Another infuriated Vista owner tries an Ubuntu setup. One of the new employees in the office has a gorgeous HD9210TX, a Hong Kong model of a media center “laptop,” although it can hardly be called a laptop. With a 20-inch screen and a weight of more than 12 pounds, it’s very much a desktop replacement but hardly a portable computer. You could call it that, but then you’d have to call my old SX-64 a portable computer too, and it was probably twice as heavy.

But Vista was failing for most of the games the owner wants to play — things like Second Life, World of Warcraft and a few others I never heard of. Stuttering graphics, program crashes at regular intervals, poor video acceleration and slow overall performance. It’s a classic case of garbage software on cutting-edge hardware.

And beautiful hardware too. Very sleek and fancy. Dual core, dual hard drive, 3Gb RAM, fingerprint reader, touch-panel buttons, etc., etc. You’ve probably already seen the specifics page.

Vista wasn’t doing the job though, and the owner was very irritated (I would be too, if I spend US$2000 on a machine that sputtered while running Second Life). It took a very long time (comparatively) to start up, and the one-shot recovery disk allowance took almost two hours and two DVDs to complete (I suggested a set of backup discs, since it’s possible Ubuntu just won’t fit. And these days, retailers don’t give you installation CDs any more. I mean, you might pirate them or something ).

But who cares about Vista anyway? We tried an 8.04 live CD first, and it seemed happy enough. A full installation went very quickly and very successfully. Performance under Ubuntu is fantastic: I finally found a machine that can get to a stock Ubuntu Gnome desktop in 30 seconds. Of course, my puny 550Mhz running Crux still leaves it in the dust, but that’s another story.

Best of all, the video drivers work perfectly — native screen resolution on first boot, and the proprietary ATI drivers have the X2600 running with excellent acceleration, on that giant 20-inch screen. It’s amazing to watch, really.

The only stickler thus far is the sound — as in, there isn’t any. I looked at lspci very briefly and it looked like the sound card was part of an integrated setup — I don’t remember the specifics and since Ubuntu didn’t find the driver on its own, it’s possible that it’s obscure or unsupported right now. I have some homework to do on that.

And that could be a dealbreaker on a machine that’s intended as a gaming rig and an entertainment station. The Second Life Linux client runs beautifully, but without sound. There are some other games that will need adjusting or native clients or just run through Wine. But those are best sorted out once the sound issue is solved (for better or for worse), since Wine won’t know what to do with the sound, unless Ubuntu can figure out what to do with the sound.

Otherwise, stay tuned as this one develops. If anyone has experience with those machines or can find the audio modules or drivers, I’d be highly indebted.

The denizens of the Programming Talk forum are a tough breed — able, intelligent, opinionated and vociferous. Wybiral is a good example of all those points: A freelance Python programmer and something of a gun-for-hire, an atheist and a music lover, a coach for new programmers and a veteran of Windows as far back as 3.1. And although he’s not part of the Ubuntu machine per se, he does have “code in the repos” as he says it, which means you might be using something he created. Here’s more from the man himself.

Tell as much as you’re willing about your “real” life — name, age, gender, location, family, religion, profession, education, hobbies, etc.

In “real” life, my name is Dave/David/Davy. I’m a vegan, a male (engaged, sorry ladies), and a dedicated atheist who sees the universe being roughly around the significance of Conway’s Game of Life.

I’m currently freelancing Python programming, but I’ll take just about any job if the pay is proportionate to the amount of work. I have some college education, which I plan to continue very soon, but I’m otherwise self-educated.

My hobbies right now include Python and Lisp programming, hiking, cooking, and playing guitar. I have a dog (German Shepherd) named Scrappy and a cat named Dyna. I’m also a really big fan of music (of all different kinds, typically very energetic types such as metal).

When and how did you become interested in computers? in Linux? in Ubuntu?

I became interested in computers when I was about 11, when I got an old machine with Windows 3.1 on it. After playing with my share of solitaire and MS Paint (we didn’t have the Internet back then), I found QBasic lodged somewhere in there, which sparked my interest in programming (it had the source for Nibbles and Gorillas, and at that age making games seemed like the coolest thing to do).

I essentially learned BASIC from the help files and the sources included. QBasic then led me down a dark and lonesome road involving other forms of BASIC, C and assembly.

My interest in Linux came from a general frustration with Windows about four years ago. The first “distro” I tried was Puppy Linux and I was extremely impressed by how small, fast, and flexible Linux was.

