Going to take the plunge from Windows 7 to Ubuntu - Now all things Ubuntu/Linux

[Huw the Poo]

Still working on accessing network shares. Trying to get IBM's Linux client access stuff installed, but it's a 'rpm' package and Ubutu is not liking it...telling me something about using "Alien" to install it. Will investigate some more.

I haven't had to do this either, but I gather that Ubuntu is pretty clever about this natively; have you tried the stuff in the 'Places' menu about connecting to server?

As for RPMs...yeah, an RPM is a binary package that is used by certain Linux distros, mainly Red Hat-based.  Ubuntu is based on Debian which uses DEB packages.  Alien is a tool used to convert RPMs to DEBs.  Just open a console and navigate to where you have the RPM, then type the following:

Code:

sudo alien <name of package>

...if memory serves, at least.  Been years since I've had to do it.  You may not need sudo for that.  Anyway, if it completes successfully you will then have a DEB, which you can then install as normal - probably easiest to do that through the graphical file manager, just double-click on it.

I could write more but I'm about to leave the office so I'll post again this evening.

[LoneStarSpur]

Had to take a step back from Ubuntu on my work PC...was getting way too frustrated.

I need to so some more research.

[LoneStarSpur]

I'm finally dual-booting 10.04 at home (AMD64) and at work (x86).

Sadly, it doesn't look like Ubuntu will be a solution at work. My piece-o-crap ERP front end crashes Wine. Will try to generate a log file and see what's up.

Missing Flash on the home machine, but I can live without it. The AMD64 version seems really fast. Chrome works great.

Will spend the majority of my time in Ubuntu both at home and at work.

[Huw the Poo]

Good to hear it.  Why are you missing Flash at home?  It's been a while since I had to install it but if memory serves there's a package in the Ubuntu repositories that you can install.  It'll give you Flash support in Firefox and probably any other browser too.

[LoneStarSpur]

Well, Flash is pretty much everywhere and not having it makes 'playing' Mafia Wars difficult. 

The repository Flash errored out on me...something about not compatible or wrong version. I googled up some installation instructions on it (Adobe has a 64-bit beta version out), but by that time it was pretty late so I didn't pursue it.

I'll figure it out or live without...not a show-stopper.

[Huw the Poo]

Heh, sorry, I didn't word that very well.  I was asking why you didn't have Flash, but now I see why.

Try getting it directly from Adobe.  Select the Ubuntu 9.04+ DEB package.  After it's downloaded, just open it to install.  You'll be prompted for your password and then off it goes.  That should be it.

[LoneStarSpur]

I think the issue is that I'm running the 64-bit version of Chrome.

Will see what's up with Firefox.

[Huw the Poo]

Ah, I don't use Chrome so I don't know - unless I'm mistaken the Linux version of Chrome is a beta anyway, so I wouldn't expect things to work perfectly.  Additionally, after a cursory search on the web, it looks like Ubuntu's packaged Flash player isn't compatible with Chrome currently.

I hope it works in Firefox for you.  It should.

[LoneStarSpur]

Chrome is awesome.

Flash works fine in it as long as it's the 32-bit version.

figured it out.

Thanks a ton for your help.

[hitbyambulance]

Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04 ) is to be released on Thursday.

[LoneStarSpur]

Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04 ) is to be released on Thursday.

Yeah, I'm running the release candidate version of it.

[Huw the Poo]

Hmmm....dunno whether to risk the in-place upgrade or just reinstall.  It's been 50/50 for me with Ubuntu.  Actually I've been mulling over a switch to Debian so perhaps this will be a good opportunity to do that.

[LoneStarSpur]

Last report:

Work
Ain't happenin'. Can't get our ERP software to work in Wine. Bummer. I use it most of the day, but boot into W7 occasionally.

Home
Went back to 32-bit. Will move to 64 bit eventually. I only boot to W7 when I want to play Fallen Earth. I'm using AWN (OS X-like dock) and Advanced Desktop Effects (ppa:compiz/ppa) along with the "balanzan" theme from bisigi and now my Ubuntu desktop is actually much nicer looking than W7. Chrome has all the extensions I need.

Lots more to explore. Should be fun.

Might move my wife to it soon, but I'm pretty burned out on installing and setting up crap.

[ROTC1983]

LoneStar, sorry for hijacking the thread again. 

I was looking at picking up the Asus A1201 with the Ion Chipset to run Ubuntu...would that be good enough to get compiz fusion to run on there?

[LoneStarSpur]

No worries on hijacking...we can just use this thread as a catch-all Ubuntu/Linux thread.

I have AWN and the compiz stuff running on a Geforce 7900GS and a 9800GTX using Nvidia's driver.

