Oooooobuntoooooo

My endless fight with linux. Now, as mentioned before, I really like linux. As much prehaps for what it stands for as for the OS itself, but I still really like it. However, I have had a really difficult time getting my two everyday computers up and running. Well, I actually have them up and running, and have got them working in various ways, but not like my old laptop.

I put mandrake 10.1 on my laptop over a year ago now and have had it running smoothly and able to do everything i want without hassle. So a year later I thought linux would have moved on and I be even easier to configure and get running now. Thought wrong I fear. Its not that I can't get Linux running on the machines. I can. I just can't get it running the way I want. AS of now I have Ubuntu with KDE on the work laptop and Kanoix on my desktop at home.

Ubuntu came out a year ago and has been the “hot” distro for a while. Obviously I have been keen to get into it and find out what the buzz is all about. So what do I think of it so far....................

My OOOOOOO KOOO buntooooooooo review

Ok, first out i had a try with the live CD.Thats a Cd you stick in the Cd and switch on the computer and it all runs off the CD, nothing to install. It worked ok, but my goodness was it slow. Ran like windows XP............on a 486. Anyway, been a KDE fan i thought i would try Kubuntu first. It installed fine except the I installed it without a network, and then when I wanted to go online with it it simply would not work. Might have been a bit of a router issue, but i doubt it. Configuring the network for DHCP simply didn't work. Who knows why, but i could not get online. So I reinstalled while online and got it up and working. All was looking good. Then i tried to play an mp3.

Well, that didn't work, and a look online revealed that this was how things were supposed to be. So I followed the instructions exactly to get the system multimedia ready. There is good documentation, I can't complain. Only thing is it recommends using gstreamer for getting various codecs running. Now I have had some real issues with gstreamer a while back trying to get amarok installed and running in earlier versions. So I was rather happy to have the apt package manager to get the packages correctly and dependency nightmare free.

Or so I thought. While I was doing some apt getting I thought I might as well get gnucash and digikam as well as xmms, all of which are lacking in the standard kubuntu distro. Well, turns out I was in for a surprise. gstreamer is still a nightmare and the instructions so carefully laid out led to some sort of circular dependency or something, because it never finished installing, then once the other programs had been installed I discovered that I could now log into gnome. So I gave that a try and low and behold, gnome was broken too.
I think installing gnucash put in enough of gnome to get it to run, just not enough to run it properly. Even worst when I rebooted later, the X would not start due to kdm no longer been the windows manager. So I went from having a working but not very useful operating system to a non working more useful system. At this point i thought it was time to give up on the Ku and go for the Oooooooo. So i put in Ubuntu and then apt got kubuntu desktop. I gave up on gstreamer, so for now video's don't work, although at least xmms can play mp3's. digikam sort of works and gnucash is installed. So I have a sort of useful operating system and it kinda works. But compared to the windows XP I still have on the system, it actually comes in second. Which is not only sad, but actually amazes me. I was so used to Mandrake and had it running so smoothly on the old laptop, I never ever booted windows. Now I boot to windows by default. Is this all Ubuntu's fault, well, not really. To be honest Ubuntu does run well, but it has nothing of what i need. All the linux software I have grown to depend on is missing or doesn't run on 5.10 yet. For example mplayer does not run on 5.10 yet. Mplayer has been my standard video player for a couple of years now and totem or kaffiene just don't cut it.

Bleached brown

The silent landscape awaits. Bleached brown by the frosts that close in nightly, the whole landscape seems to be waiting for the hammer to fall and winter to close its icy grip on the land. And yet, even now, on the 27th of October, the hammer has not fallen. The land holds its breath, each morning awaking to another day of respite. The day time tempatures have been almost balmy for this time of year. Today was all of 12 and a few days ago it was a record setting 22. Nothing to get excited about you would say, but last year this time there was 13cm of snow on the ground.

Meanwhile, the landscape is not exactly stunning, its almost a monotone brown, like a highveld winter...........with trees!

