Good news: today I got an ftp server (for quick 'n' dirty file transfer) and a PPTP client both working.
Bad news: Compiz is still b0rked. I tried AIGLX to see if that was better, but it was worse. Perhaps I should try again, harder, but I've put so much effort into GLX that the very thought makes me weary. I also tried switching to a later driver snapshot from dri.freedesktop.org; no good.
Very frustrating and so far no answers on the Compiz board.
You tick boxes for all the countires you've ever visited, and it draws a map of it for you.
I hadn't realised I'd covered so much of Europe...
create your own visited country map
I had occasion to install pho, a lightweight image browser, since comix isn't quite the same as Cdisplay. Pho doesn't have a Ubuntu package, and I was resigned to messing about with tarballs, when I noticed it did have a Debian package. So I downloaded that, and a little tool called gdebi popped up, told me all sorts of details about the package, and let me install it with a single click. Very slick.
Pho itself is quite interesting, the writer has gone for a very simple command line UI, you just say "pho imagefiles" where imagefiles is a list of images to view. This turns out to make it very flexible; "pho camera\* wallpaper\*" works as you would expect.
These days, when every modern PC has a stupidly fast CPU and mountains of RAM, virtualization is a practical proposition. In the past I've used WINE to run the Windows-only applications I occasionally need, with mixed sucess. This time I'm going to see what I can do with a virtual machine running Windows.
I have to say the results are very good. I installed the free VMWare server software. This is very easy to do - download the tarball, run the perl script inside, and answer lots of questions with sensible defaults. Once done, I put a windows CD into the drive and started the VM. XP installed as usual; Office and Netsupport went on fine. I'm not sure my AV worked - it is on a silent install so it can be hard to tell. Performance was fine once I'd put the VMWare tools on, even while the VM had 256Mb of RAM. I have 2Gb in the laptop, so I gave the VM half of that - probably more than it needs.
The only slight hiccup was that Netsupport needs you to press CTRL+ALT+ESC occasionally, so I had to change VMWare's default hotkey (which is CTRL+ALT).
Now, once the VM is created you can open it in any VMWare product, so I installed the VMWare player (which replaces VMServer) and tried that. It worked OK, and I theory should be a better UI than VMServer (which is designed to run servers) for day-to-day use, but I like the server UI more, so I put it back on. All this process was very easy, and each install retained sensible settings from the previous one.
This seems to be an excellent solution to my needs. I have "proper" office, "proper" IE, "proper" netsupport whenever I need them at perfectly acceptable speeds.
I blew most of the weekend trying to get Compiz to work. Not there yet, but I learned a fair bit.
The problem I had before is down to needing more up-to-date versions of the i810 drivers. Ventajou, another D505 user, pointed me to http://dri.freedesktop.org/snapshots/archive/i915-20060117-linux.i386.tar.bz2; just pull the drivers from the i910 folder into /usr/lib/dri and /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers.
Now XGL works fine for me, but compiz does not. It loads, and the effects work (pretty well, considering the i810 inside my laptop is so feeble) but it only redraws the screen when I do a "cube" effect. It's hard to explain (and so hard to google, darn it) - I can type away in a terminal and nothing happens - even my keystrokes do not appear - or press a launcher button and almost nothing happens - except the mouse pointer changes to the "loading" animation. However, if I hit CTRL+ALT+LEFT to rotate the workspace cube left, the second I do the window redraws with the effects of what I did.
By the way, I have compiz set to load as a seperate gdm session so that I can still use my laptop whatever happens to compiz; a much better arrangement. I've also been using a sort of manual test mode; kill gdm with "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop" so I drop back into a console, then run xgl manually with "sudo Xgl :1 ac -accel xv:fbo -accel glx:fbo & DISPLAY:=1 xterm" so I get a raw Xgl session with just an xterm loaded (and no window border). Inside the xterm I can then run compiz manually.
I next tried uninstalling, removing the extra Compiz repositories, and trying the plain compiz included in the default ubuntu. No good, and now I've put Quinnstorm's repositories back in, I have a different error; the screen is black apart from the pointer, and every time I cause a new window to appear it flashes white briefly before vanishing. This is less helpful, but I think is easier to descibe and hence google.
This is slow work but I have to be fair and point out that Compiz is a)very early and b)not exactly mission critical.
On a different note, I was looking for a .cbr file reader. Comical is highly recommended, but they provide absolutely no installation instructions, and I was unable to get it to compile. Not good. So I'm going to be using Comix instead.
Yes, I broke my Linux install. My own fault, I started messing about to make Compiz work and ended up with an invisible mouse pointer and the whole screen about a centimetre too low. I haven't got any data on the machine yet, so it seemed simplest to blow it away and reinstall. Then do a lot of research on Compiz.
