My favorite feature of Ubuntu Jaunty (9.04)?

Dust is installed by default.

There has been lots of discussion on this in the Ubuntu community for a few releases now…I think Dust is a definite winner. There will never be any theme that will please every one, but I think Dust not only looks great now but will integrate into GNOME shell very nicely as well!

Just a random comment – now back to your regularly scheduled Blog reading.

I just finished installing Ubuntu 9.04 from the latest daily image. I’ve taken a break from Linux for a while; a much needed break, but I’m glad to be back in the fold.

For a while I had gotten in over my head - I had gotten involved in too many Linux oriented things, and was stretching myself a little too thin, and as a result I simply got burnt out with the whole dang thing. I played around with Windows 7 some, but the settled into Vista comfortably for a long while. In the mean time, I built and sold a new computer, and then re-built a new “new” computer, and decided it was a good time to jump back on the Linux train again.

I decided to go ahead and load Jaunty since it’s about the time I would normally jump on the development version anyway (around Alpha 6). I noticed that the restricted drivers for Nvidia were working, so I was as good as gold. Ubuntu usually does a good job of just updating itself to final code anyway, so I shouldn’t have to re-install next month when the final bits are released unless something goes majorly wrong. Also, I wanted to go ahead and get my HDD’s and mount-points formatted in EXT4 for the future, which pretty much entailed installing 9.04 anyway.

Why did I come back? It’s simply - I just missed it. I missed the community, and I missed the software. I had my Vista install as “open source” as I could possibly get it; in other words, I was using the same software, just on a different OS. I initially thought I wanted Vista back on my machine for gaming compatibility, but I need to accept the fact that I’m simply not a gamer anymore. I guess I’ve just “grown up” so to speak, but I can honestly say in the entire time I was running Windows I could count the minutes spent “gaming” on fingers of my two hands. I simply don’t game anymore.

So, since I’ve taken a break and am just now coming back, what will I get involved in? Well, honestly not much. I don’t want to get burned out again. I’m going to stay away from distro level stuff as much as possible. I’m going to run Ubuntu because, well, it just works. Any involvement I have in Ubuntu will be restricted to helping out folk on the forums if I get really bored. I will however continue my involvement at the Desktop level and the GNOME project (specifically the GNOME Journal). I feel *anything* I do at that level is going to help far more people across many distro’s than anything I can do at the distro level.

It’s good to be back, and if you are one of my “Linux Buddies” I’ll be seeing you around more often again

Peace!

Have you ever wanted to give something back to the Open Source community, but felt that you had nothing to offer because you’re not a “coder”?

There are many ways to contribue to Free/Open Source software and the projects and communities surrounding those projects without being a developer. Many folks who consume these products want to get involved and simply do not know how.

Often people “give back” by helping other users out in IRC, on mailing lists and on web-forums, but there are other ways to give back as well. One such way is by contributing to the GNOME Jounal. The GNOME Journal is an online magazine devoted to everything surrounding the GNOME Desktop. This would include the software, people, development, news, etc. surrounding anything related to GNOME.

If you check out the website, you will see that the last article was posted in December of 2007. Recently there has been a resurgence of activity on the GNOME Journal mailing list as well as some chatter in #gnome-journal on GIMPnet on IRC about getting a new issue out the door. We do, however need help, and this is where you can help!

We not only need writers, we especially need someone with outstanding organizational skills to help organize releases. So if you have either skill-set, or would simply like to help out in any way you can, and have time to devote, please join our mailing list or hop into the IRC channel - we would love to hear from you. Also check out the GNOME Journal wiki page for ideas for articles, an article wish-list, the announcement guide, and ways to submit ideas for new articles.

There are lots of exciting things going on with the GNOME Desktop - let’s get out there and tell the world about them!

I swear, I’m not becoming a link blogger

I just came across this story reading through some of the stories on Tuxmachines. It seems DeviceGuru has had similar experiences with Ubuntu, KDE and GNOME that practically mirror mine.

I used KDE for a very long time, and for much of that time I wouldn’t have even considered using GNOME, but for me, GNOME has become the Linux Desktop standard.

I really think there are tons of great features in KDE 4, and I know that the KDE developers will come together and get a solid release in time, I just hope for the sake of competition that it isn’t too late, and that by that time, KDE is still considered a viable alternative. I’m seeing more and more users like DeviceGuru and myself that are trying GNOME and finding that it really is a great desktop, that is (now) very customizable (compared to older releases) and simply does what we need without getting in the way.