I await the first snows with excitment now. The -7 morning starts are fine and I have adapted to this autumn chill without much difficulty. The winter is still a couple months away, but the days driving through the gentle dusty brown of the silent waiting landscape are pleasant and easy.

Frost pist

Well, in great Slashdot tradition, here is my first post on the "new" Linux install I have put on the laptop. Things are not going great yet again. It seems ridiculous that i can't get a linux distrubution up and running smoothly on the machine.

On the weekend i had the smart idea of getting Kubuntu to an actually useful state. So i set about doing what the help files told me too and the whole thing simply hung at a point where it was setting up gstreamer0.8-a52
After 30minutes of that I gave up and had to shut off the machine and go shopping. On reboot everything was broken. The machine had installed gnome, kind of.... yet had disabled the kdm window manager. All evil really as we could not achieve a graphical boot without some serious fiddling. So i grew tired of the whole thing and reformated it. This time I have installed native Ubuntu (instead of Kubuntu) and have then put in the Kuduntu desktop. I have been trying to make the thing mutlimedia useful and guess what....
It's hanging at the same point. I have given it an hour with no luck. now cannot change it and cannot kill it. Oh well, lets reboot and find out how much damage is done.

My computer woes

Right now I am trying to build a couple of computers with varying degrees of success. At home I am planning a Kubuntu build for Wen-shu, which I hope might get her over to Linux. It will have Chinese issues I am sure, but let’s hope they are easily resolved. My work laptop needs a lot more power than that, so I have spent a very long time changing things. So far it has had Knoppix 3.9 on it, as well as Kubuntu 5.10 and a non booting install of Kanotix 10RC. I have Kanotix RC 12 as well, with no real luck.

Right now it has Knoppix on again, but the install is not the best. It still has DHCP issues, despite my picking Tophe’s brain (he’s my friendly linux geek!)

The little desktop at home has had a torrid time getting running and I was glad to see it boot on that massive 19inch panel into Mandrake. I have since killed the mandrake and have Kubuntu on there, but need a decent internet connection before I can get anything running well. Right now we are on dial up (AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH)

The 80GB hard drive I have in there is definitely not well, but the 40Gb seems fine. I suspect the 80 just needs a good old fashioned BLAT, but I have lots of stuff in there I don’t want to lose. that might be my weekend project. I have a dvd burner, so can get loads of stuff off it.

On Taiwan

There are a few things I really like about Taiwan. After a whirlwind visit there last week I realized that in some ways I miss the place.

• I miss the smell of 7-11.
  
• I miss the clean bustle of the MRT.
  
• I miss the long lazy taxi rides across town in the heat of summer
  
• I miss the green bowl surrounding the city of Taipei (when you can see it)
• I miss the computer market, definitely.
• I miss the technology of the place, the ceaseless renewing of things.
  
• I even miss some of the food. Not all of it, but moss burger I miss, and the instant street food.
  

After 4 years there I had had enough with everything about the place, but time and distance are good remedies and a return trip, short and eventful, was a lot more enjoyable than I expected it to be.

Cat went Mad

Well, I am feeling a useless parent now. When we headed for Canada, we left our cats here in Taiwan to give us more latitude to move around and get jobs and find places to stay. Now that we are finally set up, we have returned to Taiwan to collect them, we have run into a little problem. Oreo, our big black and white street cats, hand raised from 2 weeks old, has gone completely mad. Not only would he not let me pick him up (weird, he used to be the worlds most affectionate cat) but he is biting and scratching like a possessed leopard. I am sporting wounds on both my hands from futile attempts to box him to take him to the government inspection office. We will try again today, to see if we can get him back to Taipei, and out of the tiny little apartment where he has been residing.

Butter, our other little feline, has always been as nervous as a crack addict, and is even more so now. Fortunately she has not been attempting to maim or kill, so should travel with a little more ease. I'm off now to tackle this crisis, lets hope for a better result than yesterday.