Dunno about the Asus working with it. Here's the hardware list but Asus doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere.

Maybe Huw can help? I'm a real Ubuntu newbie.

[Huw the Poo]

Not sure about Ion, but Compiz has been running on Eee PCs running Ubuntu for a couple of years now so I'd say you're good to go.

[ROTC1983]

Thanks for the heads up.  I believe the Ion chipset is just a 9400m with a nice, cool name   I ordered it and cannot wait till it arrives. 

[Huw the Poo]

The great thing is that you can, of course, try Ubuntu for free.  If it doesn't like your hardware, just don't install it.

(or do an exhaustive search and maybe get it to work anyway)

[hitbyambulance]

the release of 10.04 happened to dovetail exactly with the building of my new PC... am excited to try it out this weekend.

[LoneStarSpur]

Let us know how it goes. I've had to reinstall 3 times because I get to tinkering around with stuff too much and break crap. 

[Huw the Poo]

To be honest...and I'm going to feel slightly guilty saying this here...10.04 is going to be the point where I will almost certainly ditch Ubuntu.  Quite a few reasons.  For a start, since upgrading to 9.10 I've had an infuriating laggy interface bug which absolutely nobody has been able to help me with.  Then there are several reasons that I'm losing faith in Canonical, like the crap they pulled with Rhythmbox/Magnatune, trying their damndest to make Linux look like Mac OS, testily reminding everyone that Ubuntu "is a meritocracy, not a democracy" etc.  Plenty of little things that have all been adding up over time.

I love the Debian base though, so I'm going to see how far Debian itself has come in the years since I last properly used it.  Besides, you wouldn't catch me using an RPM-based distro!  

[LoneStarSpur]

I wouldn't worry too much about that, Huw. One nice thing about just starting out with Ubuntu now is that I have zero prior experience with it. I don't even know what they pulled with Rhythmbox/Magnatune. 

I'm enjoying it even with all the (mostly self-inflicted) problems I've had and I boot into W7 only when absolutely necessary.

And, hey, it's Linux. You can do what you want to, right?

[Huw the Poo]

I don't even know what they pulled with Rhythmbox/Magnatune.  

It hasn't been widely spoken about, for some reason, but it was pretty shitty.  Basically, Magnatune is a great online music store whose "we are not evil" mantra puts Google to shame.  No DRM, 50% of revenue goes directly to artists, pay what you like for each album* etc.  Rhythmbox is the default music player in Ubuntu, and it has an integrated Magnatune store.  Now, any time you buy anything from Magnatune via Rhythmbox, Magnatune would give some money to support the Rhythmbox project.  So far, so awesome, huh?  The reason they were able to do this is the IP headers (or whatever) from the purchases would contain the phrase "Rhythmbox" so the Magnatune guys knew where the cash was coming from.  But last year Canonical decided to change that in Ubuntu, and any music bought within Rhythmbox instead contained the phrase "Ubuntu", thereby robbing Rhythmbox of the support.  That really pissed me off.

And, hey, it's Linux. You can do what you want to, right?

You got it, bud.  That's one of the reasons I prefer Linux to Windows.  It's your software.  You can do absolutely anything you want with it, and you're limited only by your own skills.

* Magnatune has recently changed to a subscriber model.

[hitbyambulance]

Let us know how it goes. I've had to reinstall 3 times because I get to tinkering around with stuff too much and break crap. 

wellll it's going to be held off until next weekend. i got a hard drive today at worst buy, but then found one online with 50% more capacity for $5 less.... so i have to wait until that gets here.

[ROTC1983]

Installed Ubuntu on the my netbook 1201N Asus Netbook and the wireless driver does not function...sigh!!!  Any suggestions?  I tried checking the official forums but their fixes did not work or were meant for an older version of Ubuntu.  Supposedly this will be addressed in the next kernel upgrade.

[Huw the Poo]

That's unlucky mate.  I can't do any research while I'm in work but will check tonight if I remember.  If the support is promised in the next kernel upgrade, though, you won't have long to wait.  Very possibly days rather than weeks.

[LoneStarSpur]

Bunch of updates out there today...one even required a re-boot so you might want to refresh the Update Manager.

hmm...well, of course that might be a little difficult if you can't get on the internet with you box.

[Huw the Poo]

There are ways of applying updates without a net connection, but I assume ROTC could just use an ethernet cable to get them...?

Edit: The one that required a reboot is almost certainly a kernel upgrade.

[ROTC1983]

There are ways of applying updates without a net connection, but I assume ROTC could just use an ethernet cable to get them...?