From there I shopped around a bit, eventually landing on Ubuntu, mainly for its low maintenance and high compatibility — not that the community didn’t play a large role in that too. After Ubuntu, and lots of inspiration from some really intelligent users in the forums and IRC, I was inspired to learn Python, and more recently Lisp (quite an improvement from my Win3.1 QBasic days).

When did you become involved in the forums? What’s your role there?

I first came to the forums for support (when I was still a complete Linux n00b) but eventually I found Programming Talk, which is mostly where I reside now. My role, at the moment, seems to be the occasional Python support, in addition to attempting to educate low-level programmers who think the life of a programmer is best spent hassling with pointer arithmetic and bit manipulation (which it is not, unless you’re Linus Torvalds, but that seems to be a common opinion of new programmers).

Are you an Ubuntu member? If so, how do you contribute? If not, do you plan on becoming one?

I’m not an Ubuntu “member” (I don’t think so anyway), but I like to think that I do contribute, mostly in the form of support for third party developers, and some of the chunks of code I’ve written have ended up in the repos. But, no, I don’t actively contribute to the actual distribution.

What distros do you regularly use? What software? What’s your favorite application? Your least favorite?

The only “distro” I use at the moment is the plain-old Ubuntu. As far as software goes, Firefox is the most used application on this computer by far; following that would probably be gedit, eclipse, and emacs. Occasionally I’ll use GIMP or Blender when I need graphics of some kind, and audacity when I need to record something, but mostly I’m a very boring user who spends most of his time typing out code and reading things online.

What’s your fondest memory from the forums, or from Ubuntu overall? What’s your worst?

I’m not sure that I have a single “fondest memory”, but I’ve met a lot of interesting people as a result of the forums (most of the cool ones hang out in #ubuntu-programming) and have had some very enlightening conversions, if that counts. My worst memory was the result of a few moderators thinking that the UF law extends beyond the forums and the official IRC channels. … Silly moderators.

What luck have you had introducing new computer users to Ubuntu?

I’ve introduced quite a few people to Ubuntu. Firstly, my fiance, a handful of my friends, as well as some odd folks I’ve encountered on various other programming forums and IRC channels. Typically, all you have to do is tell them to try the live CD, it’s all downhill from there. The price tends to be a huge factor as well.

What would you like to see happen with Linux in the future? with Ubuntu?

To be honest, I’d like to see better package management. The package system is great, but too often I find myself having to manually install some development files and build things myself because the package somehow exploded.

Better package support would be a plus too; I hate being two or three versions behind the most recent releases. Unfortunately, I’m not even sure there’s an easy way to fix this problem, as it’s more of an issue with the third-party developers than Ubuntu or Debian itself.

If there was one thing you could tell all new Ubuntu users, what would it be?

Before you ever try to build something … please, do a sudo apt-get install build-essential first. And don’t ask which language to start with in the programming forum, just use Python

Wybiral has a home page of sorts, but you can also follow his user profile page to get a better idea of the man at the other side of the keyboard. For more interviews with staff and community members, read Nine simple questions.

In return for my assistance installing Ubuntu 8.04 on my friend’s Asus W3J, I was given permission to peruse a 500Gb external drive of DVD rips, for future viewing enjoyment. It was rather like being given the chance to borrow an entire movie library.

The only downside though is that the drive uses a USB connection. And the Pavilion is on loan to a neighbor, which means transferring one 700Mb file can take 20 minutes across the Inspiron’s 1.1 connections. Egads.

But wait! The XO-1 has 2.0 ports! But … it’s certainly got no space for files, least of all at that size. And it’s offline until that weird Arch wireless glitch can be isolated and exterminated. What’s to be done?

Ah, now this is sneaky.

First, boot up Sugar. Wait while it gets itself ready for the party (which can take a while, believe you me). Then jump to the command line, and to the superuser account.

Add nfs-utils and midnight commander. Pop the USB-to-Ethernet adapter into an open USB port, and wire it straight into the router. Tell Sugar to ignore the wireless connection, and focus on the wired route.

Add the Inspiron’s nfs server mount to the OLPC’s fstab, start the client daemons and mount up. Add the external drive on another USB port, add the way-cute Joe Power USB mouse (because the XO’s touchpad in Sugar drives me bonkers), and start transferring: From external to USB to USB to ethernet to router to Inspiron to modular drive.

