Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
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James’ Ubuntu Installation Guide – Updated!
I started writing this little guide for one person, and then realized that I knew several other people who I’d have to repeat it to. From there I figured I’d just post it up on the blog for anybody who was interested. Of course, there’s quite a few ways to do it, but if you want to know how I recommend it, then read on!
- Blah blah blah, back up your stuff, blah blah. :P
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Download the CD image file from
ubuntu.com. -
Don't just drag and drop the .iso file you just downloaded into the CD and click burn unless your burning program specifically says that it will create the CD from the file if you do this. Usually, you have to select “Create CD from image file” somewhere in the program you're using, select the file, and click okay. If you are using Windows, I recommend using the program ImgBurn. If you are using a Mac, then you should be able to Ctrl+Click the file and tell it to burn from the file if my memory serves me correctly. If you're already using Linux, then my favorite burner is K3b, or use Brasero if you want a GTK+ program.
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After you've made your Ubuntu install CD, boot from it! When you get to a menu that asks what you want to do now that you've booted from the CD, tell it to start the Live CD! (Just hit enter in other words, or wait 30 seconds and it'll hit enter for you).
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Since it's booting a fully usable Ubuntu environment so that you can try it out before you install, give it a few minutes to load everything up for you. Since it's all running from the CD, don't expect it to be lightning fast.
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After you finish playing around and you're ready to install, click the icon on the desktop that says “Install.” It'll ask you a few questions, and they should actually all be obvious enough for you to answer on your own if you like. It can even automatically partition your hard drive for you to keep your Windows installation on the computer so that when you turn your computer on, your computer will ask you if you want to boot into Windows or Ubuntu.
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If you want to manually partition your hard drive for performance reasons or something, then keep reading. If you want to just have Ubuntu automatically set this all up for you, then you're done.
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Your first partition should be your current Windows partition. Assuming you want to keep it, just resize it so that it takes up half your hard disk space (or however much sounds good to you). Also, to make it really easy to access your Windows files from inside of Ubuntu, select the Windows partition, click edit, change the mount point to /windows and then click okay. Now that we're back to the partition table overview, make sure that the box next to your Windows partition that asks if you want to format the partition is unchecked since we don't want to format (in other words, erase) your Windows.
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If you've got an old Linux installation, then you've got other partitions. It's likely that you just want to delete them and start fresh, but if you have a /home partition then you might want to keep it and use it. If that's the case, then select that partition, click edit, set the mount point to /home and click okay. And again, you don't want to format this partition since the whole point is that you're trying to keep your old documents and stuff. From this point on, be aware that this guide assumes that you want to freshly install linux.
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Select the free space on the drive and make a new partition. Make it 100 MB big, set the mount point to /boot and make the filesystem type ext2. Click okay.
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Select the free space on the drive and make a new partition. Make it 2048 MB big andmake the filesystem type swap. Don't worry about setting a mount point at all for this one. Click okay.
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Select the free space on the drive and make a new partition. Make it as big as two-fifths of all the remaining space (use the calculator if you need to by going to Applications and then Accessories) but definitely at least 15 GB. Set the mount point to just / and then set the filesystem type to reiserfs.
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Select the free space on the drive and make a new partition. This is where your documents and stuff will go. I'm having you put it on a separate partition for a few reasons, one of which being that you can keep this partition and all your documents if you decide to try another version of Linux or upgrade to a future version of Ubuntu down the road, and another reason being that if you do it my way you'll be using a high performance filesystem for your files while using a rock solid filesystem for the system files. But this is optional. If you'd prefer, then make your / partition take up all the rest of the hard drive space and you're all done. Anyway, this partition can take up the rest of the hard drive space. Set the mount point to /home and set the partition type to xfs.
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Finish up with the installer and you're all done!
Want some bonus points? Here's some stuff to do after you install!
- If the Restricted Device Manager pops up to tell you that you can get drivers, then do so! Click the little icon on your task bar to open it up. Click the "Administrative Mode" button, and then enable the drivers (probably a graphics card, maybe a wireless card too, whatever). Then restart.
- Go to System, then Administration, and then Synaptic Package Manager.
- Go to Settings, then Repositories. On the Ubuntu Software tab, at the very bottom uncheck "Cdrom with Ubuntu 7.10 'Gutsy Gibbon' since we don't want to ever need the CD again. In the Third-Party Software tab, check the first one there, which ends with the word "partner." You don't need the other one. Check out the other tabs and get yourself set up however you like. Click apply, and then click okay.
- Go to Settings, then Preferences. On the General tab, mark the box next to "Consider recommend packages as dependencies." Check out the other tabs and set yourself up however you like, and then click apply and then okay.
- Click Reload.
- Now that we've got Synaptic set up to be extra awesome, search for these packages and mark them for installation if they haven't already been installed. Obviously, you should leave out the stuff inside the parenthesis.
