Zenwalker and The Karmic Koala: Trying Out Ubuntu 9.10

It has been 6 months since the Jaunty Jackalope was released. True to its half-year promise of new version releases, Canonical proudly presents its lastest creation for the Linux desktop world: Ubuntu 9.10, codenamed “The Karmic Koala”. So, what does the reigning king of the Linux desktop has to offer to his simple Zenwalker? Read on and find out.

Installation

From the previous engagement with The Jackalope, I decided that the installation medium would be an old 40 gigabyte 7200 RPM IDE hard drive, a big leap from the miniscule 5 gigabyte laptop hard drive 6 months ago.

The beast that will use this rotating platter:

AMD Athlon64 LE 1600 2.2 GHz processor
ECS GeForce6100SM-M2 mainboard
1 GB Transcend DDR2 667 RAM
Inno3d GeForce 7300GT 256MB GDDR3 video card
Samsung Super-Writemaster SH-S182 DVD Writer
Kworld PlusTV Analog Lite PCI TV/FM tuner card
Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value CT4831 4.1 sound card

(Yes, I know. This machine is more of a weasel in terms of technical specifications of today. )

Before the install, This Zenwalker opted for a custom partition scheme (two 19 GB ext4 partitions and one 2 GB swap) using Gparted. Installation time took about 12 minutes and 38.76 seconds (Yes, I used a stopwatch, clocked time is from after the custom partition option up to the end of installation).

The First Boot

One has to appreciate Ubuntu’s strive for polish, this is evident on the boot sequence. After the grub message, one is treated to a simple yet elegant boot splash. You are greeted with a flashing white Ubuntu logo on a simple totally black background. It then switches to a dark brown boot theme that has the “theater spotlight” effect and “streaking” animated progress bar. One is then welcomed with
a nice sleek similarly themed login screen. I have to admit, it’s the most coolest login theme I have seen on Ubuntu. Overall, clocked boot time from restart up to the login screen is 39.35 seconds. I heard somewhere that Ubuntu 9.10 sports a 40-second boot time, but MAN, under 40 seconds?! That’s SO FRIGGING SICK!

Subtle Changes

One can help notice the change in the default Human theme. It seems that unlike the fascination with orange of the previous releases, 9.10 returned to brown (kind of like in the Warty days). Some might hate the brown feel, but hey, it not a real problem for this blogger. Even though the predominant brown feel of Human now, it has quite polished up feel to it. It characterized by a dark window decoration reminiscent of MeeboMice for XFCE with a gtk theme that uses a lighter shade of brown borrowed from Oxygen on KDE 4, pretty evindent on the scroll bars. One has to notice too the changes to the system tray icons used on Ubuntu 9.10. It reminds of the ones used on Mac OS X. Also, I noticed the Mail icon, which seems like a central location for messaging (email and instant messaging).

Making It My Own / Good Vibes, Bad Vibes

Now on to making Ubuntu 9.10 my own.
First of: internet connection. The usual thing to do would be access NetworkManager, go to the DSL section, and add my DSL settings. After doing so, I tried to establish a DSL connection… only to land in mortal fail territory. Strange, in Jaunty, it was a fine affair, no problems what so ever. It kind of felt like a step back. Common sense dictated that I should go old-school: use sudo pppoeconf. And surely it did work. Now I’m able to fetch the latest updates and surf the web.

Next: accelerated graphics. I didn’t configure it before the hard disk install, and it seems that the nvidia-glx-185 package was removed when I opted not to configure my video card before the HD install. Lucky, it was a easy as sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-185 and reboot. Done deal.

Then I decided to try out Empathy, Gnome 2.28’s answer to Pidgin. Since the Philippines is very much Yahoo Messenger country, I tried using Empathy for YM testing. After setting up my YM account, I tried to connect, only to fail miserably. It won’t go online. That’s why I ditched Empathy for Pidgin. After doing so, yes, I got in on the YM network.

Now, onto Ubuntu One. It’s one of the highlights of this release. It’s the cloud storage service for Ubuntu users, in the tradition of Dropbox. Every Ubuntu user is entitled for a free 2 GB storage quota, if you need more there’s a 50 GB plan for $10 a month. If you want to try it out, you need a Launchpad account (luckily for me, I already have one). So after subscribing for the free account and configuring… I can’t connect. Huh? That really puzzled for some time, then it hit me: maybe it has to be related to NetworkManager, since I’m not connecting my DSL via NetworkManager. So, I have to find a way to make my DSL work on NM. After some research, I found the solution: install daily trunk builds of NM. To do so:

1. Add the following to your source.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/network-manager/trunk/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/network-manager/trunk/ubuntu karmic main

2. Reload apt-get/synaptic. Now you can install the daily trunk builds of nm-applet and NetworkManager then Reboot.

There, you can use DSL on NetworkManager again!
As predicted, Ubuntu One now works as I solved the DSL NM problem.

