kubuntu on my older computer and Ubuntu on my newer desktop computer and both on my laptop.

I guess this is it for this post, I know it was a boring post but you know what they say: “Life is a Bitch and so is Britney Spears.”

You Have To Be Gutsy To Try This

As I am writing this I am upgrading my old computer to Ubuntu 7.10 code named “Gutsy Gibbon” beta. I have waited longer this time around to do the switch. I had switched over to “Edgy Eft” Ubuntu 7.04 when it was still in its alpha stage. I can’t wait to try it out.

In the Ubuntu communities everybody has been posting about Ubuntu Install fests around the date of 18th of October since this is when 7.10 is coming out. I am going to have one on the 20th and 21st since I’ll be doing 2 fresh installs, maybe three. My old computer, named Precious, will have Ubuntu. My newer desktop, named New-Toy, will have Kubuntu, and the lap top, named Kramer, will have both version of the distribution. I am getting giddy with the anticipation.

I hope that they work out all the kinks out before I upgrade my new vostro laptop, since the hardware in it is relatively new and as I am writing this there are some issues. This is the main reason why I did not do the upgrade yet. I am using the lap top 60% of the time, so I don’t want to use a buggy system.

I invite you all to go to The No Name Blog for a good time and a less serious blog. I warn you that you may be offended by the content and/or the sarcasm. Thanks again for reading my musings. See you later.

Procrastination Works Again

My compiz-fusion desktop effects on my lap top are working again. As you know after an update on the 13th of September it had stopped working. Last week another update still not working. This morning another update to compiz and shazam it works. I was hoping this was going to happen, since compiz-fusion is still in development.

So the power of positive thinking wins again. I believed that compiz-fusion would fix itself and voila it happened. Buy the the book “The Secret” and wonderful stuff will happen to you, better yet just think and believe you will get “The Secret” and you get the book just by the power of wishful thinking.

Enough of this bull.

New Name Blog

For those of you that are regular readers of this blog, you will have noticed the new name. I have gotten rid of the “… and life” in the title of this post. If you want to read my quirky views of life, you’ll have to go to the No Name Blog.

You’ll notice that there are a lot more posting on that blog than this one, and that is because I have less time than I used to with which to experiment with my computers.

Anyways there is nothing new on the compiz-fusion front. It still does not work on my lap top. I have tried Foresight linux for about half an hour last night, I wanted to see and try gnome 2.2. It is alright, but for some reason I was not comfortable with its package manager. I’ll try to work with it some more at a later date.

I guess that is it for today. Go to the No Name Blog later today for a brand new post. I have Posted four times this week already, it is a marathon of posts. Will I stay the course. Go and see. Bye.

A Quick One

Just a quick one to keep you up to date. I still haven’t gotten compiz-fusion working on the lap top. I haven’t really tried to do anything about it yet.

I like what I can do with Rockbox on my iPod but after trying it for half a day I noticed that it is harder on the battery that the original firmware from Apple. I’ll be using the original from Apple for my everyday use, and Rockbox will be to impress people and something to do in my spare time. I hope that we can update our firmware so that we have the same as the iPod classic.

As I said this is a quick post. No pictures this time.

Damn Those Updates

Last post I was proud to announce that I finally got compiz-fusion working on my lap top. Yesterday their was an update for compiz-fusion. It don’t work no more! I haven’t taken the time to try and fix it, hopefully it is nothing major. I can turn it on but after a few seconds it kicks me out back to my regular metacity windows manager with no eye popping desktop.

The desktop effects the compiz-fusion are totally useless for productivity but they keep me amused and happy, and you know what they say: “an amused and happy Norm is a lot better than a pissed off and angry Norm.” It’s true they all say that, I’m not lying. Check it out you’ll see.

That it for now. I had a long day and in a few hours I have to be at work.

With A Little Help From My Friends

I finally have gotten compiz-fusion working on Kramer, my Dell Vostro 1500 laptop (as if you didn’t already know). I hadn’t tried installing it until yesterday because when I tried running the desktop effects I lost the borders and headers, so I knew that I would lose them again if I tried compiz-fusion. Also this is the second computer that I have installed the nVidia drivers through Envy and when I try compiz-fusion my computer freezes. Kramer was no exception. I had almost decided to give it a rest and try another day when I found this site (click here). I try the few trouble shooting he has at the end and low and behold everything works. Thank you Kevin van Zonneveld, I am happy and so is Kramer.

Now that I have started writing more, the thing that annoys me the most about a laptop is that when I am typing and I accidentally brush the touch pad I change the cursors’ position and I am typing at the wrong place. The Vostro does not have a “turn off” function key for the touch pad so I had to find something else. With the help of Christer Edwards I have a solution for this. You have to make sure that in the xorg.conf you have SHMConfig “On”. The run the command: syndaemon -d -t -i 2 which basically turns off the touchpad 2 seconds after the last keystroke, so no more accidentally moving the cursor when typing.

From these two examples of solving annoyance in Ubuntu you can see that the is community support. If you are willing to try Ubuntu and willing to stick with it for a few weeks you’ll be glad you tried.

