Today I had to reinstall Ubuntu. First off some explanation. Last night I was looking for a Onenote replacement and found Basket which looks great. After installing it I rebooted and Ubuntu failed to come back up. The splash screen showed but then the screen went blank with the waiting cursor showing. After some fiddling about using dkpg-reconfigure xserver-xorg I didn't get anywhere. So I reinstalled, it took about 12 minutes (very quick!) and I was pleasantly surprised when I rebooted...
As you'll know from my first post I have /home on a separate partition. When I logged back in I noticed that all of my layout preferences have been restored as well as configuration for Firefox and Evolution. So I was able to get up and running with virtually no effort. It's great that all of the program configuration is stored in /home rather than the Windows registry - it makes the process of reinstall much less painful when compared to Windows. I'm still not sure why GDM or xserver went wonky but no harm done.
Friday 27 April 2007
Tuesday 24 April 2007
Day 6 - Do sessions work under Feisty?
After a little while using Feisty and with the hibernation problems I've blogged about recently I decided that it would be useful to set up certain programs to autostart. After a bit of rooting around I found the System -> Preference -> Sessions dialog. Its not the most obvious name for a Newbie to find. I was expecting something like "Start up" or "Auto load/start" rather than Sessions.
Once I found it, everything appeared straightforward to use. Using the Startup Programs tab I added a Gaim. It took me a few reboots to realise that you had to use the Session options tab to save your changes! That aspect is far from user friendly. Why isn't there a Save button on the main dialog? It makes little sense to me to have to go to a totally separate tab in order to save!
Anyway after apparently saving the change and closing the dialog, when the Sessions dialog is reopened the change hasn't been saved, despite no apparent error message. This is irritating, from a Newbie's perspective the feature is difficult to find, operates slightly oddly and appears to be broken. Maybe I've missed something obvious, but it does appear to be broken. For the next few days I've not got time to investigate this, but from my point of view this feature certainly needs some work to make it friendsl.
Day 5 - Windows
Today, I've had to revert to WinXP for a while since I've not quite got Windows running under VirtualBox yet. My main reflection after using Windows for an hour or so is that it just seems slow and sluggish compared to Ubuntu. I do have quite a few apps installed and I last reinstalled it around 6 months ago, but even so the difference is quite marked. Whether Ubuntu will slow down in a similar way after a few month use we'll have to see.
Sunday 22 April 2007
Day 4 - Hibernation
I've not worked too much with Ubuntu today due to spending time at church and with friends. Hibernation is still frustratingly inconsistent - twice today Ubuntu has failed to hibernate, once producing some message about HAL and hibernation and on the other simply showing the unlock screen. About five minutes ago I tried to restore from hibernation, it got as far as the screen with the while line, then everything went blank - nothing. Restarting the computer solved that, thankfully I'd not left anything open. It seems, from my experience, that hibernation is not particularly reliable - unless of course I'm doing something wrong.
Saturday 21 April 2007
Day 3 - Down to work
Even though today is Saturday, I've had to work most of the day on preparing for a preach I am doing tomorrow morning. To this end, I've been using OpenOffice Writer to prepare my notes. Here are a few reflections on my experience today:
USB Drive problem - I had a problem earlier, on restoring from hibernation I was unable to get Ubuntu to recognise my USB drive. Removing and plugging it back in several times didn't resolve the issue neither did logging out, only a reboot sorted it out. I'm not sure why this is and haven't yet checked up on potential solutions.
Printer setup - went without a hitch. Turning on my Samsung ML1750 resulted in it being detected by the "Add Printer" dialog - all working great! It's great when things that should be simple are simple.
Sexy scrolling - everyone else probably noticed this ages ago. But I noticed that using the wheel on my mouse I can move the contents of visible windows which are in the background. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted this functionality under WinXP! What a fabulous surprise.
Anyway more to come tomorrow.
USB Drive problem - I had a problem earlier, on restoring from hibernation I was unable to get Ubuntu to recognise my USB drive. Removing and plugging it back in several times didn't resolve the issue neither did logging out, only a reboot sorted it out. I'm not sure why this is and haven't yet checked up on potential solutions.
Printer setup - went without a hitch. Turning on my Samsung ML1750 resulted in it being detected by the "Add Printer" dialog - all working great! It's great when things that should be simple are simple.
Sexy scrolling - everyone else probably noticed this ages ago. But I noticed that using the wheel on my mouse I can move the contents of visible windows which are in the background. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted this functionality under WinXP! What a fabulous surprise.
Anyway more to come tomorrow.