Edit: The one that required a reboot is almost certainly a kernel upgrade.

will try it right now.  Ethernet does work...just the wifi does not

[Huw the Poo]

Hope it fixes the wifi issue, mate.  Let us know.

[ROTC1983]

Hope it fixes the wifi issue, mate.  Let us know.

Didn't fix it...what a bummer.  Should I just run an older version like 9 to see if that fixes the issue? 

[Huw the Poo]

Yeah, it's not like you'd be missing out on much.  Ubuntu updates are incremental and rarely revolutionary, so 9.10 would be just fine.  Before installing it, though, just run it from whichever media you're using first.  If wifi doesn't work from the live CD/USB, it's unlikely to work if you install the distro either.

[Huw the Poo]

Are you sure the kernel was updated today?  I can't remember the exact name of the package, but I was browsing for the header packages on packages.ubuntu.com and the one I looked at said its last change was April 14.

[ROTC1983]

Are you sure the kernel was updated today?  I can't remember the exact name of the package, but I was browsing for the header packages on packages.ubuntu.com and the one I looked at said its last change was April 14.

Found a nice debian package from Matt Price that fixed the wireless issue.  One restart after I installed it and everything is good to go.  Posting from the unit right now.  Installing the Nvidia drivers right now also

[Huw the Poo]

Oh splendid, I'm really pleased!  Who's Matt Price though?

[hitbyambulance]

i upgraded from 9.10 and .. well, i attempted to upgrade from 9.10 and it didn't like the 'bleeding edge' ati drivers i had installed earlier. wanting to see what the new installer was like, i just did a clean install of 10.04 and... what is up with my graphics?? it's acting like no accelerated graphics driver is installed (slow refresh, very laggy desktop, glxgears just chugs - overall absolutely painful to use and look at) but all my usual interrogations of the Mesa open source ATI driver is showing that it is installed. i even enabled KMS - no luck. i had no issues like this in the previous Ubuntu distros, so i have no idea what is going on here. my video card is a Radeon X1600, if that helps at all. (and like i said, i had decent 3D acceleration with the open source driver before i tried Lucid.)

[Huw the Poo]

Well, it sounds like you know more about Linux than I do so I doubt I could be any help.  I've been suffering from a laggy desktop since 9.10 but that's even when I use the nv driver.

For what it's worth, though, I've been hearing that 10.04 has been getting the same reaction as 9.10 did; buggy on release, do not upgrade.  Heh.  What the hell are Canonical doing?  They were doing so well up until last October, but I bet they're bleeding users at this stage.  They've certainly lost me (when I finally get off my lazy arse and switch to Debian anyway).

[Huw the Poo]

While I'm in a ranting mood, here's another thing Canonical have done to Ubuntu that's pissed me off: getting rid of xorg.conf.  "It's OK, it's all done by magic now!  No more manually editing xorg.conf!  Yay!"  Well, great, but what happens when you're low on mana, Canonical?  I've had displays incorrectly configured and without having a proper xorg.conf to edit (which is really easy to do) I've had nightmares trying to get it all working.

Ctrl-alt-backspace to kill the X server.  Not any more (by default).  'Nuff said, I don't think there's anyone that decision didn't annoy.

And why do my disks now have ridiculously long alphanumeric names?  I have to rely on automount now.  What if I need to write a script?  What if I'm trying to coax a filesystem to life?  I can't just "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/backups" (or whatever) any more.

Finally, if I wanted a Mac OS interface, I'd buy a fucking Mac.  I don't.

 

[LoneStarSpur]

Nice rant. 

I know you know this, Huw, but Ubuntu is trying for the masses. And the masses don't give a flying f*#@! about manually editing xorg.conf nor do they care about killing the X server. Hell, they don't want to know what either one of them is and quite frankly they shouldn't have to know what either one is. Hell, if you have to mess with either one of them then Ubuntu is not where it needs to be to get the world started on its long road to a safer, more secure internet.

I feel your pain, buddy, and really do sympathize. Fortunately there are lots of distros available that will allow you to tinker 'till your heart's content. 

I do want to thank you for your early encouragement. I had lots of false starts on my move from Windows to Ubuntu and I'm seriously glad I stuck it out. It's getting closer to the point to where I can recommend it to my friends who aren't quite as, ah, experienced as I am with computers.

I don't know much about Macs, but does the default Ubuntu interface look like a Mac's? I know AWN does (and I love the doc, sorry).

[ROTC1983]

Yeah, the reason I like Ubuntu is because it does look similar to the Mac...but then you can customize it to your heart's content   I have my wireless working and the next step is to hopefully get the gestures on the trackpad and the microphone working.  I am having a blast working on this stuff