Archive Page 2
7.10 upgrade
I did the upgrade to 7.10 yesterday, and everything ran absolutely perfectly. There’s two ways you can do the upgrade: (1) burn an ISO, boot off that ISO and upgrade the installation, or (2) do the upgrade in-place via the software update tool.
I initially tried to use the ISO image, but ran into the same problem I did during the initial installation. Because the 9400 has the wonderful 1920×1200 screen, and the native X configuration under Ubuntu doesn’t quite understand it, X won’t start up. I could have used the text installer, but was too lazy. I found some info on the web somewhere (I’ll link to it if I find it again) about how you can stop the install part-way through, tweak the X config of the installer so that it works, then resume the install.
Again, lazyness got the better part of me, so I figured I’d try the in-place upgrade via the software update tool. It had been notifying me for a day or two that the 7.10 upgrade was available, so yesterday I took up it’s invitation to do the upgrade. It was the simplest and easiest Linux upgrade I have ever done. It told me clearly which packages would be upgraded, which were unchanged, which were now redundant and would be removed, then just did it. No fuss.
There were a few questions along the way asking whether it was OK to shut down particular services (eg: postgresql) while it upgraded them, and I think that would be the one thing that wasn’t absolutely perfect: I would have liked a way to say Yes to all of those prompts in one hit (or say Yes, and don’t ask me again), rather than being asked again and again. That’s a really tiny niggle though.
Overall, the whole Ubuntu team have done a brilliant job with the upgrade mechanism.
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Microtek X6 scanner
This morning, for this first time in living memory, I had to scan a document.
The only scanner I’ve got is an old Microtek X6 SCSI device. I’ve got Ubuntu running on a desktop machine here as well as the Inspiron 9400, so I found and installed an appropriate SCSI card (an Adaptec 2940, FWIW) in the desktop, plugged the scanner in and rebooted. xsane was already installed, so I had to do absolutely nothing else at all to get the scanner working. It fired up perfectly and worked first time. Brilliant.
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Ubuntu 7.10 is out
You’ve might have have already seen on the wires that 7.10 is out. I’ll be pulling a copy through the tubes some time in the next few days — most likely when I get back into the office and can use the ADSL2+ connection. Once I’ve got it, it will be my first Ubuntu upgrade. Wish me luck.
The press release points out some of the highlights in the new release:
- Hardware management improvements – improved plug-and-play configuration for printers, as well as automatic firmware installation for Broadcom cards
- Improved support for display systems – For laptop users, full support external VGA (projector) support is available out-of-the-box with easy reconfiguration when hardware is switched. For power users this release includes the ability to manage multiple monitors
- Windows compatibility – Users with a dual partition can read from and and write to files that are on located in a Windows partition (including NTFS)
- Enhanced user interface – Simple 3D screen effects and graphics enhance the user experience
- Desktop search – gives users the ability to search their entire desktop, whether for files, folders, chat logs or photos. This capability includes the deskbar applet, a central location on users’ desktops for all local and web search operations
- Firefox plugins – automatic installation of popular Firefox plugins validated by Ubuntu for a richer, safer web-browsing experience
For me big thing in this list is NTFS writing.
Looking at the feature list for the server edition, it notes, in part, “A new “tickless” idle mode resulting in reduced power consumption/heat emission“. I have little interest in the inner workings or implementation of the Linux kernel, and I don’t even know whether the Ubuntu desktop and server editions use the same kernel version, but anything that will lower power consumption is a good thing. I had to admit that I feel — and this is purely gut feel — that I get less battery life from the laptop when I’m using Ubuntu as compared to WinXP. It just seems like the low battery warnings start kicking in much sooner.
On the subject of Ubuntu server edition, has anyone got any experience using the server edition as their primary development desktop? Pros and cons?
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Eclipse really, really annoys me
I’m pretty much ready to give up on Eclipse for my Linux+Java development work. It’s too flakey. As much as I’d like to work in a modern Java IDE with all the refactoring goodness they bring to the party it’s just too unstable for me to use. It might work in other parallel universes, but on my laptop with an Ubuntu install that does everything else brilliantly Eclipse is a pain in the butt. I’ve had more success using vi and command line $CLASSPATH settings to get stuff done that I have within the Eclipse environment. It might just be my total lack of familiarity with it, and on a well tuned platform where the developers understand what it’s all about it might work great, but I’m not really all that impressed so far.
Happy to turn that opinion around if anyone has any comments about it.