Friday 20 April 2007
Day 2 - The real work starts
Day one went well but now the real work starts, initially I did some work on OpenOffice, using both Writer and Spreadsheet. I've used both programs under Windows, however under Linux they do seem to fit better and are a bit quicker. This may of course simply be as a result of the changes in the new version 2.2. Both successfully open Microsoft Office documents with no hassle, reflecting the originals accurately. However I did have one minor problem with Spreadsheet. I copied and pasted a hyperlink from Firefox into a cell, however I couldn't find any easy way of removing the hyperlink and leaving the text. In Excel I believe that you can simply right-click and select 'remove link'. However with OO this didn't appear to be possible, I checked all of the right-click options and the Cell formatting dialog to no avail. In the end I used the paste-special command to achieve the goal. Other than this minor problem OO seems to be an excellent alternative to Office for basic word processing and spreadsheet work. I'll keep you all updated on how things go on this front.
I have decided to continue to run Windows for the time being whilst I migrate. As you know I'm dual-booting with WinXP. In addition to this, I though that I would like to run Windows in some sort of visualization solution, so I can use it without leaving Ubuntu. I've used VMWare and VirtualPC under Windows before so I decided to use VMWare. Unfortunately I couldn't get VMWare server running, so I decided to take another tack and use VirtualBox which was available for install via Automatix. After playing with it for a few hours I am really stoked, the performance seems to me far faster than that of either VMWare or VirtualPC running on the same machine, albeit under Windows. I've got Windows up and running and working just great.
Whilst I'm at it I think it may be useful to share some of my current issues with Ubuntu - all of which are fairly minor.
Wireless & Hibernate - the hibernate feature in Feisty seems to work very well on my Dell Dimension 5100. However on two of the four occasions that I have restored from hibernate mode the wireless connection hasn't come back up correctly. On one occasion a reboot sorted it, on the other reconnecting using the icon in the system tray and re-entering the connection details fixed it. I'm not sure whether this is a bug or some sort of configuration issue, at best the wireless works intermittently when returning from hibernation. A look on Launchpad reveals that there are at least two bugs relating to this issue.
White line on Restoring - on restoring from hibernation the Ubuntu screen (with the logo) shows a 2cm thick white line across the middle of the screen. I'm not worried by it, although it isn't attractive and looks out of place!
Desktop effects - for some reason I am unable to enable desktop effects. Selecting "Enable Desktop Effects" results in an error "Desktop effects could not be be enabled" (note the typo!). Again I'm not too worried about this issue at this point, since I know that Compiz and Beryl are still emerging.
Monitor blanking on Start - on either starting or restoring from hibernate there is a few seconds before the login screen shows where the monitor goes blank and shows the message "input not supported". After the message the login screen appears at the correct resolution. I've no idea what is causing this and I'll take a look at it sometime.
These four issues all seem relatively minor, but overall my impressions of Ubuntu are excellent. It seems perhaps on balance to be a little quicker than Windows, with VirtualBox being the star - it really flies. I will post more tomorrow on Day 3.
I have decided to continue to run Windows for the time being whilst I migrate. As you know I'm dual-booting with WinXP. In addition to this, I though that I would like to run Windows in some sort of visualization solution, so I can use it without leaving Ubuntu. I've used VMWare and VirtualPC under Windows before so I decided to use VMWare. Unfortunately I couldn't get VMWare server running, so I decided to take another tack and use VirtualBox which was available for install via Automatix. After playing with it for a few hours I am really stoked, the performance seems to me far faster than that of either VMWare or VirtualPC running on the same machine, albeit under Windows. I've got Windows up and running and working just great.
Whilst I'm at it I think it may be useful to share some of my current issues with Ubuntu - all of which are fairly minor.
Wireless & Hibernate - the hibernate feature in Feisty seems to work very well on my Dell Dimension 5100. However on two of the four occasions that I have restored from hibernate mode the wireless connection hasn't come back up correctly. On one occasion a reboot sorted it, on the other reconnecting using the icon in the system tray and re-entering the connection details fixed it. I'm not sure whether this is a bug or some sort of configuration issue, at best the wireless works intermittently when returning from hibernation. A look on Launchpad reveals that there are at least two bugs relating to this issue.
White line on Restoring - on restoring from hibernation the Ubuntu screen (with the logo) shows a 2cm thick white line across the middle of the screen. I'm not worried by it, although it isn't attractive and looks out of place!
Desktop effects - for some reason I am unable to enable desktop effects. Selecting "Enable Desktop Effects" results in an error "Desktop effects could not be be enabled" (note the typo!). Again I'm not too worried about this issue at this point, since I know that Compiz and Beryl are still emerging.
Monitor blanking on Start - on either starting or restoring from hibernate there is a few seconds before the login screen shows where the monitor goes blank and shows the message "input not supported". After the message the login screen appears at the correct resolution. I've no idea what is causing this and I'll take a look at it sometime.
