Hardy Heron Beta is Perfect

After running brick wall after brick wall trying to get compiz working on my fancy new HP laptop I decided that I needed a cutting edge distro with the most up to date kernel and drivers. I decided to give Ubuntu a try. I had played with it before and I thought is was a good basic distro, but lacked the polish of Suse or Linspire (pre 6.0). Mint on the other hand put the needed touches on the distro, that is why I have been using it for a while now and I have no complaints except for a working intel 965 driver.

I booted into the live version and tried to get compiz functioning and could not. I have had similar problems with with live CDs and that is sometimes you have to reboot to get the changes to stick, which of course you can't do with a live CD. I installed to disk and did not have a lot of hope that I was going to succeed. The install was perfect and I booted into the OS once it was installed and it appeared that I was not going to get compiz.

Ubuntu incorrectly used the VESA driver. I had to change to the Intel 965 driver and viola, I had 3d. I had to install some compiz packages and then enable desktop effect before I had wobbly windows and other 3d eyecandy (see the movie below).

Be afraid Microsoft be very afraid. I'll be honest, the hardy heron release does not have the polish of the Vista but it it has been completely stable since I have installed it (and it is a beta release). I cannot say the same for Vista. I have had several blue screen of death's and it has been hanging during shut down intermittently for a while now. I think is is hilarious that a free beta version of Linux is more stable than a $240.00 copy of Vista Home Premium.

Just a quick aside, I have Vista Home Premium on my home desktop computer and it to has been nothing but problems since I got it. It is a Compaq tower that I got a good deal on, or I thought I did. It does not have a dual core processor and I kind of wish it did. The mobo can take a dual core Intel processor so I thing I will pop one in when the warranty expires. I had to upgrade to two gig of ram, Vista was too slow with one gig. My wife uses the machine most of the time, I may use it once or twice per week. About three weeks ago I noticed that my Zone Alarm icon in the task bar was missing. I had to reinstall Zone Alarm, I thought this was odd but I did a virus scan once Zone Alarm was reinstalled and found nothing. Several weeks later I was trying to uninstall a program but uninstall was not an option in most of the programs in control panel. I contacted HP tech support and they determined that I had a virus, it is a long story but I ended up reloading Windows.

I just tried to install a new video card with TV-out in the Compaq. It should have been compatible and it did work but I could not get the drivers to load so my max resolution was 800 x 600. I contacted EVGA support and they could not get the card to work so I am returning it tonight. This is not a Windows problem (unless you consider not releasing your source code a problem), but it is frustrating that a card that is suppose to work with my system does not.

Ubuntu has reached a point where it requires very little tweaking to make it usable and look good. I am not sure what my favorite distro Mint is going to do to their next release (they are built on Ubuntu) to polish it and make it their own.

Ubuntu had bared some codecs from the distro (mp3 for example) and relied on others to integrate them into apt-get. I think they have seen the light with the Hardy Heron release they did not include mp3 and other non-free software but they include an option in synaptic to install support for mp3 and Windows fonts etc... They finally understand that if you want the average user to use your OS you have to make it as usable as Windows.

I love several things about Ubuntu, I have it installed on my HP laptop and this is a little thing but you have to wonder why no one else (Windows or HP) has never though of it. With every other laptop I have owned you have to manually adjust the screen brightness when on battery. Sony actually dims your display by about 60% when on battery power, almost unusable, you have to increase the backlight every time you are on battery.

With Ubuntu, If I am on battery and I stop typing for a period of time the screen slowly dims until black. This sounds like a simple thing but it is a brilliant way to get a little more life out of your battery. It beats holding the function key and and pressing the f5 or f6 key to increase or decrease the screen brightness.

I also love the compiz effects especially wobbly windows, they are addictive. I have read several stories that this is the most important Ubuntu release and I agree, as far as stability and functionality Hardy Heron is a biggie.

PCLinuxOS Sucks (not really)

I recently bought a new laptop, you can read about it here. Since I am a Linux geek I was careful to check that the hardware was compatible with Linux. The chip set and video card is made by Intel and according to this web site Intel open sources the drivers. Fantastic! I have an older HP laptop that has a funky TwisterK video card that still does not have Linux drivers and never will.