Problem is that the whole thing is so complicated that no-one seems to have an easy to understand guide; there are plenty of places that rattle off a string of commands, but without knowing what is happenning I can't fix it if it breaks. Also the strings of commands are different everywhere you look. Take it easy and make sure I can roll back every change seems to be the needed trick.
Anyhow, I have other stuff to worry about before I try and make Compiz work: I need pptp working so I can dial in, and I'd like to get either WINE or VMWare going so I can use Internet Explorer and Netsupport on rare occasions when they are needed.
For a laugh I did the necessary apt-get's to install xgl and compiz and made a .Xsession file to load it.
To my surprise, it more or less works. There's a lot of crashes when loading Gnome - I think some other window manager is loading too and fighting with compiz. But once you get it going, most of the effects are there.
I only have onboard intel graphics, so many of them don't look great (I'm talking to you, wobble)
However cube/rotate (which gets to a second workspace by rotating a 3D cube with your desktops on it) and scale (which is a copy of Expose on the Mac) both work very well, and those are what I want.
I'm very pleased with this. It needs tuning (and for the moment I've delted that .Xsession so there are no crashes on login) but my hardware is up what I ask of it, so I reckon I'm going to be able to get this working.
After any new OS install there's a long period of hunting down all the little tweaks and utilities you need. With Ubuntu, of course, I only have a vague idea of what it is I need. The unofficial Ubuntu guide is a good place to start. Easy Ubuntu sounds a little less extreme than Automatix, so I use that to put various questionable codecs in place.
What else... I always like to have a copy of VLC about the place because it'll play anything - never failed me yet. I usually use XNView for managing picture files, but I don't like the UI in Linux, so I'll try a copy of Picassa instead. Ethereal is something I always like to get on my laptop, if only because when I need it the netwrok is usually broke. ;-) I'll need PPTP so I can VPN into the office, so I'm installing that, but it looks like it needs a bit of concentration to configure, and I'm too hot to concentrate.
I'm interested in stretching my integrated graphics card to it's limits - it may not be enough for Compiz etc. but I'll try to get tuxracer running.
After all that my windows sysadmin instincts press for a reboot, but I'm going to try and resist.
That was fun, very detailed instructions at http://www.nighton.net/archives/mugshot-on-dapper-07-13-2006-156. I'm used to doing this by editing sources.list, but this time did it with Synaptic.
User friendly tools are obviously confusing me. Can't really submit that as a bug!
Not sure I've gotten the Mugshot client to log on, though. It's not popped any bubbles up yet.
After the reboot, my laptop is using the DNS server I want it to, down the wired network. Since the default gateway is still pointing to wireless, looks like a reboot was all that was needed, or possibly just a re-acquire of my DHCP address.
Next I wanted to move another file across (my firefox bookmarks), and usually I'd start editing smb.conf and defining mount points and all that, but one thing I want to do with this install is check out what comes built-in. Going to Places, Network Servers gets me connected to my desktop with ridiculous ease. This is great stuff; I'm of course a little sad that all that hard earned skill wrestling with smbmount is no longer needed, but I've got my bookmarks file installed in practically no time at all, so I'll grin and bear it. Extensions will have to be next, pity FEBE won't help me move them over (yet) but it's probably a good moment to clean out the cruft.
Oh, and I'd better load the mugshot client.
It occurs to me to post this to Mugshot's Ubuntu Lover's group, so that people can watch me struggling, in which case a few notes on "Why Linux" are in order.
Firstly, I am an Windows sysadmin by profession, working in a Microsoft shop (sysadmin talk for a business that uses lots and lots of Microsoft products, we don't sell XBoxes or anything). So I use Windows a lot; have done since Windows 3.0; I am the person who installed the first NT box into production anywhere in my organization. I need Windows to do my daily work - Outlook, Microsoft CRM, Netsupport (remote control software), BPCS (ERP system).
And I rather like Windows too. I have XP on my laptop set up just right, with a toolset that I've built up over the years to do everything I need.
So why change?
Firstly, I like the ideas behind Free Software. The computer is the greatest tool man has ever created; better than the club, or the wheel, or the printing press, or the AK-47. And tools are what give us the luxury to be more than animals. There should not be a company with control of, or a monopoly on, such a vital tool.
Secondly, I like the ideas of Open Source (which is not, please note, the same thing). Everytime I try a new distro, I'm amazed at the degree of improvement I see. When I'm working on a machine with IE installed instead of Firefox, it's actually painful.
Thirdly, it's tremendous fun to learn a new OS, and I can't afford a Mac.
Fourthly, it's the future. I want to be the person who installs the first Linux box into production anywhere in my organization, and to do that I need to know what I'm talking about.