Filed under: BrokenStuff, Tools | 5 Comments
Eclipse frustration
It’s not an Ubuntu issue per se, but I’ve been really frustrated trying to get Eclipse setup and working correctly. It’s the first time I’ve seriously looked at Eclipse. The idea of a universal platform that your development tools plug into is good in principle, but I’m not convinced it’s there just yet. I’ve been trying to get the various components that I need for development work (little things, like JDBC drivers for PostgreSQL) and I’m struggling. The theory is that you install their data platform components and everything just installs and upgrades through the same universal mechanism, but it seems a little random. I don’t always get all the component repositories I’ve asked for, and each repository seems to have a different set of components available at various times. I haven’t figured it out yet.
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Secure wifi
I mentioned a few days ago that I hadn’t tried to connect to a secure wifi connection yet. Well, I have now, and everything works just fine. It’s still not quite as slick as Windows wifi handling, because there have been a few times I’ve had to reboot to get the wifi working correctly, but overall it works well. I guess there might be some kind of command line magic (ifdown, ifup?) to restart networking without the reboot, but it’s no big deal.
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Scorecard
I figure one of the things I should baseline is what I use the laptop for.
I’ve got five machines at my disposal:
- This laptop, dual booting WinXp and Ubuntu 7.04. Take it with me most places.
- A work issued laptop running WinXp. Carried between work and home.
- A desktop running WinXp. Lives at home.
- A desktop running Fedora Core 3. Lives at home, but I haven’t turned it on in months.
- A bit bucket running WS2K3. Lives in the garage at home.
Most of what I do on the road with this laptop can be classified into three groups: software development, photography, and web access (browsing, email, bittorrent, etc). There’s also a bucket of miscellaneous stuff.
Software development
I get paid to write software. My day job is all about .NET development (primarily C#) but that’s potentially going to shift toward Java in the short to medium term. I’ve got a few after-hours projects on the run, and the biggest of those is also .NET. We’re coming pretty close to the point where that can be released into the world while we shift our attention to a companion product that will be Linux based. It’s going to be heavily oriented toward C++, but there might be some Java in there too.
That’s the primary reason I’ve installed Linux on the laptop — it will allow me to be mobile and work on the Linux stuff. The after-hours .NET stuff can probably shift to being totally run from the WinXP desktop at home, but I’m not quite ready to make that commitment just yet. It is good having it with me on the road.
- Linux scorecard: 10/10. Easily coped with.
Photography
Like lots of amateur photographers I don’t get as much time to go out shooting as I’d like, but I still do a fair bit. It’s not unusual to shoot 3-4GB of images a week. My workflow is primarily focused around Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Photoshop CS3. I can’t yet see anything in the Linux world that comes close to these, especially Lightroom.
I know The Gimp is touted as supporting some of the features of Photoshop, but the little exposure I’ve had to it has been a bit of a turnoff. The UI is a mess compared to CS3 and it certainly doesn’t have support for the plugins I’m used to using. I have yet to spend any real time looking into this though, so I might be a little off base here.
- Linux scorecard: 2/10. Has potential, but doesn’t seem to come close yet.
Web access
It’s a given that Linux has outstanding ‘net connectivity. The only real disappointment has been the whole podcast/iPod connection. Using iTunes that’s just so smooth; under Linux the iPod handling was a complete disaster. For me that’s a big problem, because I have a fairly heavy reliance on podcasts. I spend a lot of time working alone and I also spend a lot of time on the road, so being able to keep up with ideas and trends in the industry is very important to me.
The other thing I spend a lot of time doing in terms of web access is email. I’ve used Outlook for a long time but only as a local client backed by a gmail account. Using the native gmail interface is just fine too, and means that I’m totally independent in terms of which machine I use for email access. I’ve been drifting this way for a couple of months anyway, so losing Outlook on my mobile desktop doesn’t concern me at all.
- Linux scorecard for general web access: 10/10. No brainer.
- Linux scorecard for podcast access: 0/10. Totally broken. I rely pretty heavily on this, but can live with it not being mobile.
Miscellaneous
Like everyone there’s also a bunch of other stuff I do that’s random and miscellaneous. I’d actually include word processing and presentations in this category, as I don’t spend much time in the office suite at all. I hate Microsoft Word with a passion, even though I do have occasion to use it. All the documentation in my day job is in Word.