You know what they say when you assume, if not ask your parents and they will tell you hoe the rest of the saying goes. You would think opens source drivers would mean a well functioning video card, well I should have checked some forums before I bought the laptop. Apparently there is a bug, and I don't think anyone is to blame. From what I have been able to find there is a problem between the Intel video drivers and the fancy Compiz 3d interface for Linux.

I had installed my favorite distro, Linux Mint Darnya. It was great for a while but after getting use to the Aero eyecandy in Vista I was itchy to get compiz working on the laptop. I had compiz working a little on my old laptop so I knew what compiz could do. Unfortunately it was too buggy to be functional.

I thought for sure PCLinuxOS 2008 would be the distro that would give me the fancy 3d interface. I had installed earlier versions and liked them alot. PCLinuxOS was short lived on my laptop, it could not do something that other Linuxes had done, configure the wireless card. I was shocked, how could every other version of linux configure my wifi card but not PCLinuxOS 2008?

Oh well I will keep looking.

Linux Hardeware

Up to this point I have babbled on about Linux the OS and have not talked about hardware. Up until this point you could buy a computer- desktop or laptop, with Linux loaded on it from web stores like Sub300.com or even Walmart. The problem with Linux hardware is that even though that manufacturer is saving money by not paying the Windows license fee for each computer, a small box shop will never be able to buy components as cheap as Dell or any other of the big boys, so your Linux computer will not have cutting edge hardware and it will cost more that a computer that you can buy on sale at Best Buy or Circuit City
For Linux hardware to become popular to anyone accept the geeks trying to support is it will need need to find a niche, it will need to do something that Windows or OSX does not. There are many places where Linux could outshine Windows, but the first one that come to mind is low resource computers. This could mean loading Linux on old computers that Vista would not run on, but it is not easy to make money selling used equipment. You could have a new Linux laptop or desktop that is far from state of the art hardware, but why would you do that? A couple of interesting answers to that question have recently appeared.




The first is the One Laptop Per Child project or OLPD, they have come up with the XO computer. Their goal is not profit, but it is more altruistic. They have this amazing idea that if we can provide computers to children in third world countries, they will not be left behind in the information age. Unfortunately for Microsoft the XO runs a modified version of Red Hat, and this scares the hell out of Microsoft. It scares them so much that they came out with a low resource version of XP to use on the Intel version of the OLPC and the story is here. They are very aware that for the majority of people, once they become comfortable with an operating system, they need a very good reason to change. This has worked well for Microsoft, they sell discounted versions of Windows and MS Office to many school districts in the US and in other countries and when the students graduate and buy a computer, they will buy what they know. A very bad analogy is a drug dealer giving dope to someone until they are hooked, then charging them for their product. I am not comparing Microsoft to a drug dealer, it is a wise business move for them to get their products into schools.

There are three pieces of Linux hardware that are currently available that I think will start the mass acceptance of Linux as the operating system of choice. The first one is, as stated above, the OLPC XO computer.

The next is the commercial version of the OLPC laptop. It is called the Asus Eee laptop. The laptop has 900 mhz Intel micro processor, 512 mb of ram, and no hard drive but 4 gig of solid state storage. It has a speakers, microphone, a .3 mega pixel web cam, a seven inch screen, wifi, and 3.5 hours of battery life. The design of the Eee is a little more adult than the brightly colored XO. It is a little bit bigger than a hard cover book, although not as thick. I have seen black and white versions, I prefer the black.

The laptop runs a modified version of Xandros Linux, the interface is extremely simple compared to a normal Linux desktop, however you can install the KDE desktop, but it takes some doing.

I was at Micro Center in St Louis Park Minnesota and I noticed that the had an Eee on display so I was able to play with it for a while. Of course the first thing that I did was power it down and time how long it took to beet once I booted it up again. I read that the boot time was fifteen seconds and it was very close to that, maybe a little faster. My second thought was I bet OpenOffice is really a dog on the Eee". Again I was pleasantly surprised, I did not time it but it did not take any longer to load that the OpenOffice on my 2 giga hz Sony laptop. I did not bother seeing how much memory was allocated to OpenOffice, but I kind of with I had. I launched Firefox and checked out hoe the world wide web looked through the seven inch window. Unfortunately Micro Center has Safe Surf on their network so my surfing was limited, but page loads were reasonably fast and played You Tube videos.

