Simon P Stevens - Professional Profile

I Tried out KDE (as opposed to the default GNOME) on my Ubuntu pc over the weekend. It is way better looking. Much nicer "start" menu, task bar and file explorer.

Only time will tell if it's functionally up to standard. I Don't like the fact that a single click opens items in the file explorer, but there must be a way to change that (or maybe I'll just get used to it).

Simon

Hi Simon,

Have you ever tried to install any of the graphic card drivers on any distros of Linux? I just can't get started with graphics programming on Linux. I have an nvidia geforce 8 series graphics card and I've now installed Ubuntu (the latest version 9.0.4). I casually inserted the disc that came with my graphics card and I was shocked to see that there was absolutely NOTHING pertaining to linux on that. They only have a Windows installer. WTF?!

Did some Googling around and realised I'm not alone and locating the right driver and installing it a real PITA! The OS looks pretty nice, is fast and snappy. But it is a shame that I cannot find drivers. Sigh | :sigh:

I have a few questions:

1. You know a way around this? (Yes, I'm currently surfing through the nvidia website)
2. What IDE would you suggest for me to be used on Linux? (C, C++, wxWidgets).
3. Any other cool software that you think I must try on Linux?

Smile | :)

It is a crappy thing, but it's life -^ Carlo Pallini

1) Sorry, I don't know much about graphics card drives. I was just prompted to install the 'non free binary blob' the first time I booted up and everything just worked fine. (It's a onboard Nvidia Nforce 6600)

2) IDE. Well I messed around with mono develop a bit, but I haven't done anything serious with it. Generally for development I fire up XP in a virtual box. I'm not doing a huge amount of development at home anyway at the moment.

3) Cool software. Well, it depends what you are doing. I've been doing some video editing with cinelerra[^] recently. It's a very powerful app that's Linux only (There is also a comunitiy edition[^]). Other than that the apps I use on a regular basis are pretty much just firefox and open office.

Simon

[I'm collecting my Linux related posts here. See here[^] for the original post & discussion.]

3.
A few weeks ago I decided to try out Ubuntu as my primary OS at home. As a bit of a Linux newbie I'm writing occasional posts on my experiences and difficulties in adopting Linux. (Part 1[^] Part2[^])

It's now been 5 weeks since I installed Ubuntu (admittedly, I was on holiday for 2 and a half of them), and it's all going very well. I've managed to extract some music from CD, write audio CD's and data DVD's, play audio (currently using audacious as an audio player) including WMA files, watch a DVD, edit an MP3 to remove some gaps, read PDFs, write a letter, and touch up some photos. Nothing has been particularly tricky, and I haven't had to compile any apps yet before I can use them. Linux has come quite a long way since I last tried to use it a few years ago. Ubuntu really does it's best to be a usable desktop OS. It's certainly not quite ready for the general user yet, but it's getting a lot closer.

I've only really come across a few minor issues. The CD extractor I used only allowed you to edit MP3 quality settings by editing the command line. OK for me, but not great for non-tech users. Also, the window manager seems to frequently place newly opened windows with the title bar off the top of the screen which is a bit annoying. I've had the occasional unintelligible error message, for example, the update manger spewed out some weird error and failed, and it took me a few retries before I realised that I'd not turned my router on. A nice little "network trouble" message could have saved me 5 minutes.

There's one or two little touches I really like. If you are doing some file organisation and initiate several long running file copies/moves, it sticks all the progress bars together in one dialog titled "File operations". This is really nice, saves screen and task bar space and makes managing the operations really simple.

All my USB sticks, card reader and PSP work fine when connected. They appear as drives on the desktop within about 5 seconds of being plugged in. Weirdly though my camera doesn't. Not a major problem as I generally use my card reader anyway, but one that a non-tech user might stumble over.

The Compiz 3d effects are cool, but pretty pointless, so that's all been turned off already.

I did have to install the Ubuntu "restricted extras" pack to get a flash player working for sites like last.fm.

The important thing so far is that there is nothing that makes me miss windows. I'm quite happy for now in Linux, and I've managed to do all of my every day stuff without any problems. It doesn't always look as polished as Windows, but who cares as long as it does the job.

Simon

[I'm collecting my Linux related posts here. See here[^] for the original post & discussion.]

2.
Last week I decided to try out Ubuntu as my primary desktop OS at home. My initial experiences and observations are here[^]. Now, part 2.