Onto the “other necessary evils”:

•  Flash – Simple enough: just go to a Flash site and Firefox will hint you to install Adobe Flash.
•  Java – UbuntuGeek has a how-to on it.
•  MP3 playback -  I just fire up Ubuntu Software Center, do a mp3 search query, select and install  Ubuntu restricted extras and Gstreamer extra plugins.
•  DVD Playback – Obviously, you need libdvdcss2, which is available through Medibuntu. Here’s the how-to I used.

Other Software Exchanges:  

• Replaced Rhythmbox with Exaile

       I’m not a big fan of Rhythmbox, I like something that works like Amarok 1.4 but a GTK
       interface.

•  Replaced Gnome Bluetooth with Blueman

       This one really gave me the head scratch. Even though Gnome Bluetooth in the default
       Bluetooth manager on Gnome 2.28, it a hit-or-miss based on my experience. Yes, pairing
       works perfectly, but OBEX push between my cellphone and the Ubuntu and vice-versa is a
       FAIL. Ubuntu should have used Blueman by default IMHO.

The Pulseaudio and TV/FM Tuner Drama

I was easing up to the idea of Pulseaudio when I was able to configure sound playback. But when I tried to configure my TV/FM tuner, well, I fell to the land of despair. I as able to configure my TV/FM Tuner, but it seems that Pulseaudio is messing up the sound from the TV/FM tuner. I could disable Pulseaudio, but I won’t go to the nitty-gritty ordeal. I reiterate again: Pulseaudio is not really for primetime yet! In terms of workability, ALSA is still the king.

The Final Words

I feel Ubuntu 9.10 is a mixed bag. Sure, they really tried to spice up the user experience with souped up aesthetics, but that’s just about it. They didn’t focus more on the other stuff. And this, coming from the Poster Child of Desktop Linux.

Just two words: MORE EFFORT.

Technorati Tags: Linux, Review, Ubuntu, Ubuntu 9.10

May the FOSS be with You: FOSS Bill Update

One of the highlight of the Software Freedom Day sessions in the University of Santo Tomas yesterday is the a brief update on the proposed Free/Open Source bill by Representative Teddy Casiño of the Bayan Muna Partylist. 

Technorati Tags: FOSS Bill, Philippines, Software Freedom Day

I Hate Linux So Much!!!

Yes, you heard me right, it’s official: I totally hate Linux! I hate it because it doesn’t need me to install an antivirus and antispyware program! I hate it because there is no more defrag! I hate it because your install doesn’t degrade with time anymore! I hate it because it doesn’t give me an administrator account by default! I hate it because I don’t need to reformat my install very often! I hate it because, most of the time, I don’t need any help when a problem arises, I can resolve it by myself or search for a solution using the evil thing called Google. I hate because it saves me a lot of dough! Darn it! It won’t force me to upgrade my lowly computer I got now! Grrrr! I don’t have to buy “stick-up” software, “stick-up” because it feels like being robbed! The problem is… I want to get robbed! Hu hu hu… And most of all: I won’t be able to help my bigtime idol, Bill Gates! I won’t help him became even more rich! Hwaaaahhhh!!! I won’t help his glorious company Microsoft anymore

Yup, I totally, absolutely hate Linux! Hate it! Hate it! Hate it!!!

(This is my reaction to this blog post. )

Technorati Tags: Linux, Windows, Hate, FOSS, Open Source

Google Chromium for Zenwalk!

Yeah, I’m at it again! >:) Since I heard of the news that development preview of Google Chrome for Linux (a.k.a. Chromium) now has early support for Flash, I decided to make a Zenwalk package (may work with Slackware too) from one of the daily snapshots (3.0.194.0 SVN 20472). Yup, it is true. I gone by YouTube.com on Google Chromium with the symlink to the Flash plugin on my Zenwalk system and it works! Others, well, not so… But then again, Chromium is considered experimental So if you willing to bite the dust, here you go. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Google, Chrome, Chromium, Linux, Zenwalk, Slackware

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 for Zenwalk!

I was getting impatient for the release of Iceweasel 3.5 on Zenwalk. So I decided to create a binary package of Mozilla Firefox 3.5. It may work on Slackware too. The package is right here. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Mozilla Firefox 3.5, Zenwalk, Slackware, Linux

Yoono: Online Social Life Unified!

Are you beginning to hate wrestling back and forth between your Facebook and Twitter accounts? Wishing you could access both in one place? Well now, yes you can! Thanks to Yoono. Yoono is a Firefox/Iceweasel plugin in that let’s you access Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Imeem, Flickr, FriendFeed, MSN, AIM, Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger all in one sidebar! But don’t let the word “sidebar” make you cringe (due to used browser estate). Yoono, has a nice hide feature so it won’t be a nuisance.