What I liked about the Eee:

It is the perfect size to take just about anywhere, yet it is not too small to do some serious surfing.

I have a Nokia 770 that I use as a PDA, I have a few minor issues with it, but for the most part it does everything I need it to do and more. I think at some point the Eee could substitute for my 770 and laptop. The Eee will do everything the 770 will do and more (accept built in bluetooth). I also think most days I could leave my laptop at home and just haul around the Eee. I have already been wondering if I will be able to run my PowerPoints on it and I believe it has a video out so I should be able to connect it to a LCD projector if I can change the output resolution. Hmmm it just may work...

It definitely seems to have enough horse power to do everything I need. I like that the OS is Linux, I should be able to apt-get any programs that I need.

I like that it has video out, and three usb ports. Heck my old two thousand dollar Sony only two usb ports.



Dislikes:


Most of the dislikes are inherent to the size of the device. The keyboard is cramped, but if you want a small laptop you have to have a small keyboard.

I was disappointed with the display. The display on my 770 is very sharp, it is probably the nicest thing about the unit. The resolution on the Eee, I believe is 800 x 480 and it is not bad, but compared to today's standards the cursor and icons are a little large and not crisp like the 770. I have read that Asus is going to come out with an Eee that has a ten inch screen. The first laptop that I had was a ThinkPad that had a 9 inch screen and the old pencil eraser instead of a touch pad and I would have a hard time stepping back in time and buying a laptop that has a smaller screen than my old ThinkPad.

Neither the keyboard or the screen (I would prefer the 10 inch model) are a deal breaker. The keyboard is as good as it can be for its size and the screen is functional, you probably would not want to spend hours without a break using it, but it is adequate.

I think 2008 will be the year that Linux will find its niche on the laptop/desktop. It is going to be a long time before Linux overthrows Windows on the corporate desktop, if it ever does, or becomes the standard home or soho OS. The dynamics of computing is memory is fast and cheap, processor speed doubles every eighteen months, Moore's law, and Microsoft will build an OS that needs all of the computer's power and more. This is a plus for Linux,

Mint makes a great mojito

Linux Mint

My wife and I are just back from a short vacation to the sleepy little island of Isla Mujeres Mexico. Somehow I have managed to spend fifty three years on this earth without ever tasting a Mojito. What a mistake! There is very little that can beat sitting at an outdoor restaurant wrapped in the evening August heat of Mexico and sipping on a Mojito with fresh mint leaves floating in the drink. My point is that mint makes a Mojito the perfect drink, the Mint Linux makes Ubuntu the perfect distro. Not a Windows killer, but I have not doubt that even a novice Windows user could find their way around Mint.

I had tried earlier versions of Mint and liked them but no matter how hard I tried I just could not get use to Gnome. I am accustom to KDE where just about everything is tweakable and felt stifled by the lack of of options in Gnome. So I used Mint for a while but always eventually installed a distro with KDE in place of Mint.

I saw that there was a KDE version of Mint so I decided to install it on a whim, per my previous post, I though Freespire 2.0 was the coolest thing since Sony invented the Walkman, so I installed Mint on a free partition. Everything I thought about Freespire was multiplied by ten in Mint. After using Mint for about half an hour I moved my files from Freespire to Mint. Mint has the functionality of Freespire, but it is much more polished.


Download


There are five different versions of Mint 3.0 (Cassandra) that you can download. There are two Gnome versions to download, two KDE versions and a lightweight XFCE version. I opted for the mini KDE download, I hate it when the distro installs two gig worth of crap, most of which I will never use. I wish every flavor of Linux had a single install CD.


Installation

The Mint installation is pretty much a standard Ubuntu installation, the one thing I like about the Mint installation is it allows you to install grub in the root partition rather than the MBR via an advanced button. I am scratching my head, did I miss the advanced option in the Ubuntu install or Freespire install that allows you to install grub in the root partition? I don't think so, but it is possible. I am reasonable sure that Mint is the only one of the three distros that gives you the option. In my opinion (that would I am a non-programmer I don't want to muck around with grub), it is better to install grub in the root partition and use a commercial boot loader to dual, triple, quadruple boot.

