Daniel Hardy

Yesterday my wife’s computer finally croaked. We decided that the best option was to build a desktop replacement form scratch. This can be a nerve racking experience as a Linux user because you never know how well every items will work with your distro of choice. I ended up with an ECS 6100SM-M, AMD BE2300 (45watt) processor, 2GB of OZC PC6400 RAM and a Pioneer DVD/R/RW. None of these components are amazing but they all work perfectly with Ubuntu 7.10 and the computer is surprisingly fast. My boot time out of the gate was a brisk 28 seconds and I haven’t even began to tweak the system to improve this time.

This last week Innotek released Virtualbox 1.5 which is a major move forward for this free virtualization system. One of the best features is the easy to use implementation of seamless virtualization. It allows the user to integrate their two operating systems in one nice interface. While this is not a new concept as Parallels has been doing it for a while, it is new to a free, cross platform application (to the best of my knowledge).

To get it up and running all I had to do was update my VirtualBox install and then press “Host(Ctrl) + L”. Next thing you know your Windows task bar will appear at the bottom of your desktop(I moved mine to the top). You are now free to access windows applications as if they where a GTK application. There is one thing that doesn’t work smoothly as of yet. It appears that Beryl/Compiz style compositing applications don’t get a long so well with this seamless integration. It is hard to say who is at fault in this case but I am sure it will be resolved in due time. Until then I am happy dealing with the problem or simply turning off Beryl.

“I took a screen shot of it.. because many of us thought that Dell would put the Ubuntu Machines 2000 pages deep into their site.. and only have it there to appease linux users. In fact, they are putting the Linux boxes on the main page of Dell on the rotating script.” - TheFounder

This is truely amazing! Linux is being pushed by a major vendor. Other vendors like HP have tried sell Linux machines in the past but none of them have made a push this strong. Dell has been in trouble for a while and perhaps, although unlikely, this will help revitalize their sales.

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With a little help from my friend Jon I was able to successfully virtualize Windows today. I have spoken in a previous post about Innotek’s Virtual Box. For this little project I decided I would use it again. Everything went off with out a hitch. I was even able to find an easy way to install Virtual Box’s Guest Additions brought to you buy Google.com.

The final piece of this puzzle is one I am not looking forward to. The software needs to be registered with Microsoft and I have heard they are not very friendly towards users who virtualize their operating system. Because I am using a previously registered copy (off my old computer) I will have no choice but to call their tech support to get this situation resolved.

Since I made the jump to Ubuntu there was only one program that I have really missed, Notepad++.  I used Notepad++ for all of my coding from XHTML to PHP with CSS in between.  Granted I am no where near a master coder but I had grown a custom to its lightweight nature, great language highlighting and most of all the ability to fold the code.   I tried running Notepad++ in Wine for a while but there are several problems with that.  The biggest of which is Wine makes it difficult to access network folders.

When I initially made the jump I spent several days trying out various programs but never found one I liked.  Since then I have been doing all my coding with gEdit.  It has worked but doesn’t provide the best highlighting and has no support for folding.

Today I was missing Notepad++ and thought I would go out and look at it’s site again.  Low and behold I completely missed a key piece of text in all my other visits.  It turns out Notepad++ is based on Scintilla, a GTK+ application.  I quickly checked the repository and was able to successfully install it in a matter of minutes.  It is fairly similar to Notepad++ but with out all the shine.

Overall I am not a happy man, funny how such a silly thing can really lift my spirits.

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.

Today Dell announced that it is going to provide Linux based desktops and notebooks, and of course like any other Ubuntu loving person, this greatly sparked my interest.

Dell is not the first major player to make the leap and offer a Linux based system to the general public. HP tried this several months ago and met some resistance from the community. This resistance ultimately led to them quickly discontinuing their Linux line.
Many believe that this is because of what the Linux demographic represents. These users are often extremely passionate about computers and the free sharing of information. Some might even say they take on a “fight the man” mentality. With this in mind I believe that the face of Linux is changing.

Every day Linux becomes more and more mainstream, and with that mainstream comes the “average” user. Perhaps these users are fed up with Microsoft, or are looking for a system where they are not constantly being attacked by viruses and spyware. Either way, these new users are quickly out numbering those who have been long time supporters.

This in turn, increases the likelyhood of success for companies like Dell to come in and start selling Linux based desktops and notebooks. These users are the bread and butter for companies like Dell and HP. They (users) often don’t require support. They have a strong interest in computers but not a passion for them. They have enough interest that they purchase a new computer every 2-4 years. These are the highest margin customers for companies like Dell and HP and if they do not give the people what they want they will be loosing market share to companies like System76, a relative unknown.