I can’t help but wonder if die-hard KDE user Linus Torvalds himself is using KDE 4, or if he has switched to GNOME…

You know, I’ve said it before, but Ubuntu is in my opinion the future of Linux on the Desktop. I’m not trying to be a fanboy, but no matter what other distro’s I try, none other seems to work as seamlessly as Ubuntu. I’ve also come to the conclusion that GNOME is going to be the de-facto standard for Linux desktop environments. I believe any other will always be an “alternate” choice for most major distributions.

For years and years I was a die-hard KDE fan, and the last week or so of playing with KDE 4.1 has taught me that GNOME is the new KDE, and KDE 4 is the new GNOME. KDE 4 simply is not the configurable beast that previous versions of KDE were (at least not yet). Although I never thought I would, I’ve just become a GNOME user anyway - I’ve grown accustom to many of the applications, and I have actually grown to prefer them over many of the KDE counterparts (plus everything doesn’t start with “K” )

For those who are interested, I’ve simply loaded up Ubuntu 8.04.1, I’m going to enjoy the fact that Canonical (unlike any other “free” as in “no cost” Linux Distribution) gives away LTS to it’s users. I did check out Ubuntu 8.10 last night, and although still pre-release, I can tell it will not be a smooth ride for me due to the fact that I have ATI video, among a few other things. There simply isn’t anything new and exciting that I must have in 8.10. I’ve never had good luck with *.10 Ubuntu releases anyway - remember it was 7.10 that started me “distro-hopping” like mad last year.

Hardy (8.04) is an awesome release, it feels solid, everything “just-works” and I see no reason to change. Contrary to what you might think, I did enjoy my experiment with Mandriva, however we just weren’t a good fit for one one another. I’ve invested many years into learning how to administer a Debian based system, and Ubuntu gives me a nice, polished Debian based desktop that’s a little smoother around the edges than pure Debian.

Funny side-note: Although this post is quite old, and he’s probably running OpenSolaris now, I stumbled across an old blog-post on Ian Murdock’s blog where he posted a screenshot of his laptop, and he was running Ubuntu. For those who do not know, although he is now “Vice President of Developer and Community Marketing”  (basically in charge of OpenSolaris) at Sun Ian Murdock was the founder of Debian (and the ian in Debian - the name was a combination of his name Ian and that of his (now) ex-wife Debra). Yes someone did give him a little flack in the comments.

Also, I want to thank Adam Williamson for being so helpful and friendly even though I did snip at him a little in a blog-post. He is a great guy, and he does a lot of great work for Mandriva, and always has a positive attitude.

And now, I want to thank my readers for keeping up with this blog as I’ve tried practically every distro under the sun - Although I won’t be switching distro’s for a while, or doing anything else particularly interesting, I will try to find some “tips n tricks” and stuff to post for you.

I’m not sure yet if I will stay on 8.04 until the next LTS release but I will definitely stay here until 9.04.

I’ll be the first to admit it - when it comes to Linux, I am a habitual “Distro-hopper”. I don’t like being a distro-hopper, and I haven’t always been a distro-hopper.

I started off with (and used briefly) Red Hat (before Fedora) on the recommendation of a friend, and I used KDE (long-term) because he said it was better. I soon migrated too (and loved - well, still love) Slackware, and I used it for a few years. I used Slackware exclusively until I got my first AMD64 machine back in 2005, and I wanted a x86_64 distro to run on it. I had been hearing a lot about this new distro called Ubuntu - it was quickly becoming the most popular Linux distribution that had ever been created, and I checked it out with version 5.04. YUK! GNOME! and it was BROWN! I soon discovered there was a “sister-distro” called Kubuntu that used KDE instead - “ahhhh - much better” I said to myself. I used Kubuntu almost exclusively (with some experimenting, and side-tracking) from 5.04 all the way until 7.10 when things majorly broke apart for me. I never could get the 7.10 release of Ubuntu (in neither Ubuntu nor Kubuntu form) to work for me. This resulted in some major distro-hopping. Once I started, I simply couldn’t stop - I had to see what was out there, and if it was better, and once I found something I liked, I’d read a blog-post about some other distro, and I’d have to try that out - even if what I was using was working. Since around November of 2007, I have loaded (and ran for at least some time), Fedora, Mandriva, Debian, CentOS, Scientific Linux, SLED, openSUSE, Frugalware, Slamd64, BlueWhite64, Studio64, Slackware (yes I even abandoned x86_64 during the process), Foresight, Mint, Zenwalk, sidux, Pardus, Parsix, DreamLinux, Arch, PCLinuxOS, Sabayon - and probably a few others I’ve forgotten about!

Some of these I blogged about, some I didn’t. There was always SOMETHING that didn’t work in some distro that would send me looking elsewhere. Recently, I’ve burnt myself out on all of this, and I had decided I’d had enough, but I wound up doing the same thing in Windows - with different variants, so I had to step back - take a break and “cleanse my palate”.