Mint is a live Cd with an install options. This is a nice option, you can get an idea if your hardware will work with the Linux version without wasting your time trying to install it. However, I have had everything work in the live CD but when I installed it I ran into hardware problems. Likewise, I have had wireless cards that did not work in the Live CD but did when I installed to the hard drive.

There was a problem with the installer when Cassandra was first release, the work around is here. They have since fixed the problem and they have updated the ISO so the installer on your ISO should work unless you downloaded your ISO shortly after it was released.

When I performed the install I had an existing installation so I did not try to create a new partition, I just edited the existing partition and that went without a hitch. There is no package selection, you get everything that is on the CD. I did not time the install but it definitely took less than twenty minutes. All of my hardware including my D-Link DWL-G650 wireless card were correctly detected. I actually got the network working while I was running the live CD, that hasn't always been the case with other live CDs.

After the install is finished it gives you the option of continuing to work or to reboot and use your brand new Mint installation.


Using Mint


This is what your Mint desktop looks like, more or less, I like a translucent task bar.
I don't think Freespire 2.0 is bad, I just don't think it is not as professional as Mint. The one thing I like about Mint is the very brave decision they made to include Tasty Menu by default. Suse has a similar menu and a lot of people railed against it when they included it in their last release. I actually like it a lot, I wish it was more configurable, I think part of the kicker should be reserved so the user can put short cuts to programs, documents, jpgs, or what ever they use the most. I know that in tasty menu you can list the most recent programs, most used programs, recent documents etc... but I would like a area of the menu that will show my most used programs and documents, it would save me a lot of time.

One of the problems with Mint if you use wifi is you have to reenter your settings every time you boot the computer. Here are instructions for a work around.

Another issue with Mint is root login, there is a huge controversy about the security issues caused by logging in as root, but I have ran into several issues where sudo did not work. In case you do not know, sudo allows you to run a program as root. In order to do this open a terminal and type sudo and the command that you would like to run as root. Once you press enter you will be asked for the root password.

To allow root login you will have to use the sudo command. Open Konsole and type the following:

sudo kate /etc/kde3/kdmrc

Then press enter. You will get some error messaged in Konsole, ignore them. You will have to enter your password. The Kate text editor will open and allow you to edit kdmrc.

Change the line that says "AllowRootLogin = False" to "AllowRootLogin = True" and click the save icon. You will be able to log out and login as root.

One of the first things a Linux addict loves to do once the new system is installed is to see what free software is available. Mint uses Adept as a package manager, it has a very slick interface but I like Synaptic so that was the first thing I installed. There is all of the usual software and if that is not enough there is a comprehensive list of repositories here, as the post states do not get greedy, there is no guarantee that all of the repositories will play nice together.

3D desktop eye candy is available through Beryl. I have two laptops, one has an old unsupported S3 Twister video card so Beryl isn't much good. My Sony laptop has some 3D capabilities and Beryl is very cool. I have found a bug where it will not display the task bar so I haven't used it much.

The stock icons, fonts, wallpaper and everything else that I usually tweak are pretty darn good. The only thing that I have changed visually is I have made the task bar translucent and I have added my vacation photo's to the desktop wallpaper.

My favorite thing about Mint is it just works. I haven't had any lockups or other strange things happen since I have installed it. I can play MP3s with Amarok, I can play YouTube videos, I haven't run into a situation yet where I could not play a video or open a file because that codex was not already installed.

Any complaints? Only a few, the wireless configuration interface located in the task bar could be better. I own a Nokia 770 and wireless interface is great. It will list the available hot spots that are within range and allow you to connect to them with a single click. As long as you connect to the same wifi hot spot Mint will connect when you boot up, but if you are traveling you will need to start KwifiManager or other configuration tools to connect to the hot spot.

Ubuntu should learn a lesson from Mint, they should buy Mint and incorporate the Mint tweaks into Ubuntu.

