Archive for February 6, 2006

It started with Debian, shifted to RedHat, moved onwards to SuSE, migrated to Fedora Core 4, and is now back at the start, albeit with a flamebait distro, namely Ubuntu.

My computer has been around the block a few times. Since I have this habit of patching it (without replacing it all at once) with new hardware once in a while it tends to have some weird quirks – the worst is probably the 512MB HDD which has been imitating a very loud cricket for over 10 years. Still its yet to fail, it maintains backups of files from as far back as 1995 (there’s even some edited Duke Nukem game and user configs in there).

So, where was I before reminiscing?

Ubuntu! I have severe limits on how I manage my Linux desktop – its pretty much an upgrade path issue. You see I have a very slow, possibly prehistoric, telephone network connecting my home to the world. As a result broadband is impossible…literally. I’m also too far away to avail of cable, or radio options – though that scene is perking up in another month or two. Time in Ireland does run a little slower .

So for me Ubuntu makes a sense. Install, wait 6 months, upgrade. Repeat. Repeat again. See, no internet apt updates required unless I’m desperate, or can’t just fetch the deb package manually when I am working off broadband at the weekends.

So yesterday (that was one busy weekend!) I got around to installing Ubuntu “The Breezy Badger” onto my freshly cleaned HDD (definitely not the aging 512MB model). I then proceeded to install XAMPP, the restricted Nvidia drivers, a few other favoured packages from the DVD (carried part of the Universal pool), and pulled up chair to give the brackish brown Gnome desktop a workout.

I was pretty impressed at this stage. I dumped the last Ubuntu in disgust after using Nautilus for a few hours and getting a bit *angry* at its habit of opening a new window for every subfolder. Thankfully that deadbeat useablity killer has been fixed – it couldn’t have been a feature no matter what the developers may have been thinking. I also tested a PHP compile since the last attempt in Ubuntu “Hoary Hedgehog” was a Twilight Zone experience. Ubuntu also seems to have no developer mode – when you go compiling you live with using apt to fetch dependencies. I just clicked through the Synaptic interface and threw them all in and its worked so far.

Overall I really like Ubuntu. I actually did the Quantum Star SE test website using XAMPP, with gedit (the Gnome Text Editor) as a code editor. Since it supports tabbing, syntax highlighting and near automatic UTF-8 encoding it was good enough for the task. I’ll get around to installing Eclipse when I have more time and can grab it from the net. The brown Gnome theme used by default is pretty drab – nothing that can’t be fixed.

Only niggling point is mount handling. Although Ubuntu will auto mount the local hardrives/removable devices (i.e. Windows partitions, and my USB stick) it doesn’t grant your user write priveleges automatically. I even had trouble reading, let alone writing. Its easy enough to edit /etc/fstab and set a more permissive umask for mounting HDDs, but for “Linux for Humans” claims that won’t go very far. Still, its a small niggle. Using “sudo ” in the shell is likewise irksome at first. I’m sure there’s a way to reset the obscured root password – better be.

A small bump in the road that will occur just after you logout of your first ubuntu session may be the monitor resolution reset. I found that although my resolution was initially set to 1200*768, it has reset to the horrible 800*600 on my next login. This is apparently what happens when you forget to install the nvidia-glx package (if you have an Nvidia 3D card). It may have been just an isolated issue however.

I’ll find a more exciting killer problem to spice up my next set of blog entries… Honestly though, very neat easy to install distro. No serious issues, and good for my limited internet speeds it has a 6 monthly release schedule.

Next stop will be “Dapper Duck” in April.