So, if Linux is so great, why haven't I done it before? Well, I've tried a few times, and come close, but it's not quite been there yet. Stuff didn't quite work, sometimes even after a lot of effort. I've run it on plenty of secondary boxes, but I can't really learn something unless I'm using it day in and day out. But each time I give up and reach for the Windows CDs, I make a note that this time it was nearly there; that next time might be the time....
So, now we have Dapper Drake, and something is telling me that this might be the time. not only is it very slick, but I believe that the tools are in place to let me find a way to run those stubborn windows-only applications. Tools like remote control of a windows machine, WINE, and VMWARE.
So, time for some fun.
Blimey, I just realised my first post here is a year old. I'll have to go back sometime and read all the rubbish that I've written.
Well, that went very simply indeed. It asked a couple of questions, to which it more or less already knew the answers, chugged away, spat out the CD, rebooted and there I was.
First thing it does is pop up the "software updates" application, pointing out that there are updates to some of my packages... to a lot of my packages actually. Good job I'm in work, and so have an 8 meg feed.
I'm a big fan of apt-get, and would normally use that, but I figure I might as well let software updates update what got put on during the install, as I'd like to give the default packages a try before installing the same stuff I've used before. Meanwhile I'll copy a handful of music files over as I want to test the audio player; one thing I want this box to be able to do is host my music.
Which brings us to the first problem of the day, hurrah!
It can't ping my desktop machine by name - DNS is not resolving it.
System, Administration, Networking gives the answer; the system has detected both my wireless network, and my wired network. The wireless is one we keep for visitors, and just gives internet access; all well and good but the machine is using the DNS server it got from the wireless DHCP, so it can't resolve it. Interesting that, since wired is eth0 I would have thought it would have been the favoured connection.
Now, how to fix this... I can manually add my internal network's DNS, but of course that is stupid. I can turn the wireless off, but that shouldn't be necessary. I have an option for which card's default gateway to use, which is irrelevant, but I'll change it anyhow in case it does make a difference. I still have a few minutes to wait before proceeding, as it's still downloading packages, so just to get those MP3s over, I just point smbclient at the IP address of my desktop. If you're not familiar with SMBclient, it's works like an FTP client, but connects to Windows servers. Useful for quick and dirty jobs like this one.
OK, booting from the Ubuntu Desktop CD on my notebook, which is a Dell Lattitude D505.
You might be wondering, from looking at the dates, what ahs taken me so long from starting this project to actually putting a CD in the slot. Well, two processes have been prequesites:
I'm going to have yet another go at putting Linux on my notebook. This time, I'm going to start by putting myself in a position where it is not important if I break the notebook, by dusting off my old desktop computer and installing that as my main work machine. (The fact that I now have enough video cards and LCD flat panel displays to make a sweet triple-head setup has no bearing on these facts.) A clean install of XP is going on this baby right now.
One problem with this arrangement is that because I've stuffed my desktop with video cards I have no room left for my Firewire card, which is a pity as I had plans to use firewire to make a sort of sync cable for my laptop, so that I could move data very fast from laptop to desktop.
I might pull one video card temporarily and put the firewire in to get all my data onto the new main machine - all my real data lives on servers, it's my itunes directory that takes gigs of space to move across.
Of course, I could just use Ethernet, but I still haven't got over how much I paid for a firewire cable back when it was new, and so I dislike having a setup that doesn't use it.
I love FireFox, but the search textbox in the toolbar is too darn small.
I tried the Google toolbar for a while, but that has the bad habit of often forcing an autocomplete on me against my will. e.g. I search for "cheese pie", decide next to search for "cheese dip", type cheese into the search box, and then it autocompletes to "cheese pie". Unacepptable.
I recently got hold of the Searchbar Autosizer extension from http://xeen.reversestudios.com/?page=autosizer and while it works well, that wasn't what I wanted either - I like the search bar over to the left, and when it autosizes it moves everything else on that toolbar and I can't automatically find it.
I should mention that my bookmarks toolbar is just a series of buttons with no text for the websites I visit daily - which is why all web sites should install an icon. So if you move it, it confuses me.
Well, finally I had a brainwave. The Searchbar Autosizer has parameters to set the minimum and maximum size for the box to shrink/stretch to. Set them both to the same value, and the searchbar is locked at that length. Voila! My search box is now exactly as wide as I want it to be.
OK, it's no Grand Unified Theory, but it's pleased me on a Thursday night.
Got an invitation to Mugshot today, a new social networking site from RedHat. Thought it worth a go, so it has an app tied to my iTunes that sends what I listen to to their server; fromw where the bit of Flash above retrieves and displays it. I've got to get a better background for it though. A bit of protoplasm in a cowboy hat, while fetching, isn't quite me.
Hopefully this new system won't inhibit me about my strange tastes in music.
