Tag: linux

Liveblogging the Gutsy install

I have the alternate cd now. This is going to work. I can feel it. Even better, the wife is cooking some weird cake for dessert. I’m sure it will be delicious.

So, the keyboard layout detection wizard is kind of fun. I don’t have most of those keys, though. I feel a little left out.

It can’t configure the network. That’s probably not a big deal. I’ll do that later. Now we’re setting the computer name to “calvin”, as in “and Hobbes”. And now I’m formatting partitions. Since I don’t want any remnant of Windows Vista, and I’ve backed up all the files I need, I chose to reformat the entire drive. Some may not want to do that. But really, who wants to dual boot Vista and Ubuntu? On one hand, you have an OS that pretty much everyone has acknowledged is a giant mess. On the other hand, you have the first real alternative to Windows and Mac OS that is getting some real traction and publicity. So, goodbye, Vista.

I know my brothers-in-law, and some of my other readers are probably aghast at my dismissal of OSX. But Macs hate me, and Windows hates everyone, so I don’t feel bad.

The alternate installer is pretty easy to use. Sure, it looks like something from 1989. But that’s okay. Just so long as it works. It’s installing software now. That’s probably a good thing.

And the wife is beating something in the KitchenAid. Probably eggs. Actually, it’s butter and sugar. I know because I just checked. And the software installation is stuck on 6%. Hopefully that’s not a problem.

There it goes. It jumped up to 18%, and now 22%. Things are going swimmingly.

Ooh, now it’s installing the GRUB boot loader. “You’re a grub boot loader”, the wife would say.

Now I’m restarting. This is exciting.

Okay, I’m all booted up. Unfortunately, it’s at 800X600 resolution. Let’s see if we can fix that.

It looks like I’m missing the latest Nvidia driver. Clicking the little icon between the network icon and the volume icon doesn’t seem to get me anywhere. Wireless works, though.

So, let’s run some updates. sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get dist-upgrade sudo reboot

Don’t know if this is working at all. Going without a guide is a little harder than following in someone else’s footsteps.

I just tried to change the video driver to “nv”, the open source Nvidia driver, in Administration->”Screens and Graphics”. I chose the driver, hit the “Test” button, and now have a blank screen. Sweet. “

alt-ctrl-delete

I feel like I’m running Windows.

I went to System->Administration->Restricted Drivers Manager and enabled the NVIDIA driver. Now it’s downloading. This reminds me that there is no way my dad or my sister, who have both expressed interest in Ubuntu, are going to be able to install this. I think they’d like it if someone else installed it, but this requires more comfort with a computer than either of them has. I hate to bash the install process, but it’s just not going to work for people who aren’t computer geeks.

It’s asking for a restart now, so I’m obliging. I’m hoping for some sweet graphics to be enabled now. That would rule.

Well, that didn’t really work. But you know what does? “

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Go through the wizard, reboot, and then go to System->Preferences->Screen Resolution, and you can choose 1280X800. I think I can actually get a better resolution out of the video card, but this will do for now.

So, things seem to be working. Wireless was painless. In fact, I’ve never had an easier time of connecting to a wireless network. This is groundbreaking.

Gutsy is definitely an improvement – this install took me much less time than Feisty did. I’ll have to update you all when I get a chance to play with things, but I’m currently pretty happy. I haven’t tested anything, like hibernate, or the sound, or any of the software. But I’m just going to assume that everything is awesome. I think the wife is feeling a little neglected, so I’m going to go wake her up and tell her that she’s more important than the computer. With any luck, she’ll believe me.

Seriously, Ubuntu

_I’m sort of live-blogging my Ubuntu install.  The following would probably be more interesting if it actually, you know, worked. _

So, we just finished some delicious Saag Aloo, and now I’m going to install Gutsy while the wife watches Law and Order: SVU.

I’ve got a black screen so far. That’s not good. BTW, I’m writing here on my old laptop while I install on the new one. Just FYI.

