In writing my last article about the various search engines I came across a fun site called Ubuntu Popularity Content. This site shows the number of downloads and installs for every package in the Ubuntu repository. It is certainly an interesting look at what people are using and if you are an Ubuntu users I suggest you take a look, maybe you will find a great new package.
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.
Today I was doing some work in innotek’s VirtualBox and noticed something new. It now accepts the “vmdk” format. For those of you not in the know, this is the format used by the most popular virtualization software, VMware. After recognizing this I decided to give it a shot and see if it would work. The first system I tried to convert was an Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon server I haven’t used in a long time. I decided on this machine as I knew that Ubuntu is pretty forgiving about hardware and often it can reconfigure itself to run when drivers are missing or changed. To my suprise it booted the system with little to no problems (took a long time).
After such a great success I decided to try a Windows system that I had laying around (and had previously backed up). This time around I wasn’t so lucky. Unfortunately Windows thought that its hardware had been significantly changed and refused to boot. This is probably due to the VMware drivers I had previously installed on the machine. Either way I am sure with a little work the machines could easily be converted to what I now consider a superior virtualization solution. It is important to note that I went back and successfully ran Windows and the Ubuntu machines in VMware.
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.
What do other OEM’s think about Linux running on their machine. This story is from Germany but it gives you an idea of what the big manufactures think about Linux.
“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.
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.
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.
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