Fantastic Freespire

I had tried Linspire 6.0 OEM a while ago and was terribly let down. The interface for previous versions of Linspire were always professional and more polished than most of the other distros. However 6.0 looked like very little time was spent on polishing the interface, it was almost an exact clone of Ubuntu. My guess is because Linspire is changing their business strategy, they would rather spend time coding Click and Run than trying to redo their base distro, Ubuntu. I think they are moving from being a Linux distro company to a software provider for Linux because as we all know, one of the major problems with Linux is installing software. I could rant for a while as to I don't understand why the software providers just don't package the program and all of the dependencies like a windows exe, but I won't put you through all of that.

I haven't spent a lot of time playing with Linux lately, but I decided what the heck, why not try it , when I saw the new version of Freespire. I installed it on my old HP ZE1250 laptop that must have some odd proprietary chip set that just does not work with Linux. If you look at my past posts you can see that I have had nothing but problems trying to get Linux to work on this laptop.

I grabbed the ISO and burned it to CD. The install process is very similar to K/Ubuntu. Not as simple as the Linspire installation process, but still easier than Windows. Freespire inherited an aggravating flaw from Ubuntu, by default you have to install grub in the mbr. To get around this with Ubuntu they have an alternative ISO image that will allow you to install grub in the root partition, Freespire does not have an alternative ISO so there are some special steps that you have to take that I cover below. I use Acronis boot manager because I triple boot or quadruple boot, and one distro's version of grub may not boot another version of Linux, and if it doesn't you are stuck trying to edit the grub config file (good luck if you are not a programmer), or you can reload the version of Linux that you use the most, leaving the other version unusable. I learned the hard way, go with an after market boot loader and install grub in the root partition, it will save time in the long run. Anyway, the Freespire/Linspire install is fast and easy. The options are kept to a minimum and the installer just works (for me anyway, even on my Linux hating laptop).

The one thing I really like about Freespire is they keep programs on the CD to a minimum so everything fits on one CD. This is the opposite of Suse, when you install Suse you need five CDs plus the "add on" CD if you want closed source programs, and it will take up two gigs of disk space on your hard disk. If you do an install with KDE and deselect everything but KDE, it is still almost two gigs on your hard drive. I am not a programmer so I don't need five shells and six editors. Suse also includes software that I just don't use, Evolution for example. This sounds like I am bashing Suse, I am not, I really like Suse, I just wish they had a basic installation CD that included KDE and a minimum of other software. I know they have a network installation CD but you are still stuck with almost a two gig install that you end up downloading.

I do tech support for a medical company, and from time to time our customers will have to reload Windows because their computer will not boot. This was a big problem before service pack one was released, it still happens, but just not as often so it appears that SP1 and Sp2 fixed a lot of initial problems.

The usually reason that Windows will not boot is because the hive is corrupted. One solution to repairing the hive is to boot into a shell and manually copy the Windows system files, but if the customer is not good with computers or the english language, it is much easier to reinstall Windows. Installing takes over an hour and one half for Windows alone, then we need to install the printer drivers, reinstall our program and restore the data. From the beginning to end it takes over two hours. There were many times I wished that our program would run in Linspire, if it did I could have the customer put the CD in the CD drive, three clicks and fifteen minutes later we would be done, we could even make a bootable image CD with everything we needed on it and included it with our computer when we ship it.

The other problem that we have encountered with Windows is activation. Our customer's computers are not connected to the internet so we have to hope that after reinstallation the customer calls Microsoft to activate Windows. I know of several times when they did not and I received a phone call thirty days later saying they were locked our of the computer because Windows was not activated.

As stated earlier, if you remove the check mark from "install grub in master boot record" (something like that) Freespire should install grub in the root partition, and actually in older versions of Linspire (Lindows), if you did not install grub in the MBR, it would automatically install grub in the root partition. Alas, those were the good old days!

Since Freespire does not install grub in the root partition on its own, after the install, Acronis will see the new OS, but when you click on the icon to boot it all you get is a flashing cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen. I searched the Linspire forms and was able to find the solution as explained below, of course this works with Linspire also.

Once the install is complete, boot into live Freespire CD (this works with other live Linux CDs or if you have a working Linux version on your hard drive) and open a terminal as root, then type the following:

grub (press enter)

You will get a grub prompt.

Then type:
root (hdX,Y) Where X is the drive number, you have to remember that grub was most likely written by an engineer so your first hard drive is 0 not 1. If you want to install grub on the second hard drive the syntax would be (hd1,Y), be sure to include the parenthesis. The next variable is the drive partition- Y and again you have to think like an engineer, so if you want to install grub on the fifth partition of the first drive the syntax would be (hd0,4).

