This afternoon Eva told me her Firefox crashes about 10 times a day on just bought Lenovo IdeaPad S10. We've checked that updates are enabled and that she is using latest version 3.0.6 and no extra add-ons are installed but nothing helped. In the end we installed a Chrome for a while. Now what to blame? Old Windows Xp running on netbook, mozilla, antivirus? No clue where to start or what to do next.
Contrary, on my Linux machine one super application stopped working. It is called gnome-do and it is unbeliable productivity booster. I worked for about two days without it and my work flow was seriously disrupted. Today I created bug in ubuntu and joined #gnome-do IRC channel on freenode server and got an answer which has solved my problem within few minutes.
You decide which system works better.
Showing posts with label ubuntu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ubuntu. Show all posts
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Upgrading to Hardy Heron
With 7.04 version of ubuntu I was quite happy, most of the hardware worked and GNOME was already very usable and cool. I was looking forward 7.10 to polish some issues and be THE DISTRO for masses. I even got new Dell Vostro laptop with mostly Intel hardware.
Ubuntu 7.10 is quite cool distro which delivered some very nice features but many things didn't work. It was probably because most of the open source conferences where held at spring and then came summer and not much time was left to polish and test. Laptop was without a sound at all, email client evolution gave a lot of nasty bugs, cisco vpn client didn't compile and few more. Similar situation with friend's Dell Lattitude which also includes problems with Boradcom wifi driver. However over time I managed to get everything working (except for the integrated microphone). But I had a wierd issue with Cisco VPN client which corrupted my username in config file whenever I presses Ctrl-C on login promtp. The microphone and this was the only thing I was not happy about. Otherwise the system was fast (I never experienced "window refresh is being rendered" feeling like I regurlary get when working with MS Windows), stable and joy to work with.
However I discovered new version of Cisco VPN client is out, so I compiled and it worked.... for a few minutes. Then hard freeze, only holding power button for 4 secs (I wonder how many people know this trick and how many are pulling the cable) helped, something really happening in the kernel. I managed to track it to:
So I typed 'update-manager -d'
and updated my system to latest version of Ubuntu Hardy Heron, scheduled to be out in about a Month. Rest of this page tracks what is not working and possible solutions.
First I was very pleasantly surprised by the update process (very simple, not error given), system was updated and while being updated most of the desktop still worked. After update I rebooted (it took a little bit longer than 7.10 but this might just be only a issue of not updating the progress bar) and was presented with working GNOME environment, working evolution, working VPN client, webcam, wifi and sound ;) Just integrated microphone refuses to work. After I got home I discovered couple of more bugs, but something might be because it is not integrated yet (Gnome 2.22 is to be released tomorrow).
Current bugs preventing "THE DISTRO" syndrom:
Ubuntu 7.10 is quite cool distro which delivered some very nice features but many things didn't work. It was probably because most of the open source conferences where held at spring and then came summer and not much time was left to polish and test. Laptop was without a sound at all, email client evolution gave a lot of nasty bugs, cisco vpn client didn't compile and few more. Similar situation with friend's Dell Lattitude which also includes problems with Boradcom wifi driver. However over time I managed to get everything working (except for the integrated microphone). But I had a wierd issue with Cisco VPN client which corrupted my username in config file whenever I presses Ctrl-C on login promtp. The microphone and this was the only thing I was not happy about. Otherwise the system was fast (I never experienced "window refresh is being rendered" feeling like I regurlary get when working with MS Windows), stable and joy to work with.
However I discovered new version of Cisco VPN client is out, so I compiled and it worked.... for a few minutes. Then hard freeze, only holding power button for 4 secs (I wonder how many people know this trick and how many are pulling the cable) helped, something really happening in the kernel. I managed to track it to:
- recent upgrade of ubuntu kernel
- recent wierd behaviour of ipw3945 (likely after the kernel upgrade)
- cisco vpn client
- SMP system (as others suggested)
So I typed 'update-manager -d'
and updated my system to latest version of Ubuntu Hardy Heron, scheduled to be out in about a Month. Rest of this page tracks what is not working and possible solutions.
