Blogs
The last time I blogged about Ubuntu Desktop, either I didn't explain the problems I was having sufficiently, or people just don't get it and react. I try to make what I write clear enough for those new to Linux, but that may make it seem like I'm not very experienced with Linux, even though I have been actively abusing it since 1995. I have decided to just keep on writing and let the chips fall where they may. This post shouldn't raise the ire of most people though, because unlike many Ubuntu veterans and rookies alike, I have had very little, if any, problems with Karmic Koala, much to my delight. Though I should point out, even with the problems I had with Jaunty, I still ran it on all of the systems I'm mentioning here. I also manage twenty Sun workstations that have been happily running Jaunty with none of the problems I had with my home system. My home system is a Dell XPS 420 with an ATI graphics card. I first upgraded, rather installed Ubuntu 9.10, and restored my data backup from 9.04. I created user accounts and the previous fix to the gnome-system-tools made this uneventful. Installing the multimedia and third-party software is incredibly easy now. The best guide for multimedia and add-on software I have found is over at my-guides.net. Once I had everything running smoothly I decided to take a chance and install the proprietary ATI drivers. I had nothing but problems with the ATI drivers in 9.04. This time however, it all worked without a hitch. I have full eye-candy and VLC plays videos smoothly with no problems. The final big test was Brasero, which was a giant headache with Jaunty. I burned an audio CD with the Normalize Plug-in and it worked like a charm. Well over a month later, Karmic Koala has been trouble free.
Karmic Koala Eye Candy |
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A few recent stories from experts in the field or journalists have raised my ire more than a bit. Seemingly well intentioned, to inform and educate the reader, criticized where more research (or common sense) would have served better. The Square Peg in the Round Hole The first set of stories began with the idea of shoehorning an enterprise Linux distribution (i.e. workstation/server class) into a netbook computer . I read the first headline of this misadventure and was baffled by the idea and just couldn't understand the logic. Netbooks are not tiny notebooks, but a whole different class of machine. This grand experiment evolved into a tirade against CentOS in general. As a CentOS user, this again made no sense, in that one who uses CentOS is aware that updates are generated from sources of upstream vendor and small delays have historically occurred. The delay of CentOS 5.3 had me considering moving to another distribution, and I still haven't made a final decision. Yet, I have always been in complete knowledge of the derivative nature of CentOS and the pluses and minuses of a distribution that is dependent of another. |
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I had intended to create blog post about my frustration with Vista and how I finally installed Linux on my almost one year old PC. A funny thing happened on the way to Linuxland, a roadblock whose name is Jaunty. So arrives the much hailed Jaunty, destined to be the final stake in the heart Vista. For the few Windows applications I need, I begin by giving less than half of my disk to the new Vista install, a common clean start to a gradually failing Windows operating system. Suspecting I wouldn't be using Vista anytime soon, I didn't bother with updates or anti-virus, saving those wonderful tasks for a later date. The next step was the uneventful install of Jaunty, updates, multimedia codecs, and Virtual Box, nothing unusual. My first indication of problems were burning a audio CD for my daily commute. One of the touted features of Jaunty was the much improved Brasero CD/DVD burning software. After building my list of tracks I began the burning process. Stepping away and returning to my machine, there sat Brasero with a message “normalizing title...” After a short on-line search, I found there is a bug with the normalizing plug-in for Brasero, that is installed and enabled by default. No problem, turn off the plug-in and a audio CD is created, albeit with varying volume between tracks. |
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I had to send my netbook, an Acer Aspire One, for repair after three months of use. The unit originally came with Windows XP, but had 1Gb of memory and a 160Gb hard drive, a configuration not available on Linux versions. I installed Fedora 10 XFCE respin, but when sending in the unit I knew that Acer would probably re-install Windows XP; Acer was upfront about this. As I suspected the repaired unit arrived with a fresh install of Windows XP.
This leads me to Easy Peasy v1.1, which is based on Ubuntu 8.10. Installing the XFCE respin of Fedora was not uneventful. I had to search the Internet on how to configure the wireless adapter, sound and installing all of the multimedia codecs for video and Internet. It wasn't a difficult task, but took a little time going over different web sites and getting the configuration just right. After the work was done I was happy with the final result. I didn't really want to go through that process again. |
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IntroductionSecure SHell is a wonderful tool for remotely logging in to a system and doing work. Because of it's command-line nature SSH can be a bit intimidating, but it doesn't have to be: some of the graphics tools you might already know and love can be used in conjunction with SSH to make life easier. Connecting to SSH with gftp |
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Hi My entries will now be in the form of a "story" and can be found here dispersed on the home page of Cooking With Linux site -- Just one click away Cheers!! John |
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On his blog: http://cookingwithlinux.com/content/passages#comment-126 John Kerr has mentioned some Firefox add-ons. One of the one's I like is http://www.wired-marker.org/en/help_basic_operation.html Check it out. You can highlight parts of a webpage and then it saves the page so you can come back to it. Along with Zotero, which John mentions, this is one of the best extensions for research purposes. (I don't work for, own, have shares or otherwise benefit from telling anyone about this...kickbacks would be nice) |
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I thought I'd upload an example of the type of video effects that can be created in Linux using (mostly) GUI-based editors. The video is created from still images taken at my office when we had put all the Christmas decorations up. Additionally, I'm creating a site which will provide both 'how tos' and links to practical content on video creation and editing. I'll post the address of my new site when it's more complete. Please enjoy. |
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Recently I came across an article by Michael Meeks, Novell, Go-OO and Open Office coder. In the article, Meeks made a series of points criticising Open Office. I had meant to follow-up with this discussion and see what each side had to say, but didn't. Fortunately Bruce Byfield has written an article for 'Datamation' called: "OpenOffice.org vs. Go-OO: Cutting through the Gordian Knot" Byfield argues that both sides are being incomplete in the positions they put forward in the debate and occlude information which may not support their position. |
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[Update November 27, 2008. -- Linux Magazine has stopped producing a print version as well: http://www.linux-mag.com/magazine.] The last print edition of PC Magazine will be the January 2009 edition : http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2335009,00.asp . I am not surprised as we have seen the magazine get thiner over the years. I wonder if this is a taste of what is to come for other publications? It is more than just economic factors. Sure prices of magazines could be relative in price to what they were twenty years ago. But at $7.00 plus for almost any magazine today, that is hovering around the $100.00 mark per publication per year. That can be a day's pay for many of us. Then there is the environmental issue. |
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