Daniel Hardy

As I have previously stated I have been using Ubuntu Feisty Fawn since it was in its Beta phases. I was hoping to give back to the community and notify them of any bugs I encountered. The beta period has now finished and as many people know, they released the official version on April 19th. Unfortunately I wasn’t much help to Ubuntu as I did not run into any problems save two small “glitches”.
The first small bug I had was with the GDM login screen. For some odd reason it would not size correctly. It would take my wide screen resolution of 1440×900 and attempt to cram it into a standard 4:3 format. This wasn’t a big problem as it only seemed to occur on the GDM login screen and once I logged in the system would display at the proper resolution.

The second problem was from one of the patches/updates they had released. The 2.20.14 kernel wouldn’t boot. The funny thing about this glitch was that by the time I had realized it I simply booted back into 2.20.13 and updated to 2.20.15. Since then it has been smooth sailing.

For the first bug I placed a bug in launchpad. I now realized that I messed this up by adding my problem to a bug from long ago that had since been closed out. The best part of the story is when I started up the machine today the problem had been fixed! It appears that my update from yesterday some how remedied the problem. It is also important to note that now when I boot I get the proper Nvidia splash screen as I am currently using the nvidia-glx graphics driver.

Just another great reason to use Ubuntu!

The final thought is I am still scheming was to give back to the open source community so be looking for my resolution in the very near future.

Recently, while digging, I stumbled across an article detailing the installation process of InnoTek’s VirtualBox. After seeing how easy it was to install this virtualization tool I figured I would give it a shot.This isn’t my first experience with virtualization software as I have recently found the joy of VMWare. With this in mind I was shocked at how simple VirtualBox was to install. In VMWare you are asked all sorts of questions that can be a tad on the intimidating side, although generally the default is the correct answer (how am I supposed to know that?). VirtualBox on the other hand was as easy as installing the pre-requisites (available in Ubuntu’s package manager) and running the .deb file that I downloaded from Innotek’s site.

After the install the application is almost ready to start, but before you can get to far into it you have to add yourself as a user to the newly created “vboxusers” group. The program does a great job of pointing this out and does so with out letting you move too deep. The downside of this methodology is that I am forced to log out for the changes to take affect. This isn’t the biggest pain as it isn’t a complete restart but none the less a minor inconvenience.

From here the application really gets points in my book, particularly when you consider the price tag of $0 (personal use only). It uses a clean simple interface that is full of context style help. This tactic was very refreshing from VMWare which doesn’t provide much inline help. It seemed like any question I had was quickly answered by simply mousing over the questionable item. Some where on the screen (this was on multiple screens) a text box would change and fill me in on what the item was for and what could/would happen if I changed it.

The overall look and feel was clean and easy to navigate. One thing to note is that it didn’t follow my theme. Instead it had a gray and blue finish. After giving this some thought and looking at some of the files I installed, I believe that this is a QT based program, not GTK. This would easily explain the appearance. With this in mind it still looked great. The icons are large and colorful and easily understandable.
The overall layout follows the task flow nicely. The individual virtual machines(VM) are located vertically on the left with each receiving an icon based on its OS type. On the right you can view and edit the details of the selected VM. When a VM session is initiated a new window opens and the VM is started. This could be done a little better by following in VMWare’s foot steps and running the VM’s in individual tabs. One positive note to the new window is that there is no surrounding items to take up valuable space.

The final piece of the pie for this application comes in how it works. So far (1hr of use) I am batting .500. I was easily able to run the OLPC’s Sugar OS but as of right now cannot get Mandriva One 2007 GNOME — Metisse Inside! to fully boot. It appears to make it all the way through but then it just sits idle with the active cursor at a blue screen (pre-login phase?).

Even with the small hiccup in Mandriva One I am sure this is going to be a great program and with a little more playing I will easily be able to get it up and running. I will try and write an update as I continue to play with this great new program.

On my home today I was contemplating a variety of random thoughts when one jumped out at me. People are made up of various attributes. These can be physical such as tall, short, bald, thin, large etc. or they can also be emotional/personality based such as caring, honest, jealous, mean, nice etc. Certain combinations of attributes can lead to more success while others may hamper ones ability to find success.

So out of all of the various attributes which ones lend themselves to success more than the others? After giving it some thought I think that charisma can directly impact success in a given situation more then all others attributes.

The power of charisma is that it is extremely passive. It is something that works unbeknown to those that it affects. In other words when charisma is being used to impact a situation, people often don’t directly see it working. This gives the user a large advantage of manipulating outcomes with out others interfering.

It simply boils down to people want to be around those that they enjoy and charisma can be an easy way of being enjoyment for others. For better or for worst, those who are likable get things that they might not deserve such as a job they where not qualified for or getting off easy when they make a mistake.
If you take it to the next level, those that possess “super” charisma will be able to do these things with others rarely complaining or noticing that they have done something wrong. More importantly when it comes to light that they have made a mistake, they will be less damaged by it then those that are not charismatic. The perfect case in point is Bill Clinton. He made several serious mistakes and got out of them relatively clean.

The down side of charisma is that it is like a super power, and with great power comes great responsibility. If you have a lot of charisma it is up to you to use it for good. The final piece of charisma is that because of its intangibility it is very hard to acquire. Many people believe it is either something you have or you don’t.

So do you have it?

Well it has finally happened… Ubuntu’s beta has shown a broken piece to me. I just received a cryptic message while I was updating. The message asked if I would like to update some obscure file with a new one being offered in the repository.
The problem with this is that the message did not tell me what the file does or what impact the changes may have. Obviously not every message can be accounted for but none the less it is extremely intimidating when an operating system asks questions like this.

As a user I am left to guess what I would like done. It is like high stakes gambling because if given the wrong answer there will certainly be some incredible catastrophe (this is just user thought). Even as I am writing this I am wondering what will happen when I reboot… will the system start again… will it work the same… or will my laptop catch on fire because some loop will start and not be able to stop.

These are the types of things that a regular user should never feel. Then again, a regular user shouldn’t play with betas

So over the last week or so I have converted both my notebook and desktop over to Feisty Fawn Beta. All in all I think they have made some major leaps in ease of use. The newer 2.6.20 kernel has some great advantages including (as always) better hardware support. But the details are where the new OS really shines. Codec support has made leaps and bounds over the previous version. Now you simply attempt to access a file that requires a codec, Ubuntu will notify you that you do not have the proper codec and then offer to download it. The really cool part is that it actually works contrary to my experiences with MS.

Another great thing I have recently discovered is Exaile. This music program puts anything I have seen to shame. Now I am sure many people are saying iTunes is tough competition, but Exaile clearly has an advantage…. NO DRM
I would give a more in depth review of Feisty and Exaile but I am sure there are enough of those out there. I just recommend you check out both and see for your self