The Ubuntu Experience: Adventure in Motion

Wow, just watched this after skimming their wikipedia article. The line between American cartoons and Japanese anime sure is getting blurrier. That show seems to me a cross between the uniquely whacky adult anime Detroit Metal City, and the distinctive --although more widespread- childish american shows with the nonsensical setting of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.

As for Ubuntu, my experience with it goes long back but doesn't run deep. They sent me two free copies (one for you one for a friend) of each of their editions, there was Kubuntu and Edubuntu and Xubuntu and I don't know what else. It was fun receiving a batch of original OS discs from across the Atlantic for free, and in a quantity to give around. It always saved the day when a computer broke down and you still had to access its files, or wanted to try something fresh (since you can fully boot from the cd and use the full functionality). I remember a friend wanted it once to be able to hack the neighbours network for free internet, he said it was nearly impossible in the windows environment.

Back then Ubuntu felt like a computer OS with a task bar and hierarchical menus, looked sleek and felt powerful, and light at 700Mb. the new one keeps updating almost every month and makes your PC feel like an Android device, what with the widget style menus they made now, although thankfully after a lot of feedback from like-minded users, you can now switch the older layout by logging off then instead of clicking the log on button you select something from a list (forgot what it was), and you got the old school Ubuntu.

A main issue I found no solution for now that my laptop has dual boot, is that the startup menu shows Ubuntu at the top of the menu, and unless I go down to Win7 it will automatically boot in Ubuntu. I searched a lot for a solution but couldn't find any easy ones, all included doing dos-style hacks and I'm not comfortable going there unless absolutely necessary.

Another reason I'd never fully migrate to Ubuntu on my laptop is because Ubuntu has zero power management, the processor is running full power all the time, battery over in less that what Windows uses for the "high performance setting". again people asked for a solution but none exists yet, as far as I know.

But Steam now runs on Ubuntu, that may change a lot of things.

 

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The Latest Adventure: Dell Dimension E521

The Latest Adventure: Dell Dimension E521

This machine would have you believe it is a lobotomized quadriplegic with spinal cancer and emphysema. That is to say, I cannot believe how slow it is. It can't even draw system windows in a timely fashion. Of course, it's riddled with mushware, or whatever the hell we call that malware in the guise of something allegedly reputable like AVG.

And look, I'm one who still runs OSX on a PPC tower. I can put up with a lot of performance issues. But this is obscene. There is no way this computer should be running this slow. I mean, sure, it's a bit old to say the least; 2x AMD Athlon 64 2.0 GHz with only a gig RAM. But Windows has somehow managed to destroy this machine's ability to function. Hey, Ho! Windows must go!

Meanwhile, I've been playing around with Mint, KDE, and Xubuntu; we'll start with Precise LTS, and work from there. That way I can be certain everything looks like it's running right.

 

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Mumble, Murmur (groan)

Don't you just love it when they put together an easy to read, click and go user interface, and you still manage to screw up the basic installation?

To the other, for some reason this 12.04 LTS is built around the 3.5.0 kernel. I mean, sure, it's what they're building Quantal on, but Precise?

Okay.

But, yes, the update collapse I ran into wasn't the kernel. It was me.

:wallbang:

 

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I had an old Ubuntu install that locked and crashed after an "update", so I installed WIN 7 on that machine and did not even open Ubuntu for years. Now I need to reformat a drive with WIN 7 and a very nasty and aggressive virus on it so I need a Linux platform to do so. I opened up that old Ubuntu install and let it update itself, which turned out to be a complete install of Ubuntu 10.4. It runs stable and does what it is supposed to do.

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Now I am thinking I will wipe that contaminated drive, build a new machine for it and install Ubuntu as the only OS on that machine, just for grins and giggles.

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Independence Day

And now I get to spend the day fighting with a system that seems to think its drives are read-only.

I'm betting this is a known issue.

It's a War for Independence from Windows ....

 

Ubuntu Does Harry Plopper

Er ... Um ... Thanks?

Wow. That's a mess. Just ran an update, which then turned into a distro upgrade.

And now everything exploded. I mean, the software still runs and all, but its icon file links are broken, the preferences are all at default, and I'm operating out of Cinnamon because Gnome-Unity is suffering a redraw issue that ... well, it means it's in a world of hurt right now. I suspect that is a driver issue for the Radeon.

I mean, unlike a Windows collapse, we're not talking full-blown delete and re-install, but it'll take a while to scrape it off the walls, and, yeah, there's even a Spider-Pig moment in there. What a sphinctral mess.

 

I Think I Can, I Think I Can, I Think I Can, I Think I Can

And There's The Answer

So it turns out Compiz is having a hissy-cow like I wouldn't believe, but only in Unity, because Cinnamon isn't updated yet.

At any rate, they really, really, really want people to leave Precise behind; the crash reporter reminds that 12.04 LTS is no longer under development, but they're happy to file the note, anyway.

So ....