Ta-da! Easy as pie, with the only hiccup coming when I failed to tell mc not to reapply the original attributes to the copied files. Crux’s nfs police didn’t like that idea.

And so there you have it: If you have an XO-1 and you don’t have high-speed USB ports, you can still borrow DVD rips from a friend without having to wait 20 minutes to transfer a single file. All you need is a sublaptop, a USB wired adapter, a decent router and nfs to get the job done.

Or … maybe there’s an easier way. Well, at least Rube Goldberg would be proud of me.

After something like 30 or 35 Ubuntu 8.04 installations, putting Hardy on a friend’s Asus W3J was a piece of cake. But I don’t take credit for that. It worked amazingly well, and all I did was press a few buttons.

Like a lot of my full Ubuntu installations, I was able to get the system installed in about an hour, added the restricted drivers for the X1400 through the toolbar icon, added the ubuntu-restricted-extras package through Add/Remove, switched to the Toyama University repositories through the GUI interface, bumped up the visual effects, added the Compiz settings manager, added VLC, added … everything, and accessed the command line only once, to add the medibuntu repositories for proper DVD access. If I had been clever, I probably could have done that from the touchpad too.

But everything — visual effects, font smoothing, wired access, wireless configuration, you name it — everything is so easy now. I’m flabbergasted again.

And my friend is positively giddy too. Gutsy blacklists the X1400 — which doesn’t mean Compiz is impossible, only that you have to wriggle a bit to get it installed. And while Gutsy needed some tweaking to get even fundamental video working, Hardy found the proper resolution and the driver and set it all up, from the initial boot.

Again, my hat is off to the Ubuntu developers. You have done well, sirs and madams. One Ubuntu vet is pleased, and one Ubuntu newbie is happy all over again. A gold smilie for the entire team:

This isn’t a review so much as a gleeful and giddy note of excitement about putting Debian on my Thinkpad after I ran aground with some wireless issues in Arch. Remembering the lightning fast (comparatively, of course) performance of Debian on the K6-2, I was rather pleased with myself when I remembered I wanted to try it on the 550Mhz Celeron.

Technically, or at least from my perspective, there’s not a lot of difference between the Celeron and the K6-2. After all, a Celeron runs a little slower (according to most geeks) than a Pentium III, and it does have less memory than the K6-2 had. But start times are around 1:08, which is faster than the Sotec’s time, and system responsiveness is better than what I remember from the Sotec.

I suppose that’s only to be expected too: The system is working at 800×600 and has more video memory. The hard drive is a 40Gb 5400rpm model, where the Sotec was suffering with 1024×768, 2Mb VRAM and a 4200rpm hard drive, if I remember right. So even if the processor has a little more speed and a little less memory, the system demands are lesser.

I did a net installation in about two hours. I immediately had one kernel update, and I’ve added ntp to solve some small clock issues. I plan on keeping this one close to stock, for as long as it lasts. Clean and simple, and nothing else.

And to be honest, there’s not much else to say — everything works just fine, which is what I expect from a Debian installation. And it moves quite fast, which is what I have learned to expect from Sarge. And after my disappointment with Debian testing, I have no plans to try the newest version — I’ll stay with the quicker, cleaner Debian, thanks. Sometimes an earlier edition is an improvement.

But it still amazes me that a machine this slow can work under a Gnome desktop. Even if it is a few versions behind current. I wouldn’t dare try this with Ubuntu, can’t find the repos for it for Crux … so I suppose I could attempt it in Arch. But … nah. I’ll leave it to Debian to handle Gnome for me. I kind of like it that way.

In between troubleshooting the Wireless Router of the Gods, I ran into a few unforeseen obstacles with wireless access in Arch.

On two machines — the Thinkpad and the XO-1 — after a recent update, neither machine could connect to an open network, and after a couple of stuttering connections, both machines report no wireless ability on their network interfaces. The interfaces are named and accessible through iwconfig, but for both the WPC11 PCMCIA card and the Marvell wireless in the XO-1, it says they have no wireless extensions.

It’s a very unusual situation. I wish I had been paying better attention to the updates, since I don’t know now what packages changed that I might be able to trace (or better, downgrade). I’ve already asked in the Arch subforum on the Ubuntu Forums, and I’ve scoured the Arch forums for similar pleas, but I see nothing. I’ll keep picking at it. This might be the first time I’m able to file a bug report for Arch.

I was planning on blaming the router, but it used its Jedi powers to suggest it wasn’t the droid I was looking for.

