StarQuake's Blog

I’ve been running Ubuntu 11.04 for the last couple of hours. I installed it using the MacBook guide on the Ubuntu Wiki. Installing was easy! I decided to follow the single boot guide. I don’t think it’s a simple process to install Ubuntu on a MacBook but console commands do not scare me. Blessing the Linux partition from the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant I put on my USB stick did not scare me.

Things I like so far

Pretty much everything worked out of the box. Had to click 1 time to install the proprietary wireless driver. That’s not how things worked a few years ago!

It’s fast! Mac OS X is fast. But this seems even faster. Or it might be my enthusiasm.

I love the fact that every piece of software is controlled by a package manager again. Every single piece of software can be found be looking it up in the database of the package manager. It just feels good. I know the locations of software in Mac OS X are structured very well, but it just feels better. Just let the package manager check for updates and I know that I’m running the latest version of every single software packages that is on my system. And every piece of software is accounted for in the package manager database.

The font aliasing of Ubuntu is really pretty. I thought Mac OS X had the best font rendering in the world but it seems I like Ubuntu’s font rendering even better!

The dark windows border starts to grow on me. A few years back some programs looked a bit odd. But all the buttons en scrollbars and stuf like that really look great with the Ambiance theme.

Things that have annoyed me

The settings that are saved by Mac OS X applications are pretty much gone. I pretty much have to install everything from scratch. But I guess you can’t do much about that. On the other hand any residual config files of software I no longer use are gone.

Getting used to Unity takes some effort too. I don’t know if I’m gonna stick with Unity but it least with Linux you can choose what desktop environment you want.

Yesterday tried getting Spotify running using Wine but I just couldn’t get it working. Just gave up. I’ll just have to listen to my own collection of music.

The twitter client called Gwibber is not as good as Twitter for Mac. But it’ll have to do.

Well that’s everything I had to say right now. Let’s see if I like Banshee Media Player.

Conclusion

I use Ubuntu 10.04 at my company, but switching from Mac OS X to Ubuntu, for things like Twitter and multimedia and other personal stuff I got used to doing on my MacBook can be frustrating. Not because it doesn’t work but more because you have to change the applications you use. And sometimes it takes a while to get the application to behave the way it was set up on my MacBook.

So far, so good!

I saw a post on Facebook with the great news that System76 will be selling laptop in the Netherlands in October. I hope it’s true!

I  installed Ubuntu 11.04 on my MacBook but then reverted back to Mac OS X in 3 days because I missed some apps and did not have time to search for Linux alternatives. I decided to give it a try again so when Ubuntu 12.04 LTS get’s released next year (April 2012, look at the version number if you didn’t already now) I might buy a System76 laptop. The hardware specs look really good. I don’t think it’s as pretty as a MacBook but I think it will do.

So to be ready to replace my MacBook for a System76 laptop I’m going to start looking for Linux alternatives.

I’m not new to using Ubuntu as a workstation. I use a Ubuntu 10.04 LTS at work, but I don’t use things like Twitter or play music on it. I use my MacBook for that. So I need to find some nice applications to do that. A few years ago I only used Linux and had no MacBook so I’m not new to that either. I got used to do things the Apple Way™. But now I want to do things My Way™. So I suspect I will be missing iTunes. I will be missing some features, but I expect I’ll be discovering features that iTunes doesn’t have. Synchronizing my Android with iTunes feels sub-optimal.

Anyway let’s give Gwibber a try. Twitter for Mac is really good so let’s see if Gwibber is good enough.

Every once in a while I feel tempted to switch to Ubuntu Linux on my MacBook. Today is one of those days. I decided to create a page to describe the thought-process involved. You can find it here: My switch to Linux

I have a new phone. The Google Nexus One. I wanted a good and reliable Android phone and I thought I couldn’t go wrong with the N1. I have had it for a few days now. I am very happy it. It’s fast and everything works as it should.

I always forget how to recursively remove the svn directories from a directory. So here is the command for me and anyone that might need it:

find . -name '.svn' -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf

It removes all svn directories in the current path.

Be careful though!!! A typo like a ‘/’ can easily remove your entire filesystem, so try replacing rm with echo the first time so you can see what files are about to be deleted.

Running Ubuntu Karmic Beta since a few days now. It’s running smooth. Some new features I like:

• Apport reports crashing applications
• The system feels more responsive
• Firefox 3.5
• Pretty icons in the task bar

Mmmm…. It seems the problem is not fixed yet. npviewer.bin still crashes, not as often as before though. Going to upgrade to the beta release karmic. See if that helps.

The error I was getting was this:

Sep 23 13:07:14 webmonkey kernel: [675069.159578] npviewer.bin[6502]: segfault at ff99cd48 ip 00000000ff99cd48 sp 00000000ff9f059c error 14

The problem is fixed after upgrading the following packages to updates-proposed:

• libgl1-mesa-glx 7.4-0ubuntu3.3
• libgl1-mesa-dri 7.4-0ubuntu3.3
• libglu1-mesa 7.4-0ubuntu3.3
• mesa-utils 7.4-0ubuntu3.3

I’m running Ubuntu 9.04 64bit. Everything works fine except one thing:

Adobe Flash! Grrr….

I installed the default flashplugin package but it keeps crashing on a few sites. It’s really annoying. I installed the flashblock plugin and set it to block all flash content for now.

Apart from that plugin everything is smooth. It works like a charm!

I installed eBox on a Shuttle XPC. Now I have a Linux firewall at home. And it has some other stuff like file sharing and OpenVPN.

It was very easy and works quite well.

You can find more about eBox here:
ebox-platform.com/