Yoono makes the management of my Facebook and Twitter accounts easy by giving me a unified timeline for both accounts. Add to that, notifications will appear for newly-arrived Facebook and Twitter status updates, not to mention, unified status posts for both or individually. It also feature link sharing for both services or one of them, very handy for sharing web finds.

If you spent much time on Firefox or Iceweasel for your social media, take Yoono for a spin. I bet you will love it! Sure beats having to install Adobe AIR on a non-supported Linux distro or half-done Microblogging clients. Go get it here!

Technorati Tags: Yoono, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Flickr, Imeem, FriendFeed, MSN, AIM, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, Social Media, Social Network, Online Social Life, Firefox, Iceweasel, Linux

Episode 2 of Ubunchu! :)

Finally! An english translation (left to right version) of the latest installment of Ubunchu! is now online It seems this issue/episode is all about the command line (don’t cringe, the CLI is your best friend) Get it here!

Technorati Tags: Linux, Ubuntu, Ubunchu, Manga

It’s Better With Windows – Is It? : Windows on Netbooks

It seems there is now an intensified Windows campaign on netbooks called “It’s Better With Windows”. The question that begs to be answered is “Is It?”.

Netbooks are generally scaled down version of laptops, which means low-powered, hardware wise. It is a general notion that Windows is a resource hog, most especially on computer with low hardware specifications. Linux is the exact opposite. If you install Linux on a such a machine, chances are, it will have very desirable performance (or you could “cut down on the fat” much further). Add in to the performance mix is the that most of the filesystems Linux can be installed, no defragmentation is required because it’s non-existent. You can’t say that with, let say FAT and NTFS.

Another obvious point is that Windows is a breeding ground for malware (virii, spyware, trojans, adware, you name it). Linux, on the other hand is “virtually virus free” mainly because of its pragmatic system design and its well-versed userbase (which I can’t say much for the most of the Windows users out there, that the only thing they know is startup and shut down).

Heck, I read somewhere that a factory-fresh Windows netbook got malware already! (LOL)

Also, most of the stuff you do on a netbook are generally basic stuff (web surfing, email, word processing, spreadsheets etc.) can be gone on Linux.

I have a hutch: Microsoft is giving more incentives to netbook makers to put and advertise Windows on netbooks. Also they’re banking on stupid marketing BS to get people buying. It is known the netbook industry is the sunniest part of the computer sector today, that why the big Windows push on netbook today.

The sad truth is while a consumer may know and accustomed to using Windows, the downsides attached to Windows outweights the real benefits of Linux usage.

Windows is a joke, and they just don’t know it…

Technorati Tags: Windows, Linux, Netbooks, It’s Better with Windows, FUD, Microsoft

Hayden Kho Scandals: A Technological Perspective

Here in the Philippines, one of the hottest news around is the public circulation of the lewd videos of celebrity doctor Hayden Kho. I actually didn’t give a damn about the whole fiasco, well, until now. I found out (while having watch the latest episode of TEN: The Evening News a while ago) one of the possible angle on how the video got loose into the wild. Apparently, Vicky Belo has Hayden Kho’s hard drive (where the lewd videos are contained). Kho seems to be assured that Belo will not spread those vile contents because of his knowledge that Belo is computer-illiterate. That, my friend, is a big point of failure. Complacency begets stupidity. Even if she is computer-illiterate, why would you give your hard drive to your girlfriend if you have shameful files within? Also, there is a chance that not only she has access to it. Here is where my second point comes to play: Why (oh Why!) Mr. Kho didn’t create an encrypted folder to hide his evidence of wrong-doings OR put those in an encrypted storage container? In that way, those files are not easily accessible. Now, it begs to be asked: Who’s the fool now? Obviously, Hayden Kho is just one of those “Johnny Six Pack” types of computer users. For that, he paid the big price for it. I rest my case.

Technorati Tags: Hayden Kho, Vicky Belo, Scandal, Data Encryption, Computer Security

Acer: A Company Without a Heart

If you are getting an Acer product, you may want to reconsider. Apparently, Acer slams Ken Starks (a.k.a Helios), one of the famed Linux advocate around. Helios calls up Acer for assistance in relation to 2 Acer Travelmates enabled with a BIOS lock based on Trusted Computing. Unfortunately, the Acer guys insists on a 100 dollar fix, in spite the reasoning given by Ken Starks that it was for charity work. What a heartless company, trying to milk some dollars off a non-profit. Such practices should not be tolerated, but condemned. After this fiasco, no Acer for me. If you want to, please don’t buy Acer products.

Source: Acer Tells Kid’s Charity – Pay Up or Shut Up

UPDATE: Seems that Ken Starks’ problem is now solved, as chronicled on his latest blog entry “The Acer Debacle – Closing The Chapter”.

Technorati Tags: Acer, Trusted Computing, Ken Starks, Helios, Boycott, Travelmate