Ubuntu Musings

Last week, I was at a conference in Vancouver, Canada. Along with appearing on a panel there and attending a number of sessions, I wanted to do some (semi) live blogging and record a few interviews for the podcast that I do with my business partner.

Of course, I wanted to travel light. Instead of lugging my ThinkPad with me, I decided to bring along my Eee PC. It was a good choice. Using the Eee PC I was able to do all of that, plus take notes during the sessions. And I took up less space than the folks who brought their full-sized laptops. Continue reading »

I love telling my Windows-using friends Chances are, you use Linux daily and don’t even know it. They’re immediately shocked and dismayed, horrified and mortified. What they don’t seem to know is that many popular Web sites run on Linux. Google is built on top of Linux. The list goes on.

This article looks at some of the places you may be unknowingly encountering Linux. One or two of them surprised me.

Another surprise was how deeply embedded Linux is in the world of Formula One. It makes sense, I guess. With the costs of F1 being so high, teams can save money using Linux clusters instead of, say, Windows or Solaris servers.

Next week, you’ll notice far fewer posts on this space. Why? I’ll be at a conference that takes place from May 6 to May 9. On top of that, I’ll be putting the finishing touches on a presentation that I’ll be giving with my business partner the following week.

I’ll be trying to prepare a few posts in advance for next week. And if you’re interested in what’s happening at the conference (it’s on technical communication and Web 2.0), then you can read daily blog posts here.

I have a confession to make: I like MacBooks. I don’t own one (at least not yet), but a MacBook is on my wishlist. There are a number of reasons that I like the Mac book, not the least of which is that the operating system is built on UNIX.

In fact, whenever I’m in an Apple Store and am playing with a MacBook I always pop open the Terminal application and play around at the command line. And I swear that when the employees who start approaching me see this they back off. Probably thinking that I’m some kind of psychotic Linux or UNIX guy …

So, what does this have to do with anything? Well, rhis set of tips (aimed at Mac users) is a good intro to the command line. But if you’re new to Linux and are wary of the command line, then you should definitely out that posting.

If you’ve been searching for the right Linux distribution, you know that there are a lot to choose from. But which one is right for you? You could test out as many as possible with a Live CD but that could take a lot of time and effort that you don’t have.

How about using the Linux Distribution Chooser instead? It walks you through a set of questions and at the end suggests a handful of distros that best suit your needs based on your answers to the questions.

Well, I did it. I upgraded to Xubuntu 8.04 last Friday. The update took a while — about four hours to download the updated packages (all 1474 of them!) and another hour or so to install those packages.

Overall, the upgrade went smoothly. My system runs about as quickly as it did with version 7.10. And the power management panel plugin now works; the volume control plugin is still AWOL, though. Continue reading »

I have to wonder whether or not Asus expected the Eee PC to be as big a hit as it was. I didn’t, and I own one. But now, one rival and another upstart have started to come out with compact machines wanting a shot at the title. And, no, I’m not talking about the Cloudbook from Everex.

First up is the HP 2133 Mini-Note. A little more expensive than the Eee PC but with some interesting spec. You can have up to 2 GB of memory, a 120 GB or 160 GB hard drive (or a 5 GB solid state drive).

The other one is the Ink MC from InkMedia. It looks a bit like the XO laptop, and has some interesting features. First up, it doesn’t pack a hard drive. Instead, it has 2 GB of flash memory and you can save files to a USB flash drive or an SD card. On top of that, it’s expected to sell for about $300 (USD).

Know of any more Linux-powered sub notebooks out there, or on the horizon? If so, leave a comment.

I recently read an interesting post at TuxToday. In it, the author writes something that I’ve been saying for a (long) while:

There are some functionality that isn’t available for the free options out there yet, but the actual portion of people that need that specific functionality is so small.

The post makes some good points, and it got me thinking. The thrust of his argument: the FOSS alternatives to commerical software are fine for most people. And I have to agree.

Continue reading »

Last week, I was working with my Eee PC when I noticed that a number of updates were available. So, I duly installed all of them. Which, as it turned out, wasn’t the greatest of moves. Why? A bunch of icons disappeared off my desktop tabs — I was using Easy Mode.

I wasn’t too happy about that. I lost my links to various Google services, the Web mail links didn’t work, and the links to my networking utilities were gone. After about 20 minutes of trying to restore my old desktop, I decided that I either had to restore the factory defaults or install a new desktop. I chose the latter option.

Following these instructions at the EeeUser Eee PC wiki, I was able to install the Advanced Desktop. Looking back, I should have done that a lot sooner. While I liked using Easy Mode, I really like the Advanced Desktop. It’s still easy to use, and everything (including the additional software that I dumped on the computer) is readily available or can be run using the Run Command option. No more opening a terminal window.

Chances are, I’ll stick with the Advanced Desktop. At least until something else catches my eye.

Over the years, I’ve only had one hard disk die on me. That was in the mid-1990s, and luckily I didn’t lose too much data. Good backups are a boon.

Some people, though, really hammer their drives. Like this guy — he seems to trash hard drives every 10 months. In this blog post, he looks at few interesting ways of working without a hard disk.

Of all the solutions that he offers, the one I’m most interested in trying out is a Linux distro on a USB drive. While I’ve used PortableApps, I’ve never tried an OS on a stick.

If you have tried a distro on a USB drive, or if you’ve found a novel way of living without a hard disk, please leave a comment and share your experiences.