On to other matters, since I started writing the No Name Blog this one has no contained allot of life segment, only the computing segments are present. I’ll sorta want to keep it this way, but let me mention that tomorrow I’ll be giving blood and I would like it if most of you could donate when you can. During my fathers last few month he was getting at least 2 pints a week so I intend to pay the Canadian Blood Services back with interest. 26 weeks time 2 pints equals 52 pints. I can give 1 pint every 3 months so that is 4 pints a year, so in thirteen years I’ll start paying the interest. Please give.

Last week I decided to lose weight and I’ve started. I want this out there so that I cannot deny it in a few weeks if I don’t see results. If there was a Canadian Weight Services I would be glad to them some of mine.

That’s it for now, see you next time.

Rockbox and iPod

Today I was going to tweak the Rockbox installation on my iPod. My Plan Changed. Rockbox is a firmware for iPod and other media players. I had installed it four days ago and I installed a few themes. I expected to install patches to show album covers and stuff like that. The Rockbox firmware allows users to drag and drop files directly in the iPod. Rockbox users can play more music formats then with the original iPod firmware, more games (Doom), even screen savers. If you have a mp3 player you should try Rockbox. For those of you that are not sure you want to switch over when you install Rockbox you don’t get rid of the original iPod firmware you can switch from one firmware to another quite easily.

I have learnt something new today. One must at least learn something new everyday or everything becomes stagnant. I learnt that when you plug in your iPod to your computer and on the iPods screen you see displayed “Do Not Disconnect”, well follow that instruction to the letter, even if you have waited half an hour for some date to be written on the iPod. My iPod could not read the information that was on it. I had 25GB that was on the iPod but I could not play it. Can you believe it I crashed my iPod. At first I decided to drag the music files out of the iPod and on to my computer, but when I saw that it would take 7 hours I decided to revert my iPod to factory state and start anew.

At this point of the day about six hours have past and I am currently installing songs on the ‘Pod I ‘ve already installed Rockbox and while I was waiting for songs to upload to the iPod I found a build of Rockbox already patched with a few. You can find it at this link: here. I have a bunch of work to do since I have to go throu my CD collection and convert some files to mp3 again. I guess I’ll have my hands full for the next few days.

I really enjoy my new laptop, aka Kramer, but I am disappointed with Dell. I also ordered a carrying case and a wireless mouse which originally should have been shipped on August 29. Dell pushed back the shipping to September fourth. Then to September 14th and yesterday when I checked they delayed it once again, this time until October 16th. I guess I’ll have to wait. I am very happy that it was not my computer that was delayed for so long. I’ll still recommend Dell for their computers, this is my second one from them and so far I am satisfied with their products.

Well I guess I’ll call it quits for today and upload more music to the ‘Pod. Until next time.

That’s One Small Step For A Man, One Giant Leap For Mankind

After long deliberations I have decided. I am happy with my decision. My decision was to simply install Ubuntu 7.04 on my new Vostro 1500 from Dell. Since most of the hardware is relatively new the Linux kernel does not support it all. With a lot of hard work from my Ubuntu Community friends I was able to do it in a very short amount of time. I started the installation a 8:30 pm and finished at 10:30 pm. I installed Ubuntu with the Alternate install CD, which basically means no fancy live CD or GUI, all was done in text mode, like it was done in the old days, two – three years ago.

One of the reason it took so short a time is the fact that my Internet Provider, Aliant, has finally given me what I was paying for a fast Internet connection. My Internet connection is now at 5Mbps instead of 1.5Mbps, what a difference? I could not believe it.

Anyway I still have a few issues with my laptop, which I have called Kramer, The Web Cam is not functioning and when I turn off the computer I have weird colours on my screen and I have to completely shut it of by pressing the power button. I’ll be trying to fix these issues in the near future. I don’t think that these can be considered major problems. If I can’t find solutions for these inconveniences I believe that I can live with them until the next release of Ubuntu in October.

You might be asking yourself why I decided not to do a dual booth with XP? Well when I was doing a system back up the damn thing froze. It also froze another time which I can’t recall what I was doing. What is the point of have an Operating System that freezes all the time? I can’t see why myself.

I guess that is it for now. Thanks for all you faithful readers and I hope you’ll join me at the other blog because that one is more fun to read and write. Just click the No Name Blog link.

The Eagle Has Landed

I have received my brand spanking new laptop from Dell today, Woo-Hoo! Mmmmmh laptop. The estimated shipping date was supposed to be September 3 but to my amazement it was shipped on the 20th of august instead. I am so happy right now, I am just like a pig in shit. This is the best thing since slice bread. I have a shit eating grim. Enough of the cliches. My first impression is that it is thicker than I expected but it feels very solid.

I haven’t decided if I dual booth Ubuntu and XP yet, but as you can see I have decided to install Ubuntu as my GNU/Linux operating system. I am not going to do anything until the beginning of next week, so I still have time to decide what exactly I’ll be doing.

I’ve installed security programs on the computer and I will be doing a back up so that I can revert it to almost the condition I received it in.

My fake cnet.com review would be 10 out of 10 because I receive it two weeks before I was supposed to. This review is not based on any of the computer’s performance what so ever(Please refer to “We have Lift Off” post for reference).

I am using Internet Explorer 6 right now and being so used to Firefox I don’t know how people can use a browser without tab browsing. I had to open another window to remind me of the title of a previous post! If you are still using IE 6 change to Firefox or Opera or even IE 7 and get with the times.

It is getting late so I’ll call it a day and early next week I’ll tell ya what i am doing with the laptop.