Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Ubuntu and the Linux Experience.
It has been quite a while indeed since I’ve added anything here. Suffice to say that besides normal day to day life events, I have experimented much further with the DeskTop Linux, specifically Ubuntu 8.04. The way I left this before, Installed Ubuntu and Update on Ubuntu as starting points.
Here is where I am today with the experimentation of Ubuntu:
1. Dell Latitude C610
I eventually got just about everything going on this platform, including all the quirks mentioned in the previous posts. Since this machine only has a CD reader, I did not even bother to experiment with any video tools, besides VLC which I run on XP as well.
VLC is terrific as it has just about every codec available out there: there has not been any video and audio that would not play, unlike all the “Linux” video/audio tools like Amarok, MoviePlayer, Rhythmbox, which are constantly asking you to find and add new codecs… Argh!
For Images and Pictures manipulation, of all the many Image Viewers I perused and tried, I settled on gThumb. I guess you could say that this is the closest to the commercial package ACDSee Viewer on XP or the freeware FastStone Viewer. Unfortunately, there are some significant issues with The Gimp and the video driver on this machine that did not show up on other more powerful machines: “Brush Outline”, which is pretty nice to have about, leaves a trail of the outline. It is so bad on the C610 that I needed to turn it off. Please note that the same machine on XP has no issue with the “Brush Outline”, it is working just fine.
As far as the Network Shares, I have absolutely no problems there: I activated NFS Server on the Debian powered LinkSys SLUg, added the NFS exported Shares to /etc/fstab and it is solid as a rock, even when the laptop returns from Hibernating or Sleeping (even though these are very flaky).
Basic Ubuntu uses GNOME as its desktop manager. I quite like it much more than the KaKophoniK KDE… I’m not a great fan of KDE…1 However, it has one good application that I do use: Konsole…2 Just to make sure that I don’t add fuel to the fire about KDE, I even tried KDE 4.1 (I think) and on the C610, just does not have the video and/or the cpu horsepower to run it. I understand that since this is Alpha/Beta code, it probably has a lot of debug code included, but still… The C610 has a1-GHz Pentium III-M processor and 512MB memory.
At the end of the day, I settled on Xfce: just installed Ubuntu for Gnome and installed Kubuntu-Desktop and I settled on it as my default and keep Gnome as the default for root. And yes, I do not use root as my every day account: only when I need to do heavy duty admin stuff… I guess this is a habit from managing my local Debian Servers…
2. Dell Inspiron 6400
Ubuntu installed just fine on the 6400 (Intel Core Duo T2400 @ 1.83 GHz and 1GB memory), including the Intel Wireless. However, the video driver sucks big time with VLC or any other video application… So bad, that I went to the VLC UserGroup to do some research there only to find out that a lot of people had the same problem… As usual, as it is in the Linux Support World was the usual: change the driver… Which was completely ridiculous as most of us had the proper “restricted” driver… Otherwise, Ubuntu ran just fine on this guy, but the video deficiencies had me put XP hard drive back.
Since the 6400 is the most powerful machine that I have for video editing, I’m keeping that machine XP only for now for any heavy duty work that I\’m required to do at times.
A very positive point to all this is that since I put the Ubuntu 7.10 hard-drive in the 6400, Ubuntu automatically offered me the update to 8.04… I was truly impressed with this. There is hope after all…
3. Dell Latitude D600
Another used laptop I picked up recently is a Dell Latitude D600. It has an Intel Pentium M @ 1.80 GHz and 2GB memory. This guy literally flies on XP and on Ubuntu GNOME / XFce. However I’m keeping XP in this box for the time being and using the C610 as the Linux laptop. As a matter of fact, I’m using the C610 to write this.
4. Final Thoughts ???
What are my conclusions at this point? The first myth for me to obliterate form the Linux vocabulary is: “You don’t need big hardware requirements”. As my experience with the C610 would indicate, this is not so. Yes, Linux per se, for sure, runs on very minimal systems: Debian is running on the LinkSys SLUg (NSLU2: Intel XScale IXP420 @ 266Mhz and 32MB memory) and on the LinkSys Routers, where the whole thing, including the file system, is 32MB (some only have 16MB). I also had Debian base (no graphics) on the C610 and used it as a local file server, and it did indeed fly as a LAMP machine in addition to File server (NFS and Samba). But add a Desktop Environment, and the required resources increased tremendously for both cpu and memory. Ouch!
Yes, Linux Desktop does require resources. In order for it to fly, you need a powerful CPU and tons of memory… As a mater of fact, the D600 is faster with 2GB memory than the duo-core 6400 with only 1GB of memory. Sound very similar to what many poster on the Net are saying about Vista: it sucks big time with 1GB, but give it 4GB and Vista flies….
But truly, I’m absolutely not interested in Vista… Wanna know why?
My son has been after me for years to get a Mac… Well guess what: he got himself a new one (needs it for his work) and I will get his “hand-me-down” MacBook Pro PowerPC laptop… but it is only going to be available in September… Darn! And I thought I’d spend the rest of my life on Windows, or Linux…
More on that soon….
Regards.
Footnotes
- As a geek, the first thing I do on Ubuntu before anything else: “sudo -u root passwd”, and activate Admin Login in “Login Window”. Stupid sudo problems resolved: after all this is a home network and managing Samba remotely without “root” is a bitch without root… “\’Nough said”. ^top
- Kubuntu and its KDE desktop manager, forces you into using the Stupid Keyring for the Wireless WPA Key the first time you start it, without any options to decline KeyRing. Which means that every time you login, you are forced to use the Keyring. Checking out the Kubuntu Support Site on this issue, I was simply left completely bedazzled. Even though you add the GNOME-Desktop, you are forever stuck with that stupid Keyring Stuff… In addition, the KDE Login Window does not allow you to let admin login. Argh! The solution was to re-image with Ubuntu… And please do not mention that these issues are easy to resolve… Remember, that this is for a “Normal User” (which accounts for over 95% of the computer users out in the real world) who wants to move away from Windows. ^top