For my after hours stuff (and that’s the sole domain of the 9400) I’ve pretty much got total freedom in documentation, so LaTeX will do just fine. I know Open Office is installed but I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet. I did use it to open up a PowerPoint pack with it a couple of days ago and everything worked perfectly. I’ll see whether this is of any use over the coming weeks and months, but right now I’m happy that what I’ve got can cope with the smallish documentation requirements I have.
One thing I haven’t looked into is a replacement for the smartdraw/visio class of application that I occasionally use for data modeling.
Mobile versus fixed
In the coming weeks and months I’ll need to consider how much of the stuff that Linux doesn’t do for me is absolutely required to be on the road with me. My feeling right now is that I could happily shift some stuff from the 9400 and take care of them using the WinXP desktop at home. Most of my image editing is done at home anyway; I’ll occasionally stick the SD card into the 9400 when I’m away from here, but I’ll usually do this stuff at home where I’ve got the wacom tablet, etc.
Sync’ing the iPod can probably be run from the desktop too. I typically load up a bunch of podcasts at home and I’ll be good for a couple of days. Right now I do occasionally pull down new stuff using the connection at work, but if I couldn’t do that any more it wouldn’t be a problem. And for the occasional use of the office suite (Word, Visio, etc) I can almost certainly do this at home.
I think I’ll leave the WinXP partition on the 9400 in place for now, but I can certainly see that it’s days are numbered. If the hard disk crashed and I had to setup the 9400 from scratch I’d think long and hard about whether I wanted any Windows stuff on there at all.
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Wifi weirdness
I’ve tried running Linux on the 9400 a few times before and gave up when I couldn’t get the Intel 3945 wifi controller working. When I installed Ubuntu 7.04 everything worked great.
Kind of.
I had to go into network admin (System, Administration, Network) and turn off roaming mode. I manually picked my SSID and everything came good. I should say that I do not have any form of security on my wifi router (for a reason). I haven’t yet tried connecting to a secure connection, but I’m hopeful that will work. I’ll know next week.
One thing that does seem a little quirky is that if I suspend the laptop, when it wakes up again I have no wifi connection, even though the LED is lit. Futzing around with the network settings doesn’t seem to bring it back to life, either. It’s reboot time. This certainly isn’t a deal breaker, but it is a little annoying. Right now I’ve got power management setup so the laptop won’t suspend. I don’t mind that though, because it takes less time to shut Ubuntu down and restart it than it does to suspend and revive WinXP on this laptop.
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Ubuntu gtkpod hosed my iPod
The first really sucky experience I’ve had since moving toward Ubuntu as my primary workplace is that the iPod handling is pretty badly broken. I installed gtkpod in the hope that I could manage the podcasts on my iPod without having to boot into Windows. Everything looked ok, but when I got into the car earlier today I found that the music I was looking for wasn’t there. In fact, nothing was there. The iPod was just 4GB of emptiness. Not happy.
The whole gtkpod user experience was pretty bad. Apple’s iTunes is much clearer and it just works. Even if I did something wrong in terms of dragging, dropping, saving, etc via gtkpod there is just no way that all the stuff on the iPod that I hadn’t touched (music that was there for months) was erased. When I rebooted into Windows it asked me what my iPod was called, which is an indication of how comprehensively the thing had been wiped.
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Introductions
I’ve been a Linux user since the good old days of Slackware 0.91. That’s a while ago now. Sadly, my day job pays me to use Microsoft products, so for a long time Linux has been something of an occasional escape. I’ve got a slight change of landscape coming up though, so it’s time to get re-acquainted with an old friend. I bought myself a Dell Inspiron 9400 last year so I can work on the road, and I’ve recently rejigged things a little so I’m running Linux on it. After much consideration and research I went for the Ubuntu distribution and was rewarded with a working 1920×1200 LCD and 3945 wifi connection.
It hasn’t been all plain sailing, however, so I’ve started this blog for two reasons. The first is to share my experience with others who are looking at running Ubuntu (and in some instances, any Linux installation) on a laptop. Because of my hardware this will be oriented toward my Inspiron 9400 experiences, but it might help others who are going through the same issues I am. The second reason is that I’ll have a handy google resource for searching through what I’ve done should I need to review later. I’m still running a large Windows partition, and at some time in the future I might consider blowing that away and running purely Linux on the laptop. We’ll see though. There’s some stuff that just doesn’t work at all, and I have to decide whether I need that on the road or not.
Anyway. That’s basically what this blog will be about.
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