Henk van de Goor's Bloggers@large

One of the classic problems with releasing software is making the mistake to give people a tight deadline and then work towards that deadline. About 2 weeks ago I wrote about the upcoming version of Ubuntu Linux, which was scheduled to come out yesterday, well it's not out yet. When you go over to their website the counter says 00 days but you won't find it; just the Beta is there. Canonical, the software support organization behind Ubuntu are going to put seven releases (versions) of Ubuntu out, and it's no shame they won't make it in time. It's just so "Vista-like" to announce a date and then not make it. It will be interesting to see if the final version of Gutsy Gibbon can be found on the Ubuntu website tonight...

When I migrated my server at home (zion.demon.nl) to this server at Site5, I realized that I now had one spare computer left to mess around with. So, what to do with it? Well, that was an easy question: put Linux on it! My main PC which I use for games, downloading etc. etc. is a Windows XP machine and is actually dual-boot; I have Vista Ultimate on it as well. And even though I use Vista less than 1 hour a month I don't really want to put Linux on that PC. Although the idea of making it triple-boot is appealing ;-) So instead I went over to the Ubuntu website, downloaded the latest Beta version of Ubuntu 7.10, codename "Gutsy Gibbon" and burned a CD. Then I wiped my old server, disconnected the faulty 60gb drive that caused my Ubuntu 6.06 LTS to die (I had it configured using LVM - bad choice!) and started the install.

The installer was straight forward as is always the case with Ubuntu. About 20 minutes later I was staring are the GDM login screen and logged on. I was immediately greeted by the "restricted driver" dialog that told me my hardware would perform better if I used the restricted Nvida drivers, which I did. It worked great, right away. Compiz Fusion is enabled by default and gives you lots of desktop visual effects (see video below). Before configuring Beryl or some other 3D desktop was a pain in the ass and way to geeky. But with 7.10 it will become mainstream. I also noticed that it does NOT make your PC slower as all effects are handled by your GPU.

So what makes 7.10 so interesting? To me it represents a step forward in the development of Linux for regular users that want a good alternative to winblows. It is easier in use and it is getting more mainstream with each release. 7.10 will have the latest version of the Gnome desktop (2.20), has better drivers, better laptop support, easier installation of printers (supposedly automagically), better graphics (including dynamic resizing of your desktop and support for beamers etc..), and loads of other cool things.

However, after I installed the KDE desktop as well, I couldn't get Gnome (or better Compiz) to work properly anymore so I better wait for the final release and stick with Gnome. You can still run KDE apps anyway. For now I reverted to Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn).

Yep folks, Ubuntu is here to stay and rock your world... Uh.. your PC...

Gutsy Gibbon Goodness

Just to let you all know: this Friday I added my own Wiki to my webserver. After I tried PHPwiki (which was very hard to configure and looked real ugly) I decided to install the #1 Wiki: MediaWiki. This is the same software that they run for Wikipedia and lot's of other Wiki sites. I am going to dedicate my ZionWiki to the Serendipity (s9y) Blogging software and a bit about Ubuntu Linux. The Serendipity website has its own Wiki, but I think it doesn't look good like a Wiki and I find it hard to search and find stuff. And as long as the authors don't object (afterall: it's more exposure) I think it's cool. By the way: there is a really good website that helps you decide what Wiki software you want to run: WikiMatrix. So the next few days I will start to fill my Wiki with as much handy information as I can. I also will need to learn how to put certain features in it as well.

In the mean time: feel free to contribute to ZionWiki!

[CONFESSION MODE] The more I work with computers and software, the more appreciation I get for Microsoft and it's Windows OS.[/CONFESSION MODE]. There: I said it. And you know what: I really mean it...

So what triggered this confession? Well, I have some new (old) hardware since this weekend (Friday night) that I try to turn into a dual boot server running XP and Ubuntu (yeah again: Ubuntu). The hardware is an old Pentium III that runs at 866Mhz with 640mb ram (133mHz ECC), has a Elsa Gladiac Nvidia MX200 videocard with 64mb and a DVD rom and CD-rom player. Nothing fancy there, nothing weird. Except it has a 250gb harddisk. Well, knowing that I want to run Linux and Windows dual boot, you start with installing Windows first, then install Linux and just let Grub do it's work dual booting the stuff.

So I installed Windows Professional within 50 minutes (it takes that long because the hardware isn't exactly that spanking new) and it recognized all the hardware except the wireless PCI network card (some old SMC card). It runs like a breeze. Now, I partioned the 250gb into two partitions at first: one 45gb for XP and the rest for Linux. After I did some updating and installed the usual stuff you need on Windows (a real firewall and a decent virusscanner), I proceeded to install Ubuntu 6.06. After the usuall yada yada it started to take about another 50 minutes installing all the packages etc. and finally I could reboot the server yeah! Then I'm staring at a black screen with green letters:

GRUB Loading stage1.5.

GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 18

Big sigh...
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