sproif.com

I’m struggling to pick up Ubuntu. I guess I just want to be in the in crowd. So I thought I’d document my trials for those that wish to make fun of me.

The groundwork
I purchased a Dell XPS M1710 laptop back in June. When I got it, like any good nerd would, I formatted it out of the box, partitioned it, reinstalled Vista Business and installed Ubuntu Edgy (I had it laying around). A month or so later, I upgraded to Feisty, and just recently I followed the upgrade recommendations found on Ubuntu Forums to Ubuntu Studio – Graphics Edition (instead of video or audio, this has Photoshop, Illustrator – like programs, which I’m more prone to using). So now I’m using the 2.6.20-16 kernel with Ubuntu Studio (not the low-latency audio kernel, which is apparently prone to crashing).

The F*ck up
I moved too fast. Either that, or I did something wrong. I tried to first install Beryl and get it to run on boot, then installed Studio, then removed Beryl and Compiz because they weren’t working right. After hours and hours of figuring out why my window manager was crashing, I finally found a great blog detailing how to upgrade to Compiz Fusion. This had me remove all the spare Beryl and Compiz stuff I had laying around, showed me how to actually install Compiz Fusion and even how to run Emerald window manager by default on boot. Now my machine is slick looking, just like those who actually know what they’re doing.

Miscellaneous Helpful Info
So now that the boring crap is over, I thought I’d detail some other useful information that I’ve come across along the way.

• Wireless Card
  • The Dell wireless card I have didn’t work so swell in Ubuntu. I think it’s too new maybe? I had to install the ndiswrapper to get it to work correctly. Follow these guidelines on the Ubuntu forums.
• Use apt-get with tab completion.
  • Commands such as ’sudo apt-get install <app name>’ is the easy way to use the command line to get new applications. If you just type the beginning of what you want, you can smack the tab key a few times to get suggestions as to what you want to install.
• SUPER! Remap the cube
  • In Linux world, the “Windows Key” is known as the “Super” key. It’s not used for anything useful by default, so it’s just waiting to do your bidding. If you go to System > Preferences > Key Mapping, there’s definitely many things you can map it to do. I’ve also gone into my Compiz Config (terminal command: ccms) and mapped my cube rotation to Super-Q for left and Super-W for right. It’s way easier to do that than to hold ctrl-alt and hit left/right to rotate it.
• Pidgin Instant Messenger
  • I’m not a fan of the default GAIM instant messenger installed with Ubuntu. I removed it installed Pidgin instead. This is purely personal preference, but try it, I bet you like it better than GAIM.
  • For some reason, the .bz2 file threw me for a loop. Then I found these easy step-by-step directions. Problem Solved.
• Avant Window Navigator – How to Mac up your Linux
  • I’ve installed this AVN because I’m not too fond of the default menu structure. As of right now, I’m only really using 3 things on Ubuntu regularly: the Terminal, Firefox & Pidgin Instant Messenger. Installing AVN is simple, configuring it is a little buggy, but if you get it set up like you like it then log out and back in, it’s pretty stable. (note: do this after you upgrade to Compiz Fusion). It looks a lot cooler if you turn on the “3d effect”
• Slick Terminal
  • Ubunut Unleashed has a great article on making an embedded terminal using compiz. Follow it to a T and you can make a wicked useful terminal on every desktop. One thing I noticed, however, is that in their tutorial they don’t tell you to turn off the scroll bar in the “trans” terminal profile you create. Click over to the scroll tab in the profiles dialog box and turn off scrolling. It looks much better that way.

Work… The reason I own a machine.
Next task is to switch over to using Ubuntu for work. Being a web developer, it’s not that difficult. So far, I’ve installed Eclipse Development Environment. You can easily install that through Synapic Package Manager. I also use Subversion Version Control, but I don’t like Eclipse’s implementation of it. On Windows, I use Tortoise SVN so I wanted something that integrates into Nautilus (Linux’s Windows Explorer). I found plugin that uses Nautilus Scripts that works better for me (again, personal preference). Here’s what I have left to replace:

• Mail
  • I use Outlook on Windows, but it’s Pop3, not imap. I have to switch over my mail usage to IMAP so both sides stay in sync. Once I do that, I’ll research alternative email clients, but probably just stick to the default.
• Backup
  • Mozy Remote Backup backs up all my business files (not site files, just invoices, checks, etc…) I’ll have to see how i can utilize an offsite backup in Linux
• Flash
  • Some of the work I do uses the Flash IDE which isn’t available for Linux. I’ll have to figure out how to run it using WINE or something like that, so I can open my .flas without rebooting.
• Database
  • In windows, I use Navicat MySQL to connect to all my client’s servers. It has this handy http/php tunnel feature which allows me to use it without having my cliens open up ssh tunnels to connect through or using that crappy phpMyAdmin software. Believe me, once you use Navicat, you’ll never go back. There is a for-purchase version of Navicat for Linux, but I want to research non-pay software first. I’ve had emma recommended to me, but that doesn’t have the tunneling, so I’ll just keep looking.

So, I’ll keep looking. I know anyone can use Ubuntu. I just hope I’m as smart as the next guy…

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 12:44 am and is filed under Technical Jargon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.