Tag: Ubuntu

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?

Id be installing this now if it wasnt for work

Review: Ubuntu’s New ‘Gutsy Gibbon’ Brings Linux Out of the Jungle

If you’ve been considering making the switch from Windows or Mac, Ubuntu makes the process painless. It’s ability to seamlessly import your settings, music and data from a Windows partition erases one of the most pressing barriers for new users. And once you’re in, the learning curve is minimal. In fact, besides requiring a little futzing to get multimedia playback set up, Gutsy Gibbon is about as easy as Linux gets.

Ubuntu 7.10 is out today. As soon as I get home, I plan to upgrade. Well, a clean install, probably, because I haven’t been running 7.04 long enough to really need to keep stuff. Also I want to redo my partitions and clear out all remnants of Vista.

I hear the wireless is better in 7.10, which would be great, because I lose my connection every day when I get home in the evening.  It works great most of the time, but for some reason, it refuses to stay connected from 4pm to 6pm.  It’s very strange.

Anyway, if you haven’t tried Ubuntu, you should.  You can use the installation cd to run the operating system without installing anything.  It’s a little slow that way, but you can test it out without losing any of your files and whatnot.

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.

Howto – Install Ubuntu Feisty on a Lenovo Thinkpad T61

So, you have a new Thinkpad. I have a T61 with the Nvidia 140M graphics card. Ubuntu Fiesty doesn’t seem to like that card, and it’s been a pain in the neck to get it working. But it’s working now, and here’s how I did it. Before we go any further: This tutorial is just what worked for me. I make no promises, guarantees, or anything else. This may turn your brand new computer into a really pricey paperweight. Use of this tutorial is ENTIRELY at your own risk. I am willing to give advice if you get stuck, but I’m a Linux noob. The Ubuntu forums are likely to be more helpful. Anyway, I make no promises, I just want to share what worked for me. First, the regular installer doesn’t work because you don’t get any sort of GUI. So, go to the Ubuntu downloads and get Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop edition. You want the version for 64 Bit AMD and Intel computers. Below the green download button, you want to check the box where it says, “Check here if you need the alternate desktop CD. This CD does not include the Live CD, instead it uses a text-based installer.” Then click download. You know how Windows probably asks you to open it with whatever your cd burning software is before you even download the file? Well, don’t do that. I tried, and it didn’t work. If you are not familiar with MD5 checksums and burning ISO images, check this tutorial. It should tell you all you need to know. Once you have your cd, put it in your cd drive and install using the text-based installer. The only issue I had with the installer was partitioning the drive. I have a 120GB drive. I read somewhere that Vista requires 30GB (As an aside, good grief, Microsoft, no wonder old Windows machines run really slowly. Do all your operating systems have such ridiculous requirements?), so I set my partition to 90GB. Well, Vista took that to mean something really, really bad happened, and now wants me to recover Windows. It refuses to boot. Some may see this as a blessing, and I’m not going to argue, but I had hoped to keep a working Vista install for those rare cases when it’s just more convenient to use Windows. Anyway, getting Vista to work is a project for another day. That’s why this tutorial is provided with no guarantees. Once you have Ubuntu installed, you have to boot into the recovery (that is, text-only) mode. Log in using the user you created during installation. Then the real fun begins. Install development tools sudo apt-get install build-essential Setup ethernet connection sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces Add the following to the file: auto eth0 iface eth0 inet dhcp Save the file and close. If you don’t know how to use VI, Google is your friend. Restart networking sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart Test to see if it works ping www.google.com Stop pinging. Someone can probably tell me how to ping like Windows, where it tried a few times and then stops, but I didn’t bother to look it up. ctrl-c If you get this error – sudo: timestamp too far in the future: Try rebooting with Ctrl-Alt-Delete Remove old Nvidia file sudo rm /etc/init.d/nvidia-kernel Disable the installed Nvidia driver sudo vi /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common Add this line DISABLED_MODULES="nv nvidia_new" Save and exit. install nvidia drivers sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx sudo nvidia-xconfig --add-argb-glx-visuals --composite Restart sudo reboot Update Ubuntu (This might have been a good idea earlier in the game. But this is where I did it.) sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get dist-upgrade Restart sudo reboot Get the new Nvidia driver installer Create a temp directory in your home folder cd sudo mkdir nvidia_temp cd nvidia_temp Download the driver installer Make sure to check this url – it’s current as of 8/28/07 sudo wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/100.14.11/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-100.14.11-pkg2.run sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-100.14.11-pkg2.run It will ask you about runlevels. Ubuntu apparently doesn’t do runlevels. Continue with the installation. Mine had errors, which I ignored. Reboot, this time start up in regular mode. You should have a functional graphics card. Unfortunately, it’s only partially functional. Mine only supported 1024X768, which is totally unacceptable. Reconfigure X From the menu at the top of the screen, select “Applications”, then “Accessories”, then “Terminal” to open a terminal window. At the prompt: sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg This will open a little wizard. You can leave all the defaults for the most part. However, it is important to select “nvidia” instead of “nv” from the big list of drivers. Select “1280X800” from the list of resolutions. When it asks to specify “simple”, “medium”, or “advanced”, just pick simple and choose “Up to 14 inches”. That is, assuming you have the 14″ screen like I do. Now, you can click the red icon at the top right of the screen, reboot, and your screen resolution should be set to 1280X800. Update: I finally got around to checking the sound, and it turned out I had none. However, if you go to this Ubuntu forum thread and follow the instructions from forum user fmhoyt, sound should work fine. From here, you’re on your own. The Ubuntu Forums are great. Lifehacker loves to talk about Ubuntu. Del.icio.us is also a really good resource for cool stuff to do with Ubuntu. There are lots of cool apps and tricks and whatnot. So, have fun. Resources:

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.