mmmmmm.... Ubuntuuuuu...

[Nunyas]

Ok, so I don't have a LBC to tinker with anymore, and I love to tinker. So, I turn to the "next best thing"; computers. Over the past couple of months I built 2 new PCs. The first is my new "doze" box for playing PC games on. The other is my new Linux box. It's replacing my old Linux box which is a Mac G4 with a vacuum cleaner hidden inside it somewhere during the summer months; noisy little beast it is. The new box is a poster child for AMD. I kitted it out with one of them thar Athlon X2 3800+ BE processors (45Watt baybay! ), 2GB DDR800 RAM, and a couple of Western Digital SATA300 HDDs (160GB for the OS Drive, and a 500GB for the /home/ftp mount... ). 'Tis a treat to not hear it running while it's on I tell ya!

I tried to get Ubuntu 7.10 Desktop to install on the system and none of the extra flags I tried would work. So, I gave up on that version, and started downloading Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop Beta. While that was downloading, I decided to give Slackware 12 a whirl. Amazingly, it installed without a hitch and worked right out of the box. Slackware has advance lightyears since the last time I futzed around with it (version 3.4 ... heh heh heh).

Alas, I like to tinker, and not necessarily do work like items while I'm at home. Slackware didn't have GNOME running out of the box for me, which means I would have to compile the source code to install it, if I wanted it. It had KDE running out of the box instead. Which is fine if you like KDE, but I've always been a supporter of GNOME.

So, when I finished downloading Ubuntu 8.04, I quickly burned off a CD and popped it into the DVD drive and did a "test run" of running the full OS off of the CD. Everything appeared to work ok. So, I rebooted and performed a full install. It went without a hitch, and I now have a great running Linux box sitting next to my PC and G4...

So, my current debate is whether or not I want to deploy this puppy now or wait for the "official" release version to come out. If this were a MS product, there would be no debate, I would wait until the OS is released. However, this is Linux, and from past experience, a Linux beta OS is usually more stable than a retail release version of Windows.

Maybe I'll play around with some of the 3D desktop enhancements that are floating around for Linux before I promote this rig to file server/Internet router/FTP server/HTTP server duties...

 

[Steve_S]

You can come tinker on MGs any time you want. I have LOTS of projects that need to be done. :wink:

By the way, if you come across a nice AGP card, mine just died. It isn't worth buying a new top end AGP card and I'm not ready to upgrade this machine yet to a new format. Got an old Ti4200 in there now. Weak sauce.

 

[NutmegCT]

Rob - as a relative newcomer to the Ubuntu world, I wanted to give it a try.

Got the Ubuntu 8.04 and put it on a bootable CD.

Booted my Dell P4 1G ram from the CD, and the OS ran great. Except for connectivity. Despite all my attempts at switches and options, it never recognized the network card. Then I saw on several Ubuntu forums that users mentioned the same thing: running from a CD gives no connectivity.

Did you run into the same thing?

Thanks.
Tom

 

[DrEntropy]

YAY ROB!!

Gnome fer me, too. But I'm a Fedora, CentOS, RH guy.

Tom, what chipset NIC? The kernel fairly JUMPS onto Realtek ones.

 

[sparkydave]

I've dabbled with Ubuntu a few times, and had some good results. I mostly run PCLinuxOS, which is the only thing running on my desktop right now. It's an Athlon XP 1800+, ATI Radeon 9200, and it plays very nicely. I've done my web development, digital music, photo editing, and even my taxes with it. Only reason I haven't pitched Windoze off my laptop is I can't get my Garmin GPS software to install under Wine. So, I just have an external hard drive I boot the laptop on to get PCLinuxOS.

 

[Nunyas]

Rob - as a relative newcomer to the Ubuntu world, I wanted to give it a try.

Got the Ubuntu 8.04 and put it on a bootable CD.

Booted my Dell P4 1G ram from the CD, and the OS ran great. Except for connectivity. Despite all my attempts at switches and options, it never recognized the network card. Then I saw on several Ubuntu forums that users mentioned the same thing: running from a CD gives no connectivity.

Did you run into the same thing?

Thanks.
Tom

The integrated Gigabit NIC on my motherboard uses a Realtek chipset, and the NetGear Gigabit PCI NIC that I also have installed in the same machine uses a Realtek chipset as well. Both NICs were detected and enabled without issue. However, I had to do some "logic" reasoning to figure out which was which, because I didn't take the time to write down the chipset model #'s before the installs.

Then again, I didn't try to connect to anything while running from CD. I just used the CD to see if I could get that version to run on the system. Since I ~knew~ I was going to run Linux on the system from the beginning, I had no problems with performing a full install before concerning myself with getting all the peripherals functioning properly.

 

[NutmegCT]

<span style="font-style: italic">"Then again, I didn't try to connect to anything while running from CD. I just used the CD to see if I could get that version to run on the system. Since I ~knew~ I was going to run Linux on the system from the beginning, I had no problems with performing a full install before concerning myself with getting all the peripherals functioning properly."</span>

Aha! thanks Rob. I liked the "clear" efficiency of Ubuntu. So now maybe I'll convince myself to go ahead and do a full install.