Yes, it’s the end, and I wish I could say it’s a happy one. But unfortunately, it’s not. A return trip to the electronics store, the assistance of an interpreter and another US$250 couldn’t cure the wireless obstacles I faced in sharing my connection with my co-workers.

I know throwing money at a problem doesn’t make it go away. In fact, I’m usually a proponent of the exact opposite behavior. This time, though it seemed like a good idea: to try the biggest, fattest, most daring router they had in stock. But even the dreaded Corega WLBARAGND, a router that’s as big as a book and looks like a cross between Darth Vader and a peacock — can’t penetrate the walls of this building. It might have a, b, g and even Draft n compatibility, it might have triple antennas for three-axis transmission, it might even have 300Mbps transmit speeds over wireless … but it can’t punch through the 1970s-era construction materials that make up my humble abode.

Oh well. At least now I know I live in fallout-shelter-quality accommodations.

But that’s as far as I’m willing to go. If it had worked, it would have been worth the cost — the price probably would have been split between five people, as would the monthly bill — and I can return the router for a refund. So all in all, I didn’t really lose anything. I’m just back to where I was in February, before I started this little adventure

If I decide I still want wireless access in my own house (and maybe for the one person who lives above me) I’ll make another trip to the store and start from scratch. I am a little addicted to it — I can position my music machine across the room and stream audio off the Internet — but right now I’m a little weary of wireless, if you can believe that.

It’s important to remember that Xubuntu is not XFCE. What I mean by that is, Xubuntu uses XFCE as a desktop environment, but adds a lot more from ordinary Ubuntu that doesn’t technically appear in the XFCE playbook.

By itself, it in its purest form, XFCE is almost as fast (in my experience) as Openbox or Fluxbox or sometimes even IceWM. Xubuntu dumps an immense load on XFCE, and that’s why it doesn’t seem fast on an older machine. And that’s why I don’t endorse it for anything slower than about 1.4Ghz: The bloat overtakes the benefit of using Xubuntu.

Be that as it may, the XFCE community has a clear idea of what system applications are aligned with the desktop’s goal — and they have a great list of applications here. I love finding new application lists; it’s like Christmas, Ramadan and the Lunar New Year all in one.

There are a lot of common programs there that you might recognize. I make a point of using a lot of those, like ePDFView, Zim or even just Sylpheed. There are some new ones there that I want to take a look at, and maybe you might too. I doubt any one of them, except perhaps for some of the core, bundled XFCE tools (like Terminal) will drag in much of the entire desktop if you’re only after the program itself. Watch the dependencies and see what happens.

Personally, I’m going to check out Tasks, Oxalis and maybe see if I can get SLiM running under Crux on the battered Thinkpad. Such fun!

The wireless access issue has escalated, with the addition of a few more employees to our apartment building. Before it was a back-burner, minor option that would be nice if it worked. Now, with this many people in close proximity, it’s almost a must-have.

A signal booster seemed like a good idea, but there was a problem getting my router to connect, physically, to the router antenna mount. Apparently the antenna isn’t meant to detach, so this model is more or less un-magnifiable.

Next stop: Look for a new router — something more powerful.

In the mean time I switched my local machines off the wireless network (which was strangely disappointing, to be honest), and put the Thinkpad back on a wired connection, using the USB-to-ethernet adapter I originally bought for the OLPC machine. I added the asix and usb-net modules, rebooted and changed rc.conf to use the eth0 connection. All was good … but the Thinkpad’s USB ports are 1.1-speed, so I was wondering where the connection would top out.

And it seems like the highest speed I get for a USB wired connection through a 1.1 port is around 630Kbps. Not bad, considering the old Linksys WPC11 card I was using to mesh with the wireless router was getting around 580Kbps on a consistent download.

So just for the record, if anyone is ever debating a USB 1.1 network connection or a 11Mbps PCMCIA card, you’ll get probably the same download speeds from one as the other. Change those variables at all though, and the whole analogy crumbles.

I’m flattered. It’s only been four days since I posted the Hardy speed guide, and that post has been hit almost 3,000 times, and almost half as many downloads, according to the host site.

By comparison, the Gutsy guide has had only about 10,000 views, with over 3,000 downloads, in the entire time it has been available through three revisions across six months.

Thanks: I appreciate that people find it interesting enough to check it out. I hope it’s useful, even if it is admittedly esoteric in this day and age.