I just got a warning, telling me that Ubuntu is running in low graphics mode. That’s not cool. I chose 1440X900 from the “generic” monitor resolution list. Now it’s running local boot scripts. This doesn’t seem good. I was kind of hoping it would just boot up without my input. I’m staying postive, though.

I just ctrl-alt-deleted. It wasn’t doing anything.

I tried the default 800X600 resolution this time. Now it’s running local boot scripts again. I’m not optimistic.

This Live CD stuff just isn’t working. I’m downloading the alternate install cd now. I’ll be back in an hour or so.

Gutsy or Bust

So, I’m going to install Ubuntu 7.10, Gutsy Gibbon. It’s going to be awesome. You may have already seen my guide to getting 7.04 onto a Lenovo Thinkpad T61. Well, this time I’m doing things a little differently. First, I’m going to try the Live CD install rather than the alternate install, because I just have faith that it’s going to work. Then, I’m completely blowing away Windows. Vista is stupid, and I haven’t missed it since I got the Thinkpad. Which is good, because I broke it installing 7.04.

Anyway, I’m going to install a second partition for my /home folder, which lots of people say you should do. And everything is going to be awesome. I just know it.

First of all, though, let me complain about downloading the stupid ISO. I tried it yesterday, release day. After two hours, I was at 2%. I killed it, and tried again later. No dice. I even tried wget from the command line, thinking that maybe without whatever overhead Firefox introduces to the process, it might be better. No dice. So I tried again today. My ever-helpful brother-in-law (I should probably write down the euphemisms I use for my various brothers-in-law so I can keep them straight, but whatever) suggested that I might have better luck with BitTorrent. That seemed like a good idea, since a huge number of users slows a download but speeds up a torrent.

No dice again. Why? Because Satan’s ISP (Comcast) has decided that P2P=BAD for all values of P2P. Never mind that what I’m doing is downloading totally free software and saving them bandwidth at the same time. I mean, I won’t get into illegal downloading and all that. But what I’m trying to do is TOTALLY LEGAL and encouraged by the creator of the intellectual property or whatever we call software these days. But Comcast can’t allow it, because some people use P2P for illegal things. Up yours, Comcast. If it wasn’t for your dirty monopoly on cable internet here, I would have cancelled your service today.

Anyway, my laptop is currently sitting two feet from the router, plugged in by wire, because my wireless is being finicky and I don’t have any long ethernet cables anymore. It’s maybe 1/3 done with the download.

If all goes well from here on out, I’ll have this working tonight. If all goes as expected, I’ll polish off this bottle of scotch trying to get it to work.

Still no 7.10

I probably should have guessed that I wouldn’t be the only one downloading Ubuntu 7.10 the day it came out.  Maybe it will actually work tonight.

And next weekend, I’m going to put Ubuntu on my dad’s old Windows 98 box.  That should be interesting.  I’m thinking about trying Xubuntu, the lightweight version that requires almost nothing in terms of processor and RAM.  Wouldn’t it be nice if Microsoft and Apple had an OS that ran on 128 megs of RAM and 1.5 gigs of hard drive space?

I guess that would keep you from upgrading, though, wouldn’t it?

A magazine about Ubuntu

Full Circle Magazine » Issue 4

Full Circle – the Ubuntu Community Magazine are proud to announce our fourth issue.

I know, I’m going to get more user submitted complaints about rambling on about Ubuntu, but I’m more and more excited about Linux as a real alternative to Windows.  I’ve been thinking about trying to install it on my parents’ computers because I can log in remotely and fix things for them.

I mean, my dad is running Windows 98 on his desktop.  As a computer dork, this is roughly the same as a dentist allowing his father to lose all his teeth due to cavities.

Anyway, Full Circle Magazine is accessible for the non-geek, although some of it will seem like a foreign language.  But I mention it more as a symbol of things to come – there was an article in the previous issue (That I actually haven’t read, but the new issue mentions it) about someone installing Ubuntu on his grandmother’s computer, and how happy she’s been with it.  When people who didn’t use a computer until well into adulthood start using and being happy with Linux, it’s good for everyone.