- emerald (theme manager for when you're using Compiz Fusion, which you'll want to do since it's just awesome)
- subversion (a way of getting files and doing work collaboratively, used by lots of programs, namely Emerald)
- compizconfig-settings-manager (gives you lots of control over Compiz Fusion, you'll want this)
- gnome-compiz-manager (will help tie Compiz Fusion into your Gnome desktop in ways that makes this package worth having. if you're using Kubuntu, Xubuntu, or one of the other non-Gnome versions of Ubuntu then obviously you don't want this)
- pidgin (you've already got pidgin installed actually if you're using regular Ubuntu, but this will show you a list of plugins you can get, too. for instance, the plugin-pack package includes a magic 8-ball and a dice roller... :P)
- amarok (my favorite music player)
- k3b (my favorite CD and DVD burner)
- yakuake (if you aren't afraid of the command line, then this is the best way to have a terminal window ever. if you are afraid of the command line, then, well, I suggest you give it another shot since it's pretty fast way of doings things)
That should be enough to get you started. Of course, you can always browse for more programs. There's actually a friendlier (read: prettier) tool for exploring available packages that you can use by going to Applications and then clicking Add/Remove, but do that later.
- Click Mark All Upgrades, because we can.
- Click Apply.
- After it's done installing all of that, go to System, then Preferences, and click Appearance. Have fun.
- If Compiz Fusion isn't working for you, then it might be because you need to install a package named xserver-xgl and then restart. Not a big deal.
- If you want to have more emerald themes, then open a terminal (hit Alt+F2 and enter gnome-terminal) and type "svn ls https://svn.generation.no/emerald-themes" (without quotes) and then when it asks, accept it permanently. Then open up Emerald by going to System, then Preferences, then Emerald Theme Manager. Look for the Repositories tab and fetch non GPL'd themes. Presto! More options. You might need to press Alt+F2 and enter "emerald --replace" to get it to update the way things look.
- Go to GetAutomatix.com and download the version of Automatix2 for your system and install it. Then, update your computer like we did before by going into Synaptic, clicking refresh, marking all upgrades, and clicking apply. Then you can use Automatix2 to get other things that you'll probably want, like the restricted extras package that will allow you to listen to proprietary media codecs and stuff and the flash plugin for Mozilla Firefox. There's quite a few good things it'll let you download, so have fun!
- Show off your desktop as much as possible, but try not to look like a jerk. Then, get your friends to try Ubuntu. :D
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Feedback: OSNews vs DistroWatch
This is my feedback on the scuffle between DistroWatch’s founder and leader Ladislav Bodnar and OSNews’s managing editor Tom Holwerda regarding the recent release of the distribution of Linux called Elive. You can see Mr. Holwerda’s blog entry here, and Mr. Bodnar’s response here.
Looks like Mr. Holwerda bit off a little more than he could chew this time. If a distro is going to claim to be free and open, then they shouldn’t be terribly surprised when they’re held to it. Having a tiered download system doesn’t bother me, but when your free download server is down for weeks (or days, when you’ve got as many contacts as Elive) and you decide to go ahead with making a new release anyway, there’s something slightly icky going on. Seems to me like DistroWatch was simply assuming that Elive meant what it said about being freely downloaded and was holding them to it.
And really, Mr. Howerda can resort to the argument about using up bandwidth if he feels the need to, but for a free and open project, using that bandwidth for downloads is exactly how it should be used. If Elive has not lost site of their goal of being freely distributed and if OSNews has not lost site of its goal of seeing that free and open distros grow and get downloaded as much as possible, they should both be thanking DistroWatch for getting Elive attention and for making it nice and easy for everybody to grab a copy.
If they did in fact email Mr. Bodnar and ask him to not post direct download links, then perhaps Mr. Bodnar should not have done that. Only the Elive team and the DistroWatch team will know if those emails ever were sent and received. I personally hope that those emails were never sent and that Mr. Howerda was mistaken, because the alternative would mean that Elive knowingly issued a release when their free download server was down and expected DistroWatch to just shepherd people over to their pay-per-download server while having DistroWatch list them as free and open. That would be very, very disappointing on the part of Elive, and would also reflect rather poorly either on Mr. Holwerda’s or OSNews’s journalistic credibility. A little analysis would’ve probably been a good idea before running the smear against DistroWatch.
But hopefully, this was all just a simple technical error on Elive’s part and they’re willing to say “Thank you” to Mr. Bodnar for providing a working download link during a new release’s debut, and hopefully Mr. Holwerda and OSNews will say “Sorry” and review their methods so that this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.
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Steve Ballmer Music Video
Man, this is good stuff. I was posting on Bagelwood an idea for a spoof game pitting Microsoft against Apple against Linux in a sort of Mortal Kombat way, and of course, Steve Ballmer had to be in there going berserk somehow. This made me want to see the video of him going crazy during a speech again, so I went to Youtube. I came across this music video version which I hadn’t seen before, and man, it’s gold.