Tom

 

[Nunyas]

Here's a video to give you guys a better idea of what I'm thinking about trying out with my Linux box before I deploy it as a server...

[video:youtube]https://youtube.com/watch?v=YKEcz_OTTBk[/VIDEO]ere's a link in case the embedded thing doesn't work right: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YKEcz_OTTBk

I'm not sure how well this may or may not work because of the Integrated video card I'm running (Radeon x1250). If it doesn't work with that, I might give it whirl using the Radeon x700 I have laying around.

Mind you, I want to do this primarily as an exercise in "can I do it too" ... :smirk: ... whether or not I leave this stuff running on the system, I haven't decided yet. If I like it enough, there may be a chance that I forget all about Windows for normal usage... :smirk:

 

[Dave Richards]

What did he say?

wanna shoot some guns?

 

[DNK]

YAY ROB!!

Gnome fer me, too. But I'm a Fedora, CentOS, RH guy.

Tom, what chipset NIC? The kernel fairly JUMPS onto Realtek ones.

HUH

 

[Nunyas]

sorry... we geeks gotta get out and play geek games from time to time too you know :laugh:

We can't always be the "cool cats" cruisin' the drive-thru in our LBCs :wink:

 

[DrEntropy]

Beryl is amusing but I haven't played with it, I keep things simple where possible.

About have the "All linux, all the time" thing on th' GPU. Now looking to Scribus as a surrogate Adobe app. If that serves, Vista will never darken my threshold.

 

[Nunyas]

muwahahahah! I got the "pretties" up and running last night :laugh:

Unbuntu use to ship with "Compiz". However, in my research I found that "Compiz" and "Beryl" have merged back together and are calling the blend "Compiz-Fusion" now. I gotta say, the eye candy is phenomenal. It's a million times better than any of the "commercial" desktop offerings. It hearkens back to the days when "Enlightenment" + Linux was the eye candy to beat, and all MS could come up with was drop shadows in XP.

I had to use the proprietary ATI drivers to get full acceleration out of the integrated Radeon x1250 video card. The Open Source Radeon drivers didn't work with the integrated video; I always got corrupted video. The two just didn't get along. Everything on the MoBo (MSI K9AG Neo2-Digital) is integrated, except for that extra NIC I installed. I have all of the peripherals operational now.

Linux has come a LONG way since the mid-90's. With Ubuntu/Debian upgrades are easy: "sudo apt-get install xxx" from the command line. If what you're getting has "dependencies", you'll get a confirmation dialog before it automatically grabs everything you need.

I haven't messed with an RPM based Linux distro since Suse back in '99, and I can remember that, while the package system was nice, it lacked the intelligence to get and install what you needed. You were left with trying to find all the dependencies and installing them before you could install what you really wanted. Maybe it's better now. However, I'm really liking Ubuntu now, and the fact that it is based on Debian is a plus, IMO.

I'm going to play around with this thing for a while. I want to see how well it plays with different video file formats and such. If it does what I want/need, I'll probably move the OS into my HTPC case. My current 'doze box is in the HTPC case, but they're both using very similar MoBo's. The MoBo in the HTPC case is just the Micro-ATX version of the one I'm running Linux on right now. Both have HDMI out :thumbsup:, which will be handy when I finally get around to getting that HDTV that I've been shopping for over the past year or so. :smirk: Hopefully, Linux will play nice with the HDMI interface. If not, I won't be too upset with having to use a VGA cable to connect it to the TV. :smirk:

Sorry if some of you folks don't get it... but this is exciting stuff! :laugh:

 

[Nunyas]

oh yeah, that reminds me... I wonder if there are Linux drivers available for the VFD and "volume control" on the front of my HTPC case... hmmmmm... we'll have to find out I guess... :laugh:

 

[DrEntropy]

uhh... what's an RPM?!?

The Fedora and CentOS flavors have what you have: Apt-get is called "yum" in this case... command line: <span style="font-style: italic">yum install Scribus</span> and all deps, updates and such are handled. I can still use RPM's or source and hand knit stuff but I ~am~ a lazy putz. Watch leavin' it on autopilot tho... kernel updates and such can fool ya if it happens without your okay. 'specially with those video "driver" changes. I have Nvidia here and it has to be reconfig'd if I tickle the kernel.


And it ~IS~ FUN!!! :laugh: :thumbsup:


"Once ya turn hack, you'll never go back"


Vista, I hardly knew ye.

 

[DrEntropy]

And just HAD to add this:

8:11am <span style="font-weight: bold">up 179 days, 11:41</span>, 0 users, load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.00

:laugh:

 

[Nunyas]

nice! my best uptime was done on a Pentium 100 running Slackware... IIRC it was ~400 days... :smirk:

 

[DrEntropy]

I've seen in excess of 250, but with Florida Flicker-n-Flash that's a rarity.

 

[Nunyas]

that up time was while I was living in Gainesville, FL... I had a UPS on the system :wink:

That reminds me. I need to get the batteries in that UPS replaced so I can have an amazing uptime on my Linux box again Currently, stupid wiring in my place is preventing me from having uptimes longer than 30 days...

 

[Dave Richards]

You guys are killing me! It's like being in a country where you think they speak your language, but, you are so wrong!

Not into guns? Wanna go SCUBA diving?