I gave myself a week to play - find what I wanted to test - test in a structured environment (taking notes) and making a decision, and committing to it, and to finally stop all of this non-sense. So here, are my trials, tribulations and some of my notes about what I tried, what I liked and what I didn’t like.

Folks, this is gonna be a long one, so only read on if you are truly interested in what I found, and what I picked.

My first decision was that although I’d been using GNOME for a while now, I wanted to step back in and see what was up with KDE 4.1.

First Test (short): Fedora 10 w/ KDE

Fedora 10 Beta KDE x86_64 Live CD - wouldn’t boot on my machine - no matter what I did! (not getting into details - trying to keep this as short as humanly possible!)

Second Test: Feodra 9 w/ KDE

I discovered by browsing the updates repo, that I could install Fedora 9, fully update it and be on KDE 4.1. Initial boot and install went beautifully! I did my full update and I was on 4.1 - yes, it was a lot better than 4.0 - by a mile. Here is where Fedora failed - no ATI drivers (even in Livna). Not Fedora’s fought - ATI’s fought for not supporting the new version of X11 that is in Fedora.

Third Test: Kubuntu 8.10 Alpha 6

Yes, I know it was an Alpha version. It installed perfectly, would boot, but I couldn’t get X at all - I could switch to Virtual Terminals, and access the console, but never could get X to start.

Fourth Test: Kubuntu 8.04 w/ KDE 4.1 packages from PPA

I discovered that Kubuntu had packages for 4.1 via this news post (at the time of this writing there are 4.1.2 packages in that same repo if you are interested in trying them out). I made two attempts at this one. On the first attempt I installed from the Kubuntu-KDE4 Remix CD, which installed 4.0.x, and then followed the instructions on the news-post I linked too earlier to upgrade to 4.1. Somehow, I ended up in a huge mud-puddle of instability. I’m not sure what went wrong, but something definitely did. I then re-installed, and hit F4 at the boot prompt and chose to install a Command-Line only system. I added the PPA repo, and did the 4.1 install. This time things went much better, but it still wasn’t right. I had occasional plasma crashes (at random), and overall, using the desktop, I felt as thought I was going to break it. I knew this couldn’t be a long-term solution for me.

Fifth Test: openSUSE 11.0 with 4.1 packages from the Build Service

Having learned my lesson from installing Kubuntu 8.04 and upgrading form 4.0.x to 4.1, I added the Build Service repo at install time, and installed KDE 4.1 fresh. Initially, I thought this was it! However, although it took a little longer to start happening than it did with Kubuntu, KDE 4.1 started dissolving around me - Plasma crashes, and the general feeling I was going to break the Desktop by simply clicking on something. I was very disappointed in this trial, because I actually fully expected this to be my solution.

Sixth Test: Kubuntu 8.10 Beta

By this time, the Beta for 8.10 was released. Same problem as Alpha 6 - no X.

Seventh Test: Mandriva 2009 RC2

Sorry - I just can’t get used to Mandriva - I don’t feel comfortable here. Also, had some random Plasma problems as well.

Side note: By this time I actually considered returning the RAM and going back to XP Pro

Sorry KDE guys, I’m just going to have to step away still - KDE 4.1.x just isn’t ready (or at least I’m not ready for it) just yet. I will check back w/ 4.2, but for now, I’ve gotten used to GNOME, and I actually like it better now.

The real results of this test aren’t distro specific, they became desktop specific. I could go down that same list of distro’s, and with the exception of not having ATI drivers available for Fedora, any of those distro’s would work for me under GNOME (including Mandriva). What did I pick?

Eighth Test (and defeat): Ubuntu 8.04.1

It just works. Plain and simple. It works, and it works better (at least for me) better than anything out there - Plus, it’s an LTS release so I can relax and just run for a while.

I think it’s great that there are hundreds of Linux distributions out there, and dozens of Window Managers and desktop enviroments, but Ubuntu (running GNOME) has become insanely popular, and has come closer than any Linux distro before it of becoming “Mainstream”. Dell is offering how many machines with Ubuntu pre-installed now? I think it’s 6! Can you get any more mainstream than Dell?

For me the choice was simple - Ubuntu (in my opinion) is going to be the future of Linux on the Desktop - like it or not. I’m not trying to be a “fanboy” so don’t flame me here, but I think like it or not, Ubuntu isn’t going anywhere, and it’s only going to get bigger and more popular than it is now. There will always be the countless number of Distro’s available, and there will be die hard users of both the “big ones” and the “little ones” but I think slowly, but surely more and more people are going to discover that Ubuntu is a distro that simply works, and works better than others out there.