Following the firewall advice from the earlier discussion, I decided to install Firestarter. First thing I did was went to their website and looked for a download link. Surprisingly, there isn't one. It simply says "Firestarter is available in the Ubuntu universe repository.". So following their directions, I hit the "start" menu, and go to "add/remove programs". Sure enough, in the list is Firestarter. I'm slightly puzzled, I think surely this will just be installing from my Ubuntu CD which was released several months ago, so where do I get an up to date version? Well, I tick the box to select it and proceed with the install. Quick confirmation prompt and Woosh, Firestarter latest version is downloaded and installed in about 15 seconds, no confusing questions about where to put the files, no config. It just works. Brilliant. I love this universe repository thing. There's stacks of software there, it all just installs dead easy, it all auto updates to the latest versions. On windows, every app you want, requires finding the website, downloading, installing (and every installer is different and asks lots of confusing questions), etc. The Ubuntu repositories cuts through all the complications and just makes it all easily available. After a bit of reading about this it becomes clear there are several different repositories offering software at different levels running from "Main" which is officially supported Ubuntu software, through non-open source software ("Restricted"), community maintained software ("Universe"), and non-free software ("Multiverse"). You can configure which of these repositories are made available to you through a nice little GUI app found in the administrative tools menu. Obviously, there's nothing stopping you from going to the vendors site and following the traditional Linux route of downloading and building the app from sources. This is a definite plus point for Ubuntu, finding and installing new software is simple and easy in comparison to windows. It's worth noting that this is an Ubuntu specific feature, not all Linux distributions are going to have this fantastic level of out of the box, pre-compiled, ready to go, software support.

Anyway, after the little distraction at the revelation that is the Ubuntu repositories, I got round to checking out Firestarter. It's a very simple little app, it's basically a GUI configuration app for the iptables command line tool. It allows you to configure open ports and protocols for incoming packets, and has either a white list or blacklist (the default) mode for outgoing connections. Outgoing connections are blocked/white listed by either destination IP, or port number/protocol. This slightly disappointed me. I like a firewall that can block outgoing connections at the application level, so I can configure specific apps for outgoing access (like a web browser etc), but block others I don't use. If anyone can recommend an application level firewall, I'd happily give it a try. It works nicely though, and is simple to configure.

Everything is going well so far. I'm settling into to my new Linux shaped home rather nicely. There are several things I positively prefer (Do I need to mention the repositories again?). A lot of stuff still seems mysterious to me, but everything is just working together very well. As you know, Ubuntu is aimed at the less technically expert user (or at least 'new to Linux' users), and they are achieving that goal very well. It's rare to see a prompt or dialog with confusing technical jargon on it, most processes are straight forward, and I haven't had to once resort to the command line yet.

Things still left on my list to try before I accept Linux:
~~Drivers~~
~~Internet browsing~~
~~Office suite~~
~~Password manager~~
~~Firewall~~
Virus checker? (Some say it's not necessary)
Playing music - MP3/WMA/CDs
Playing videos - MPG/AVI/DivX etc
Playing DVDs
Last.fm/Internet radio stations
Image editing
Audio editing
Video editing
CD/DVD burning
Programming - Languages/IDEs/Frameworks (Maybe MONO, or I might try Python)
Printing
PDF viewing
VMWare or similar - running Windows

Simon

[I'm collecting my Linux related posts here. See here[^] for the original post & discussion.]

1.
With all the talk of Linux recently, I've been feeling the urge to try it out. A friend recently offloaded an old computer on me, so I dug out the 80gb hard drive, wiped off the dust coating, and set about on my Linux adventure.

I partitioned it into 2 equal bits. 1 half I formatted NTFS and copied all my docs and general stuff onto. The other half I installed Ubuntu 8.04 on. I then removed my original hard drive to make it harder for me to give up and go back to windows.

So hows it gone so far? Installation was straight forward. partitioning and formatting was done automatically via the "use all available space" option. All hardware was detected no probs. I did have to allow an 'non-free' driver from Nvidia for my graphics card to get it above 800x600. It prompted me to do whole bunch of auto updates after the first boot (which didn't even require a reboot! - Ubuntu 1, Windows 0).

Internet just worked, FF3 was installed by default. Installed my standard bunch of FF addons, all seemed to work fine. Was nice to get instant access to all my Google bookmarks. I've already been using OpenOffice for the last 2 years or so as my primary word/spreadsheet app, so that was nice and familiar, and I know my way around GIMP, so that's fine. Installed a Linux version of KeyPass no problem to get to my password database.

I still don't quite get the Linux file system. When installing KeyPass (from a pre compiled Ubuntu package) there was no prompt for installation location, and it just appeared on the "start" menu. Easy, but Where did it put the files? Where are the usual "custom" installation options I've come to expect for windows installations.

The Linux stance on firewalls seems rather confused. Some people are saying Ubuntu doesn't come with one. Others are saying, it doesn't need one (apparently because all incoming packets are just ignored by default, so unless you start opening up stuff, then you don't need a firewall). And others are saying Linux has something called "iptables" which is your basic firewall blocking rules and stuff. I don't have a virus checker on it yet either.

No real problems so far. There's a lot I haven't tried yet though. CD/DVD burning will be a critical issue. DVD watching/MP3 playing as well will be important. My USB stick needs to work (as well as my USB mp3 player, PSP, camera and memory stick reader).

So... Now taking bets. How long will I stick with Linux this time? My record is around 3 weeks. (I gave up last time due to difficulty getting my CD writer to work - It was an unbranded laptop one though. My current one is a better supported Sony model).

Simon

Simon P Stevens - Professional Profile

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