Press enter.

Then type:
setup (hdX,Y) then press enter. The syntax will be the same as the root command. I have encountered a problem with grub when typing the the setup command, I will get an error message the first time I type the setup command. If that happens, just retype the command (or press the up arrow key, this will bring up the last command that you typed) and press enter, it has always taken it the second time through.

Close the shell and reboot, once in Acronis, or the boot manager of your choice click on the Freespire icon and you should boot into your system.

Once in Freespire you will get the "first boot" configuration screens where you can configure date and time, set up the network connection, add users and more. Once finished with all of that, you are finally using your Freespire OS.

When I wrote this Click and Run was still in alpha so I was not able to use it to install any other programs.

One thing Ubuntu is really bad at is wireless networking, I have five wireless cards and I think only one of them works in Ubuntu. The Ubuntu wireless applet is lame compared to Freespire's wireless setup. Also, I could not get ndiswrapper to work at all in Ubuntu, I have not had to try to use it in Freespire because my D-Link cards work!

I have an old Microsoft B wireless card that works in just about every version of Linux that I have tried (Microsoft, go figure), I also have a D-Link DWL 650g that usually works in any distro can load the madwifi driver. The D-Link card does not work in Ubuntu, but works flawlessly in Freespire. My laptop is a fair distance away from the router so it is nice to get a little extra speed.

Click and Run is not up yet so I am kind of stuck with the programs that came on the CD. I tried Automatix but was not able to get it to work and I also did not have any luck with klik.atekon.de either.

Final thoughts about Freespire 2.0, the look and feel is not highly polished like most Linspire versions, but then it is the community supported version. I expect the final Linspire 6.0 version to be better than Freespire 2.0 and the Linspire 6.0 OEM version that I had tried a while back. I don't thing Freespire is ugly, it is just that the interface could be a little better, the icons are different than other flavors of Linux but they are kind of basic, there is nothing special about the look of Freespire. That said, Freespire works great, I use to love, after an install, searching for and adding repositories to get non-free software and tweaking everything. I still like getting in and tweaking the interface, but is nice to have all of the codecs installed. It is also nice to have my wireless cards "just work".

I've been away

I have lost my obsession for Linux lately. There are several reasons for this, one of my laptops has problems with most Linux distros, I have been trying to learn VB Studio 2005, and I have spent the last month playing with my new toy- a Nokia 770.

I had a Linux server (file, music) setup, but my wife wanted to keep the Windows box on all of the time so it did not make any sense to run two computers when one will do the job. I have been using Windows most of the time because of VB Studio 2005. I haven't given up on Linux, I still use it when I buy anything or log onto my bank website.

I have PCLinuxOS and Linspire 5-0, along with Windows loaded on my work laptop. Linspire has been on it for almost two years and is getting old. I really like PCLinuxOS and it it operates flawlessly but it does not have.

I had played with Mint previously and liked it accept for the fact that it has Gnome desktop. I have also played with Ubuntu and Kubuntu. The big problem I have with K/Ubuntu is that I cannot get wireless working, even with my old Microsoft B card that works with everything, that is a definite deal breaker.

I wanted to try Mint 3.0 since it was just released. It is a very nice distro, but again Gnome was the deal breaker. I was able to use ndiswrapper to get my Netgear card working. The configuration was not as easy as PCLinuxOS, because I had to use the command line compared to the PCLOS gui.

I also tried the new beta of Ubuntu. I tried it because I saw in the release notes that they have tweaked acpi to make the laptop run cooler and the battery last longer. The one problem I have with PCLOS on my "problem child" HP laptop is the fan runs all of the time and the laptop runs hotter than usual. The Ubuntu beta worked great, but Gnome again was the deal breaker. I decided to try Kubuntu Feisty Fawn, the install was easy, my laptop runs cooler, even though this is the "old" Kubuntu, the fan actually runs less that when I am in Windows, Honest! The deal breaker was I could not configure my wireless car using ndiswrapper. I do have an Old Microsoft B card that plugs and plays, so I will use that for a while.