So to Dell I say thank you, although I will probably never purchase a Linux computer from you, I know that I, along with many others will reap the benefits of your move into the open source world.

PS I think HP will announce a similar idea before the end of April…

Well I have had a little time to play with the new system and I must say I am extremely impressed.
I was surprised to find out that Ubuntu booted up with no problems. Everything seemed to work like before only faster. I then decided I would check on Windows XP and as I had predicted, it was broken. As I stated in my previous post I assumed that this was going to happen, so no sweat.

With this in mind I decided I would reinstall Ubuntu and eliminate the dual boot system. I was amazed at the speed at which the system installed. It took half the time as the previous system would have required.

With Linux up and running I decided to try and get some applets up and running that would tell me what was going on inside. This was the first snag. It appears that the thermostat for the processor is unsupported. This really bummed me out as I was hoping to overclock the system a little bit, and without knowing the CPU temp it would be a little too risky.

Everything else I installed went off with out a hitch. Now I decided to truly test the new system with a little DVD:rip exercise. Amazing! I was able to rip and encode a 2:09 movie in just a shade over 40mins. I have a feeling a new hard drive could greatly improve this as I am still using IDE 100 drive. But only time will tell.

The only other problem I am having with the new system is Apache2 and PHP. For some reason they don’t want to cooperate but I am sure with a little cursing and some reading it will get worked out.

Next on the list is getting a cable card so stay tuned…

So I finally decided to bite the bullet and attempt my first major computer surgery. This surgery consisted of upgrading my HP Pavilion 751n desktop (1.8 P4, 256MB of PC2100) to something a little more significant. Fortune shined upon me and I was able to get a great deal on an ECS P4800PRO-M, Pentium D 805, 1GB of DDR2 667 and a Cooler Master 775 fan. I understand that these aren’t the latest and greatest on the market but for a grand total of $190 it couldn’t be beat, or passed up.

The final piece of this puzzle was convincing myself (and to some extent my wife) that I didn’t need a windows desktop anymore. I figured with the install, MS XP would potentially need a reinstall and I unfortunately(or fortunately) didn’t have the disks to do this. With this in mind I committed completely to my favorite OS, Ubuntu.

I tried to follow the directions that came with the motherboard to install the CPU and fan but they where lousy so I had to create my own instructions as I went. This didn’t prove to be too difficult but I did have some concerns about the thermal grease portion. When I was purchasing the equipment, the salesman said I wouldn’t need it as the fan had some. When I opened the fan, low and behold there was no grease. After closer inspection I realized that the fan did come with thermal grease and it was actually pre-installed.

The CPU went in with no troubles but the fan assembly was a little more difficult. The bracket provided by Cooler Master didn’t line up exactly with the fan piece. I over came this with some good old fashion wiggling and force. With that done it was basically down hill. I installed the RAM and then turned to taking the old system apart.

The breakdown of the old system proved to be more time consuming than difficult. I started with unhooking all the cables. This would allow me to move components as needed. From here I needed to take out the hard drive cage to get to the motherboard. This was simple enough and before long I had my new system put in place.

Now it came to hooking up all the cables I had recently removed and ensuring that the hard drive cage would fit with the new configuration. The cables didn’t prove to be too much trouble until I had to connect the power button. The configuration of the button’s harness was 4-0-3. This is to say that there where 4 open pins, a closed pin followed by 3 more open pins all in a single row. The motherboard on the other hand had a completely different layout it had two rows with the top containing 4 pins and the bottom containing 5 pins. After some reading in the lousy manual followed by some playing I was able to get the power button worked out. Unfortunately I was not able to get the power buttons LED to work. This isn’t really a big deal but a little annoying.

This was followed by attempting to reinstall the hard drive cage. This was the first place that was quickly determined impossible. The ECS board’s 20pin power slot was directly below where the cage was to sit and there was clearly not going to be enough room for both items. So the cage is currently resting on the bottom of the case until I have the time and energy to purchase a new case.

Time for the moment of truth… first power up. This was a little nerve racking at first as I had never done this before and wasn’t sure what to expect. To my amazement it was completely painless. The motherboard made a few beeps and then prompted me to set the time. After this was done Grub(boot manager) came up and asked what I wanted to do. Everything seemed to be in order…

I will let you know what I think after I have had some time to play so come back and see how it turns out