Still Learning... » linux

Coming to you live from Linux

andy — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 03:25:14 +0000

Ubuntu Dapper Drake to be precise. Over this last week I’ve been in Linux just about as much as windows, actually. As i have no room for a Linux partition on my primary harddrive, I’m running it on an external USB drive. I think i’ve posted about his previously elsewhere. But I now have it in an upgraded, fully usable state. Previously it was more of a toy, and lots of stuff (Firefox plugins, customizations, etc.) wasn’t in place. But it’s now much more “me.”
I also was able to get my brother on linux (albeit on M$ Virtual PC). He’s running Xubuntu (uses the XFCE desktop environment instead of GNOME). I still find it quite oxymoronic (is that a word?) to run linux using a Window$ program. Anyway, I thought since i was using linux “so much” this week, i should at least make a post using it.

Customizations i’ve made to the default install include (but are not limited too)…

Firefox 2 (not in the dapper repositories yet)
Automatix – nice installer for lots of common plugins (flash, quicktime), apps (gFTP, Gaim beta 3, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Bluefish and much more), codecs, etc. that make Ubuntu much more friendly to my everyday use.
xorg.conf customization for Thinkpad scrolling
Copy of file browser running as root
Standard Firefox and Thunderbird icons (not the ubuntu versions)
msttfcorefonts (Verdana, Trebuchet MS, Arial, Tahoma, ect [since almost every website we’ve created uses at least one of those)
other tweaks such as theme, screensaver, fonts, wallpaper, etc, to give it “my” touch

Before i sign off, i suppose i should register at least one complaint, and others have mentioned it before… If linux is ever going to go mainstream, linux support is going to have to stop referring users to the terminal. I personally like using it, but my brother dislikes it a good deal. Eh, as a designer, he just wants a Mac, anyway.

Current System specs:
Thinkpad R40 2723
80GB Western Digital external USB hard drive
1.3 GHz Centrino processor
Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 (I’d upgrade to Edgy, but it seems to have been giving too many users problems)

getting it going…

andy — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 05:18:05 +0000

This post is pretty much a reply to previous one. I was able to get a lot of the remaining issues I had with Linux fixed last night.

Boot XP from grub – check.
Had to add the following line to the /boot/grub/menu.lst under Windows XP before “chainloader +1″
map (hd1) (hd0)
I also changed root (hd1,0) to rootnoverify (hd1,0) but I’m not sure if that makes a difference or not…

Get programs from universe and multiverse – check.
Not too difficult, but had to enable the correct repositories and then set up the proxy. I was then able to get Mozilla Thunderbird installed, however I’ll probably manually install the newer version, 1.5 later.

Install fonts, particularly Verdana – check.
With the universe and multiverse enabled, I was then able to download msttfonts, which includes Verdana, Arial, Times New Roman, etc. All the standard windows fonts that I’m used to. Getting this done was a bit more tricky though. I had to configure the proxy, not only in Synaptic Package Manager, but also in a the wget file. I also needed the cabinstall package to get the fonts to work.

So that’s all good for now, I’ll see what I learn next…

Free from dependence on Window$

andy — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 06:39:56 +0000

Finally! I was able to get ubuntu installed on my new external hard drive. It wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be due to two problems. (Problems on my end, not w/ ubuntu)

First, I had a problem w/ my screen, which i mentioned before. Turns out it was just a loose connection between my screen and motherboard. So that's been fixed. (Free service is really nice.)

Now for problem two… Getting Linux (grub specifically) to play nice w/ a USB hard drive. Thankfully, these problems were easily resolved with a step-by-step guide at ubuntuforums.org. It took about an hour to get it installed. And then another hour to figure out few tweaks (get the middle button on my Thinkpad trackpoint to work, install Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5). And in the process of doing that I began learning about using the command line and Linux permissions. Good stuff. So everything is up and running just great.

There are still a few things on the Linux to-do list… Be able to boot Win XP from grub, get some programs from the universe and multiverse, add some fonts (I wonder if Verdana works in Linux…), and a few other miscellaneous things. But that gives me something fun to work on in between school. (Not that school's not fun, but you know…)

Christmas present

andy — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 23:49:29 +0000

Sweet and sleek. And silent. That about sums up my favorite Christmas present – a Western Digital 80GB external hard drive. I used some money from my parents and grandparents to purchase it on newegg.com. As this is my first experience with them, I was pleased to find the service as good as I had anticipated from hearing about from friends. (ordered 12/27 around 10pm, had it by noon 12/29).

I was able to get it formatted this morning using Windows Disk Manager for lack of anything better. So I now have a ~10 GB unformatted partition for Linux (more on that in a moment), a ~30 GB FAT32 partition for Linux and M$ Windows to share, and a ~40GB NTFS partition for M$ Windows backup purposes.

So now I'm ready to install Linux… sort of. I got the Ubuntu CDs from a guy at school (livecd and install cd) but I'm having a problem with, I'm guessing, x-server configuration. I put the livecd in, went through the all the configuration stuff, and everything looks great until it done and goes into GNOME. Then the screen just flashes like crazy, and it's mostly black. I can't see enough to click anything and Ctrl+Alt+Delete doesn't seem to do anything (not sure if that's even used in linux), so I do a hard power-off (hold power button of my laptop in for 5+ secs).

I did some googling and also some searching at the ubuntu forums, and came up with a couple ideas. I tried the livecd again, and instead of just hitting Enter at the boot promt, I typed in "live-expert" (minus the quotes) and then hit enter. I select the defaults for everything until i get to the x-server configuration. Then instead of the default selected "vesa" driver, i selected "ati" (I have a ATI Radeon 7500 graphics card – it came w/ my laptop), I also changed the default screen resolution from something like 1500×1400 to 1024×768 instead. I select everything else default and this time everything behaves fine… at least at first. The screen doesn't flash and I can see the desktop and everything (why brown?? ugh!!). But then the screen starts acting up, and gets progressively worse. First there's just litte horizontal black and white lines around the edge of the cursor or any open windows, but then it got worse, and the screen started flashing again. I quickly logged out while i could still see enough to do stuff.

So that's where I'm stuck right now. If any of you linux gurus out there have any ideas, leave a comment and let me know. At least for now anyway, I'm stuck with Window$ as my sole OS. I've had similar problems with the Knoppix CD, too.

My system specs if this helps any…