Who's using Quantal, Raring, or even Saucy?

No, I'm not going Saucy. But I might get Raring. But come on, Precise LTS has a life expectancy into 2017 ....

The current Raring is obsolete next year.

I guess it's time to actually get off my ass and do something about this. Like actually looking up known Compiz bugs.

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​

 

You should have went with Linux Mint! It's better than windows and crapple.

 

Cinnamon ....

Because of the Compiz blowout in Unity (I'm still reading up on it), I'm presently working in Mint>Cinnamon>White.

But, yeah, there are some issues to figure out; I still can't figure what all went wrong.

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(grumble murmur grumble)

It's not compiz ... jockey-gtk? (And other notes.)

Well, I've figured out it's not compiz; I think the problem is with jockey-gtk. But I haven't figured a fix.

Interestingly, another Linux box in the house lost track of its video card; I managed to initiate an update in TTY mode, which told me DPKG was wounded, and actually listed a command to use. I initiated the command, and everything is running fine on that machine, now.

I so wish I had written down that command. I would love to try the same thing on this box, but TTY/CLI update syntax doesn't yet yield the same result.

 

I'm doing that myself right now!

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Though I'm dusting off my old Toshiba with a crashed hard drive and, hopefully, I will be able to use an USB stick to boot it up and make its carcass useful again... :bugeye:

 

(grumble, murmur, grumble)

So, Yeah, It Was Compiz ... Sort Of

I found an old command syntax that apparently still works in 12.04. And, like a moron, I tried it.

At any rate, it seemed like as good of a stupid idea as I could possibly undertake. Something about gtk-window-decorator is absolutely poodlepuckered, compiz is having forty-six kinds of petit mal seizure, and the file system is frantically searching itself over and over again, trying to find the missing or corrupted element.

Hot damn, this is a complete disaster. Terminal has seized.

Phuck.

 

So overall, are you happy with Linux?

 

Kernel Teflon

Oh, sure. Unity won't stay broken forever, and I can always reinstall the shell if this is an exceptional problem. As it is, Mint Cinnamon still runs fine, and the Linux kernel is pretty much bulletproof. The X side of the system runs just fine, too. As it is, I'm down to a fault in gtk-window-decorator that's driving compiz insane. But that's what I love about the kernel. At one point, compiz went so insane that it seized the Terminal. With this kernel, though, you just getty up. Okay, that's a bad joke. But, yeah. Run another Terminal window, initiate reboot, no harm done.

(There's also the bit with the other box, in #110 above; I adore the fact that I have to try very, very hard to damage the kernel.)

 

Fun Fun Fun 'Til Daddy Takes the Linux Away

I feel so ... not incompetent.

I mean, sure, the Unity problem is still in effect, and Mint annoys me with its permanently-active screenlock; XFCE wasn't doing the job.

So I tried a new solution, purging XFCE and installing KDE Plasma.

I like Plasma, but it's far more (ahem!) "powerful" than a user of my knowledge and skill needs. And it presents some fun challenges. Like they still haven't included a master volume sound widget for the install, but I managed to look up and CLI VeroMix into the system. And then I was able to track down the yet to be fixed KDE/Firefox issue where you have to edit one of your preference files by hand, so I learned how to launch hidden files from the command line.

Sure, it's all baby steps and nothing, really, to be patting myself on the back about; all users should be able to do at least this sort of work on their system, much like every driver ought to be able to change a tire. Still, though, it's somewhat gratifying to not have to sit around and cuss out the system like I did when OSX finally left my G5 behind.

Sigh.

If I actually sat down for a week and ran everything from the command line, well, that would be something else, wouldn't it? And educational.

 

I was having trouble connecting to the wireless network with Linux Mint 10. I know, they are already at 16, but since I only use it for emergency or when I am really bored, I don't see the reason to upgrade. But it does make the XP machine significantly faster.

Apparently the newer versions have some sort of security problems, according to this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIcCrb1x7l4

Horrible accent and speech style, hard to understand...but I guess he has a point...

 

Sometimes I ask my self "Why am I still running Linux Mint 9?" I cloned my old OS to a new fangled SSD even, I have another partition with 13,14,15 on it but I never migrated over, now I should upgrade it to 16, probably keep booting up and doing everything on good old 9 anyways.

 

The Latest Addition (Laptop Edition)

Huzzah Says, "Hello!"

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"Hi." Dell Inspiron 15 running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.​

All up and running; a flawless installation.

 

download ubuntu now!!:
mirror.switch.ch/ftp/ubuntu-cdimage/

 

Some time ago now Linux got to the point where I could use it and not even really think about what OS I was using. And some time ago, it got to the point where it was actually a lot less of a hassle than Windows in almost every way.

The only reason I maintain a Windows installation anymore is for a bit of gaming that I can't do otherwise, but even that particular landscape is seeing Linux emerge in a major way, and quickly too.

It really is the beginning of a golden era for computing I think.