Imagine you could go buy a computer, and they’d ask you, “Which operating system would you like?”, and you could choose whatever you wanted.  There would be real choice, and real competition.  Right now, for the vast majority of people, you either buy a Mac or you run Windows.  But Ubuntu isn’t far off.  And if Ubuntu succeeds at bringing Linux to the masses (And their deal with Dell is a huge step forward), then other distributions will follow.

Anyway, it’s exciting.  At least, I’m excited.

Ubuntu is working like a charm

Everything is working.  My screen resolution is a lovely 1280X800, everything works, and I’m pretty friggin’ happy.  Vista is still broken, but I haven’t tried to fix it.

As promised, I have written up my HowTo.  Here I explain how I got Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) running on a Lenovo Thinkpad T61.  It wasn’t easy, but hopefully I can help make it a little easier for everyone else.

So, click here to find out how I installed Ubuntu.

And then there was one

I have one functional OS. At least, mostly functional. I’m running Ubuntu now. Still no Windows, but I haven’t tried to fix it.

My graphics card is not 100% (I don’t have resolution higher than 1024, which kind of sucks). And the Gnome settings manager, which I haven’t tried to fix. But wireless worked right out of the box, and here I am, posting away on the new machine.

It’s pretty exciting. Still a little way to go, but my confidence is renewed.

Fully functional operating sysmtems – zero

My brand new laptop is currently non-functional.  Vista boots up into the recovery manager, which I suspect wants to “fix” my Ubuntu install.  I didn’t mess with it for very long, but it didn’t want to start up Windows.

Ubuntu will come up in text-only mode, but not in normal mode.  I suspect that I need a driver or something for my video card – I think others have had this problem with Ubuntu and a Thinkpad.  So I’ll try that today after work.

I think I’m going to try and write up a HowTo for installing Ubuntu on the Thinkpad.  There are a bunch out there, but my mommy says I’m good at explaining technical things to non-technical people.  I think there could be a bunch of people who are like me – fed up with Windows treating me like an idiot, technically savvy but not an expert, and willing to do a little extra work to get a computer that makes us happy.

First impression of Vista, heading for Ubuntu

Ugh. It’s pretty unappealing visually. It’s like they took all the things that were good about any other operating system, ever, and threw them away. To be fair, I was expecting to hate Vista, and I suspect it is not possible that I could have liked it at this point. But still.

So, I’m downloading the Ubuntu Feisty alternate install disk image. That was my plan all along when I got the new computer, a Thinkpad T61. It’s almost done, so I’m going to go burn it and try the install. Should be loads of fun.

Update:  I’m on the old computer now, as Ubuntu is “Installing the base system”.  Not sure how long this is going to take.  I should probably get to bed soon.  The wife isn’t feeling well, and she’s already in bed.  We rarely go to bed separately, and on her way to bed, she said something to the effect of, “Don’t stay up too late playing with Ubuntu”.  She’s probably asleep now, so she won’t know how late I stay up.  But she’ll probably read this tomorrow, so, whatever.

It’s selecting and installing software now.

FYI – trying to install Ubuntu on a Thinkpad T61 requires the alternate, text-based install.  For whatever reason, the gui-based install just doesn’t work at all.

I hate computers

I booted up Windows today for the first time in a while. Firefox is not working in Ubuntu. I mean, it is, sort of, but it hangs constantly, and it’s driving me insane. I imagine I broke something, but it’s a little strange that it only seems to be a problem in Firefox.

I’m hoping it’s just a problem with Wubi running on this piece of junk computer. I want a new computer with a full Ubuntu install.

Update:  I booted back into Ubuntu and started up Open Office, which is notoriously resource-hungry, figuring that I could determine if it were simply a Firefox problem.  It’s not.  Open Office never opened.  I waited a few minutes and then killed it.  I think I need to find a career that doesn’t involve computers.  I seem to break every one I touch.