First I was very pleasantly surprised by the update process (very simple, not error given), system was updated and while being updated most of the desktop still worked. After update I rebooted (it took a little bit longer than 7.10 but this might just be only a issue of not updating the progress bar) and was presented with working GNOME environment, working evolution, working VPN client, webcam, wifi and sound ;) Just integrated microphone refuses to work. After I got home I discovered couple of more bugs, but something might be because it is not integrated yet (Gnome 2.22 is to be released tomorrow).
Current bugs preventing "THE DISTRO" syndrom:
- #182284 - slow scrolling of webpages (Xorg going to 100%), seems to be fixed by installing xserver-xorg-video-intel - 2:2.2.1-1ubuntu4
- #176090 - no LED activity for wifi (Intel iwl3945)
- #200950 - wifi cannot connect to WPA+WEP based networks, likely bug with WPA supplicant
- #183968 and #180766 wifi is renamed to wlan0_rename
- #201326 - Shutdown button does not work
- #188972 - Integrated microphone does not work
- #201338 - Evolution crashed with SIGSEV in camel_exchange_journal_delete()
Friday, July 13, 2007
Ubuntu lovely, Gentoo cool
Since last month I'm using Ubuntu on my laptop. Beautiful distro. Fast boot, working sleep mode and a solid desktop experience. Reasonable amount of packages, yet installing some newer applications might get bit tricky as only security and update patches are back ported. Support is on very good level and it has good momentum. Compared to Vista and Xp is offers simple but very intuitive user experience across the whole desktop. Personally all I had to do to was to enable activation of windows by moving mouse button over them. You just then hover your mouse over you music player and scroll the middle mouse button to raise/lower the volume. Use same technique for seeking movies and it works in many other areas as well. I do not know if there is any real reason why this is not default. Put it in one sentece I would say Ubuntu is just great for end users.
But I miss Gentoo. Gentoo offers unmatchable flexibility in configuration and system maintenance (at least as far as I know). Powerful tools and a large catalog of applications ready just to be plugged into the system. Yet, still very clean design and philosophy. Ideal distribution for developers, advanced system administrators and those willing to try. Unfortunately Daniel Robbins has left Gentoo a while ago and it seems, although there are many great people involved in the project, not many new great features came out of it then. Still it is one of the best advanced Linux distros out there.
But I miss Gentoo. Gentoo offers unmatchable flexibility in configuration and system maintenance (at least as far as I know). Powerful tools and a large catalog of applications ready just to be plugged into the system. Yet, still very clean design and philosophy. Ideal distribution for developers, advanced system administrators and those willing to try. Unfortunately Daniel Robbins has left Gentoo a while ago and it seems, although there are many great people involved in the project, not many new great features came out of it then. Still it is one of the best advanced Linux distros out there.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Positive review of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04
The latest reincarnation of popular distribution is out for a while and I decided to share my own experience here. Recently there were two machines available for testing. My Mums desktop which we have at home and is used mainly for surfing the web and is Linux powered already for some time and keeps its users happy. As the amount of data is minimal (photos, few documents, settings) complete re-installation is done and user usually wont notice new version of Ubuntu as long as the Firefox icon is at its place. The other machine is company provided new toy (ehm production laptop of course), small, light and beautiful Dell D420.
Installation on both machines went without any problems, wouldn't we have non-standard disk layout setup I believe everybody can install that on empty box. Just few clicks and there you go. Boot process is fast and nice and animated logo is presented. In about 30seconds I was logged into the desktop.
Networking part is done right, there is NetworkManager which works perfectly for both setups. I've managed to connect to several WPA protected networks without any hitch, wired connection is perfect as well. Only problem with NetworkManager I ran into so far is asking for gnome-keyring password to access stored WPA keys. There are few posts on the internet on how to change it, but simple check box to allow NetworkManager to access some parts of Gnome Keyring (password storage) without further user involvement is something that is missing at the moment.