Gold, I tell you.
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Next-Gen Letdown
Alright, so as far as the market is concerned, it’s been a year since the new “next generation consoles” came around. I’ve been saving up money for a while and just got even more thanks to graduation gifts, but see, I’m having the same trouble that I’ve been having for a few months now: I haven’t seen anything I want to spend my money on!
So, yup. That’s the dismal truth: all three of these systems have failed to woo me.
The Wii seemed like it would be great, and I’m sure it is to an extent since it sounds like Nintendo delivered on the fundamental things they promised, but the way I see it a system can only be as good as its games, and the Wii to me seems to be severely lacking in this area. I mean, for Pete’s sake, all they had to do for me was put out a Star Wars game here (nothing against the Lego games, but they’re not what I’m talking about), a good first-person shooter with online play there, and maybe a Gundam Wing game since I’m the one writing this miniature wishlist. Blah, I don’t know. I can’t actually even think of all that many games I’d be demanding because I’ve gotten so out of touch with gaming in general.
The Xbox360 has the opposite problem for me though. It seems to have a pretty wide selection of interesting games (that one called “Assassin’s Creed” looks pretty cool to me), but the system itself has never managed to blow me over. I mean, I’m all for graphical improvements, but it seems like that’s the only real hook for the core system itself aside from having an HD-DVD player, which is definitely not a feature that would make me buy a game console.
And as for the PS3, I saw on either Slashdot or Digg not even a month ago that they were just getting to the point where its games could not be copied by the Xbox360 in terms of graphic firepower and whatnot. That’s a funny enough little tidbit by itself in more than one way. But the sadness reflected by that lack of progress is only compounded by the fact that, really, nobody has a PS3 that I know anyway, so I can’t really see it for myself anyhow. Which just goes to show how few people I’d be playing with on top of all of that.
I was really expecting one of the systems to fill my teenage male mind with envy by now. But time passed and my savings just kind of built up, and up, and up. I apathetically/disappointedly saved up right past the quotas for the Wii, then the Xbox360, and now even the PS3. And nothing else even outside the video game world has really taken my interest either. This is just getting pathetic. It’s not even that I’m trying to be frugal, either. I’ve now resorted to milling through travel sites looking at prices for plane tickets (and recently, even cruises) to places I want to see.
Honestly though, I’m hoping somebody will be able to show me something to make me want one of the game systems since they’d last a little bit longer than a week in the Bahamas. Maybe I’ll buy that person a cookie, too. Or that failing, maybe I’ll save up even longer and get some stocks.
Bah. Somebody find me something fun and wasteful.
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Mooooving on. Moo.
Well, predictably, it’s been a really exhausting week. Even if I wasn’t dealing with the whole resignation thing, there was still the art show in which I had my own section (I was also asked to be master of ceremonies, which means that I’ve emceed the expo every year I’ve been in the program, weeoo) and a driver’s license test, which I passed. And anybody who knows about me knows that any one of those things would be enough to exhaust me. But that’s all through now, and I’m starting to relax a bit. I’ve got a pretty decent idea of what directions I’ll be going in now.
1) Dairien asked me to partner up with him to start a design group to make a little money. After playing with the idea for a while and talking to him, this sounds good to me. We’re still thinking of a name. We want to have a green theme for this, which is nice because I’ve wanted to do something green for a while now. This will probably be done on a small scale for local businesses and stuff like that.
2) As far as my involvement in the FOSS community goes, Christopher has successfully convinced me to start a “vendor neutral art consortium.” The idea is that there will be a team of artists who help out free and open source projects that we like, and there’d also be a community built around our web site. Christopher wants me to be the lead (he’s exhausted too ya know, and he’s already pretty busy earning his PhD), but he’ll be around to give me advice and stuff. The scale on this will be large. I still need to pick a name and figure out exactly how I want to do this though. I have some ideas for names though already, but I want to run them by Chris. Yes, Chris, I know I’m the lead and you want me to start making decisions, but you still get to help name it since a lot of this was your idea. :D
3) A developer and a friend wants me to help them out with a linux (server as opposed to desktop) distribution’s artwork. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say who or what though (you know who you are, so I’ll leave it to you to decide how much you want to say, just post in the comments).
4) A different developer and friend wants me to help them out in the indefinite future with a linux (desktop as opposed to server) distribution’s artwork. (Same deal with you, leave a comment to give whatever details you’d like).
5) PolitySim. I really should get back to work on stuff for them. I was in the process of contributing a web design to them to help them get going, but then all the drama and the art show kinda took over. Sorry about that. :P
Ooof. Busy busy busy! I think I’m actually going to venture out of my house on my own in a bit to reward myself with some Taco Bell or something, heh heh! Heh! Heh. Heh… Kinda sad that I’m excited about going to Taco Bell, isn’t it? Ha. XD
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