These four issues all seem relatively minor, but overall my impressions of Ubuntu are excellent. It seems perhaps on balance to be a little quicker than Windows, with VirtualBox being the star - it really flies. I will post more tomorrow on Day 3.
Thursday 19 April 2007
Day 1 - Starting off
It was with considerable excitement that I downloaded the shiny new Ubuntu release. The download was painless and soon I had a CD to install on my existing Windows XP machine. The CD loaded and soon I was running through the wizard on the Live CD, I opted for the following partition setup:
Root 4.8Gb
Swap 1.9Gb
Home 8.6Gb
With this decision made the install started. After about 15 minutes I had a lovely new dual-boot system, running both Ubuntu and Win XP. Launching into Ubuntu for the first time I was selected the networking icon from the tray at the top right of the screen. This showed me that it had detected my wireless network, entering the relevant passwords resulted in a connection being made to the network! I was impressed, a smooth and utterly painless connection.
The next step was to install Automatix to enable quick installation of a few things that I knew I would need. The installation of Automatix didn't go smoothly, I kept getting errors about Python2.4 not being a satisfiable dependency. With a bit of fumbling around and help from the great guys at Automatix I got things going. It turned out that it was some sort of 'repo sync' issue. Anyway with that issue resolved I used Automatix to install Realplayer, Beagle and VirtualBox.
Realplayer is important to me because it allows me to listen to programs on the BBC's website. With this in place I set up Evolution to connect to several IMAP accounts, all of this worked very smoothly. I then used the Restricted Drivers Manager to set up the driver for my ATI Radeon X600 video card, this again worked so seamlessly that I was very pleasantly surprised.
Compared to setting up the same card on Windows this was as easy, if not easier. Having completed this task and carrying out the required reboot I discovered that my monitor was not running in the right resolution (1280x1024). Apparently it's not possible to change to this resolution using System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution. So I had to use sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg to add the correct resolution, once done I was running at the right resolution.
With this completed, I used Firefox to browse a few sites. The first day has been successful, so far!
Root 4.8Gb
Swap 1.9Gb
Home 8.6Gb
With this decision made the install started. After about 15 minutes I had a lovely new dual-boot system, running both Ubuntu and Win XP. Launching into Ubuntu for the first time I was selected the networking icon from the tray at the top right of the screen. This showed me that it had detected my wireless network, entering the relevant passwords resulted in a connection being made to the network! I was impressed, a smooth and utterly painless connection.
The next step was to install Automatix to enable quick installation of a few things that I knew I would need. The installation of Automatix didn't go smoothly, I kept getting errors about Python2.4 not being a satisfiable dependency. With a bit of fumbling around and help from the great guys at Automatix I got things going. It turned out that it was some sort of 'repo sync' issue. Anyway with that issue resolved I used Automatix to install Realplayer, Beagle and VirtualBox.
Realplayer is important to me because it allows me to listen to programs on the BBC's website. With this in place I set up Evolution to connect to several IMAP accounts, all of this worked very smoothly. I then used the Restricted Drivers Manager to set up the driver for my ATI Radeon X600 video card, this again worked so seamlessly that I was very pleasantly surprised.
Compared to setting up the same card on Windows this was as easy, if not easier. Having completed this task and carrying out the required reboot I discovered that my monitor was not running in the right resolution (1280x1024). Apparently it's not possible to change to this resolution using System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution. So I had to use sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg to add the correct resolution, once done I was running at the right resolution.
With this completed, I used Firefox to browse a few sites. The first day has been successful, so far!
Introduction
Well here we are, the new version of Ubuntu: Feisty fawn has been released at last! Yesterday marked a big day for me. I've been a Windows user for years, since Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and at last I've taken the plunge and decided to try and migrate to Ubuntu.
Over the last few months I've been dabbling occasionally with Edgy but never felt quite comfortable enough to make the move. One of the main stumbling blocks was the lack of 'out of the box' support for WPA within Edgy. The advent of the Feisty Beta a few weeks ago tipped the balance and made me feel comfortable enough to move to Feisty full time.
This change of Operating system inspired me to start this blog as a way of documenting the ups and downs of a relative Newbie to the Linux scene. I hope in the process to learn, from those reading who know better, and perhaps even to help those who have made the move as well! Enjoy!
Paul
Over the last few months I've been dabbling occasionally with Edgy but never felt quite comfortable enough to make the move. One of the main stumbling blocks was the lack of 'out of the box' support for WPA within Edgy. The advent of the Feisty Beta a few weeks ago tipped the balance and made me feel comfortable enough to move to Feisty full time.
This change of Operating system inspired me to start this blog as a way of documenting the ups and downs of a relative Newbie to the Linux scene. I hope in the process to learn, from those reading who know better, and perhaps even to help those who have made the move as well! Enjoy!
Paul
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