Graphic drivers, for some reasons there is Nvidia graphics card installed on the dekstop machine. After install I was presented with restricted manager pop-up telling me that Nvidia didn't have open sourced its drivers yet (so far only Intel did which I'm so thankful for) and binary drivers might be necessary to install before I'm allowed to take full potential of the system. But the nice thing ends here. I clicked to use proprietary driver and ubuntu installed that and restart was required. After restart I still had open source implementation of the driver in use instead of Nvidia one. This means no 3D Desktop effects and likely show stopper for and unexperienced user. Well few searches on the Internet and manual change of used driver in configuration file and it is working now. I assume this is because the first incarnation of such a manager and things will likely get better with future versions. On laptop I had to install i915resultion to get 1280x800 working by default, another thing if detected automatically would boost the "Wow it really works" effect. In 7.04 there are now Desktop Effects available. By default it provides wobbly windows (really Wow... for few hours), nice Alt-Tab switcher between applications and and quite usable 3D cube with mapped workspaces to each side. Unfortunately after using it, metacity window manager is not used anymore and many of the keyboard shortcuts do not work, so I reverted back to 2D desktop.
Now few things I miss. Ubuntu doesn't come with some nice sets of predefined applications or any other content. There is Examples folder but that is. How about to preload some bookmarks, add more of quality wallpapers, more icons for users so we can have graphical login manager by default. Install some templates for OpenOffice by default (even simple ones like CD covers would make difference). Give users a bunch of internet radios right into the Rhythmbox (which in this version works very well by the way). And I miss Java, it has been open sourced recently so why we do not have it installed by default? Firefox didn't come with any Java plug-in on my machine, the very same for Flash. First thing users usually checks is connection to popular sites like YouTube. How about get democracy on our desktops by default?
Final verdict: Clean, fast and one of the best Linux distributions out there getting better with every release. I think Gutsy Gibon (the next incarnation of Ubuntu) can be a perfect choice for many end users. A I also should not forget about great forums that helps users with almost any problem there. Well done guys.
Installation on both machines went without any problems, wouldn't we have non-standard disk layout setup I believe everybody can install that on empty box. Just few clicks and there you go. Boot process is fast and nice and animated logo is presented. In about 30seconds I was logged into the desktop.
Networking part is done right, there is NetworkManager which works perfectly for both setups. I've managed to connect to several WPA protected networks without any hitch, wired connection is perfect as well. Only problem with NetworkManager I ran into so far is asking for gnome-keyring password to access stored WPA keys. There are few posts on the internet on how to change it, but simple check box to allow NetworkManager to access some parts of Gnome Keyring (password storage) without further user involvement is something that is missing at the moment.
Graphic drivers, for some reasons there is Nvidia graphics card installed on the dekstop machine. After install I was presented with restricted manager pop-up telling me that Nvidia didn't have open sourced its drivers yet (so far only Intel did which I'm so thankful for) and binary drivers might be necessary to install before I'm allowed to take full potential of the system. But the nice thing ends here. I clicked to use proprietary driver and ubuntu installed that and restart was required. After restart I still had open source implementation of the driver in use instead of Nvidia one. This means no 3D Desktop effects and likely show stopper for and unexperienced user. Well few searches on the Internet and manual change of used driver in configuration file and it is working now. I assume this is because the first incarnation of such a manager and things will likely get better with future versions. On laptop I had to install i915resultion to get 1280x800 working by default, another thing if detected automatically would boost the "Wow it really works" effect. In 7.04 there are now Desktop Effects available. By default it provides wobbly windows (really Wow... for few hours), nice Alt-Tab switcher between applications and and quite usable 3D cube with mapped workspaces to each side. Unfortunately after using it, metacity window manager is not used anymore and many of the keyboard shortcuts do not work, so I reverted back to 2D desktop.
Now few things I miss. Ubuntu doesn't come with some nice sets of predefined applications or any other content. There is Examples folder but that is. How about to preload some bookmarks, add more of quality wallpapers, more icons for users so we can have graphical login manager by default. Install some templates for OpenOffice by default (even simple ones like CD covers would make difference). Give users a bunch of internet radios right into the Rhythmbox (which in this version works very well by the way). And I miss Java, it has been open sourced recently so why we do not have it installed by default? Firefox didn't come with any Java plug-in on my machine, the very same for Flash. First thing users usually checks is connection to popular sites like YouTube. How about get democracy on our desktops by default?
Final verdict: Clean, fast and one of the best Linux distributions out there getting better with every release. I think Gutsy Gibon (the next incarnation of Ubuntu) can be a perfect choice for many end users. A I also should not forget about great forums that helps users with almost any problem there. Well done guys.
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